1983-09-27

Hon. Yvon Pinard (for the Minister of State (International Trade)) moved: that Bill C-l 10, an Act to amend the Export Development Act, be read the third time and do pass.


Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Mr. Speaker, this Bill was before this House at report stage until last Friday when after seven days of report stage debate, a debate which did not involve the question of exports and the need for financing and assistance to our exports but involved the issue of parliamentary accountability, the Government to some extent saw some reason and consented to the amendments which are now part of the Bill as presented to the House at this stage. Briefly, Mr. Speaker, those amendments reduced the gross limit of the Bill from a demand for the right to deal with $62 billion to a demand for the right to deal with $44.5 billion, a $17.5 billion reduction in demand.
[DOT]	(ino)
Second, those amendments require an automatic reference of the Export Development Corporation's performance to standing committees of the House so that the committees will be able to review annually the performance of this corporation as it works to assist the exporters of our country.
Last, Mr. Speaker, perhaps the most dramatic amendment is the change in terms of the borrowing arrangement for the corporation. You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that under the Bill presented to Parliament and under the previous Export Development Act, the corporation was entitled to borrow in relation to its authorized capital. That borrowing is now limited to ten times the paid-in capital and retained earnings of the corporation. That in itself is a very dramatic form of parliamentary accountability.
We are not quite sure what the retained earnings of the corporation are at this point, but the corporation can borrow approximately $7 billion because that would be approximately ten times its paid-in capital and retained earnings. That is a far cry from the automatic right to borrow $20 billion without
having the Government put any money into the corporation at all.
This has, therefore, been a dramatic action largely led by this Party to make sure that Parliament again would have control over the public purse and would have some element of control over the activities of the corporation. The result of the debate that we have engaged in over the past weeks is proof, Sir, that Parliament can work, proof that if Members of Parliament are prepared to demand that the Crown be accountable, the Crown can be forced to be accountable. I think that is a tribute to the House and, indeed, it is a tribute to the Government that it finally saw the wisdom of the statements made and positions taken by members of this Party in requiring accountability to Parliament.
There are serious problems with the Export Development Corporation. Those problems were, to some extent, referred to by the many speakers who spoke at report stage on the various amendments. Before we finish this debate which, by House order, should finish today, I think it is essential that those particular positions be put to the House again for the record so that the officials of the Export Development Corporation may know where we stand, what we would like done with the corporation and how we would like to see that corporation run to the benefit of the trade of Canada.
There were serious allegations made about the efficiency of the Export Development Corporation in a study done by the Economic Council of Canada. I want to refer to that study first because I think it made a number of references to how the corporation should work. The Economic Council of Canada made a number of recommendations, Sir. 1 would like to go over those recommendations very briefly with Members of the House so that we can come to some type of consensus and formulate some type of direction from the House to the corporation as to how the corporation might better promote the exports of the country.
At one time, Sir, the corporation was essentially an insurance corporation for an exporter with a receivable from a foreign country or receivables from purchasers or consignees of Canadian goods in foreign countries. That exporter would purchase from the Export Development Corporation insurance coverage to cover all his world-wide export contracts with various countries and consignees. The corporation's basic business interests remained in the insurance field until 1970. It was only after 1970 that the corporation moved into the field of lending money.
A lot of the discussion on this Bill has been about the lending function of the corporation. Perhaps the most impor-

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act
tant thing the corporation could be engaged in is the insurance field. The Economic Council of Canada dealt with that aspect and said that in its view the corporation should be more involved in the export credit reinsurance and the insurance aspect-in other words, it should get back to where it was before, insuring and reinsuring of exports so that when they give credit on the sale of goods and services they are going to wind up with accounts that are collectable. When goods are shipped to a foreign consignee first of all, it is very difficult to get them back; second, in many cases there is an opportunity to sue in a foreign court; and third, in the process the company's working capital requirements have to be financed. The sale of goods to a purchaser in a foreign country represents risks that are entirely different from those involved in selling goods domestically. It is for that reason that exporters and their bankers demand insurance coverage. We must have a more aggressive insurance and reinsurance coverage.
The Economic Council of Canada talks about developing private markets for insurance, and reinsurance of those private insurers, so that exporters get paid for their goods.
The corporation had better examine the references regarding insurance made by the Economic Council of Canada. I say that because many exporters come to me complaining that they cannot get along with the Export Development Corporation. They say it is too fussy, it does not check credits, it gives small coverage on insurance and it is hard to get along with. One company claimed that the Export Development Corporation is a waste of time and it deals with the American Credit Indemnity Company of New York where they can get insurance at one-third or one-fifth of the cost of the Export Development Corporation's coverage.
Reference was made to the sale of a food conveyor system for an airport in Singapore. Apparently the negotiations with the Export Development Corporation became so cumbersome that they placed the business with the American Credit Indemnity Company where the premium was less. They got the coverage and were paid without any problem. But where was the Export Development Corporation's insurance program? It was working in a very bureaucratic and backward fashion with an attitude that it was not appropriate to the development of the trade.
The Economic Council of Canada suggested that the corporation should withdraw bit by bit from the lending field because there seems to be a limited number of borrowers who get assistance, and almost always it is the same group. For example, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited has borrowed about 25 per cent of the money the corporation has lent. Is this financing export or is it financing Atomic Energy of Canada Limited under another heading? I think it is the latter. If we are going to sell atomic reactors, perhaps the Government of Canada should finance the sales but let us recognize it for what it is: it is financing Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, not export sales. Therefore, to a large extent, one begins to wonder whether this is not an implicit subsidy to a relatively few number of corporations which are receiving a subsidy and which perhaps should be designated to them. If they need a
subsidy they should have the subsidy, but it should not be buried under the glowing cloak of export assistance when in fact it is corporate assistance to businesses which may or may not be entitled to receive assistance year after year just because of foreign sales.
We must look at what the cost to Canada is for these particular businesses which seem continually to rely on the Export Development Corporation somehow as their banker at low interest cost. That low interest cost is a huge subsidy to these corporations. It does not appear anywhere in the estimates. That is something which we as a nation must look at. This is the kind of thing which the corporation must look at. Is the Export Development Corporation here to finance exports, or is it here to be a source of credit to a limited few which have, for one reason or another, the right to access money at very significantly subsidized rates?
Further, the Economic Council of Canada looks at the question of subsidizing rates, a concessionary financing. There is no question that what we have to do is struggle with our trading partners, with other countries which are leading exporters, and get rid of this business of subsidizing interest rates. That is not a question of fair trade; that is a question of subsidized trade. When we are looking at our tariff policy and at our dumping arrangements, our other trade arrangements, we ought very carefully to examine those countries which give concessionary financing for goods purchased by Canadians from those foreign countries. That type of assistance is nontariff assistance and should be treated as a form of dumping, a form of subsidizing exports, the kind of thing which, if it is going to continue, will seriously mar international trade. We had better get tough about the matter. It does not do the foreign country in balance any good. It does not do us any good to do it. It is expensive for all of us. We ought to get tough with those who do it by treating the goods which they export to Canada in a fashion different from what they claim to be a fair market basis. We ought to treat them as being pariahs in world trade and penalize them accordingly.
We might well be better off, Sir, as the Economic Council says, when we have a situation where it is a question of exporting goods or of reducing the need for imports, to spend more of our money reducing the need for imports, because that is the other aspect of trade. It is all very well to buy and sell goods all over the world, but sometimes one is just as well off to sell fewer goods and make more of the things and do more of those things at home that one can do at home. I wonder about the airplane business, for example. Are we all that bright in financing airplanes at concessionary rates to foreign purchasers but not to Canadians? Are we all that bright in financing ships for export to foreign countries but not for Canadians? In effect, the Canadian goes offshore to buy his ship because he can get concessionary financing. We sell ships to a foreigner with concessionary financing but not to Canadians. Where are we getting lost? It is not too bright, Mr. Speaker, and it is about time the EDC and the Minister started looking at the situation and saying somewhere along
September 27, 1983

the line that we have to do the business like, bottom line type of thing.
A lot has been said about the New York subway deal whereby we supplied the best part of $1 billion in concessionary rates. Even today they are concessionary rates, Sir. When the loan was committed to the City of New York it represented a subsidy of between 6 per cent and 7 per cent, an enormous subsidy on a per annum basis. Today rates have fallen and it does not represent that kind of subsidy at all, but it still is a small subsidy. The loan was justified on the basis of creating employment, but 40 per cent of the employment is American. The loan was justified on the basis of the export of our technology, and so on, to that great market in New York. At the same time we have cities in Canada which need commuter service, subway cars and so on, so should we not be offering that kind of financial assistance to our own people before we offer it to those around the world? When do the people of the City of New York have the right to assistance from Canada before the people of Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver?


Mr. Nystrom:: Or Yorkton.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: My friend says Yorkton.
I would like to move, Mr. Speaker, to the question of other types of financing that we might look at. We have before the Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs a reference with respect to foreign banks. You will know, Sir, that under the Bank Act we have allowed some 58 foreign banks to operate in Canada. The reason for this is that our banks, which were certainly not large in terms of foreign business 15 or 20 years ago, have now become quite dominant in some foreign markets. Indeed, they rank high in a list of international banks doing business around the world. What we have to look at is the extent to which we can use our own Canadian bank network to promote and finance our trade and the extent to which foreign banks operating in Canada can help us with financing our foreign trade. After all, one of the reasons for bringing in a foreign bank to the country, presumably, is to finance trade activities. By and large they are not there to look after the ordinary citizens' deposit or chequing accounts or that type of thing; they are interested in commercial activity, and what we ought to look at in licensing foreign banks is their willingness to assist in financing Canada's export trade.
During the debate a great deal was made of the efficiency of the operation itself. The corporation's executives have probably heard to the full the fact that in their last year's report they indicated they had 613 employees, approximately ten employees for every loan customers. The fact is that they made about 120 loan transactions but with only 62 separate customers. Therefore, that corporation had ten employees for every loan transaction.
Then one goes on to the insurance account and finds that it wrote about 900 new insurance policies. It has about 1,320
Export Development Act
insurance accounts, but it wrote 900 new insurance accounts, amounting to one and a half insurance accounts for every employee.
When one finds that the corporation has offices in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax and, of course, here in Ottawa, one begins to wonder, in view of the size of the corporation and the kinds of things it is doing, why it needs all this help and all these offices. After all, if it is only involved in 900 new guarantee deals in a year and if it has only 62 customers to whom to lend money, why does it need over 600 employees? The answer is that it does not.
No reasonable person could ever suggest that the corporation is efficiently and effectively managed. I say that because of the straight statistics produced by the corporation. The corporation may say that it must be very careful when it gives a credit line to a foreign country, that it must check out the economy of the country and ensure that the credit is worth while, and that it is necessary to employ economists and so on.
1 ask why? We do have a Department of External Affairs. We do have embassies and consulates around the world. Surely we do not need a duplicate arrangement involving the Export Development Corporation.
I therefore say to Your Honour that there is a great deal of room for fat trimming in the corporation. It is my hope that with the promise of the Minister that his new board of directors, which will now total 15, will have a significant private majority, this directorship will be comprised of people who will not be yes men or yes women. I hope these people will take a hard-nosed look at the activities of the Corporation, its employees, its expenses such as travelling costs, and, if necessary, contract out some of the work of the corporation. Is there any reason the corporation's insurance should not be available in major insurance offices around the country? Is there any reason the banks of the country should not be directly capable of dealing with the Export Development Corporation on their own, placing the paper, receiving the guarantee, much the same as they do under the Small Businesses Loans Act, for example? There is no reason at all.
I say to Your Honour that a great deal of overhead being carried and a great deal of bureaucracy could easily be eliminated. I hope that the private sector appointees will very quickly turn around this image created by 613 employees handling 62 loan accounts and 900 new insurance policies. We must have a bottom line board of directors, and the Minister had better appoint a bottom line board of directors. Perhaps there have been further additions as of this year, and I am not exactly sure what the paid-in capital of the corporation is at this point, but as of the end of December, 1982 the corporation had $651 million in subscribed capital and retained earnings. On the $651 million, it earned $1 million. This is perhaps less than one-tenth of 1 per cent; I am not very good at mathematics. However, the return was $1 million on $651 million. That is a pathetic return. That return represents an implicit subsidy to those persons and corporations who received export concessionary financing. Bearing in mind the fact that during 1982 the Government of Canada was paying on the average 15 per

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act
cent for its money, the $651 million really cost us 15 per cent, or very close to $100 million. For the $100 million we received back $1 million. The subsidy then was very close to $99 million.
When we are paying out that kind of subsidy, and that is what we did, we had better make sure that Canada is getting value for the subsidies. A new, hard-nosed private board of directors had better be appointed to review the situation, because the matter will be coming back to the House of Commons next year. As soon as the corporation's next annual report is through, it is required that the report be referred back to the House's Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs. That is one of the amendments that was put through on Friday. 1 am sure the committee will be asking those very questions, and I am now drawing the amendment to the attention of the Government and to the directors of the corporation.
There are a great number of things that we need to do concerning trade in Canada. We rely on foreign trade. We are a country that produces some basic commodities in huge amounts. They must be sold to the world. We are a country that has some of the most highly educated young people in the world, probably a higher percentage than anywhere else. Those young people are learning skills and trade in highly technical fields. Our exports of technological equipment can beat down doors of the world markets. We need an export corporation and we need financial assistance and the drive and the enthusiasm of people out there to encourage our producers to produce and to sell our goods. The challenge of the corporation is to move Canada ahead in trade.
Unfortunately, over the years we, as a country, have slipped in the percentage of world trade. At one time we had very close to 6 per cent of the world's trade. We are now down to well less than 4 per cent of the world's trade. We have gone down about 50 per cent from our former position, and that cannot continue. We in this nation rely on trading with others for our prosperity. The corporation is one of our front line tools for trade. It had better start acting efficiently, effectively and dramatically to encourage and build our trade, or we in this House of Commons will want to know why.


Mr. Peterson:: Mr. Speaker, 1 would like to ask the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn), who has declared that he is strongly in favour of added incentives for exporters in Canada, if this debate being conducted by the Official Opposition is a filibuster. I would ask him how many speakers he has put up on behalf of that Party in an attempt to stop us from coming forward with the increased funding that is necessary to do the job on behalf of Canadian exporters.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that the Hon. Member was not here on Friday but he can be excused. The issue in the debate was that of parliamentary accountability. It had nothing at all to do with trade.


Mr. Thomson:: He does not understand.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: That is right. He does not understand that. He does not understand because at some point he has taken the attitude that the Government knows best and he believes anything the bureaucracy tells him.
If he could read financial statements he would know that there was no need for this Bill to be passed in a mad rush. If there was any urgency the Government would have introduced the Bill for debate much sooner than last week. Even last week, with the most optimistic trade possibilities, the Government had enough credit on hand to finance Canada's exports without any additional capital requirements, or borrowing limit requirements, without any additional money toward order in council awards or order in council insurance appointments.
If the Hon. Member cares to examine the financial statement, he would find that at ten times the subscribed capital and earned surplus in the corporation it could borrow roughly $7 billion. He would also find that the corporation only owes the marketplace $4.5 billion. Therefore he would know that the corporation had the right to borrow well over $2 billion without this Bill ever coming before Parliament.
The Hon. Member does not understand the Bill yet he stands here and asks questions. He asks how many speakers we have put up. While I do not have the exact number, there are about 153. He asks why they were speaking. It is so that Parliament and Members of Parliament could ensure that this corporation and the Government which that Hon. Member represents is accountable to Parliament and not the bureaucracy.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. The Chair ought to remind Hon. Members that questions, comments and replies should be brief and to the point. Is the Hon. Member standing to be recognized for a further question?


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that they cannot oppose the substance of what we are attempting to do, which is to facilitate the efforts of the Export Development Corporation in doing its job in a much expanded way on behalf of the private sector in this country. But what have they done? They got on the high horse of parliamentary accountability.
If the Opposition intends to adopt this practice not only with a Bill through which we are attempting to help those people who can really make our economy move in the days ahead but with every Bill we introduce, 1 simply want the Canadian people to know that that is obstruction and not constructive criticism.


Mr. Nickerson:: What is your question?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: I have heard other Hon. Members ask what the question was. Standing Order 35(1) provides for questions or comments and replies thereto.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, the reply is clear. This Party will stand up for Canadians, talk in the House and put forward constructive amendments. We will make sure that the agencies of the Government and the Government itself are accountable
September 27, 1983

to Parliament. We will make every effort and speak as long and often as necessary to make sure that that occurs. For the Hon. Member to say that this is a Bill with respect to trade and that our debate concerns trade is not to understand what occurred here for the past two and a half weeks.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted that the Opposition is supportive of our efforts to aid the private sector to do its job of increasing our share of world trade. I am glad that they have come to that admission lately, however reluctantly.
If the issue is credibility, 1 would invite the Hon. Member to review the speeches which have been made in the House by Hon. Members from this side, including myself, dealing with the ways in which the Export Development Corporation is accountable to the people of Canada through our institution of Parliament. Let me summarize some of the ways in which that corporation is accountable. It is accountable to the Auditor General, the Comptroller General, the Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates when additional borrowings must be approved, and to the Minister who is answerable in the House. He is an excellent Minister of State for International Trade (Mr. Regan) who has been making great efforts on behalf of Canadian exporters to make their goods known and better recognized in the marketplace of the world. It is through that approach that we have accountability.
The Opposition may not want that exact approach and prefer to have an opportunity to approve every single additional issue when the Export Development Corporation has to go to the marketplace. Surely that is an unreasonable constraint to impose on any operation which has to be flexible in meeting the needs of Canada's exporters. The House does not sit all year long and it must also deal with many other issues that come before us. Imagine what would happen if every new issue that the EDC wanted to bring out had to be brought before the House.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. The Hon. Member has gone on for an additional two minutes. I think he has made his point.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that the Hon. Member did not read the Bill. He will find that under the existing Act, and as it was amended on Friday, borrowing by the Export Development Corporation can take place without the corporation ever coming to the House and without ever having the approval of any committee of the House.


Mr. Forrestall:: Or without the Minister's approval.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Indeed, without the Minister. Though it may have some problems with the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde). He will know that the controls which we wanted were ones which the Minister finally gave us. They demanded that there be some equity capital relationship between borrowing and debt. We would then have some element of control over what the corporation in fact borrows so that it cannot get itself into some of the problem situations such as companies like Canadair and de Havilland were allowed to get into by the
Export Development Act
Government. We have been very responsible by forcing the corporation to have a relationship in borrowing ten times the paid-in capital and retained earnings of the corporation. That kind of change, which the Government finally accepted on Friday after resisting it for seven days of debate, makes quite a difference in the control that Parliament and the people have over this corporation and its actions.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, I want to be fairly brief this morning but I wish to continue the comments made by the Parliamentary Secretary about the amendments that passed through the House on Friday. 1 also wish to talk about the Bill itself in general.
[DOT] (M50)
There were two significant points about the amendments which were passed on Friday with all-Party support. The first was that there will now be more accountability to Parliament and its committees by the Export Development Corporation. I think that is a very good and positive step. It is the kind of step which should be taken with other Crown corporations in this national Parliament.
The Province of Saskatchewan, under the premiership of Tommy Douglas back in the 1940s, established a special Crown corporations committee of the legislature on which sat Members of all Parties. The annual reports of the provincial Crown corporations are referred automatically to that committee each and every year. Also, every year the officers of the Crown corporations must go before the committee, talk about their plans and justify what they have done in the year gone by. That is a very good step. It is the kind of thing we should have in this Parliament where automatically the reports of Crown corporations are referred to the relevant committee for cross-examination and discussion by Parliamentarians. I think that is very important.
I am a very strong supporter of Crown corporations. I suppose that is true of all Parties, including the Conservative Party. I can look at Peter Lougheed in Alberta with PWA and his investments in the oil industry, or Bill Davis in Ontario with the purchase of part of Suncor and other Crown corporations. I can look at the federal Crown corporations and the ones we have established in the three Provinces which we have governed in the last number of years. It is very important that they be more accountable and more responsive to the wishes of Canadians. That is the message we tried to get across in this debate, and we have succeeded to a certain degree by the amendments that were accepted last Friday.
The second important point about the amendments is that Parliament finally has a little say over what a Bill should contain or what the EDC should look like, rather than the Cabinet or the executive exercising an almost autocratic say in a situation where we have a majority Parliament. I think that is a good step as well. Where we have a majority Parliament in our system, all too often because of the hang-up on the confidence vote, the lack of free votes or things of that sort and the lack of clout of committees, the executive, the Prime Minister's office or the Minister's office, has much too much

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act
power and Parliament itself has much too little power. Those were the two very significant points about the amendments which all three Parties supported last Friday to Bill C-110 respecting the Export Development Corporation.
Another point I want to make is that this is only a beginning. We have to move more and more toward a system of economic democracy where ordinary citizens, workers, farmers, consumers, producers and business people have more say over the economic direction of the country. For years we have talked about and exercised political democracy and voted every two to five years. The time has come in the twentieth century to start talking about the ways and means of achieving real economic democracy so that the ordinary citizen, regardless of one's income, has more influence upon the direction of society. I believe we can do that as well in the Crown corporations of this land.
World trade is very important for Canada. In fact, it is more important in our country than in most other countries of the world.
[ Translation]
International trade has always been very important to Canada, because we do not have a large population, compared with the United States, France, Japan and other countries. In Canada, international trade represents about 25 per cent of our gross national product. In the United States, it is 12 or 13 per cent of GNP, the same in France and Germany, and perhaps less than 10 per cent in Japan. Export development is very important for creating jobs for Canadians, more 80 for us than for other countries, with the exception, for instance, of New Zealand, Australia and other countries with a small population. Mr. Speaker, the Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) said earlier that our share of international trade has shrunk considerably in the last twenty years. For instance, between 1972 and 1979, it dropped from 4.9 per cent to 3.4 per cent. In only seven years we had this substantial drop in our share of world trade, notwithstanding the Export Development Corporation, the Government of Canada and all the speeches made by the Prime Minister and other Ministers during that time. Another interesting figure shows that between 1969 and 1979, the market share of Canadian exports dropped 33 per cent. That is a lot.

