1984-01-16

ELECTION OF SPEAKER


[Stage Direction]
Dr. C. B. Koester (Clerk of the House of Commons): It is
my duty to inform the House that a communication has been received as follows:
Having been designated to other functions, I hereby submit my resignation as Speaker of the House of Commons, effective as of midnight, January 15, 1984.
With warmest regards.
Sincerely yours,
Jeanne Sauv£
The mace was then put beneath the table.
Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Dr. Koester, I wish to inform the House that His Excellency the Governor General has seen fit to authorize this Chamber to proceed with the election of a Speaker.
This decision is of vital importance to the proper conduct of this Assembly. Without a firm and enlightened Speaker, our parliamentary democracy would not be viable. Canadians depend on their Members of Parliament to defend the causes they hold dear. As we all know, opposing views, especially when they are firmly rooted, often cause the business of Parliament to be conducted in an atmosphere of antagonism.
It is then up to the Speaker to maintain order while remaining fair and impartial, to allow the majority to govern while at the same time giving dissenting voices an equal chance to make themselves heard.

This is a tough job description for what is not always a popular role. In Great Britain Speakers have been hanged and beheaded.


An Hon. Member:: Prime Ministers too!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Thankfully, here in Canada we have been less extreme in demonstrating our unhappiness with the system. We have yelled at a few Speakers, insulted one or two, and more recently nearly deafened one with bell ringing. Yet for all of that, because of the calibre and wisdom of those who have held this high post, we have generally treated our Speakers with the respect and gratitude which the office deserves.
Today it gives me great pleasure to nominate our colleague from Ottawa West (Mr. Francis) for this somewhat overwhelming responsibility. He is a House of Commons veteran who has experienced both the satisfaction and the many frustrations of parliamentary life.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I hope the House will become more serious when we have a serious Speaker. For the Hon. Member quite simply there is no finer life, whether he be passionately pleading the concerns of his constituents or fighting for the traditions of this institution. The Member for Ottawa West has devoted the past 30 years to public service in this community and to federal politics. He has done so with a sense of duty, understanding, and a special quality of kindness which, in our view, makes him an admirable candidate for Speaker. His most recent discharging of responsibilities in the Chair as Deputy Speaker demonstrated an effective use of his abilities.
Finally, Members may not know that our candidate brings another accomplishment to the job. During the Second World War he served in the RCAF as an air navigator. I would recommend that he dust off those old navigational skills; they may hold him in good stead in the days to come.
[ Translation]
I move, seconded by the Hon. Leader of the Opposition, that the Hon. Lloyd Francis, Member for the Electoral District of Ottawa West, do take the Chair of this House as Speaker.


Mr. Brian Mulroney (Leader of the Opposition):: Dr. Koester, this is an important time transitionally for Members of the House of Commons.

The election of a new Speaker of the House of Commons is due to the resignation of the Hon. Member for Laval-des-Rapides, Madame Sauve, who served the House with unequalled dignity and energy. She has left her mark with respect to parliamentary procedure and the day-to-day administration of the House of Commons. Naturally, we are sorry to lose her, but we are convinced that, in her new role as Governor General, Madame Sauve will continue to use her abilities and her competence to serve honourably the people of Canada and to defend the best interests of our country.

Members of the House of Commons are assembled here today to make what is arguably the most important decision that is required of any of us in the course of our duties in the House of Commons on behalf of the people of Canada. The election of the Speaker of the House of Commons is important, not only because it is a prerequisite for the conduct of

January 16, 1984
Election of Speaker
business in this place, but because the choice that we will make today will influence both the quality and the shape of debate in the House and will necessarily have an impact on our lives, both as Members of Parliament and as Canadians.
I am certain that all of who have served in the Chair over the years, including the most recent occupant, would attest to the fact that the job of Speaker is a very difficult and challenging one, made doubly so by the fact that the House of Commons is a place of great partisanship. However, it is a partisanship, as I have learned in my own very limited experience, which is bound by, and expressed within, the strict and equitable exercise of our rules. This notion, this indispensable notion, must prevail at all times.
In a democracy progress clearly results from forceful debate and intense scrutiny here in the House of Commons. When we ignore or abuse the rules of this place, as I suspect, Dr. Koester, we all have in varying degrees from time to time, we turn our backs on the achievements of the past and the promises of the future. It is for this reason that we gather in assemblies such as this to elect a Speaker.
This is a moment of remarkable importance in our parliamentary life. The person chosen to act in the role as first commoner is charged with the responsibility of acting as the conscience of the House and as interpreter and arbiter when disputes arise here in the House. The Speaker is guardian of the rules, the practices, and most of all in that important responsibility, must be above partisanship at all times but particularly when we are told, Dr. Koester, that there is a possibility that there will be an election this year or some year.


An Hon. Member:: Don't hold your breath!


Martin Brian Mulroney: I am not holding my breath at all.
It is therefore with great pleasure and pride that I rise, on behalf of my colleagues of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, to second the nomination of a distinguished and thoughtful Canadian who has served his country well as Speaker of the House of Commons.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
The Clerk of the House: Shall the motion carry?


Hon. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa):: Mr. Chairman, on this occasion I would like to say a few words on the nomination which is before the House for the selection of a new Speaker. In so doing I would like to comment briefly on our previous Speaker and say something about the process for selecting Speakers in general.
As has been indicated by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Mulroney), the position of Speaker of the House of Commons is supremely important not only for Members of the House but, because of all the duties connected thereto, for the people of Canada in our system of parliamentary democracy.
The Speaker, whoever he or she may be, is responsible in the final analysis not simply to the government which basically proposes the name of the Speaker under our present system but fundamentally responsible to all Members of the House of Commons.
[ Translation]
And it is in that context that I want to emphasize the work done by Madame Sauve in the past. As Speaker, she made very difficult rulings in this Parliament, particularly during the constitutional debate. That was obvious. During that period, as Speaker, she ruled in favour of the House of Commons, not simply in favour of the Government. During that very trying period in the House, she also made some rulings which went against the Government. And in other circumstances, some of her rulings went against the views of the Opposition. Madame Sauve was an exceptional Speaker and I wanted to say so.
I would now simply like to add that we in our Party will certainly be giving the new Speaker our full support and we wish him well in his onerous duties in this House. Anything I now have to say I want to make clear has nothing to do with the personality of Lloyd Francis, who I am sure will do a good job.
For the occasion, however, I would like to take this opportunity to remind the House of Commons that a committee of this House representing all Parties not long ago made a recommendation for the selection of Speaker, a selection very different from the process now being used. The committee of the House took into account the responsibilities of the Speaker to all Members of the House and made a recommendation that that committee, consisting of Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats, thought would meet the responsibilities of the Speaker better than the current process. I as leader of my Party want to indicate very clearly that we agree with that recommendation.
The recommendation was that in order to enhance the moral authority of the Speaker as being responsible to all Members of the House and not simply to a government-and governments change from time to time, even in this country-it would be desirable to have the Speaker elected by secret ballot by all Members of the House. Therefore, a key recommendation was that instead of the Speaker's name being proposed by the Prime Minister of the day and, as has been our tradition, seconded by the Official Opposition, supported as a matter of routine as well by the New Democratic Party, the committee said that the Speaker should be directly elected by secret ballot by all Members of the House.
We in our Party think that process would be much better. If it were followed in the future, as we hope it will be, the Speaker so elected will have more moral authority in speaking to all Members of the House. This would enhance the position of individual Members, especially back-bench Members of the House of Commons. In that respect we think the recommend-
January 16, 1984

ed process would be an improvement. The Speaker's position, in short, would be enhanced and the power of the House of Commons, vis-a-vis the executive branch of the government, we think would also be enhanced.
1 want to conclude by saying that the present nominee has our full support, but I also urge future governments, whoever they may be, to pay attention to the all-Party recommendation which set out a more democratic and more effective process of electing a Speaker for this body.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Ian Waddell (Vancouver-Kingsway):: Mr. Chairman, I would like to exercise my right as a back-bencher to take part in this debate. The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) spoke in his speech this morning about former Speakers being hanged, drawn and quartered, or whatever, to protect the rights of Parliament, and the Prime Minister is right about that. They were doing so, as 1 understand my British history, to defend the rights of Members of Parliament from the king. When King Charles entered the British House of Commons, Mr. Speaker Lenthall protected the Members so John Pym and other Members could retreat to the back of the House and get away by sailing down the River Thames. That is an honourable tradition.
We have replaced the king by the Prime Minister, it seems, in our system.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Ian Gardiner Waddell: I see the Prime Minister applauding!


