1983-06-09

GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Vegreville) moved:: That this House rejects the centralizing and interventionist policies of the Government as an ideological thrust aimed at introducing socialization of the Canadian economy by the back door and without the authorization of Parliament, and a definite and present threat to the freedom of Canadians.
He said: Mr. Speaker, this motion quite clearly and succinctly zeroes in on the main root of the problem that exists in our nation of Canada today. It is with increasing frequency, increasing obviousness and increasing clarity that the economic, social and political ills of this country can be directly linked to the massive Government intervention, collectivism and centralization that has been provided by the Liberal Government, aided and supported by the NDP, which is tantamount to a Liberal-NDP coalition. The tragedy is that all Canadians are paying the price, particularly those Canadians who face the task of seeking work and who find themselves on the unemployment rolls.
There are signals and warnings from literally every corner of Canadian society that this direction must change. There are admissions even from Members of the Government and apologists for the Government that this social experiment is not working and must be changed. There is a clear recognition that it has failed.
But what do we get from the Government? It basically steamrolls ahead, keeping on in an unrelenting fashion day by day, further penetrating the economy. In the course of that it is crushing the entrepreneurial spirit of Canadians, the creative spirit of Canadians and their innovative capability. It is destroying the confidence of the business community and is confiscating hard-earned taxpaying dollars from Canadians.
What is most important is that there is an underlying erosion and suppression of Canada's fundamental and basic freedoms. Just yesterday, the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) admitted to the House that the Government had lost control over a major Crown corporation, namely Canadair. He admitted that the Government was misled. The Government admitted that the mismanagement of this country had continued unchecked for a long period of time. The Government admitted that it failed to exercise proper accountability and to
ensure the proper managerial expertise in this company, primarily because to a point it selects its friends to the board of directors rather than selecting people on the basis of their expertise. What happens? The Canadian taxpayer has been faced with the loss of $1.5 billion. This amount will probably reach $2 billion by the time this fiasco is through.
What has the Government set out to do? It really does not set out to correct the problem; it sets out to establish a bigger, bolder and more blatant monster by transforming the Canadian Development Investment Corporation into a Crown Corporation. It is really further perpetuating the problem that existed heretofore. Why does the Government do it? I suppose it is so it can appoint a few more of its friends to high positions and power and can further penetrate the marketplace. The combination of penetration of the marketplace and mismanagement can only amount to one thing-more dollars from the taxpayers' pockets.
The Globe and Mail just stated with reference to the Canadian Development Investment Corporation that it is a holding company to end all holding companies. It will be the largest holding company in Canada. It will have share capital of $1 billion. It will be able to borrow up to $3 billion. It is not accountable to the shareholders, or to the average Canadian who is the shareholder. It is not accountable to Parliament but to Cabinet. There is no control with regard to the value for money that will be expended. It has the ability to spin off numerous other Crown Corporations, to buy and to sell without any reference to Parliament and without a word of debate. Above all, Mr. Speaker, it can do this with no reference or control by the Auditor General of Canada. These monsters grow and multiply like rabbits.
What is more important and is becoming increasingly a concern of Canadians is that the Government proceeds with such blatancy and contempt for the taxpayer that Canadians from coast to coast are rising up and saying "Enough is enough." We have over 400 Crown corporations that are literally out of control. Let us look at Petro-Canada for a moment. When Petro-Canada was established it was to have been merely a modest window on the industry. It was to be involved in state to state trading and in exploration and development, particularly in those areas where the private sector did not enter. It was to encourage energy self-sufficiency. It did this because of the encouragement and the mandate from the Government.

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There was no mention made of service stations. As a matter of fact, the former Energy Minister, Mr. Macdonald, who introduced this corporation, indicated that it was not the intention of Petro-Canada to become involved in the service station business. But what happened? Petro-Canada has over 1,500 service stations. How are we paying for them? An amount of $5 billion has been expended by this Crown Corporation, and where did it get the money? From the Canadian taxpayer. Every time an individual fills up his or her gas tank at any pump, he or she contributes four cents to a slush fund. We understand that in the next six months or so the bills will be paid for Pacific Petroleum, Atlantic Richfield, Petrofina and the British Petroleum acquisitions. Most of those companies were purchased at inflated prices. But the collection of the four-cent a gallon surtax will continue. The Government will build up a $3.5 billion slush fund. What for? I suppose to buy up more Crown corporations.
When you look at Petro-Canada over a seven-year period, on the basis of the 1982 financial statement it showed net retained earnings of $186 million. We have to bear in mind that this company gets its capital free. There is little interest on debt. If Petro-Canada had to function in the normal way in the marketplace and reward its shareholders, conforming to the financial and commercial marketing conditions of the real world, it would probably show a loss in excess of half a billion dollars.
More and more Canadians are realizing that Petro-Canada has not been a good investment. Reserves are not increasing. As a matter of fact, I think oil reserves have remained relatively the same and gas reserves have decreased. What about selfsufficiency? Petro-Canada has really not contributed to Canada's self-sufficiency. This corporation seems to be more interested in self-sufficiency in places like China, Senegal, Jamaica, Pakistan or Tanzania.
What else is concerning Canadians? It is the slip-shod accounting procedures and tactics to which the Auditor General referred. For example, there was the acquisition of Petrofina for $1.7 billion and the purchase of British Petroleum Canada, which started out at $347 million and ended up at $577 million. In his latest report, the Auditor General drew attention to the fact and warned the Government that there was a serious weakness in the manner in which Petro-Canada has been delegated authority to act as the major instrument in implementing the provisions of the National Energy Program. Quoting from page 12 of the Report of the Auditor General, in part it reads:
This means the Government of Canada chose to delegate the implementation of a crucial decision concerning the National Energy Program to an entity that is not fully accountable to Parliament. This constitutes a serious weakness in the management of public funds.
What has been done to check that? We know of nothing. What did the Auditor General say about Petro-Canada? He said:
When the Petro-Canada Act was given second reading in the House of Commons, the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources placed great emphasis on the need for energy development, including risky and costly exploration in the far north, and government-to-government oil deals. However, the company's biggest financial undertaking to date, involving an investment of $1.7 billion, was in the oil refining and marketing business-Petro-Canada's purchase of Petrofina.
It has become an agency to infiltrate the private sector.
What about the broader context? There is a deep concern shared by all Canadians in the country. In effect, in the section dealing with matters of special importance and interest with respect to Crown corporations, the Auditor General referred to the myriad of Crown corporations as a form of subgovernment. He said:
The citizens of Canada have a right to consider themselves the principal shareholders of these organizations; parliamentarians speak for them. Crown-owned corporations must be held accountable through Parliament.
He went on to say:
These organizations have a greater impact on the economy and the life of Canadians than ever before. There are now more people working for Crown-owned organizations than there are working in government departments and agencies when the RCMP and the Armed Forces are excluded. A subgovernment has been created to fulfil some of the social and economic aims of Government. This subgovernment structure is not as accountable as I believe it should be.
To top it all off, we have his warnings and the warnings of the previous Auditor General. Also we have the admission of the Prime Minister yesterday that things were out of control. Yet Government refuses to change direction.
The country must be relieved of the technocrats and elitists who believe they can make the best decisions for Canadians. They believe that through the centralization of authority and decision-making they can make the ultimate in decisions for Canadians. Essentially this is based upon their maligned and disjointed philosophy. They do this, ignoring the realities of the world marketplace and ignoring the intelligence and the expertise of individual Canadians and individual Canadian businesses.
I find this action contemptuous. The utopian ideal, which may be espoused by my friends across the way and particularly by my friends to the left, that Government can plan and regulate everything to perfection has clearly been discredited; yet that myth prevails here in Ottawa. A country as large and diverse as Canada, with its potential and capacity in human and natural resources, requires the freedom of individuals based upon their intelligence, their instincts and their intuition to make decisions; to share those decisions with other individuals, with other corporations and with other governments; and to encourage risk-taking unfettered by the manipulation and interference of government.
No one person or group of persons can be a substitute for the complexity and variety of decisions which must be made in the day to day operations of the economy and of the stock market and that make the business engine turn. That is what we have in Ottawa today. Basically Canada's economy has become a game, played by the bureaucrats and the theorists, and essentially Canadians are the pawns.
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Instead of the producers and builders running their operations, generating wealth and maintaining jobs, they must come to Ottawa cap in hand and wait for a decision. They have to wait for the next bureaucratic edict, tax policy or royalty policy to be espoused. The cost has been crushing to business, particularly those businesses associated with the energy sector, as a result of the National Energy Program.
The National Energy Program, with its attack on the oil sector and its discrimination against the domestic and foreign investor, has created a disaster in this country. It still continues to be the Liberal policy. It has destroyed the service and supply sector in western Canada. Some 20,000 to 30,000 jobs have been lost. Only 30 per cent of the rig fleet is working today. Every well that is being drilled creates 692 man-days of work. There have been bankruptcies, not of large businesses but of small Canadian businesses.
What this Government has overlooked is that every dollar spent in the energy sector in western Canada generates two dollars worth of activity in other places. Of every dollar spent in Alberta, 42 cents ends up in Ontario, 15 cents in Quebec, 29 cents in Alberta and 14 cents in other Provinces.
We could not find fault with the fundamental objectives of the National Energy Program; it is the manner in which the implementation took place. There was to be fairness in revenue sharing, acceleration of the Canadianization of the oil and gaz industry and oil self-sufficiency by 1990. The Government however was basically aiming at extracting the highest possible federal revenue that it could and imposing an increased Canadian ownership and Government control upon an industry which was tantamount to nationalization.
We have not achieved the goal of self-sufficiency and we have not achieved a fair pricing regime. Our gasoline prices at the pump are higher than in the United States. This is particularly true with regard to agriculture. Every time a farmer fills his tractor, 65 cents per gallon goes into Government coffers.
It has not attacked the multinationals, as was suggested it would. A recent edition of Oilweek magazine indicates that the net income for foreign-controlled companies declined by 11 per cent. By the same token, the income of Canadian companies declined by 37 per cent.
What is very disturbing as well is that it was a calculated decision to shift the exploration of oil from the conventional area to the frontier and offshore. A recent example is Petro-Can spending $70 million on a dry hole drilled off the coast of Nova Scotia. They did not use a Canadian rig but a Norwegian rig. With that amount of money, 240 gas wells or 98 oil wells could have been drilled in the sedimentary basin. Either of those projects would have created 38,000 man-days of employment.
The result of generation of a huge bureaucracy, which is costing about $1.5 billion, is that we now have three accountants for one working geologist whereas before the NEP we had one accountant for three geologists. We have a situation where
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the bottom line is simply that the NEP has been a massive failure. There is no other way in which it can be described.
What is more disturbing is that this Government wants to repeat this tragedy and penetrate its influence further in other areas. I refer to agriculture. Canagrex is the monstrous equivalent of the National Energy Program. It will probably lead to the establishment of five-year plans where Canadian farmers will have to check with Ottawa before deciding what to seed, how much fertilizer they will require and how much weed spray they should buy. There will probably be supermarkets. This proposal is a step in the wrong direction. When will we learn from the experiences of the past?
A new feed grains policy is being drafted. It, too, will put more power and influence in the hands of the livestock feed board and the Minister responsible. The new western rail policy provides for additional powers, more centralization of power in the hands of the Minister.
There is a debate now going on about the fishing sector. I suspect that the Government will probably espouse the formation of a Crown corporation that will take over the fishing sector.


Mr. Epp:: We will have to blame Canagrex for that.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: My hon. colleague says that we will have to blame Canagrex for that. The Government wants control over the news media.
The emergency planning order has not been brought to the House for debate. It has been imposed simply through regulation, and in times of real or apprehended emergencies the Government can take total control of the economy. It can invoke censorship and suspend civil liberties. It will take over all of these things, Sir, from basic civil liberties to the whole of the economy.
The November, 1981 budget really was the most antibusiness, anti-investment and anti-growth budget that has ever been delivered in the House. Thank God that, through the efforts of the Opposition and others, there has been a retraction of that budget. But the latest budget is really no better. The Government has indicated that the new budget will use the private sector as the main engine for recovery. The Minister of State for Economic Development (Mr. Johnston), the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Lumley) and the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) masquerade by saying that they are the great defenders and supporters of the private sector. Yet looking at their policies they are really espousing more and more state Government control.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, seven years ago 36 per cent of Canadians polled saw big labour as the biggest threat to Canada's future; 29 per cent named big Government and 20 per cent named big business as the biggest threat to Canada's future. This November that same poll shows that 50 per cent of Canadian people believe that the federal Government's influence on their way of life is too great.

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The fact of the matter is that the Government's unrelenting intervention, its confiscating tax policies, its huge bureaucracies, and its creation of a multitude of Crown corporations have complicated the economy and created a costly burden upon all Canadians in the country. Furthermore, these things have stifled and eroded not only our economic freedom but indeed our political freedom. We all know, Sir, that true democracy cannot function within this kind of a controlled economy. That is why we brought this motion forward for debate. We draw to the attention of the House and Canadians in general that the Government's trend is wrong. The Government must reverse its dangerous and tragic trend and we implore it to do so without delay.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Skelly:: Mr. Speaker, that was a very interesting speech made by the previous Member. I would like to make a comment, and the possibility of a response to my comment would be appreciated.
I would like to observe, Mr. Speaker, in speaking about energy, that the combined efforts of both the Conservative provincial Government of Alberta and the Liberal federal Government in Ottawa is what has really destroyed or harmed the energy industry in Alberta. I would recall to the previous speaker that Peter Lougheed, the Premier of Alberta, gave a $5 billion incentive to Alberta oil companies and these companies promtly took that $5 billion out of the Province. In his blind adherence to free and private enterprise, Premier Lougheed attached no performance guarantees to that money. He gave a $5 billion gift to the oil companies and that money was promptly removed from the Province of Alberta and used to buy 20-cent dollars in order to drill offshore and in Canadian lands.
1 suggest to the previous speaker that it was the blind adherence to the ridiculous policies of both the Conservatives and the Liberals that caused a great deal of harm in Alberta and ended up creating an enormous amount of unemployment and a serious hampering of the energy industry in the Province. If a proposal were put forward to rectify this situation, that proposal would not only have to change Liberal policies but would certainly have to change that blind and ridiculous approach of the Conservative Government. I suggest that if we are to continue following that blind approach, we will end up destroying medicare and most of the institutions that have been created in the country.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: That is a 6 per cent solution.


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


Donald Frank Mazankowski: I thank the Hon. Member for his question. I might begin by reminding him that I am still a Member; I am not a former Member.
Second, I think he would find that there was general concurrence among the Canadian population and indeed among all sectors of the energy industry that it was not the combined forces of the Liberal and Conservative Governments that
brought the energy industry to its knees. It was really the efforts of the Liberal Government, aided and abetted by the NDP in Ottawa, that perpetrated the mess. I know that the Hon. Member is supportive of the so-called New Democratic Party industrial strategy which would propose to turn the total Canadian industrial sector into the equivalent of a National Energy Program. We disagree with that fundamentally because it has been proven that it does not work in the energy sector. It will not work in the other sectors of the economy either.
As far as blaming the Province of Alberta is concerned- and I take offence at that-I think the Hon. Member should know that the benefit of the low price provided by the Government of Alberta and the producing Provinces has not accrued to the consumer. That is concurred in by the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Chretien), who points out day after day in this House that it was really the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario that moved to take up the slack. Any slack that they did not take up was absorbed by the federal Government. I would remind the Hon. Member that 65 cents per gallon goes into federal coffers. While Alberta was selling oil at the wellhead price of 50 per cent of 55 per cent of world price, that advantage was not accruing to the consumer, and I say that is a tragedy.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I should like to run through this one more time to see if the Hon. Member can get it straight. Many other Conservative Members have problems with this.
The point I was making was that the Premier of Alberta-a Tory's Tory-gave away $5 billion of Alberta's money without any performance requirements in that Province. As a result, we are now looking at deficits in that Province and 136,000 people unemployed as well as a serious problem in developing adequate energy supplies. The Alberta Energy Corporation simply took the gift at the expense of the people of Alberta, bought 20-cent dollars and moved the industrial activity or energy activity offshore into Canada lands.
I would ask the Hon. Member if he does not agree that that was a failure of the Conservatives at the provincial level and of the Liberals at the federal level.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member should go to Alberta and talk to some of his NDP friends who offered an alternative to the Government which the people of Alberta rejected.
As far as the Hon. Member trying to explain the NDP energy policy is concerned, the polls show that only 16 per cent of the Canadian people understand it. I do not think I have to take any lessons from the Hon. Member about the way the Government of Alberta is run. Neither does the Premier of that Province. I invite the Hon. Member to go to the Province of Alberta, talk to a few people and he will be enlightened. It might improve the quality of his questions.
June 9, 1983


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I recognize that the Hon. Member, being from the Province of Alberta, may spend a little more time there than is required in Ottawa without surveying opinions in his Province. He should be aware that in the last few months, in the times that I have been in Alberta, there has been a great deal of criticism of the policies that have harmed the economy. Alternatives have been put forward. If the Hon. Member were sincere in his presentation to the House, he would recognize the serious problem. The Conservatives must clean up their act. Blind adherence to private enterprise is not the way the country will function effectively or ensure an even distribution of benefits.
It is Conservative Governments that are destroying other institutions in the country, not just energy. Medicare is on the rocks and so are hospitalization schemes in Provinces where Conservative Governments are in power. Gradually we will see the complete erosion of an equitable approach to distribution in Canada if that Party gains power federally.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I do not want to be flippant but I want to say to the Hon. Member that I can only back up the sincerity of my argument by the fact that people support the policy of the Government of Alberta both at the ballot box and in the public opinion polls. As far as the Conservative policy is concerned vis-a-vis the NDP, I think it is quite clear from public opinion polls that the NDP is out of the picture. The Conservatives must be doing something right. They must have some policies that Canadians embrace.
Perhaps the Hon. Member should go to the Province of Saskatchewan as well. Not only did a Liberal Government destroy what was left of the energy sector in Saskatchewan, but that destruction was aided and abetted by a provincial NDP Government. The new thrust, "Open for Business", in Saskatchewan is really taking hold. In spite of the National Energy Program, a vibrant new energy sector is emerging. It means jobs and it means the generation of new wealth.
Perhaps the Hon. Member exemplifies the reason the NDP is doing so poorly around the country. It is trying to do everything in its power to take hold of an issue, but I suggest to the Hon. Member that he is on the wrong wicket with this particular issue.


Mr. Althouse:: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the Hon. Member would explain to the House how the industrial policy is working in Saskatchewan. As a Member from that Province, it seems to me that we have succeeded in getting that so-called industrial expansion in the oil business which he referred to and which is not very apparent to people on the ground there, at the expense of a provincial deficit like none we have ever had, somewhere in the area of $350 million by the end of this year. That is because we have given away the oil revenues and the resource revenues of the Province in our attempt to attract some activity.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the New Democratic Party cannot have it both ways. It says that the Conservative Governments are not compassionate, that they do not care about people, I think the Premier of Saskatchewan and his
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Cabinet demonstrated compassion in their budget when they considered the importance of maintaining the level of social and welfare standards. They encouraged job-creation activities, as a Government should in times of economic decline.
I think the fact is that they have put more money into the hands of the average citizen in Saskatchewan by the reduction of the sales tax on gasoline. They have assisted home owners and have done a lot of things to help the average Saskatchewan citizen.
It is really strange that all the flak is coming from the socialists. Perhaps the message is getting through to the Government. It may be prepared to take a new course, but it certainly does not meet with the approval of my socialist friends to my left.
A Member from British Columbia was chastising me not too long ago about the fact that they were going to walk over the Social Credit Party in British Columbia. We have not heard anything from them lately on that issue. They are most sensitive. I guess the motion has already served its purpose.


Hon. John Roberts (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Vegreville (Mr. Mazankowski) knows of the affectionate regard in which I hold him. Nothing he has said today will shake that regard. He started off by saying this motion was very clear and succinct. I am not surprised that he did not read it. It says:
That this House rejects the centralizing and interventionist policies of the Government as an ideological thrust aimed at introducing socialization of the Canadian economy by the back door and without the authorization of Parliament, and a definite and present threat to the freedom of Canadians.
If the Hon. Member believes that is clear and succinct he will believe anything-as clearly he does. It is a motion which is typical of so much of what is happening in the Tory Party these days. It is excessive, myopic and confused. I doubt that the Hon. Member knows what it means.
He accuses us of the terrible sin of "socialization". He should look at the Oxford Dictionary; it is a well-known book. "Socialization" means acting in a social manner. If there is anyone who is being socialized around Ottawa these days, it is the Tory Party. It is out wining and dining and partying as the candidates are looking for delegates in the their quest for new leadership.
This motion is a ragbag of windy rhetoric without any substance. What the Hon. Members have done is drop into the motion any old scare word they could find. A few years ago, Mr. Speaker, there was an election campaign in the American south in which one of the Senators-in fact still a distinguished representative of the American Congress-was attacked by his opponent in a vicious campaign. His opponent said: "His brother is a self-confessed philanthropist and his wife is a thespian". If the Hon. Member had thought he could scare up any votes, he would have accused us of being self-confessed philanthropists and thespians.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Watch the polls next month.

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John (Moody) Roberts: What does the Hon. Member really mean by "socialization"? It is hard to know. He certainly does not seem to understand what the word means. Perhaps he means that this Government, this Party, is committed to social reform, that we do believe we can help.
I apologize, I did not mean to be so harsh. That the Hon. Member could not stand it; that he had to leave the House. However, if he thinks this is bad, wait until my colleague the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) goes after him this afternoon.
Yes, Mr. Speaker, we do believe that Government can help society by providing a basic structure of social protection. If that is his accusation, then we are guilty. We are not only guilty, we are proud. We in this Party and this Government are proud that we have been responsible for building the basic structure-


Mr. Taylor:: That is why you are way down in the polls.


John (Moody) Roberts: -of social protection.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John (Moody) Roberts: We do believe that society should care not only for the rich and the self-important. We do believe that society should care and that Government can help those who are not fortunate in a society. We do believe in those things.
Yes, we were responsible for Family Allowances; guilty. Yes, we believe in old age pensions; guilty. Yes, we support the Unemployment Insurance Program which, in these days, has shown how important and valuable it can be to a country in a period of recession. Yes, we are proud that we brought in medicare; guilty. Yes, we believe in Guaranteed Income Supplements; guilty. Yes, we support the Canada Assistance Program; guilty. If that is what the Hon. Member means by "socialization", then we are guilty.
It is odd, though, Mr. Speaker, to realize that these programs we brought forward, that "socialization", were fought by that Party opposite. The Conservatives fought these programs when they were introduced. They do not fight them now, however, not in specifics. They do, of course, with their windy rhetoric but not in specifics.
I would like to welcome the Hon. Member back to the House. I promise not to say anything too unkind about him from now on.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: I just had to take a phone call, and they agreed with everything I said.


John (Moody) Roberts: One has only to look at that Party's leading candidates, and perhaps I should not say this to the Hon. Member because he has not the courage to support any of the candidates for the Progressive Conservative leadership. Perhaps, Mr. Speaker, "lacking in courage", is not a parliamentary expression. Perhaps I should say he has the good sense not to support any of the Progressive Conservative candidates for leadership. However, you do not find those leaders attacking these programs. Mr. Mulroney is not opposing medicare. The Hon. Member for Yellowhead (Mr. Clark) is not opposed to Family Allowances. The Hon. Member for
St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie) is not opposing old age pensions. Oh, no. With rhetoric, yes, they are against "socialization", but they are not against those programs. Perhaps they do not understand why those programs are good. However, what they do understand is that the Canadian public needs them and wants to have them.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John (Moody) Roberts: Perhaps what that Party is talking about with "socialization" is economic socialism. Maybe that is the ragtag they are trying to stick to our image. In that case, they do not have very long memories, do they, Mr. Speaker? They forget that it was Liberal Governments with Louis St. Laurent and C. D. Howe which established the basic, tremendous growth and structure of economic development in Canada. Is that the kind of intervention which they are opposed to in their resolution?
They do not have very short memories, either. Is it because we stand for some sort of "socialization" that the recent budget brought forward by my colleague, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde), was applauded by virtually allbusiness people-small business, large business, medium-sized business? Is the investment tax credit socialization? Is the special recovery refundable tax credit socialization? Is the special recovery share-purchase tax credit socialization? Is the special recovery investment fund socialization? Is the special recovery exports financing fund socialization? If that is "socialization", then the country is certainly going to benefit from that kind of approach to our economic problems.
This motion rejects "interventionist policies". That Party is against intervention. It is wonderful to listen to the Hon. Member. His speeches ring out across the land. Who can forget those marvellous attacks against Premier Lougheed for the purchase of Pacific Western Airlines? Who can forget his astringent comments against the Conservative Government of Ontario for the purchase of Suncor and for their involvement with Ontario Hydro? Who can forget his flaming attacks against the retroactive appropriation of trust companies? Oh, yes, he is against intervention. Every day we hear the Hon. Member speak out against such intervention as the Canadian Wheat Board, for instance.
Every day I listen to the comments of his colleagues. For instance, in my own area of responsibility, when we talk about forestry policies in this House of Commons, his colleagues seem to be always asking me to do less in forestry. They seem to be always suggesting we could get by without doing as much, that we do not need more, that we should not be more active. That is what his colleagues seem to be saying all the time. Nonsense. He should talk to his seatmates. They are pushing and pressing the Government to do more and more in the forestry area.


Gordon Edward Taylor: More for the people. Less for the Liberals.


John (Moody) Roberts: In science and technology, for which I used to have some responsibility, of course, his colleagues are saying to
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do less. "Do not intervene. Do not help. Do not assist. Do not provide a context in which research and development can get done." And pigs will fly! Every day they are urging me not to intervene, not to seek better regulation of industry to try and tackle the acid rain problem. Oh, yes, each day on the other side of the House they are asking us to do less in tackling water quality problems in Canada. Yes, in theory, in rhetoric, in that kind of overblown, windbag style. However, when it comes down to specifics-because more of them over there are practical and understand the wants of their constituents-they want Government to be involved and to help.


Mr. Thacker:: Tell us about the debt and the interest to service the debt.


John (Moody) Roberts: Their rhetoric simply does not match the realities of this country. The sad fact, Mr. Speaker, is that they do not understand the realities of this country. "Socialization" means "render fit for society". Yes, we believe that the Canadian economy should be fit for this society, that it should serve this society. That is why we have always had in this country a positive involvement of Government in the Canadian economy. It is not because there is some, to quote the words of the Hon. Members opposite, "ideological thrust". Does that not sound sinister, Mr. Speaker? It is not because of some ideological thrust. It is not because of ragbag rhetoric. It is because of the practical realities of this country.
There has always been Government involvement in the economy of this country. It is at the heart of the history of our country. Government has been involved from its beginning in the creation of canals, in the creation of railways, in marketing, in air transportation, and in countless programs. Not because of some abstract, windblown, ideological conception, but because given the size of this country, and given the size of its population, there has had to be a constructive and positive role for Government in assisting economic growth and assisting the private sector to do what it can in the creation of growth in this country. The Government must be involved and it must help if Canadian society is to thrive.
[DOT] (M50)
That is what Hon. Members opposite do not understand. They think that what we have done, as Liberal Governments, is because of some sort of-how did they put it?-some sort of "back door" approach? This was not done by the back door; it was done because of elections. Why we have been able to do these things as a Government is that the people of Canada wanted us to do them. I suppose it might be possible, somehow, to do them by the back door. It might be possible somehow to be sneaky, to fool the people once and a while and to take power that way. However, would it be possible for 45 of the last 50 years? It was not because we did it by the back door, but, rather, because we responded to the reality of the country in a way which Canadians could understand and did not simply try to serve up to them empty, posturing rhetoric.
The tragedy of the motion is that Canadians deserve much better from the Conservative Party. They deserve to have an
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Opposition which is prepared to define alternative policies which relate to the reality of this country so that Canadians have an effective choice.
The tragedy is that the Conservative Party has turned its back on its own heritage. Its one great Prime Minister understood the reality of country. Sir John A. Macdonald understood that reality. If he were back here now, he would stand in the pillory condemned by the Hon. Member for Vegreville for the kind of approach that he took with regard to that terrible railroad, that awful railroad, the intervention of Government into society to create that railroad, that terrible intervention, that kind of centralization. If Sir John A. Macdonald were back in the House today to hear the motion, he would have crossed the floor to this side, if he would not have crossed it long ago.


Mr. Gray:: He was a Liberal Conservative.


John (Moody) Roberts: What this country needs is not the kind of vacuous piffle which this motion represents. What it needs is a Conservative Party which remembers the heritage it once had, and remembers the kind of approach that once made it a relevant Party to the problems of this country.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Donald Frank Mazankowski: I would like to ask a question of the Minister who just concluded his remarks. He essentially ignored the issue of the economic thrust as contained in the motion and sought to divert his comments in an attempt to focus on the various social programs, the old age pension, Unemployment Insurance, and things of that nature which, as Members of a compassionate Party, we have always supported.


Mr. Fisher:: Careful now.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: The fact of the matter is that there has been an increasing wave of Government intervention in the Canadian economy, as witnessed by the NEP, as witnessed by the economic development thrust into the 1980s, as Government policy. This is acknowledged by increasing numbers of Canadians. Does the Minister really ignore the fact that as of today, some 60 per cent of Canadians throughout the country believe that the federal Government's influence on their daily lives is too great?
He also refers to the fact that the Liberals have been in power for the last 40-odd years. What is very disconcerting about the present trend is that over the last 15 years there has been a major escalation of Government intervention, and particularly in the last two years. Sixty per cent of the Canadian people believe that that intervention is too great.