With those kinds of statistics it is easy to see that, despite the fact trade is so important, our share of world trade is falling. This is one reason more and more people in the country are unemployed each and every year.
World trade is becoming more and more aggressive. We can look at the French, Germans, Japanese, Americans, British and even the Third World. Despite the fact that we in Canada have increased our exports dramatically, in the last ten years or 15 years our share of world trade has fallen.
I would like to indicate one more specific which I think puts into perspective the need for being more aggressive and ensuring that we are more competitive with the French, Germans
and Japanese. Between 1969 and 1979 we increased our trade at an annual rate by some 15.1 per cent. We may say that that is a tremendous increase or growth in our trade, but developing countries increased their trade at an annual rate of 23.1 per cent, or 8 per cent faster than Canada. My feeling is that we will go more and more slowly in terms of our increase in trade in comparison with the rest of the world.
I want to spend a minute or two on other matters which are very relevant to the Export Development Corporation and to trade in general. I do this because of the tremendously high unemployment rate in the country. I refer to our failure as a nation in expanding our manufacturing base. I see the Hon. Member for Winnipeg North (Mr. Orlikow) in the House. He has often mentioned our failure as a country to develop, protect, expand, modernize and make competitive our manau-facturing base with the Europeans, Japanese and Americans.
Back in 1970 our deficit in manufactured goods was $2.5 billion. In 1981 our deficit in finished goods had risen from $2.5 billion to $21 billion-a tremendous deficit in finished products. In finished products we have many skilled jobs with which to put people to work. The EDC must do a much better job in terms of financing, insuring and promoting in every way it can under the Act the export of Canadian manufactured goods around the globe. Perhaps it is one of the sad commentaries in our country that since its inception, or even earlier, we have been an exporter of raw materials and an importer of finished goods. If we go back to Samuel de Champlain in 1608, the French exported beaver pelts from Canada and purchased finished goods in return. We are no longer exporting great quantities of beaver pelts, but we are still following the same philosophy of exporting raw material and importing finished goods. The EDC has to do something to try to change that trend.
The other point that disturbs me about the Export Development Corporation and our trade in general is that too much of the export financing done by the EDC, and I think the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) will agree with this, is going to a few large companies and much too little is going to small business.
I believe that the large multinational corporations are powerful. They can look after themselves. They have a lot of funds, resources and contacts around the world. The EDC does not have to worry about financing many of these big corporations in different parts of the world. Instead, it should be concerned about helping the small business people across this country.
A couple of years ago a special committee of this House studied the possibility of establishing a national trading corporation. In its report, it stated that 37 per cent of businesses in Canada did not know the Export Development Corporation even existed and only 29 per cent of businesses in this country ever used the EDC. It shows there is something missing when only 29 per cent use EDC and only 62 per cent know it exists. The Hon. Member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Evans) may want to comment on this later.
September 27, 1983

In its statement of May 24 last, the Economic Council of Canada said to us that between 1969 and 1980 only 16 companies had availed themselves of over 50 per cent of the loans from the Export Development Corporation. One company had a loan on 40 different occasions between 1969 and 1980. Some 138 companies used EDC loan financing between 1969 and 1980. There were 415 loans, and 16 companies accounted for well over half of the loans from the Export Development Corporation. That is another point that is very important. If the EDC is to be seen to be working and efficient, it should put more emphasis on aiding and assisting small business in this country, which employs 60 per cent or more of the Canadian population.
Those are some of the important matters that we should look at. There are a number of other points on trade and the EDC that 1 have mentioned at other times. One is that we must ensure that our trade policy jibes with our foreign policy, that we not just try to make a buck for the sake of a buck, but that there be some moral purpose to the kind of trade we are trying to develop. As I mentioned, we should try to push more manufactured goods.
I have often tried to point out to the House that before we can have a proper trade policy, we need a proper economic and industrial policy so that we know where we are going. We need a more planned economy. We should specialize in a few areas that are natural to our country. We should modernize our industry so that we can preserve some jobs and create others. These are some points the EDC should be working on as well.
In conclusion, 1 am pleased that last Friday afternoon we reached an all-Party agreement to make the Export Development Corporation more accountable to this House. A number of people worked on this for quite some time. I hope the Government will look on this as a precedent and automatically refer the annual reports of all Crown corporations to the relevant committees from here on in. This is very important because of the number of Crown corporations that we have. Most of us in this House support Crown corporations. We must ensure that they are accountable and are in step with the policies and wishes of the Parliament of Canada.
The last point I want to make is that this Parliament should have more say over Government policy when we have a majority Parliament. All too often it is the executive or the Prime Minister who run the show and want to use us as a rubber stamp. In a healthy democracy in the twentieth century we need to have more legislative input and clout from the ordinary Member of Parliament. It is time we had some radical parliamentary reform so that we can move in that direction. I do not see why the Prime Minister should have the right in our system to appoint heads of Crown corporations and to appoint unilaterally heads of regulatory agencies and national boards. If we are to have a truly democratic parliamentary system, the Prime Minister should only nominate. That nomination should go before the relevant committee of this House. The committee would cross-examine the nominee and either ratify or reject the nomination of the Prime Minister. That would be true parliamentary democracy. 1 hope that
Export Development Act
is the direction this Parliament will go in the years that lie ahead.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Question, comments, debate?


Mr. John Evans (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council):: Mr. Speaker, I first want to indicate to the Members why the Minister responsible, the Minister of State for International Trade (Mr. Regan), is not here today. The Minister is attending the quadralateral meetings at Meach Lake which Canada is hosting on questions of international trade. He has asked me expressly to thank the Members of the House for the co-operation they have given, especially on Friday when we were able to reach a rather monumental agreement and come to a House Order to pass this through third reading today.
I would like especially, with the Minister's admonition to me, to thank the Hon. Members for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn), Calgary South (Mr. Thomson), Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom) and the Members on this side of the House who have been instrumental in bringing concerns to the attention of the Minister which ultimately resulted in the amendments that were made at report stage on Friday and which are now part of the Bill that will receive third reading today.
In my role almost as a mediator between sides, I found it a very exciting prospect to find ways to accommodate the valid expressions of concern of the Opposition and the very valid need for moving forward with necessary legislation on the part of the Government. 1 can assure Members on both sides of the House that I intend to play that role as actively as I possibly can in the future to see whether we can make Parliament work the way all of us want it to make it work-much more effectively, moving forward with legislation on which all of us can agree.
There is no doubt that the legislation was necessary. The Export Development Corporation has a very vital function in our economy. The way our economy is structured, certainly international trade cannot be anything but seen by this House as being of the utmost importance, and the Export Development Corporation facilitates that greatly. I was interested in some of the comments made by the Members for Mississauga South and Yorkton-Melville. I am sure some of those comments will be reiterated by other Members as the debate continues.
Through the amendment process we have emphasized the notion of accountability of Crown corporations to Parliament, although I would say that accountability to Parliament on a less frequent basis was certainly part of the legislation as it was brought before us. Parliamentary accountability through the reference of the annual report, should we continue with the provisional rules now before the House, would have been the case in any event. The amendment brought forward by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South ensures that should the provisional House rule not continue beyond the deadline that we have set for ourselves in the trial period, automatically that annual report will be referred to committee, should there be

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act
changes to the Standing Orders away from what we now have. It was always our intention that these changes to the Standing Orders would continue and, therefore, the annual report of the Export Development Corporation would have automatically been referred to a committee for scrutiny. We have a different form of parliamentary accountability perhaps from the point of view of the Hon. Member for Mississauga South and others, and that accountability has been strengthened. Certainly I was always of the opinion that the Export Development Corporation would have to be accountable to Parliament in a very meaningful way even as the Bill was originally introduced.
1 was interested to hear the comments made by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South with regard to the Economic Council report. That was a report we in committee looked at with great care, indeed, representatives of the Economic Council came before the committee to make representations about the Export Development Corporation and to present their report on export financing. I too share the concerns of the Hon. Member for Mississauga South and others with regard to the role of the Export Development Corporation vis-a-vis the role of other private sector intermediaries in financing foreign trade.
During those committee hearings we heard a great deal with regard to how other countries come to joint arrangements between private sector financial intermediaries and state controlled export financing arms. 1 would hope that in the future we in Canada would indeed see some movement toward more joint ventures and more loan guarantees made by the Export Development Corporation to ensure not only the widest possible range of export financing mechanisms available but that the market penetration of sound export financing can be as deep as possible without having to depend solely on one agency.
My hon. friend referred to the 613 employees of the Export Development Corporation. Contrary to his views, when one is talking about penetrating a massive market with tens of billions of dollars worth of export, 613 is really quite a small number of employees to do the kind of job that we would like to see done in the export financing field. I would hope that those 613 employees could be used more intensively through the use of joint ventures with private sector financial intermediaries.
Expanded coverage and the presence of export development financing through the Export Development Corporation to a wider range of firms are ideas that we in the Finance Committee were very concerned about and we probed quite deeply into those matters. 1 would certainly be of the view that the facilities of the Export Development Corporation should first be made known and then made available to a much wider range of firms, and I refer both to the nature of export business as well as to the size of firms.
Obviously, given the size of the Export Development Corporation, export financing through the corporation will be more favourably disposed toward export financing for very large
deals through very large firms. I believe it was the original intention of the Export Development Corporation to finance the very large deals that the private sector would be reluctant to finance. 1 can certainly see a role, however, for the Export Development Corporation, through loan guarantees and other kinds of joint arrangements, in making its facilities available to the smaller firms that have a very important role to play in the export future of the country.
With regard to the area of co-operation, I might, Mr. Speaker, just as an aside, say a few things about the structure of our private financial intermediation system. At the moment, as you know, Mr. Speaker, there are certain restrictions on our financial institutions with regard to the nature of business that they can undertake in the marketplace. The chartered banks, the Canadian owned and operated banks, the Schedule A banks, have restrictions on the kinds of things that they can do. Subsidiaries of foreign-owned and controlled banks, our Schedule B banks, have very serious restrictions on the kinds of business that they can undertake. That matter is currently before the Finance Committee and we are about to make recommendations with regard to how we should look at the question of Schedule B banks, what the nature of their presence should be and whether or not some of the restrictions, in particular the 8 per cent ceiling, should be changed or not.
Certainly these institutions, the chartered banks, the Schedule A and B banks, the trust companies, credit unions, co-ops, caisses populaires and insurance companies have in the past been separated into specific sectors of financial intermediation. My own personal view is that as a result of this we have precluded a great many innovative and creative arrangements that are now being undertaken in other countries to facilitate the financing of domestic and export operations that we could enjoy here in Canada.
1 would hope to see the Export Development Corporation form part of the renewed, reinvigorated and renovated system of financial intermediation that I see evolving in the minds of many parliamentarians here. This new system of financial intermediation could create the framework that would facilitate the kinds of changes that we have all been talking about with regard to trust company legislation and the kinds of changes that have been asked for with regard to life insurance and general insurance legislation as well as legislation with regard to caisses populaires, credit unions and other forms of financial intermediaries.
A more flexible and broader based set of financial institutions in the country could certainly compete in many different markets outside of those which are currently available to them. The Export Development Corporation then could play a very major catalytic role by ensuring that export financing was made widely available in the country, not only to large firms but to small firms and to a wider array of economic and commercial activities.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I would like to refer to the comment made by the Hon. Member for Yorkton-Melville who said that he was a great advocate of a planned economy. The only thing that I could say about that is that "planned"
September 27, 1983

has a tendency to become obsolete, which is why we have the phrase "planned obsolescence".
1 am very much opposed to the notion that the state somehow has the kind of insight and intuition that would make it possible for it to plan the future from the centre. 1 do not think we can do so, and certainly the view of the Government is that we should not even try to do so.
The essence of what I have been saying, Mr. Speaker, is that we need to try to make our economic system, and especially in this case our system of financial intermediation and arrangement of financing, more flexible, more adaptable and more driven by the real needs and demands for services in the marketplace. It certainly is not my view that we can somehow plan and direct where financing should take place and what kinds of businesses certain financial intermediaries should engage in. Perhaps in the 1940s and 1950s when things were so much simpler, it was possible for governments to say: "This is an area of business that you as a financial intermediary can get into and this is an area that another financial intermediary can get into but you cannot compete with one another."
If our intermediaries are going to be able to compete in today's world, if they are to be first-rate and provide the best and cheapest services to Canadians for the purposes we all want to see, then we will have to have financial intermediaries that are capable of adapting and changing and working together by coming to joint arrangements and finding ways of providing those financial services at the cheapest possible cost in the most efficient ways. That means more flexibility, more adaptability and that we need to have a bottom-up type of financial system as opposed to a top-down, centrally planned financial system. I think that that kind of a view toward financial intermediation and financial institutions in the country is precisely the same kind of view that we will have to take toward an industrial policy, because an industrial policy that is top-down directed will be just as inflexible and prove over time to be just as obsolete and ineffective as would a financial system that is top-down directed. It has to be bottom-up, market-oriented and responsive to changing needs.
If anything is certain in the future of this country, it is that change will occur as fast as it has in the past, not slower. There is no time for bureaucratic adjustment to change; it has to be bottom-up. What the Government has to do is to ensure that it can remove the barriers and restrictions that may hold up the development and growth of the economy and our financial institutions. They must provide the kind of flexibility that will facilitate change so that we can create the jobs and wealth that the country needs in the future.
The Export Development Corporation has a vital role to play because it is oriented toward megaproject financing. As many Hon. Members have said, it needs to take into consideration how it can work as a catalyst with private financial institutions in the future to get financing from them as opposed to depending on parliamentary approval for major infusions of new capital. We are talking about a maximum of
Export Development Act
$15 billion in lending from the Export Development Corporation. I cannot see a situation where Parliament would be willing to expand that base greatly. We must find ways to get the maximum leverage out of that $15 billion and the other facilities available to the Export Development Corporation in order to improve ways that our Schedule B banks, our Schedule A banks and other financial institutions can expand export financing and Canada's presence in export markets.
Hon. Members opposite have put forward very good ideas on this subject. The Export Development Corporation should not see itself as a "stand alone" agency doing most of its financing out of its own coffers; it should be a catalytic agent to ensure that financing for megaprojects is done but also that, through loan guarantees and other mechanisms, smaller firms have access to export financing.
1 should like to thank Hon. Members for their co-operation. The Minister is grateful for the co-operation that has resulted in the House order that will see the legislation pass third reading this afternoon. In my role with the Government House Leader, I look forward to seeing that kind of co-operation in the future to ensure that we move the nation's business ahead as the people expect.


Mr. Thacker:: Mr. Speaker, 1 wonder if the Parliamentary Secretary could advise us whether the international trade meeting is dealing with concessional financing, which is implicit in this Bill?


John Leslie Evans: Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of the full agenda that is before the Minister. 1 know that he is having discussions with other ministers of international trade and I believe that later today he will make a full announcement about the agenda and the agreements reached. I understand that great progress is being made and, like the Hon. Member, 1 look forward to the Minister's statement.


Mrs. Mitchell:: Mr. Speaker, I should like the Hon. Member to clarify some of the statements he made which 1 believe referred to his philosophy of planning. Do 1 understand him to say that he does not believe the federal Government should be involved in planning, that there should be no federal planning, that it should be a laissez-faire country and that the federal Government has no responsibility to lead in this area? That is really what he said-that he does not believe in federal planning.
Then he talked about bottom-up planning. As a Liberal, how does he think he is going to relate to any bottom-up planning in western Canada where there is absolutely no representation in the Liberal Party?
He also referred to planning by financial institutions. The last group 1 would want to leave planning to in my part of the country is the financial institutions. It seems to me that sound planning must involve regions, communities, labour groups and management. It should not be left to the financial institutions. Is the Hon. Member's philosophy the Liberal Government's philosophy? It seems to me that it is, at least the laissez-faire aspect of it.

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act
This Party believes in co-operative planning. We believe in planning with regions, with different sectors of the economy, but we certainly believe that the federal Government has the responsibility to take leadership in economic matters.


John Leslie Evans: Mr. Speaker, I think the difference between what the Hon. Member is talking about and what I am talking about is that I was expresssing the point of view that the best planning comes from the people and not from organizations of people, as the Hon. Member might suggest. Community groups are not the community, and governments are not the people and often do not have consistent views of what the people want. 1 did not mention planning by financial institutions; I was talking about-


Margaret Anne Mitchell: Leave it to the banks.


John Leslie Evans: The Hon. Member says leave it to the banks. In western Canada major financial institutions are called credit unions and are supposedly owned by all members of the credit unions. I was talking about an expanded horizon for all financial institutions. Those with the smallest horizons at the present time are trust companies, credit unions and caisses populaires. They have an ability to compete and take on these other financial institutions in head to head competition. The people will decide where the best financial intermediation takes place and who is providing the best services. If the institutions that the Hon. Member and her Party dislike so violently do not provide the services that the people want, then there will be massive growth in credit unions, caisses populaires, small trust companies and other forms of financial intermediaries.
That is the view of the world that I have-let the financial institutions compete. The average, individual Canadian will then decide the structure of our financial institutions because they will choose the one that provides the best service at the lowest price, which meets their needs in the best way. That is bottom-up planning-let the people decide through head to head competition those who want their money. That is bottom-up planning, not having a-


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


John William Thomson: Mr. Speaker, after hearing that dissertation I think the Hon. Member opposite should move across the floor. He says he does not approve of the central planning operation and he wants our economy to be market oriented. 1 totally agree with him on that. Why is it that in Canada 50 per cent of the Gross National Product is controlled by Crown corporations, federally and provincially? We are running toward state capitalism as fast as we can and the Government is at the head of the parade. 1 do not understand the Hon. Member's remarks in this context.


John Leslie Evans: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member should look at the facts over the last 15 or 17 years and ask where the greatest growth of Government has occurred. It occurred not at the federal level, but at the provincial and municipal levels. If the Hon. Member does not understand the philosophy of the
Government and how my philosophy is consistent with that, then I certainly cannot understand that his philosophy is consistent with the action taken by every Conservative provincial government in the country. I do not think free enterprise is inconsistent with Liberalism.
If the kind of things which myself and this Government are being accused of are so inconsistent, or if I do not fit into this Party because I hold these views, then I certainly feel the shoe fits on the other foot as well, because it has been the provincial governments, and the municipal governments under the control of the provincial governments, which have shown the largest insurgence into all areas of our economy in the past 15 to 20 years. It has not been the federal Government.
It has been in the provincial governments, and the municipal governments under the control of the provincial governments, where the greatest incursions into individual freedoms and actions have occurred. I find nothing inconsistent, Mr. Speaker, with what I am saying. I feel my beliefs are totally consistent with those of my Party, and I will continue to profess them.


Mr. Kristiansen:: Mr. Speaker, in the remarks of the Hon. Member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Evans), directed to the Hon. Member for Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom) who spoke earlier on behalf of the New Democratic Party, he seemed to express the opinion that Government planning necessarily implied planned obsolescence. Perhaps there is something lacking in my education, but I would have assumed that anyone would consider that planned obsolescence, as much as anything could be, is an invention of the marketplace, whether one talks about light bulbs, automobiles or vacuum cleaners which are geared to break down in a matter of two or three years in order to keep the market going. To support my argument on that point, and asking him to comment, I would point out that according to most Canadians this Government is obsolete, and I am sure it was not planned that way.


John Leslie Evans: What I meant by the comment "planned obsolescence" was that any central planning structure tends to create for itself the conditions for its own obsolescence. The problem with central planning bureaucracies, whether they be corporate, government or institutional of any kind, is that they do not change. As change occurs inevitably in our society and in our world they, by their very nature, become obsolete. Their planning function becomes obstructionist as opposed to creating and promoting the kind of change which the future demands. What I am saying, therefore, Mr. Speaker, is that all the good intentions which are behind the establishment of major planning functions lead directly to the establishment of a bureaucracy which, instead of planning for the future, starts to deal with planning to maintain its own existence, which in fact is counter to the notion of change in the future. That is the kind of thing I was talking about. Central planning leads to its own destruction by its very nature.
September 27, 1983


John William Thomson: Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to question the reply of the Parliamentary Secretary with respect to the growth of Crown corporations by the provincial governments. I do not have the figures here to refute his argument, but I do not seem to recall that provincial Crown corporations have grown to anything of the magnitude of the corporations of the federal Government. The number of Crown corporations which existed federally just after the Second World War were, 1 believe, something in the neighbourhood of 36 or 40. Today there are approximately 400 Crown corporations. I doubt that there is any Province in Canada which can match that growth, so I would like to question that remark of the Parliamentary Secretary.
1 was, however, delighted with his willingness to co-operate, as expressed at the beginning of his speech, because it is something I certainly have not witnessed in the four and a half years 1 have been a Member of Parliament.


John Leslie Evans: Where were you on Friday, John?


John William Thomson: The Parliamentary Secretary asks where I was on Friday. I have a small job to do and it is called "Crown corporations". I was spending a bit of my time at that.
1 was pleased by the comments of the Hon. Member for Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom) in concluding his remarks when he talked about the appointment of the chief executive officer. 1 could not agree with the Hon. Member more on this particular point. It is absolutely vital, in terms of the accountability and control of Crown corporations, that the chief executive officer of that corporation be appointed by the board of directors. I would have to think a little bit about whether or not every chief executive officer should come before a parliamentary committee. I feel that is perhaps somewhat onerous. However, it may be necessary because as long as we have the current situation where directors are simply a cosmetic appointment by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), we really have no way of effectively causing the chief executive officer to be accountable to the board. And that is at the heart of the control of a Crown corporation. If you have a chief executive officer who is appointed, as presently, by the Prime Minister, to whom does he account? He accounts to the Prime Minister. The board is simply there to go through the motions. Therefore, I totally agree with the thrust of the comments of the Hon. Member for Yorkton-Melville. It may very well be necessary for Parliament to set up a process whereby the chief executive officer is screened and approved by a committee of Parliament.
The Hon. Member for Yorkton-Melville, my hon. friend from Mississauga South and the Parliamentary Secretary have already referred to the fact that we have reached a milestone because we have finally agreed on a few insignificant amendments. I would like to compare that to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. That is about the size of it. The Liberal Government has moved only one millimetre in those terms.
The Hon. Member for Willowdale (Mr. Peterson) was asking whether we were Filibustering this Bill. He is darned right, we did filibuster the Bill for a very good reason. The
Export Development Act
Hon. Member for Willowdale completely missed the point of the debate. If he does not understand that the people of Canada care about the Canadian Dairy Commission and the $1.4 billion which Canadair has thrown down the drain, about the waste and extravagance and the uncontrolled operations of the Crown corporations of Canada, then he has missed the entire point of the debate. He has the nerve to stand up in this House and ask if we were filibustering. Yes, we filibustered the Bill and as far as 1 am concerned we would still be here carrying on that filibuster if I had my way, because the amendments we were given in the Bill are nothing. It is just simply going through the motions.


Mr. McKenzie:: Let him read Friday's Hansard and then he will learn what happened.


John William Thomson: We are trying to represent our constituents. Apparently the Hon. Member for Willowdale does not seem to be concerned. Does he think that his constituents are not concerned about the $200,000 worth of extravagance indulged in by the head of the Canadian Dairy Commission? How does he feel about that? What we are debating in this House, and what we were debating in this House, are the principles involved in controlling Crown corporations. The EDC legislation happened to be a Bill on which the Members on this side of the House and the New Democratic Party could put forward their views about the lack of control over Crown corporations.
As you might gather, Mr. Speaker, my concerns with respect to Crown corporations are two-fold. First of all, all 282 of us in this institution have done a lot of work over the last 18 months on parliamentary reform. There is a willingness on all sides of the House to come to grips with this important issue because what is at stake is the credibility of this institution and every Member. The same is true as it relates to Crown corporations. If we do not come to grips with this issue, Mr. Speaker, every Member of this House suffers and the institution itself will suffer. Look at the things happening in the Canada Dairy Commission. What do you think the Canadian people think of this man who heads the commission? Abuse of public trust, that is what it is. You know that, Members opposite know it, in fact every Member of this House knows it, and we all cringe a little bit.
Secondly, my concern is the proliferation of Crown corporations. One cannot keep up with them. I had from the Treasury Board a list showing 319 Crown corporations. It spelled out the subsidiaries and their classification. I said to my secretary that I would like to get that list updated or make sure it is up-to-date because the list was published last December. Do you know how many more we have today? Twelve new ones. They are just growing like weeds and no one on the other side wants to get their arms around the issue.
We in this House all know how important this issue is. Crown corporations represent 50 per cent of the Gross National Product, employ 263,000 people with $67 billion in assets.

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act
Federal Government appropriations on their behalf amounted to $6.5 billion last year. I cannot even comprehend $1 billion, let alone $6.5 billion.
I am concerned, Mr. Speaker, about the reckless abandon with which we are creating these Crown corporations. Every time we create one we deprive Canadians of a little bit more of their freedom, the freedom to innovate. We take away their motivation. If we are to be internationally competitive, Mr. Speaker, the solution to our problem lies with Crown corporations because their very thrust is not to be competitive. They are not bottom-line oriented. In a good many cases maybe they should not be. There is a good and valid reason for many Crown corporations. They have a legitimate role to play, they are a legitimate tool of Government where you want to give autonomy to a particular entity to accomplish a mission. But the unceasing proliferation of Crown corporations in Canada is sapping our willingness and ability to go out and compete in a very tough world today.
I have no quarrel with the Export Development Corporation, Mr. Speaker. As a matter of fact, on balance 1 think it does a pretty good job. 1 do question some of its practices but by and large it is fairly well managed. So the point is, and 1 want to stress this to the Hon. Member for Willowdale (Mr. Peterson), that we are not condemning the functions or purposes of the EDC. There is no one on this side who has condemned those objectives and it would be wrong for anyone to conclude from Hon. Members' remarks that we were opposed to the EDC. But please understand that we are trying to focus public attention on this enormous and complex problem of Crown corporations which the Government opposite does not seem to want to come to grips with. Quite the contrary, it goes out and creates a monster like the Canada Development Investment Corporation. I think this is scary.
When I take the Parliamentary Secretary's remarks about centralized planning and the need to be market oriented and compare them with the formation of this monster-and I say "monster" knowingly-the CDIC, I can see that the primary function of that corporation is really to further state capitalism. The men who run it make no bones about it. Senator Austin, father of this legislation, makes no pretence about it. He says we are creating the CDIC to advance the cause of state ownership. It is part and parcel of the Canadian industrial policy of this Government. Oh, he said it, and so have Mr. Maurice Strong and Mr. Joel Bell.


John Leslie Evans: It is not true.