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Ian Gardiner Waddell: There is room for only one emperor in Ottawa, I suppose!
In the previous system, before the imperial Prime Minister, the king never appointed the Speaker of the House of Commons. The House of Commons made sure it appointed its own Speaker. That was the beginning of our parliamentary democracy in Canada.
Why, then, are we in this House giving up our collective right to have a real election, not this farce of an election, by having our Members nominate candidates for Speaker rather than the Prime Minister? It seems to me that would make a lot of sense. When I suggested this in a letter to Members of the House last week, one of the Prime Minister's people said that it would turn things into a popularity contest. That is the view of those people of democracy and that is how far the imperial Prime Minister has got in our system.
[DOT] (U20)
I am sorry Hon. Members of the House have not taken the opportunity we had today to have a real election, to suggest a number of names. There are a number of competent people in the House who could be Speaker. I say this not as an attack on the nominee's credibility and competence, but as an attack on the system of choosing a Speaker. When it comes to the next
Election of Speaker
election of Speaker, which I think could be soon, I hope Hon. Members of the House of Commons will have more collective guts than they have shown today.
The Clerk of the House declared the motion carried in the affirmative, and Lloyd Francis, Esquire, Member for the electoral district of Ottawa West, duly elected to the Chair of the House.
Mr. Francis was conducted from his seat in the House to the Speaker's chair by the Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau and Mr. Brian Mulroney.


Mr. Speaker  Elect@: Hon. Members, I beg to return my humble acknowledgements to the House for the great honour you have been pleased to confer upon me by choosing me to be your Speaker.

Hon. Members, I beg to return my humble acknowledgements to the House for the great honour you have been pleased to confer on me by choosing me to be your Speaker.

I would like to express my thanks to the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) for nominating me to this illustrious office. I am deeply appreciative of the fact that the Hon. Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Mulroney) seconded the motion and of the kind words expressed by the Leader of the New Democratic Party (Mr. Broadbent).
I know that no Speaker can perform his duties without support from all sides of the House. I am touched and grateful to have received such warm best wishes. Having occupied the Chair as your Deputy Speaker for three years, I am heartened that your sentiments of trust and goodwill have survived my apprenticeship for this great honour.
I would like to pay tribute to my distinguished predecessor, Madam Sauve. I think we would all agree that this has been an active Parliament with much controversial legislation. Throughout these busy years, Madam Sauve distinguished herself by her composure, her sense of humour and her charm. Her work in response to the comments of the Auditor General and the Commissioner of Official Languages brought commendations from both of them. She also demonstrated that necessary prerequisite of any good Speaker: impartiality. These qualities, I am sure, will serve her well and benefit the whole nation when she assumes her new role as Governor General.

I am very conscious of the fact that by taking on the duties of Speaker of the House, I am taking part in a historic tradition that lives on and has proved its worth. I truly believe that this tradition owes a large part of its success to the rules that govern our parliamentary proceedings and are the culmination of many years of experience.
Since our Standing Orders are based on a common sense principle, the role of the Speaker is to ensure and maintain the proper conduct of the proceedings of this House. To many, it

January 16, 1984
Election of Speaker
may seem that our rules are both archaic and complex. In reality, however, they have been formulated as a response to any situations that may arise. This is absolutely necessary, since the House is a deliberative assembly that symbolizes the diverging opinions of all Canadians. The task of the Speaker is to guarantee impartial application of the Standing Orders, for the greater benefit of all Members. It is a difficult task and a great challenge. That is why traditionally, Speakers are always escorted to the chair after their election.
The Speaker is also responsible for the preservation of the dignity of this Chamber. No Speaker can do this without the trust and co-operation of all Members. I hope that in the heat of the moment you will not abandon your trust in me and feel that I have occasionally ruled against you. I hope you will remember my need for your co-operation when my impartiality does not give universal satisfaction.
In return for your trust in me, I pledge to do my utmost to be worthy of your trust; to perform my duties in the best tradition of the Speakership; to be truly impartial and fair to all; to protect the right of the majority to transact the business of the House while protecting the right of the minority to be heard; to give to each Member the same respect and consideration; to maintain order and decorum; and to observe the spirit of the rules of procedure and parliamentary life. I pledge to you that I will try to remember at all times that the Speaker is only the servant of this House and not its master, and I will endeavour to place these duties above every other consideration.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
The Sergeant-at-Arms then placed the Mace on the Table of the House.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, Sir, I now have the pleasure to inform the House that it is the pleasure of His Excellency the Governor General that the House shall present their Speaker at twelve o'clock noon in the Chamber of the Senate to receive His Excellency's approval. I would therefore suggest, Mr. Speaker, that the sitting be suspended to the call of the Chair.


Mr. Speaker  Elect@: The House has heard the suggestion of the Right Hon. Prime Minister. Is it agreed?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker  Elect@: The sitting stands suspended to the call of the Chair.


SITTING SUSPENDED
[Stage Direction]
At 11.28 a.m. the sitting of the House was suspended.

[Stage Direction]
A message was delivered by Flavien J. Belzile, Esquire, Acting Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, as follows:
Mr. Speaker,
It is the pleasure of His Excellency the Governor General that this honourable House attend him immediately in the Senate Chamber.
Accordingly, Mr. Speaker Elect, with the House, went up to the Senate Chamber and there Mr. Speaker Elect spoke to the following effect:
May it Please Your Excellency:
The House of Commons have elected me their Speaker, though I am but little able to fulfil the important duties thus assigned to me.
If, in the performance of those duties, I should at any time fall into error, I pray that the fault may be imputed to me, and not to the Commons, whose servant I am.
The Honourable Speaker of the Senate then said:
Mr. Speaker,
I am commanded by His Excellency the Governor General to assure you that your words and actions will constantly receive from him the most favourable construction.
And the House being returned:

Prayers.


Hon. Monique Begin (Minister of National Health and Welfare) moved: that Bill C-3, An Act relating to cash contributions by Canada in respect of insured health services provided under provincial health care insurance plans and amounts payable by Canada in respect of extended health care services and to amend and repeal certain Acts in consequence thereof, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Health, Welfare and Social Affairs.
She said: Mr. Speaker, with your leave, since I am the first Member of this House to rise in debate immediately following your inauguration as Speaker of this House, I wish to congratulate you, to extend my best wishes and to remind the House, as this was not mentioned before, that before entering politics you had been a senior official of my Department, and through you, I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to salute all those people working behind the scenes whom we do not necessarily know and who, especially at Health and Welfare Canada, have helped to realize the programs we have today and of which we are so proud, and especially the Health Insurance Program which is the subject of this debate. I have
January 16, 1984

heard you did very good work, and from time to time I find documents with your signature. Now we are colleagues. Today, you have become that impartial person who will preside over our destiny.