John (Moody) Roberts: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the question because it enables me to return to a part of my speech which I had not had the time to deliver. I will answer the Hon. Member in two ways. First, if he would take an objective look, which is easy to do by looking over the past record from Statistics Canada, he will find that federal participation in the Canadian economy has not increased significantly, as a proportion of the Gross National Product, since the Second World War. Clearly, as I

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have said in my speech, the kind of policies which these past Liberal Governments have supported have been clearly supported by the Canadian public. If he wants to consider the last 15 years, if my memory serves me correctly, the Opposition has been in power for nine months of those last 15 years, which seems to me to be a relevant indication of the degree of support his Party has had.
The second point in reply to his question is exactly this: the kind of economic policy which the Government has always espoused is that which was presented within the budget of my colleague, the Minister of Finance. That clearly does argue two points, one being that the private sector is a motor for economic development and, second, that the Government has a positive role to play in creating a context which would make that private sector activity fruitful and effective.
We do not believe what perhaps the Hon. Member believes. I am not sure that he believes it. We do not believe, as many Conservatives do, that the proper role for Government is simply to stand as far away as possible from these concerns and allow the private sector to work without any role for Government at all. We believe that the proper approach and the one which has clearly been the approach followed throughout Canadian history, is a positive partnership of Government and the private sector.
That is why in the budgetary proposals brought forward by the Minister of Finance-


Donald Frank Mazankowski: You don't practice what you preach, though.


John (Moody) Roberts: -we brought forward a variety of tax proposals which we believe, and I think the private sector believes, will create economic activity and growth in the country. The budget also recognizes that it will take some time for the impact of those budgetary proposals to be felt. As a result, we brought forward the Special Recovery Program which involves a direct participation of the Government in creating jobs to bridge that gap until the private sector incentives begin to have their impact. The budget quite clearly idicates the kind of general economic approach we on this side of the House follow, one which states that the Government does have a legitimate and useful role which should be pursued, and one which also tries to create as open and as positive a context for private sector activity as possible. Does the hon. gentleman disagree with that approach?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. The Minister's answer is rather long.


Blaine Allen Thacker: Mr. Speaker, I want the Minister to tell me where the governing Party believes the amount of revenue which goes to service the debt should stop, because when it first came to power in 1968, it was very small. Some 5 per cent of tax revenue went to service the debt. During those 15 years the debt has risen dramatically, so that now the percentage to service the debt is over 30 per cent of tax revenue. One dollar in three goes to service the debt, which means that it is concentrating wealth into the hands of people who already have
wealth. We are very much becoming a class society. Where does the Minister want to cut it off, at 40 per cent, 50 per cent, 60 per cent or 70 per cent?


John (Moody) Roberts: Mr. Speaker, I will not give the hon. gentleman a specific percentage. I would suggest two facts that he should keep in mind in approaching or determining that question. The first is that a great deal depends upon what stage of the economic cycle one finds oneself. The level of debt which is appropriate when there is a high level of prosperity and, therefore, high revenues in terms of the take in Government taxes, is a different situation from one in which one is managing fiscal and monetary policy in a recessionary situation.
The other suggestion I would make to the hon. gentleman is that he should not only look at the debt side, but he should also realize that the debt and the service charges on the debt reflect payments for real assets which are in the country and that the importance of those assets can be reflected in the size of the Gross National Product.


Blaine Allen Thacker: Canadair.


John (Moody) Roberts: He should not only look at the debt side, but he should also make an assessment of the tremendous assets of the country which that debt has helped to create.


Mr. McKnight:: Mr. Speaker, I would just like briefly to ask the Minister a question and make the comment that, as far as economic development and the economic spin-off is concerned, the Hon. Member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Evans) feels that the Conservative Party has contributed more economically to his riding, I am sure, in the last three or four days than the Party which is in Government will over the next number of days in the future.
I would simply like to say that when one speaks of the increase, when one considers on a national accounts basis the increase in debt over the last 12 years, the debt has increased 693 per cent. That is more than a slight variance. If one wants to use the public accounts basis, it has increased 554 per cent.
As we have debated in the House concerning the Canadair issue, where the known amount of debt is $1.4 billion, used in another way a contribution of this amount would have run the Canada Students Loans Program for three years. The $1.4 billion would have implemented the Kirby Commission recommendations. It would have built seven Calgary Olympics or four new frigates.
When one compares the management of this Crown Corporation under the direction of the Government, these funds could have been used for these other purposes in a more positive manner for the people of Canada than under the direction of the Government.


John (Moody) Roberts: Mr. Speaker, if the Hon. Member is right about the impact that the Conservative Convention is having
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on the constituency of the Hon. Member for Ottawa West (Mr. Francis), I suspect it is about the only positive thing it has done in the past three and a half years. I think the Hon. Member's question as he expressed it is confused. He began talking about the level of debt and its implications. By the end of the question he was not talking about the size of expenditure but whether the expenditure had been efficiently and effectively made. Those are two separate questions.
To answer the first question, I have to return to answers I have already given. One has to look at the size of the debt in terms of the economic cycle and the assets it helps create. Opposition Members in the House urge us day in and day out to undertake more and more expenditures for projects which they think are valuable and useful, given the economic situation which we confront. It is easy for them to disclaim the over-all impact of what they suggest and forget that it is the accumulation of all of the individual programs they would bring forward that would lead to such a debt.
In terms of the proper expenditure of the funds the Hon. Member described, the simplest way to focus on that question would be to ask him if it woulld have been right for the federal Government to withdraw its support of the aerospace industry in this country. His Government made that mistake back in the 1950s in terms of the Avro Arrow and we are still suffering from it.
If he was asking for my personal opinion, I would say that it is important that the federal Government support the aerospace industry. When you do that, some things go well and some do not go well. Yesterday we saw the shuttle flying into Ottawa. There was great enthusiasm. I think Members on the other side of the House would suggest that it was beneficial for Canada to support the development of Canadarm. That was a gamble we took which succeeded tremendously.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. The time provided for questions has expired.
Before proceeding to another Hon. Member, the Chair would like to remind Hon. Members of Standing Order 15(3), which states:
When a Member is speaking, no Member shall pass between that Member and the Chair-
In the course of the Minister's speech, an Hon. Member did cross the floor between the Hon. Minister and the Chair. The Chair would hesitate to stop a Member dead in his tracks for fear of the consequences, but I would be very happy if Hon. Members would co-operate and respect that basic rule of debate.


Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg-Birds Hill):: Mr. Speaker, today we witness another spectacle and more evidence that the Canadian conservative tradition in the Conservative Party of Canada is philosphically disintegrating before our very eyes.


An Hon. Member:: Give us the 16 per cent solution.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Actually, I was just about to come to that. An Hon. Member says to give the 16 per cent solution, referring,
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of course, to the latest Gallup poll and the indication that my Party only has 16 per cent support in the polls.
I was going to come to that topic because the Hon. Member for Vegreville (Mr. Mazankowski) was arguing the validity of Conservative policies by citing the support that those policies appear to be receiving in the Gallup poll. I cite that as evidence of what I previously referred to as the philosophical disintegration of the Conservative Party.
I am sure that Edmond Burke is rolling over in his grave after hearing Conservatives citing polls as evidence for the validity of their policies. Edmund Burke was that great Tory and defender of parliamentary government who said that he owed his constituents his best judgment and the exercise of his conscience. Although he would not have been able to say it this way at the time, he would have argued that he was not there simply to cater to the latest survey or opinion poll. Yet I believe that is where the Conservative Party has arrived via the long route that has seen the gradual Americanization of Canadian Conservatism.
I think it is a tragedy for Canadian politics and a tragedy for the political context in which debates take place in Canada to see a Party trying to take advantage of legitimate antiGovernment feeling on the part of Canadians instead of attempting to help Canadians and others understand, through intelligent debate and reasonable argument, what is happening, in what ways their anti-Government feelings are legitimate and what other factors may be involved that cannot be blamed on Government alone.
The Conservatives make no attempt to help Canadians understand. Instead, we see them trying to ride out this antiGovernment phenomenon felt by Canadians to victory. Perhaps they do not understand themselves. The Hon. Member for Vegreville said that his motion put clearly and succinctly what was happening. Surely he could not have meant that. Surely a motion which purports to be an analysis of what is happening to the Canadian economy and society but lays the blame for everything at the door of one particular sector in our society cannot be called clear or succinct.
For instance, there is no mention made of the environmental dimensions to the economic problems we are now facing. There is no mention made of errors and omissions of policies in the private sector of the country. There is no mention made of the global conditions in which the Canadian economy must develop. There is no mention of the North-South dialogue. In other words, there is no attempt to be intellectually honest with themselves or with the Canadian people in describing what is going on.
I say this without defending the Government in any way. I simply ask that the Conservatives make their analysis with intellectual honesty. I too have lots to say in criticism of the Government and many of its policies, but we serve no useful purpose in the House when we try to pretend that the issues are as simple as this motion would have us think they are.
Another reason why the motion and the speech made by the Hon. Member for Vegreville are not intellectually honest or

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respectable is that no specific alternatives were suggested. He went on at great length to speak in very general ideological terms. I did not hear the Hon. Member for Vegreville take a stand on Petro-Canada and I challenge him to get up to say whether a Conservative Government will or will not get rid of Petro-Canada. When he has the opportunity to rise after my speech, I challenge him to get up and say whether or not the Conservatives intend to get rid of medicare. They are already eliminating it slowly and surely anyway through the aegis of their various provincial Governments. But what would the stand of a Progressive Conservative Government be on medicare? There is no honesty, just generalities. We hear no statements about what the Progressive Conservative Government would do with respect to some of the issues about which they speak at great length.
The Hon. Member for Vegreville criticized Petro-Canada in his speech. I also have many criticisms I wish to make about Petro-Canada. However, the Hon. Member lacked intellectual honesty in this area as well because, for all his criticisms of Petro-Canada, he did not allow, as he should have allowed, that all of those criticisms could have been made of the private sector corporations. He could have made those criticisms of private sector corporations that run up huge debts and that are involved in mergers that are not very productive and do not create jobs. They have to go the banks to borrow. Many of them cannot repay those loans. Then they go to the Government cap in hand to be bailed out. We did not hear anything about that. We did not hear anything about the sins of the private sector from the Tories. You would not hear that from the Tories. They are not interested in knowing what is going on; they are interested in painting a distorted picture of what is really going on in the Canadian economy.
The Hon. Member for Vegreville also did not distinguish between Liberal policy and NDP policy in this area. He likes to perpetrate the political lie that there is no difference between the Liberals and the NDP on these various matters. He knows very well that is not true. He knows very well that New Democrats over the years have been interested in making Crown corporations more accountable. The Hon. Member for Vegreville served for years on the Standing Committee on Transport along with the Hon. Member for Regina West (Mr. Benjamin). He knows that no one has been more devoted to the idea of making the CNR more accountable to Parliament and more accountable to the needs of the Canadian people and Canadian communities than the Hon. Member for Regina West. Yet the same individual who has witnessed that all these years gets up and says that the Liberals and the NDP are one and the same when it comes to Crown corporations. That is just not true, Mr. Speaker. Anybody with a whit of intelligence or honesty would not have got up and alleged what the Hon. Member alleges with regard to the "great Liberal-NDP conspiracy".
On the matter of accountability, we in this Party believe that freedom suffers not just when there is a lack of accountability between Crown corporations and Parliament, but when there is a lack of accountability to the common good and to the
public interest wherever that lack of accountability occurs. We are concerned about the lack of accountability between Crown corporations and Parliament. We are also concerned about the lack of accountability between multinational corporations, the common good and the public interest. We do not single out one sector for accountability and leave another sector to do as it pleases. We want accountability for all. We want all economic activity in this country to be accountable to the common good. That is the fatal flaw in the Conservative position. It would single out government activity for accountability and allow another sector of the economy to go unhindered and unaccountable.
No one is more aware than we are, of the need for accountability, myself in particular, having served on the Special Committee on Standing Orders and Procedure, where we discussed the whole matter of the parliamentary accountability of the subgovernment to which the Hon. Member refers. There is a real problem. But let us not concentrate on that problem at the expense of pretending all these other problems do not exist. We would not be doing a service to the Canadian people by doing so. We should want to counter the threat to freedom, Mr. Speaker, wherever we find it.
There is a problem with bureaucracy in this country. There is a problem with bureaucracy in the modern world. It does not matter really whether it is a Crown corporation or a private corporation. There are certain organizational structures which we find in the world today which are stifling, unaccountable and against which people are rightly rebelling. But let us not pretend that this is just a phenomenon peculiar to government. We find it in large corporations as well as in government. And there are problems peculiar to government, of course.
We in the NDP do not see ourselves as part of any Liberal-NDP coalition. No one is more unhappy than we are with the bad name that the Liberals have given to government. As democratic socialists who want to see more interventionist government, more active government, and who believe in a positive role for government, no one is more unhappy than we are with the bad name the Liberals have given to public ownership and to government in general over the last 14 years to 15 years. Quite contrary to what the Hon. Member for Vegreville says, we do not sit here with any kind of delight at what the Liberals do when it comes to Petro-Canada or any other instrument of public ownership in the economy. We were critical of the way in which Petro-Canada purchased Petrofina, and we have been critical of other things Petro-Canada has done.
However, 1 wanted to put on the record that we do not oppose Crown corporations or public ownership on principle as the Tories now seem to do, contrary to their tradition, but we are critical of the way the Liberals have gone about doing this. In fact, the NDP was the first to bring up the recent Canadair troubles, even before the Tories. My leader, the Hon. Member for Oshawa (Mr. Broadbent), was the first to question the Government in the House on the latest debacle in Canadair.
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Let us not pretend that it is only the Tories who are interested in the accountability of Crown corporations.
What, then, is the NDP's view on this, Mr. Speaker? The Hon. Member for Vegreville has initiated an ideological argument and I am going to give him that kind of answer. We are interested in both equality and community. We believe that both these concepts are central to our vision of the way things ought to be. Equality and community have to go together. This connection between the two is found in the name of the NDP's predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which through the idea of a commonwealth went far beyond the notion of mere income redistribution, which so often passes for left-leaning, social economic policies these days, particularly on the other side of the House.
In the vision of the Co-operative Commonwealth Party equality would not only be possible but it would be cherished. People presumably would abandon the dehumanizing and undignified motives that economic competitiveness creates. In place of the law of the jungle which the Conservatives advocate we would have a truly civilized society based on cooperation with each and every person, according to their God-given endowment, making his or her creative contribution to the betterment of the human community and each, in turn, receiving what he or she needs out of the abundance created by that very same co-operative endeavour. It would be the brotherhood and sisterhood of the human family instead of the cutthroat individualism or the exploitive monopoly which is characteristic of capitalism these days.
In so far as cut-throat individualism has prevailed, we have seen an increasing breakdown of social purpose and sense of community, the very things the Conservatives lament. Indeed, if we are all just isolated individuals in the marketplace looking after number one, what sense does it make to use words like "social" or "community", the very concept against which this motion is directed? Socialization has everything to do with community and everything to do with people not just acting as individuals. Yet that is what the Conservatives oppose.
We have an economy which does not recognize such concepts, let alone take heed of them. We are simply to trust that all this organized selfishness will somehow lead to a happy ending.
I notice, Mr. Speaker, that I have driven a number of Tory delegates out of the balcony.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Cullen:: It is lunch time.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: They have walked out in disgust. I can only surmise that I am touching some kind of nerve.
New Democrats know that organized selfishness is not the way to the just society. We all know that the kind of economy which we have and which we want to change is one in which many important human needs are neglected because there is no profit to be made in meeting such needs. Many unnecessary
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and harmful wants are created and encouraged through advertising and what is harmlessly called marketing.
Thus we are not half as surprised as our right-wing opponents that people do not want to do a good day's work any more. Why should they when they have been taught from day one that more for less is the ethic of our society? And when the companies they work for have records a mile long of putting their profit margins ahead of workplace safety and health, ahead of the general environment and ahead of the economic needs of the surrounding community, why should they? If there is to be a genuine, renewed sense of the value and the meaning of work, as there should be, then the renewal would have to be on all sides of the labour-management divide.
We are not half as surprised as our right-wing friends that people do not feel as much responsibility for others as they should and look to government to care for the inconvenient. It is their world view, not ours, which has glorified convenience and self-interest and created an economy in which many families are too geographically separated or too economically weak to look after the old, the disabled, the unemployable or the young.
We agree that a real human community would not have to look to government all the time. We want to set about building that kind of community. We can do it only through a fundamental change in our economy and through leaving many of the values we have learned from capitalism behind us. Instead, we see increasingly smaller groups of people acquiring more and more control over our economy and thus our very lives. This is called free enterprise by the Conservatives.
I refer to some recent mergers, such as Thomson taking over Hudson's Bay or the sweetheart monopolistic arrangements between Thomson and Southam which led to the demise of the Winnipeg Tribune. These are only two of many such undesirable incidents in the last few years. These mergers have been unproductive in terms of employment and have contributed to high interest rates. The only merger I could imagine being in favour of would be the one long dreamed of by the left in Canada, the merger and indeed the disappearance of Canadian Pacific into Canadian National Railways, thus socializing once and for all that great Canadian symbol of corporate greed and irresponsible power.
Monopoly means power, and the redistribution of power is what socialization is all about. As I said before, simply to redistribute income without power is not really enough. This is one fault among others of the welfare state. The same people are still in charge, whereas the goal of our movement is not just to see people prosper but also to see people enjoy more responsibility and control over their own lives. The most significant form of monopoly which we find today is that of the multinational corporation or the global corporation, as I prefer to call it. In such corporations we have institutions that are larger and more powerful than many nation states of the word. They blackmail. They play one country against another. They seek the weakest labour and environmental laws they can find.

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They create needless markets to sell resources which would be better left unused. They finance governments favourable to their interests. They are power gone wild, power unaccountable, power which must be seen for what it is and broken globally through the election and subsequent co-operation of democratic socialists in all parts of the world. People must see the need for taking such a stand against these corporations which control such important things in our common lives as energy, information, food, finances-you name it.
In breaking the power of the multinationals, I have alluded to public ownership and the nationalization of such corporations, the very thing which is in many ways the subject of the debate today. Indeed it is established NDP policy to use public ownership as a tool for returning to Canadians power over their own economy. Basically, though, we are talking about social ownership as opposed to state ownership in particular. Social ownership is any form of ownership in which people themselves own the facilities for production, distribution and exchange. State ownership is but one category of social ownership which has been used and should be used more to overcome the injustices of certain monopolies such as automobile insurance, public utilities and energy resources, for instance.
We are reminded of the encyclical statement long ago by Pope Leo XIII, "anything which dominates the life of a community should be owned by the community". Just as important, there is a form of social ownership known as cooperative ownership. In this case not government but the people themselves own, operate and control certain enterprises. This is the form of social ownership I would like to emphasize.
I know I do not have enough time left in which to go into the subject, but I want to say that we in the NDP and those before us in the CCF never intended an economy in which the state owns everything. We have always believed in a mixed economy in which co-operative endeavour was just as significant as government or private sector activity. That is the truth about the political tradition out of which we come. That is the truth or one of the truths with which the Progressive Conservative Party has to reckon if it is to be honest with Canadians in the genuine debate about our economy which is so badly needed in the country. This motion is a political lie that contributes nothing to that debate. For that reason it deserves to be condemned.


Mr. Neil:: Mr. Speaker, 1 have a question for the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie). I have been a Member of Parliament for quite a while. It seems to me that in the last year or two every time New Democratic Party Members rise to speak they begin to protest the fact that they have been accused of allying themselves too closely with the Government. They try to quote figures to indicate the number of times they have voted against the Government. But if we look at the record, we find that they have closely associated themselves with the Government on anything of a socialistic nature which falls in with the philosophy or the ideology of the NDP.
I listened with interest to the Hon. Member talking about free enterprise and public enterprise. I was reminded of his former Leader who ran around the country talking about corporate welfare bums, indicating that any corporation making money was a bum, whether it was small or large. That particular Leader of the NDP and his Party kept this Government in power for a good long time in a minority situation.


Mr. Keeper:: Question.


Douglas Charles Neil: I will put a question, but 1 understand this time allows for both comments and questions.
The Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill talked about socializing Canadian Pacific. He is quite aware of the fact that Canadian National Railways for many years, almost during its entire life, has been a Crown corporation. Is there something magic about Crown corporations? Do they act any better than private corporations? Could the Hon. Member tell me why CNR basically operates in the same manner as the CPR? I have never heard CN officials talk about reducing tariffs or doing things to assist the public. They have been a drain on the public purse over the years. What is the difference between the CNR, a Crown corporation, and the CPR, a privately-owned corporation?


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, that is precisely the point I would have made if I had had more time. Under the Liberal Government there has not been a heck of a lot of difference between public and private corporations. Indeed, CNR was formally instructed to act no differently from CPR ever since 1975 in particular when Otto Lang gave that instruction. I was trying to point that out as one of the differences between the NDP and the Liberal Party when it comes to public ownership.
Take Petro-Canada as another example. We believe that if it acts no differently from Shell or Gulf, then what is the point of public ownership? Sure, the profits stay here in Canada, and that is not to be taken lightly.


Douglas Charles Neil: What profits?


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Far too much of the wealth exploited by foreign and domestic private companies over the years has not been reinvested in Canada. But Crown corporations have to be different in many respects. I would like to indicate just a few ways in which they have to be different. They have to be leaders in the perfection of occupational safety and health. They must be willing to experiment with different models of worker input and decision-making. They have to be more obedient to the laws of the environment and the need for industrial development to respect ecological principles and that sort of thing.
We do not have Crown corporations which do that. This is why we stand in judgment over the kind of public ownership the Liberal Government has developed. If Petro-Canada is drilling in the Beaufort Sea without the techonoloby to clean up a spill, that is every bit as morally reprehensible as Gulf doing it.


Douglas Charles Neil: I do not think the Hon. Member has answered my question. He talked about worker safety and so on. As far as
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CN is concerned, it has a reasonably good record. It is unionized, and I think many of the things about which he talked have in fact happened. How would the Hon. Member treat CN if his Party were in power? How would he make it function more efficiently and more effectively? How would he make it more competitive with CPR?


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: The word "efficiency" begs all kinds of questions because it is not as if everyone agrees on what constitutes efficiency. We do not think the abandonment of branch lines is efficient in terms of its larger social impact, yet according to certain economic models it is very efficient.
That is the kind of debate that has been going on in this House over the last few weeks about the Crow rate and what actually constitutes efficiency. In the first place, we would not have to worry about the CNR being competitive with the CPR because we would merge the two into one railway. We would have that railroad serve the social and economic well-being of the country. It would operate according to a criterion of efficiency which took into account social and environmental factors as well as economic factors. If you do not take those other factors into consideration, you are not talking about efficiency. You have to judge efficiency over the long term, not just the short term; for example, the profit margin in the latest quarter.


Gordon Edward Taylor: The Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie) mentioned that the profits of PetroCan stay in Canada. A few years ago I heard Liberal and NDP speakers say the same thing about Canadair. Will the Hon. Member tell us what happened to the profits of Canadair? Are the people better off because it was operated by Government rather than private enterprise? If there were losses, they would not then come out of the pockets of the taxpayers. Would the Hon. Member outline that for me so I will be aware where the profit of PetroCan is so far? How much profit has it made and where is it?


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, I maintain that the profits which Crown corporations generate are more likely to be reinvested in Canada than the profits of multinational corporations. I stand by that. If a corporation like Canadair has not made a profit, that does not contradict my argument. It has something to do with the way Canadair has been managed and the way the Government has mishandled the whole affair. It is not evidence against my argument that when profits are generated and there is good management, those profits are more likely to be reinvested in Canada. Think logically for a change. I quite agree with the Hon. Member's condemnation of the way Canadair has been handled, but that is not contrary to what I have been maintaining.


Gordon Edward Taylor: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask one more question. Does the Hon. Member believe that today there is sufficient accountability of PetroCan to the Parliament of Canada?
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William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, no, I do not. That was the point I made in my speech. Both as a New Democrat and as one who had the opportunity to study this issue in the Special Committee on Standing Orders and Procedure, I have stated there is not enough accountability of Crown corporations to Government and I am concerned about the many quasi-government agencies that are proliferating and which need to be made accountable to this Parliament. We do not disagree on the need for more accountability. Where we disagree is on whether we are going to use that lack of accountability which exists to attack the existence of these instruments of public policy on principle, or whether we are going to make them accountable and thereby make them better instruments of public policy. Our second disagreement is whether we are going to make private power in this country as accountable to the common good as the Hon. Member and I want to make public power. That is where we disagree.
I wish to comment with respect to an element of a question asked before which I did not answer regarding the taxpayers having to pick up losses of various Crown corporations. Let us not kid ourselves. When private corporations suffer losses, somebody picks up the cost of those losses. People either pick up these losses as taxpayers then they are Crown corporations, or pick them up as consumers if it is a private corporation. When private corporations suffer a loss, they do not assume that they cannot pass on that loss through the marketplace. It works its way into the marketplace. Let us not be naive about the way the marketplace works.


Hon. Perrin Beatty (Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe):: Mr. Speaker, today we are dealing with a Government that often talks about the rights of Canadians. When the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) finally goes on to his retirement, and it will certainly be a well justified retirement, one thing he will want to be remembered for is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which guarantees Canadians specific rights. It is possible to talk about rights and it is possible to enshrine the principle in the Constitution. However, this Government acts in a hundred different ways to undermine those rights. It daily circumscribes the rights of Canadians, daily confiscates their wealth and their income, daily restricts their ability to watch what they want to see and listen to what they want to hear, and daily prevents them from exercising what we as Canadians feel to be our most basic freedoms. This is what we have seen done by this Government, particularly since 1980. We have seen it in many different ways.
The Government has made an attack upon the basic freedoms of Canadians. When the Prime Minister retires from office or, more appropriately, when he is retired from office, we will find that Canadians are less free than they were at the time when he came to office in 1968.
In no area is that more conspicuous than in the case of freedom of the press in Canada. Read the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Lip service is paid to the right of freedom of speech. Lip service is paid to the right to a free press. Indeed, the two are inseparable. In many ways what this Government

June 9, 1983
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has done is to attack one of the most basic liberties of Canadians, one of the most essential rights that any Canadian must have if our democracy is to survive and flourish.
There are a number of different ways in which the Government has done this. This is the first Government in the history of Canada ever to launch a raid on a newspaper under the Official Secrets Act. It was done by this Government against the Toronto Sun when it did not appreciate the fact that the Sun was publishing documents on the extent of Soviet subversion in Canada. Therefore, what it did was to sic the RCMP on the Sun. It is the first time in our history that this was done.
This is a Government which has threatened the publicly-funded CBC on more than one occasion, including one case where the Prime Minister threatened to put the lid on Radio-Canada if it did not change its coverage because it did not like the people who were giving coverage to events.
This is a Government which has set aside a massive war chest, unparalleled in the history of Canada, for propaganda- often very highly partisan propaganda-to sell a contentious, disputed point of view and to ensure that when it cannot earn good publicity in the nation's news media, it will buy it. It will bypass the news media, using it simply as a vehicle for going directly to Canadians with their tax dollars, trying to persuade Canadians that the Liberal point of view is right.
There is nothing in the law which prevented previous governments from doing that. The only thing that prevented previous governments from abusing tax dollars in that way was a sense of self-restraint, moderation and decency, a respect for the Canadian way of life.
Many of our freedoms as Canadians over the years since Confederation have depended upon the willingness of governments to recognize that fundamental reality. Part of what makes us Canadian is our respect for the rights of one another and the unwillingness of people who have power to abuse power and to take away the rights of others. That was the case and it has worked well until this Trudeau Government came to office.
What we have found in recent years is a steady accretion of power in the hands of a few and a steady diminution of the rights of Canadians and of liberties which we have historically taken for granted. The Government is about to embark upon a new assault on freedom of the press in Canada. The Minister of State for Multiculturalism (Mr. Fleming) has been waging a one-man war against Canada's daily newspaper industry. In the past few days he made a speech in which he said that before the end of this month the Government will be tabling legislation which will hobble or control the daily newspaper industry in Canada. It will regulate the ownership of daily newspapers and affect the ability of newspaper to do their job.
It is essential if our democracy is to function well that we have a press that is free and unfettered. Even when the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Mr. Ouellet) does not approve, as he sometimes does not, that right must still be exercised by the fourth estate to hold the Minister to account. It will shine light into areas of government administration
where the Government does not want the public or the news media to go.


Mr. Ouellet:: Have you seen your psychiatrist lately?


Henry Perrin Beatty: Do you see, Mr. Speaker, what happens when one points out the mentality that there is on the part of the Liberal Government? Do you see, Mr. Speaker, how particularly the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs vociferously indicates that there is no way that this could be the case?


Douglas Glenn Fisher: He is right, you are wrong.


Henry Perrin Beatty: You can tell a guilty conscience when you see one, Mr. Speaker. No one should have a more guilty conscience than this Minister, who has consistently attacked the independence of Radio-Canada over the years and has shown by his own actions that he has no regard for the need for independence of the news media and for the need for a free press in Canada.