John William Thomson: Well, I can give the Hon. Member a quotation from their speeches.


John Leslie Evans: Please do.


John William Thomson: This is the reason they have created the CDIC.


John Leslie Evans: You will have to produce them because 1 do not believe it.


John William Thomson: The reason it is so difficult to come to grips with this issue is that we cannot sort out and put in a separate compartment the commercial or bottom-line functions of a Crown corporation and what 1 would call the public interest functions. So what we do is put them together and we ask the chief executive officer and board of directors to manage that corporation, and they have to weigh every single day in every decision they make whether or not the venture is going to be profitable and whether or not it is in the public interest.
This is at the heart of the problem of Crown corporations and their accountability. Unless we can find a means to segregate those functions within a corporation that should be bottom-line oriented, putting those into a separate compartment and then over here, on the other side, putting those public interest functions into another compartment, very clearly and succinctly spelling out the mandate to the chief executive officers and the board of directors, we will never come to grips with the accountability of Crown corporations, because-and it is only human nature-it is very easy to cloud the issue. If I make a mistake, if I pull a boner in a company and I can say that it does not show up in the bottom line, and one can say that I did not make a profit this year, it would not be because I really made a commercial mistake, but, rather, because I acted in the public interest. Probably no one but the employees or very close associates of the chief executive officer will know the difference. Certainly Parliament and the taxpayers of Canada will not know.
This is at the heart of the issue, together with the appointments of the board and of the chief executive officer, which are all so crucial, in my view, to controlling the operations of Crown corporations.
Let me just return to the subject of the Canadian Development Investment Corporation for a moment. This is the mandate of the Canadian Development Investment Corporation:
The objects of the Corporation are:
(a)	to assist in the creation or development of businesses, resources, properties and industries of Canada;
(b)	to expand, widen and develop opportunities for Canadians to participate in the economic development of Canada through the application of their skills and capital in any activities carried on by the Corporation;
(c)	to invest in the shares or securities of any corporation owning property or carrying on business related to the economic interests of Canada;
(d)	to invest in ventures or enterprises, including the acquisition of property, likely to benefit Canada; and
(e)	to carry out all activities in the best interests of Canada, operating in a commercial manner.
That is a very clear set of objectives. That means that the corporation can do absolutely anything under the sun. To whom does it report? It reports to the Prime Minister essentially. That is what it is all about, with no due regard, going through the motions. It sends us some financial statements. It really just reports on money spent. However, there is no clear-cut, succinct mandate by which we can hold the CDIC, its officers and the board of directors accountable, and that is the point. It can muddy the water and confuse all of the
September 27, 1983

decisions that it makes because it has cats and dogs and rats. One just cannot sort it out.
I am not trying to suggest that Parliament should attempt to be a manager. That is not the role we are here to play. I want to emphasize this point. In terms of accountability, I am not suggesting for one minute that Parliamentarians become managers of Crown corporations. Etowever, 1 am suggesting that we as Parliamentarians must come to grips with this issue of accountability if we are to save our own credibility. It is a vital issue. There seems to be an unwillingness to come to grips with it.
For the last 18 months, as all Hon. Members will know, we have had a Special Committee on Standing Orders and Procedure. The Committee has been charged with the responsibility of trying to introduce some parliamentary reform. The seventh report of the Committee, with which Hon. Members will be familiar, makes recommendations and deals with proposals-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. 1 regret to interrupt the Hon. Member but his allotted time has expired. He could be allowed to continue if he obtains the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


John William Thomson: I thank Your Honour for your indulgence and that of the House. I just want to make a point which all Hon. Members should consider. It deals with the financial accountability committees. The Committee on Standing Order and Procedure has recommended that there be four committees established, one being a Public Accounts Committee, which is already a standing committee. The following comit-tees have been recommended:
(o) Public Accounts, to which the Public Accounts and all Reports of the Auditor General shall be deemed to have been permanently referred, immediately the said documents are tabled.
(b) Fiscal Framework, which is empowered to consider on its own initiative the national Fiscal and economic policies.
(<*) Expenditure Proposals, to which the subject matter of the estimates and all related documents shall be deemed to have been permanently referred immediately the said documents are tabled.
(d) Government Corporations and Agencies, which is empowered to consider on its own initiative the operations of all corporations or agencies which are government-owned or controlled or in which the government has an interest.
I would conclude by saying to Hon. Members opposite that this is just a small start in the right direction to give this institution and ourselves some accountability. I would plead, let us move forward with the reform and let us move forward quickly.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: Mr. Speaker, with respect to the comments made by the Hon. Member for Calgary South, I very much appreciate the point he is making to the effect that this is not really a quarrel with the Export Development Corporation or with the need for increased opportunities for Canadians to export. I am pleased to have heard him state before the House that the goal of the Opposition is not to stop those particular efforts.
Export Development Act
Let me make my point clear. If the purpose of having 150 or more speakers from the Opposition on a Bill dealing with the Export Development Corporation is not to have the effect of retarding the process of getting the EDC where we want it to be, but, rather, is to be a mere attempt to draw to the attention of the House, and perhaps Canadians, that there have been problems in the past with a number of Crown corporations, then 1 respectfully submit that they chose the wrong Crown corporation by which to bring these points before the public.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Why?


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: There are other Crown corporations, such as Canadair, where the Minister-


Donald Alex Blenkarn: This fat cat should be let off the hook, eh?


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: It is very difficult to hear oneself think when an Hon. Member shouts.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: You have to have the ability to do it.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: 1 would remind Hon. Members that questions and comments must be brief and to the point, and in the current circumstances, if the Hon. Member for Calgary South (Mr. Thomson) is to be allowed to reply, I think the Chair ought to recognize him at this time on the points made so far by the Parliamentary Secretary. The Hon. Member for-


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: May I reply?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: If he so wishes.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: My only point, then, Mr. Speaker, is that if the wish is to deal with Crown corporations as a whole, as an entity, there are other ways and means available to us, as Members of Parliament, to deal with these issues directly.


Some Hon. Members:: Read them off.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: It is not something that must be piggy-backed in the door. This is something that we could do through an Opposition Day. It is something with which we as Members of Parliament will have an opportunity to deal when the CDIC Bill-


Donald Alex Blenkarn: When is it coming? Are you afraid to bring it on?


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: -comes before us, when we are dealing directly with issues such as Canadair. 1 do not think Hon. Members opposite will have a great deal of difficulty from this side of the House in finding a common effort to develop better modalities for dealing with the type of problem we have encountered in the past. This is not the issue. The EDC is not the issue on which the debate should be founded.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. The Hon. Member for Calgary South will, of course, be given an opportunity to reply at the resumption of debate after three o'clock today.

	equipment with an aggregate tonnage of 1.161 million gross
tonnes have been registered in Canada at the expense of the AFTER RECESS	Canadian shipbuilding industry. This industry, in terms of jobs
and solvency, cannot afford to continue to put up with the The House resumed at 2 p.m.	importation of foreign built vessels into Canada in record
numbers.


STATEMENTS PURSUANT TO S.O. 21
[Stage Direction]
[ Translation]

Mr. Gaston Gourde (Levis):: Madam Speaker, according to a press release from the Canadian Shipbuilding and Ship Repairing Association, more foreign-built ships and floating equipment were registered in Canada in the first eight months of 1983 than in the entire year of 1982. If all the figures provided by Mr. Walsh, president of the Association, are accurate, it is clear that the Canadian Government should immediately take the necessary corrective action. The situation in our shipyards is indeed alarming. I am thinking, for instance, of the Davie shipyards in Lauzon, whose performance in terms of jobs has in recent years been in the 1,500 to 2,500 range. The figures for August, however, indicate that employment has dropped to 960 workers, and although construction on the CN Marine ferry will provide employment for the coming months, the future does not seem very promising for this shipyard which is the principal employer in the Quebec City area. Last January, the Government promised to get legislation through the House that would provide better safeguards for shipyard workers by restricting imports of foreign-built ships and providing guarantees with attractive provisions.
1 therefore urge the Government to have these measures adopted immediately, with the consent of the Opposition parties, which for once will have a chance to let their actions speak louder than their words.



Mr. Gus Mitges (Grey-Simcoe):: Madam Speaker, my statement concerns essentially the same theme. More foreign built vessels and floating equipment were registered in Canada during the first eight months of 1983 than in all of 1982- some 170,000 gross tonnes.
Therefore I urge the Government to give the House the assurance that the Ways and Means Motion of June 29, which would tighten up custom loopholes, will be passed in this session of Parliament, and thus eliminate the preferential or absence of duty on ships imported into Canada from a number of countries. I believe all Parties in the House support swift passage of this motion, having full realization of the urgency of this problem for the shipbuilding industry in Canada.


HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES
Mr. Jack Burghardt (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Communications):: Madam Speaker, as Members of the House will know, the registration deadline for the UFFI Assistance Program is just three days away. UFFI home owners interested in receiving financial assistance must register no later than Friday, September 30.
It is of great concern to me that not all UFFI home owners have yet registered for the program. I would like to remind those who have not registered that they can do so by calling the UFFI Centre's toll free number, or by writing the UFFI Centre. Letters must be postmarked no later than September 30. The UFFI Centre's phone number and address can be obtained from MPs' offices.
It should be noted that, because the volume of phone calls to the UFFI Centre may be great, and lines may be busy, letters may be the preferable means of ensuring registration. Those who fail to contact the UFFI Centre by the end of this month will lose the opportunity to ensure that any UFFI related improvements to their homes are eligible for federal help.
With just three days remaining before the September 30 deadline, almost 53,000 people have registered with the UFFI Assistance Program. It was launched in December, 1981, and was established to help approximately 80,000 Canadians who had insulated their homes with the foam.
September 27, 1983


CANADIAN WHEAT BOARD
Mr. Lee Clark (Brandon-Souris):: Madam Speaker, about three weeks ago the Canadian Wheat Board suggested an increase in the initial payment for barley. As well, Cargill and the United Grain Growers have asked the Treasury Board to approve an increase in the initial payment to $110 per metric tonne, yet elevator operators and Canadian barley growers are still waiting for a decision.
While No. 1 feed barley has been trading in recent weeks at $160 per tonne or more on the export market out of Thunder Bay, the Wheat Board is paying farmers a mere $95 per tonne. Is it any wonder that farmers are reluctant to haul their barley to elevators? As a result, the Wheat Board is in danger of not having enough barley to meet its exports demands.
This ridiculously low initial price is causing another problem. Because the Wheat Board buys the majority of the Canadian barley crop, it virtually controls even the non-Board domestic price. Therefore, non-Board barley has sold domestically at just under $130 per tonne in recent weeks.
The discrepancy between the world price and the Wheat Board's initial payment for barley is far too great. Barley growers should not have to wait a full year until a final payment reimburses them for the difference.
It is critical that the Cabinet immediately approve an increase in the initial payment for barley. Its failure to do so to date illustrates the Government's inability to understand the financial needs of Canada's cash-starved farmers.


INCOME TAX
Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Madam Speaker, Government legislation requires that income tax, if it is not deducted at source, be paid in quarterly installments by taxpayers. Unfortunately this requirement causes undue suffering and hardship to many senior citizens.
Many of those who are retired live on the proceeds of a modest pension and they supplement this pension income with the interest earned from investments and savings. Canada Savings Bonds, because of their security, have been a prime source of investment for many pensioners. Certainly the nation has benefited as a result of the support many have given to Canada Savings Bonds. However, the interest on Canada Savings Bonds is paid once a year, in November, yet people are required to pay in income tax in quarterly payments, three of which fall due prior to November. In effect the Government wants its money back before it has paid it out.
For senior citizens who depend on Canada Savings Bond interest as an important part of their income, quarterly installment payments are a real hardship. Some are forced to borrow at commercial rates to make these installment payments.
I would like to draw to the attention of the Minister of Revenue the hardship that this regulation has caused, and 1 urge that the legislation be amended to permit payment of income tax on Canada Savings Bond interest after the interest is received in November.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


POLITICAL PARTIES
Mrs. Ursula Appolloni (York South-Weston):: Madam Speaker, as Liberal Members of Parliament we are becoming accustomed to the contradictory and uncivil displays put on by the Official Opposition to gloss over their distinct lack of policies. However, it is most shameful when the Official Opposition pretends to be the champion of the senior citizen and the underprivileged.
Yesterday, for example, the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Island (Miss MacDonald) shed crocodile tears on behalf of those seniors receiving the Guaranteed Income Supplement. As all Members of the House know, the Liberal Government promised to increase the GIS during the 1980 campaign. Making good that promise was the first act of the Liberal Government. Guaranteed Income Supplement benefits have never been limited under the six and five restraint program.
The Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands and all former Tory Government Cabinet Ministers might well remember the policy of that regime. The then Prime Minister said on November 16, 1979, as reported at page 1393 of Hansard, that senior citizens on fixed incomes would have to "endure, now, some of the high interest rates and other economic problems that have to be faced in the short term if we are to have long-term solutions." That is the Tory concern and compassion for Canadians on fixed incomes-to endure with neither help nor hope.
The Liberal Government has taken tough decisions and helped those who need help most, while the Official Opposition offers only shallow-


Madam Speaker:: Order, please.


CANADIAN WHEAT BOARD
Mr. Gordon Taylor (Bow River):: Madam Speaker, agriculture in western Canada is in a sorry state. Net farm income in 1982 decreased by more than 25 per cent, and 10 per cent or more of our farms are in financial difficulties. World grain prices are at 1973 levels, while input costs for farmers have

September 27. 1983
tripled during the last ten years. Grain, hog and cattle producers are taken for granted. The Government restricts their credit and expects them to carry on with a net loss each year.
In 1982 more than 485 farmers went bankrupt, and scores of others are on the verge of bankruptcy. This Liberal Government gives farmers no priority. Only 1.5 per cent of the total budget goes to agriculture.
Now, to cap the series of tragedies largely due to the Liberals, Senator Hazen Argue, the Minister in charge of the Canadian Wheat Board, has dropped the initial price of Red Spring Wheat to $4.63, Durum to $4.49, and the price of feed barley to $2.07 per bushel. This is absolutely disgraceful. The Senator, who hides in the Senate, would not listen to the recommendations of the Progressive Conservative Party to hold the prices to the 1982-83 level. Senator Hazen Argue has provided no leadership, has lockjaw in Cabinet, and has lost all credibility.
The most important industry in Canada refuses to suffer any longer under this useless Senator. On behalf of the farmers of western Canada, I say to the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), before the entire farm industry goes down the drain, fire this socialist.


Madam Speaker:: Order.


HOUSING
Mr. Ian Waddell (Vancouver-Kingsway):: Madam Speaker,
I have a short statement to make. 1 bring to the attention of the House and of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) that many of us still have a problem in our riding with mortgage interest rates. I have a couple of cases in my riding. One deals with Fidelity Trust. My constituents are paying 17.75 per cent on their mortgage, and mortgage interest rates are now about 12 per cent. They are trying to get the mortgage paid off. We have gone through the Minister of Finance who promised Canadians that he would intervene and do something about it. We have gone back to the trust company and it will not do a darn thing. The fact is that the trust company wants interest payments for three months. It wants a penalty. These are just usurious demands.
The banks, finance companies, and trust companies have been making lots of money. Surely they can reduce mortgage rates for people in a fair and equitable manner, or allow people to pay off their mortgages equitably. That is all we ask. In this particular case with Fidelity Trust-and with some other trust companies-it will not do a darn thing, and the Minister of Finance is not prepared to back up his word which he gave to Canadians in this House.


FISHERIES
Hon. Roger Simmons (Burin-St. George's):: Madam Speaker, yesterday in St. John's I was pleased to be part of an event of considerable importance to the economy and welfare of Newfoundland. A fisheries agreement, touted by Premier Peckford as the most important bilateral agreement since Newfoundland and Canada joined to form one nation, was signed by the Premier and by my good friend and colleague, the Hon. Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. De Bane).
The two Governments have taken a landmark step to become joint partners in an undertaking of immense and significant proportions, namely, the stabilization of the deep sea fishery in Newfoundland through the instrument of the world's second largest fishing company.
I am especially pleased and excited about the prospects for my riding of Burin-St. George's. Widespread has been the misery inflicted by the virtual shutdown of the deep sea industry over recent months. On behalf of my constituents I welcome the new accord between Newfoundland and Ottawa.
It must be noted that there will be some job loss. However, the agreement between Newfoundland and Canada addresses this problem by the establishment of a regional Burin Peninsula Development Fund. I am confident that ultimately the net job opportunities available on the Burin Peninsula will be at least equal to the numbers which were in existence prior to the crisis in the trawler industry. The fisheries agreement marks a happy day for Newfoundland and for one of Canada's important primary industries.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. John C. Crosbie (St. John's West):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Acting Prime Minister, one of the towering intellects on the Government side of the House-


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Carnell Crosbie: -surrounded by pygmies, of course.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Carnell Crosbie: The real level of economic production in Canada is 3 per cent below what it was when our recession started, but now in the United States it is 0.7 per cent above. In Canada we have 267,000 fewer people employed than when the recession started, but in the United States they have 854,000 more jobs than when the recession started. Our
September 27, 1983

disposable income here is 4.2 per cent below that of 1981, and in the United States it is 3.5 per cent above.
In view of these facts is it the Government's position that Canada has a recovery second to none in the world so far, and that a moderation in the pace of recovery is not only acceptable but helpful? Is that still the Government's position in light of these facts?


Hon. Jean-Luc Pepin (Minister of State (External Relations)):: Madam Speaker, having been here for a while, I know that the devil on the other side also quotes statistics. 1 always come here prepared to counter statistics that are given to me, with a set of counterstatistics.
Confidence in Canada is at a record high now. Confidence among consumers was at an 18-year high in the second quarter of 1983. Seventy per cent of businessmen consulted recently said that they were optimistic about growth in Canada. The output is strong. In the second quarter of 1983 there was a 7.2 per cent rate of increase. Industrial production is high, 4.9 per cent, on the basis of June 1983, compared with June, 1982. The trade picture is excellent. Everyone knows about that. Job creation is fine, 318,000 in the first eight months of this year. Interest rates are half what they were 20 months ago. Inflation is half what it was 20 months ago.
1 can counter any bad statistics for 1975, or whatever year the Hon. Member can suggest. 1 know, when I do that, that I am only rivalling my hon. friend in the fine art of quoting statistics. There is no country in the world today which has all good statistics; every country has a mix of them.


John Carnell Crosbie: That was a very impressive performance.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


DECLINE IN FAMILY INCOME
John Carnell Crosbie: Madam Speaker, if the Hon. Acting Prime Minister is correct in his statistics and we have such a wonderful state of economic circumstances in Canada, why did his fellow Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs say on September 24 that many Canadian women would spend their final days in poverty if changes were not made? Why should that statement be necessary? Could the Minister also advise us, if things are so wonderful, how is it that Statistics Canada has shown that average family income has declined 4 per cent last year, the second year in a row for the first time in history? Will the Government remove, for example, the Canadian ownership charge which is imposing unnecessarily a tax of $900 million on Canadian consumers this year? Let's have some action.


Jean-Luc Pepin: Madam Speaker, I was very frank in the answer I gave. 1 said that there were a number of statistics in Canada that were not "comfortable". I realize that. I am the first one to admit it. For example, statistics on investment and on unemployment are not good. The Government is doing its best to correct that.
Oral Questions
With respect to the Minister of State for Economic Development, I heard him say repeatedly in the House-and the press covered it pretty well, I thought-that the speech he presented to the Macdonald Commission was a speech in which he was simply projecting or thinking out loud. This was not a program for the Government. This was simply his concept and views of the future, the difficulties and the good side of it. It was not meant to be a Government program. It was not meant to be a quasi-budget or anything of that kind.


John Carnell Crosbie: Madam Speaker, 1 never mentioned the Minister of Regional Economic Development. 1 said the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs.


REQUEST THAT GOVERNMENT CANCEL OIL OWNERSHIP TAX
John Carnell Crosbie: The Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, better known as the gnome from Dome, said in connection with the Canadian ownership charge, which is four cents a gallon on all gasoline and heating oil consumed in Canada and which is still being imposed, that Ottawa intends to collect that levy indefinitely whether Dome needs it or not. Is it the position of the Government that it is going to continue to collect $900 million a year for Dome, or without Dome, or forget Dome, or for Petro-Canada, or just for the Government, or is it going to stop that imposition and put Canadian consumers in a position to spend $900 million more on those things they really need and not on unnecessary Government taxation?


Jean-Luc Pepin: Madam Speaker, I want to tell my hon. friend that flattery will get him nowhere, either with the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources or with me. With regard to what 1 understand is the Canadianization charge, I think it will be well used in the future, if that is what my hon. friend has in mind. Most people in this country are pleased to see the degree of foreign ownership in the gas and oil field decreasing from the ninety per cent level to the sixty per cent level at which it is now.


LABOUR CONDITIONS
Hon. Janies A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Employment and Immigration. The Minister is reported to have said in Montreal last Friday that the problem of unemployment cannot be solved by the Government alone, but will require the co-operation of the private sector. He made that comment when the OECD was reporting on the Canadian economy and predicting an unemployment rate in excess of 12 per cent, and a youth unemployment rate in excess of 20 per cent, indeed 22 per cent

September 27, 1983
Oral Questions
for this year. When can we expect an announcement from the Government on some stimulation of the private sector so that it can get on with the job of co-operating with the Government and creating jobs?


Hon. John Roberts (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Madam Speaker, 1 am surprised that the Hon. Member did not also remark on the report which was released at the end of last week on the update of the accomplishments under the NEED Program. It has accomplished exactly what we described we wanted to do and has worked along the lines that he has just suggested to us. Under the NEED Program, as a result of expenditure by the federal Government of $500 million we have levered into activity $1.1 billion through private sector co-operation which will have created over nine months, ending this month, 90,000 jobs. The kind of program he has just been suggesting, of encouraging the private sector to work with us in creating jobs, is indeed well under way and has succeeded in excess our expectations.
The Hon. Member referred to the OECD report on unemployment and mentioned the youth unemployment rate which it describes. He should also have pointed out that the survey indicates that Canada and the United States are the only two countries of those surveyed which show a decline in the unemployment rate in 1984 over 1983. Indeed, the most important statistic shown by them is that, in terms of unemployment that lasts 12 months and over, the Canadian record is better than any other country under the OECD listing.


YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT-REQUEST FOR INTRODUCTION OF EMPLOYMENT TAX CREDIT
James Aloysius McGrath: Madam Speaker, the NEED Program merely addresses a short-term solution, a band-aid solution. 1 ask the Minister, on behalf of the 600,000 young people of this country who are unemployed, what long-term prospects they have of finding a job. Is the Minister prepared to recommend to his colleagues that they put in place an employment tax incentive program, for example, which will produce jobs effectively and inexpensively, producing permanent jobs as opposed to the band-aid type treatment we keep getting from this Minister?


John (Moody) Roberts: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member is entirely incorrect in his assumption. The jobs created under the NEED Program very often go on to become permanent jobs. They are simply not a band-aid approach. As far as the band-aid solution which the Member has suggested as a tax credit is concerned, he should be aware that we now have in place job subsidy programs which are more effective and more encouraging to the private sector in creating those types of jobs because they provide an immediate cash flow assistance to business rather than waiting for the year-end effect of a tax credit impact.


SOCIAL SECURITY
Margaret Anne Mitchell: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Health and Welfare. It concerns the responsibility of the federal Government to do something soon about increasing poverty. Statistics Canada and the Toronto Social Planning Council have documented the tragedy of increasing numbers of children who are being permanently damaged by severe poverty in Canada. In view of the high level of unemployment and family breakup in all regions of Canada, will the Minister take steps to increase the family allowance, to protect children of low income families who are at considerable risk? As she knows, this can be taxed back from higher income families.


Hon. Monique Begin (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Madam Speaker, as a result of coverage of a question by the Hon. Member's colleague a few days ago, people are now wondering whether the poor are a federal or provincial responsibility. That attitude is not acceptable in this country. The Hon. Member should have researched before asking her question. She would know that the Child Tax Credit, which goes to those most in need, was not only fully indexed but, in addition to the cheques the mothers receive, there was an additional $50 this year which is to do exactly what the Hon. Member is just now discovering is a problem, and everyone else knows is a problem.