1 would like to say to all my colleagues that it is both with pleasure and regret that 1 am taking this opportunity to speak today on second reading of Bill C-3, the new Canada Health Act. I regret that the federal Government had to take this measure in order to stop the growing erosion of medicare and I regret, in a way, that the excellent recommendations of Mr. Justice Emmett Hall were rejected back in September of 1980 by the provinces at the federal-provincial conference in Winnipeg. I also regret, I must admit, that a year later, despite hundreds of briefs and very clear recommendations in the report of the Breau parliamentary task force, which was conducted by my colleague, the Hon. Member from New Brunswick, the provinces were not convinced to ban extra charges. A few years ago, in 1978, extra charges were in the amount of $50 million to $55 million. When I tabled the Bill in early December of last year, this amount had already grown to $100 million over the amount Canadians have already paid and this has hit them at a time when they are less prepared for it.
To sum up the so-called problems of medicare-the political confrontations and controversies which did take place in the past but which are fading away today-some players could accuse the federal Government of moving too fast. However, only history will tell; we do not know. One thing that is sure, which everyone knows, particularly the senior civil servants in all the provinces who have created medicare and who have given Canadians the excellent system we have, is that there is a serious problem which will have to be addressed sooner or later. An erosion of medicare is taking place and, of course, in the case of erosion, no one knows when it will make the house collapse. Therefore, the federal Government decided that the time to act was now.
The charges are increasing and becoming serious, but are not yet too disruptive from the viewpoint of the global system of medicare. We may be in too much of a hurry, but I do not believe so. I feel most Canadians do not believe we are. I believe that is the only accusation which could ever be made against Bill C-3.
There are many things which must be said under dossier and Hon. Members will excuse me if my remarks are perhaps delivered en vrac. I did not, for obvious reasons, have time to write a speech. I crossed the country last week from coast to coast. On Monday I met with the Minister of Health of Newfoundland in his capital city of St. John's. I met with the Minister of Health of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown, and I met with eight of my provincial colleagues and one of my territorial colleagues in all of the five working days of last week. We had, I must say, excellent meetings. They were very positive. For the first time in a long while we got down to business, we were able to speak of medicare and of the draft regulations which I received on Monday at the same time they
Canada Health Act
received mine from me. We began to address the practical consequences of this new Canada Health Act which the House is studying today.
This Bill, I must say with great pride, having tested it and worked with it in a very intensive fashion all of last week, is a very good piece of legislation. That was confirmed to be by several players in the field. The provincial, federal and territorial people acknowledged it as a very good piece of legislation. Perhaps I should add at this point, Mr. Speaker, that the two provincial Ministers I have not yet met with I will meet in the coming days. They are outside the country right now. The territorial Minister of the Northwest Territories will soon be appointed-if he has not been appointed already-and I will meet with him as soon as possible, of course. However, together with the vast majority of my other colleagues, I had a chance to get down to business and talk of health.
The Act is a very good piece of legislation. Two words worried the provinces a lot. With my provincial colleagues I undertook eventually to replace them with better words. Although they are not new words or new concepts, in 1984 they may appear to place undue burdens on the provinces. Needless to say, this was not the intent of the Act. 1 will quickly give these words to my colleagues and to the Opposition. The provinces are very nervous about the words "adequate" and "reasonable" in Clause 12 of the Bill where one is applied to compensation for doctors and the other to budgets for hospitals. Reasonable compensation for doctors is in the existing legislation and we all agree with the idea; there is no doubt about that. Adequate funding for hospitals is not word for word in the existing legislation but has been with us for 25 years through another phrase. However, the words may appear to carry a notion of value judgment which is not intended and may appear to groups and communities as a tool to have a tribunal assess what province x, y, or z has granted them.
As my officials and myself have explained to our provincial colleagues, there is a long-standing tradition which explains what is meant by reasonable compensation for doctors. It is accepted that when the majority of doctors in a given province have accepted the settlement of that province, that is what that concept means. The same applies to funding by hospitals. However, I will look into it and come back to my colleagues in Parliament with possible changes and more neutral words to try to define these two key concepts. We need concepts which are yardsticks of measurement for overcharges. Something has to be charged before we can define extra billing for user fees over and above the basis. By definition the basis must be serious enough not to create in itself an automatic way of creating user fees and extra billing.
So much for the text of the Bill itself in terms of possible legal changes to the Bill. The Bill is quite a short piece of legislation proposed for adoption by the House of Commons. I hope it will be adopted as soon as possible and that the Act will be in place by April 1. The Act does not do many new things. It basically consolidates the five existing conditions of

January 16, 1984
Canada Health Act
our medicare which have existed for 25 years for hospitals and 15 years for visits to doctors. It clarifies that two newer, growing problems, extra charges by doctors and specialists and user fees by provinces, contravene the Act. Because of that the federal Government will be deducting a dollar for a dollar. In a nutshell that is what the Act does.
It also has one other good input into medicare, which is a national institution, a beautiful and very important one: it introduces a process of resolution of problems which does not exist in the existing legislation. It is very good to put medicare above partisanship of all sorts. It is the biggest and most crucial institution for the citizens of a given country. Health is so precious. We are so well equipped in Canada and we want to reinforce and keep our medicare system. We are therefore also offering a process for the resolution of future problems with medicare. In other words, when there are extra charges a dollar for a dollar will be deducted. That is what is called the automatic penalty of the new Act.
There will be other breaches which cannot be anticipated. An example of this would be if hospitals were to be privatized and operated for profit in the private sector, which is against the spirit of our national programs which are publicly operated for non-profit for the benefit of all Canadians. When such future breaches develop there is a process offered by which Ministers, both federal and provincial, will have to exchange information by law. They will then have eventually to come to the federal Cabinet for an Order in Council defining what the penalty applicable to that particular breach is. The penalty does not have to be the whole cash contribution. That is a very disruptive penalty. The penalty might be anything judged by Cabinet at that time as appropriate to deter province x, y, or z from that breach. Within 15 days following that decision by the federal Cabinet the decision will have to be tabled here in the House of Commons and in the Senate. That is done to make sure it is brought into the open and before the public so that all regions of Canada have a fair chance to assess what the breach is and what the penalty is that is decided for that province.
By defining in our Bill the rules of the game as clearly and precisely as possible today we will avoid problems in the future and will have the best possible federal-provincial relations. This is the key in a system such as the medicare system.
[ Translation]
I have so much to say, and there is a great deal to say about the health insurance system. At this point, I would like to consider various aspects of health insurance which cannot be ignored and I would like to do so in connection with the political impact of Bill C-3 which has been felt across this country.