André Ouellet: You are sick. I attacked separatists.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: He is protecting Canada.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, we have a Government that is incapable of distinguishing between the national interest and its own interest. It cloaks its actions by saying that everything it does is in the national interest, yet everything it does is calculated to be in its own interest. What is seen time after time, both in the House of Commons and across the country, is that any Canadian who dares to challenge the Liberal Government, any Canadian who dares to question the policies of the Liberal Government or their actions, finds his Canadianism impugned and is told that he is a bad Canadian and that somehow he is doing a disservice to his country because he does not agree with the Liberal Government. This is the attitude that the Liberal Government has shown toward the press.
As a result of the Kent Commission, which was set up after the simultaneous shutdowns of the Ottawe Journal and the Winnipeg Tribune and which made broad and sweeping recommendations that would have seen an extremely dangerous intrusion by the Government into the daily newspaper industry in Canada, we found that the Liberal Government used this as a Trojan horse to get its foot in the newsroom door. In the future the Government will control the ability of people or organizations to buy a daily newspaper. It will give direct grants to daily newspapers in order for them to open new bureaux, something that was systematically rejected by every reputable news organization in the country because those news organizations did not want to be beholden to the Government or its friends. The Government will set up a Government-sponsored and Government-funded press council to pass judgment on the nation's journalists. The first chairman and vice-chairman of this Government-funded press council will be appointed by the Government and the funding will come from the Government. It will create a convenient vehicle for the
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Government to use at any time when it needs an excuse to enter further into the daily newspaper industry in Canada. What could be a more dangerous attitude on the part of a Government that professes to respect freedom of speech and freedom of the press?
I invite Members of the Government at large to ask themselves this question: Where freedom of the press has died around the world, has it died because of neglect by government or has it died because of too much involvement and control by government? In every single instance in the history of the press around the world, the single greatest threat to a free and unfettered press has been a government that believes it has a monopoly on truth, that it has the responsibility of sitting in judgment on journalists and that it has the right to ensure, through whatever method it wishes, that its particular point of view prevails. Because of this measure, that is what we are seeing happening today. The Government, Mr. Speaker, has used the taxpayers' money, it has used intimidation, and now it is prepared to use the law to attack one of the most basic liberties that all Canadians must enjoy if our democracy is to flourish.
I have a copy of a confidential document that was prepared by the Minister on March 31, 1982, and is marked "Minister's Eyes Only", in which the Government analysed the Kent Commission proposal. One of the problems found with the Kent Commission proposals was that they might be largely unconstitutional and illegal. The Government backed off somewhat and made other proposals. Interestingly enough, Mr. Speaker, this document has never been officially released by the Minister or made available to Parliament because he does not want Canadians to see it.
In its own document, the Government raises very serious questions as to the legality of its own proposals. For example, Mr. Speaker, I mentioned to you earlier that the Government had a proposal for review if a non-media company wanted to purchase a daily newspaper. The Government proposed that a non-media company must go before the Restrictive Trades Practices Commission and justify to Government appointees that the purchase of a newspaper would be in the public interest. Well, I know what the Liberal Government means when it refers to the public interest; it means the interest of the Liberal Party.
On the bottom of the page that deals with this proposal, the Minister, in his "Minister's Eyes Only" document, says that even this review process may be struck down by courts. The Government is preparing to introduce in Parliament legislation that, according to the Minister's own documents, may very well be illegal and unconstitutional. Indeed, there are serious doubts as to whether the whole of the initiatives being taken by the Government may first contravene the provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which guarantees freedom of the press in Canada, and second, and even more probably may very well violate the separation of jurisdiction provisions in the Canadian Constitution.
The Minister of State for Multiculturalism, who is responsible for these proposals, has not released and will not release any legal opinion that he has received on this question. The
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closest thing that we have to a legal opinion is this internal document which indicates that he himself recognizes that his proposal may be illegal. He will not release it. He will claim solicitor-client confidentiality if we ask him for that document.
It may also be that he has never asked for any official legal opinion from the law officers of the Crown. But one thing is certain. Parliament will not be allowed to see that document.
I have asked the Library of Parliament and its research branch to prepare a paper on the division of powers implication of the Kent Commission and the Minister's proposals on press ownership. That document is available to Parliament, to Canadians at large and to anyone who has an interest in it, including the Minister. The conclusion reached by that document is that there is a very serious question as to the constitutional right of the Government to act in the way in which it is proposing. It concluded that there is serious doubt as to whether in fact the Government has the jurisdiction that it claims it has. For example, the conclusion reads:
From the above, it can be seen that it is by no means clear that the central government has the legislative authority to enact the proposals of the Commission.
It refers there to the Kent Commission.
The best arguments for jurisdiction would seem to relate to the central government's power to regulate or restrict competition. This, however, creates a problem for the Commission, because if the basis for the claim of legislative jurisdiction is the control of competition, the proposals may suffer the same emasculation that the merger provisions presently found in the Combines Investigation Act have undergone.
Further, the paper concludes this:
Specifically, it may be concluded that:
1) The proposals of the Commission dealing with concentration of ownership on the basis of market shares and the divestment requirements related thereto do not fall clearly within the legislative competence of the central government. This would apply as well to the Fleming proposal on non-media ownership. On the basis of the legislative competence of the central government and the provinces to deal with competition, trade and commerce, property, and civil liberties, the jurisdiction to enact these proposals is at best shared between the two orders of government.
It goes on to deal with other aspects of the question as well. This legal opinion, Mr. Speaker, is available to Parliament. It is available to the Canadian people. I challenge the Minister of State for Multiculturalism, when he introduces his odious Bill, to introduce a legal opinion as well which will indicate the constitutional validity of what he is proposing. I invite him to refer to the Supreme Court the Bill that he will be introducing to see whether in fact he is making a serious attack both on the freedom of the press provision of the Charter of Rights and on the constitutional division of powers which are so important to the Canadian federal system.
The Government will not do as I have suggested. Instead, it will attempt to introduce legislation and to ram it through the House of Commons. That will seriously restrict the rights to freedom of the press in Canada. It is a proposal that will be fiercely resisted by Members on this side of the House who believe in a free press. As well, it will be fiercely resisted by Canadians at large who recognize that nothing could be more dangerous to our system of Government than to have the

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Government's foot intruding into the doors of the newsrooms of the daily newpapers of Canada.
In his very powerful and disturbing novel, "1984", George Orwell wrote about the way in which politicians could corrupt the English language. As well, he dealt with that subject in many of the other pieces he has written. He pointed out that often the most innocuous of terms are used by politicians to throw a veil over the most odious of actions. By co-opting language which was positive, by misusing it, by perverting the language and by making it mean something it was never intended to mean, they were able to mask actions which the public at large would refuse to accept if they were honestly presented.
a (1250)
Nowhere could there be a better example of what Orwell was referring to than for a Government, under the guise of legislation dealing with freedom of the press, ostensibly to enhance freedom of the press, to bring in measures which would make the press financially beholden to that Government, make it so that potential purchasers of news outlets would have to win the favour of the Government before they could act, and make the actions of working journalists subject to scrutiny and review by a government-sponsored and, in large part, government-appointed press council. What could be more dangerous than that? What could be a worse corruption of language than that which, in its face, seems straightforward? If Orwell were here today I think he would be amazed to find how well the Government has learned the techniques he warned about in passage after passage.
If we are to preserve the freedoms of Canadians, it is essential that we begin now to prevent any action by the Government which will chip away, erode, undermine or circumscribe those fundamental freedoms.
It should be pointed out to the Government that it is ironic that at the very same time as it laments the fact that there are fewer daily newspapers in Canada, it has made no positive proposals that would increase the number of dailies. It has not suggested changes to tax legislation which would encourage advertisers to use the newspapers. It has not proposed changes in legislation that would allow the heirs to independent daily newspapers to be able to hang on when the owner dies and so continue the ownership. Instead of spending money on direct grants to newspapers, the Government has not proposed fellowships for journalists or an increase in funding for journalism schools in the country. These were not concerns of the Government; its concern was the control of a dwindling number of dailies in Canada.
At the same time as the Minister of State for Multicultural-ism complains about the shrinking number of dailies in the country, successive Ministers of Communications have done everything they could to impede the ability of Canadians to see and hear what they would like on their radio and television stations. On the one hand the Government argues that diversity is essential; on the other hand it has consistently tried to prevent that diversity.
Finally, I think I should bring to the attention of the House a statement which perhaps explains better than I can a concern that many people in Canada have about what the Government is doing. When the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Roberts) was Secretary of State, he delivered an address to the 20th General Assembly of UNESCO. He said this:
On every continent there are some people who think that governments should regulate journalists, should tell them, in the public interest, what to write, or should pass judgment on their accuracy. Canadians do not believe that either politicians or public servants should have anything to say in the management, direction or correction of the media. Quite the contrary. In their view, only a free press can guarantee that the decisions of the state power are in harmony with the wishes of the people. Governments have no means of knowing what the needs of society are for its own well being, unless they are told by an informed public.
None of us here today, Mr. Speaker, could have expressed the importance of a free and unfettered press better than did the Minister of the Environment. The onus is on Members here today to take that message to heart and resist attempts by the Government to shackle the free press that is so important to our democracy.


Mr. Breau:: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member started off by saying-and I believe I paraphrase him correctly-that when the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) retires the rights of Canadians will have been lessened if you compare them to what they were in 1968. The Hon. Member acknowledges that I am quoting him correctly. He is either being grossly partisan or is guilty of a grave oversight. 1 wonder how he could say that about language rights unless he does not consider language rights to be important human and social rights.
How can the Hon. Member be so hypocritical when his Party tried for weeks and months-and buckled under the presure of the Provinces-to resist the enshrining of a Charter of Rights in our Constitution?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Before recognizing the Hon. Member I wish to remark that I saw him frown at the use of a certain word. That word is in both lists but nevertheless I would caution the Hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Breau) and all Hon. Members about the choice of words when referring to other Hon. Members.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, I find it a novel construction by the Hon. Member that we should measure the totality of rights in Canada on the strength of what the Prime Minister did on language rights. He has shown strength on language rights in Canada but in so many other areas he has either refused to act or has circumscribed important rights.


Herb Breau: Oh, oh!


Henry Perrin Beatty: The Hon. Member asks a question and then attempts to drown out the answer. One of the most fundamental rights in Canada is the right to free speech in Parliament, yet the Hon. Member would try to drown me out when I answer his question.
I pointed out one of those areas. A fundamental right is a right to a free and unfettered press. We find that the Government is going in exactly the opposite direction.
June 9, 1983

Another right is property rights which have been systematically undermined by the Government. The Hon. Member for Gloucester mentioned the Charter of Rights. In committee I moved an amendment which would have included property rights in the Charter of Rights. Initially I had the agreement of the Liberal Government that it would allow the amendment to go forward. The Hon. Member referred to buckling. Under pressure from the NDP the Government-


Douglas Glenn Fisher: And the Provinces.


Henry Perrin Beatty: -did a back flip and buckled and decided to vote against enshrining property rights for Canadians. It attempted to confiscate the property of Canadians in many instances, the back-in provision for Petro-Canada being just one example, and refused to take any action which would have protected property rights in the Constitution. It voted against such a provision.
The Hon. Member now has the temerity to say that because language rights have been broadened during the term of the Prime Minister, somehow Canadians are more free today than they were before the Prime Minister came to office. This is the Prime Minister who jailed Canadians without warrants for their arrest and who operated on the basis of secret information.


André Ouellet: That is untrue.


Herb Breau: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member talked about the danger of providing assistance to newspapers. I share his concern in that regard. I wonder if he is aware that in an election campaign in New Brunswick last fall, a Tory Premier and now one of his senior ministers indicated that the Government of New Brunswick would provide provincial guarantees and whatever assistance necessary for a French language paper in New Brunswick despite the fact there is a private group with totally private money that wants to start a French language paper there. How does the Hon. Member square that, or does he totally disagree with the policy of Premier Hatfield in that regard?


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, let me turn the question back to my hon. friend. Apparently he disagrees with Premier Hatfield's position of direct financial assistance to newspapers. When the Minister of State for Multiculturalism introduces legislation in the House, as he says he will before the end of the month, will the Hon. Member have the courage to stand in his place in this House in an area where he has jurisdiction-I do not have jurisdiction in New Brunswick but he has jurisdiction in the federal House-and vote against that dangerous and odious provision?


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, I find it hard to understand why the Hon. Member spoke to the House for about 20 minutes about a Bill that has yet to be tabled in the House. He cannot
speak with any measure of certainty about the contents of a Bill that has not even been drafted. He does not know what its provisions will be nor what those provisions will cover. Consequently, the Hon. Member's speech is purely hypothetical, and there is nothing he can state with any degree of certainty. However, he has revealed to us his tormented soul, his fears and, I assume, his personal problems. He feels persecuted, and thinks the Canadian press is persecuted as well. I think it is all in his mind, Mr. Speaker. In fact, I think the whole situation is rather bizarre, and perhaps I may ask him when he last saw his psychiatrist.


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


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.


Mr. Gaston Gourde (Levis):: Madam Speaker, yesterday, the Members for Beauce, Lotbiniere, Bellechasse and Fron-tenac (Messrs. Lapointe, Dubois, Garant and Corriveau) and myself had a meeting with economic partners from the Quebec south shore and the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Lamontagne), who is responsible for this region.
The meeting, held in Victoriaville, was organized as a follow-up to the meeting held last year in Levis. Twelve briefs were submitted, in which the emphasis was on the disastrous situation in the textile and garment industry, a sector that is being severely affected by imports, for which controls are being sought. A number of economic partners were also concerned about the role of the Federal Business Development Bank and felt that the Bank's role with respect to small- and medium-sized businesses should be redefined.
Three briefs were submitted in which organizations from the Quebec south shore expressed their support for the efforts being made by Scan and Davie to obtain the Canadian Forces frigate contract. There were also lengthy discussions on forest rehabilitation and reforestation. As was the case last year, all briefs will be routed to the decision-making levels of the Canadian Government, and replies will be sent to those who
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came personally to explain their positions and make representations.
Last year, nine out of fourteen cases were dealt with satisfactorily, while the remaining ones are well on their way to being solved. We intend to repeat this experiment next year for the benefit of all individuals living in the ridings represented by the group of Liberal Members from the Quebec south shore.



AGRICULTURE


Mr. Mel Gass (Malpeque):: Madam Speaker, I would like to address a topic of concern which was brought to my attention by the Prince Edward Island Women in Support of Agriculture, regarding farm evaluation. In their annual meeting held on April 13, 1983, the Women in Support of Agriculture passed a resolution which stated:
Whereas farm evaluation has not been revised since 1971, and whereas the rate of inflation, having escalated in the past 12 years, if a farmer sells his farm in 1983 the capital gains tax will be exorbitant, be it resolved that we approach our Members of Parliament and our Members of the Legislative Assembly to request a new evaluation, and by so doing have the capital gains tax lowered.
I support this resolution 100 per cent, Madam Speaker, and feel that capital gains tax should not be assessed to farmers. The policy of the Progressive Conservative Party in the elections of 1979 and 1980 stated that the first $200,000 would not be taxed for capital gains on the sale of a farm.
I join with the P.E.I. Women in Support of Agriculture in urging a new evaluation of farm land, considering how land prices have soared due to inflation since 1971, the last evaluation year. If a farmer sells his land today, his capital gains tax will be exorbitant. I urge that this escalating situation be corrected as the agricultural system is being adversely effected by high property taxes and high capital gains tax. I urge that the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) realize the importance of this issue.



NEW EMPLOYMENT EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM


Mr. Ted Miller (Nanaimo-Alberni):: Madam Speaker, my colleagues have spoken several times before in this House, denouncing the Government's abuse of the NEED Program. Obviously their words were not heeded, because this abuse continues to spread. In a couple of weeks the over-the-side herring sale program will be getting under way in the Bay of Fundy. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans traditionally provides observers on the foreign vessels whose owners are here to buy fish from our fishermen. This year, however, those
observers are not being rehired. Instead these duties will be performed by workers on a NEED grant.
The lion's share of the work done by these observers is troubleshooting any problems which arise between our fishermen and the foreign vessel owners. This kind of work requires a 24-hour a day commitment for extended periods, in unfamiliar and sometimes hostile and unpleasant conditions. Can we really expect the recipients of NEED funds to put up with these kinds of conditions for only $200 per week? It is quite possible that many of them do not know they are getting into. A similar program tried a few months ago with Canadian offshore vessels fell apart after a couple of weeks because many of the participants resigned after they found out what the conditions were like.
The Government is using the NEED Program to replace higher paid skilled workers with lower paid untrained ones. It is becoming a restraint program, not a job-creation program. In this case our fishing industry could suffer seriously.



MINERS' MEMORIAL DAY


Mr. Dave Dingwall (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Madam Speaker, as the sitting Member for Cape Breton-East Richmond, an area proud of its coal mining tradition, we approach Miners' Memorial Day, on Saturday, June 11, 1983, with a sense of pride and a sense of sorrow. On this date we are reminded of the history of coal mining in Cape Breton and of the role coal mining has played in the shaping of our community. Mining on the Island dates back to 1720. Many technological advances have evolved since then. While mining methods have changed over the years, the unique qualities of the miner, which can be best described in one word, courageous, have not.
The struggle of the miner has not been without adversity. We remember the fight to bring in the United Mines Workers of America and the infamous strike of 1909-1910; the six years of protest culminating in the strike of 1925 and the tragic death of William Davis, killed 58 years ago; the Number 12 mine explosion of 1917, and more recently, the explosion in 1979. Over the years there have been triumphs and disasters. At this time we remember the contributions made by all miners and their families, and honour those who lost their lives.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



CROWN CORPORATIONS


Blaine Allen Thacker: Madam Speaker, Crown Corporations were brought into life with the
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noble objective of pursuing the public interest. As instruments of public policy they have played a key role in our nation's development. However, during the last 16 years, we have witnessed unlimited expansion of state owned agencies and ever increasing government involvement in the Canadian economy. This sub-government of state enterprise has resulted in Crown Corporations becoming increasingly less accountable to the people, while their financial operations have continued to grow exponentially. Canadians have been denied the right to scrutinize their operations through this Parliament.
The recently introduced Bill C-158 is a further example of the Liberal attempt to prevent Parliament from exercising its fundamental responsibility. CDIC, a newly established Crown Corporation, is to be granted powers which would allow it to delve into Canadian business and spend the taxpayers' money without adequate control on the part of Parliament. The public interest requires that this House oppose the Liberals' policy of doing indirectly what they cannot do directly.



DISARMAMENT


Mr. Neil Young (Beaches):: Madam Speaker, since mid-April a group of young Canadians has been camping out for peace on Parliament Hill. When they first began their vigil to protest Cruise missile testing in Canada, they encountered tremendous odds from forces beyond anyone's control. They spent nights huddled while freezing rain, driving snow, and hail fell all around them. They did all this without benefit of tents, which they were told they could not erect on the grass of Parliament Hill.
Now, forces beyond their control-but not beyond Parliament's control-have decreed that the Peace Camp be dismantled today at four o'clock. In a hand delivered letter today, the protesters were told to pack up their sign and cart off their information table, ostensibly because there is not enough room for peace protesters and tourists on Parliament Hill.
There are Ministers in this House who sympathize with the protesters outside. And there are Ministers in this House who have the power to reverse the decision of the House of Commons administrator from whom this directive to disband emanates. These protesters do not want to leave the Hill, and I and my colleagues in the New Democratic Party support their right to be here. We believe their protest is a legitimate protest being which is carried out in a non-violent and legitimate fashion. The arguments about the Peace Camp being a threat to security, or an eyesore and nuisance to tourists, do not wash with us. What is happening here is the suppression of the individual's right to freedom of speech-


Madam Speaker:: Order. Order, please. The Hon. Member, of course, is entitled to make a statement at this particular time. However, I must tell him that whatever takes place on the grounds outside the House of Commons does not come under my jurisdiction, nor under that of the administrator.
S.O.	21 HEALTH



LEUKEMIA RESEARCH-NECESSITY FOR FUNDING

Mr. Stanley Hudecki (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Defence):: Madam Speaker, through its grant program the Medical Research Council provides support for research projects in health sciences whether basic, applied, or clinical.
Currently, at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, and at a number of selected centres in Canada, bone marrow transplants are being carried out for leukemia patients. This is a well controlled, collaborative study designed to improve transplant techniques and to evaluate the benefit of transplants in comparison with conservative management. Preliminary results are most promising and encouraging, but it will be another two years before it can be said whether transplants will make a significant breakthrough in the search for a leukemia cure.
This study is seriously jeopardized by the small number of available medical research grants in Canada whether private, provincial, or federal in origin. In the current year 916 projects were submitted to the Medical Research Council. Seven hundred and twenty were considered worthy of funding, but only 92 were given grants due to budget constraints. The award rate was therefore 10 per cent. It had never been below 25 per cent in previous years.
Canada is fortunate in having dedicated, outstanding scientists in the field of medical research. One such medical scientist working on the marrow transplants for a leukemia cure in Toronto has M.D. and Ph.D. degrees with nine years of research experience. He and his kind are deserving of the full support of our Medical Research Council. Funding should not be limited to only 10 per cent of Canada's pool of gifted and trained-


Madam Speaker:: Order.



AGRICULTURE


Mr. Lee Clark (Brandon-Souris):: Madam Speaker, there is a very real crisis in western Canadian agriculture today, due to a number of factors. A combination of rising costs, declining grain prices, disastrously high interest rates, and inadequate Government policies, have forced many farmers to the verge of bankruptcy.
Unfortunately, the Government's energy and transportation policies have added substantially to this problem. While many improvements are needed, two changes can be made immediately. First of all, the farmers' very substantial operating costs can be and should be reduced by abolishing the 9 per cent federal sales tax on farm fuels and fertilizers.

June 9, 1983


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Walter Leland Rutherford (Lee) Clark: Second, the prairie farmer must be guaranteed that his transportation costs never exceed the long term average. During the last quarter century prairie wheat farmers have paid transportation costs which averaged approximately 7 per cent of the initial price, and any safety net which is to be established must never exceed that percentage.
Madam Speaker, I wish to inform all the Members of this House, through you, that western Canadian farmers are very disappointed in the Government's agricultural policies. The proof for that statement lies in the fact that those policies were supported by only 17 per cent of the electorate in the recent by-election in Brandon-Souris.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



WESTERN GRAIN TRANSPORTATION ACT


Gordon Edward Taylor: Madam Speaker, the Right Hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) have stated in the House a number of times that they wanted consensus in the West on changes to the Crow rate policy. The freedom of choice amendment recommended by the Progressive Conservative Party and the Hon. Member for Vegreville (Mr. Mazankowski) in this House is an acceptable framework for agreement.
This amendment has received wide acclaim in western Canada, and at public meetings the vast majority of a crosssection of farmers, almost unanimously, supported the concept. This is understandable, as the freedom of choice option goes right back to basic democratic principles; the people who have to live with the program decide what the program will be. Real democracy! Producers themselves will decide whether their share of the Crow shortfall will go to the railways or to the producers. The producers choosing to take the shortfall themselves will then decide to use the railway or the trucks, or feed their grain to livestock. This freedom of choice will hurt no one but will be a unifying force in Canada. The program will provide the instrument which will permit all industries in the West to reach their real potential, and it will hurt no one in any part of Canada.
I urge the Government to accept this amendment. It will do much to unite Canada. The freedom of choice concept will guarantee the consensus which the Prime Minister and the Minister of Transport said they were seeking.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mr. Charles Mayer (Portage-Marquette):: Madam Speaker, I would like to ask a question of the Minister of Transport relating to the problem of the West Coast grain handling dispute. As the Minister will know, grain exports account for billions of dollars and are very important not only to western Canada but to the whole economy as well. I understand that there has been no negotiation between either labour or management since June 1. I wonder if the Minister can give us an update regarding this very critical situation on the West Coast.


Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Madam Speaker, I might reply on behalf of the Minister of Labour who is still overseas, but who, we all hope, will be back very soon. The situation in relation to the West Coast problem is still that the two Parties must make a decision that they want to arrive at a settlement. We have responded to their telegram, suggesting to them that any attempt to introduce mediation or conciliation must first be preceded by a clear example that they themselves are willing to come to the table and get down to bargaining so that an arrangement or decision can be made in that kind of spirit. There is no point in intervening someone in that particular situation until both parties clearly demonstrate their own willingness to arrive at an agreement.


REQUEST THAT NEGOTIATIONS BE UNDERTAKEN
Charles James Mayer: Madam Speaker, I would point out to the same Minister that the Government has a responsibility in that, in 1974, through the Neil Perry Report it gave parity with longshoremen to the grain workers. As of last year, 1982, there has been a conflict because the Government imposed a six and five package on grain handling companies Therefore the Government has a responsibility in this situation because there is a conflict of Government policies which both parties are trying to work out. Would the Minister reconsider his position so that the Government would become involved, either by appointing a commission or a board to become directly involved, to ensure that some face to face negotiations take place again between labour and management?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, I think we in this House are all deeply concerned that an agreement be reached. No one, in any way, wants to witness the kind of blockage of transportation of our grain which has happened in the past. However, I must say that absolutely no good is being served by members of the Opposition standing up in the House trying to negotiate a settlement across the floor of the House of Commons. The negotiation must take place between the parties to the dispute. That is what collective bargaining is all about.
June 9, 1983


GOVERNMENT RESPONSIBILITY
Charles James Mayer: Madam Speaker,
I point out to the Minister that it is not a question of any good being done by the Opposition. The reason that we are asking the Minister to do something is because the Government is doing no good in this situation.


Mr. Lalonde:: Question.


Charles James Mayer: I would further like to ask the Minister why the Government is so reluctant to become involved because, as I understand it, as of about an hour and a half ago, both parties were willing to sit down and negotiate.


Marc Lalonde: Why don't they?


Charles James Mayer: Both parties would be willing to accept a mediator. As I understand it, this is the first time in 30 years that a Minister of Labour has refused to become involved by either appointing a conciliator or a board. May I ask the Government to reconsider, to become involved, and to show some responsibility in this very important situation?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, the Minister of Labour has always indicated his full willingness to respond to the requirements of the situation, and so has the Government of Canada. If the Hon. Member's reports are, in fact, accurate, that there is now a willingness to move toward the negotiating table, then I am sure the Minister of Labour will be in a position to respond to the request. However, I would say that it is important that the parties to the dispute indicate their willingness, because they are the ones who must ultimately come to the table and make the agreement. Therefore, when we hear from both parties that they are prepared to respond in a constructive and positive way, obviously the Government will be prepared to do likewise.


Charles James Mayer: They are ready to do it now.


CONTINUANCE OF GRAIN SHIPMENTS
Hon. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Madam Speaker, I would like to direct my question to the Minister of Transport since the Acting Minister of Labour does not seem to have a feel for the urgency of the problem at all. I direct it to him in the absence of the Minister. The Minister knows that there was no grain handled last weekend. He also knows that, because of the keenness of competition in the world market, any threat of a shutdown is seriously impeding the market at a very difficult time for western grain farmers. 1 hope the Minister of Transport understands that fact. I want the Minister to tell the House what steps he is taking to ensure that grain will continue to be handled on the West Coast this week, and then throughout the rest of the month.


Hon. Jean-Luc Pepin (Minister of Transport):: Madam Speaker, I can only repeat the spirit of what the Minister of
Presence in Gallery
Employment and Immigration has said. I answered a question yesterday in the same way. There has been an assessment by the Department of Labour that the best way to proceed at this time is to let the parties get together and find their way out of this situation. That is an assessment and a decision made to go that way. I am told, at the same time, that there is not a stoppage in the handling of grain facilities at the ports. Therefore, the position taken by the Government is a conscious one. It is not one which is without reflection. It is one which was arrived at after deep analysis of the situation. I take comfort in the fact that the employees have said that they do not want to strike and the employers have said that they do not want to lock them out. That has all the makings of an agreement.


REQUEST THAT MINISTER INTERVENE
James Aloysius McGrath: Madam Speaker, the Government has a responsibility. It cannot continue to reach for the silver bowl. There was a refusal to handle grain last weekend, there is a possibility of a work to rule and a lock out, all of which is having an impact on the world market, which impact is very serious at the present time. In view of those facts I ask the Minister, who has a direct responsibility here, why he does not go to Vancouver and take his responsibility in his hands and make sure there is no further slowdown in the handling of grain on the West Coast.


Jean-Luc Pepin: Madam Speaker, and when I come back the Member would be the first one to ask why the Minister went to Vancouver and made a mess of it all.


James Aloysius McGrath: Madam Speaker, the Minister is right in a certain sense. If he does go to Vancouver we will hold him accountable when he comes back. But the point is that he has a responsibility to go to Vancouver and make sure there are no more work stoppages and no more slowdowns. That is his responsibility, and he ought to take that responsibility.


Madam Speaker:: Order. I want to remind the Hon. Member for St. John's East that he asked me for an extra supplementary question which I gave him, and he did not ask a question.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY OF ASTRONAUT PAUL WEITZ, COMMANDER OF CHALLENGER SPACE SHUTTLE
Madam Speaker:: 1 have the honour to draw the attention of the House to the distinguished presence in our gallery of Mr. Paul Weitz, Commander of the Space Shuttle, Challenger, on its first mission.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!

June 9, 1983
Oral Questions


ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of the Environment who, I am sure, is aware by now that some 575 gallons of fenitrathrion, Atlox, and Dowanol were dumped into the Restigouche River the night before last. It is enough to spray 4,000 acres. The U.S. label for fenitrathrion states:
This product is toxic to fish, birds and other wildlife. Birds and other wildlife in treated areas may be killed. Avoid direct application to lakes, ponds and streams.
Since fenitrathrion has been found to cause mutations and chromosome aberrations in human cells, and since the salmon fishery in the Restigouche, which is an internationally renowned river, is opening up a week from today, is the Minister planning to encourage his colleague, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, to close that river temporarily to sports fishing?


John (Moody) Roberts: Madam Speaker, we think that this is a serious situation. We are examining it closely. I am not yet able to report to the Hon. Member or the House what action we would recommend.


MONITORING OF WILDLIFE KILLED IN BUDWORM SPRAYING PROGRAM
James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, as the Minister is no doubt aware, this year's budworm spraying program in New Brunswick comes hard on the heels of the facts released by Statistics Canada that the cancer rate in New Brunswick is double that in areas bordering it that are not being sprayed. I am sure he is also aware that the spraying program has been demonstrated to do nothing other than to maintain epidemic proportions of budworms in New Brunswick.
In light of the fact that he released funds earlier this year to test the effects of acid rain on rabbits' eyes, will the Minister inform the House whether he plans to monitor the death rate of birds and other wildlife from the spraying, keeping in mind his international responsibility under the Migratory Birds Convention?


John (Moody) Roberts: Madam Speaker, I will look into the Hon. Member's representations.