COMMUNITY AND CO-OPERATIVE GROUPS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
Margaret Anne Mitchell: Madam Speaker, it is interesting to note that the reports I mentioned came out after the child tax credit. Also, as everyone should know, it is far from adequate to feed a family. The Minister is in effect becoming a partner in crime with Socred-Tory provincial Governments. I want to explain that.


Madam Speaker:: Order. There is no need to explain that. The Hon. Member should just ask her question.


Margaret Anne Mitchell: Provincial Governments are slashing social programs which are tax-shared by the federal Government. The Minister, through her Department, retains amounts of money equal to those which the Provinces have cut. Will this Minister meet with the Minister of Finance, who I wish were here today, with regard to transferring the federal savings of some $8 million in British Columbia through the Secretary of State so that this money can be allocated to self-help community groups and co-operatives which will do the job in their communities?


Monique Bégin: Madam Speaker, we on this side of the House do not believe in helping the poor through images and slogans. That has never helped anybody. We have not only conserved the full budgets of all social programs, but have fully indexed them and have obtained increases in several of them. That is
September 27, 1983

the only way to fight for those most in need. If the Hon. Member knows that her Province is slashing social programs, why does she not say it there, and not here?


EMPLOYMENT
Mr. Ian Deans (Hamilton Mountain):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration. Over the course of the last ten days this Minister and other Ministers, as well as the Prime Minister, have indicated that the Government will not extend unemployment insurance to cover those who are running out and for whom welfare will not provide sufficient money to meet their needs. The Minister has indicated that he wants jobs. Why is it then that of the 32 applications from Hamilton under the COED Program, 25 were rejected outright without explanation, three have not yet been decided upon, and only four have been approved? Of the 494 potential jobs, only 106 have been approved. Will the Minister move to correct this stupidity?


John (Moody) Roberts: Madam Speaker, the explanation for the situation in Hamilton which the Hon. Member describes, if memory serves, is that something like $1.4 million was made available to the Hamilton area under the COED Program. The city council's recommendation was that approximately $1 million of that should go toward speeding up the construction of two hotel projects, leaving $400,000 or so for other projects. It was at the behest, or on the counsel, of city council that those steps were taken. I believe that the generation of employment which resulted from following the recommendation of council was much greater than would have been the case if we had followed the course of action which the Hon. Member is suggesting.
If I remember correctly, there is as well something like $6 million in other NEED programs that apply to the Hamilton area. In fact, at the behest of my colleague, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, he and I are reviewing the Hamilton applications to see if there is some way of funding some of the other worthy projects which are brought to our attention.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY OF FRENCH MINISTER, JEAN AUROUX
Madam Speaker:: I wish to draw the attention of the House to the presence in our Gallery of Minister Jean Auroux,
Oral Questions
Secretary of State with the French Minister of Industry and Research, responsible for Energy.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


CANADIAN DAIRY COMMISSION
Hon. Perrin Beatty (Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Transport in his capacity as Acting Minister of Agriculture. I would like to refer the Minister to the comprehensive audit of the Canadian Dairy Commission which was conducted by the Auditor General and which disclosed that senior officials of the CDC made a practice of accepting free travel and accommodation from people with whom the CDC was doing business. When the information about Mr. Choquette's travel bills was made available to the House last Friday, did it include all of these freebies which he may have accepted, or were these freebies in addition to the $210,000 in travel costs disclosed?


Mr. Marcel Dionne (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Agriculture):: Madam Speaker, I would like to answer the question about Mr. Choquette's increased travel expenses. I think the House ought to know that there are five reasons for this increase: the number of exports, the increase in exports, adjusting to world markets, dealing with new customers and the energetic approach taken by the Canadian Dairy Commission in doing so.
Madam Speaker, in 1976, our dairy exports were worth $41 million and cost us $30,000 in expenses, and in 1982-1983, those exports were worth around $400 million, and our expenses were around $100,000. Madam Speaker, I do not think the increase in expenses should give any cause for alarm since they were made in the interests of Canadian farm producers.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Madam Speaker, perhaps the next time the Parliamentary Secretary responds to a question, he could get around to actually answering the question that was asked.


RCMP INVESTIGATION
Henry Perrin Beatty: Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the Acting Minister of Agriculture to answer the question that was asked, rather than shunting his responsibility. Did the Order for Return that was tabled on Friday include any or all freebies that were accepted by Mr. Choquette or by other officials of the Commission? Second, since the Minister of Agriculture has disclosed that the RCMP has been investigating the CDC, may I ask the Minister if the RCMP investigation has been concluded?

September 27, 1983
Oral Questions
[ Translation]


Marcel Dionne: Madam Speaker, it is a fact that in the past few years, there have been a number of inquiries regarding the Canadian Dairy Commission, and up to now, their findings have always exonerated the Commission's administration.
It is also a fact that the Auditor General made 33 recommendations, and that the Canadian Dairy Commission has already approved 30 recommendations and is now discussing the feasibility of making further improvements.
Madam Speaker, I would also like to mention that recently, Canada lost its markets in Mexico and Jamaica to the Americans and the Canadian Dairy Commission had to look for markets elsewhere, in Algeria, Nigeria, Peru and other countries. Since the Canadian Dairy Commission had to adjust to these changes as effectively as possible, it had to spend a little more.


CONSUMER AND CORPORATE AFFAIRS
A. Daniel McKenzie: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. Consumer and Corporate Affairs licensed contractors are not paying their subcontractors for removing urea formaldehyde foam insulation from Manitoba homes. Therefore the subcontractors have placed liens against 150 properties in Manitoba and work has remained unfinished. Will the Minister inform the House what she will do to correct this situation, and particularly what action she is planning to take to assist those home owners in Manitoba who will face the winter with no outside walls for protection against the cold weather?


Hon. Judy Erola (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: Madam Speaker, I am having some difficulty with the Hon. Member's question because we do not have Consumer and Corporate Affairs contractors. We merely license contractors who have been qualified under certain standards to perform the work. We are not actually the contractors who perform the work.


A. Daniel McKenzie: Madam Speaker, I never said that Consumer and Corporate Affairs had its own contractors. I said that it licenses contractors.


MANITOBA GOVERNMENT'S NON-COMPLIANCE WITH REGULATIONS
A. Daniel McKenzie: Madam Speaker, the Manitoba NDP Government is not obtaining performance bonds from these contractors to ensure the protection of home owners, nor is the Manitoba NDP Government reporting these delinquent firms to the federal Government as is required. To make matters worse, there is only one individual in Winnipeg from Consumer and Corporate Affairs assigned to handle the problems being encountered by the three western Provinces. Has the Minister had any consultations with the Manitoba NDP Government as to why it is not conforming to federal Government regulations? Will she work in conjunction with the Manitoba Government to have the liens removed immediately, have the foam insulation removed, and have the outside sidings replaced?
Hon. Judy Erola (Minister of Consumer and Corporate
Affairs): Madam Speaker, this is the first time this problem has been brought to my attention. The Province of Manitoba has not informed me of the difficulties and I am glad that the Hon. Member is fulfilling his obligations as a Member of Parliament by bringing the matter to my attention. I can assure him that I will look into the matter once he has presented all the facts to my office.


FISHERIES
Hon. Lloyd R. Crouse (South Shore):: Madam Speaker, I wish to direct my question to the Hon. Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. I would like to do so before he tells us a "whale of a tale" about socializing the Newfoundland fishing industry.
The President of the Canadian Saltfish Corporation told the Macdonald Royal Commission that the number of fishermen in Newfoundland and Labrador must be reduced from the present total of 26,000 to some 12,000 if the fishery is to become viable. This amounts to a reduction of some 14,000 jobs. I would like to ask the Minister if the President, when making that statement, was reflecting government policy. If so, what alternative employment opportunities has the Minister to offer these 14,000 people?


Hon. Pierre De Bane (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: Madam Speaker, I am happy to report to the Hon. Member that the policy of the Canadian Government was made public by myself some months ago. As you know, Madam Speaker, one of the three cornerstone principles of the Government is to create jobs, and that policy is targeted to create the maximum number of jobs, particularly in Atlantic Canada, depending, of course, on whether the program would hurt the income of its participants. The need for maximum employment is one of the reasons why, for instance, during my tenure I will not allow trawler plants. That is the policy of the Canadian Government as approved by Cabinet.
As to socialism in Newfoundland, I am sure the Hon. Member heard the compliments that Conservative Premier Peckford paid to the federal Government, and 1 hope that the Hon. Member will share the opinion of the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador.
September 27, 1983


Lloyd Roseville Crouse: Madam Speaker, I thank the Hon. Minister for his answer.


ROLE OF CANADIAN SALTFISH CORPORATION
Lloyd Roseville Crouse: Madam Speaker, I am sure that the Hon. Minister is well aware that there are still a large number of resource-short plants in Newfoundland as well as throughout Atlantic Canada. In giving the Canadian Saltfish Corporation in Newfoundland complete authority over the resource-short plant program, the Minister has allowed that corporation to greatly exceed its mandate. 1 would like to ask him when Parliament will be presented with suitable legislation to authorize this. Can the Minister assure us as well, in light of the massive unemployment in Newfoundland and Atlantic Canada, that no foreign trawlers will be involved in the resource-short plant program untill all Canadian trawlers are fully employed?


Pierre De Bané: Madam Speaker, as to the problem of unemployment, I would like the Hon. Member to recognize for a moment what the federal Government has done and what Premier Peckford did yesterday to stabilize no less than 16,000 jobs in Newfoundland. I think that is quite an achievement. I was moved when I heard Premier Peckford say that it was the most important bilateral agreement that Newfoundland has signed with the federal Government since Confederation. It happened during the tenure of this Government, and not during the tenure of either Mr. Clark or Mr. Diefenbaker. It was under the tenure of the present Prime Minister that this took place.
As for the question of the resource-short plants, 1 hope to be able to make an announcement in the very near future.


ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of the Environment who also happens to be responsible for forestry and for Parks Canada. First of all I should like to congratulate him on his appointment, and also for meeting several times with some of his Canadian Forestry Service officials in the short time that he has been Minister.
The Minister will be aware of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court decision handed down less than two weeks ago which basically gave the green light to the Government and the forest industry in Nova Scotia to renew widespread aerial spraying with 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T over populated areas in order to combat spruce budworm infested areas. Since then we have not heard a word from the Minister or from the Minister of National Health and Welfare about this.
Has the Minister, in his environmental role, consulted with himself in his forestry role, as to the serious implications of
Oral Questions
this decision in Nova Scotia and throughout Canada? If so, what is the result of this consultation and any consultations he may have had with other Ministers or with various provincial Governments? What initiative has he taken, in either role, to ensure that any potential threat to the environment and to public health is kept in check across Canada, while bearing in mind the health and future productivity of our forest resource?


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Minister of the Environment: Madam Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for his kind words. With regard to the decision, he is probably aware, as I understand it, that the judge concluded that there was not enough evidence to decide that the use of that particular type of herbicide was harmful. From the knowledge that I have of the law, it seems to me that until the question of the proof of onus is shifted from where it stands now to the individual or to the group that initiates the utilization of a new product, this type of decision will continue to take place.


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Madam Speaker, I cannot help but wonder what advice the Minister is getting from the various sub departments of his Ministry.


BRITISH COLUMBIA FORESTRY AGREEMENT
Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Madam Speaker,
I have a question on another forestry related matter. The Minister will be aware that the British Columbia Ottawa forestry subsidiary agreement expires on March 31, 1984. Could he tell me the stage of negotiations for a new forestry agreement between the Canadian Forestry Service for the Government of Canada, and the B.C. Ministry of Forests in Victoria? When is the new agreement with our number one forest products Province to be concluded?
Finally, what, if any, provisions are contemplated in order to ensure that the B.C. Government will honour both its long and short-term commitments under any such agreement? This is something that B.C. has not been famous for in recent months.


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Minister of the Environment: Madam Speaker, in conversations with the B.C. Minister of Forestry a few weeks ago in Winnipeg, I was given the indication that a proposal would be forthcoming from that Government in a few months. The other questions raised by the Hon. Member seem to be argumentative in nature.


FEDERAL-PROVINCIAL FISCAL ARRANGEMENTS EQUALIZATION PAYMENTS TO PROVINCES
Mr. Tom McMillan (Hillsborough):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Acting Prime Minister. A Canadian Press story fresh off the wire, and just handed to me a few moments ago, quotes the Prime Minister as saying earlier today in Toronto, that co-operative federalism "will remain dead in the sense that the federal Government is expected to hand money over to the Provinces for them to spend in any which way".

September 27, 1983
Oral Questions
Since equalization payments to the have-not Provinces would fall into the category to which the Prime Minister referred in Toronto, would the Acting Prime Minister assure the House that the federal Government has no intention whatsoever of eliminating equalization payments to the Provinces, or of changing those payments in any major way?


Jean-Luc Pepin: Madam Speaker, obviously my hon. friend is trying to extract things from what the Prime Minister has said that were not meant to be said. I think everyone in the House would agree with what the Prime Minister said on this occasion: cooperative federalism does not allow either the federal Government or the provincial Governments to spend whichever way. I think there is nothing in the quotation that would shock anyone, with the possible exception of my hon. friend.


GOVERNMENT POLICY
Thomas Michael McMillan: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is also for the Acting Prime Minister. Will he rise to his feet now and tell the House whether the federal Government has any plans to eliminate equalization payments to the have-not Provinces or to change those payments in any major way in the foreseeable future?


Jean-Luc Pepin: Madam Speaker, with respect to equalization payments I am reminded by my learned colleague, the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, that this is now in the Constitution. I am at a loss to find what worries my hon. friend. Perhaps we should have a conversation later when he could be more specific.

[ Translation]


IMMIGRATION
Mr. David Kilgour (Edmonton-Strathcona):: Madam
Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Employment and Immigration.

The Minister will know that a large number of people have lost their homes in the Chouf Mountains in the past three weeks. Similar things have happened in Sri Lanka recently and in Afghanistan during the past four years. Will the Minister tell the House if he has any concrete plans to discuss with other nations whereby a reasonable number of such people might be relocated to Canada, the United States, West Germany and so on? Will he also tell us if the Government has any concrete plans in this regard?
[ Translation]


John (Moody) Roberts: Yes, Madam Speaker, we have already set up a program for refugees from Lebanon.

I can tell the Hon. Member that the special program put in place last June will remain in effect. As the status of Lebanese visitors in Canada expires, they may extend their stay by one year if they wish, with permission to work. At the end of the year each case will be reviewed and a decision made as to landing in Canada. Canadian citizens, or permanent residents having relatives in Lebanon who are facing hardships, will be permitted to sponsor such relatives even if they cannot meet regular selection criteria.
In spite of recent developments in Lebanon, our visa office there has resumed normal operations. So far, few Lebanese residents have applied. There do not appear to be too many who are contemplating immigration. The special program announced in June, 1982, remains in effect.
I will consider the Hon. Member's representations about further international action if it appears, as a result of pressure for immigration to Canada, that some further discussion is warranted.


REQUEST FOR RELAXATION OF CRITERIA
David Kilgour: Madam
Speaker, 1 wish to thank the Minister for that answer. Is he prepared to consider relaxing the criteria and point system for people applying to relatives in Canada from Lebanon? I am also referring to Sri Lanka and Afghanistan refugees.


John (Moody) Roberts: Madam Speaker, two weeks or so ago we announced that we would take similar measures in relation to people coming from Sri Lanka or people of Sri Lankan origin. In that case, and in the Lebanese case, we extend ourselves in every possible way to apply humanitarian considerations. I do not know, but I will check to see if there is some special need in relation to potential immigrants from Afghanistan.


NATIONAL CAPITAL COMMISSION
Mr. Dan Heap (Spadina):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Public Works. As he knows, the Mill Restaurant, a tenant of the National Capital Commission, which comes under his jurisdiction, has been virtually shut down for two months because the owner refused, until today, to bargain with his employees over confiscation of tip money and uniform costs, call in to work without assured compensation, and wages at the Ontario minimum. Will the Minister tell the House what action he has taken to protect both the principles of collective bargaining in this case and the revenues of the National Capital Commission?
September 27, 1983


Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of Public Works):: Madam Speaker, I am not familiar with the details of the question asked by the Hon. Member. 1 can tell him, however, that 1 take a back seat to no one in the protection of the rights acquired by workers. I will inquire and try to give him a more detailed answer tomorrow.


PENSIONS
Mr. Neil Young (Beaches):: Madam Speaker, I should like to put a question to the Minister of National Health and Welfare. Last Friday 1 asked the Prime Minister whether it was his intention to raise, in the meetings with Prime Minister Thatcher yesterday and today, the problem of some 40,000 persons living in Canada who receive British pensions and if those pensions would be increased by the cost of living. I also asked whether he would press the British Prime Minister to enter into a reciprocal security agreement with Canada. Could the Minister advise the House whether this matter was indeed raised by the Prime Minister, and what the results of those discussions were?


Monique Bégin: Madam Speaker, as soon as the Prime Minister is back in town I will check with him and have an answer.


CULTURAL AFFAIRS
Hon. David Crombie (Rosedale):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Communications, if he would like to take his seat. As the Minister may know, two weeks ago in St. John's, Newfoundland, the Chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Communications Commission, the CRTC, condemned what he called the unco-ordinated approach to telecommunications policy development in this country, and went further to say, and I quote, "Jurisdictional disputes create investment uncertainty and can lower the rate of innovation and technological development in this country."
The Minister bears a direct responsibility for that, and in light of it 1 would like to ask him why he has refused the invitation of his provincial colleagues to meet with him in St. John's tomorrow?


Hon. Francis Fox (Minister of Communications):: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member has two things confused. There are two groups of Ministers who are concerned with the area for which I have responsibility; one group consists of the communications Ministers and the other consists of the Ministers responsible for culture and historical resources. The meeting to which he is referring is the meeting of the Ministers responsible for culture and historical resources.
__________________________________27503
Oral Questions


INVITATION EXTENDED TO MINISTER
David Edward Crombie: Madam Speaker, the confusion, of course, is not mine but the Minister's. 1 have here 11 pieces of correspondence from the Ministers now meeting in St. John's, Newfoundland. These invitations were issued to the Minister seven months ago. They have asked him to come. They want him to come tomorrow. Why will he not do that?


Francis Fox: Madam Speaker, I am pleased that the Hon. Member is aware of the fact that it is not the Ministers of Communications. Therefore, his quotation from the Chairman of the CRTC is completely aside from the point. The meeting is one which is an interprovincial meeting of Ministers responsible for culture. I have indicated a number of times my interest in participating in such meetings. However, as we have done consistently in the past, we have always thought it better that these meetings be preceded by meetings with officials so that agendas could be set on which we agreed and also so that we could determine in advance the areas on which we wish to make some progress.
The Minister responsible for convening the meeting has done so knowing that I would not attend the meeting under the circumstances in which it was called. However, notwithstanding the procedure employed by the Minister from Newfoundland, which is completely contrary to the procedure accepted by the Ministers responsible for culture in the past, to wit, a decision made as to the date which is agreeable to both sides, in spite of his way of proceeding, 1 have indicated my availability to meet with the Ministers of Culture during the course of the months of October and November in an informal way to report on the Applebaum-Hebert Commission Report. I would like to point out to the Hon. Member, if he will allow me, and bear with me-


Some Hon. Members:: Order.


Francis Fox: -for a few seconds more, I feel quite strongly that that meeting only has sense inasmuch as it responds to the Applebaum-Hebert Commission of Inquiry-


Madam Speaker:: Order, please.


NATIONAL RESOURCES
Mr. F. Oberle (Prince George-Peace River):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. Since he has attended just recently, in the absence of the Minister of State (Mines), a meeting with provincial resource ministers in Regina, and is, on behalf of the Government, attending additional meetings of that sort, could the Minister tell the House what kind of positive proposals he took to this meeting, particularly in light of the very serious circumstances in which both the mining industry and the forest industry are finding themselves right now? In other words, was the Minister able to take any proposals to the meeting which would give the industries reason to anticipate that there would be a different tax regime which would permit these industries to be competitive in world markets once again?

September 27, 1983
Oral Questions


Hon. Jean Chretien (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Madam Speaker, I believe that the conference was a good one. We had an agenda which was very easy to deal with. Of course we are aware of the different problems which face the mining industry and we have discussed that, but basically the remedy for the problems of the mining industry in Canada at this time is the improvement in the markets. Everyone is of the view, because of the recovery in the western world at this time, that the outlook for the mining industry is better than it was a year ago.


GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSALS
Frank Oberle: Madam Speaker, there are a couple of major problems which the mining industry is facing: first, the Government's present regime of giving grants to industries in trouble which in turn means that some of the other plants are financing their own demise. Another serious problem which the industry has is in connection with the Government's proposals to tax northern benefits. The Minister was asked about both of these issues. What answer did he give to the mining and forestry ministers in the Provinces in terms of both a new tax regime which would keep the industries competitive in world markets, and a regime by which northern benefits could once again be permitted to be earned without being taxed by the heavy-handed federal Government?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Madam Speaker, the matter was discussed and is being considered by the Minister of Finance. The Minister has extended benefits for another year, so the problem will not arise until 1984. The Government is aware of the situation, we discussed it briefly, and the Minister of Finance, who some time ago decided to do away with these benefits, has extended them until next year. Whether or not he decides to change his policy, I have made the necessary arrangements to inform the Minister of Finance of the concerns of my provincial colleagues.


FISHERIES
Hon. John A. Fraser (Vancouver South):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans who was in the Chamber.


Mr. Nowlan:: He has gone fishing.


An Hon. Member:: There is his Parliamentary Secretary.


Madam Speaker:: Does the Hon. Member want to ask the question of an Acting Minister?


John Allen Fraser: Madam Speaker, I will put the question to the Parliamentary Secretary. Last week the Minister said that it would not be his policy to put money up front in order to start a buy-back program this winter in British Columbia. He said he was waiting for a report from the Minister's advisory committee which would appear in November. We on the West Coast would like to know if there is going to be any buy-back
program starting this winter, or are we going to be into the third and fourth year of no buy-back program?


Mr. Brian Tobin (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: Madam Speaker, as the Hon. Member properly pointed out, the Minister, in addressing himself to this issue last week, indicated that he wanted to await the advice, after proper deliberations, of the advisory committee. It would be a little premature and somewhat redundant and contradictory for me to stand here and indicate when a buyback plan would take place and what kind of buy-back plan would take place, when the Minister already said a few days ago that he will want to consult his advisory committee before making any more pronouncements on this matter.


DELAY IN INTRODUCTION OF PROGRAM
John Allen Fraser: As a supplementary, Madam Speaker, the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary know that if there is to be any buy-back program this winter somebody must finance it. It is going to require upfront government money no matter how it may be paid for later. The question remains. Put aside the details. We want to know is there going to be a buy-back program this winter, or is it going to be put off for another 12 months, or 18 months, or two years? Is there no answer at all that can be given by the Government side?


Brian Vincent Tobin: Madam Speaker, I know the Hon. Member's great and sincere interest in the welfare of fishermen on the West Coast, and I want to assure him that that interest and dedication are shared by both the Minister and myself and the officials of the Fisheries Department. I would ask him in good faith to bear with the Minister, to bear with the advisory board on the West Coast, and to bear with the officials who are as concerned as he is about this problem and are as anxious as he is to ensure that it is addressed as quickly as possible. But more consultation, not for the sake of consultation but for the sake of making sure that due process is given its proper place, is necessary at this time.
V * V


INDIAN AFFAIRS
Mr. John McDermid (Brampton-Georgetown):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Since I am only going to have one question I would like to ask the Minister about the status of a $1.3 million proposal in Manitoba for a task force on housing for status Indians. The proposal was made by a John Petrinka, who said the over-all program was designed not only for the benefit of the individual bands and their people but equally-but equally-for the Liberal Party of Canada. Can he tell us the status of that particular study which is not going to produce one house for any Indian family in Canada?


Hon. John C. Munro (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Madam Speaker, may I advise the Hon. Member that studies usually do not produce concrete
September 27, 1983

items such as houses. They make recommendations for Government to consider in terms of policy. 1 would tell the Elon. Member that I will find out precisely what the status of the recommendations is now.
Let me point out again, Madam Speaker, that in this current fiscal year we have more than doubled the amount of money for Indian housing over what was provided the year before. That is a 100 per cent increase which has not ever been experienced, even when there were Conservative Governments in power, so that we have now been able to attack the backlog. This has created a tremendous amount of employment among Indian people and it has met with the approbation of most Indian people across Canada, including those in Manitoba who have got a substantially increased number of houses as a result.