That does not stem from my visits last week to all the provinces in Canada. It is rooted in lots of experiences in the past month. I will first explain to everyone who is listening and to those who are with us in the House that it is very dangerous and bad for the social fabric of this big country of ours which
has so many diverse regions to believe, or to write, or to spread the word that, for example, this is an attack on Alberta. Nothing is farther from the truth and more dangerous and unfair for Albertans and all other Canadians.
By the way, that was written. Things like that feed opposition and lack of understanding instead of comprehension and bridges between the various regions of this huge country of ours. It does not stand the test of facts, figures and reality. That is why I have insisted that these twisted perceptions should be corrected.
For example, I received a form from a woman from Toronto approximately three or four days ago. It was from the Mount Sinai Hospital. There are many such forms charging extra billing for Canadian women who are perhaps 59 years of age. Many of these women are widows who are not entitled to their pension and who although not poor do not have enough money. In this particular case this form was submitted to the woman after the fact-which is wrong-and she was charged approximately $135. This was not even a personalized typewritten form but one which simply explained that her test in the general field of gynaecology was very specialized and concerned new technology. This woman is like millions of Canadian women who cannot judge. There are similar cases pertaining to men and children in the country with respect to sophisticated tests. Since OHIP only reimbursed her so much, she was asked to pay the extra amount of $135. I was told by medical officials that there was nothing new about these tests and therefore this woman, as a consumer, had already paid for them.
Perhaps cases such as this could be referred to my colleague, the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Mrs. Erola), who is also responsible for the status of women. This represents a double injustice because people are not protected from being asked to pay extra on top of what they have already paid. This example reflects hundreds of thousands of cases which have not been revealed and explains the grim realities of extra billing of at least some $50 million in Ontario and smaller amounts in most of the other provinces of Canada.
There are other examples of extra charges for admission, even to emergency, which is unbelievable when one considers it. Alberta is a particular case which has the potential of high user fees that have fortunately not yet been implemented by hospitals in that province, except for admission and other fees.
This brings me to another aspect of medicare. I do not know what the opinion of my colleagues is on this, but in the draft regulations which have been made available to my colleagues in the provinces last week and which we began discussing, we offered the concept that whenever there is a case of medical necessity people should not have to pay extra charges. While that is the view of this Government, some provinces have suggested that beyond 90 days or 120 days people will be charged daily. Another suggestion has been that one should pay every day in a particular kind of institution and not pay
January 16, 1984

when one is in another kind of bed. We do not believe that is good.
In this respect, I would say that each province can serve as a model in health care for a particular program, procedure or approach. In this case, Ontario is a model. There are many examples one can see in each of the ten provinces, and in this case Ontario has not practised a model of medical necessity.
When a patient has a potential of being reintegrated into the home, that patient should not be overcharged. I believe that makes sense. We do not often have a chance to discuss such things as medicare, which is so close to daily life, and I appreciate the opportunity. These are not concepts or theories but facts of life. We believe that if a person must pay for an apartment or pay a mortgage on a home, that person should not pay an overcharge.

This is the concept of medical need which we have put forward with regulations. It means for instance that, in the case of senior citizens who are living in old people's homes, these institutions are considered as their home. This is quite normal.
I do not believe that anyone will dispute that point; it is normal that these people use part of their pension to pay a daily amount for food and maintenance as well as for accommodation cost, if I may use such a term.
It is very important to say so. However, in the case of someone of whatever age who is in a chronic care bed for perhaps four, five or six months, such as those who have suffered serious burns which take much longer to heal, and who, whatever his age will be able to resume a normal life, such an individual must also keep his home or his apartment. He has double costs. He is therefore a patient and has no business paying any surcharge. This is the definition that we give in the regulations. Needless to say that this was one case where the provinces tried to take advantage of the system, and the reaction to this has been quite strong-

I would like parliamentarians to pay great attention to that because we are fixing the rules of the game of medicare for years to come. I would not wish any Minister of Health to go through it again. We want to consolidate medicare by fixing the loopholes and bad habits that have developed to make it work for years to come.
My colleague, the Minister from Alberta, said at the conclusion of our meetings last week that he was very surprised to see that admission to emergency and other admissions were not acceptable overcharges. We do not believe they are acceptable because they stand in the way of health care in an emergency situation as well as the fact that Canadians have already paid for such an event. While I would not say it is a right, they have prepaid this through their taxes and we owe it to them. This is what the federal Government pays for with over $9 billion. We are not interested in any other kind of system and we believe it is the best, most efficient and least expensive way to administer it compared to the United States.
Canada Health Act
For those reasons the proposals by that Alberta Minister for admission fees or user fees which exist in his province are unacceptable, and he is not the only Minister who suggested this. These charges are not acceptable for patients who have the potential for being medically reintegrated into normal daily life. The Minister was most surprised when I explained that those charges would not be acceptable, but he is new in the job. Officials from both sides, federal and provincial, remember the pre-block funding days of 1976 and before. During the entire period of the cost-sharing mechanism under which the system works and for which we had direct control, we deducted these charges.
Why do I not name Judy LaMarsh as one of the Ministers of Health who had to do that? She would sign payments to a province on which we had first deducted these extra charges. We had deducted a buck for a buck, a dollar for a dollar, already. We can go back 25 years and see the charges that were not authorized, that were not in the spirit of medicare, were always deducted. I do not think the officials will like what I am saying. Maybe we will have to use a computer to get that information out of the system to tell everybody how much it was. We always deducted a dollar for a dollar of any user charges that were applied to people who could be medically returned to normal life. We always did that and we want to continue doing that. That is the medicare we want. That is the way we want Canadians to be treated.
Why is it that we want Canadians to be treated like that? Some think we are socializing health, whatever that means, or turning our health services into a state medical system or whatever words are used these days. The reality is very clear. Canadians as a society, as a community, first 25 years ago and then in a second step 15 years ago decided to prepay everything that has to do with going to the hospital on the one hand and with going to the doctor on the other. In other words, we gave ourselves as a community, as a country, a program by which we pay ahead of time what is needed to have medicare. We want to keep it that way. The fiction, because it is absolute fiction, is that some believe that premiums, which are a very different way of paying for health care, cost far less than paying by general taxes. They must have been really bad in arithmetic when they were kids at school.
Let us review what that means. First, a Canadian who lives in one of the three provinces which levy premiums has already paid for medicare through taxes, provincial taxes of the province, and then a tiny portion of the whole medicare cost of that province comes to the province through premiums. The problem with premiums is that they hit people in a very unfair way. They hit poor people in exactly the same way as those with lots of money. To my way of thinking, that is totally wrong.
Second, premiums cost a lot of money administratively. A special mechanism has to be set up to collect premiums. Then, how does one enforce their collection? It is none of my business but I told some of my provincial colleagues that there is nothing which prevents them from having on the tax form,

January 16, 1984
Canada Health Act
which we the federal Government administer on their behalf, a special part to tell us what they want to show separately as going to medicare. They think premiums are a good way to remind Canadians of the real cost of health. They are not. Premiums are too high and create a problem for some who do not have money, but they are far too low to show the real cost of health.
Maybe the tax form is the better mechanism to use. It would be very easy. Maybe the whole amount of the premiums should be converted into tax points and then people would pay according to their means, which is the progressive way for any modern society to obtain and develop programs.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Monique Bégin: That would ensure that no one is denied services because of unpaid premiums. Everybody should pay their share, there is no doubt about that, but that share should be separate and apart from getting the health service you need when you need it. What about someone who has not paid his tax? My colleague, the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Bussieres), does his job and he does it very well. He makes sure everybody pays their taxes as everybody is supposed to.


Mr. Gamble:: Sure, whether they owe them or not. You are harbingers of doom.


Monique Bégin: Everybody should pay their taxes. I am very pleased to see the Conservatives agree with that. I was myself Minister of National Revenue and I know taxes are the basis for any programs to be developed. But if the tax collector gets after those how have not paid their taxes, that has nothing to do with medicare. He or she should do his or her job and get his or her taxes paid. That is absolutely normal in any society. But that has nothing to do with getting health services in a doctor's office or in a hospital when a person needs it. That is why I say premiums are quite a fiction. Many things are a fiction.