REQUEST THAT RIVER STUDY BE INITIATED
Mr. Maurice A. Dionne (Northumberland-Miramichi):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the same Minister. Will he give the House assurances that there will be a thorough analysis of the situation in the Restigouche River and that he will not simply recommend that the sports fishery be closed, which would be pretty devastating economically to those earning a living there, and simply not respond to the hysteria of the Hon. Member from the NDP?


John (Moody) Roberts: Madam Speaker, I can assure the Hon. Member that we will undertake a serious, thorough, and responsible review of this situation. We will not urge or recommend actions which respond to hysteria.
The Members of the House know that the decision to spray or not to spray is one which is in provincial hands. Members also know that, in terms of impact, there are Departments other than Environment Canada that are concerned. I think the responsible course of action is to take these reports seriously and investigate them before coming to any rapid conclusion as to what action, if any, should be taken.


CROWN CORPORATIONS
Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister will know that the Auditor General stated in public today with respect to the Canadair affair:
Bills C-153 on Crown corporations and C-I58 on CDIC legislation do not go far enough to prevent a repetition of this tragic affair.
In view of that clear statement by the Auditor General, will the Prime Minister and the Government withdraw Bill C-153 and Bill C-158 and have those Bills re-engrossed to comply with the requirements of the Auditor General concerning accountability?


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Madam Speaker, on Bill C-153 the Hon. Member will recall that it was the result of us dividing the earlier Bill in a way which accommodated the Opposition. They wanted the Bill to be divided, and we divided it.


Mr. Lewis:: Split.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: We split it.
I have not seen the Auditor General's statements. I am happy to look at them. If he made those statements, it will be one man's opinion.


CANADAIR-AUDITING OF CORPORATION'S ACCOUNTS
Donald Alex Blenkarn: Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister will know that the Auditor General is Parliament's servant. Would the Prime Minister also note, when he reads that statement, that it goes on to say:
What we have here is a costly experiment about which Parliament and the public received little relevant and realistic information.
The Auditor General states that if the accounts had been audited in accordance with the Financial Administration Act, the Government, Parliament, and the public would not have suffered this massive loss as it would have been stopped earlier. In view of that statement will the Prime Minister do something
June 9, 1983

to stop a repetition of these losses? Last year we had Consolidated Computers. This year we have Canadair. What is next?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the debate in Question Period for the past few days has indicated that the Government has taken steps to prevent a repetition of that unfortunate period of time at Canadair. Those are the steps the Government has taken.
With respect to the quotes from the Auditor General, I repeat that I have not seen them. My impression is that in the questions asked there was a point where the quotation marks stopped and where the Hon. Member interpreted in his own way what the Auditor General might or might not have said.


PETRO-CANADA DISMISSAL OF EMPLOYEES
Mr. Howard Crosby (Halifax West):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. It concerns the dismissal of several Petro-Canada employees engaged in East Coast exploration work. There are reports that these employees were dismissed because they either demanded or received favours from Petro-Canada contractors.
We know there has been political interference in Petro-Canada's operations on the East Coast, particularly with reference to supply bases and services. Will the Minister confirm or deny these allegations of improper conduct by Petro-Canada employees, and will he assure the House that he will not tolerate any pay-offs or kick-backs on Petro-Canada contracts?


Hon. Jean Chretien (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Madam Speaker, everyone knows that I do not intervene in the operations of Petro-Canada on a daily basis. It is managed like any other company. If the Hon. Member is aware of some irregularities, it is his duty to give those to me. I will make sure that the employees will serve Petro-Canada in a most honest way, as they must.


Howard Edward Crosby: I will be glad to provide the Minister with the information. There are at least three Petro-Canada employees who were dismissed.


REQUEST THAT MINISTER CONDUCT INVESTIGATION
Howard Edward Crosby: Madam Speaker, I want to know why they were dismissed, because they were involved in important offshore exploration work with several companies, including Wolf Offshore Transport Ltd., which is one of those great Canadian companies whose owner lives in Europe and spends very little in Canada. If the Minister wishes to investigate this, he can ask Mr. Walter Wolf and his friends what is going on, and ask the manager for Petro-Canada
Oral Questions
Explorations what is going on. I hope he will then report to the House.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Madam Speaker, if employees have been dismissed it is because the management has found good reasons for dismissal. If they have done something wrong and have lost their jobs because they have not acted properly, I think the management has done exactly what had to be done.


FORESTRY
Mr. F. Oberle (Prince George-Peace River):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of the Environment and Forestry, who was informed in a question last week about the serious situation with forest fires in British Columbia. This has now reached crisis proportions. Thousands of hectares or acres of prime forest land are being destroyed daily. Could the Minister tell us today to what extent this Department of the federal Ministry is involved in the attack and the fighting of this serious situation in British Columbia? Has he negotiated with the Provinces to determine what aid and weight his office can give to alleviate the situation?


John (Moody) Roberts: Yes, Madam Speaker, I believe the situation is a fluctuating one. There was some indication of improvement last week. The situation may be becoming serious again. The co-ordination of federal and provincial efforts in this area is managed through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre in Winnipeg, which has been in touch with the Government of British Columbia about the situation and which is co-ordinating the organization of resources as they may be needed to confront the problem.


FUNDING OF FOREST FIRE CENTRE AGENCY
Frank Oberle: Madam Speaker, the Canadian Interagency Forest Centre in Winnipeg has a total of about $100,000. Could the Minister tell me how far $100,000 would go to fight such a disaster situation in a Province that depends for 50 per cent of its economy on its forestry resource, and where one major forest company alone will have 25 per cent of its feedstock destroyed before the year is out? Does the Minister feel that is the only effort the federal Government should make in response to such a crisis?


John (Moody) Roberts: Madam Speaker, I would remind the Hon. Member, as he knows but some Members of the House may not, that the role of the agency is to co-ordinate the firefighting fleets and the facilities available in a variety of Provinces, and also to keep in touch with resources which are available in the United States. It is

June 9, 1983
Oral Questions
not the direct expenditure of effort by the Centre itself; it plays a co-ordinating role. The basic backup is the material available in the various provincial fleets.
I find it astounding that the Hon. Member should ask whether we think this effort is sufficient when he also knows that we recently indicated that we are committing virtually $150 million of federal Government funds to upgrade and to improve firefighting capacity across Canada by assisting the Provinces in the purchase, on a matching basis, of the most modern and up to date firefighting planes, a move which his colleague from British Columbia has roundly chastised us for taking. I wish he would talk to her and manage to straighten her out on what is required for adequate fire protection in this country.


WESTERN GRAIN TRANSPORTATION ACT
Blaine Allen Thacker: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. He knows that the Government decision on the Crow has resulted in a cap being put on the export of grain of about 31.1 million tonnes. This will cost the nation about $4 billion to $5 billion by 1990, whereas an investment of $150 million a year to remove that cap would result in the nation being richer by $4 billion or $5 billion. How can the Prime Minister justify the loss of $1.5 billion for Canadair and other Crown Corporations when the Government is not prepared to make this investment that will give a return of ten or 20 times that amount?


Jean-Luc Pepin: Madam Speaker, there is no cap on the export of grain from Canada, none whatsoever. The Bill presently before the House states, however, that there would be a cap on the contribution that the Government of Canada will make to grain transportation. There is a big difference between the two. That was a suggestion made by the Gilson group, and the Government of Canada had accepted that simply as an indication that there is a limitation on the amount of money the federal Government can put into the transportation of grain.
Should the farmers of Canada prefer not to have the cap, that is a suggestion I am quite willing to receive, but only inasmuch as it would be understood that this would not affect the total amount of the contribution of the federal Government.
In specific answer to the question, the fact is completely different from the implication. It is estimated that the amounts of grain exported by Canada will move from 31 million tonnes to 42 million tonnes by the end of the decade.


Blaine Allen Thacker: Madam Speaker, the farmers are paying 10 per cent of the price up to 31 million tonnes. If they pay 100 per cent beyond that, that is an effective cap.


GILSON REPORT RECOMMENDATION
Blaine Allen Thacker: Madam Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Minister of Transport. If the Government were prepared to accept the Gilson compromise with respect to the cap, why has it not accepted the Gilson compromise with respect to paying 81 per cent to the producers and 19 per cent to the railways?


Jean-Luc Pepin: Madam Speaker, the fact is that when Gilson produced his report he had a number of supporters; there is no doubt about that. But a great number of groups of farmers and producers of livestock and others disagreed with this or that aspect of the Gilson report. Since then we have been trying to put together a package that would be acceptable to the greatest number of people. As it is not possible to have everybody agreeing with every part of it, the poor Minister of Transport has been begging people kindly to settle for 65 per cent or 75 per cent of their interest and their points of view on the subject. Hopefully, he will get that soon.


NATIONAL REVENUE
Melbourne Alexander Gass: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue. It concerns the valuation date for farm land and other properties, dating back to 1971. Has the Minister or his Department any plans to raise the value of farm properties, or to eliminate the clause which makes it necessary for farmers to pay capital gains on cash for farm sales?


Hon. Pierre Bussieres (Minister of National Revenue):: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member's proposal would require an amendment to the Income Tax Act, which would be in the nature of a change in the tax system and, therefore, the responsibility of the Minister of Finance. I can, however, advise the Minister of Finance of the representations made by the Hon. Member with respect to a change in the Income Tax Act in this area.


HUMAN RIGHTS
Ms. Lynn McDonald (Broadview-Greenwood):: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Justice. He indicated recently that the Government was considering compensation for Canadians of Japanese ancestry who lost their homes in World War II and were placed in internment
June 9, 1983

camps. Would the Minister tell the House what progress is being made on this matter and what process has been set up to establish what kinds of compensation should be paid?


Hon. Mark MacGuigan (Minister of Justice):: Madam Speaker, this matter is indeed under some consideration by Government. It is far from being ripe at the present time. I understand the Japanese Canadians are holding a conference in the Fall at which they will discuss what their own position might be. Of course I should remind the Hon. Member and the House that there was a Royal Commission which was appointed and which reported in 1950, according to which Japanese Canadians were compensated to a great extent for the losses which they suffered.


Lynn McDonald: Madam Speaker, certainly members of my Party would welcome compensation being worked on at the present time, and I am sure other Hon. Members would welcome it too.


FORM OF COMPENSATION
Lynn McDonald: Madam Speaker, my second question is for the Minister of Justice. Would he be a little more explicit on how consultations might be carried out and what the role of Parliament would be in determining the amount of compensation, and the form of compensation?


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, I think it would be rather unusual for Parliament to be involved in the amount of compensation. Perhaps with respect to the form of compensation, this is a matter about which, at the appropriate time, the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs would want to give some advice to the Minister. I think we are a long way from having the issues before us in sufficiently concrete form to enable us to face these questions precisely.


INVESTMENT IN QUEBEC-INQUIRY RESPECTING PORT OF CHURCHILL
Douglas Charles Neil: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. In today's mail I received an information bulletin from the Minister indicating a $14.5 million investment in an elevator operated by Bunge of Canada Limited, at the Port of Quebec. When will the Minister be making an announcement with respect to spending some money on the Port of Churchill?


Jean-Luc Pepin: Madam Speaker, this must be an investment by the Port of Quebec on the grain facility. It is not an investment of the Department of Transport.
Oral Questions EXPORTS OF GRAIN


Douglas Charles Neil: Madam Speaker, the information came from the Minister of Transport's office indicating a Government of Canada investment of $14.5 million.


Mr. Munro (Esquimalt-Saanich):: Oh, he doesn't know about it.


Douglas Charles Neil: The Minister is aware of the fact that you can ship grain much more cheaply through the Port of Churchill than you can through Quebec or the Great Lakes system. When is the Minister going to do some work in the Port of Churchill and start directing the export of grain through that port?


Jean-Luc Pepin: Madam Speaker, I think I am right in suggesting that the investment in the Port of Quebec is an investment by the Port of Quebec, which is part of Ports Canada.
On the subject of Churchill, my hon. friend is wrong in intimating that no money has been spent on that port. To the contrary, millions of dollars have been spent both on the Port of Churchill and on making adequate the rail that leads to Churchill. Each time we talk about Churchill, the question arises: what is the Canadian Wheat Board willing to do on behalf of Canadian farmers for the Port of Churchill? Is it willing to commit itself to certain minimum quantities on an annual basis for that port? Each time the Canadian Wheat Board, on behalf of Canadian farmers, says no, that there are some limitations to what price it can charge Canadian farmers for the use of that port. Consequently, in recent years 500,000 tonnes to 600,000 tonnes have been shipped from Churchill, but it is estimated by most people that, contrary to the opinion expressed just now by my hon. friend, there is an added cost to ship through Churchill.


FOOD AND DRUGS
Mr. Geoff Scott (Hamilton-Wentworth):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Health and Welfare. I have given her office notice of it. In light of the recent occurrences of tampering with bottles of laxative in the Ottawa area, known as the Metamucil scare, could the Minister give us a progress report on proposed regulations for the security of non-prescription drugs? Can she also give us an update on whether the Metamucil scare is just an isolated incident or whether it has moved to other parts of the country outside the Ottawa area?


Hon. Monique Begin (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Madam Speaker, starting with the latter part of the question, from all investigations conducted by the police and by my departmental officials, we are confident that these

June 9, 1983
Oral Questions
incidents are localized. Unfortunately it happened here, but at least there is no sign of any other such problems in Canada. Of course they had to do with deliberate acts of tampering. We are continuing the investigation, by the way.
I want to add on the general problem of drug security packaging that, after extensive consultations with the pharmaceutical industry and other interested parties, we will be promulgating regulations under the Food and Drugs Act to provide consumers with additional protection. These new regulations will be effective as of the next-I am speaking Chinese, I am sorry; I am speaking like Crosbie right now-



what I mean is, the 1st of January 1984!


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: I am not going to touch that one with a 3.584 metre barge pole, Madam Speaker.


APPLICATION OF PROPOSED REGULATIONS
Geoffrey Douglas Scott: Madam Speaker, could the Minister say whether these regulations will be voluntary on the part of manufacturers, or mandatory? Will they be legislated, as she said, in 1984, to make security precautions mandatory for non-prescription drugs?


Monique Bégin: Madam Speaker, I will have to countercheck, but my understanding is that they will be mandatory. The way the Hon. Member asks his question creates doubt in my mind, so I will come back to him and to the House with a reconfirmation of it. I forgot to say that as part of the new regulations the labelling will have to indicate whether or not the drugs have been opened prior to being sold.


POLITICAL PARTIES
Mr. Benno Friesen (Surrey-White Rock-North Delta):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Supply and Services. It is clearly visible that the Minister and Hon. Members on the Government benches are wearing buttons with the Prime Minister's name on them.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Benno Friesen: It is not so clearly visible that they are written with very easily erasable crayola.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Benno Friesen: Since Marshall McLuhan has said that the medium is the message, I wonder whether the Minister of Supply and Services and other Government members are trying to convey a subtle message to the Prime Minister, or
have they finally agreed that, whereas one can lead a Liberal to a water hole, one cannot make him drink?


Hon.   J.-J. Blais@Minister of Supply and Services: Madam Speaker, I can tell the hon. gentleman that on this side of the House we are very pleased to wear this particular button. There has been no hesitation at all in wearing the buttons, and we can see that the Hon. Member has no difficulty reading what they say.


Madam Speaker:: We are away out in left field as far as that question and answer are concerned. The Hon. Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe.


Henry Perrin Beatty: The whole Government is away out in left field.


THE PRESS
Henry Perrin Beatty: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to one of the Government leftfielders, the Minister of State for Multiculturalism, who has been waging a one-man war on Canada's newspaper industry.


An Hon. Member:: You are away out in left field.


Henry Perrin Beatty: If the Minister's colleague will let me finish, in view of the fact that within the past two weeks the Minister was reported to have made another speech in which he said that he would be tabling legislation in the House before the end of the month to regulate the newspaper industry, will he tell the House whether he has asked for and received a legal opinion on the constitutionality of what he is doing? If so, will he table that opinion in the House of Commons at the same time the Bill is introduced?


Hon. Jim Fleming (Minister of State (Multiculturalism)):: Madam Speaker, I have not said nor read anywhere where I was reported to have said that I would table the Bill in the House. I said that I hoped to have drafted legislation ready by the end of this month. 1 still have that hope. Although I might not make that deadline, I hope I will.
As to constitutionality, the advice of the Department of Justice, which I take as a Minister, is that our proposal will be quite within constitutional parameters.


LEGAL OPINION
Henry Perrin Beatty: Madam Speaker, could the Minister tell us whether he read the article in The Gazette of Montreal on Tuesday, May 31, which indicated that the Minister hoped to table legislation affecting the ownership and accountability of daily newspapers, by the end of June? In view of the fact that he says he is confident about the constitutionality of his proposals, how does he square
June 9, 1983

that with his "For Ministers' Eyes Only" memorandum of March 31, 1982, which dealt with the legislation as it deals with conglomerates, and said, "even this review process may be struck down by courts". On what legal opinion was this statement made, if he says that he has a legal opinion saying that everything he is doing is perfectly legal?


James Sydney Clark Fleming: Madam Speaker, I do not have before me nor did I have any notice of the particular document, if it is a Government document. All I know is that a Royal Commission found that there was a great danger to freedom of the press if there was increased concentration of ownership in the daily newspaper business, that every major and minor daily newspaper owner in the country agrees there does come a point when there can be too much concentration, and that the Government has produced a number of proposals and is now putting them in legislative form according to what we believe is correct within the law.
As far as The Gazette of Montreal is concerned, I am simply saying that I have not told The Gazette or anybody else that 1 would table legislation by the end of the month. I said that I hoped to have a draft ready.


ATOMIC ENERGY CONTROL BOARD
Mr. Dan Heap (Spadina):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources who has responsibility for appointments to the Atomic Energy Control Board. The Minister knows that Roy Olsen, a member since 1975, was reappointed as of February 19, 1983. The Minister should also know that Mr. Olsen is President of Phillip Cables Limited, which held contracts during the past three years for the Pickering and Darlington nuclear generating stations in the amount of nearly $1.5 million. Does the Minister not consider that Mr. Olsen has a conflict of interest in administering the Control Board that awards licences to Ontario Hydro for these projects from which he profits as a supplier?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member makes a kind of affirmation about conflict of interest on which I will certainly check and report to the House. I do not know the particulars.


INQUIRY RESPECTING DIRECTOR
Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Madam Speaker, since the Minister seems to be unaware of Mr. Olsen whom he appointed, will he also check the fact that Mr. Olsen is chairman of the Electrical and Electronics Manufacturers' Association and chairman of a joint industry task force which is lobbying to have the Ontario Government convert all its buildings to
Oral Questions
electrical heating and otherwise puff up the use of electrical power by another 4,000 megawatts more than Darlington will supply?
I would like to know whether the Minister insists that Mr. Olsen, who has been called Canada's top nuclear reactor salesman, is a person without conflict of interest, fit to administer the pursuit of private profit that endangers Canadian lives and health and the Canadian environment. Does he regard him as a fit and unbiased person?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Madam Speaker, the first question and the second question are of the same nature. I will check into the matter.


CUSTOMS AND EXCISE
Mr. Fred McCain (Carleton-Charlotte):: Madam Speaker, I would like to address a question to the Minister of National Revenue, of which I have given him notice. Have any students been hired in the customs service at the border points in Carleton-Charlotte for summer employment?
[ Translation]


Pierre Bussières: Yes, Madam Speaker, students have been hired for the summer in this area. If I remember correctly, 16 students were hired for the summer.


STUDENTS' PROXIMITY TO WORK
Fred Alward McCain: Madam Speaker, in order to extend to students the maximum benefit of their earnings, it has been customary for the Government to hire them within their residential range of the positions which may be vacant. How many of those students who have been hired are residing 15 miles beyond their point of work, which is about the limit of a student's capability to commute?


Pierre Bussières: Madam Speaker, 10 of the 16 students who were hired live within a radius of 15 miles from their place of work.


PARLIAMENT
Mr. Girve Fretz (Erie):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Government House Leader. He will recall that earlier this

June 9, 1983
Oral Questions
week I raised the question of electoral reforms in the House. According to reports, the Government House Leader stated that the appointment of a committee to study such reforms has been shelved until at least the next session of Parliament. This leads us to believe that the Government does indeed have plans to proceed with electoral reforms in the House of Commons in the not too distant future. This seems to contradict the Prime Minister's statement this week to the effect that the Government has no plans to proceed in that direction. My question then is, who speaks for Government policy in that area, the Government House Leader or the Prime Minister?


Hon. Yvon Pinard (President of the Privy Council):: Madam Speaker, I am not aware of the statement or passage to which the Hon. Member is referring.


REQUEST THAT PRIME MINISTER CONSULT OPPOSITION LEADERS
Claude Girvin (Girve) Fretz: Madam Speaker, I wish to direct a supplementary question to the Prime Minister with regard to electoral reform, a question which I posed to him earlier this week. He will recall that the three Party leaders have failed to come to an agreement. That was his statement. Will he promise this House that he will not proceed with any action to implement such a policy without consultation with the Leaders of the Opposition Parties?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, if the Hon. Member is asking me about the policy that we attempted to have accepted shortly after the last election, the answer is yes. The acceptance of that policy by the Government was predicated on the acceptance by the three Party leaders. I think I told the Hon. Member that the other day. As far as I am concerned, that is a dead issue.


NATIONAL REVENUE
Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Madam Speaker, I would like to direct a question to the Minister of National Revenue. A few months ago officials of Revenue Canada moved in and seized the funds of Carousel Players, a children's theatre company based in St. Catharines, Ontario, which has been entertaining children for many years. These funds were seized on the pretext that the theatre company had failed to make remittances for UIC and Canada Pension Plan contributions. The Minister must know that virtually all theatre groups in Canada operate on the basis that actors are considered selfemployed. They are very seldom employed. Will the Minister clarify his Department's position on this matter? With this action, is the federal policy being changed with respect to
Canadian artists? If this is the case, what other Government Departments or agencies have been consulted in this area?
[ Translation]


Pierre Bussières: Madam Speaker, for several years, the Department of National Revenue has been examining the insurability and nature of the employment of the persons in question. After a thorough study, it was determined, according to the customary criteria used by the Department, that their employment was insurable under the provisions of the Unemployment Insurance Act and the Canada Pension Plan Act. In the circumstances, the Department has no alternative but to request that both employee and employer pay their share of the unemployment insurance and Canada Pension Plan premiums. This was done, without prejudice to employees, employers or the work they are doing, and in accordance with the legislation now in effect.


EFFECT ON PERFORMING ARTS GROUPS
David Orlikow: Madam Speaker, can the Minister tell us whether it is the intention of the Department to move on other theatre groups across the country and do to them what was done to the Carousel group? Does the Minister realize that the arts community is very concerned about the effect this kind of policy will have on the work which these theatre groups do? I ask this because many of these people are employed sporadically and temporarily.


Pierre Bussières: Madam Speaker, what the Hon. Member just said merely confirms that a thorough study of each specific case must be made before the Department can decide as to the insurability or non-insurability of employment. The Department looks at the employee's status vis-a-vis his employer and also considers whether or not his employment is permanent, and a final decision is made on the basis of these criteria. It does not mean that a decision made in this particular situation will necessarily apply to other cases. I am merely pointing out that a thorough study is made of the case before a final conclusion is reached.


LABOUR RELATIONS
William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: Madam Speaker, I would like to direct my question to the Acting Minister of Labour. As the Minister is well aware, Mr. Bill Kelly, the Assistant Deputy Minister, has been in Vancouver where he is monitoring the progress, or lack of progress, between the grain handlers and the elevator operators on the West Coast. Can the minister inform the House on the report Mr. Kelly has given to him on the situation as he now sees it?
June 9, 1983


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, we in this House all know what a distinguished record Mr. Kelly has had over the past years in working on labour-management matters. The House will be pleased to know that at this time the best advice received from Mr. Kelly and the Department is that we must first determine very carefully the inclination or willingness of the partners to this dispute to give signs of coming together to find an agreement that will not only suit their economic interest but also be in the public interest. Mr. Kelly, who is certainly one of the best people we have on that situation, is monitoring it on a daily basis, which should give some comfort and support to the Hon. Member.


DRILLING OPERATIONS-SERVICE SECTOR DIFFICULTIES
Donald Frank Mazankowski: Madam Speaker, I would like to direct a question to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. The Minister will be aware that this week there have been several representatives of the energy supply and service sector in Ottawa making representations to Members of Parliament, and indeed to Government, on the very serious difficulties that are being faced by that sector as a result of the slowdown in drilling activity in these sedimentary basin. Less than 30 per cent of the drilling fleet is working. That has a direct impact upon the service and supply sector. What words of encouragement and hope has the Minister given this very important sector, or is he going to allow this multi-billion industry to collapse like a punctured balloon?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Madam Speaker, the message of hope that I can give to them is that for 1983 it is forecast that the cash flow in the industry will increase by about 8 per cent or 9 per cent while the same industry in the United States will see a negative cash flow in 1983. The fact that we have been able to increase the price of a barrel of oil by $4 as of January 1 substantially improved the position of that industry in relation to the situation south of the border. As you know, some of the people who were very keen to go to the United States some years ago, have come back to Canada. For instance, Total Petroleum have indicated that they are now very happy that they were not able to sell their Canadian assets two years ago. They kept those assets, and the Canadian sector of the company is the only one in which there was a profit made this year.
Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act


PETITIONS
Madam Speaker:: I have the honour to inform the House that the petitions presented by Hon. Members on Wednesday, June 8, 1983 meet the requirements of the Standing Orders as to form.



ELECTORAL BOUNDARIES READJUSTMENT ACT


Madam Speaker:: It is my duty to inform the House that an objection signed by the Hon. Members for Prince Albert (Mr. Hovdebo), The Battlefords-Meadow Lake (Mr. Anguish), Humboldt-Lake Centre (Mr. Althouse), Saskatoon East (Mr. Ogle), Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom), Dauphin-Swan River (Mr. Lewycky), Kootenay East-Revelstoke (Mr. Parker), Spadina (Mr. Heap), Winnipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie) and Winnipeg North (Mr. Orlikow) has been filed with me pursuant to Section 20 of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act Act, Chapter E-2, RSC 1970, to the report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission for the Province of Saskatchewan.
If the House agrees, I would suggest we follow past practice and print the text of the objection as an appendix to this day's Votes and Proceedings. Is that agreed?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



FILING OF OBJECTION TO REPORT OF COMMISSION FOR THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC

['Madam Speaker, we are not in the hands of the Tory caucus on this issue. We follow the rules. The Special Committee on Parliamentary Reform proposed, and it was accepted unanimously, that the motion to extend the hours, if there is no agreement, must be moved on the tenth sitting day before June 30 this year. The Committee knew that. It so happens that the tenth sitting day before June 30 is a Wednesday. I hope that the Tories will agree to that, but failing that agreement, we will certainly not be dictated to by what the Tory caucus decides.']
Madam Speaker:: It is my duty to inform the House that the objection signed by the Hon. Members for Lachine (Mr. Blaker), Blainville-Deux-Montagnes (Mr. Fox), Welland (Mr. Parent), Elington-Lawrence (Mr. de Corneille), York-East (Mr. Collenette), Essex-Kent (Mr. Daudlin), Sarnia-Lambton (Mr. Cullen) and St. Paul's (Mr. Roberts) has been filed with me pursuant to Section 20 of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, Chapter E-2, Revised Statutes of Canada, 1970, to the report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission for the Province of Quebec.
If the House agrees, I suggest we follow past practice and print the text of the objection as an appendix to this day's Votes and Proceedings. Is that agreed?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Madam Speaker:: Agreed.

June 9, 1983
Business of the House



Philip Derek Lewis: Madam Speaker, this being Thursday, I would like to ask the Government House Leader if he can give the House some idea as to the business of the House for next week.


Yvon Pinard: Yes, Madam Speaker, but first I would like to seek unanimous consent that the House does not sit tomorrow.


Madam Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent not to sit tomorrow?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Madam Speaker:: It is agreed and so ordered.
[ Translation]


Yvon Pinard: As far as the business of the House for next week is concerned, Madam Speaker, on Monday, we shall consider the third reading stage of Bill C-85 to establish Canagrex, a corporation to facilitate the export of agricultural products. I would like to designate Tuesday as an Opposition day. Since it will be the last Opposition day in the present supply period, votes will be taken at the end of the day. Wednesday is usually set aside for Private Members' Business, according to the Standing Orders, but I wish to advise the House that I shall seek the Chair's permission to move a motion to extend the hours of sitting until the end of June, as, provided in our new Standing Orders, since we now have a parliamentary calendar, and in order to be able to finish Government business, to get as much work done as possible, we are entitled to extend sitting hours during the last two weeks of June. We therefore intend to move a motion to this end on Wednesday. If the motion is challenged, the Standing Orders provide, as Hon. Members are aware, a debate of two hours followed by a vote, if necessary. Finally, next week Thursday we shall resume debate on second reading of Bill C-155, an Act to facilitate the transportation, shipping and handling of Western grain.


Philip Derek Lewis: Madam Speaker, that is satisfactory to us. However, at this time, Madam Speaker, I would like to go on record as expressing our displeasure that the last allotted day would be in the middle of the month rather than in the last week of the month. As well, I would like to express displeasure on behalf of all Private Members in the Conservative Party that the Government intends to take the time of Private Members on Wednesday to debate the motion to extend hours. It seems to us, Madam Speaker, that this is the type of motion that should be debated on a Government business day since it is Government business that we would be dealing with.