THE LATE OSIE F. VILLENEUVE TRIBUTES TO FORMER MEMBER
Hon. Erik Nielsen (Yukon):: Madam Speaker, yet another of our colleagues has passed away. I refer to Osie Villeneuve, who was a very strong Parliamentarian, a dedicated servant of his people in his constituency at both the federal and provincial levels.
Although his time in Parliament was short by comparison with his tenure in the provincial legislature, he was here in the years of the Government headed by the late Right Hon. John G. Diefenbaker and was very highly regarded by Mr. Diefen-baker when he was Prime Minister.
Osie Villeneuve was a fitting representative of that area where the strains of Scottish Highlander and French-speaking Canadian so felicitously merged together to produce a society with a charm and flavour all its own. He was in every sense a "man from Glengarry" and a strong proponent of the Scottish as well as his native culture. He represented a county where Scottish and French Canadian lumbermen erected a tradition and history of sturdy self-reliance and dependence on their own efforts for survival. He was a familiar figure at the Games which are yearly held in Maxville, where his funeral is scheduled to take place on Thursday next.
Representing an area which was the early home of Ralph Connor, whose family name was, of course, Gordon, where there are still memories of John Sandfield MacDonald and where Simon Fraser lies buried, he knew well how to mingle the strains of both our ancient races. In this House in the late fifties and early sixties, Osie Villeneuve was a repository of down-to-earth common sense with a strong feeling of affection for his people and his Province.
His passing represents the second death of a former Member in a few days and our sympathies go to his family, his widow Alma, and his sons Brian, Bernard and Ronald; and also to his riding and to Premier William Davis, under whose banner he served and was serving at his death.


Hon. Ed Lumley (Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce and Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: The Late Osie F. Villeneuve
Madam Speaker, I would like to rise on behalf of the Government of Canada to pay tribute to a provincial colleague from my constituency and that of my colleague, the Hon. Member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell (Mr. Ethier). Osie Villeneuve, as the Hon. Member for Yukon (Mr. Nielsen) has indicated, served this House for six years. He also served the provincial legislature for 29 years, a total of 35 years of very dedicated and devoted service to the people of eastern Ontario. Mr. Villeneuve's many years of public service at the federal and provincial levels is indicative of the concern and interest he demonstrated on countless occasions towards the well-being of his area and its citizens.
My experience with Mr. Villeneuve goes back much longer than the time I have been a federal Member of Parliament. It began during my days in business in the constituency which he served. One of the things I have always admired about Mr. Villeneuve is that he always spoke out for what he believed in. Obviously every Member of this House has great respect for those like Mr. Villeneuve who dedicate their lives to serving the public in this manner.
During election times he was a fierce competitor, but to me what was most important was that between elections he was dedicated to the people of his area, regardless of one's political persuasion.
Those of us in eastern Ontario who had the privilege of knowing and befriending Osie will be comforted by the fond memories of his efforts on our behalf. He touched the lives of nearly every person in his constituency during his 35 years of service. He had a strong commitment to his family, his country, his constituency, and he will be sorely missed. To his wife Alma and his three sons, as well as to all members of the Villeneuve family, I would like to extend the Government's and my personal deepest sympathy during this time of remembrance.


Ian Deans: Madam Speaker, I knew Osie Villeneuve well. I served with him in the Ontario legislature for 12 or more years and I remember him vividly. As was said earlier, he was a person who had a remarkable capacity for finding a compromise, and though he was a strong partisan he was able to put aside partisan differences on those occasions when finding solutions to difficult situations required that to be done. He was able, as is evidenced by the number of years he was successfully re-elected, to reach out and touch the constituents in his riding association and in his riding.
He seemed to have the capacity, Madam Speaker, as I recall from working with him, for finding in everything that was being done something that was worth while. People who came to the Ontario legislature to meet with Osie Villeneuve never went away with the impression that he somehow or other did not understand their problem or would not take some action to try to ameliorate it.
Therefore I want to join with my two colleagues in the House to say on behalf of my colleagues how sad we feel at his passing and I hope his family will at least feel the comfort that they surely must in knowing that he is well respected, well regarded and has provided a tremendous amount of service on behalf of so many people.

September 27, 1983
Point of Order-Mr. Huntington


Mr. Denis Ethier (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of the Environment):: Madam Speaker, I had expected to rise before Question Period under Standing Order 21 to pay tribute to my colleague and friend, the Hon. Osie F. Villeneuve, MPP for Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry, but as you know, following discussions I had with you, Madam Speaker, I understand and accept your recommendation that honouring or paying tribute to distinguished personalities cannot and must not be done under Standing Order 21. Therefore I am pleased to join those who have spoken before me and add that we were all deeply saddened to learn of the death of the Hon. Osie F. Villeneuve from Maxville, Ontario.
Mr. Villeneuve represented the riding I presently represent from 1957 to 1962, and with the exception of that brief period he represented the population of Glengarry in the Ontario legislature at Queen's Park from 1948 until now, a remarkable 35-year career. On numerous occasions I had the privilege of working very closely with Mr. Villeneuve. Osie, as he is so well known to all of us, served his constituency with honour and dignity. He was a hard-working and dedicated servant. His door was always open to his constituents. He will be long remembered for the non-partisan manner in which he carried out his numerous mandates as a representative of both provincial and federal Governments. Osie will be missed by all.


Madam Speaker:: I will look into the matter. It did not appear to me that the point raised by the Hon. Member applied, but I will look into it and see whether in fact the statement under Standing Order 21 was properly used.


MR. MCKENZIE-REPLY OF MRS. EROLA DURING QUESTION PERIOD
A. Daniel McKenzie: Madam
Speaker, I rise to point out that the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Mrs. Erola) misled the House today. I asked her about the UFFI problem in Winnipeg and what she was going to do about it. She informed the House that she had no knowledge of the subject. I have a copy of a-


Madam Speaker:: Order, please. That is certainly not a point of order. If the Hon. Member reads the blues of the House of Commons, he will see that nothing in the rules refers to that kind of matter as being a point of order. It is a matter of debate. The Hon. Member may debate it on another occasion.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS

[Stage Direction]
On behalf of the population of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, I wish to express our most sincere and heartfelt sympathies to his wife Alma and to their three sons, Ronald, Bernard and Brian.
['Madam Speaker, I wish to lay upon the Table a petition from some constituents of mine who live in the village of Apohaqui in Fundy-Royal. Those residents are concerned because the mailing address of their village has been changed to that of a neighbouring village. They have held this address for decades and are extremely concerned that they are losing their identity, and they wish to protest same.\n* *\n*']
John Horton McDermid: Madam Speaker, I would just add a few words as well to what has been said. I had the pleasure of working with Osie Villeneuve at Queen's Park, and especially with his son, Brian. Osie was an inspiration to all of us who aspired to political life. I would like Brian, his mother, his brothers and the rest of his family to know of my deep sorrow also at this time.



Mr. Bob Corbett (Fundy-Royal):: Madam Speaker, I wish to lay upon the Table a petition from some constituents of mine who live in the village of Apohaqui in Fundy-Royal. Those residents are concerned because the mailing address of their village has been changed to that of a neighbouring village. They have held this address for decades and are extremely concerned that they are losing their identity, and they wish to protest same.
* *
*



QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER


Hon. Ron Huntington (Capilano):: Madam Speaker, I would just like to draw your attention to the statement under Standing Order 21 of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Communications (Mr. Burghardt) during today's proceedings. If that statement is examined, one will find it is very close to a ministerial statement and is outside the intent of Standing Order 21. I flag that for your attention in case Ministers start using that procedure for ministerial statements.
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)


John Leslie Evans: Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: 4,668 and 4,925.


PERSONS EMPLOYED IN DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE IN WESTERN CANADA
Mr. Mazankowski: 1.	How many persons are presently employed in the Research Branch of the Department of Agriculture in western Canada?
September 27, 1983

2.	How many man-years are involved for the fiscal year 1982-83 and what percentage of those man-years are for administrative or clerical positions?
3.	Is the Department anticipating a reduction in research positions in western Canada due to transfers, lay-offs or attrition in 1983 and, if so, what is the justification for this reduction?
4.	Is the Department planning to close any research facilities such as greenhouses, growth chambers or laboratories in western Canada in 1983 and, if so, what is the justification for doing so?


Hon. E. F. Whelan (Minister of Agriculture):: 1. As of
December 31,	1982, the Research Branch had 1,346
employees in Western Canada.
2.	A total of 1,429 person-years of which 10.6 per cent are in the Administrative and Foreign Service or Administrative Support Categories.
3.	The Department is not anticipating a reduction in the number of positions conducting agricultural research or providing essential services in support of research in western Canada for any reason in 1983.
4.	There are no plans to close any facilities necessary for continued research in western Canada in 1983. It may be necessary to restrict or curtail the use of some non-essential facilities in order to reduce energy costs and remain within the budgetary allocations.


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


Pierre De Bané: 1. There is a Fisheries and Oceans Research Advisory Council. Membership is as follows:
(a) Names of Members	(b) (i) Background/Expertise	(b) (ii) Term/Date of Appointment	(c) Remuneration to date*Dr. W. E. Johnson (Chairman of FORAC)	Fisheries Scientist. (Long history as senior DFO official.)	3 yrs. Sep. 80	GIC-6 $ 61,090 to $ 71,890Dr. H. A. Favre (Vice-Chairman of FORAC)	Chemist. Served on former Fish. Research Board. Dean, Univ. of Montreal.	4 yrs. Sep. 81	$ 20,520.04Dr. A. J. Bowen	Oceanographer, Prof., Dept, of Oceanography, Dalhousie Univ.	4 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 3,759.15Mr. J. B. Buchanan	Fishing Industry. Vice-Chairman, B.C. Packers Co. Vancouver.	2 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 2,044.40
Order Paper Questions
Dr. L. Chcnard	Fisheries Scientist. Retired D. M., N. Bruns. Dept, of Fisheries.	4 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 6,089.98Dr. C. W. Clark	Applied Mathematician/ Resource Economist. Prof., Dept, of Math. Univ. of B.C.	3 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 5,508.44Mr. F. J. Doucet	Economist, Fisheries Consultant. Toledo, Ontario.	3 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 4,239.51Mr. J. T. Dunn	Fishing Industry. President, Freshwater Fish Marketing Corp. Winnipeg, Man.	2 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 804.10Dr. G. Filteau	Marine Biologist, Prof., Dept, of Biol., Laval Univ.	3 yrs. Apr. 83	~Mr. M. Florian	Fisherman. Pres., Prince Rupert Fishermens Co-op.	2 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 3,335.03Mr. L. D. Hudon	Secretary of MOSST. Recently retired.	3 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 2,661.23Dr. H. B. N. Hynes	Freshwater Biologist. Professor, Dept, of Biology, Univ. of Waterloo.	4 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 6,140.32Dr. J. Lebel	Oceanographer. Professor, Dept, of Biology, Univ. du Quebec a Rimouski	3 yrs. Apr. 83	$ 786.20Mr. C. R. Levelton	Fisheries consultant. (Retired senior DFO official)	3 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 3.343.58Dr. C. C. Lindsey	Fisheries Scientist and Director, Inst, of Animal Resource Ecology, U.B.C.	4 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 5,131.86Mr. S. P. MacKay	Offshore oil dvlopmnt. Chairman, Arctic Petrol. Operators Assoc.	3 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 6,318.67Dr. J. Mclnerney	Fisheries Scientist. Professor/Chairman, Dept, of Biology, Univ. of Victoria	4 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 4,870.52Dr. J. S. Nelson	Fisheries Scientist. Professor, Dept. Zoology, Univ. of Alberta	4 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 5,456.87Dr. P. J. Nicholson	Operations research. Member of Atlantic Fisheries Task Force.	2 yrs. Nov. 81	-Dr. T. R. Parsons	Oceanographer, Prof. Inst, of Oceanography, Univ. of B.C.	4 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 5,867.16Mr. D. Pattinson	Recreational Fisheries. Pres., Canadian Wildlife Federation.	2 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 4,817.05Mr. L. G. Riche	Fishing Industry. Vice-President, Fishery Products Co. Newfoundland.	2 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 5,436.74Mr. Wm. Short	Fisherman. Newfoundland Fishermen Food & Allied Workers Union.	2 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 4,431.84Mr. E. Studney	Retired fisherman. Hay River, N.W.T.	2 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 5,388.42Dr. W. Templeman	Fisheries Scientist. Retired Professor,	3 yrs. Nov. 81	$ 7,192.98
Memorial University,
Newfoundland.
* The amount specified under "remuneration to date" includes an honoraria of $150 per day for non-public servant members of the Council for days spent on Council business (as fixed by Order in Council P.C. 1981-3034 dated October 29, 1981) as well as reimbursement of travel and living expenses in accordance with Treasury Board regulations.

September 27, 1983
Order Paper Questions
(d) The federal Government provides an annual budget to cover the operation of the Fisheries and Oceans Research Advisory Council as well as the salary of the Chairman and one indeterminate employee.
2. (a) The terms of reference of the Council, as stated in the Fisheries and Oceans Research Advisory Council Act, are as follows:
"It is the function of the Council to advise the Minister on all matters referred to it by the Minister relating to:
(a)	fisheries research and the marine sciences including technological developments in those fields;
(b)	the scope and adequacy of the science policies and programs of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, having regard to the duties and functions of that Department and the science policies and international obligations of the Government of Canada; and
(c)	the co-ordination of research and development programs in the fields of fisheries research and the marine sciences."
(b) and (c) At FORAC's inaugural meeting on November 30, 1981, the Minister asked the Council to undertake a general review of his department's fisheries and oceanographic research and development activities and provide him with any comments and recommendations as to their quality, relevance, adequacy and balance considering both the present and the future. In fiscal year 1982-83 the Council proceeded with this task by holding a series of visitations and meetings (total of six) at the major fisheries and oceanographic research establishments across Canada. FORAC submitted its views and recommendations to the Minister at its annual meeting with him in Ottawa on February 4, 1983. It states in the FORAC Act that "the Council shall meet annually at the city of Ottawa and at such other times and places as are necessary for the work of the Council."
(d)	The Fisheries and Oceans Research Advisory Council does not publish any reports or recommendations.


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


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


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Pinard (for Mr. Regan) that Bill C-l 10, an Act to amend the Export Development Act, be read the third time and do pass.
John William Thomson: Mr. Speaker,, just prior to the lunch hour adjournment, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of State for Economic Development (Mr. Peterson) asked me why we chose to debate Bill C-l 10 for seven days with some 140-odd speakers. I would happily reply to that question.
Bill C-l 10, as the Parliamentary Secretary may know, was introduced in the House in May of 1981, two years and some months ago. When it was introduced into the House by the then Minister of State for Trade, he came to me as spokesman for Trade of the Conservative Party and asked me if we could very quickly dispense with the Bill. It did not seem to involve a great deal. I reviewed the Bill and agreed with him that it was not earthshaking, but I sought three amendments to the Bill. First, I wanted greater representation from the private sector on the board of directors of the Export Development Corporation. Second, I wanted the financial disclosure shown in the financial statements of the Export Development Corporation. I wanted the corporation to disclose the contingent liability with respect to the commitments the corporation had made to finance certain contracts at one rate of interest, then going out on the open market and having to finance those commitments at a higher rate of interest. Third, I wanted the Government to bring forward appropriations that were necessary to fund the Export Development Corporation from time to time. 1 wanted them brought before Parliament. The then Minister of State for Trade said; "I do not see any problem with those amendments. They seem perfectly reasonable. I think I can arrange to have those approved by my Cabinet."
Here we are, two years later, debating the Bill. They were very reasonable amendments that I put forward. We put those amendments forward in committee for over two years. We did not receive one civilized response in a period of two years to those simple, straightforward amendments, not one sign of willingness to amend the Bill in those reasonable ways. I say to the Parliamentary Secretary that that is why we were here in the House for seven days. That is why we put forth 140 speakers.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Are there any further questions or comments? Debate.


Hon. Sinclair Stevens (York-Peel):: Mr. Speaker, in joining in the final debate on the Export Development Corporation Bill, I felt it might be helpful if I could underline what has really transpired with respect to the Bill. First, I would like to emphasize that Canada does need an important acceleration in our trade activity as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
September 27, 1983

There are several ways that we can consider the matter. I had an earlier opportunity to speak at report stage on the Bill and pointed out that on a world, global basis, Canada at one time had about 5 per cent of the total trade of the world, and that has now deteriorated to about 3.6 per cent. But perhaps I should have continued further at that time and pointed out that with respect to the components of our share of world trade the picture is even bleaker. I refer, of course, to manufactured products. We find that we once had over 4 per cent of the world's total share, but that has now deteriorated, as far as manufactured goods are concerned, to something over 2 per cent. 1 suggest, and this point has certainly been made by many business associations, such as the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, that if we could just regain our fair share of world trade, especially in manufactured and in semi-manufactured products, we would really cut our unemployment by half. Surely, when we face the reality that, first, there has been a steady deterioration under the emperor with respect to our share of world trade, and that perhaps half of the unemployment today is due to the fact that we have lost that fair share of world trade, we can see how relevant the debate is with respect to export-import trade generally, but specifically with respect to Bill C-110, the Export Development Corporation Bill.
Having said that, it is natural to ask what will be done about it. My first suggestion would be to make it extremely easy for business generally in Canada, and especially for the smaller businessman, to get their fair share of trade in the world market. This brings us to the essential question of whether the Export Development Corporation is serving the Canadian public, the businessman-and the small businessman specifically-adequately in relation to allowing them to participate in world trade. Coupled with that question, I believe we must consider whether Parliament is being given the opportunity to scrutinize, perhaps to make suggestions, and above all to be satisfied with what the Export Development Corporation is doing. It must not only be adequate but fair and attempting to achieve the goal we seek, which is to regain what we have lost in world trade.
This is where I feel the debate on Bill C-110 has been so relevant. I know that the trained seals on the other side are often impatient when we delay a Bill because we feel there are certain provisions that must be changed. We sought various amendments to this particular Bill. While we would like to have won them all, we agreed to accept amendments in the spirit of compromise which perhaps went only part of the way. At least, they were an improvement. Of course, I am referring to amendments to these blank cheques which the Government enjoys having Parliament authorize. At least we were able to have that measure tempered. More importantly, we were able to have a specific clause included in the Bill which will require the annual report and financial statements to be referred to the relevant committee of the House every year.
Having said that, let me underline why I feel it is so important that we have that type of parliamentary scrutiny.
Export Development Act
During the debate at report stage of this Bill, I mentioned that most Canadians would not believe it if they were told that of the approximately $2.5 billion total financing commitments and dealings that the Export Development Corporation handled in 1982, $957 million went to one company; Bombadier. I invite those who are interested to go to the Library and read the annual report from Bombadier. They will find it almost unbelievable that in relation to the size of that company, the Export Development Corporation would have felt justified in awarding it the benefit of almost $1 billion worth of financing. In 1982, for example, the total sales of Bombadier were $448 million. In one year, financing was approved which will result in an eventual benefit to that company of almost $1 billion in sales.
When we are dealing with a situation which represents almost 40 per cent of the total 1982 activity of the Export Development Corporation, surely it is relevant that we in the House ask if that was a wise course of action. Surely we must ask if there has been proper scrutiny and when we would have an opportunity to review the details of what the EDC is doing with respect to that one benefactor of financing.
Let me go further. How many in the Canadian public realize that one country has been given what is called an unconfirmed line of credit of $2.5 billion? Of course, I refer to an arrangement that was made some time ago in favour of China. While that may be a very sensible move for the people of Canada to make, surely we in the House owe it to our constituents to almost insist that the Government must be able to satisfy the Members of the House that the deal which it has in mind is fair, will serve the Canadian public, and particularly the smaller businessman since that is where EDC lacks fairness, before it enters into those kinds of transactions.
Furthermore, we have seen these disclosures of mismanagement of various Crown corporations in Canada. I could take the balance of my time just reading the names of the companies that are involved, such as Consolidated Computer and Canadair. Suffice it to say that there are billions of taxpayers' money not only for this generation but for generations to come that will be lost because of the ineptitude of the Government in running so many of these Crown corporations.
Again we find that the EDC plays a hand. While Bombardier received almost 40 per cent of the total activity of the EDC in 1982, a nice little company owned by the Crown called de Havilland picked up $200 million. Surely we must ask ourselves, if the Government saw fit to give assistance amounting to $200 million to one concern, a Crown corporation, whether that was the most suitable way to spend that money compared to ensuring perhaps 100 or 1,000 smaller businesses picking up a piece of that type of financing benefit.
While pointing out the de Havilland example, I think it is interesting to see to which countries that financing has been awarded. For example, in 1982 there was a financing facility awarded to a country called the United Republic of Came-room. It was for $25,190 million. As well, we see that Colombia picked up a couple of financings; one for $1,466 million and another for $1,460 million, both giving a benefit to
27510

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act
de Havilland in Canada. There is another financing of $3,502 million for Colombia in favour of de Havilland.


Mr. Blais:: Selling planes built in Toronto.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: All of these are to this one, single Crown owned company.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Selling planes made in Toronto.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Let me go on to mention that in Egypt in 1982, de Havilland was able to get $119 million-almost $120 million-in financing, again for their benefit with the destination being the Arab Republic of Egypt. The more one speaks to people who are active in the Canadian export and import business, the more one hears one common message. It is that the federal Government is using the financing available either to support its Crown corporations or, in turn, its favourite corporate associates. That is what this question of scrutiny and parliamentary authority is all about. The Minister of National Defence (Mr. Blais) has been heckling me this afternoon across the aisle.


Jean-Jacques Blais: 1 have been giving you facts.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: He simply talks about building planes to sell in other countries, with the hope of employing people in the Toronto area.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Not only the hope. It will employ people.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: If it is as simple as that, why has the Minister of National Defence, as a member of Government, consistently refused to make disclosures through the House which the people of Canada feel should be made with respect to such financing? Certainly other countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States take for granted that public financing of this nature is an open book. One can learn anything about the financing, including the rate, the term and the customers involved. Here, one cannot learn that. It is a secret. Certainly it is a secret because the Government feels-


Jean-Jacques Blais: You cannot get commercial information like that any place. Tell me one place where you can.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: 1 hear the Minister interjecting again. If he would like to check through his staff, he could have that information within 24 hours. Certainly that would be the case with the Export-Import Bank in the United States. If his staff cannot obtain it, I will get it for him. If there is any other way I can help that Minister to improve the defences of Canada, 1 want him to be assured of my assistance, because it is long overdue.


Mr. Cullen:: What is long overdue, your assistance?


Jean-Jacques Blais: The aircraft built by de Havilland-


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: I hear the Minister referring to aircraft built by de Havilland. Is he referring to Twin Otters? Apparently that will be our fighting aircraft.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Did you ever hear of the Buffalo?