John Albert Gamble: You mean they do not exist?


Monique Bégin: I think on the first page of The Toronto Star on Friday morning it was reported that the new Canada Health Act will impose a $500 million expenditure on Ontario. That is absolute fiction. Right now Ontario does not have much in the way of user fees to my knowledge. Ontario has about $50 million in extra billing. The new Act, until the situation returns to normal, will impose a penalty of $50 million. Why multiply that figure and make it $500 million? Is that an admission by the Province of Ontario that it has not paid its doctors enough in the past? No, I cannot believe that would be the way things would go.


John Albert Gamble: Do not speculate.


Monique Bégin: Let us talk of facts. I am sure the Member does not know them.


John Albert Gamble: There has been a 36 per cent increase in British Columbia. Do you want that to happen in Ontario?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order, please. The Minister has the floor.


Monique Bégin: The Hon. Member does not seem to realize that extra billing has nothing to do with an increase of budget and of cost in any given province. Extra billing is a special goody in terms of additional dollars that a specialist, a minority of physicians, by the way, gets for himself or herself directly, bypassing the whole system and putting those extra dollars in his or her pocket without any justification.
To answer the Hon. Member, the vast majority are, yes. The vast majority of doctors in the health system do not extra bill. Doctor x gets extra bucks for himself or herself from the system, which amounts in some parts of the country to hundreds of thousands of dollars for one person. Why is that? Is that person better than the doctor next door? I say prove it. Nobody can prove something like that.


Mr. McDermid:: You are dangerous.


Monique Bégin: Having good management and good procedures in the health system have nothing to do with permitting extra billing or creating user fees supposedly to deter Canadians from abusing the system. Canadians are not abusers of the health system.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Monique Bégin: Nobody likes to wait for hours in an out-patient department or the emergency department, nobody. Try it if you need to be convinced. Nobody likes to wait in a doctor's office and read Macleans or People magazine ten times, although those magazines make fabulous reading. Everybody has something else to do in life. This is what medicare is all about.
I will finish on this point, although I wish I had more time to explain what a $9 billion system is all about. I would like to say before the luncheon adjournment is called by the Chair how much the system is reasonably well funded-


John Horton McDermid: Well funded?


Monique Bégin: I have a little paper called "The Facts" which the Minister of Health for Alberta handed to the press in front of me last week in Alberta. However, I want to refer to this paper that I have which asks: "What is the distribution of the financing of the system?" The answer is 76 per cent. I told him that I would give him a little computer for Christmas; he has great trouble with figures. The 76 per cent comes from general provincial revenues; 14 per cent comes from the feds. He said "Monique, on page 4 I put the right figures". But on page 1, for some reason, they did not correct them.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Monique Bégin: There is no need to say that is not the case for Alberta. As soon as I am out of this job I will start a training course in elementary arithmetic for all provincial people.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!
January 16, 1984


Monique Bégin: They really have trouble.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Monique Bégin: For example, what we pay for medicare in Alberta is 50 per cent. I can provide the exact figures to the House showing the whole medicare cost to that province.
I see it is one o'clock, Mr. Speaker.


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. Laverne Lewycky (Dauphin-Swan River):: Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, January 11, 1984, my office received a news release dated December 21, 1983, from the Hon. Minister of the Environment (Mr. Caccia). This news release informed me of his Department's new initiative in conservation and job creation, called "Environment 2000".
The stated deadline for receipt of completed applications at the nearest Environment Canada regional office-in the case of my riding, Edmonton, Alberta-was the end of January. However, as of January 11 blank application forms were unavailable at the Edmonton office. While the existence of such a project is of real interest to a riding such as my own, Dauphin-Swan River, the time frame given both to myself and to those of my constituents who may wish to act upon Environment 2000 is absolutely ridiculous.
When I contacted the local Ottawa Environment Canada office to ask for an explanation of the above, the response was less than adequate. I am now told that the application deadline has been extended until February 15, 1984. This revised February 15, 1984, deadline still does not provide sufficient time for prospective applicants in my riding to be informed of the project, obtain application forms from Edmonton, formulate their proposals, complete the necessary paperwork, and return the materials to Edmonton.
My constituents and I would like to know how seriously the Environment Minister wants to see our riding's unemployed young people benefit from Environment 2000. We would suggest that he take the necessary steps-


Mr. Speaker:: 1 regret to interrupt the Hon. Member but his time has expired.



EMPLOYMENT


Mr. George Baker (Gander-Twillingate):: Mr. Speaker, the hiring restrictions placed on the selection of workers for job-creation projects in Canada funded directly by provincial Governments and the Canada Works Program funded directly by the federal Government, are an example of blatant, outright discrimination in hiring practices.
The criteria respecting who qualifies for work on provincially and federally sponsored works programs were designed for urban areas. Over the past two weeks referrals have been going out from Manpower Offices in Canada for Canada Works projects with preferences given to exhaustees and welfare recipients. Persons with no income, or new entrants into the work force, cannot even obtain a referral because of these departmental restrictions. Instead of leaving selection to sponsoring groups in the community, Canada Manpower is forced by these regulations to omit those without any income.
These regulations came into force during the NEED Program upon request of provincial Governments that made deals with the federal Government. I am requesting the Minister responsible to intervene immediately to throw these restrictions out the window. The Opposition should be making an issue of it.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



RAILWAYS


Hon. Ray Hnatyshyn (Saskatoon West):: Mr. Speaker, when the Minister of Transport (Mr. Axworthy) announced last week the abandonment of three sections of branch rail lines in Saskatchewan, he once again demonstrated his abject insensitivity to western transportation issues.
The callousness of the Minister's decision is perhaps most evident in the termination of the Carlton branch line. This is the line which the western branch of the Canadian Transport Commission, as one of its first acts, recommended be retained in the basic network. That recommendation was made only after extensive hearings by the western branch of the CTC, at which the railways were fully represented.
Now the Minister, in a capricious and arbitrary move, has chosen to thumb his nose at the western branch of the CTC, and at grain producers dependent upon the Carlton line and western Canadians in general. This arrogance and lack of understanding should not be surprising, however. We need

January 16, 1984
only remember the Minister's support for his colleague, the former Minister of Transport, in abandoning VIA Rail service between Vancouver, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Winnipeg. The Minister now has had to swallow himself, and he has announced that he is reconsidering the policy.
If further proof of insensitivity is required, it is amply provided by the imposition of closure on the Crowsnest Pass legislation, legislation which ran contrary to the wishes of every western producer and farm group. The Minister hides behind the CTC when its decisions benefit the railroads and ignores recommendations which contravene positions taken by the railroads.
The Minister has seriously undermined the credibility of the western branch of the CTC. The premises upon which the Minister basis his conclusions are quite simply wrong.


Mr. Speaker:: I regret to inform the Hon. Member that his time has expired.



THE SENATE


Mr. Andre Maltais (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the people from the North Shore region generally, but especially the American Indians and Inuits, I should like to say how pleased they are with the appointment to the Senate of one of their own, namely Mr. Charlie Watts, from Fort Chimo.
The first constitutional conference following the adoption of the Constitutional Act, which will be held next March, will deal specifically with Indians' rights. Accordingly, Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that Mr. Watts was born in the Manicouagan riding and has played a major part, though still a young man, in the advancement of the Indian cause within Canada and his own community, I wish to emphasize just how pleased Inuits are with the appointment of one of their own.
Mr. Speaker, I feel that the promotion of the Indian cause is basic to the very evolution of Canada and that from this perspective, Mr. Watts' appointment to the Higher Chamber is surely a valuable step toward the Inuits' full representation and will greatly enhance the significance of the debates concerning the people who live in Canada together with the Inuits and make up the great Canada nation.



ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Joe Reid (St. Catharines):: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Caccia) and his predecessor have both called the S-area dump on the United States side of the Niagara River "a greater threat to Canadian waters than any other U.S. landfill uncovered to date". The Minister has indicated that the clean up of this S-area site will be a priority issue in talks with his American counterparts, and in his Department.
This dump is a seven-acre site, about 300 feet from the Niagara River. An estimated 63,000 tons of chemicals are buried in it. Just recently an Environment Canada report claimed that some of these chemicals are finding their way into the Niagara River.
A settlement has now been reached between Hooker Chemicals and the State of New York, by which the company is required to take whatever steps are deemed technically and economically feasible by the United States court. Unlike the Hyde Park settlement when witnesses were allowed to present evidence in court before the court approved the settlement, this time Canadians and Americans will be allowed only 30 days for comment before approval is given. The nature of the settlement document and the problem itself are too technical and intricate for environmental agencies to comment upon within that time period. An intervention by the Government of Canada before the public comment period has expired is urgent and necessary so as to protect Canadian public interest.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


[Stage Direction]
Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine
East): Mr. Speaker, last week, on January 11, the Kissinger Commission on Central America made its report to the President of the United States. This Commission had been established by President Reagan to re-examine American policy in that region. Unfortunately it is a great disappointment.
While the report recommended $24 billion for aid to Central America over six years, it did not suggest how that money should be divided between military and economic aid, nor did it recommend how that aid should be divided between the six countries of the region. More serious, it recommended increased military assistance to El Salvador and continued financial support to the contra troops which have been invading Nicaragua. What this means is a continued reliance on military solutions to Central American problems rather than a negotiated political settlement as recommended by the Con-tadora process.
January 16, 1984
[Stage Direction]
1 strongly recommend to our Government that these matters be brought to the attention of the United States Government and that our Government make a renewed commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement in Central America in accordance with the Contadora process.
Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Erie.


Mr. Fretz:: Congratulations, Mr. Speaker.



CANADA POST CORPORATION


Claude Girvin (Girve) Fretz: Mr. Speaker, in Ottawa we hear that mail service is being refused to a new apartment building housing 200 families because of a shortage of carriers. This is ridiculous. Not only does Canada Post service a building right across the street, but there are 18 positions in the bureaucracy in Ottawa paying in excess of $50,000, all the way to a staggering $227,000.
Surely a way can be found to deliver mail to an apartment building which might take an hour per day to handle. At the same time, perhaps one of them could hop on the stagecoach to Fort Erie and discover why a letter containing important cheques from the social security service in Buffalo takes two weeks to travel across the river to Fort Erie. Why, in the name of all reason and logic, must mail for the Niagara area go to Toronto to be sorted? Someone in the hierarchy needs to take lessons in common sense. Imagine the wasted time, gasoline and manpower, especially when Canada Post has decided to be financially cautious. If it really wants to be financially cautious, there is only one route to go-cut out the deadwood in the bureaucracy and make more efficient use of the work force already available. Then, and only then, will there be a chance that Canadians will be satisfied with their postal service.



ABORTION


Mr. Stanley Hudecki (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, I am concerned at the language of deception that is currently used in describing the act of abortion. This vocabulary is used in such a way as to falsify and pervert the true meaning of the Act. For example, instead of saying or admitting that abortion kills a baby, or fetus, or embryo, it is said that a pregnancy was "terminated". Similarly, the operative procedure of abortion is listed as "therapeutic". However the term therapeutic means to cure or to heal. So-called therapeutic abortion satisfies no therapeutic criteria. It treats no disease, cures no symptoms, and does not remove, in the vast majority of cases, abnormal tissues.
Herbert Spencer, in his book entitled Principles of Ethics, said, "How often misused words generate misleading thoughts". I can think of no better example of misuse of words than the current usage of language in the social sciences through the use of misleading soft terms, such as "therapeutic abortion" and "termination of pregnancy", to obscure the full meaning and full impact of abortion.



ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Simon de Jong (Regina East):: Mr. Speaker, on January 5 over 100 million litres of radium 226 contaminated water spilled at the Key Lake uranium mine in northern Saskatchewan. There is no doubt that a serious threat exists to the environment and the health and safety of northern residents and workers. Left in the environment, radium 226 will spread through the Athabasca and Churchill Rivers systems. It will be digested by fish which are eaten by people.
This is not the only spill. There have been 15 others, nine with radioactive material, in the last six months. So far we have been lucky. Had the spill occurred at the Rabbit Lake mine, it would have flowed straight into Collins Bay, making it impossible to clean up. Had the spill occurred in the summer, or had it gone into sand rather than the muskeg, it would have flowed straight into the water table.
Serious technical problems exist. Unfortunately, they are compounded by mindless provincial government decisions. The Saskatchewan Conservative Government is hell bent on development, deregulation, and government cutbacks. It reduced by 40 per cent the number of people monitoring the uranium mines. It ignored the lease agreement which provided for a monitoring committee to meet at the mine site three times a year. It wants the revenue from the mines, but is negligent in its concern for northern residents, the workers, and the environment.
In the name of sanity and for generations yet to come, let us preserve the North. Stop the uranium mining.



POLITICAL PARTIES


Mr. Gordon Taylor (Bow River):: Mr. Speaker, the NDP is in trouble in all parts of Canada. Almost all Canadians denounced Canada's socialist party for aiding and abetting the Liberals during the Constitution debate, especially for keeping property rights out of the Charter of Rights. Western farmers are highly critical of the NDP for refusing to support the freezing of freight rates as proposed by the Progressive Conservative Party during the Crow discussions. Now, with their popularity in the polls dropping to a new low, the New

January 16, 1984
Oral Questions
Democratic Party's former researcher, who ran second to David Lewis in the 1971 NDP leadership race, Mr. James Laxter, throws killing blows at his socialist colleagues.
Laxter asks the question: "Just where would the NDP notion of economic recovery lead if it was actually implemented?" Here is his answer: "To a skyrocketing deficit; to a disastrous balance of payments; to a falling dollar... to high interest rates", and he adds that the NDP economic program "is a hodge-podge of contradictions and dead-end solutions". In other words, the NDP is dead but it won't lie down. Socialism is a nice theory, but it will not work.
Free enterprise built this country, and free enterprise will save this country. What we need is a federal election. The Canadian people will wipe the socialists off the electoral map and throw the Liberals into oblivion. The PC Party will be the salvation of this country under free enterprise principles.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mr. Chris Speyer (Cambridge):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Revenue. On December 21 last the Minister denied the existence of tax quotas in the City of Toronto. Last Saturday morning the director of tax in the City of Toronto, Paul Shoobert, contradicted the Minister when he said not only was there a memorandum which existed imposing tax quotas on small business people, but in addition there were other areas in which quotas were imposed. My question is twofold. First, will the Minister admit to the Flouse the existence in Toronto and elsewhere of tax quotas? Second, will he specifically tell us the other areas where tax quotas exist which the person in charge of the Revenue Canada, Toronto district, said existed?