Yvon Pinard: Madam Speaker, on the latter point raised by the Hon. Member, I have no other choice under the new Standing Orders but to move that motion next Wednesday. I refer my hon. colleague to Standing Order 9, which indicated that this kind of motion must be moved on the tenth sitting day
before June 30. The tenth sitting day before June 30 is June 15, which is next Wednesday.
There is a possibility that we could come to an agreement. As I have indicated to him earlier, I intend to talk to my colleague about those extended hours, and if we were to come to an agreement with the NDP and with the Progressive Conservative Party, it may be that it will not be necessary to debate the motion and it would be passed by House Order without debate. Failing to come to such an agreement, we intend to follow the rules and have no other choice but to move the motion on the tenth day preceding June 30, as is stated very clearly in the Standing Orders.
On the first point made by the Hon. Member, the fact that the last allotted day this year would be in mid-June was well known by my colleague. I told him in advance that we are experimenting with parliamentary reform and that after June 15 we will have long sitting days. During this period of supply beginning after Easter, we have given the Opposition 12 allotted days so far. That is a lot of time that has been used by the Opposition. I think it is very reasonable that the last allotted day is to be before days with extended sitting hours. Even though we are acting under the new parliamentary reform, I would like to tell my colleague that in the past when hours were not extended it often happened that the last allotted day was somewhere around June 17, 18 or 19. This is nothing new; it is perfectly normal under the rules. It is our prerogative, and we officially designate next Tuesday as an Opposition Day.


Raymond John Skelly: Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the Government House Leader a question that has to do with House business. My question deals with a theme that I have raised previously. I request the Government House Leader to give the House some information as to when the Government will present to the House legislation that will give effect to the policy that was brought forward on shipbuilding.
The second aspect of my question related to that theme is that there is a great deal of concern about the allocation of the frigate program and there is a movement to ask that the Government report to the House of Commons on the feasibility of spreading the construction of these six frigates across the country on a regional basis; two in the West, two in central Canada and two in eastern Canada. I was wondering if the Government House Leader could tell us if Canadians and the House will have a chance to examine, before we sit in the fall, the legislation that will give effect to the shipbuilding policy, and will the Government be reporting to the House prior to adjournment and prior to the decision on the frigate program on the feasibility of spreading across the nation on a regional basis the construction of those frigates?


Yvon Pinard: Madam Speaker, I will be glad to bring the matter to the attention of the Minister responsible. I am not in a position to make any commitment as to what will be done or
June 9, 1983

what will not be done before the date of adjournment because we do not know what the date of adjournment will be.


Raymond John Skelly: Madam Speaker, I would like to say that it would certainly be sufficient if the Government House Leader could consult and attempt to provide the House and the country with that kind of information prior to sitting. That would then provide us with an opportunity to respond in a possibly very effective and quick way in the fall should those programs be suitable.


Philip Derek Lewis: Madam Speaker, at our caucus meeting on Wednesday of next week we will be discussing whether or not our Party might grant unanimous consent to bring that motion forward on the Thursday rather than on the Wednesday in order that the time allotted for Private Members' Business will not be infringed upon. I will communicate that to the Government House Leader at a later time.


Yvon Pinard: Madam Speaker, we are not in the hands of the Tory caucus on this issue. We follow the rules. The Special Committee on Parliamentary Reform proposed, and it was accepted unanimously, that the motion to extend the hours, if there is no agreement, must be moved on the tenth sitting day before June 30 this year. The Committee knew that. It so happens that the tenth sitting day before June 30 is a Wednesday. I hope that the Tories will agree to that, but failing that agreement, we will certainly not be dictated to by what the Tory caucus decides.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Claude Tessier (Megantic-Compton-Stanstead):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour of tabling, in both official languages, the eighth report of the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates.
[Editor's Note: For text of above report, see today's Votes and Proceedings.]


PETITIONS
Gordon Edward Taylor: Madam Speaker, I have great pleasure in presenting another petition containing some
Order Paper Questions
425 names of Canadians who are asking the House of Commons and the Government to hear their plea for the execution of Clifford Robert Olson, who planned the murder of 11 young people and now brags that he killed many others.
Women and children and young people will not be safe if Mr. Olson is ever released from prison to roam the streets looking for more victims.


Raymond John Skelly: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present today a petition from many residents of Manitoba asking that the Government implement a marine industrial strategy that would provide thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in industrial and economic activities for Canadians.
It is also hoped that the Government will be able to produce legislation to give effect to its policy on shipbuilding and to ensure that, in the development of the frigate program, there will be a distribution of benefits across the nation on a regional basis.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Douglas Glenn Fisher: Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 4,837 and 4,869.


Mr. Howie: To the date on which this question is answered, what is the status of the Maritime Forestry Complex which is to be built at Fredericton, New Brunswick?


John (Moody) Roberts: The
federal Government has confirmed its participation in the construction of the Maritimes Forestry Complex as part of its Forest Sector Strategy for Canada, under the Special Capital Recovery Projects Program. As announced on May 18 by the Hon. John Roberts, Minister of Environment Canada and the Hon. Romeo LeBlanc, Minister of Public Works, the Government will construct new facilities for the Maritimes Forest Research Centre of the Canadian Forestry Service. These facilities, estimated to cost $22 million, will be part of the Complex which will also include the New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources, the University of New Brunswick Forestry Research Group and the Maritimes Forest Ranger School.

June 9, 1983
Order Paper Questions CLOSED CAPTIONED PROGRAMS


Mr. Beatty: 1.	What is the policy of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission concerning the desire of cable companies to decode closed-captioned American programs instead of being forced to substitute Canadian signals that are not closed-captioned for the hearing impaired?
2.	Have efforts been made by the CRTC to encourage broadcasters to (a) produce Canadian close-captioned programming (b) purchase closed-captioned versions of foreign programs and, if so, what were such efforts?


Hon. Francis Fox (Minister of Communications):: I am
informed by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission as follows:
1.	The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission requires cable licensees that have 6,000 or more subscribers to substitute for local or regional signals when requested by the local or regional broadcaster under the provision of section 19 of the Cable Television Regulations.
Two cable licensees now have authority to decode closed-captioned programming. The Commission is currently reviewing an amendment that would allow these and other cable licensees to apply for specific exemptions to the requirement to perform program substitution when lower priority signals are captioned. The Commission hopes to announce its decision on these measures in the near future.
2.	This Commission has always taken the position that it is the broadcaster's responsibility to determine how they will spend their resources to serve its minority constituents. Broadcasters who are before the Commission for various reasons may be questioned on their programming efforts. Questions concerning service often arise and as part of that discussion, the subject of captioning may be raised. The subject may be raised by the Commission itself or it could be raised as part of an intervention from any interested member of the public.
The Chairman of the Commission has written each independent television broadcaster and cable company on services and programs for the disabled pointing out how important service to the hearing impaired is and, at the same time, soliciting their comments.
This subject has also been raised with some of the pay television licensees.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Madam Speaker, I ask 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. Mazankowski:
That this House rejects the centralizing and interventionist policies of the Government as an ideological thrust aimed at introducing socialization of the Canadian economy by the back door and without the authorization of Parliament, and a definite and present threat to the freedom of Canadians.
Madam Speaker:: The Hon. Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan).


Henry Perrin Beatty: Madam Speaker


Madam Speaker:: I recognized the Hon. Minister of Agriculture. He got up first and I recognized him. Will the Minister defer for five minutes and we will allow the Hon. Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Beatty) to answer questions?


Mr. Whelan:: Yes, Madam Speaker.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I wish to thank the Minister of Agriculture for his courtesy. You were not in the chair, Madam Speaker, when proceedings ended at one o'clock. We ended with the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Mr. Ouellet) believing that I would not have a chance to respond to his question. He made a comment the same as one that previously landed him with a contempt of court citation, but he made that at another time.
He asked one genuine question, however. He wanted to know how I could discuss legislation for the newspaper industry which has been proposed by the Minister of State for Multiculturalism (Mr. Fleming) when the Bill has not been introduced. If the Minister had read the document entitled "Government Proposals on Freedom of the Press in relation to the Canadian Daily Newspaper Industry", which is the text of the speech given by the Minister of State for Multiculturalism on May 25, 1982, at the University of Western Ontario, he would have found that the Minister outlined all the government's proposals at that time and referred to them as Cabinet decisions. If the Minister has any doubts about any of the assertions I made about the intention of the Government, he should query his colleague who published this document.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I should like to address some comments on questions to the previous speaker on the subject of the Kent Commission and the Government's response through legislation and policy.
The first thing to do is acknowledge that the Government program is not at an acceptable level. This morning my colleague, the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie), outlined the kind of intellectual bankruptcy and basic dishonesty of the approach of the Conservative Party. The
June 9, 1983

Hon. Member who just spoke did not outline what the Conservative Party would be prepared to do to face the problems of the industry. He stated no policy and no position, but just said that there are too many problems and that that is the fault of the Liberals.
I should like to ask the Hon. Member what the Conservative Party would do about corporate concentration in the newspaper and media sector. What would it be prepared to do about a small number of people controlling a large number of media outlets and controlling retail outlets that depend on those for media advertising, squeezing out other competitors and destroying a competitive system?
What is that Party prepared to do about cross-media ownership? It is fine for the Conservative Party to stand in the House and condemn the Government, but it does a tremendous disservice to the people of Canada by failing to put forward constructive alternatives.
I challenge the previous speaker to put up some alternatives by which the Canadian people would judge his Party, or at least admit that his Party is prepared to see concentration continue to the detriment of consumers and to other small businesses in Canada. What is that Party prepared to do to ensure there is a diversity of titles?


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to receive the challenge and to be able to respond to it. The first assertion made by the Hon. Member was to the effect that companies which had retail outlets were squeezing out retail competitors. I would ask the Hon. Member to supply justification for that statement. I think he will not be able to do so. Hon. Members would be interested if he could.
He asked about the issue of cross-media ownership. If he had followed the proceedings of the CRTC over the years, he would have known that the CRTC has always had the right and has always insisted upon the right, to question cross-media ownership. There is nothing new in these proposals that goes beyond what the CRTC was able to do before.
Finally, the Hon. Member asked what sort of positive proposals this Party has. I have made a number of proposals, including some for changes in the tax laws. An example is the case of the Blackburn holdings in London. The London Free Press is owned by a family operation. As the tax laws stand, if Mr. Blackburn were to die, his family might be forced to sell the newspaper to a chain or some other buyer and be forced to divest themselves of those holdings. This could lead to greater corporate concentration.
My criticism of the Government's proposals and of the NDP "me too" approach is that they are strictly interested in regulating a dwindling number of dailies. They have not proposed anything that would improve the climate in which newspapers would operate. For example, they do not propose changes to the tax legislation to encourage advertising, which is the lifeblood of Canada's daily newspaper industry. Second, the great issue that we should be concerned about is diversity in the media. We are concerned about the ability of Canadians
Supply
to draw their opinions from a number of different sources. The best way to ensure that is to ensure diversity.
The position taken by the NDP and the Liberal Government over the years, particularly as it relates to the electronic media, has been to draw an electronic curtain along the 49th parallel and say that we should restrict competition rather than encourage it. They cannot have it both ways, Mr. Speaker.
I say that competition should be encouraged both in the electronic media and in the print media. Canadians would be far better served by that than they would by a restrictive regime that regulates a dwindling number of dailies and ensures that friends of the Government are able to pass judgment on what working journalists have said and done.


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, I enter this debate today because of the things that people say, and some people may even believe what they say. The motion reads as follows:
That this House rejects the centralizing and interventionist policies of the Government as an ideological thrust aimed at introducing socialization of the Canadian economy by the back door and without the authorization of Parliament, and a definite and present threat to the freedom of Canadians.
Crown corporations have been a way of life in Canada for many years. To suggest at this time that they are socializing our country is plain nonsense, nothing more than nonsense. Let us look at Canada. Owing to the size of this country, with its very small population and diverse regions, Canada is faced with problems that smaller or more compact countries do not have to deal with. It became obvious early in Canada's history that some services that Canadians required could not be provided equitably by private enterprise. If we relied on profitmaking private business to meet all the needs of Canadians, there would be a lot of well-off people living in the Quebec-Windsor corridor and a few people scattered in pockets around the rest of the country.
With respect to the Crowsnest Pass freight rate, which Hon. Members opposite are so determined to keep us from changing, it was interesting to read in the press yesterday what the candidates for the leadership of that Party are saying about the Crowsnest Pass freight rate. I believe every one of them has said it has to be changed. I believe one of them is quoted as saying that it should be scrapped completely. I do not know what will happen to him in the leadership contest. The former Leader of that Party says he does not know enough about it to make a comment. At least, that is what he was reported in the press as saying. That sounds kind of strange to me.
That Party opposite is determined, Mr. Speaker, to keep us from changing the Crow rate. It must be changed because of our very recognition that it is not fair to ask farmers on the Prairies to carry the full cost of transporting their grain to export markets when the beneficiary of that trade is the entire population of Canada. Governments over the years have recognized their responsibility was to unite Canadians. One of the best ways to do that is to provide real opportunity for all. If

June 9, 1983
Supply
private industry could not, or would not, then it was the legitimate role of government to step in. Crown corporations were the vehicles which were used. I do not believe any one of those Crown corporations even intentionally abused that power.
If Crown corporations are socializing Canada, then it is a process which has had the full blessing of the Progressive Conservative Party. The first and some of the biggest Crown corporations formed in this country were instituted by Conservative Tory Governments. For example, the Canadian Wheat Board, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Canadian National Railways were all fathered by Conservative Governments. I do not believe any Hon. Members, Mr. Speaker, would seriously argue that these Crown corporations have not worked effectively for Canada. I do not hear any strong calls for their abolition or fears that they are turning Canada into a socialist country.
I can remember travelling with the previous head of Canadian Pacific Railways and the head of the CNR. We were visiting a proposed construction site between Calgary and Kamloops on the CP route and between Kamloops and Edmonton on the CN route. Some of the people on the trip said afterwards: "You know, the head of CP sounded more like he was running a Crown corporation than did the head of CN". They thought the heads of the two railroads, by their philosophy, should be interchanged because of the way they were putting forth suggestions as to what should be done in the railroad industry and what should be done for the good of Canada.
The Canadian Wheat Board, Mr. Speaker, is one of the most successful grain sales agencies in the whole world. Other countries send their officials here to study it. Farmers in other countries urge their governments to follow the Canadian pattern. You must remember the "great American grain robbery" of the 1970s when the Russians secretly bought so much United States grain that they upset the world market. That could not have happened if the United States had had a national sales agency which kept on top of what grain was sold to what country. That cost the United States farmers, Mr. Speaker, billions of dollars. What did the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture do in that so-called great free enterprise country? He moved in and put export controls on, because they were shorting the market. They were making a scarcity of grain in that country. However, the Russians "capitalized", if I can use that word, and made almost 100 per cent profit on all the grain which they bought. They moved into that system and bought it up and did it in such a refined, professional way that no one knew what they were doing until it was too late.
Crown corporations, Mr. Speaker, are not confined solely to the federal Government. Every Province has some. So they should, because every Province has the same basic problem as the Government of Canada has, that is, how to provide equal levels of service and opportunities to residents in regions with different natural resources.
I do not hear the Hon. Members opposite, Mr. Speaker, criticizing provincial Governments for socializing the country by setting up Crown corporations. In Saskatchewan there is a
huge Crown corporation which looks after potash in that Province. I said to the Deputy Premier, the House Leader and the Minister of Agriculture of that Province the other day: "Are you going to sell the Saskatchewan Potash Corporation?" The answer was: "Of course not; it is making money for us." I said: "Have you got rid of any of the Crown corporations which the previous Government had?" The answer was: "Not yet". I don't know if they are going to get rid of any of them either, because they have been a good thing for that Province.
They have in Saskatchewan, for instance, a transportation system which is owned by the Province and which provides large, smooth-riding, air-conditioned buses all over those roads which are built by the Province. Is that centralizing? Is that socializing? Roads at one time, Mr. Speaker, used to be toll roads. Now they are paid for by everyone. They are paid for by the few who say: "We do not use them; why should we pay for them?" I have not heard one suggestion from the other side that the highway system should go to a toll type of system, that anyone who uses highways in Canada, whether municipal, provincial or federal, should pay a toll charge on them. I have not heard that being suggested. I have not heard that the Members opposite would go back that far in their medieval thinking. However, they have suggested it in some other ways.
I wonder if they should think also of our educational system. Maybe they call that system centralization also. I remember when I first came to this House, the Government gave $26 million to the schools of higher learning in this country. Mr. Pearson was Prime Minister at that time. He said that every young Canadian should have equal opportunity to education. He was going to fund universities and schools of higher learning for those people he described at that time, those "who may live in have-not Provinces which do not have the resources to go ahead with that type of system". Last year this Government gave $4 billion to the schools of higher learning. Are the Members opposite suggesting that that is "centralizing", when education is strictly under the Provinces? They have the control, yet at the present time we are paying over 50 per cent of all administration costs for education. Are the Members opposite suggesting that that is what we should get rid of?
Are they suggesting our church system in Canada, where everyone contributes if they want to, and everyone can attend if they want to, is "socialization" or "centralization"? Are the Members opposite suggesting our parks system in this country is "socialization" or "centralization"? Is that what Members opposite are suggesting, that we should get rid of all those and let someone in the private sector run them? Are they suggesting that our natural harbours and our man-made harbours are something which should be turned over to the private sector? Are they suggesting that Air Canada be turned over to some private system because it is a Crown Corporation and is under a Liberal Government?
Is the mover of this motion suggesting, perhaps, Mr. Speaker, that because Pacific Western Airlines is in the Province of Alberta and owned by the Province of Alberta, that that is free
June 9, 1983

enterprise because it is under a Conservative Government? Is he suggesting something like that? Does it mean that Air Canada is "centralization" or "socialization" because it is owned by the federal Government and run by the federal Government for the people of Canada, but PWA, because it is in the Province of Alberta, is different?
Is the Hon. Member suggesting, for instance, when freedom of choice on the Crow rate was talked about earlier, something the same as Alberta has for the irrigation districts in Alberta? Under law in Alberta, if you do not turn over the ownership of the headworks of all the irrigation systems in Alberta, you do not share-and that is freedom of choice-in the S234 million special fund which is set aside to assist these people. Is that what Hon. Members opposite call "freedom of choice"? I have met these people. Is PFRA, for instance, "socialization" or "centralization"? These are people who are offering engineering services and so on, and they have made a tremendous contribution to western Canada. Are Hon. Members opposite suggesting that we abolish PFRA?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: We set it up.


Eugene Whelan: Yes, that is another one. The Hon. Member for Vegreville (Mr. Mazankowski) has asked me to find more funds for the Farm Credit Corporation.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Of course.


Eugene Whelan: That is a Crown Corporation. Does he want me to centralize all farm lending in Canada under the Farm Credit Corporation? Is that what he is saying? Is that more "socialization"? Is that what he means? He should say what he means.
In the Province of Alberta the Treasury Board has banks all over the Province. Is the Hon. Member suggesting that perhaps we should get into the bank business? It is probably called private enterprise if it is in Alberta; however, if you suggest it for Canada, you are becoming a very bad socialist.
Over half of the land in Alberta is owned by the state. Most of the mineral resources in Alberta are owned by the state and administered by the State. I do not understand what the Members opposite mean when they talk about "socialization" and "centralization". I can remember when the Government was told to get rid of grain elevators. So I put them up for sale. I can see that the Hon. Member for Moose Jaw (Mr. Neil) remembers it very well. Who bought them in Alberta? That great private enterprise system called the Alberta Government. That was not centralization or socialization because it was under a Conservative Government in Alberta. Therefore they call it private enterprise in Alberta. But when I had them under the Canadian Grain Commission, that was Liberal socialization. I do not understand why when it is good for one, it is not good for the other.
Take the Opposition's view on the media, for instance. How is centralizing under a huge private corporation to have the media under one control any different? When the Government
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suggests something to try to protect the little person in the media in some manner, the Opposition say that it is bad and that we are interfering. I do not understand how it can be said that the free enterprise system in the media system is working properly when more and more central control takes over in that fashion.
When we were talking about Canagrex in recent days, we heard a lot about how it would own farms. They made a comparison with Russia and Poland. No Russian farmer has the say that the Canadian farmer does. No Polish farmer has the say. It is wrong to make that kind of comparison because freedom of choice will be made and Canagrex cannot be involved in farm ownership. It cannot be involved in any of the things that they mentioned. It can only get involved when asked, and only in exporting.
One Hon. Member mentioned the other day that we would find cans on the shelves with Canagrex written on them. That cannot happen in Canada because Canagrex can only be involved in products for export. The Opposition called it socialism and the taking over of the last bit of free enterprise in Canada.
Those Members have heard me and know how well that I understand and appreciate agriculture in Canada. I recently met with Mr. Gorbachev here who was from the Politburo. I must say that he was entertained royally in Alberta. I appreciate their paying for part of the Bill. He met with the Premier of Alberta when he was there. The Premier of Alberta is paying $40 a tonne in subsidy on canola crushing plus $9 a tonne freight assistance. Who was he trying to sell it to? The Soviet Union. The Premier was saying what a great product it was, and I agree, but he is giving the Soviet Union $49 a tonne more than Saskatchewan or Manitoba could. He has the resource of a great pile of money which he can take out by the handful now and again. He could control the canola industry in Alberta if he continued this long enough because the other industries would be depleted both in Saskatchewan and in Manitoba.
I have direct responsibility for several Crown corporations and agencies. I assure all Hon. Members that they work well on behalf of the Canadian farmers and Canadian consumers. The Agricultural Stabilization Board and the Agricultural Products Board have used Canadian taxpayers' dollars wisely to keep the agri-food industry financially strong and viable. The Hon. Member for Essex-Kent (Mr. Daudlin), who spoke to me just before I rose, came to tell me how well the Agricultural Products Board was working with the food processing industry in Ontario in order to save it by buying its product. He was saying how it worked well with the Province of Ontario on loan assistance it had given to a canning factory and how the two Governments were accomplishing this. Does centralization or socialization mean making sure those industries stay alive? I do not think it is. I think that is what we want.
I heard one Hon. Member talking in the House recently about Koreans and using brainwashing tactics, that if you told people often enough, you wore them down and they believed it.
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I have never heard any better description of what the Opposition were doing when saying what Canagrex would do to our society.
The Agricultural Products Board has had the power to buy and sell since 1952. I would ask Members to do some research and find any time when that Board has had its powers abused by any Minister, whether Liberal or Conservative, since that time. They will find that it has not been abused.
What can the Agricultural Products Board do? It can buy up surplus quantities of food production to forestal market disruption and then put it back into the system when prices are stable. We have bought grapes that have been turned into brandy. It was made from red grapes when people discontinued drinking red wine. I can tell those Members that if they want some brandy, they can even use for Sacramental wine if they wish; it is of high quality. Our rules and regulations for making brandy or any spirited beverages are much more strict than those of any other country in the world.
Let me return to the Farm Credit Corporation because that is one of my favourite topics. While Hon. Members on the other side may be as honest, I wish they would show the honesty shown by the Hon. Member for Vegreville (Mr. Mazankowski) when he talks about the Farm Credit Corporation. He has said that it must have more funding to look after the needs of farmers. I see his colleague, the Hon. Member for Moose Jaw nodding his head in full agreement. At one time the Farm Credit Corporation had 60 per cent of all long-term credit mortgage loans in Canada. We then asked the private sector to move in. The private sector moved in in a big way. We dropped down to 22 per cent of long-term mortgages for farmers in Canada. Then all hell broke loose. When the farmers called for long-term mortgages, what did the private lending institutions say? They told them to go to the Farm Credit Corporation. We have lists upon lists and applications upon applications.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Do not take over the farms. That is what we are saying.


Eugene Whelan: When I have to go to the money market I hope to get the support from those Members to get that money for the Farm Credit Corporation. I hope they will not then say that the federal Government is again increasing its debt load and affecting its credibility in the rest of the world.
Let them be honest when they talk about socialization in the agricultural industry. With respect to my share of the federal budget, no country in the world spends as little per capita as we do on agriculture. No country in the world has as healthy an agriculture industry as we do. If those Members want to talk about socialism and communism, let them see how much money those countries pour into agriculture. They would be very pleased to have only half of the agriculture industry that we have. A member of the Russian Politburo who visited us was quite honest when we showed him our meat packing plants, our food processing plants, our dairy farms, beef farms, and grain farms. He was utterly amazed at what he saw. He
said, "I heard so much about it but I had to come and see for myself."
Certainly our industry was built by agencies such as the Farm Credit Corporation, the Agricultural Products Board and the Canadian Dairy Commission. It was built by these agencies, and some people call that centralization or socialization. But they are necessary in our country. When they talk about proliferation, let me say that I could have brought Canagrex in by Order in Council. I chose the legislative route. Some farmers have said I am wrong, but I think it has been an education for many people here.
I can go on to talk about all the great things we have done to build this country and its agriculture industry, which has been the envy of such huge countries in the northern hemisphere as China and the Soviet Union as well as many smaller countries in the northern hemisphere in regions that are similar to ours. We have long cold winters and a short growing season. I find what we have been able to do in our country phenomenal.
I see, Mr. Speaker, that you are making motions-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Order, please. There is no difficulty if the Minister wishes to continue, but he would require the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


Douglas Charles Neil: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Minister spoke about going to the money market for funds for the Farm Credit Corporation. The Corporation did, in fact, go to Europe and borrowed money at, I believe, 12.75 per cent. For a number of years Members on this side have promoted an agri-bond concept and another concept regarding capital gains tax whereby the Farm Credit Corporation could borrow money at about half that rate. The Minister has never made any attempt, as far as we can determine, to implement that concept. If he is interested in the farmers of this country and in having cheap money available to them, why has the Minister not been trying to sell that concept to Cabinet? Would he tell us that, please?


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member knows full well that the committee appointed to look into how the investments of banking systems should work recommended very strongly against that. They were people mostly from what we call the blue chip committee because they were from the lending institutions. There was consultation with the Government, and they did not recommend that concept. I still think it is a very good idea.
The Hon. Member if wrong when he talks about the money borrowed. We borrowed money at 11.25 per cent in Canadian funds for ten years repayable in ten years in Canadian funds. It is a very good rate of interest we were provided. None of the lending institutions at the present time will lend anything, as
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far as I know, over three years at a fixed interest rate. The last rate I had quoted for three years was 15.75 per cent. The Hon. Member knows very well that we have entered into an agreement with the Province in which he lives, that is, Saskatchewan. It has a loan program to assist young farmers who are starting out. That program is one whereby we lend the money to them, the Province moves in and funds are subsidized by 5 per cent. It brings the interest rate down to 8 per cent for young farmers for the first five years of the mortgage. The Province of Ontario is trying to negotiate such a program at the present time for its young farmers. Neither one of those Provinces is promoting the agri-bond, and they are Conservative Provinces. If we got the support of those Provinces, probably we would have more support in getting the program through the Government of Canada. The Hon. Member for Moose Jaw could use his influence with the Conservative Government of Saskatchewan and perhaps get it to say "We want the agri-bond system". I believe, as the Hon. Member for Moose Jaw does, that it is a good system. But I have not been successful in getting it through.


Douglas Charles Neil: Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed the Hon. Minister has been unable to get the scheme through Parliament. He talks about listening to a committee made up of high calibre lending people, and so on. If the Minister is seriously concerned about the plight of the farmers and there is a way to make this money available without subsidization, surely he must be able to sell Cabinet on it. If he is unable to sell the system to Cabinet on his own, perhaps he would like to invite some Members from this side of the House to go with him and make representations to Cabinet.


Henry Perrin Beatty: You will never get into Cabinet that way.


Douglas Charles Neil: If the Minister is serious, not only will he be helping the farmer by lowering interest rates but he will also help those farmers who have spent a lifetime building up their farm assets cut back on their capital gains tax. Many farmers have spent their lifetime building up their farm assets. They have no ready cash. They look forward to the day when they can sell their farm and equipment and have the money to buy a house in the city. But by the time the Government takes its share of income tax and capital gains, there is nothing left with which the farmer can build a home.


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member questions my sincerity about this. I have checked the records and I do not believe I saw his name or that his Party presented a brief to this committee on the very thing he is proposing today in the House. They had that opportunity They were invited to do that kind of thing. Anyone could make a presentation to the committee when the hearings were being held. I may have missed it by omission, but I am sure the Hon. Member, who speaks with such sincerity about this today, must have presented a brief.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister. In the motion we are discussing today it suggests that the
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federal Government is centralizing policies and has interventionist policies. The Minister, in explaining the Government's decision, described the functions of the Dairy Commission and other marketing agencies. I understand there are a number of marketing agencies operating in the Province of Ontario. Could the Minister give me some information concerning these marketing agencies, which products are under the jurisdiction of these agencies and whether these agencies set up and operated by Conservative provincial Governments are different in any way from the agencies set up by the federal Government?


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member asks a good question. A lot of people are under the impression that all the marketing boards in Canada come under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Agriculture. Really there are only three marketing boards as such: the Egg Marketing Board, the Canadian Chicken Marketing Board and the Turkey Marketing Board. Then we have commissions. We have the Canadian Dairy Commission and we have the Canadian Wheat Board. Those are the main ones we have dealing with products in Canada. Each Province has many marketing boards. They are very powerful. They have control over supply and control in some instances, over price. They have an array of powers.
The Hon. Member says there is not one provincial Minister who would not want marketing boards, and actually I have never heard one provincial Premier of any Party, Conservative or other-but they are practically all Conservatives in Canada at the present time-say he does not want any more. Just recently we had a meeting of the signatories to the poultry agreements that we have for national marketing in Canada. What the Minister from Ontario said is recorded. He said that he was a strong believer in supply and management as long as these marketing boards are run well. I believe in Ontario there are forty-some marketing boards that have to do with products. Actually, Ontario and British Columbia were the creators of marketing boards. I believe it was British Columbia first. It goes back to 1928, I believe, for the dairy producers in the Fraser Valley, who had the first farming board to market milk.
One of the largest marketing boards, as we know, is the Canadian Wheat Board. People were not allowed a choice when the Wheat Board was imposed upon them by a Conservative Government. It was said that in Five years farmers would have a vote. The World War came along. They had an excuse for not having a vote. Farmers did not have a vote, I believe, until 1947 but then they voted about 85 per cent in favour of the Canadian Wheat Board. The Canadian Wheat Board is the largest marketing board in Canada. It has tremendous powers. It is protected against imports. You cannot import any grain under the authority of the Canadian Wheat Board unless you get a permit. That includes the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Speaker. Even if he wants to bring in a bushel of grain for research, he has to get a permit from the Canadian Wheat Board to use that wheat in Canada.