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Clearly, when the Minister of National Defence keeps interjecting, we are getting to the quick. He knows that this is stuff the Government would just as soon have under the carpet and not much comment about.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Is that as much as you know about de Havilland? You should visit its aircraft plant in Toronto.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Let me emphasize that I am only giving an example of where EDC financing has been routed.
I could go through this for other companies that are very closely connected with the Government. Here is one in favour of de Havilland for $3.8 million to Malaysia. When we were dealing with an aggregate of $200 million in financing for the benefit of the Havilland, was that the most sensible way in 1982 for the Government of Canada to facilitate an export, as opposed to ensuring that hundreds of smaller businessmen received some part of the benefit? The question is as simple as that. I have yet, either in committee or in the House, to hear a Government Member or backbencher attempt to justify some of this type of financing to which I am referring.
1 have cited various countries, but what about the United States? Why, if we wished to sell to the United States aircraft manufactured by de Havilland, would we have to give them concessional financing through the EDC? In 1982 I see before me four financings, all for the benefit of de Havilland: one for $6,144,000; another for $11,858,000; another for $6,267,000; and a final one for $6,513,000, all to customers in the United States to allow them to buy de Havilland aircraft with our financing. Is that competition?
There is always a danger in this field when a company like de Havilland finds it tough to sell its products that if will start, through the Government of Canada, selling a financing program which the buyer cannot refuse. That, in turn, tends to weaken the infrastructure in the country. The selfsame Government which is hinting that it would like to see more free trade, especially with the United States, apparently overlooks the fact that to the degree we weaken our own in-country industrial capability and competitiveness and at the same time welcome free trade, basically we are asking for a situation that might develop where we will be overwhelmed by the American producer, and the manufacturing capability in Canada will be lessened still more.
What I am discussing is something which is actively being considered and reviewed in many of the so-called think-tanks both in Canada and the United States. If there is a debate which will ensue in the House, either in this session or the next, I hope that at least in part it centres on the critical question of where Canada's role will be through the 1980s and into the 1990s in terms of world trade. It is time we accepted that the academic, philosophical attitude of our emperor,
September 27, 1983

which may have been in vogue in the 1960s, has absolutely no relevance in the 1980s. If we continue to follow his impractical, unrealistic approaches, coupled with the confrontation which he seems to love so much, it will mean a much less wealthy Canada than we have every right to expect. The fall in real incomes in the last two years, which has started to accelerate as Statistics Canada pointed out, is just the beginning of a continuing fall if we do not start looking outward at the world and saying that Canada once again will regain its fair share of world trade. To do that, we must start looking at some of the issues 1 have touched upon today.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


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


David Kilgour: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to participate in the debate on a matter which is extremely important to Canadians. There are a minimum of 1.3 million Canadians now out of work, particularly young people. Every day 1 am in my riding I hear from people of all ages who say that they have lost their jobs. 1 am thinking of a man who told me he recently lost his job after 25 years. I am thinking of young people who tell me they cannot find their first job. As everyone here knows, the unemployment situation in Canada is unacceptable to all Canadians, whatever their politics or location in the country.
My contribution this afternoon is primarily based on a quotation by Jean Monnet, the father of the European Community, who said:
If a freely elected government makes a simple plan clear, free people can immediately adjust to it. Businessmen could plan investments, working people could plan savings, shopkeepers plan inventories, and farmers plan their fields.
I wish those words were posted on the walls here so that every one of us could look at them every day of the week. I think Mr. Monnet has stated a truth about which each one of us should be told frequently.
Evidently it is true that $1 billion worth of new exports creates approximately 40,000 jobs. It is clear that every time you create another $1 billion in exports you create an additional 40,000 jobs. The most cutting indictment that anyone can make of the Government is that it has willfully and intentionally created unemployment over the last number of years in order to fight inflation. It may have done something about inflation, but 1.3 million or more Canadians and their families have paid the full price for a policy designed to fight inflation and create additional unemployment.
I realize it is easy to be critical. This Bill asks what we on this side propose to do about the situation. Last year Professor Thibaut de Saint Phalle wrote a book entitled "Trade, Inflation, and the Dollar". Everyone could gain from reading the book. I am speaking personally and not on behalf of the Official Opposition in saying that some of his suggestions are applicable to Canada, this Government, and to all Canadians. I say that in the context that Canada, while being one of the
Export Development Act
luckiest countries in the world, is desperately in need of re-invigoration, renewed enthusiasm and, if 1 may coin a term, re-invigorization.
What can this Government and the Government in waiting do to help Canada increase its exports? Some of his suggestions are as follows: First, we can show greater interest in strengthening the world's monetary system. Second, we can show greater interst in, and response to, trade barriers created by other nations. Third, we can enact a clear national export policy. I know those opposite will say that they just announced one a few days ago. A press conference is now being held across the street with the trade ministers of the OECD, the United States, Japan and Canada.
Again I refer back to the quote of Mr. Monnet. How can a businessman plan a plant expansion, a new plant or whatever, when, until six months ago, the third option-the option that we get away from dependence on the United States and increase our multilateral approach with other countries in order to avoid dependence on the United States, greater trade with the United States and greater economic integration with the United States-was somehow morally unacceptable to Canadians? It is true that the recent trade policy of the Government indicates a greater sectoral integration with the United States.
My point is that you cannot jump from a national energy policy that blantantly discriminates against our major trading partner and other measures, such as FIRA, which sends a signal to the United States that it is not welcome in Canada, that we want to reduce rather than increase our economic ties with that country, and then say as we did six weeks ago, "Presto, Eureka, we are now converts, we want greater recognition of the geography between the two countries and greater recognition of the need for sectoral free trade with the United States". It is this flipping and flopping, going backwards and forward, going upside down and inside out, which has worsened many of our economic problems.
The Minister of State for External Relations (Mr. Pepin) in Question Period today stated that our investment statistics are bad. That should qualify as the understatement of the week. You cannot create permanent jobs without increasing investment. Jobs in large measure are a function of investment. If someone chooses to put his saving into a savings account at the bank, not as many jobs will be created as if he had put an addition on his house, opened a small dairy business or something along that line. That is the way to create long-term jobs in Canada. When you do not have this fundamental confidence among investors, you do not have the employment opportunities that Canada needs. I guess I had better speak briefly to the Bill.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. 1 was about to say that there is the matter of relevance. There is strict relevance and relative relevance. The scope is pretty wide. The Hon. Member has made the point, so I will allow him to speak to the Bill at this time.

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act


David Kilgour: It is clear to all Members that last week we achieved something. There was all-Party agreement to the amendments. As you have probably heard one or two times today, Mr. Speaker, the borrowing capacity of the corporation is limited to ten times its paid-in capital in earnings rather than its authorized capital. Second, the authorized capital asked for of $2 billion has been reduced to Si.5 billion. This reduces the possible borrowings from $20 billion to $15 billion. Also of importance is the fact that in future the company will have to present its annual report and financial statements to the House of Commons, the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs, for examination. Finally, the right of the Government to take up loans and guarantees not appropriate to the corporation's activities has been reduced from $20 billion to $13 billion. For this we have to thank the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) and recognize the goodwill of the Government on these matters.
The EDC can do part of the job, but it cannot do all of the job. We believe that it should be more accountable to Parliament. We have succeeded in persuading the Government to go along with this. I think it is within the grounds of relevance if in a personal capacity I say something about the proposed restructuring of the Department of External Affairs with respect to trade. You, Mr. Speaker, will be aware of the fact that External Affairs is to be integrated from top to bottom with the former trade section of the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. I invite the Hon. Member to state the relationship of the Bill, the Export Development Act, to what he is now raising, which is the subject matter of another Bill presently before a committee of this House.


David Kilgour: It is indeed, Mr. Speaker. Thank you for correcting me on that. I believe this is relevant. I have before me the fascinating study of the Economic Council of Canada entitled, "The Bottom Line". It deals in large measure with trade. Chapter 10 deals with future trade policy. It talks about low interest loans. It is hard to argued that the EDC is not making low interest loans. In discussing an amendment last week, I stated that it may be making a lot of low interest loans and may in fact be engaging in more aid than trade.
We on this side strongly favour aid. However, I wonder whether the EDC should properly be confusing its role of financing trade with a role which more properly belongs to Cl DA, that of encouraging aid. This study talks about productivity. The author states that the productivity problem persists and that productivity has not grown for eight years.
How will this Bill increase productivity in the vital export industries which are now in a period of recession, as is the rest of the economy? How will we increase, through the Export Development Corporation, our trade in, for example, the export of manufactured goods?
It has already been pointed out in this debate that Canada's percentage of the total exports of manufactured goods was 3.3 per cent in 1960. In fairness, it is 4.2 per cent today. At the same time, Japan, for example, has gone from 5.3 per cent of total exports of manufactured goods in 1960 to 14.8 per cent. Surely, Sir, it seems to me that if Japan has had a simply phenomenal increase in its total exports of manufactured goods and Canada has had an increase of slightly under one percentage point, we should be looking at the programs used in Japan as compared to those used here.
What, for example, does Japan do with its equivalent of the Export Development Corporation? Is it modelled after our Export Development Corporation? Is it different, and if so, how does it differ? Should we not have a Bill in front of us now which would take Canada in the direction that Japan has gone in terms of exports? One may say that there are other programs dealing with that. Yes, it is true that there are other programs dealing with exports, but do we have the right kinds of programs? Do we have the right kinds of mechanisms in place that will allow Canadian manufacturers and exporters to increase their percentage of total world exports?
It has been pointed out by numerous speakers that the Export Development Corporation is not perfect. 1 think it is clear that this Bill does not perfect it. A number of speakers have referred to Professor Andre Raynauld who said that the EDC is:
-rapidly becoming a bureaucratic monster, borrowing and lending money, making unsound loans to foreign countries, extending its empire, and involving Canada in transactions and negotiations that are both costly and inefficient.
Professor Raynauld has compared the EDC to equivalent organizations in other countries and does not come to favourable conclusions.
The point cannot be made often enough that we on this side want to increase exports. We want to support anything and everything which will increase exports from Canada, because only in that way will we get Canadians back to work. At least I am persuaded that it is only by increasing exports that we will accomplish that.
I believe that it is a mistake for the Government to pretend that this Bill, as amended, is a panacea. It is not. It will take many other things to improve our trade position significantly. More important in my view, Sir, is that it is going to take a change of thinking on the part of the Government to improve our trade position, or, hopefully, it will take a new government which recognizes that the private sector can create jobs in the export market and that permanent jobs will only be created when Canada resumes its role as a secure place in which to invest, to work and to do business.
Let me give an example which perhaps makes what I am trying to say seem more real. Recently I heard of the case of a person in a European country who was engaged in the business of exporting beef. Somebody asked that person whether he did business in Canada. I am informed that the man rolled his eyes and said: "No, of course not. I do not do business in Canada". Asked why, he said that years ago he had had a contract with a Canadian company and that Canadian company, which I
September 27, 1983

obviously will not name, had botched the contract to the point that this man will never do business in Canada again. Unfortunately in this case, the European business community is a small business community. Stories like this get around rather quickly in the European business community, and they hurt you, Mr. Speaker, they hurt me and they hurt our constituents. If Canada is known as a country where one does not do business by choice, that hurts all of us.
I think that all of us in our own way within our own communities and businesses have to change our way of thinking. We have to become pursuers of excellence. 1 remind you, Mr. Speaker, that the book that is number one on the non-fiction bestseller list at the moment is entitled "In Pursuit of Excellence". It basically deals with management techniques of successful American companies. The book that is number two on the non-fiction bestseller list is called "Megatrends". I have read one of those books and I am now reading the other one. I wish everyone would read those books. Everyone would see that Canada has more going for it than any other country in the world. As we have all heard many times, Canada has people, resources, geography, infrastructures, social programs and access to markets. In my view, we have absolutely everything that is necessary to be number one in the world; yet, for various reasons, we are not number one at the moment.
We all must say to ourselves that from now on, we are going to pursue excellence in whatever our business or occupation is. We are going to get into this market or that market with a sense of urgency. Our businessmen must have a sense of urgency. You and I, Mr. Speaker, for different reasons, must have a sense of urgency as well.
Canadians need to develop an alertness to opportunities. Somebody was complaining the other day that there does not seem to be this sense of urgency in our business community at the moment. This sense of urgency must be encouraged. Anything that this Government or a new government can do that will encourage Canadians to do business around the world must, in my view, be done.
I will refer to some examples. I refer again to the book written by Mr. de Saint Phalle, and it seems to me that there is not enough appreciation of the need for exports in Canada.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Hear, hear!


David Kilgour: It seems to me that the substitution of investments abroad by Canadian firms for a policy of marketing from Canada is one that must be encouraged.
My time is almost up. I do not have to tell you, Sir, how many Canadian companies have chosen to simply move out rather than continue here. There must be improved research and development in Canada. There must be more adequate training programs for the executives who are marketing Canadian products around the world.
May 1 continue, Mr. Speaker?


Jean-Jacques Blais: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, since the Hon. Member for Edmonton-Strathcona (Mr. Kilgour) is the first
Export Development Act
speaker in a long time from that side of the House who has made sense, I have no objections to his continuing.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Is there unanimous consent to allow the Hon. Member to continue his speech?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: There is not unanimous consent.
Questions, comments? Debate. The Hon. Member for Edmonton West (Mr. Lambert).


Hon. Marcel Lambert (Edmonton West):: Mr. Speaker, it seems to be rather coincidental that my work this week has taken me into the consideration of two Bills, one in committee and one in the House, dealing with international trade. Bill C-152, the Government reorganization Bill, has of course a great deal to do with, shall we say, the framework of the department for international trade in the now omnibus Department of External Relations. This particular Bill, Bill C-110, deals with the financing of a good deal of our international trade. During the extensive debate at report stage my colleague, the Hon. Member for York-Peel (Mr. Stevens) and others, adverted to the problems of international trade in Canada. They spoke of its decline in an absolute and relative sense and the necessity for an increase, if we are to regain employment and economic activity. Those are not very simple problems.
Earlier, a Member of the Government referred to the fact that some 140 Members spoke at report stage in order to achieve the particular objective of having the Bill amended. The Government showed unbelievable gall in the size of borrowing authority it sought, the overcapitalization, and so on, of the Export Development Corporation. This could easily be halved and the corporation could still carry on as well as before. Unfortunately, however, it would have had to be accountable to Parliament if it wanted to increase the ceilings for borrowings and insurance as well as capitalization. We know that the Government wants to get as much blanket authority as possible so that it will not need to come to Parliament and give an accounting.
I do not know whether, in agreeing to the amendments of last Friday, we accommodated the real objective of the Government, that is, a gain of about one-third. There are ways of getting what you want. A typical bureaucratic way of achieving success is to overdemand and then make a concession. After extensive debate, concessions are eagerly seized upon by all concerned and a settlement is made. That is all very well but, of course, it was what the Government wants. I dare say we could have carried on debate and denied passage of the Bill at report stage, but then the Government would have brought in closure.

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act
1 am not going to comment on the amendments that were made or the Bill as it stands. I am going to say something that no one else referred to in the earlier stages of debate or in committee, where documents are produced, however. There is a stony silence from the media as well, as far as the representations made by public bodies and corporate interests with expertise in the field are concerned. This matter should therefore be brought up in this forum where there is wider public observation. 1 am going to refer to two bodies that made strong representations that I think are in keeping with what should be the philosophy of the corporation.
The Export Development Corporation was set up years ago to assist private financing-to assist Canadian exporters who, at that time, were doing well in the international field. The economies of Germany and Japan and the modern economies of Taiwan, Singapore and Korea were not set up, nor did we have competition from Brazil and other parts of the world where Canadians, to their surprise, now face competition. The attitude of many manufacturers and members of the public was almost, "How dare they?" They were used to the fat years after World War II when we lived in a euphoria of so-called international power and trade. The truth of the matter is that some of these countries have far more modern machinery and a younger and better trained work force which has a work ethic.
My colleague, the Hon. Member for Edmonton-Strathcona (Mr. Kilgour), referred to productivity. At the present time I am engaged in a study of productivity in the public and private sectors of Canada. The short answer to productivity is for the working public and the managing public to recover the work ethic. That is one of the, perhaps, simplistic ways of saying that we have to do better, not only in the public and private sectors but at all levels of government. We have been living in the land of the lotus eaters for the past generation and now we must work at regaining some of our lost trade.
In 1982 the Economic Council of Canada produced a report called "Intervention and Efficiency". After a rather notorious visit to Europe some six or seven years ago by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), he went on television in this country, without having discussed the matter with his Ministers, and indicated that the Government would become much more interventionist. We have seen what five to seven years of more intervention has done for efficiency. What has been the result as far as the Canadian economy is concerned? The Economic Council of Canada identifies one of the Government agencies which has had direct intervention, because it has excluded pretty well everyone else, and that is the Export Development Corporation. Canadians face greater risks in international trade than in domestic trade, and the financial requirements for it are greater. I will read those recommendations very quickly. The first one deals with the Export Development Corporation, and I quote:
We recommend that the Export Development Corporation gradually move towards providing export credit reinsurance, leaving the field of insurance proper to the private sector. We further recommend that the Export Development
Corporation serve as the insurer of last resort to close any gaps left by the private sector in the supply of export credit insurance.
That is entirely within the philosophy as posed by the Opposition, and as was stated during the debate on this particular Bill. The Minister may look startled about this, but this is a fact. I quote the next recommendation. It reads:
We recommend that the Export Development Corporation continue to provide direct financing for Canadian sales abroad when there is reason to believe that the private sector is unable to provide the required credits. Public financing should be made available only under terms and conditions commensurable with the risks involved and the costs of such assistance-including the opportunity cost of the funds used-except in those cases where it is deemed necessary to take into consideration the export-support programs of other countries.
This means that the Export Development Corporation would partially withdraw from direct export financing, except when a credit gap is found. This has always existed. I remember many years ago one of the first big breakthroughs in selling railway engines on the world market came between Canada and Mexico. Mexico did not discover any oil. Mexico was a poor country. It needed railway rolling stock and, frankly we needed a good, healthy, productive spurt in the locomotive manufacturing field. This was done with government financing with long-term low interest rates. There was a political element. There is no doubt about that. But, my goodness, it was an economic shot in the arm for both countries and, therefore, it was an activity which was worthy.
That is provided for in the Export Development Act. I believe it is $5 billion or $7 billion now as a result of the amendments, with which the Government of Canada can make direct loans or participate in the financing directly rather than through the corporation.
I quote the following from the next recommendation:
We further recommend that the Export Development Corporation's gradual withdrawal from most direct-lending activities be accompanied by an increased concentration of its efforts in the field of credit insurance and bank guarantees. The Corporation should also stand ready to provide refinancing facilities for private lending institutions engaged in export finance.
That is precisely what a government agency of this kind should be doing in the type of economy we want here in Canada. I have already seen some efforts in this field.
I would like to talk about a brief which was submitted to the Science Council of Canada by the Royal Bank with regard to counter trade, which is a new phenomenon. Counter trade means swapping or barter. For example, if country A wishes to buy from country B, it is on condition that country B may buy from country C, which in turn, will buy something else from country A. It is all a lock-up deal, and that has to be financed. 1 cannot say a lot of Canadian banks, but certainly the Royal Bank, which spoke about this in its brief of May of 1983, said that this is a phenomenon which Canadian business cannot ignore, nor can the Canadian Government. There is one recommendation made that there be, in the section of international trade in External Affairs, a desk designed to deal strictly with counter trade. If we ignore recommendations of this kind, Mr. Speaker, we do so at our own peril.
I have read the last of the recommendations of the Economic Council of Canada. I hope I have done so on a positive basis.
September 27, 1983

1 would like to re-emphasize again what was said about counter trade. A classic example, perhaps, is Indonesia. It is perhaps the one which is most widely known among Canadians. By the counter purchase policy instituted in January, 1982, as a means of increasing Indonesia's non-oil exports, foreign companies now tendering on government-funded contracts are required to purchase non-oil, non-gas goods equivalent in value to the contract in the event their bid is accepted.
We in Government have been told time and time again about the necessity for the Canadian business community, and Canada as a whole, to get involved in that North-South trade, so-called, with the Third World countries. The economies of those people are in a precarious state. They do not have a great deal of money lying free to finance the deficits they have in trade. Therefore, this counterbalance, this counter trade practice, has grown up. It is understandable and we have to get involved. The faster we do so, the better, and not only through our private institutions. Not only must private businessman wake up to it, but government must also wake up to it, not next year or the year after, but now. I hope that in the next committee meeting on Bill C-152 the Ministers in question are going to be asked what they are doing about counter trade.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Mr. Speaker, my question to the Hon. Member is as follows: with reference to the question of competition in which EDC might be involved with the private sector, would the hon. gentleman indicate to me whether he has any knowledge, first of all, of any private sector corporation, which is in the export insurance business, which has at any time complained to him or, indeed, has launched a complaint relating to the activities of the EDC?


Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: Mr. Speaker, I have heard rumours of some complaints. Some Hon. Members have raised the question. But 1 have never personally received any complaint with regard to the field of insurance. I do know some of the banks are acting, more recently, in conjunction with EDC on a shared basis, and that is to be encouraged. As to the insurance, I would say this, in fairness, that I believe EDC scared them all out of the field years ago. It has become a state monopoly. That is why I believe the Economic Council of Canada has said, "This state organization must desist from what amounts to intervention by the state which has existed for some time and let the others in."


Jean-Jacques Blais: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman, being very knowledgeable in this field, knows very well the areas to which we are directing our exports. Does he not recognize that the level of risk there is regarding the financing of any export items creates substantial difficulty, especially in today's financial environment, in finding private sector companies that are ready to assume that high level of risk?


Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I am aware of that. On the other hand, I do not think I would like to express it that way. I would much prefer to take a positive approach and say that we have a degree of trust in those people with whom we trade. We
Export Development Act
do not approach them on the basis of high insurance contracts which are an immediate telegraph to others that frankly we will sell to them but we do not trust them very much. That to me is the reaction if it becomes known that the rate charged for an insurance policy is as high as the market will bear.
I think there is room for improvement here. While there have been some difficult times, in the end you will find that if your prime seller, the Canadian businessman, has been on his toes and has a proper contract, the calls on insurance will be much smaller than might be feared.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Mr. Speaker, regarding EDCs involvement in export financing, the Hon. Member has recognized that there has been an increased level of co-operation between the conventional lending institutions and the EDC. Has the hon. gentleman been approached by any of the conventional financing institutions decrying the role of the EDC in export financing or at any time criticizing or claiming that EDC was denying them access to financial returns as a result of its involvement in export financing?


Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: I must say, Mr. Speaker, that personally I have never received any reports. I have read of some representations made by newspaper columnists, presumably expert in the field, suggesting that the financial institutions of Canada had finally decided to, well, go somewhere else because, frankly, competition from the EDC was too severe, the profits to be made were not commensurate with the risk and activity. In the same way, the life insurance companies got shooed out of the house mortgage field some years ago. When I was building my first house and practising law, there was not a bank in this field, there were a few trust companies, and Central Mortgage and Housing only went into larger apartments or limited dividend projects. The rest was done by the NHA with the life insurance companies and some trust companies.
However, and I trust I will end on a positive note, I am hoping we will see that more of the banks, particularly those which have developed over the past five to eight years in the international field and which have taken advantage of the anticipated creation of the B-series banks here in Canada on a reciprocal basis, will get involved. They have learned a great deal more about international financing. They have learned how to work in those markets, and they are there for that particular purpose. I hope that as a result of their activities they will get into a great deal more financing of Canada's exports rather than recourse being made to the EDC on all occasions.
Mind you, Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn), put on the record many, many times that with a staff of 600 less than 100 applications for financing were processed during the whole year at the EDC. Therefore, the market demand cannot be that great. More and more is being handled, I think, by some of the charter banks, and certainly if the banks are the people who are drawing to our attention the counter trade, that means that they are involved.

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act


Jean-Jacques Blais: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member has recognized that there are occasions where international transactions occasion extremely high risk with very low returns, and that creates an environment that is not very attractive to the private sector. In that context, and in view of the fact that there is increasing demand for participation in the export market where this particular environment is to be found, namely high risk and low return, does he not see that there is a need for greater involvement of agencies such as the EDC, to go into areas where the private sector fears to tread?


Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: Well, Mr. Speaker, I will say this much. Having been in this House at the time the EDC or its predecessor was established, I am quite well aware of the compelling reasons at the time. I supported the establishment of the EDC and, yes, there is a place for it. Having said that, I say that its present role should not remain writ on stone, and it would be more in keeping with the need for expanding Canadian trade for it to go more into re-insurance, as the financial backer of last resort, and the encouragement of more participation by private financial institutions. Not only those which operate from Canada, but, as you may know, some 65 foreign banks have established branches here in Canada and they have connections abroad. I would not want these foreign banks to act as bird dogs for business for their home banks.
Now that the Minister of State for International Trade (Mr. Regan) has come into the House, possibly he would like to say something to us about this question of counter trade, unless my time has expired. We hope the Minister of State for International Trade will give us some learned discourse on the subject of counter trade.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. On the last point made by the Hon. Member for Edmonton West, the Minister of State for International Trade is considered to have spoken because he was the mover of the motion now being debated. He was the prime mover. It was moved on his behalf. Technically he has spoken. He can only speak again with the unanimous consent of the House. I hope that is clear, if he wishes to speak. Debate?