Hon. Pierre Bussieres (Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, I can only repeat what I have already told the House namely that it is not the policy of the Department to set quotas for district office auditors on the amount of money to be collected. I would like to repeat to the House that it is not the policy of the Department to set such quotas and that, as I have already indicated, if some district office had acted on its own without the knowledge of the taxation authorities in Ottawa, these practices would stop.
I therefore believe that the Hon. Member should be satisfied that this is not the policy of the Department. Moreover, he should realize that, by asking such questions, he is creating doubts which could undermine the high degree of confidence
that Canadian taxpayers must have in the taxation system of their country.


REPORTED STATEMENT BY DEPARTMENTAL DIRECTOR
Chris Speyer: Mr. Speaker, for the past six weeks we have had to endure a Minister with a mind untrammelled by any knowledge of his Ministry and the plight of the Canadian taxpayer.
1 would like a specific answer to the question which I posed to the Minister. The director in Toronto said that quotas existed not only for small business people but in other areas as well. He is a subordinate of the Minister. The Minister is aware of the statement. Will the Minister now tell this House in what other areas are quotas imposed in the City of Toronto?


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, I can only repeat what I have already said to the Hon. Member, namely that this is not the policy of the Department. Instructions have been issued in various district offices to remind officials that it is not the policy of the Department to set assessment quotas for auditors. The Hon. Member must accept the fact that these departmental instructions have been followed.


REMOVAL OF DIRECTIVES FROM DEPARTMENT'S TORONTO OFFICES
Chris Speyer: Mr. Speaker, what a feeble performance from a pathetic Minister. My final supplementary has to do with a very disturbing report out of Toronto that the statements and the memoranda that exist in the Toronto district office were taken by superiors of the auditors during the course of an evening and, presumably, destroyed. This was made last Wednesday. What it really does is conceal the evidence of quotas which exists.
1 should like to ask the Minister whether he has investigated this particular allegation which has appeared, who is doing the actual investigation on behalf of the Ministry, and what the results are so far.


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, we are faced with a situation where someone who refuses to identify himself and who under the shield of anonymity contends that such practices may have been followed.
I would like to remind the Hon. Member that over 2,000 employees work in that office, that they work in two different buildings and that it is therefore nearly physically impossible for such things to have happened.
January 16, 1984



My position on that question, Mr. Speaker, is that I strongly urge the employee of the Toronto district office, who is hiding behind the curtain of secrecy, to go to the district office director and tell him the facts that he knows.


Mr. Beatty:: Mr. Speaker, maybe the Minister could drop into the Toronto district office and find out what he should know.


MINISTER'S STATEMENT
Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, may I draw the attention of the Minister to this specific statement that he made on December 21, 1983, as reported at page 395 of Hansard, as follows:
As I have also had occasion to inform the House, an unfortunate initiative, the only one of its kind, was taken in a district office-
That refers to Kitchener, Mr. Speaker. Does the Minister now deny the statement, conceded in The Globe and Mail by one of his officials who gives his name, that in fact quotas were in place in Toronto? Does he deny that fact, or will he correct the record and the misleading information he gave the House of Commons on December 21 ?


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, as a preamble to his question the Hon. Member suggested that I should go and visit the various district offices. I must tell him that the Government and myself have a much higher opinion than he does of the senior officials and employees of the Government, especially those of Revenue Canada. They have proven to be able and responsible in the discharge of their duties and we fail to see the need for the minister to go around the country checking on what every employee is doing. There is a certain delegation of power; we have managers who are qualified to manage their office and they do so very well.
1 would like to ask the Hon. Member to examine all the replies I have given him about the quotas which he has suggested are imposed on the departmental auditors, and he will see that I have given the House the facts as I know them when 1 said that it is not departmental policy to set such quotas and that should this type of initiative be taken, instructions would be issued by the Deputy Minister of Revenue to remind the employees that this is not the policy of the Department.


EXISTENCE OF MEMORANDUM SETTING TARGET FOR TAX AUDITORS
Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, I will give the Minister one more opportunity to correct the misleading statement he made as reported in
Oral Questions
Hansard and, if he does not, I will have a question of privilege at three o'clock.
I refer the Minister to the top of page 395 of Hansard where he said that the initiative taken in Kitchener was "the only one of its kind". Will he now confirm what has been stated by the director in the Toronto district office, Mr. Paul Shoobert, that there was a memo that set a target of $700 per hour of extra taxable income to be reached by each of the auditors? Incidentally, before the Minister answers, Mr. Speaker, he should be aware of the fact that we have that memo and are prepared to produce it for him.
[ Translation]


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, I have told the House that it is not the policy of the Department to set quotas for tax auditors. I have told the House that if such an initiative has been taken in any district office, it was against departmental policy and I have asked that the instructions no longer be applied.


ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Doug Anguish (The Battlefords-Meadow Lake):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of the Environment. It concerns an incident which took place on January 5 in which a reservoir at the Key Lake mine site ruptured, spilling some 100 million litres of contaminated water which had a contamination rate some 50 times the acceptable level for radium-226. At that time we were very concerned, and we have been very concerned since then with the situation that has arisen.
We would like to know, first of all, if the Minister has determined the actual cause of the rupture of the reservoir. We understand that the people in Saskatchewan who are responsible for the cleanup are waiting for recommendations to come from the federal Government. Can the Minister tell us if recommendations are forthcoming, in particular on how the contamination is going to be cleaned up? And, once it is cleaned up, how is the contamination going to be disposed of?


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Minister of the Environment: Mr. Speaker, that is quite a series of questions and I will endeavour to answer the basic ones.
At the present time I am informed that inquiries are being launched by AECB, by the Government of Saskatchewan, by the company, and by a group of consultants to the company. Those four inquiries are being launched simultaneously to establish the causes of the spill. At the same time we have a uranium specialist from Environment Canada on the site. He will be preparing a technical report and will advise the Atomic Energy Control Board of remedial measures required to minimize the impact of the spill at the present time.

January 16, 1984
Oral Questions


ROLE OF ATOMIC ENERGY CONTROL BOARD
Douglas Keith Anguish: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Minister in charge of the Atomic Energy Control Board, the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. It is my understanding that the spills that have happened at the mine site, some 15 in total since the beginning of its operation, are to be reported to Saskatchewan Environment. I should like to know if Saskatchewan Environment has reported these to the Atomic Energy Control Board. The inspectors from AECB were on the mine site from November 1 to November 3 inclusive-


Mr. Speaker:: One supplementary. I think the Hon. Member should state his supplementary.


Douglas Keith Anguish: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is this. Following the inspection, were the Atomic Energy Control Board officials aware of some problem that might occur? What recommendations is the Minister making to the Atomic Energy Control Board for cleanup operations and disposal at Key Lake?


Hon. Jean Chretien (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, as my colleague reported, there are some people from the AECB on the site. They have been informed of the last difficulties that occurred and, in conjunction with the federal Department of the Environment, Environment Saskatchewan, and the company, are preparing a plan at this time for controlling and disposing of the spill. The plan has not been finalized but will be finalized very soon.