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Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I would like to pose a question to the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan). It pertains to the great job of intervention and protection of the public involvement, and it involves grain inspection in Canada. It pertains directly to agriculture and Government involvement.
It is my understanding that the Government intends to reduce the presence of meat inspectors in a variety of slaughterhouses and meat packing operations across the country and allow certain companies to undertake their own inspections under the authority of these meat inspectors even though they were not present. The responsibility for those seals would be placed in the hands of company officials. Basically, what would happen would be that the responsibility for supervision of the protection of the public and the degree of sanitation and health protection would fall on those who are to be regulated. Basically, the individuals who are to be regulated would be regulating themselves without adequate supervision and there would ultimately be a serious situation concerning public health. As I understand, there has already been a large number of violations and concerns about procedure in meat plants. In spite of this, the Minister and the Department intend to go ahead and reduce the presence of federal inspectors in those positions. Would the Minister be prepared to outline just how he can justify that kind of situation?


Eugene Whelan: Madam Speaker, we will not downgrade the meat inspection in Canada. We will not cut our staff. If we had more funds, we would probably add more staff at the present time. In Canada, we have one of the best inspection services for meat products that there is in the world. One can make a comparison. We have 541 plants in Canada which are federally inspected, which are approved for export to the United States of America. In essence, what that means is that any meat we feel is good for domestic consumption is good for export, or vice versa. Some countries just have inspection for export to meet the standard. For instance, the United States, which is a big country, only has 141 plants which will meet our inspection criteria to export meat to Canada.
I know full well what the Hon. Member is discussing, because it involves a little plan in his area where consideration is being given to withdrawing an inspector who has been there, I believe, since the 1950s. That inspector has not been withdrawn, and I do not think that he will be, because the order that I issued was that he had to stay there, and that if a service had been provided for any length of time, there was no way we could downgrade it. In no way will we be allowing a company to do its own meat inspection and then try to export the product, because with the present international trade agreements, the product would not even be accepted.
As the Hon. Member knows, there is some inspection which is run by the Provinces. At one time there were many problems, and there has been a lot of publicity, but no significant breakdown in our inspection system has ever taken place. As far as I remember, when bad meat was being sold, and this type of thing, it was all out of provincially-inspected slaughtering and meat packing plants. There was a wild rush at that
time for us to provide inspectors for their meat plants with the CDA inspection stamp of approval on them. We did not have that many inspectors to do that. People recognized that it meant a pure, good product if it had the inspection stamp of approval from the CDA. If products are to be shipped across interprovincial or international borders, they must have that inspection. Some of the Provinces depend solely on the Canadian Department of Agriculture Inspection Service for their meat packing plants. Some of them have a combination of both federal and provincial inspection, and some are only provincially inspected plants, but in these cases, as far as I know, they are doing every bit as good a job as we are with the training that they are giving their people, the technicians and veterinarians on the job. There may be the odd time when we find people a little bit lacking, but if their lacks are pointed out to us, they are either fired or removed from their jobs, and that is for sure.


Mr. John Thomson (Calgary South):: Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to the remarks of the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan). I guess what really amazed me more than anything else, and I was trying to figure it out, is by what convoluted type of reasoning, when he was speaking of churches, highways and our education system, he was relating them to interventionism. I couid not quite understand it. What do churches and highways have to do with interventionism? I have listened to the Minister of Agriculture for four years. I guess we must give him credit for one thing: he is a master of bafflegab. However, I have never in my life heard anything like I heard today when he tried to relate churches, highways and our education system to interventionism. That really escaped me.
I just wonder how long the Minister believes he will fool the Canadian people with that kind of reasoning and nonsense, because that is what it is, just nonsense. I do not know whether the Minister knows it or not. Maybe he has been around here for so long that he does not understand it any more. All this nonsense just comes off him like water off a duck. I do not think that the Canadian people will put up with that kind of nonsense for much longer, not any longer than it takes us to get to the next election.


Mr. Regan:: Do you think?


John William Thomson: Canadian people have had it up to here with that kind of baloney, just baloney. If the Minister does not know this, I will not tell him, but Canadian people do not trust him. They do not trust his Government any more. Perhaps it is not so much because of interventionism. Does the Minister know why they do not trust the Government? They do not trust it because of what it let the former Minister do and how it rewarded its own at the public's expense. They do not trust it because the former Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources put one Michael Phelps on his payroll at public expense. He abused the public trust. That is why the Canadian public does not trust the Government. They do not trust it because the Minister of State for International Trade (Mr. Regan) uses
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public transportation for the benefit of his own family. That is why the Canadian public does not believe in the Government any more. They do not trust it and they will kick it out.


Eugene Whelan: We'll see about that.


John William Thomson: I listened this morning to the laughter. Maybe it will not be too long before Eugene has the happy experience of joining the ranks of the unemployed in this country. Maybe if he were among those people he would understand the importance of a $1.4 billion loss which was incurred on the public's behalf. I wonder how all of the 1.5 million unemployed Canadians feel about that kind of waste, extravagance and gross mismanagement. I would be interested in knowing just how they feel about that. What they do not know, because the Government will not tell them, is about all the other disasters which are buried every day by the Government. Canadair is only the tip of the iceberg.
I listened with interest this morning to the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Roberts). The Minister was to tell us all the good things his Government has done for Canadians. What the Minister really fails to understand is that what the Liberal Government has done over the last 15 years has been to destroy individual initiative in this country. The Minister does not have any appreciation whatsoever of that fact. It always seemed to me that the greatness of Canada was the greatness of our opportunity to go out and build, to create, to strive for something better in this life. In the last 15 years the Liberal Government has taken much of individual initiative away from Canadian people. That is why we are in this predicament today. Hon. Members on the other side of the House and those in the socialist Party to my left do not understand that that is at the core of the problem in the country today. What is individual initiative all about? That is what creates jobs. Governments do not create jobs. Governments spend money. Governments take in money with one hand and spend it with the other, and in the process about 30 per cent is lost.
I would like to refer to one thing which makes me so angry with the Government. When I return to my home riding of Calgary, I am saddened to see the needless devastation caused by the Government and its National Energy Program. Either it does not understand or it does not care. The Government has no idea what its National Energy Program has done to western Canada. Does it realize that there are 80 rigs running today in western Canada or how many there were before the National Energy Program was invented as a socialistic experiment of interventionism on a scale which had never been seen in the country before? Government Members ought not to be very proud of themselves. Are they proud of the 25,000 men they put out of work in the oil well drilling and servicing industry? Do they care? No, there is not a vote in western Canada. I can assure them that there will never be a vote for the Liberal Party in western Canada as long as I live. Let us remember the devastation that program has caused in western Canada. What for? Also it caused human misery. In aid of what? What has the National Energy Program accomplished? It is built upon bureaucracy. The people of Canada should know that the
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Government had to erect an office building to accommodate 4,000 people in EMR today. There are actually 20,500 and some odd people employed in the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources today. There are 600 employees looking over forms, deciding the level of Canadian owership, the core rating. Who cares what is the level of Canadian ownership if it is creating jobs? What is so magnificent about a company that happens to be 70 per cent Canadian owned but broke?
They have Canadianized the oil industry, but they have bankrupted Canadian companies and foreign controlled companies are prospering as they never prospered before. The Canadian part of the industry is broke and bankrupt. This is why there are 80 rigs running in Canada. The National Energy Program is so good and so magnificent that there are 80 rigs in western Canada today looking for oil and gas!


Herb Breau: That is because the price is down, and you know it.


John William Thomson: The Hon. Member does not have the faintest idea what it is all about. He does not understand the industry and he does not care.
The saddest part of it is that I happen to know that the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) has stated that the National Energy Program is a disaster. The former Minister of Energy admitted in private that it is a disaster. The new Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Chretien) admitted that it is a disaster. Do they do anything about it? No, because that would be to admit that they made a mistake. The Liberal Government does not make mistakes; it has never made a mistake! Has anyone ever heard the Liberal Government over the last 15 years admit that it made a mistake? Is Canadair not its responsibility? That $1.4 billion lost by Canadair, is it not the Government's mistake? No, it indicates that it is the fault of the management of Canadair.
If I happen to be the president of a company or on the board of directors of a company, do I not have responsibility for the operations of the company? If it loses money, do I not have a responsibility to the shareholders? The Government and the Prime Minister are telling us that they are above all that, that it does not make mistakes and that it is management which makes mistakes. They tell us that it is not their problem because they appointed a bunch of Liberal hacks to the board of directors. Also they indicate that it is not their fault that it took six years to take off the financial statements of Canadair so that Hon. Members of Parliament would know where the company was going. They think that it is not their problem. The Minister of Agriculture would not understand the fiduciary responsibility which goes with his appointment as a Member of Cabinet. It is not their responsibility, they do not make mistakes, they are above making mistakes! I suppose they are not ordinary people and are not like the rest of us. They hold themselves above the rest of us. We are just ordinary people.
Over the last 15 years-and this is why I became a Member of Parliament-the Liberal Government has deliberately and

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slowly strangled individual initiative in Canada. The saddest part of it all is that it cannot even see it. It is blind to it. Do Hon. Members know why they are blind to it? It is because they are committed to a concept of control and regulations. It is part of their make-up, it is a part of their physiology. They have to control and regulate people, which is the whole purpose of Liberalism.
They believe they have to interfere in the lives of people because ordinary citizens of Canada are not capable of making decisions for themselves. They think they know what is best for ordinary citizens. They decide what is best and tell them what to do. The Government thinks it knows more about the oil and gas industry than all those "crazy" oil and gas companies in western Canada. It wants to put bureaucrats in place to tell them what to do and to go out and find oil and gas. Does anyone really believe that 20,000 bureaucrats in Ottawa, some of whom are in the Petro-Canada tower, will improve the lot of Canadians by going out and finding more oil and gas? Does anyone really believe that? Hon. Members opposite believe it because it is ingrained into their system. They want to control. They want to regulate. They love it. They thrive on it. It is their daily manna.
Canadians today are wondering why we are not as productive as some other countries in the free world. Canadians ask me why there are 1.5 million unemployed. Young people leaving university today are asking why they cannot find jobs. Government Members rise here and say, "Well, it is really not our fault. There is a world-wide recession, so it is really not our fault. We do not make mistakes. It is not our responsibility."
I would like to ask the Minister of Agriculture where his Government has been for the last 15 years. We have not been in recession for 15 years. What has this Government done? Name one thing other than to take step after step to strangle individual initiative.


Herb Breau: Do you believe that?


John William Thomson: I would not be here if I did not believe that. What do you think the Canadian Development Investment Corporation is doing? You believe that by forming this corporation with Mr. Joe Bell, the magnificent Senator Austin and Maurice Strong, it will save this country and Canadair, making it a viable operation together with de Havilland? Do you believe that this will contribute to the welfare of Canadians? Do you believe that Senator Austin, Joe Bell and Maurice Strong will do us any good? What have they accomplished in their whole lives, any one of the three of them? Zero. A great big zero. They got a law degree and that is the total sum of their contribution. In addition to their law degree, they are also Liberals, which makes them part of the elite.
If you are going to drill a hole in the ground to try to find oil and gas, you usually hire someone who knows something about doing that. You do not hire a lawyer to drill a hole in the ground; at least most sensible people do not do that.
The Liberals would probably do that because they know everything about everything. The Liberals believe, as do their partners in the NDP, that the guiding principle should be that more Government is better Government, big is beautiful, that we should have more Government, more regulation and ways to further control and redirect the lives of Canadians, telling them what they should be doing. We will see a lot more of that. It is not only the National Energy Program, but look at what the Foreign Investment Review Agency has done for us.
Most countries of the world, even the communist countries, are looking for investment capital. Most countries of the world want investment capital in order to provide jobs for their citizens and to build new industries. Not in Canada, no Sir! We want to slam the door on foreign capital.
Foreign-controlled companies that come to Canada should be good corporate citizens. However, that does not have anything to do with the money they put into this country. A dollar is a dollar in so far as creating a job is concerned. We should be creating a situation where we ensure that foreign capital behaves as a good corporate citizen, and that is all.
We need investment. This is a huge country desperately in need of capital today. There is a shortage of capital all over the world. To listen to the economic nationalists opposite, one would think we did not need any capital to create jobs for the 1.5 million unemployed Canadians.
The Government likes to intervene. It wants to control the media. It thinks there is a conspiracy among the media to tell the wrong things. It has the CBC to say what is right. We need $800 million Canadian taxpayer's money every year so that the CBC can tell us what the Liberal Government wants us to hear.
So far the Canadian newspaper industry has been privately owned. In the 50-odd years of my life, I thought the newpapers had done a reasonably fair job of recording the facts. What would concern me more about a corporate concentration in the newspaper industry would be for this Government to get its hands on it. Can you imagine the fun it would have controlling the media? Do you have any idea?
Every day each Cabinet Minister puts out a press release through his or her press secretary. Do you know how the press secretary earns his livelihood? It is by feeding the press information and news releases every day. It is a bigger propaganda machine than Herr Goebbels ever had.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Order, please. I am sorry to interrupt the Hon. Member, but his time has expired. Perhaps he might like to seek the unanimous consent of the House to continue or, in the alternative, rely on the question and answer period. Shall I inquire whether there is unanimous consent? Is there unanimous consent to allow the Hon. Member to continue?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.
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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: There is not unanimous consent.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct a question to the Hon. Member. In a recent issue of Business Week, an article on the Exxon Corporation stated that $4 million to $5 million was invested in an oil shale plant in Colorado and that the operation closed down before going into production because the price of oil had gone down. An article in a recent issue of Time magazine indicated that a large number of oil rigs were mothballed in the Gulf of Mexico, not working and not drilling. The United States has the most pro-business Government, a Government which believes in free enterprise, less control of business and less regulation, which it has had in 50 years, namely, the Reagan administration. That country does not have a Liberal Government or a National Energy Program, yet the energy industry in the United States is a way down from what it was a couple of years ago.
Is not the reason for that situation in the United States the reason for the similar situation in Canada, namely that two or three years ago the price of oil was expected to increase by 10 per cent or 15 per cent a year and that the price in a few years would be $70 or $80 a barrel? Is that not in fact the main reason why oil exploration and drilling has either stopped or been reduced dramatically, not just in Canada but in other countries as well, rather than the federal Government and the National Energy Program being entirely to blame?


John William Thomson: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member makes a good point. It is interesting that he likes to apologize for the National Energy Program on behalf of the Government. I guess the socialists really helped in a lot of ways to create the National Energy Program. It is true that there has been a fall-off in exploration activity in the United States. There are really two parts to the explanation. First, the industry was very badly overbuilt in the United States. In the period around 1977, the industry in the United States was operating almost at capacity, with 2,000 land-based drilling rigs and about 60 offshore rigs in service. That inventory of drilling equipment was very rapidly expanded as the price kept going up, to a level of something over 5,000 landbased drilling rigs in the United States. So you can see, Mr. Speaker, that it increased by 150 per cent in a period of four years. The drilling industry in the United States has returned to about the same level of exploration as was being carried out in 1977 and 1978, and there is a very, very high level of exploration activity still proceeding in the United States with about 2,200 rigs at work.
I would also inform the Hon. Member that I happen to know that the industry is extremely active in the Gulf of Mexico at present. The United States has only a seven year supply of natural gas reserves left and the reserves of gas in the Gulf of Mexico are very sizeable and are being explored very aggressively.
Perhaps the Hon. Member could refresh my memory as to his question if I did not answer the latter part of it completely.
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David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, my question was a very simple one. I asked the Hon. Member whether the drilling for conventional oil or the planning and building for the extraction of oil from shale rock in the United States or the extraction of oil from tar sands in Canada was predicated, by the industry and by the federal and Alberta Government, on the notion that the price of oil would go up 10 per cent or 15 per cent each year so that by the time the tar sands plants came onstream, the price of oil would be about $70 a barrel and would be competitive with conventional oil. That is not happening, and so I would ask the Hon. Member whether it would not be honest for him to admit that unless the price of oil will go up very substantially in the next few years, it will probably not be economically feasible for anybody, the Government of Canada, the Government of Alberta or private industry, to go ahead with tar sands or with very expensive conventional oil exploration.


John William Thomson: First of all, Mr. Speaker, there is a very great difference between oil sands and oil shales. Extracting oil from oil shales in the United States is twice as expensive as extracting oil from oil sands in the Athabasca area of Alberta. Not only was Exxon but a good many other companies were optimistic about making a technological breakthrough that would allow them to recover oil from oil shales at something like $50 a barrel. In fact, those companies could not make that technological breakthrough that would reduce the cost to that level, and the cost would have been something in the order of $75 a barrel.
In the case of the oil sands in Canada, I think that it is fair to say that there would have been an advanced oil sands plant today had it not been for the punitive taxation that was introduced by the National Energy Program.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, many people in the country and in the House are faced with an interesting conundrum stemming from the immoral and dishonest approach of the Government. I could point to examples of this within the National Energy Program that really stand out. But on the other side of the coin, Mr. Speaker, is the basic dishonesty in the approach of the Conservative party to important questions dealing with the national energy policy.
I would point out that the Conservatives have failed to put one alternative on the record that would be acceptable or reasonable. The Conservatives criticize the Government without taking the responsibility of placing options before the people of the country. The Conservative Party would remove regulations and give control back to the multinational corporations. I would like to hear the Hon. Member from the Conservative Party talk about going to world oil prices and turning control back to the seven sisters in the country, which would basically put Canadian people out to hang.


John William Thomson: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member says that the Conservative Party does not make any positive recommendations about what it would do. A great many of my colleagues and myself have consistently said that first we would decontrol the price of domestic oil and natural gas and let it move to a market system. Second, we have said that we would scrap the

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PIP grants and subsidies that are given to oil and gas companies. Canada is the only country in the world in which the Government pays money for dry holes. With the savings made by not paying for dry holes, we would introduce a system of incentives to replace the PIP grant that will prompt exploration. Third, we would abandon the well head tax called the owners petroleum gas and revenue tax, a tax that is stripping all the incentive away from Canadian and foreign companies. We would take away that owners' tax that represents such a crushing burden on the industry. That tax is why there are 80 rigs working today and no new oil and gas is being found. Those are the three policy proposals that we have put forward.


Herb Breau: Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the speech made by the Hon. Member for Calgary South (Mr. Thomson). He speaks passionately about what he believes in and that is what Parliament is all about. I always appreciate listening to him because he brings to Parliament a knowledge of his region and the industry with which he was involved. That knowledge is of great benefit to the debate. I always enjoy hearing politicians who have had a background in business speak because I am from a family that has always been in business. I studied business administration at university and I was briefly in business full time before I entered politics. I do enjoy hearing people with initiative who have been successful.
Where I depart from the Hon. Member's views, is where he suggests policies, because he displays his Party's impatience and sometimes almost intolerance for the other point of view. He speaks as though only the business point of view counted in matters of national interest. In his Party's view, when it comes time to implement public policy on behalf of the people, unless we follow to the letter whatever the industry wants to do or whatever business wants to do, either we do not know anything about it or we are supposed to listen to the view of business.
I suspect that my hon. friend will be in the House for a few years and I hope that with the years he will temper the opinion that he expresses so eloquently on that point of view with a little more realism and a little more appreciation for complex problems. Canada is a very complex country to govern. Particularly in the last two or three years, I feel that the approach of the Conservative Party to these very important national problems-the question of the National Energy Program, the question of the Constitution and a few other questions that have been of crucial importance to the country and have been debated in the House in the last few years-has demonstrated its incapacity to grasp the complexity of the problem. It continuously comes forward with simple solutions. Mr. Speaker, simple solutions to complex problems just do not work.
Somehow I think that the Conservative Party really does appreciate this. When I look at the motion of the Hon. Member for Vegreville (Mr. Mazankowski), I see that it is very skillfully drafted. In that motion, there is a dimension in terms of Canadian politics that goes beyond the issue of intervention in the economy and beyond ideology and the question of more or less Government ownership or, as his motion reads, socialization. It also goes beyond the question of centralization in one level of Government or another. I do not understand why they
do not come out and say what they are expressing, only in part, and that is, some regional frustration. Some people in the Conservative Party who are spokesmen for their regional interest-and I do not fault them for that as it is their role to express that frustration-say through the Governmnent, "What you are doing to my region is wrong."
I do not understand why they want to mix the National Energy Program and the Constitution. I do not understand why it is not possible for them to say, in terms of industry and public policy, that we should have either more or less Government intervention in the energy sector. That is debatable, Mr. Speaker. What is the proper balance in a country like Canada on the question of how much Government intervention there should be? That is one issue.
Another issue is the regions versus the centre, one region versus another region or the centre versus one region. On the National Energy Program the Conservatives expressed a fear of socialization. But if they want to be honest, particularly those from Alberta, how can they be against Government intervention when their provincial Government, with which they do not dissociate themselves, is the most interventionist Government on energy matters in Canada? I do not want to make a judgment on that as it does not concern me that much, but the Alberta Conservative Government understands that on some of the issues it has Alberta's interests at heart and it does not deal with these problems simplistically.
When the Government of Alberta decides to buy an airline, I see that as a policy instrument, as a politicization of the economy in terms of saying it wants to have a transportation policy that will ensure the development of the economy of Alberta in the future. I do not see how Hon. Members opposite can be against having state intervention.
Hon. Members opposite talk about the disaster of the National Energy Program and the negative effects of the PGRT. They say it skims cash from the cash flow of companies. They do not say anything about the Alberta royalties that are the highest in the land, the highest of most western industrialized countries, royalties which skim the cash flow off the companies. If the Conservatives want to be honest with themselves they will realize that they have a responsibility to tell us where they stand on that issue. I can understand Members from Alberta and from the West generally expressing a regional frustration with the National Energy Program.
As a Liberal from eastern Canada I am very concerned. Even if I am not from the West and even if I do not have a background in the energy industry, I can understand that. The Hon. Member for Calgary South (Mr. Thomson) and a few other Members interjected a little while ago and demonstrated the intolerance they sometimes have for the other point of view. Apparently you are not supposed to know anything about the energy industry if you are from the East or if you are a Liberal or if you are not from the energy industry.


Blaine Allen Thacker: It is just that you prove it sometimes.
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Herb Breau: The Hon. Member for Lethbridge-Foothills (Mr. Thacker) says it is because I prove it sometimes. Hon. Members opposite prove a lot of things sometimes too. I have never said to a Member from another region of the country that he should not have a point of view on the fishery in the Atlantic Provinces or on the forestry policy because it is an industry that is important in my constituency. I do not tell them that they should not have anything to do with the 200-mile limit or the law of the sea because they are from a landlocked Province. I do not expect that they will have spent as much time on the dossier as I have, but I do not say that they should not be able to contest what I say. The day we start saying that, we have no tolerance for the other point of view.
Conservatives must become more responsible regarding these matters. As a Liberal from eastern Canada who has been here for the 15 years that are supposed to have been so terrible for the country, I admit that there is a regional dimension to the National Energy Program. Part of the concern in this Party, leading up to the years 1979-80, was for the national interest as we perceived it. I wish that in this country and in this Parliament particularly, one could speak one's mind about the national interest without being accused of being against another region. That burns me up, Mr. Speaker. Just because I give my perspective as a New Brunswicker-and that is not a powerful Province, economically or politically-then am I not supposed to give my view of the national interest because it may turn out to be a different view from that of Members from the West? That does not lead to mature debate. We should be able to have tolerance for those who disagree with us even if we express regional frustration, or it will become impossible to govern this country. It is a very complex country to govern in any event. In a certain sense we are governing the country against every natural and geographic factor. The Conservatives should understand that.
Why are the Conservatives having a leadership convention this weekend if this country is not a complex one to govern? Their own orientation as a Party is complex. They have their own problems in trying to determine where they should go. They know very well they are not involved in a leadership convention only because of the seasonal values of the Right Hon. Member for Yellowhead (Mr. Clark), but because this country is confronted with very tough problems and choices. They have not been able to come out with a cohesive position on some matters. It is not a sin to admit that in your Party there is difficulty in coming to an orientation. If the country is simply to govern, why did the Conservative Party have a leadership problem? It is because some factions in that Party attempted to simplify the solution to those complex problems.
I have said that I admit there is a regional dimension to the National Energy Program. Should we have policy instruments that encourage more private sector involvement or instruments that encourage more federal or provincial Government involvement? Apart from that, there is the question of how a federal Government policy instrument affects the West. I can understand that westerners are going to be concerned about that. It is a legitimate question. If that is what they want to express,
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they should express it clearly. They cannot try to bluff their way into this issue. They play with words and say that the centralizing and interventionist policies of the Government are an ideological thrust aimed at introducing socialization of the Canadian economy by the back door. What they want to exploit is the fear, perhaps the legitimate fear, in the West-I am not the best judge of that-that perhaps all of these efforts of the federal Government are efforts at socialization or socialism. If that is what the Members opposite want to say, then they should say it clearly. However, they are trying to mix the two, the regional and the policy aspects. I say that they are dishonest when they do that, Mr. Speaker, because their own Party, when they are in power provincially in the West, in the energy sector, has been very interventionist. Members opposite do not say that that is socialism. They do not say that that is interventionism. It will be interesting to see if the new Tory Government in Saskatchewan is going to do away with all those Crown corporations. I do not believe it will, Mr. Speaker. It will make a judgment on what is best for the electors and the people of Saskatchewan.
Mr. Speaker, in my opinion, when we are dealing in the House with issues that have a regional dimension and concern the interests of one particular region in relation to the central authority, it is very important to discuss such questions in an atmosphere that encourages, mature and adult debate, in the course of which any comments that are made reflect tolerance for and patience with the views of those who come from other parts of the country.
In my speech, I would like to refer briefly to a speech made this morning, before the lunch recess, by the Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Beatty), when he said that in the last 15 years, or rather, to quote exactly what he said, when the present Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) retires, we shall find that in Canada, the rights of Canadians .. . and in my question, I asked him whether I had understood correctly, and he said yes, that the rights of Canadians had become more restricted compared to what they were in 1968. I then asked him how he could say that, when this was the party that had introduced language rights, first in federal Government institutions, and then as one of the mainstays of our plan to patriate the Constitution. Anyone who rises in the House and says the rights of Canadians have been circumscribed in the past 15 years is showing his ignorance of the fact that language rights are a social, human and public right. Technically, I would not say these are fundamental rights, but I do say that it is essential that the country should have language rights of this nature.
This Government, led by the Right Hon. Prime Minister, is the one that introduced the concept of enshrining rights and freedoms and language rights in the Canadian Constitution. This proposal was opposed in the House by the Progressive

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Conservative Party for months, while it was not certain whether or not it would listen to what the Provinces were saying, and now an Hon. Member who is one of the major critics of this Party is rising in the House to say that the rights of Canadians were circumscribed by the Government. Either the Hon. Member is showing his complete ignorance of the situation in Canada or he is being extremely sloppy in his criticism.
Mr. Speaker, while the Hon. Member for Vegreville (Mr. Mazankowski) says in his motion that the policies of the Government are a definite and present threat to the freedom of Canadians, and the Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe is trying to say that the rights of Canadians are being circumscribed by the Government, I take great pride in saying that they are wrong and will continue to be wrong, that this is utter nonsense, and that Canadian political history will show that the period from 1965, even before the present Prime Minister came to power, until now, will be known as a period when the development of social, human, civil, political and fundamental rights, and that includes language rights, was unique in this country's history, and I would even go so far as to say that no other democracy in history can compare with the political development of Canada in this particular area.
I do not mean that the Liberals should take all the credit, but the fact remains that the Liberal Government introduced these measures, and I know that the official positions of the Progressive Conservative Party depending on who and when of the New Democratic Party and of other parties that sat in the House in previous Parliaments, were probably basically very similar.
Mr. Speaker, to say that the rights of Canadians were circumscribed during the last 15 years is superficial in the extreme or grossly partisan.
In fact, I strontly suspect, Mr. Speaker, that this morning, the intentions of the Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe were partly partisan. If he wants the floor, it is to speak to the rights of Canadians. I have the floor now, but I do not want to take up too much of the time of the House today. I could talk about how the Progressive Conservative Government in New Brunswick shows its concern for the rights of Canadians, the rights of the New Brunswick electorate. I will not do that now, Mr. Speaker, but if Progressive Conservative Members are anxious to talk about patronage, about circumscribing the rights of individuals, I could give a few examples of the concern of a Progressive Conservative Government for the rights of Canadians.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy listening to the Hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Breau) and I appreciate the enthusiasm with which he engages in debate. He has implored all Hon. Members to exercise tolerance and understanding in the admission of mistakes. I would point out to him that, in the spirit of the environment within which the Hon. Member has made his pitch, perhaps he might want to consider the fact that the National Energy Program has been condemned by the industry. It has been condemned by Hon. Members in this House. It has been condemned by the workers
who have lost their jobs. Just recently, it has been condemned by the C.D. Howe Institute, which very categorically stated that the costs clearly outweigh the benefits of the National Energy Program and that there are less costly and disruptive means which could be expected to achieve the same or even superior benefits to the economy. What is really being said, Mr. Speaker, is that the goals and objectives of the National Energy Program, the three basic goals of fairness, equitable distribution and pricing, and self-sufficiency, have not been achieved.
Would the Hon. Member not consider now, even at this late date, to urge his Cabinet colleagues to take a second look and reassess the situation before the industry is destroyed completely? The Financial Post today headlines, "Oil rigs and services are barely hanging in". I am not sure whether the Hon. Member understands this, but most of our young western Canadians, or many of them, work in that kind of service and supply industry. They are now either out of a job or working south of the border. It is very serious.