Mr. Bill Domm (Peterborough):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Edmonton West (Mr. Lambert) ended his last remarks on a somewhat complimentary basis, with qualifications however. I too could perhaps start my remarks in a somewhat complimentary fashion, but I might not end on such a complimentary note.
We should now be aware, at this point in the debate on Bill C-110, that after perhaps one of the longest report stage debates on a matter of principle, the Progressive Conservative Party was able to gain substantial concessions toward parliamentary accountability in the Export Development Corporation Bill known as Bill C-110. The authorized capital of the corporation formerly determined its borrowing capacity. In the future, the corporation's borrowing capacity will be limited to ten times its paid-in capital and its retained earnings. The
authorized capital of some $2 billion requested by the Government was reduced, because of long debate, to $1.5 billion. This, in effect, reduces the possible borrowing from $20 billion to $15 billion. In future, the corporation will be required to present its annual report and its financial statements to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs for examination, something that has been long overdue. Once again, accountability has been strengthened. Lastly, the Government's right to take up loans and guarantees not appropriate to the EDC's activities has been reduced from $20 billion to $13 billion. That will not answer all of our concerns, but it will some of them, which, in turn, would justify the need for extended debate on the Bill.
There could be no doubt about the difference in approach to government financing that exists between the Progressive Conservative Party and the Liberal Party of Canada. The Progressive Conservative Party believes very strongly in the principle of accountability and control. The Liberal Party, or the governing Party today, believes that the tax dollars of Canadians and their descendants are the property of the Government to do with as it pleases, with as little reference to Parliament and to outside consultation as it can get away with being made possible through legislation. In other words, it is circumventing the responsibility of Parliament or Government to the electors who require representation here in Ottawa.
Bill C-110 has two major thrusts. But before I proceed, and to throw some perspective on the seriousness of the Bill, I must go back a few days in the debate to a statement made by the Hon. Member for York-Peel (Mr. Stevens). I wish to quote him directly because it does indicate the seriousness of the matter at hand. As quoted from page 27439 of Hansard, he said:
Let me put it into perspective, if I may. When it comes to the question of whether we are crowding or somehow being unfair to EDC when it requests a $60 billion authorization, let us not forget that as of December 31, 1982 the total corporate and Government lending activities, the total assets of the EDC, were $6.5 billion. That is the total amount it expended as at the end of 1982. It is asking for authorization to make it ten-fold bigger compared with its total assets at the end of the last year of roughly $6.5 billion.
The first major thrust with which we are dealing in Bill C-110 is to expand the operational capacity of the Export Development Corporation, more commonly referred to as the EDC. In so doing, the Government seeks to expand the borrowing capacity of the corporation without need for further reference to Parliament and without need for further paid-in capital. The Government also seeks to increase the amount of high risk or bad business transactions that the Cabinet may approve, originally from $3.5 billion to $10 billion, but now because of changes, from $3.5 billion to $7 billion in the case of insurance. Originally it had requested from $2.5 billion to $10 billion in the case of loans and loan guarantees and now, through debate, that has been reduced to $6 billion. Any losses made under such circumstances are paid from the Consolidated Revenue Fund without future reference to Parliament.
The second major thrust of Bill C-l 10 is to alter the current structure and powers of the board of directors. We will refer to some specific problems in that area. The number of directors
September 27, 1983

increases from 12 to 15, and the requirement that six of the directors be public servants has been dropped. This does not go far enough toward ensuring adequate private sector participation on the board. If the Government so desired, it could appoint no one at all from the private sector. Therefore, I think it fair to say that the Export Development Corporation is not truly accountable to Parliament.
We must consider one specific, glaring example of lack of accountability and the concern involving those who might lobby the financial involvement of Government by again referring to page 27440 of Hansard for September 23, when the Hon. Member for York-Peel, in discussing the lending of money by EDC to a company on whose board sat the Hon. Jean-Pierre Goyer, stated:
By sheer coincidence, we find on the board of Bombardier Inc. the Hon. Jean-Pierre Goyer, P.C., Q.C. When I noticed that, it rang a bell. That chap used to sit across the aisle, shoulder to shoulder with many of these fellows who are attempting so poorly to govern the country at the present time. As we know, the same Jean-Pierre Goyer is Vice-Chairman of Canadair Inc ... . That company, on the Government's own admission, has blown $1.4 billion of taxpayers' funds. Here we have another company getting the benefit of $970 million worth of financing through the Export Development Corporation, and there is a common Liberal link, Jean-Pierre Goyer ... included in the Bombardier financing through the Export Development Corporation was a sale to the almost defunct New York Transit Authority. If we read the same statistical review, we find that the United States Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York got two cracks at the Canadian public purse. Directly from EDC it received $294,912,000. The Government stepped in with another $626,688,000. Isn't that nice! Talk about a milk cow! It was so blatant in the United States that the U.S. Commerce Department instituted an action in that country, pointing out that in its opinion the Canadian Government had provided a subsidy amounting to $167,225 for each subway car proposed to be sold to the Transit Authority of New York.
Can you believe that this Government, which denies financing to help commuters get to work in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, is willing to subsidize authorities in New York to help workers there get to and from work through a company which happens to have a very friendly director on this board.
He is the already referred to as the Hon. Jean-Pierre Goyer, PC, QC. If that does not indicate without question in the minds of those here in the House of Commons a necessity for accountability of the EDC to Parliament, I do not know what will.
The EDC does not have its spending adequately scrutinized here in Parliament. It is not required to table an operating budget, a capital budget or information on the size of its payroll. It may borrow money in the name of Canadian taxpayers, their children and their children's children without seeking parliamentary authority to do just that. But for anyone who has paid attention to the Government's operations and expenditures over the years, this comes as relatively no surprise.
The expansion of Government intervention and the erosion of accountability was accurately reported in 1979 by the Auditor General of Canada, James J. Macdonell. His reports were based upon the findings of four Government-wide studies, each on a different aspect of financial management, control and accountability and each involving upwards of 100,000 hours of professional analysis and study. In terms of size and
Export Development Act
scope, each study could easily in itself be equated to a royal commission. His findings are as important today as they were back in 1979. The conclusions were straightforward and identifiable: control of the public purse had been lost in this country. An attitude permeated the bureaucracy that somehow the taxpayer was accountable to Government.
In 1978, a report to the House of Commons by Macdonell offered these comments on the ballooning and its impact on effective management. I must quote from two paragraphs of that report as follows:
If our findings are an indictment of anything, it is of the system which apparently puts more emphasis on developing policy initiatives and new programs, than on the principles and well-established practices of economical, efficient and effective resource management.
He went on to state:
Operating in a climate which seemed to provide reasonably easy access to a bottomless public purse ... it is not surprising that few Brownie points were available for managers who displayed frugality, let alone parsimony, in spending public funds and bringing in an effective program on schedule and below budget.
It is indeed deplorable that the insight and intelligence of J. J. Macdonell was wasted on a Government that, rather than heeding his warning, increased its interference in the economy and continued to expand at unprecedented rates.
The question of increasing the budget of yet another Crown corporation over which we have no control is absolutely deplorable. I am reminded of a book entitled "The Disease of Government", written by Professor H. S. Ferns of Birmingham, England, who suggests that:
As a result of sustained government intervention in the economy and the creation of regulatory planning and operative government industrial institutions, ... the end of market economies is now in sight... Governments, to be effective as agencies of social co-operation, have to define and limit their role in the community; otherwise governments are a source of confusion, disorder, and other massive evils ... The need to limit the power of governments in the interest of liberty and peace is now universal.
This is exactly why the Progressive Conservative Party is opposing Bill C-l 10, which would increase to $44.5 billion the amount of money that the EDC can borrow, lend and insure without adequate parliamentary control. This Party speaks for the interests of all Canadian taxpayers who no longer want to be misled and confused about Government spending. They like to see government run somewhat like a business, accountable to those who have their money invested.
In the words of a former U.S. Treasury Secretary, William Simon:
-people must be taught to start calling for a rollback of the bureaucracy, where nothing will be lost but strangling regulation and where gains will always take the form of liberty, productivity and jobs.
Today we are indeed forced to witness a disease of Government, and it is a malady which, if allowed to go unchecked, will not be susceptible to cure.
Let me quote from Hansard of September 23, at page 27442. This was said by the Hon. Member for Cumberland-Colchester (Mr. Coates):
We are making an argument that is as old as democracy itself-that there has to be accountability by the Government for the money it extracts from the taxpayers of Canada and then spends.

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act
As we have gone through debate on Bill C-l 10, speaker after speaker has given us many examples of the tremendous proliferation of Crown corporations and their belief that they are sacred and unassailable and that it is impossible to examine their activities.
Only this week I was shocked to see that the Chairman of the CNR, Jack Horner a former Member of the House and one who stood on many occasions to talk about accountability and the requirement to have Members on the Treasury benches account to us for the money spent, supposedly on behalf of the taxpayers of Canada-was reported as saying that he did not believe the Auditor General should audit the books of the CNR.
That is exactly what we are saying here in the House during this debate. That is what the Auditor General should be permitted to do.
Seven years ago, the Auditor General noted that in the majority of Crown corporations audited by the Auditor General, financial management and control is weak and ineffective. Moreover, co-ordination and guidance by central Government agencies of financial management and control practices in these Crown corporations are virtually non-existent.
1 do not see anything different being said in my remarks today and the remarks of the Auditor General than was said by Jack Horner who, now in his capacity as Chairman of the CNR, feels that auditing by the Auditor General should not occur.
It is a shame that we have to live with such inconsistencies on the record. The time for reports and discussion has passed. The time has come for meaningful action to be taken to increase the accountability and control of Crown corporations.
The EDC is proof positive that the current Government has, for many years, been unwilling to listen to the Auditor General, Members of Parliament on both sides and most important, the individual Canadian taxpayer.
It has been completely unresponsive to the needs and aspirations of the voters. Canadians are demanding cost effectiveness in Government to act as an inspiration for recovery and hope. Instead, we see a Government which continues to expand and spend money without regard for costs.
Last Wednesday, we listened to my colleague, the Hon. Member for Halton (Mr. Jelinek), expound on the virtues of increased trade and its ability to increase jobs. We are all aware of the benefits of export development, yet this Government seems to feel that only it is capable of making important decisions regarding trade.
The Economic council, in its report, entitled "Intervention and Efficiency", noted this fact on page 51:
Canada is perhaps the country with the least private-sector participation in export financing decisions. The Governments of most other industrial nations encourage bank participation in this area, more so than does the Government of Canada. In six of the industrialized countries examined, the supply of primary financing is left completely in the hands of the private sector, which may, however resort to public rediscounting facilities. In most of the 17 countries studied, the negotiations for granting export credit are also left to the private sector. This is not the case in Canada, where direct negotiations take place between the EDC and the foreign buyer. When the banks are invited to participate jointly with the EDC in long-term financing, they often complain of being denied access to all the information and to the negotiations, and of being presented with ready-made proposals.
This was according to a report of the Economic Council of Canada entitled, "Intervention and Efficiency". The private sector must participate more in the decisionmaking process of the EDC. However, Liberals believe that the bureaucrats who govern most govern best. It is imperative that the Export Development Corporation be governed by a disciplined, costconscious board of directors. The Government has a responsibility to Parliament and to the people of Canada to ensure that the public purse is not treated as a bottomless pit.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Are there Hon. Members who are rising to ask questions or to make comments? If there are none, the Chair recognizes the Hon. Member for Lethbridge-Foothills (Mr. Thacker).


Blaine Allen Thacker: Mr. Speaker, we are drawing to the close of another Bill, Bill C-l 10, and once again I rise to indicate that it reflects the fundamental problems of process in the House of Commons and the rules by which we govern ourselves.
Some two years ago this Bill was started. It is now getting through. I agree with anyone who says that the process takes too long. Two years is much too long for the passage of Bill C-l 10. But that begs a question. It is not just simple Opposition intransigence which is trying to stop the Bill. There were very good, honest and legitimate reasons to stop it, just as there were good and honest reasons for the Government to want to get a Bill amending the EDC through Parliament. Somehow between those two forces we have a stand-off at high noon. The problem mainly goes back to process and our views on what the House is all about. Certainly some of the delay resulted from Government priority. It brought forth many other Bills which took a lot of House time to get through. It was a question of the Cabinet as the executive of the nation setting its priorities as to what Bills it wanted. Certainly the House, and particularly the Opposition, canmnot be blamed for that. The Government is entitled to set its own rules.
I suppose the main reason for the opposition, as indicated by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn), was accountability. Since the Second World War over 400 Crown corporations have been established. If we did in all their subsidiaries, the figure would be much larger. The question arises as to how a democratic society controls Crown corporations. Most of the board members and appointments to Crown corporations are made by the executive. This has caused a sub-government tied into the main executive, the Cabinet. We see a close relationship between Crown corporations and Government departments, which has resulted in a lack of accountability for taxpayers' dollars.
We must always remember that our primary objective as elected officials is to protect the dollar which comes out of our pockets as citizens and, because of the deficits which have built up, will come out of the pockets of our children and grandchildren. Ordinary Canadians can quite properly criticize us for not developing a process and mechanism to protect their dollars. For every dollar a private citizen cannot decide to
September 27, 1983

spend, there is a dollar in the hands of the Government which it decides to spend, at the expense of the work, effort and sweat of ordinary citizens. That is principle 1 am against.
Millions and millions of individual decisions by ordinary Canadians on how to spend their own dollars would lead to a much wiser result than those dollars being taxed away and spent by a few men and women of whatever political stripe. When we believe that an executive can make better decisions than ordinary Canadians, we are wrong. If we continue the way we are, we will return to the pre-1750s when there really was state capitalism in the form of a monarchy and a tightly knit group of advisers and counsellors. Essentially that is what we are returning today. We have a duty to oppose it today just as people fought and indeed gave their lives in the 1700s for the right to make their own decisions, which of course was primarily the right to property.
Not only is there the issue of accountability. There is also the issue of freedom of information and the legitimate role of Parliament versus bureaucracy. The Bill before us reflects once again how many Bills come through the bureaucratic process to Parliament. We all know the charts that show how an idea about something which needs to be done progresses through the bureaucracy. There is a huge chart indicating the Departments through which each Bill has to go. There are arrows going each way, whether it be to the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce, the Department of External Affairs, the Department of Finance or Treasury Board. The arrows go both ways indicating a dialogue, but in the far right-hand corner of the chart there is a little tiny box marked "Parliament". There is an arrow into it and there is an arrow out the other side. It is the job of the executive to get it through Parliament with no amendments. That is what we stand here resisting.
I believe Government Members should be seeing this matter from a different perspective as well. If a Bill has not originated with one of us as Parliamentarians but has come through the bureaucracy, then we must check that bureaucracy, which is becoming increasingly larger. They are individually fine people, but collectively they have taken on a power which has subsumed the power of the House. Indeed, Government backbenchers should play a much more critical role in the consideration of legislation which comes before us. This Bill is a particular example.
Two years ago the Hon. Member for Calgary South (Mr. Thomson) brought forward three amendments which would have made the Bill acceptable. It was similar to the constitutional package which the Government could have had by Christmas of the year it was brought in, if it would have accepted one amendment. The Government would not accept the amendment, so we fought for months and months, causing enormous division in the country. These three amendments were reasonable in themselves. This Bill could have been law for two years.
What were the amendments? Of course, the first one concerned more private individuals on the board of directors rather than public servants appointed by the executive or the
Export Development Act
Cabinet. The second concerned financial disclosure, especially of the interest rate subsidies used. The reason these should be known is that every time some dimension of an industry is subsidized, we are really delaying a problem which ultimately surfaces and has to be dealt with. But when it has to be faced ultimately, the problems are ten times worse and the agony is great indeed. It is better to face it at the beginning. Why do we not have that information up front so that we can deal with it and everyone can operate above board? Then there would be no financial foolishness or skullduggery under the table. Of course, the third amendment indicated that major commitments or appropriations by EDC should come before Parliament. My original thesis was that the primary role of individual Members of Parliament was that of a financial watchdog. If we accept that, then surely this amendment was a reasonable one.
Had the Government accepted the amendments of the Hon. Member for Calgary South, the Bill would already be two years old and we would have had more time to direct our energy and effort as Members to some of the other major problems in the country rather than fight over the principles of accountability, freedom of information and the role of Parliament. While we fight for what we believe and while the Government continues to fight for secrecy and Government by executive fiat without any responsibility to the House, the nation is literally being destroyed. We stand here fiddling while Rome burns, while Canada is being destroyed.
With a simple change of the rules of the House, we could make it that votes against the Government on ordinary pieces of legislation would not result in the Government falling and having to call an election. We have often argued in the House that it is only on the budget, the Throne Speech and major pieces of critical policy legislation that the Government would declare a question of confidence. On ordinary pieces of legislation such as an amendment to this statute or the Farm Credit Corporation, the bulk of which come out of the bureaucracy, backbenchers on both sides in the House and in committee should be able to take a critical look at that legislation. If we do not like it, we vote it down and the Cabinet Minister would say, "Fine, ladies and gentlemen, you do not like it, we will take it back and re-work it." We could do that. We do not need to have responsible Government on ordinary pieces of legislation, particularly in the twentieth century when legislation is much more significant and there are literally thousands of pieces of legislation on the books.
While we fiddle, the country is being destroyed. As the Hon. Member for York-Peel (Mr. Stevens) said, our over-all trade has gone down from 5 per cent to 3 per cent. In manufactured products, it has dropped from 4 per cent to 2 per cent. Had we retained our original 5 per cent and 4 per cent, we would have had 50 per cent fewer people unemployed than we do today. Think of that in terms of the unemployment insurance dollars and the welfare dollars that would be saved. With another 750,000 people working, tax revenues would be so much greater. The deficit would be smaller.

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act
I have argued about the effects of the deficit. Just as night follows day, deficits lead to inflation, which, in turn, leads to high interest rates, which, in turn, leads to a collapse such as we are experiencing today. There is an adjustment factor that takes place when nations have huge deficits such as we now have. We have between 1.5 million and 2 million people unemployed.
If we had 50 per cent fewer people unemployed, the extra tax revenue would have permitted the Government to do so much more. It would not be in the marketplace borrowing all the money. There would have been more capital that people would have had to put into businesses because there would be nowhere else to invest it in terms of government.
The way it is today, people can sit back and take absolutely no risk whatsoever. They can lend to their Government and get an enormous rate of return. We had a classic example a couple of years ago where people got 19.5 per cent. If two years ago you had a million dollars to invest and lent it to the Government, you would have received an income of $195,000 without taking one scintilla of risk. If the Government had not been demanding the money and competing, that money would have had to be put into the marketplace. It is true there would have been a risk, but we would have seen the building of plants and the creation of jobs. Therefore, we might have had even less unemployment.
Two years later the original amendments have not been accepted. Other amendments have been brought forth, lately the amendments which were accepted which dealt with the lending capacity of the corporation and automatic reference to a standing committee, a change in the borrowing arrangements restricting it to ten times paid-up capital. Over-all, as I said earlier, the basis of our objection is accountability. At third reading, when we are to look at the Bill in principle as amended, do we still have outstanding issues that have not been dealt with? 1 submit we do. Therefore, the problems will continue with respect to this and other corporations. We will continue to waste enormous amounts of time in the House as well as human vitality and energy which could be put to positive use building a greater nation rather than spinning our wheels.
The first issue is whether the Export Development Corporation could be lending money directly or whether it should have an insurance function. We have read the reports and the original statute. Prior to 1970, the EDC was an insurance agency. Since then it has been lending money. As the Economic Council points out, if the EDC were to return to an insurance principle, it would get a much bigger bang for its buck. By guaranteeing money, you would put out a little bit of money in terms of insurance coverage. That would go a lot farther than lending an actual sum of money to one corporation.
The second issue has, to a certain extent, been dealt with in the Bill. It deals with the bureaucratic nature of the corporation. I would like to ask EDC why it took over 600 people to process 100 applications last year. There may be a perfectly
rational answer. They may be able to show that everybody put in a full day's labour and that it was valuable to the country.
However, if there is padding and too many people, that makes the corporation look inefficient. It also tends to reduce morale in the corporation. As well, it ties up people with all sorts of vitality and experience. They may be able to go to another area of government or another corporation which could use those people in terms of making applications to EDC. They would understand the internal nature of the corporation and government itself. We need to look at the red tape, the expense and the cumbersome nature of the applications.
The third issue is the whole process where, for some reason or other, the bulk of the corporation money is going to a very restricted number of corporation. Some of our Members talked about Atomic Energy of Canada, a Crown corporation, and de Havilland Aircraft, another Crown corporation. If it is the Government's intention that its own Crown corporations are to get priority and have access to public tax dollars indirectly through the corporation rather than through direct Government appropriations, Government purchases of shares or straight Government loans, why do we not face that question? Why do we pay 600 people to operate the EDC and run money into Crown corporations when we would not need anybody to do that if we run it through departmental loans or Government investment in equity? 1 wonder if the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Blais) would rise and give his views on that.
The fifth issue which has not been dealt with to my satisfaction in trying to follow these issues, together with other issues that come before us, is the whole question of concessionary finance where we subsidize interest rates on loans to other countries so that those countries can buy goods from Canada, which creates employment. The effect is that the deficit continues to get larger. These deficits in themselves are much more dangerous on a long term than the problems they are trying to solve. The Government says that it is better than we lend it the money and subsidize it so that Canadians are employed because if Canadians are employed, they are not rioting in the streets. It does not need to be that way because I think one can always go to the people and explain that the situation is that we are either priced out of the market, because of our northern climate where it takes too much heat to grow plants and therefore we must reduce our fuel taxes, or perhaps because our labourers are demanding too much in wages. Labourers would be prepared to work for less if the costs of their loans and mortgages were lower, because it is all relative. If we increase the deficit and therefore interest rates, the ordinary labourer will, quite properly, ask for more money to meet his day-to-day needs. If we do not increase the deficit and keep all those expenses down, then that labourer does not have to ask for more money. It does not have to be the way it is now.
September 27, 1983

I see, Mr. Speaker, that you are rising to point out that my time has expired. 1 could go on to many other issues, but 1 will leave it at that.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Are there Elon. Members seeking to ask questions or make comments at this time? If there are none, the Chair recognizes the Elon. Member for Bow River (Mr. Taylor).


Gordon Edward Taylor: Mr. Speaker, this is the fourth time that 1 have endeavoured to speak to this particular Bill. The Bill is becoming more familiar to me each time 1 speak.
1 am much happier with the Bill as it is now than 1 was when I spoke previously. At that time, the Bill was bad in a number of respects, particularly on the issue of accountability. The Export Development Corporation had been given the power to borrow $2 billion and then had been given the power to multiply that by ten to borrow $20 billion without reference to the Parliament of Canada. That is the part that we were seriously concerned about.
I heard an Hon. Member today question why this debate had gone on for so long. That is the very reason. This is an important aspect of parliamentary democracy. If we lose accountability and the control of the public purse, we do not have a parliamentary democracy of the kind spoken about by the Right Hon. Prime Minister of Great Britain yesterday. Parliament must take responsibility. When that happens, we have proper representation.
As I mentioned on one other occasion, there was a time when the representation was true. When Parliament first began, everybody went to the site of Parliament. Everybody was present. Each person voted the way he felt he should vote. That was true democracy. As society and the population grew, that became impossible, so we devised a scheme whereby representatives went to Parliament to represent 5,500 people, 10,000 people, and today there are Members of the House who represent more than 100,000 people.
As the population grows, it becomes difficult to reflect the thinking of the greatest possible majority in a riding, but that is the responsibility of the Member. He can do that through a number of means. He can stand for certain principles at election time, and if people elect him they expect him to uphold those principles. He can hold a series of public meetings to secure the wishes of his constituents, as indeed I did when discussing the Crow Bill. People turned out in large numbers at five meetings that were held in my riding. The people who were there were a cross-section of the country. There were farmers, businessmen, hog producers, cattle producers, grain growers and processors. They indicated how they wanted their elected representative to vote in the House of Commons. Almost unanimously they wanted their representative to vote for the freedom of choice which is the basis of our democracy.
Export Development Act
When our forefathers went West seeking land, they went West with determination. They had little money but strong backs. They had little more than the clothes on their backs, but they were determined to build a heritage. They were determined to develop something of which their children could be proud. Among those things which they were determined to develop was accountability. A father bought a farm and his children worked. Accountability was learned in the farmstead. So it was in the mining camps. We were taught that we had to be accountable.
I remember a time when 1 received 25 cents a day for looking after my neighbour's cows. 1 took the cows up the hill at seven in the morning and I went to get them at six o clock at night when 1 got home from school. I received 25 cents a day for that. 1 remember my mother saying to me that that came to $1.75 a week and that I must be accountable for that money. She asked me what 1 was going to do with it in ten weeks. I had to be accountable. That is the lesson that Government officials must learn.
To a considerable degree, we now have accountability in this Bill. There is not as much accountability as we would like to see, but there is now much more accountability than there was before. But what about all the other corporations? What about the Government itself? We want accountability in the Parliament of the country. We are not in Moscow where the Government can do what it likes without the knowledge of the people. That Government simply tells the people what is good for them. That is not what we want in Canada.
We want the Members of a democratic Parliament to reflect to the greatest possible degree the thinking of the people who sent them to Parliament. We want the Government to include that thinking in its administration, in its policies and in its laws to the greatest possible degree. That is democracy. We have gotten far away from that.
Do you think, Mr. Speaker, that the people of the country, whether they live in P.E.I., Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories or Indian reservations, would have favoured seeing the country go into debt by spending more than it made this year, by spending $31 billion more than it takes in? Not on your life, Mr. Speaker.
I represent three Indian reservations and 1 have met with the band councils. 1 have learned to respect our Indian people. Our Indian people are not illiterate, as some people think. They are business people. I remember the time the Indians I represent came to me and said: "How can we be accountable when we apply for a grant first thing in the spring in order to put in a sewer system on our reserve, we get the money in October; and then the Government says we have to spend it now or we lose the money?" Rather than lose the money, they try to spend it in October. What happens then? They are putting in sewer lines in frosty conditions, the worst possible time to put in a sewer system. In the west, snow often falls in the middle of October. Sometimes the snow comes before that, but I have seen pretty severe winters starting on October 15.

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act
Here they were trying to put sewer lines in in November. That is a waste of public money.
One of the Indian band councillors from the Blackfoot Reserve said that they were wasting the money but they have to do it. The Government told them they had to do it. That is not accountability on the part of the Government, Mr. Speaker. Our Indian people had no choice. They had to do it or else lose the money entirely and be told the following year that they had lost their chance.
Accountability does not exist when an Indian reservation applies for a grant in the spring and they get it in October. Surely it does not take months to go over these papers. Sometimes I write letters to Ministers of the Government and I get an answer back within a week. Other times I get an answer back three months later. Is that doing the job? I have been a Minister and I have had some heavy portfolios. At one time I was responsible for the motor vehicle branch, the Department of Highways, the research council, the licensing of drivers and the cancellation of licences for drunk drivers, et cetera. It was a tremendous load. As well, I was responsible for the telephone system of Alberta. I know the many hours of work that are involved, Mr. Speaker, but people did not have to wait three months for a reply to letters. If the letters piled up I worked until the early hours of the morning, and that is what Ministers should do. Of course, I understand there is a limit, but surely three, four or five months' delay on a reply is no way to run a public business. That is not accountability.
The whole matter of accountability is what is involved here, Mr. Speaker. Due to the tremendous work of the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) and others who helped him, we have gained that to some extent in this Bill. The Government finally gave in, and now will be accountable for this particular corporation, but what about all the others and the Ministries? They should all be accountable if we are to have anything like a democracy. I hope that now that the Bill is just about ready to go to the Senate, we will be able to get results from our international trade and export market.
I should like to tell the House of an incident that really hurt me, Mr. Speaker. In the City of Drumheller we were close to getting an industry with world-wide connections, but then the Government refused to give the last grant that was required. They may never have had to call on the guarantee, but they refused that guarantee, and today the company has gone into receivership. About 200 people were thrown out of work. When I go through the west part of Drumheller, I see machines sitting idle. That industry could have provided 150 families with a living and could have been exporting machines, but the Federal Business Development Bank would not give a guarantee so that the program could go into the final stages.
One machine the company manufactured was a 139 cultivator and the Prasko seeder which could have been sent to Third World countries if a guarantee had been provided. The Prasko air seeder is a tremendous innovation and has all kinds of
potential. All the research had been carried out, but in the final stages, when the cash flow was needed, it was not available. The bank would not take a chance that it might not succeed but, rather, made sure that it did not succeed, and the company went into receivership. It also made the chisel plow. These implements could have been used all around the world and could have provided work for 150 or more people. Welders from all over Canada could have been given work instead of being put on the unemployment rolls. Financial institutions would not go along with the proposal, however, and had to have their money then and there. The Government would not give any guarantee, so the plant went under. Today, in Drumheller that site sits cold and lonely, hundreds of Prasko seeders in the yard and scores of people drawing unemployment insurance. It is no wonder the Unemployment Insurance Fund is disappearing, Mr. Speaker. The only way to keep the fund functioning is to have more and more people working. The people who worked at the Prasko plant put their whole life's savings into running it, but the Government would not take a chance. But the Government took a chance with Imperial Oil to the tune of $30 billion. It is no wonder there are two million people unemployed. There is no incentive for people to invest their money, either. If we invest our money, then we create jobs. Perhaps only one or two people would be hired to start with, but any business can expand.
Another thing that hurts us is the capital gains tax. In Turner Valley a man showed me an empty lot with a garage beside it which he owned. He wanted to expand, and he said to me, If you think I want to do that for any blinkety blankety Government, you are crazy. I will do it for my family. I will work 24 hours a day for my son and daughter and my wife, but I am not going to work for the Government to grab the money.
I will pay income tax as I go along, but when I die or sell the business 1 do not want to have to pay all over again."
The capital gains tax is unfair. It kills incentive and halts expansion. It is no wonder we have two million people unemployed. There is no incentive to invest in this country anymore.
Just the other day I was on a plane returning to Ottawa. The man in the seat beside me told me that he had money invested in Florida. He said, "The way things are going in this country 1 need a little nest egg for my wife and family if I get ill and cannot work. But the way things are going in this country, I have no faith in the Government." As a result, he is investing his money in another country. The Government is responsible for that attitude, and it is mostly because in so many cases there has not been enough accountability.
In Parliament, we should turn our eyes inward and find out what we are doing wrong. I suggest the first thing we need is what the Hon. Member for Mississauga South fought for so ably in this Bill-accountability and control of the public purse. When industry sees that the Government is paying its own way and not spending money it does not have, then industry will follow suit.
The Bill has been improved greatly, Mr. Speaker. The effort made by all Hon. Members, particularly the effort of the Hon. Member for Mississauga South, has been repaid because now
September 27, 1983

there will be some responsibility-unless there is some loophole we have not found yet. I hope that is not so. 1 hope this corporation will become a model for every other corporation, all 300 of them, so that we can eventually change all legislation and make them all responsible to Parliament, which will have the final say in regard to these things.
Parliament should have the final say. Parliament should have the right to control the moneys which are expended. I used the illustration the other day of King John and the Magna Carta. King John was spending wildly for various projects he wanted, not what the people particularly wanted, and when he came back from France one time, he was met by some of the people of Britain. They met him on the field of Runnymede and said to him, "We want you to sign here. We want you to be responsible. We want you to be accountable. We want to have some say in the money you collect and the way in which you spend it." It was a small beginning, but that was the basis of our Parliament today. As the Right Hon. Prime Minister of Great Britain said yesterday, "Accountability, that is the difference between a democracy and a totalitarian state." In a totalitarian state the people have no business knowing what the government is doing. They have no right to know. They cannot gather in Red Square and protest in the way the Canadian people can line up and even sleep on our grounds and protest about something which might eventually save their lives.
1 see you rising, Mr. Speaker. I am just barely getting started, but I recognize the rules. The 20 minutes go pretty fast. I would like just to say in conclusion that 1 hope this Bill will be a model, that this corporation will be accountable to this Parliament, that it will be an example to all other corporations and that we will now start on a new course in this country with government responsible and with the Parliament of Canada having control of the purse strings of the nation.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Are there Hon. Members rising to ask questions or make brief comments? If not, the Chair recognizes the Hon. Member for Kootenay West.


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Mr. Speaker, in rising to speak to this last segment of the debate on Bill C-l 10, 1 would first of all like to deal with a number of subjects which have arisen from time to time, namely those of competitiveness and productivity as they affect both our export markets and our ability to lengthen our production lines for our domestic market within Canada. In relating to both competitiveness and productivity, I would like to make some particular reference to the questions of the debt burden, interest rates and inflation which have plagued not only government, but industry, over the last number of years.
The idea espoused by many speakers in this debate so far, that workers have created their inflationary misery through the wage-price spiral, would be funny were the effects not so harsh and tragic for millions of Canadians. Both high interest
Export Development Act
rates and the high rate of inflation can be traced directly to the office door of business. The high inflation which began in the late 1960s came from two main sources, the Viet Nam war

that is some time ago but it is important for us to bear in mind-and a conglomerate merger boom which occurred in both Canada and the United States. That inflation declined during the mid-1970s, but returned with a vengeance in recent years. It is only now beginning to ebb through a deliberately induced recession and depression in many world economies. No one has more successfully induced that depression than has the Government and the business community of Canada.
This inflation is tied to an even higher military expenditure and a merger boom to end all merger booms. The only people to benefit from these trends are corporate shareholders, and 90 per cent of Canadians do not even own one share. Let us first dispose of the idea that government is the only source of inflation. Business and government have been equal partners, but not equal offenders. The federal debt in Canada was virtually unchanged from 1968 to 1973. Until 1978 it grew by 17.5 per cent per year, on average. Corporate debt has grown by 15 per cent to 16 per cent every year since 1968-every year. Government is not blameless, but business has been at it much more steadily and much longer.
Corporations have also the ability to print money. They do it through mergers and takeovers. Company A buys the outstanding shares of Company B, but pays a premium over the usual trading price which has averaged 60 per cent over the last few years. This means that billions of dollars of unproductive debt are added to company balance sheets. And this means, of course, higher prices for both goods and services, and the consumer gets the bill. Increasingly, business does not go to the market for capital, and it has not done so for some time. The so-called "democracy of the marketplace" which many Hon. Members, particularly Conservatives, but many on the other side of the House, still tout as being something real, actually, it is a fairy tale, Mr. Speaker. Business increasingly does not go to the marketplace for its capital for takeovers or for investment. It builds those funds into its own price structure. That amounts to taxation without representation. No one complains when prices reflect the production of goods at a reasonable profit, but when business does not go to the marketplace, and takes it out of largely administered price structures, because of the increasing corporation monopoly control which the larger corporations have gained, it is taxation without representation and there is no other word for it. The democracy of the marketplace in this situation is an absolute myth.
Takeovers in Canada came to $55 billion for 1976 to 1981. This means an additional $20 billion or more in business debt. Mergers are just not productive and there is nothing in the market system to justify them or make them desirable, not the large corporate mergers which we have seen increasingly in recent years. Of course, some of our economic problems are imported from the United States. Its federal debt passed the trillion dollar mark in 1981. However, since 1975 it has spent more than $650 billion on arms. The increase in its massive federal debt is mainly caused by arms expenditures. On that

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act
point, Mr, Speaker, it is interesting to note that the new Leader of the Conservative Party, its new messiah, has been advocating, along with his caucus colleagues, ever-increasing defence expenditures in Canada, which again will create some of the same kind of problems, albeit on a smaller scale, as has been the case in the United States in the last few years where the Reagan administration has found that its promises just cannot be brought to bear fruit, largely as a result of it. Some of that business has come to Canadian firms, but it is all play money. Billions of these dollars have been pumped into both economies, but there has not been a corresponding increase in goods. This puts great inflationary pressure on prices. There is too much money chasing too few goods, in the classical term. The merger boom has helped raise interest rates through increased competition for large amounts of capital. In other words, the high interest rates which have driven many Canadian small businesses, farms and home owners into bankruptcy, have happened because those very same ordinary Canadians, normally productive, have been forced to foot the bill for corporate mergers. These mergers will in turn make things even worse for them and drive even more of them out of business.
That is the kind of problem we face with the kind of economy we have seen in Canada and in many other countries over the last few years. The myth of a free enterprise society in a country which is rapidly becoming a corporate society and a corporate state is just a myth. It is a fairy tale. As long as the Government, the Official Opposition Party and the people act as if the fairy tale were true, we will continue, I submit, to get deeper and deeper into debt and deeper and deeper into severe trouble, both in our economy and as a society.
Home owners trying to renew their mortgages cannot compete with Seagrams, Dome Petroleum or Petro-Canada. We cannot control inflation in the United States, but we can put our own house in order. If we let companies continue to merge as they wish, we must prohibit them from passing on the additional cost to the public. Let the billions come out of dividends. If shareholders know they will have to pay directly and immediately for their lust to acquire, it might slow them down. That would help bring down both inflation and interest rates. The Government has subsidized the takeover game and we can no longer expect ordinary Canadian wage earners, small business people, farmers and consumers to pay for it.
There has also been a lot of talk during this debate from both sides as to the strategies we must follow. I would like to touch for a few brief moments on some of the strategies we have followed which were endorsed, both implicitly and explicitly by both the Liberal Government and the Conservative Opposition.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: What?


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Northeast Coal in British Columbia.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: What has that got to do with-


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: That company, again supported by the B.C. Members of the Conservative Party, hand in hand with their Social Credit allies-they do not like to hear the truth, Mr. Speaker. To quote from a recent article in a Canadian Press story-


Donald Alex Blenkarn: How about the EDC?


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: -it says:
On the eve of the formal opening of two more coal mines in western Canada, an independent report has forecast that one or more of the mines now operating or under construction in British Columbia will be forced to close within a few years.
The report, prepared by industry analysts H.N. Halverson Consultants Ltd., nominates as the most likely candidates for closure 'new mines in remote locations'-the Quintette and Bullmoose Mines at the centre of the Northeast Coal project.
We are in the middle, Mr. Speaker, of spending well over $1 billion in public money, not to mention the private money, to create a huge edifice in northeastern British Columbia which is already outdated. The respective Governments were told by some of the top analysts in the field that this was totally outdated before they made the investment.
Another example, Mr. Speaker, was the pre-build pipeline. That was supported by the Liberal Government and the Conservative Opposition. Once again we have to say we told you so, but it would give us a lot more joy to say, "You guys were right and it is working out." But you threw away whatever leverage or bargaining power we had. We are now in a situation, as reported in the Ottawa Citizen: "Don't blame us for gas problems, Americans told". Canadian Ambassador Allan Gotlieb:
-speaking to a luncheon meeting of the American Gas Association in Washington, said the Canadian Government has become concerned at some of the punitive measures being put forward in the U.S. Congress against imports of Canadian natural gas.
Not only was there not an ironclad agreement, not only did we throw away our leverage, not only are we exporting our cheap gas instead of providing the right of way for a pipeline so the Americans can burn their own Arctic gas, the Americans are now saying that because the gas was fixed at a cheap price we are undercutting some of their own gas production and they want to penalize us for that. That is the fault of the Conservative and Liberal Parties, tweedledum and tweedledee.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: They advocated that as a joint policy, just as they and their friends advocated Northeast Coal.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: What has this got to do with EDC?


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: They are both a flop. Both Parties and both projects are a flop, and they should have known. We do not know anything, of course; we are New Democrats.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: We are the ones who told them that the oil and gas companies were lying in the early 1970s, and they

September 27, 1983
said, "Who do you think you are?" "Who does Tommy Douglas think he is?", they asked. Two years later when the whole thing fell apart, they are sitting there red-faced and they cannot understand. They are the biggest bunch of absolute phonies in the world, and that is a polite phrase. I only wish some of the people in the media would read their own newspapers of a few years back.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: How about you reading the Bill?


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: They would realize that while some of us are certainly not infallible, every once in a while we know something about the marketplace that they fail to understand and appreciate, that it is not a fairyland where you can give away what you have, have no bargaining power left, and then have the right to complain because somebody takes you for a ride. We are constantly being taken for a ride. These guys over here, the Conservatives, and those guys over there, the Liberals, have been the drivers who have taken us for that ride into the sorry situation in which we find our economy today.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Who is introducing this Bill?


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Maybe the Government wants to atone for its sins. Maybe it is going to turn over a new leaf and behave in a little more accountable and responsible way. But you will pardon us, Mr. Speaker, if we have to see it to believe it. We have been a long time waiting.
While the Conservatives and Liberals have joined in one megaproject boondoggle after another, projects which have collapsed in our faces, most regrettably those of the people of Canada, they have continually neglected over decades and decades and decades the renewable resources of this land, the forest industry in particular. Again, it is many small companies in that industry which need assistance from the EDC and other agencies of Government because they do not have the wherewithal to seek out many of those specialized markets in Europe, the Middle East and other places, in many cases where the purchasing companies are willing to put the capital up front. Those smaller companies, which are lean enough, hungry enough and adaptable enough to be able to cut their product to suit those markets, do not have the facilities to seek those markets out. They need that kind of assistance and require financial assistance in start-up costs, modification costs, so they can meet the markets many of us know are there.
I have had, Mr. Speaker, many examples in my own electoral district, certainly in the adjoining ones, of small private companies which made it during this period when the giants were flopping and failing, the giants which have been traditionally favoured by both the Government and representatives of the Official Opposition whether in Ottawa or the various Provinces. I have seen them make it because they are willing to adapt. They are willing to go out as much as they can with their limited resources, change their production line and their measurements. They will go to metric, imperial or whatever. They will cut one foot, two foot, three foot or whatever is required in order to adapt to the market as it exists. They do not sit back on their fat rumps like a lot of the majors have
Export Development Act
done in the forest industry over the last few years and say, "Come to us". Markets do not just come to you, especially in lean times. They got so used to being big and fat when times were great and they sat back and said, "We are just going to cut for volume. To heck with quality. To heck with having to modify our industrial plant to meet whatever demands are there." So they have collapsed.
If it were just those corporate managers who had to suffer, Mr. Speaker, well, they made the decisions and they have the right to suffer. But there are 300 communities across this country who have suffered terribly from the consequences of their decisions. There are hundreds of thousands of working people and small businesses which provide the machinery and support services those companies traditionally require, and they have been the ones which have had to suffer. Just as the ordinary consumers and farmers and small business people and homeowners of Canada have had to suffer through interest rates and inflation for which corporate mergers and the arms budget in the U.S. were in large part responsible, so are the service industries and small business people in 300 communities across Canada being asked to pay the price once again for decisions that they had no part whatsoever in making.
1 would like to conclude simply by saying that one of the things that we have to address, if we are talking about the nature of the economy we must have if we are to adapt and not serve just some mythical target but the needs of the Canadian people, is to decide whether we want an accountable society with decentralized power-structures where people from all walks of life have a more direct say in governing their communities, their resources and their means of livelihood. In that way they can ensure the decisions made meet their needs and not just self perpetuating corporate managers. Or do we want a society in which an increasingly concentrated and monopolistic corporate big daddy, through its Government agents, be they Liberal or Conservative, decides what is best for him with the interests of the people and the nation as an afterthought? Those are the two choices facing Canadians. It is, fundamentally the choice, represented broadly-though we are not without sin-between the NDP on one side of the argument and the Liberals and Tories on the other. No matter what legislation the Government passes, if it does not decide that it will make the economy work for people rather than have the people work for the economy, it will fall flat on its face. The ordinary people of Canada are the ones who will be continuously asked to pay the price. They have paid enough. It is time the Government gave them a product that was worth it.


A. Daniel McKenzie: Mr. Speaker, it was certainly interesting to listen to a Member of the New Democratic Party, the Hon. Member for Kootenay West (Mr. Kristiansen), tell us how, if his Party formed the government, and heaven help us if it ever did, it would do away with business. Could one imagine what would happen to this country if the NDP did away with all business? It is against business and against profit. What a mess we would have. 1 am glad the Hon. Member mentioned the name of Tommy Doug-

September 27, 1983
Export Development Act
las. Hon. Members should remember what happened in Saskatchewan under Mr. Douglas. There was once a boot factory, a shoe factory, a glue factory, every type of factory under the sun, and every one of them flopped. It was a total disaster. He spoke of what Mr. Douglas will do. Mr. Douglas is a big multinationalist. He is on the board of-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: 1 hesitate to interrupt the Hon. Member, but I would call to his attention the Bill before us, Bill C-l 10. While there has been some leeway with regard to subject matter, the Hon. Member does appear to be straying a bit.


A. Daniel McKenzie: I hope we will not have a double standard here, Mr. Speaker. There was much talk of investment and where investment is going, and I would like to make some comments. I have figures going back to the time of the prior Government in Manitoba, from 1969 to 1977, concerning the amount of investment that was driven out of the Province, either into Alberta or into the United States. I have also seen the amount of investment money that these people across the way have driven out of this country, in the billions. It is reducing in amount now, because there is nothing else left to go.
I was recently on a trip back to Winnipeg and I had a conversation with a developer. He works out of Winnipeg at Toronto. All his work is in Texas, Louisiana and Florida. That is where all the investment money is going. There will never be any economic recovery in this country as long as we have this Liberal bunch in, I can guarantee that, because they cannot attract investment. All they do is drive it out of the country. I was also reading a recent trade magazine and found that Kentucky advertises itself as being the eleventh Province. It stated, "Come to Kentucky, where profit is not a dirty word." That is what these people have done to this country. I have seen other examples in Manitoba of the New Democratic Party getting into the Chinese food business and what have you, and that folded up also.
The Export Development Corporation is one of the many Crown corporations which has a highly inefficient operation. For example, in 1982 the Export Development Corporation's 613 employees had loan transactions with 62 companies and placed slightly in excess of 900 separate insurance policies. How many banks have ten employees for every loan customer? How many insurance companies in the private sector issue insurance policies at an annual rate of one and one half policies per employee?
The Government makes money on its export insurance coverage, but fails to market the insurance adequately. Only a small handful of corporations received the benefit of the Export Development Corporation's export subsidies. Little is being done to expand this circle. The Export Development Corporation's actual profit last year was $1 million on capital of $691 million, a rate of return of one-tenth of 1 per cent.
To quote from the Economic Council of Canada's report, "Intervention and Efficiency", "Government assistance should be of a temporary nature. But each year, as time goes by, the
names of the firms receiving assistance from the Export Development Corportion become more and more familiar." Sixteen companies received half of the 415 loans to 138 identified companies authorized by the EDC between 1969 and 1980. One of them received 40. One Crown corporation, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., which led groups of exporters in negotiations of turnkey projects related to the sale of Candu nuclear reactors, received 25 per cent of all the financing authorized by the EDC during that period. Over-all, six companies received half of the total value of loans authorized by the corporation during those years. Therefore, leaving aside the AEC1, the number of companies that received half the total amount of loans authorized over the period is 19, still a small figure. The report questions, "Could it be that these exporters have not yet reached maturity? One is rather tempted to believe that, for these firms, the subsidy has become a form of permanent assistance."
Last year the EDC lent or facilitated bank financing in the sum of $2.5 billion. Of that amount, $1 billion went to Bombardier, $200,000 went to de Havilland, and $100,000 to Spar Aerospace. Thus, three of the 62 comanies that received EDC financing last year received more than half of the total money.
The EDC has not always conducted transactions that are in the best interests of Canadian taxpayers and their children. The EDC has financed Inco Developments in Indonesia and Guatemala, thus jeopardizing jobs in Sudbury and Manitoba.
The EDC has financed forest development projects in Mexico, Poland and Peru, developments that will compete with Canadian forest products. The EDC helped to finance the construction of a monument to the Algerian revolution. Is that not a high priority?
At a time when Government borrowing costs were in the range of 16 per cent, the EDC arranged a 9.7 per cent loan of $563 million U.S. to assist Bombardier in the sale of subway cars to New York City. Forty per cent of the jobs created by this deal are in the United States.
Often the EDC will be indecisive or will not match a foreign country's offer. A March 29, 1983, Globe and Mail article stated, "A Canadian company has lost a $70 million (U.S.) export order to build an iron foundry in Saudi Arabia because the federally financed Export Development Corporation could not match private European financing terms".
The EDC is supposed to aid Canadian exporters by subsidizing export financing. However, the agency's requirements for financial guarantees from the buyer were so stiff that with the guarantees, Stell Technology Limited of Burlington, Ontario, could have borrowed the money more cheaply from a commercial bank.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. It being 5.59 p.m., pursuant to order made Friday, September 23, 1983, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the motion now before the House.
All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.
September 27, 1983	COMMONS DEBATES 27527


Erik Nielsen: On division.	Export Development Act Mr. Deputy Speaker: It being 6 p.m., this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m. pursuant to Standing


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: 1 division.	declare the motion carried on Order 2(1). At 6 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put,
Motion agreed to and Bill read the third time and passed. pursuant to Standing Order

Wednesday, September 28, 1983