Herb Breau: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member raises a very important question, and it is one which concerns me. I realize that the National Energy Program, being a fundamental change in the way policy was being designed in the energy area, is very controversial. I realize that. When you do something which is controversial, you are going to provoke a lot of reaction and a lot of opposition. It is true that a lot of people in the industry have criticized it. A lot of spokesmen from western Canada who are related to the energy interests have opposed it. But the Hon. Member cannot ignore the fact that with or without a National Energy Program, there was not going to be less searching for new oil and gas in Alberta and Saskatchewan in any event. We are at the stage of searching for secondary and tertiary recovery, as it is called in the industry. Whatever happened, there was to be shift away from the traditional search, which has gone on since 1945 for oil and gas in Alberta, to the so-called Canada lands. Therefore, the Hon. Member cannot ignore the fact that change was to come in any event. The Hon. Member cannot ignore, either, the fact that prices have gone down. He cannot ignore the fact that drilling has been reduced in the United States. It has been reduced all over the world. Therefore, to suggest that all of that is because of the National Energy Program is not to be totally fair.
I would ask the Hon. Member also to recognize once in a while that when the federal Government does something to help, as it did, for example, the gas industry in Alberta which has so many oil wells which are capped, and he knows why they are capped-they are capped because there are fewer markets-takes quite a risk. It took a risk when it approved the southern portion of the Alaska pipeline. He does not recognize the fact. He does not say that that was a risk we took
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in terms of the interest of the country as those other than themselves perceive it, as well as in Alberta's interest. He does not say that in the latest change brought about by the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Chretien) to permit the export of gas, in any event, to the United States, we have permitted the price to be reduced. Therefore, 1 wish the Hon. Member would balance his claims a bit with some recognition for the things the Government has done in the energy sector.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: I have just one comment. I only want to point out that the shift of exploration activity from conventional areas to the offshore and frontier areas was not taken by the industry on its own. It was merely a shift as a result of a deliberate Government policy. For the information of the Hon. Member, the fact of the matter is that there are still ample conventional supplies which can be sought out. However, the fact concerning oil and gas is that the shift and emphasis has been placed on offshore, on the frontier areas, the result of which has been to see our conventional reserves depleting at the rate of 4 per cent per year.


Herb Breau: Mr. Speaker, I do not totally disagree with the Hon. Member that the National Energy Program has had an effect on that. What I am saying to him is that there was a shift, in any event, as a result of economic forces, to the offshore and so-called Canada lands. However, he cannot ignore the fact that the Province of Nova Scotia and the Province of Newfoundland, for example, used all the political muscle they had. It is not a question of its being in the interest of the provincial Government only. They would want to persuade the federal Government to implement a policy regime as we did for the West in the late forties and fifties to permit the exploration of oil and gas of the shores of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Therefore, this shift came naturally, not only because of economic forces, which is part of the trend, and not only because of the actions of the federal Government, but also as a result of the natural expression of the political wish of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland that some of their money be invested off the shores of eastern Canada. The Hon. Member must admit that the shift of investment there is not totally owing to the National Energy Program or the federal Government.


Blaine Allen Thacker: Mr. Speaker, the other point that my friend, the Hon. Member for Gloucester, does not realize is that during the 1920s, when the level of technology swept across the western plains, only very shallow gas and oil deposits could be found, where it was obvious, because there were no machines to dig it up. Then, during the forties there was another wave, and during the seventies there was still another wave. Therefore, each time more advanced technology is utilized in the western plains enormous quantities of oil and gas are found.
The Pembina oil field, which is a tight field, was found because of that technology. The Hon. Member is indicating
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that perhaps he does not appreciate that fact. There is much oil and gas there. Only as a comment I would like to say that it surely was not necessary, in order for the federal Government to become involved in the Canada lands and offshore, to bring in the National Energy Program which was so highly damaging to the West. It has virtually destroyed it. Why could the Government not have come up with a policy to develop these other areas without killing the conventional plains?


Herb Breau: Mr. Speaker, I wish I had more time to answer these questions because, again, the Hon. Member forgets some facts, particularly while it is true that there is still some gas which could be found. The geological data is that there is much gas under the shales of Alberta, which has already been found and capped, and there is probably some more. However, the policy instruments which the Parliament of Canada implemented in the late forties, the fifties and the sixties, partly by the Diefenbaker Government and partly by the Liberal Governments, have provided the West with a policy and the taxation instruments which have permitted exploration there. How can he deny that other regions of the country which also have a potential for development of oil and gas should not be provided with policy instruments, too?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: He didn't say that at all.


Herb Breau: This is what the National Energy Program is doing. He should not ignore, either, the fact that in the national energy policy, maybe not in the National Energy Program when announced on a certain date, provision was made for the extension of the natural gas pipeline to eastern Canada, which is an important policy instrument in the West and which permits the surplus of gas which is there in Alberta to be sold to eastern Canada. That is something that many people in my area do not like. It is competition to the advantage of the West. In this case I also think that in the national interest we should have an infrastructure to transmit the gas which is surplus in the West to eastern Canada, to divert away from the nuclear, divert away from oil generation and to try to obtain access to this very efficient, cost-wise, gas resource which comes from Alberta.
Therefore, the Hon. Member should not ignore that there are aspects of the NEP which are not negative. Concerning the Alberta interest, there are provisions in the energy policy of the Government in the area of energy which are also of great advantage to the West now and for the future. I name the southern portion of the Alaska pipeline as another one.
I would just urge these Hon. Members, at some time, to temper their partisanship and to recognize when these things are done, because some of their constituents believe that everything the Government does in the energy area is negative to the West. For the future of the country, I am just urging them to please recognize the advantages and benefits of the policies when they are beneficial to the West.

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PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. Before proceeding with debate, it is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 45, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the Hon. Member for Kindersley-Lloydminster (Mr. McKnight)-House of Commons-Canadian Bill of Rights-Absence from display within Parliament Buildings, (b) Request that Bill of Rights be displayed; the Hon. Member for Humboldt-Lake Centre (Mr. Althouse)-Railways-Crowsnest	pass	rate-Railway
upgrading-Prime Minister's position; the Hon. Member for Comox-Powell River (Mr. Skelly)-National Defence- Request that CF-104 aircraft be banned from aerobatic demonstrations, (b) Request for documentation on accidents.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Mazankowski:
That this House rejects the centralizing and interventionist policies of the Government as an ideologoical thrust aimed at introducing socialization of the Canadian economy by the back door and without the authorization of Parliament, and a definite and present threat to the freedom of Canadians.
Hon. Sinclair Stevens (York-Peel):: Mr. Speaker, I hope the Hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Breau) does not leave the House too soon because I find it most startling to see how that interventionist stance and that type of thinking is so insensitive to the havoc being wreaked in this country to the point at which the Hon. Member, presumably in a very partisan, supportive way of his Government, stands up here in the House and says that he is proud of the Government. I can understand, for reasons of loyalty or Party discipline, that the Hon. Member maybe feels he cannot speak too openly in criticism of his Government, but it really startles me to hear the Hon. Member say that he is proud of the Government's record.
Let me state for the record the record to which he is referring. For example, in 1968, we had a period of rising inflation to the point at which it rose to 4 per cent. That was the inflation level the year the emperor First took power in this country and introduced his interventionist, socialistic policies about which I want to speak. Thanks to the direction and support of the socialists to my left calling themselves the New Democratic Party, we know that that level of inflation rose to the height of 12.5 per cent in 1981 and was 10.8 per cent last year. Is that the record that the Member for Gloucester says he is proud of, to take inflation from 4 per cent to 10.8 per cent?
With respect to real growth, when the emperor took power in 1968 it was 5.8 per cent. Last year it was negative 4.8 per cent. Is that the record that he is proud of? According to the OECD, that 4.8 per cent put this nation twenty-fourth out of 24 among the major industrialized nations on which the OECD reports. We were behind Iceland in terms of our real growth last year. For example, Turkey's real growth was 5 per cent, which is roughly what we had before the emperor took power in Canada. Turkey had that growth last year, but thanks to the Government whose record this Member is so proud of, we had a negative 4.8 per cent.
Let us look at unemployment. The unemployment rate was 4.5 per cent before the emperor seized power in Canada through misrepresentation. We now find that the unemployment rate last year was 11 per cent. There were a million and a half Canadians not given an opportunity to work in this country, especially the youth of this nation, thanks to the socialistically inspired Trudeau type of policies that have so throttled the inherent ingenuity that could be called upon to create true wealth in this country had it not been frustrated by the interventionist, socialistic tactics of the Government.
I have spoken in general terms of unemployment. Let us look at more meaningful factors. How many Canadians has the Government inflicted unemployment upon? I have mentioned the number of 1.5 million. Before the emperor took power, there were 358,000 unemployed in this country. We thought that was too high at that time. When the Hon. Member says he is proud of his Government's record, can he honestly stand up and say that his Government had no hand in it and this was a matter just like Canadair that was running out of control? Is he saying that somehow the Government should not be called to task or held responsible for that record? Will he seriously suggest that his Government's spending, which amounted to approximately $12 billion at the federal level in 1968 and is now over $80 billion, had nothing to do with those figures? A deficit that was non-existent when his Government took power is now $25 billion, which is actually over $2 billion a month of deficit financing. Would he suggest that that had nothing to do with those sad figures which I have just put on the record concerning our economic morass at the present time?


Herb Breau: More simple messages.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: The Hon. Member says more simple messages. That is what I find so fraudulent about the socialistic approach to governing. They create the problems and the complications and then say, lo and behold, that they are now lost in the forest. They want to know how to find a way out to some kind of better prosperity, and there are no simple answers.
The truth is that I would like to suggest that there is a way to a new prosperity in Canada. It is a prosperity that will
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ensure that our productivity can once again be increased. It would ensure that the private sector would be more inclined to spend money on research and development perhaps to reach the point where we would spend 2 per cent of our Gross National Product on research and development. Before the private sector can get moving, we must once again inspire in it the confidence that the Government of the day will not through interventionist tactics and high taxation that basically frustrate the very thing we want to accomplish for all Canadians, that is, higher prosperity, greater real wealth and, in truth, what freedom is all about, a freedom for them to carry on their business and lives with a minimum of Government intervention.
If the Hon. Member dares, perhaps he will get up and try to rebut what I am saying. He likes to use the emperor's classic excuse for the problems with which he now finds himself confronted.


Herb Breau: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I regret to interrupt the Hon. Member. I believe that the rules are very clear that when any Member of the House is referred to we must refer either to his title, such as if he is a Minister, or to his constituency. The Member has been repeatedly referring to a term, obviously referring to the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), which I believe is against the rules.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: In the opinion of the Chair, the rules are very clear that one should not refer to another Hon. Member by his given or family name. One must refer to a Member by the name of his portfolio, office or constituency. As far as any other name which an Hon. Member wishes to call another Hon. Member, in the Chair s opinion it is parliamentary as long as it is not included in the list of unparliamentary language.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am sure that you and all Members of the House noted how quickly the Hon. Member associated his Prime Minister with the word "emperor". That clearly meant something to him. He almost automatically assumed that if I was referring to an emperor it was, in truth, the Prime Minister of Canada.
I am very anxious to put on the record what I feel would be some concrete policy moves on the part of the Government of the day that would lead us back to a more free and more private enterprise oriented system. In turn, it would be a system that would produce the jobs and prosperity that this Government is obviously incapable of engendering in Canada at the present time.
I say this because I noticed that, in a classic socialist debating stance, the Hon. Member for Comox-Power River (Mr. Skelly) stood up and spoke in that righteous tone that they like to take to talk about how they have listened to our criticism of the Government but were somehow unable to discern what policy moves we in the Official Opposition would make if we had an opportunity to govern this country. Every socialist has made that kind of argument to some extent. I have noticed that when the Members of the NDP feel that their ally, the present Liberal Party in power, is under attack, they are the
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first to rise to their defence. They try to convey the message that the issue we are talking about is a little more complicated than it is in reality.
In short, let me suggest to that Hon. Member that he might, for example, if he is looking for policy moves, consider a move in which the investment tax credit up to perhaps 10 per cent could be allowed on all investments by the private sector with respect to new investment in manufacturing and non-manufacturing activities. I would suggest that the Member might consider a 5 per cent reduction in the federal corporate income tax rate in order to give industry a somewhat better after tax profit, which is really capital to invest and begin developing our country.
I would like to suggest to the Hon. Member that he take a look at the November, 1981 budget to which presumably they had little objection. That budget changed the capital consumption on manufactured investment, which I think should have been restored to what it was. In other words, if you make an investment prior to the year's end, you could write that investment off 100 per cent. You are allowed only a 50 per cent write-off at the present time.
I would like that Hon. Member to consider that there be various research and development incentives designed to encourage the private sector to increase R and D expenditures combined with any university R and D expenditures and related expenditures in order to reach a target of 2 per cent of the nation's Gross National Product by 1990. That would be in sharp contrast to the 1.1 per cent share we are now putting into research and development in Canada, which is one of the lowest ratios of any industrialized country in the world. Over the next six years that would involve a $20.5 billion incremental. I want to emphasize that extra investment in research and development in Canada.
I would suggest the Hon. Member might take a look, speaking about energy, at a $20 billion energy investment plan to ensure that a marketable surplus exists in oil and gas by 1990. These investments would include additional exploration and development expenditures, several small scale oil sands projects that would produce heavy oil and asphalt type of tar for export markets and, finally, it would provide for the accelerated development of such fields as Hibernia and the Beaufort Sea projects. That is the type of private initiative where the Government essentially sets, if you like, the atmosphere and gives the incentives that we need in Canada in order to get us moving again. What is so encouraging, Mr. Speaker, is that if we started to take those kinds of thrusts we would be able, in the export field alone, if we simply regained the fair share of the world trade market that we used to have prior to the emperor's taking power, to increase our agricultural exports to the rest of the world by $11 billion by 1990. Once again, percentage wise, we would be exporting what we used to export to the rest of the world prior to the emperor's taking over. I would suggest that the type of energy thrusts to which I
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referred would enable further exports of oil and gas to the extent of, say, one hundred million barrels of oil and a comparable amount of gas which, in turn, would strengthen our dollar, lower inflation as a result of that, and which, in turn, would lower the interest rate structure to which we have become accustomed. In short, the creation of jobs would begin.
Let me be more specific. I think the next question which the Hon. Member for Comox-Powell River might ask is, what would be the effect if we did those things we are talking about? Perhaps even the Member for Gloucester would like to know what his Finance Department could tell him if he asked, "Assume we did some of the things to which the Hon. Member for York-Peel (Mr. Sinclair) is referring, what would it do for Canada and the economy between now and 1990?" I think the Hon. Member would find out that it would reduce our inflation level to 4.2 per cent, and it would create 520,000 extra jobs between now and 1990. In short, the trend line on which the last budget of this Government put us was for the creation of 1.4 million jobs in Canada. As we know, that is barely enough to keep unemployment at its present level.
The program I am outlining, according to the respected Data Resources of Canada group, would create 520,000 extra jobs or would create, in contrast to the Government program of 1.4 million jobs, 1.9 million jobs and bring unemployment in this country down to 5.7 per cent by 1990.
I refer to these things only to whet the appetite of Members of this House as to the tremendous potential we have in Canada if we would clear our minds of that socialist cobweb type of thinking which has become parasitical and has basically distracted us from the creation of wealth simply through the building of more and more bureaucracy and more and more Government involvement in all of our lives.
Let me tell you about other things. What I have described would trigger a balanced budget, certainly on a current expenditure basis by 1987. It would basically take us out of any deficit by 1990 and, most important, it would mean, in sharp contrast to the about $20 million of added net debt which the Government plans between now and 1990, that we would be able to reduce that net debt by $44 billion between now and 1990.
The program to which I am referring is a program of only one that could be offered, based on private sector involvement, to give us back some prosperity, some job-creation with less inflation and more real growth. As far as I am concerned, and I would suggest that most Members in my caucus believe Canada deserves better government than it has been getting with the interventionist socialistic alliance that has ruled this country almost without interruption since 1968. It is time we discarded the worn out thinking of these Karl Marx type of people, put back into place what had built the country initially and gave us a hard rock prosperity, namely the private enterprise system built on freedom for all Canadians.


Herb Breau: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member picked up on my words about the expression of my pride. He related that to things other than what I said. Just in case the interpretation
did not come to him clearly, I was talking about the unprecedented evolution in the last 15 years with regard to the introduction of legislation and the enshrinement in the Constitution of language rights, fundamental rights and basic rights. This is what I was talking about. I would think that even the Hon. Member, sometimes as partisan as he is, would recognize that.
When the Hon. Member refers to this Government as being socialistic, interventionist and against business, I ask, how can he really say that honestly when in the last budget five changes were brought to the investment tax credit to lengthen the period in which industries could claim it from five years to 11 years in some cases? We have introduced, for example, the concept of the equity holder being able, in some circumstances, to claim the tax credit if the investor or the company cannot claim it. He knows the investment tax credit was proposed by a Liberal Government, not a Conservative Government. How can he say that this Government does not look to encourage business where it can when we brought in these five changes in the last budget to the investment tax credit? For example, this may permit Noranda Mines to obtain the equity it needs when the market improves to build a zinc reduction plant in New Brunswick. Instead of the provincial or Federal Government's doing it, we are providing a tax regime in which equity holders and the company will be able to do it. How can the Hon. Member say such things when such beneficial changes were made to the investment tax credit in the last budget?


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to the two comments of the Hon. Member for Gloucester. First he indicated that somehow I had taken out of context his reference to being proud of the Government's record, and also he referred to such things as enshrinement of various rights. Here again I think it shows how the Hon. Member is totally insensitive to what the Government has done to the average Canadian. The average Canadian cannot eat the enshrinement of some type of paper reference in a document such as the one to which the Hon. Member referred. The average Canadian wants work. The average Canadian is denied jobs, jobs, jobs. I suggest that it is the Government's fundamental obligation to meet the right of every Canadian to a meaningful job. That is the right which the Government has taken away with its interventionist, socialistic approaches.
Then, in typical Liberal fashion, chameleonlike, he turned around and said, "How can you say that we are unfriendly with business?" It has absolutely beaten business into the ground, particularly the oil and gas industry. Then Government Members turn around and say, "Instead of hitting you 100 times, we will hit you 95 times next year. Are you not pleased that we have laid back on five?"
In short, the Government must be looked at in light of the over-all thrust of what it has done since 1968. John Turner and the present Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) cannot deny the record. That is their legacy to Canada. The Government of Canada has taken an interventionist, socialistic approach
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which has been demonstrated not to work by the fact that we are now ranked twenty-fourth out of 24 OECD nations. That is what I am speaking to.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I wish to correct and comment on some of the things the Hon. Member for York-Peel (Mr. Stevens) said. First, I said that the Conservative Party refused to put on record its policies and procedures. I note for the record that the Hon. Member for York-Peel has never been too abashed to do that. We have noted his approach to the problems in El Salvador and Central America, which I would say was in support of the governments in power there and the very nefarious activities going on.
We know that the Hon. Member for York-Peel is on the far right of the Conservative Party. He mentioned three points in terms of expanding the oil industry, but the additional expenditures would be simply the trickle down effect where we pay the companies and the wealthy and hope that it trickles through. He suspects that the freeing up of $20 billion will get things rolling, but it will simply serve to engorge multinational oil companies in Canada. Speeding up Hibernia and Beaufort Sea explorations cannot be done in the face of declining world oil prices. His proposal to export 100 million barrels of oil will simply deprive Canadians now and in the future of an opportunity of access to light crude. Basically it is an absolutely ridiculous approach to the solution of problems in Canada.
I want to admit that I was mistaken on one matter. The Hon. Member for York-Peel, in a different way than most other Members of the Conservative Party, put on the record proposals which I think would be very seriously looked at in terms of an election.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to the comments of the Hon. Member for Comox-Powell River which reflect how out of touch he and the New Democratic Party are. The British have spoken today. They have given a massive vote of support for Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative policies in the United Kingdom. There is a wave in the world today in favour of conservatism and diametrically opposed to the socialistic, dogmatic type of approach which perhaps was in vogue in the 1960s. The socialistic approach is out of favour. This is reflected also by the results of today's Gallup poll that showed our friends to my left have now fallen back to a mere 16 per cent of popular support.
1 understand how Members of the New Democratic Party feel. They are a little fluttery at the present time as they sense how the world is passing them by. If the Hon. Member wants to see some action in the House, if he wants to see jobs for Canadians, and if he wants to see less inflation and lower interest rates, he will hae an opportunity very shortly to allow us to form the new Government after the next election. We will put some truly free enterprise oriented policies back into vogue and allow Canadians to create some prosperity once again without a leechlike Public Service oriented Government living off their backs.
Message from the Senate


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, as I listened to the Hon. Member for York-Peel (Mr. Stevens), it sounded very familiar. It sounded like the program which the presidential candidate of the Republican Party, Mr. Reagan, proposed three years ago. The Americans, as they had the right under democracy, accepted his argument. Three years down the road and after the United States Government did the kinds of things the Hon. Member for York-Peel has been advocating, such as cutting taxes to the business community, giving greater incentives and the rest of it, Americans are still faced with over 10 per cent unemployment.
I would like to ask him a specific question. He talked about the deficit. Of course we have a large deficit. A substantial part of it was brought about by the very large increase in transfer payments which the federal Government pays to the Provinces for post-secondary education, hospital insurance and medical insurance. If there is a Conservative Government in the future of which he is a Minister-and that is a very unlikely possibility-and if it is faced with a large deficit, would it cut back on transfer payments, particularly for programs such as hospital insurance, medical insurance, old age pensions and family allowances?


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Aren't they beautiful, Mr. Speaker? They always come up with that old bogey that the only way we can get back to prosperity and reduce the deficit in the country is by cutting back their precious spending programs. The fact is that with what I outlined we would not have to cut from the real growth in federal Government expenditures one five-cent piece. All we would do is to put some faith back into the private sector and let it do the job of creating the wealth, which in turn will create the tax revenue we need to start balancing the budget.
If I could comment on one other matter, the Hon. Member referred to the program in the United States. He might be interested in a contrast between what has happened in Canada and what has happened in the United States in the last five years. The real Gross National Product in Canada went up 13 per cent, whereas in the United States it went up 19 per cent, and in every other economic aspect we did worse.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: I regret to interrupt the Hon. Member but he can only continue with unanimous consent because his time has expired. Is there unanimous consent?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


An Hon. Member:: No.


MESSAGE FROM THE SENATE
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order, please. I have the honour to inform the House that a message has been received from the Senate informing this House that the Senate has

June 9, 1983
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passed Bill S-32, an Act to amend the Penitentiary Act and the Parole Act, to which the concurrence of this House is desired.


BUSINESS OF SUPPLY
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Mazankowski:
That this House rejects the centralizing and interventionist policies of the Government as an ideological thrust aimed at introducing socialization of the Canadian economy by the back door and without the authorization of Parliament, and a definite and present threat to the freedom of Canadians.
James Sydney Clark Fleming: Mr. Speaker, if I can say at the outset and if you can believe it, having listened to the Hon. Member for York-Peel (Mr. Stevens), I still get some pleasure from listening to the Hon. Member. It is one of the few consistent things in this ever-revolving world. He has not changed since he crawled on a kiddy-car some decades ago. He is still riding on the far rightwing of the highway. He has been on the gravel he first walked and talked.
It must be a nostalgic moment for the Hon. Member because tomorrow night a number of his colleagues will be facing off in the political forum of their Party for the leadership, and this time around he is not there. A Member from the NDP said a moment ago that the Hon. Member for York-Peel was on the right wing of the Party. That may be how it was seven years ago in the leadership campaign, but now he is right in the centre of the Conservative Party, far over on the right wing of the highway, about to fall off in the abyss. The Canadian people certainly will not buy that kind of right-wing extremism. Still it is great to see the Hon. Member steady on course and basically out of tune with the mainstream of the Canadian public.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Let's try an election.


James Sydney Clark Fleming: His voice is strong, as his determination is strong. Might I also add that he made mention a moment ago of the elections in Great Britain. Remember, something has changed in Great Britain. The fact is that there are two major Opposition Parties. There are far more people opposed to the Government of Great Britain in Great Britain today than there are supporting that Government, thank goodness.
The reason why I wish to speak this afternoon is simply that I want to respond to comments made this morning by the Hon. Member for Wellington Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Beatty). It has been quite a while since I have had a chance to rise in this House and speak in debate because I have had few, if any opportunities to address myself to my portfolio. That may mean that I am doing everything right, and Members of the Opposition, particularly the Official Opposition, see that there is nothing to criticize. I would be delighted if that were the
case. At any rate, I am glad to have a chance this afternoon to respond what I find to be absolutely incredible rhetoric put forward by the Hon. Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe this morning.
Politics is a natural adversarial system. We stand up and each of us, depending on what Party we are in, do our very best to present in the best possible light our point of view. I must say that the Hon. Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe did not do justice to himself, his Party, his credibility or his Party's credibility by taking the track he followed this morning. The Canadian public is fed up with hyperbole, and it was nothing but hyperbole today, a clear distortion of any of the facts involved in the Government's proposal on how to deal with concentration of ownership in the Canadian newspaper industry.
The speech this morning was a classic example of the Official Opposition throughout this Parliament: bereft of any policy of its own, full of nothing but negativisms about anybody else's suggestions. That is not very healthy for any democracy. It is an exchange of ideas so that the public can determine largely what it would best accept.
The Hon. Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe began this morning by saying that with these proposals concerning the daily newspaper industry in Canada we were threatening even the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that our proposals were an attack on the basic freedoms of Canadians and that today there is less freedom in Canada than there was in 1968. Other Members before me outlined how ridiculous that charge is. I want to respond specifically to a couple of points, distortions or whatever that Member made this morning.
The Hon. Member said that the Government had raided a newspaper, that no other Government in history had done that. It is not a very palatable thing to have any newspaper raided. I am a former journalist. I wish to give a small reminder of the facts rather than the distortions. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police raided a newspaper. It did so because it thought there was secret information that might jeopardize the wellbeing of Canada. They may have been wrong, they may have been right, but it was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police which recommended and then acted on that. It is a very serious thing ever to intrude upon freedom of the press by any authority of Government, but clearly the security of the state is worth considering, rather than the kind of rhetoric of the Hon. Member, which seemed to suggest that no matter what a newspaper might do at any time to deal with that. You must have a right to deal with that and the Canadian public will judge whether you dealt with it appropriately.
The Hon. Member said that this Government had developed a propaganda war chest to serve its own purposes and to give misinformation to the public. That is ironic. That comes from a Member who was a Minister in the Clark Government, who set up a system under which, in order to decide what advertising firm would work for the Government and where the Government's advertisements would be placed, it would hire a small group of its friends and do it away from Government,
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away from the scrutiny of Parliament. They would decide who the advertisers would be and who in turn would get the advertisements. Therefore, that was a pretty hollow attack.
Let me get to the basic nonsense we heard about the Government's proposals on the daily newspapers in Canada and increasing concentration of ownership. The Hon. Member said it was a new assault on freedom of the press in Canada, it was legislation to regulate ownership, it would affect the ability of the press to do its job. He said that anything Government does is calculated for self-interest. He said Government will control the ability of organizations to run their newspapers.
What are we proposing? We are simply saying that at the current time in Canada in English language daily newspapers there are two very large newspaper chains that control approximately 60 per cent of all of the daily newspapers' circulation. What is freedom of the press if not our proposals to limit concentration from going any further? Surely freedom of the press is as much freedom from Government intrusion in the newsroom as freedom from monetary power, allowing people to have access to a diversity of views.
Surely competition is essential to a free press. If increasingly there are fewer and fewer owning more and more of our daily press, there is less of a challenge of accuracy in direct competition. There is less ability for senior journalists to move about in the job if what they want to tell or say is suppressed by management. There is less ability for Canadians to be sure that they are getting a diversity of view rather than a diversity of one or two publishers or owners who control most of the newspapers in the country.
What is the real threat? The real threat to freedom of the press in Canada is that money power will allow for a lack of any law and too much in the hands of too few. Were a Government not to act, that would be irresponsible. Let me add something else that I think is irresponsible.
In all the questions during Question Period and all the charges about the Government attacking the freedom of the press in Canada, never once-and this will surprise no one- did the Hon. Member from the Official Opposition suggest what he would do. Is he simply here as the "houseboy" of the publishers, or does he have a view? Does he think there should be more concentration? Do we have a free press if two companies own all the English language daily newspapers in the country? Is that what he would like? Is concentration of ownership not a problem?
It amuses me because it shows how far to the right they have gone. When every publisher or representative of the owners of daily newspapers in this country has told me over two years of consultation that concentration of ownership can be a problem-they will not say at what level but they admit it is a problem-the Official Opposition still will not admit it can be a problem or admit what is their position. Would it be a free press if they did nothing and more and more fell into the hands of fewer and fewer and there was no diversity and no competition? That is hardly responsible policy.
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The next charge was that we were going to set up a press council and that it would have its first chairman and vicechairman appointed by the Government, that it would be a convenient vehicle for Government to interfere any time it chooses, that the single greatest threat to a free press is a Government sitting in judgment of the free press, and that is what we see today with this proposal for a press council.
Let me tell you about the press council. That is all untrue. Either the Hon. Member cannot read or he has no willingness to talk about the facts. The fact is the membership of the press council, as set down in the proposed law, would have publishers' representatives and journalists' representatives in balanced numbers, in fair numbers from all of the five regions. They together would choose representatives from the general public with no conflict within the newspaper industry. None of them would be appointed. They would make the decisions and the balance of voting power would be with the public's representatives when hearing complaints. How is that Government interference in the press? It is not. To be sure, Government will not interfere but, to be sure, people have the right to vent their concerns, especially since almost all major cities in Canada, with the exception of three or four, have only one major newspaper. Those daily newspapers have a monopoly. The written word has a certain power, and I and many other Canadians and the Government think that individual Canadians and groups of Canadians deserve the right to have the ability to complain if they feel they are not being treated properly by a monopoly daily newspaper with all its power of print.
We are saying to the press that if they do not get credible press councils going, the Government will set up the framework of a council. The members of the press will determine their own workload, they will decide who the representatives will be from publishers and journalists, who are not always friendly with one another, and, as I said earlier, there will be the public's representatives holding the balance of power.
Now, Mr. Speaker, how does that illustrate the phrase, "the single greatest threat to a free press is a Government sitting in judgment of a free press"? How does that illustrate the phrase, "a convenient vehicle for Government to interfere any time it chooses"? That kind of rhetoric totally distorts the reality of the proposal and does not lead to productive debate on this focal point of Canadian democracy but makes democracy unproductive. I think that that is very irresponsible.
Once more, where is that Member who is the Party's critic? Where is that Party that, as the Official Opposition, says that it will form the next Government? Members of the Official Opposition can tell us what is wrong. They can distort and twist the facts of the matter, but they cannot tell us what their own position is.
The next charge laid by the Hon. Member was a document that indicated that advisers on the Government side said that what we want to do would be illegal, especially with reference to the Restrictive Trade Practices Commission reviewing

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possible newspaper purchases and start-ups by companies that are largely engaged in other businesses. We do not need a lawyer to tell us that the federal Government has the right to review anything. There may well be a question as to whether the Government has the right to impose penalties or laws because there are split jurisdictions, but the Government does have the right to review anything, and that is all that is proposed.
The Government proposes to make the point with the public that a company which is engaged largely in other areas should not reach into the newsroom so that the newsroom loses its independence by being fearful of criticizing the other areas that the parent company is involved in. Once more, that was a major concern of the Kent Commission, and I think that it is something that a lot of Canadians are worried about as well, especially when so much of the daily newspaper circulation is in the hands of so few.
The Hon. Member then went on to say that he had requested the Library of Parliament to prepare a research paper that said that there are serious doubts about the federal Government's jurisdiction. He then went to quote what those doubts were, but they all related to the Kent Commission. Indeed, that is exactly what I said when I announced the Government's proposals. With every good intention, we found those proposals either too intrusionary, appearing to be too intrusionary, or both, into the newsrooms. Government politicians should not enter the newsrooms. They have no right to be there. That is why our proposals are as limited as they are and as passive as they are. They set parameters for review or turn over to others the responsability of review with no input from us.
But we cannot have it both ways. We rejected the Kent proposals in part because of jurisdictional problems as well as the others I have just mentioned. If the Hon. Member's document says that, then he simply agrees with us. What we propose and what we will soon have in draft form is an Act that is legal as far as our lawyers are concerned and is very important to a free press in Canada.
As he wound up, the Hon. Member said that we were going to ram this through the House. The rhetoric really does get tiresome. We are going to ram it through the House? The Royal Commission met for a year and then brought forward its findings. I consulted with everybody I possibly could consult with for eight or nine months. Then we made our proposals and I have consulted on them for one year. When the proposals come to Parliament, I have indicated that I want them to be in Parliament and I want any proposals in the form of an Act. I do not want anything to be done by regulation or Order in Council because it is a sensitive area, and I want it fully vented and discussed in committee. Although I have said that publicly, the Hon. Member says that that is ramming it through the House.
Do you know what will probably happen when we have that legislation, Mr. Speaker? The Hon. Member and a handful of his friends will hold it up and hold it up on second reading and say that we are ramming it through the House, when all we are trying to do is to get it to committee so that other Canadians can discuss it. Mark my words. See if that is not what
happens. Mr. Speaker, I will bet that he still does not have a policy at that time that will deal with what can be done to protect the free press from the danger that is created when too much is in the hands of too few.
Finally, the Hon. Member said that these proposals contained shades of Orwell's "1984" and were only measures to make the press beholden to Government. He said that owners of Newspapers will have to win the favour of Government. He did not tell us how that would be done, because there is no way that we suggest that that would have to be the case. We have set parameters and there is no retroactivity for those who are already beyond the 20 per cent threshold in concentration of ownership. It is the meekest, mildest, most limited package that can be imagined simply because, as a former journalist myself, 1 do not believe we can do anything that would appear to be intrusionary. At worst, we offer grants for better interregional coverage and better coverage from abroad by people knowledgeable about Canada. That is a passive intrusion, one with no judgments, one that is on a first come, first served basis if there is no bureau in place already. Nobody is obligated to take the money if he does not want to take the money.
The Hon. Member concluded that the whole nefarious proposal was an attempt by the Government to shackle the free press which he said is so important to a democracy. Well, let me say that if Members of his Party were in charge, their inaction would shackle the democracy in an area vital to a competitive free press. Their inaction would allow conglomerates perhaps to use their influence to have the press make sure only their story got out. I would like to believe that conglomerate ownerships and large companies operate largely with goodwill within Canada, but they operate for their own interest and for their own profit line.
Surely Parliament must set limits at times that will protect a democracy and allow for diversity. We have proposed a law that will allow for that diversity and that will limit competition. We have proposed a review that will encourage editorial independence. We have proposed that in any individual marketplace, there should be no cross media ownership because there must be competition if there are to be facts and accuracy and diversity. We have proposed that there should be better inter-regional coverage in Canada and better coverage of Canadian interests abroad. When so many major cities only have one daily newspaper, we have proposed that individual Canadians should have a way to grieve if they feel that that powerful instrument has not been fair to them. I do not know how anybody can argue that any of that does anything but protect a free press, and a free press really means the rights of individuals to a diversity of sources of information.
Where are Members of the Official Opposition on this policy? They are nowhere. Who are they? They are friends of big business and, apparently, the newspaper conglomerates. What are they? Apparently they are destroyers of legitimate and rational debate and policy production.


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

June 9, 1983


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, the resolution before us today is an incredible piece of chicanery. Unfortunately, the only reason it tends to stick is that there is some shred of truth to it. I would like to use the ten minutes remaining to build on some of the remarks made by the Hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Breau) about the performance of the Government that gives a shred of credibility and truth to resolutions such as we see before the House today.
I would like to use as an example a small community in British Columbia that suffers because of the nature of Government intervention and the lack of what I would call the effectiveness of Government. Alert Bay is a small community on an island that sits at the head of Johnstone Strait. It encompasses 2,000 people, approximately 1,000 people who live in a native community and 1,000 people who live in an adjoining community. This community hangs in a life and death balance, Mr. Speaker, and that life and death balance is influenced on almost a daily basis by the Government and how it responds or fails to respond to that community.
When we speak about intervention, we also mean interest and understanding and communication. These things do not exist in Alert Bay. The Government is 3,000 miles away. It has no interest in the community, and consequently the community has no interest in the Government.
The present Government wonders why it has no representation from western Canada. Maybe the explanation that will follow will assist it in developing appropriate intervention which supports the kind of personal and private initiative that we would like to see, the kind of intervention that enhances the independence of the community to make decisions which affect their day to day lives and, in short, gives people independence.
I am sorry that the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) left the Chamber, Mr. Speaker, because his Department has great influence on what happens in that community through unemployment insurance and the employment development process. Alert Bay does get some recognition, but there are tremendous problems with the delivery of unemployment insurance in the community. When you combine that with the inefficiency of the post office, Alert Bay, like many communities in rural and remote Canada, suffers tremendously. People judge that it is suffering at the hands of the Department that comes under the Minister of Employment and Immigration as well as at the hands of the Government. Tremendous difficulties are imposed upon it.
Banking is a federal responsibility and Alert Bay has no bank. It has a small credit union on which the local business community is absolutely dependent. The small businesses that are trying to survive and grow in the community are dependent on a credit union that is hanging in there by a thread. By failing to intervene in some of the problems of the credit union, that sole source of banking in the community, the federal Government puts the small businesses in the community in jeopardy. Debts are incurred in areas of federal responsibility where the credit union could be made more viable and stronger and could serve the needs of the people more effectively. I urge
Supply
the Minister of State for Finance (Mr. Cosgrove) to look at the problems in the community.
Indian affairs is another area of concern. With approximately 1,000 people in the native community the Nimpkish band is struggling for economic development, for access to the forest industry, for appropriate intervention in the fishing industry, for development of their culture and the education of their children. The Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Mr. Munro) is a long way from Alert Bay. There are many and serious problems with employment and economic development that affect the day to day life of the native people and the opportunity for them to earn a living in order to support themselves and their children. The Government wonders why the people in that community and in all of western Canada reject that Party as a source of representation in the House.
I am pleased to see that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. De Bane) is in the House. The Johnstone Strait fishery is one of the most complex in western Canada, yet it is the people of Alert Bay and Sointula and the area at the head of Johnstone Strait that depend, absolutely and desperately, on income from the fishing industry. Every fish caught in Johnstone Strait by a fisherman from Alert Bay, from the Nimpkish band, from Port Hardy, from Sointula, is a ten dollar bill in those small communities. Every fish is the lifeblood of those communities. Yet the officials in the field decided to let the fish swim by and be taken elsewhere at a lower value. That put Alert Bay on the slippery skids to oblivion. There is a question of understanding that community and its dependence on that resource. The Government must understand this and extend aid to the community.
On the matter of small craft harbours, I must point out that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has had in his possession for seven years a request for harbour development. Alert Bay contains one of the largest fishing harbours in the area. The largest number of fishing boats on the West Coast is in that area. Seven years ago they made a request to build a fishing harbour there, but it has been ignored. As a matter of fact, harbour developments have been placed in communities that have no fishing harbour. Some of the communities that have received benefits do not even have major vessels harboured there. I suggest that this is so critical that if the fishing vessels are drained away from Alert Bay, it will kill the community. It is vitally important that the Government understand this. If that should happen, at least the people of Alert Bay should be informed. I hope the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans will take note of this and respond to it.
Another problem is transportation. There is a Coast Guard communications system which involves five or six people at a Coast Guard radio station. The Minister proposes to remove them from that community and put in a remote station which will remote to Vancouver. This is a compromise with safety. Those radio operators know the area like the back of their hand and when there is an emergency, they know who is closest and able to respond and exactly where that person is.

June 9, 1983
Supply
When this is remoted to Vancouver, the local operator there has no more detailed knowledge of the area than he has of Timbuktu. The proposal to remote that Coast Guard radio station is dangerous and it will erode the economic viability of the community. It is imperative that the Minister of Communications (Mr. Fox) have his officials talk to the people of the community about this. They should also talk to the other Government Departments involved so that there is a complete understanding not only of what is happening in the community but of how each Department affects the life, growth, hope and expectations of the people.
Also, the Department of the Solicitor General intervenes in the community without understanding it. An RCMP boat is involved in law enforcement and search and rescue. It is greatly respected in the community. It is often quite dangerous on the water with the tremendous traffic involved in the fishing industry, the ferries intersecting, the major marine routes for ocean going freighters, and the RCMP play an effective role there. In the past, the Solicitor General's office has proposed that the five officers involved be moved out of the community. That has not happened to date but it would have a bad effect if it did.
In the past, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has attempted to remove the fisheries office where some of the most difficult fishing management decisions are made. If those officers are removed from Alert Bay, communications will break down and the economy will be eroded.
There is a desperate need for Government Departments that intervene in the community and whose goals and aspirations, we hope, are to allow the community to thrive and continue to grow, to begin to talk to each other about the nature of the community and how they can help. They should then begin to talk to the community about where it wants to go. That is absolutely imperative.
At the present time we have a Senator who roams the coast of British Columbia. Instead of establishing priorities and discussing with the people of the communities how the Government will intervene and become involved in the day to day lives of people in a meaningful way so that they can make decisions themselves to secure their future, he comes out and announces where the small craft harbour will go, by total surprise. He comes out and announces where the salmon enhancement projects will go, by total surprise to the people of the communities.
Through the intervention of Cabinet Ministers an interdepartmental committee must be set up to study the needs of the area, to consult with the people and look at ways in which the Government can work with them to determine how they can be assisted. In some cases the solution might be for the Government to keep its nose out, but in other cases there are many things that the federal Government can do to assist such communities and help the people to preserve their way of life and make it better.
If the Government is interested in developing a good relationship and not exposing itself to the hot air rhetoric of the
Conservative motion, I offer them these constructive suggestions and a positive course of action that could be used in communities along the whole coast of British Columbia and in many of the remote communities of Canada.
[ Translation]


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order, please. The debate being concluded, the proceedings on the motion have expired, pursuant to Standing Order 62(11).



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

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

William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: Mr. Speaker, I take part in the Adjournment Debate this evening in an attempt to receive a little more information from the Government on the subject of a question I asked on June 6, 1983, as reported on page 26077 of Hansard.
It was brought to my attention by several constituents when I was showing them through their Parliament Buildings, through the buildings which are an honour, a tribute, and the property of all Canadians, that the Diefenbaker Bill of Rights was not displayed. I was showing them our Library, their Library. In the past I have always made a point of pointing out in the display cases on the desk in the Library the Flag Proclamation which gave Canadians their own flag. I have also pointed out the Diefenbaker Bill of Rights and other documents in the form of statutes of historic importance to Canada and to Candians in the development of our country. To my dismay, however, I could not show them the Diefenbaker Bill of Rights which used to be displayed in either language. It was not available. I looked through the documents in the display in the Hall of Honour which has just been opened in the corridor leading to the Library. There were several documents displayed at that time, which supposedly pertained to the constitutional development of our country, the Acts that have brought us to this point in history.
I would like to enumerate some of those Acts which are in the Hall of Honour, Mr. Speaker. There is the edict creating the Sovereign Council of Quebec, 1663, the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Quebec Act, 1774, the Constitutional Act, 1791, the Union Act, 1840. There is also the Constitution Act of 1867 which in itself is an anomaly because up until recently that Act has always been called the British North America Act. There was the Canada Act of 1982 and the Proclamation of the Constitution Act, 1982.
June 9, 1983

I asked the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) what had happened to this document, this Statute that when passed by the Parliament of Canada was to be the supreme Statute pertaining to constitutional rights of all Canadians. One of the rights which was in that Constitution Act passed under the Diefen-baker Government, commonly known as the Diefenbaker Bill of Rights, was the right of Canadian citizens to own and to hold property.
In checking to see what had happened to this historic document, I found that in 1967, Centennial Year, the then Prime Minister, Lester Pearson, wished to display to Canadians two important historic Acts. The ones he did display were the Proclamation of the Flag along with the Diefenbaker Bill of Rights, the original of which was displayed for two years, up until 1969. Then through some problems with humidity and some concern for the wellbeing of this important document it was removed. The document was replaced in the display case originally by a unilingual document, which was to be rotated, using one or other of the official languages, on a monthly basis. Shortly after that another display case was built and it was then possible to display it in both English and French. Up until this time, Mr. Speaker, I have not been able to find out, or, even receive a reply from the Government, what really has happened to this document and where it is. This document was the first Bill of Rights in recent history given to the Canadian people. It is a Statute which still remains, and was originally to be pre-eminent over all other documents.


Francis Fox: Public Archives.


William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: Mr. Speaker, I hear something from the Minister of Communications (Mr. Fox) across the floor. He is telling me that it is in the Public Archives. I do not see the difference between the Diefenbaker Bill of Rights, in the constitutional progression of our country, and the other documents which I see displayed in the Hall of Honour.
One matter which does concern many people is the apparent attempt to rewrite or change history-not because of language but, rather, because of the political Party involved-to make it appear that the one political Party is the only Party which has progressed and brought constitutional changes to Canada.


Francis Fox: That's besides the point.


William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: That is really something which most fair-minded people in Canada would find offensive. There must always be some credit given to the Diefenbaker Government and, in particular, to that honourable gentleman for developing and putting forward our first Bill of Rights. If these fears of mine are groundless, I would be only too happy to hear that.
I would also like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary when this important document will be placed on display in the Hall of Honour with other documents showing the constitutional steps we have taken. It is something which should not be missed by Canadians. It is something Canadians look for, especially those from my part of Canada who revere Mr. Diefenbaker. I do not see any reason which would stop the
Adjournment Debate
Government from displaying something as important to Canadians as the Diefenbaker Bill of Rights. I hope to receive a satisfactory answer.


Mr. Denis Ethier (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, to mark the patriation of the Canadian Charter the Government of the United Kingdom gave to Canada, on October 1, 1983, facsimilies of the major British documents respecting Canada's constitutional development, including the Royal Proclamation of 1763; the Quebec Act, 1774; the Constitutional Act, 1791; the Union Act, 1840; and the British North America Act, 1867. At the same time, the British Foreign Secretary, Francis Pym, also presented a special copy of the Canada Act 1982, produced on parchment.
The Speaker of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Commons decided that these documents of Canada's constitutional development should be put on display in the Hall of Honour so that thousands of Canadians who visit Parliament each year might be able to gain an even greater understanding of various stages in the evolution of Canada as a sovereign state.
They also decided that the edict creating the Sovereign Council of Quebec, 1663, which established New France as a royal Province and made provision for civil Government, should figure in the display. That original document is on loan from the Archives of France until September 5, 1983. The collection of documents of Canada's constitutional development also includes the proclamation of the Constitution Act, 1982, signed by Queen Elizabeth II. This document completed Canada's evolution as a fully sovereign state.
The collection of constitutional documents is complemented by a display of three proclamations establishing Canada's symbol of sovereignty: The Royal Proclamation of the Coat of Arms of Canada, 1921; the Proclamation of the Canadian Flag, 1965; and the Proclamation of the National Anthem, "O, Canada", 1980.
The number of documents to be included in such an exhibition is inevitably limited. The main exhibit deals only with the principle documents respecting Canada's constitutional development leading to full sovereignty, and the complementary exhibition deals only with the Canadian symbols of sovereignty. The exhibition of documents does not seek to deal with every aspect of Canada's constitutional and political evolution. For this reason, it was decided that another exhibition dealing with other aspects should be organized by the Public Archives.
I might say at this time that the Public Archives removed this document from the showcase because a signature on the document was being raised by the light reflecting in the
showcase.
It should be noted that the exhibition in the Hall of Honour includes The Proclamation of the Constitution Act, 1982, which brought into force that Act which includes the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, the Constitution Act, 1982, itself is not included in the display.

Adjournment Debate
The collection of constitutional documents does not include the many historic statutes of the Parliament of Canada that are of great significance for the people of Canada, such as the Official Languages Act of 1969, or indeed the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947 or, for that matter, the Canadian Bill of Rights of 1960. The exclusion of such documents does not reflect in any way on their importance for Canadians.


RAILWAYS-CROWSNEST PASS RATE-RAILWAY UPGRADING-PRIME MINISTER'S POSITION
Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: Mr. Speaker, on May 20 I asked the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) a quesiton concerning the railway upgrading and the Crowsnest pass rate. I was basically attempting to determine from the Prime Minister whether he had been very clear in his discussions with the various provincial Premiers and interest groups in the West when he asked their opinions of his proposed transportation initiatives. 1 asked if he had been clear as to whether he was talking about the need for railway upgrading, and what was their opinion as to the need for that activity, aside from a decision to change the historic Crowsnest rate charged to farmers. He fudged the issue somewhat in his answer.
In his answer as reported at page 25627 of Hansard, he said:
There are two aspects, and some of my interlocutors are more interested in one aspect than in the other. For instance, it is easy to see that those who are interested in an improved transportation system would probably include a lot of Manitobans, because I understand the Minister of Transport has announced or will announce that there will be some 1,000 proper cars or so built at the Transcona plant in Winnipeg.
That was the point on which I wish to raise an interjection. The cars that are being built in Winnipeg have nothing to do with the proposed transportation Bill C-155 that was before the House. Those cars are not being built to transport grain. They will be coal cars and there is a vast difference in the design and utilization, consequently, of those cars.
The cars being built in Winnipeg are small volume cars designed to carry a very dense material like coal. They cannot be interchanged for use in grain haulage and really fall outside the proposed legislation we are being asked to discuss in the House. As well they fall outside the discussions that have been going on between various farm groups and, to some extent, the provincial Premiers.
I believe the Prime Minister's answer left us with the impression that the question of the rate and upgrading were thoroughly and inalterably intertwined. Our Party and many other people in Canada do not see that to be the case, and that view is held not only by western Canadians but by people right across the country.
We have been making the point for some time in the House that the railway's ability to move grain has not really been limited by the amount of technology that exists in the railways now. Railways have upgraded considerably and consistently. Admittedly, they have done so through intrusions into the public purse at times. However, we note that the proposed
June 9, 1983
subsidies included in Bill C-155 of $651 million annually include subsidies that have existed under previous legislation. For example, there is the branch line subsidy of $278 million which is being paid now annually. I would remind the House that those subsidies are being paid to transport the grain directly from the elevator to the seaboard, and they relate to all the costs of moving grain from those branch lines directly to the seaboard. That covers closeto 30 per cent or 35 per cent of the total crop moved in the country.
I think there are some problems regarding the background reasoning for the decision that has been made. Let me point out a couple of things. The railways cannot obtain more efficiency with this rate. The rate was very profitable up until the last 15 or 20 years. There is some dispute as to whether or not it is still profitable. Many figures we have been able to obtain would indicate that the railways come very close to covering all their operating costs. The upgrading costs are being paid out of the public purse. The cost of the hopper cars is being paid out of the public purse, from farmers pockets and with provincial money.
As far as efficiency of the railways is concerned, using one format for computing efficiency, this has gone from roughly a train load average of 22 cars at the beginning of the century to a situation today when 110 cars are moved per train load. The cars today are much larger than the ones used in 1900. The efficiency ratio there is about ten times in terms of the crew and backup people necessary to maintain the trains on the tracks. About one-fifth of the crews and backup staff are now needed if you compute efficiency on a train load basis.
If you compute efficiency on a tonne mile basis, about one-fiftieth of the backup staff is needed today compared with the turn of the century. Costs are not consistent with what occurred back then.
There have been many ways of reducing costs. The compensatory rate Mr. Snavely determined is not very accurate. When you use his figures and superimpose them on the financial statement for one of the most profitable years of CPR you will find, on a train load basis, that the returns would be more than twice the actual train load mile costs.
We argue that the Prime Minister has not fully understood the problem. It is not just an economic problem, it is a social problem. It is a problem affecting the security of the country as an economic entity. It is a regional problem, not just an economic problem. It is a truly political problem of a national sense. I again call upon the Minister to split the Bill, split the two issues and deal with them as two separate issues, which they most clearly are.


Denis Éthier: Mr. Speaker, I think the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) well understands the situation. The question is whether railway upgrading and changing the Crow rate are
June 9, 1983

inseparable issues. It is the Government's view that the two must go together. Theoretically, I suppose it would be possible to charge arbitrarily low freight rates for certain commodities, and then to pour taxpayers' money into upgrading whenever it is thought to be needed. But in the Government's view, it is neither sound management nor sound economics to charge freight rates that bear no relationship to the costs incurred in the transportation.
Grain is perhaps the only commodity in the country in respect of which 4025;-1 freight rate bear no relationship to transportation costs. Rail freight rates for other commodities, elevator charges, passenger fares on public transit, even public utility fees-for example, Manitoba Hydro, in a Province with an NDP Government-have been subject to periodic fee increases in an attempt to recover a reasonable proportion of the cost incurred. Unless there is a reasonable amount of revenue from each type of traffic, it becomes impossible to determine whether that traffic will grow or decrease, where it will move and, consequently, where investment for upgrading of facilities are required.
None of the above excludes Government support of grain transportation, even as a long run proposition. The Government fully recognizes the contribution of grain to Canada's exports and balance of payments. That is why grain will never have to pay the full cost of transportation. Under the present plan, it will pay about 60 per cent of the true cost by 19901991. If grain prices remain depressed, the "safety net" will take effect before that and grain will pay a smaller proportion of transportation costs.
The Government is convinced that some additional revenue is required from grain to allow the railways to commit themselves to the expansion needed to accommodate future growth in traffic over the next decade.


NATIONAL DEFENCE-REQUEST THAT CF-104 AIRCRAFT BE BANNED FROM AEROBATIC DEMONSTRATIONS. (B) REQUEST FOR DOCUMENTATION ON ACCIDENTS
Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I wish to elaborate on a question I asked some time ago in the House concerning the Canadian Armed Forces operation of the CF-104. Of the 239 acquired by the Canadian Armed Forces, 110 have crashed and there has been a 46 per cent failure rate. Over the last six months five pilots have been killed in CF-104 accidents, and over the term of its use approximately 33 have been killed.
When the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Lamontagne) was questioned about this in the House, he indicated that the Opposition was attempting to make a tragedy out of the most recent situation in Germany in which a clergyman and his family were killed by the crash of a CF-104, with a greater tragedy just narrowly being missed with thousands of people watching an Armed Forces public display.
There is no doubt in anyone's mind that this is an extremely dangerous aircraft. It was pointed out that some squadrons in the RAF had better flight safety records and less loss of
Adjournment Debate
aircraft during the second world war when the aircraft were actually involved in active combat than the CF-104. The aircraft seems to have some design problems. It is a single engine aircraft which cannot be relit after an engine failure. In West Germany the aircraft was described as a national scandal, with 252 accidents and 177 that have crashed. Also 24 have been lost in Italy. The current figures stand to be updated. Of the 1,900 manufactured, 600 have crashed. There is no doubt that this is an absolute tragedy. It is a serious situation. It is ridiculous for the Government to maintain aircraft with such a performance record.
Some of the rationalizations which have been used to justify continued usage of the aircraft are interesting. One article indicates that fighter pilots like to fly the CF-104, that it is a great honour, and that it is like the infantry soldier who knows there is risk but wants to be doing what he is doing. Unfortunately the five people who were killed on the highway in Germany did not want to happen what happened to them. Of the two persons who lost their lives in Alberta, one had a wife and four children. I am sure they do not want to be doing what they are doing today.
We in the House of Commons must ask ourselves whether this is justified. Frankly, in peacetime, astronomical losses of a dangerous aircraft such as that are completely intolerable.
Returning to the Cold Lake situation, the two aircraft that we lost did not appear to have been equipped with normal emergency locater equipment. The justification that military aircraft are exempt from carrying emergency locater transmitters is absolutely appalling on the part of the Canadian Government. Armed Forces pilots are probably the best trained and the most safety conscious pilots-beyond the shadow of a doubt. For the Canadian Government to permit the aircraft to be flown without ELTs is an extremely poor example to civilian pilots the Government is trying to convince should adhere to the law and maintain their aircraft. It is also a very poor example to set in respect of aviation safety. Unfortunately in cases of accidents where pilots survive in hostile countries, it could result their deaths. Emergency locater transmitters must be installed on all those aircraft. There must be operational changes in the aircraft. Unfortunately on the day that this matter was raised in the House the Minister indicated that there would be none and that the aircraft would continue to fly.
I submit that there must be a public investigation into the aircraft and its crashes, a search for common threads. The Minister made a commitment to make crash investigation records available indicating the variety and number of aircraft that went down, and the causes. I ask that he fulfil that commitment. The Minister must prohibit the use of those aircraft in aerial and aerobatic demonstrations. It is just too risky for the pilot to fly the aircraft at low levels, and it is too dangerous for the people watching.
Finally, the Minister must prohibit the use of the CF-104 in commercial airports. There can be no justification for flying this aircraft into heavily populated areas such as Vancouver

June 9, 1983
Adjournment Debate
and Winnipeg, where civilian airports are used. It is completely unjustifiable. The Minister must recognize that he cannot hide or attempt to justify these tragic accidents. We must all be very forthright and move quickly to investigate the causes. We must also act quickly to put the aircraft into very rigid operational roles in which they are known to be safe before we lose anymore pilots and before we have a repeat of the kind of tragedy we recently saw in Germany.


Stanley Hudecki: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member expresses several concerns in regard to the regrettable accident which occurred during an air display last month in Germany. He has questioned the operational suitability of the CF-104 in its current role in Europe, its accident record and also its continuing suitability for operations. The specific questions he has posed would take much longer to answer than the three minutes allotted to me. I will therefore just generalize and give him the highlights. Hopefully on a more personal basis and through correspondence I can give him the details.
On all of these contentions I must strongly take him to task, not only on the tone, the implications and indeed the facts that he has used in questioning the use of this aircraft, but especially on his lack of appreciation and sensitivity to the very difficult task that the pilots are called upon to perform for the security of this country. As the Minister has already pointed out in the House, we would not allow our pilots to take to the air in any aircraft if there were any questions whatsoever relating to the operational safety and soundness of the aircraft.
It has been accurately reported in the media that both the United States and the Canadian experience with this aircraft in so far as accidents rate are concerned is similar. Indeed, the same is true with regard to the accident rates of our six NATO allies who are also flying this aircraft in the European theatre. The CF-104 is a high performance military aircraft intended
for use in a very hostile environment. This inevitably requires specialized training missions that simulate actual wartime conditions.
This plane is not used for aerobatics at the various exhibits. It is simply a fly-past and the impression that is left on the spectators results from the speed at which they fly and the concomitant noise they produce.
With regard to the specifics of this unfortunate accident, may I assure the Hon. Member that, as with all accidents involving Canadian Forces aircraft, we are conducting an intensive investigation into the causes. May I assure the Hon. Member that the findings of these investigations are not secret, although some of the information gathered may indeed be of a confidential nature.
I can tell the Hon. Member that during the last five years only 13 per cent of the CF-104 accidents have been caused by identified material deficiencies. Therefore, to suggest that the aircraft is not airworthy for war service is simply not true. Our pilots are among the best trained pilots in the world. They are consummate professionals. They do not shy away from the CF-104. Indeed, they look forward to serving with it. They consider the opportunity to fly this high-performance aircraft in a demanding role a privilege. It is an extremely demanding job which they carry out with the utmost of professional capability, and we are rightly proud of them. I see my time is up, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order, please. The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until eleven o'clock on Monday, June 13, 1983, pursuant to the Order adopted earlier today.
At 6.28 p.m., the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Monday, June 13, 1983