NATIONAL REVENUE
Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue. The Minister will know from his Liberal colleagues that the conduct of his Department is now at the top of the list of grievances received by Members of Parliament from people across Canada. I think this stems from the obvious policy of the Department to encourage aggressive tax collection techniques-techniques that are symbolized in the training film entitled The Investigative Approach to Auditing.
Is the Minister prepared to have a showing of this training film for interested Members of Parliament and members of the press this week, so that we will have an idea of the kind of incentives being put before the auditors in his Department?
[ Translation]


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, I am concerned about this charge of aggressivity about the way the Department collects taxes. I am also concerned about another problem. I would like to quote Hon. Members a few figures. For instance, in 1982-83, the Department was responsible for the collection of about $2.6 billion in
taxes due, that is taxes that must be collected if we want to guarantee an equitable system. At the end of the first eight months of 1983-84, there is an amount of $3.5 billion of receivable accounts or taxes due. This question should concern all the members of this House since these are taxes due.
As for the film used to train certain departmental employees, I have already told the House that if members of the Standing Committee responsible for consideration of these matters were interested in looking at it and discussing its contents, its objectives, and its use by departmental officials, I would be happy to organize a meeting with our officials, who will readily answer the various questions which may be asked.


DEPARTMENT'S TREATMENT OF TAX RETURNS
Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, the Minister is shrouding his Department in oppressive secrecy. Employees of the Minister's Department have reported that Revenue Canada has been cooking the books in its favour when a taxpayer fails to make a deduction to which he or she is entitled. There is no other word for this except "cheating". Will the Minister, therefore, do the honourable thing and make a commitment to every taxpayer in this country that the Department will stop cheating Canadians by dressing tax returns and, instead, correct those returns to the taxpayer's benefit?
[ Translation]


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, once again I want all Canadian taxpayers to know that we make every effort to examine tax returns objectively. For instance, in the routine examination of tax returns, we save taxpayers thousands of dollars by making a first examination of their returns. Our objective is not to collect more taxes. Our objective at the Department of National Revenue is to guarantee that every Canadian taxpayer pays his own share of taxes, no more, no less!


DENIAL OF DEDUCTION FOR LEG BRACES
Mr. Bill Kempling (Burlington):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue. A constituent of mine, Mr. David Bourne, has felt the sting of the Income Tax Act. He has been denied the deduction for expenses related to the cost of leg braces and is being told by National Revenue officials that he should use a wheelchair. He does not want a wheelchair. He is more mobile with leg braces. Noting that the Tax Appeal Board has upheld the appeal of Mr. Michael Overdyk whose disability is similar to Mr. Bourne's, will the Minister instruct his officials to treat the Overdyk ruling as a precedent and apply it to Mr. Bourne and others with disabilities which affect their mobility and ability to earn an income?
January 16, 1984


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, I am very glad the Hon. Member raised this question. He is referring to the judgement in a specific court case, the Overdyk case. First of all, I would like to assure the Hon. Member, that the Department will not appeal that decision. The Department accepts as rendered the decision in the Overdyk case, and I would simply assure the Hon. Member, other Members in the House and the Canadian taxpayers that anyone involved in a situation similar to the one examined by the Court in the Overdyk case will be treated the same way.
However, I cannot tell him that the case he is referring to is similar, that the circumstances are the same as in the Overdyk case. The Hon. Member should bear in mind that the decision in that case was based on specific facts, and that other cases that are to be considered in the light of that decision should meet the criteria of specific circumstances as examined by the Court in the Overdyk case.


REQUEST FOR BROADER DEFINITION OF &quot;DISABILITY&quot;
William James Kempling: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue. A committee of this House on disabled and handicapped persons recommended that the Income Tax Act be amended so that allowances for expenses incurred by disabled persons who are employed and earning be classed as deductible expenses for tax purposes. Will the Minister show some initiative and get a commitment from the Minister of Finance and the Minister of National Health and Welfare to define the term "disability" more broadly, and accept recommendation No. 46 of the special committee, so that cases such as David Bourne and Professor Nagler of Hamilton, who is disabled with cerebral palsy, will be covered?


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, I am glad that the Hon. Member is raising the issue in a much broader context, that of taxation policy in respect of the handicapped.
We on the Government side are privileged in having within our ranks a colleague, the present Minister of State (Small Businesses), who has chaired a committee of this House, and has together with other Members made us much aware of the problems of the handicapped in general and of their problems with respect to the Income Tax Act. And I must add that this has enabled me to identify certain situations in which the handicapped are deprived of the very restrictive provision now found in the Income Tax Act, and I can assure the Hon. Member that I will bring to the attention of the Minister of Finance those specific cases in order that, when the time comes for him to make policy decisions concerning amendments to the Income Tax Act, he will consider whether it is possible
Oral Questions
within the spirit of the existing Act to bring forward whatever amendments would implement such proposals.


THE ECONOMY
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. A number of Ministers have talked in recent days about the recovery which took place in 1983. However, according to statistics released by government Departments and agencies themselves in the past week, it is clear that the recovery has been anything but fair. For example, while profit increases of corporations almost doubled, going up by 96 per cent in 1983 as compared to 1982, instead of going down average unemployment levels increased by about a full percentage point. Why should the Prime Minister expect Canada in 1984 will have any fairer kind of recovery by maintaining the same policies, which include tax increases on consumers and tax reductions for corporations?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I must have misunderstood the Hon. Member. I understood him to say that unemployment had gone up. In 1983, from December to December, it had fallen from 12.8 per cent to 11.1 per cent or 11.2 per cent. It is true that profits have gone up. The Minister of Finance has commented on that on various occasions. I believe he indicated that they have gone up. They have not recovered the position which they had before the economic downturn.
Of course, in our system, profits are important. It is with profits that investments are made and that jobs are created. Therefore, we do not feel distressed that profits have gone up. We do hope that they will result in greater creation of jobs.
Once again, as the Minister of Finance has indicated, and he has quoted figures, there has been very substantial job creation in the last 12 months, bringing unemployment down by a full point and three quarters.


UNEMPLOYMENT AND PROFIT LEVELS
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister should read his own Government's reports. The average unemployment for the year in fact went up. More seriously, what is indicated for 1984, according to private and government forecasting agencies, is that the profits which are now being made are not being reinvested to create the jobs about which the Prime Minister is talking.
Considering that forecasters are saying that unemployment in 1984 is going to remain above 11 per cent, which is a way beyond the pre-1981 recession level, but profits are going to go up beyond the 1981 profit level, will the Prime Minister not admit that this is an unfair kind of recovery? And will the Government bring in some immediate programs which will start to produce the jobs which unemployed Canadians want?

January 16, 1984
Oral Questions


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the admission which the Leader of the New Democratic Party is seeking leads me to think that the only thing which I can admit is that the New Democratic Party is, true to form, looking back on 1983, which has been a year of growth, where inflation has fallen, where jobs were created at an unexpected rate. Naturally, looking back on the year, the Hon. Member still does not think it is good enough. Looking ahead to the times to come, he is still hypothesizing that it will be a very bad year. That is typical of the New Democratic Party. There has been surprising progress in 1983. It has to continue, and it will not continue with the defeatist spirit shown by the Hon. Leader of the New Democratic Party.


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, if the Prime Minister will not pay attention to the questions, perhaps he will read his own Government's reports. I am not talking about what the New Democratic Party has said about 1984, but about what government agencies have said about 1984.


REQUEST THAT GOVERNMENT CHANGE CORPORATION TAX POLICY
John Edward Broadbent: I would like to ask the
Prime Minister again specifically, since the proposal made by his Minister of Finance to the effect that we should give all kinds of blanket tax concessions to the corporations, which will in turn invest this money and create jobs, has evidently not worked, will the Government now change its policy and tie any tax cuts to the corporations to specific performance, either in terms of R and D or in terms of job creation? That is one change which the Government could make.
Would the Government also rescind the more than one billion dollar tax increases which are scheduled to go into effect for consumers? In short, will the Government reverse some of its policies in order to produce the jobs which Canadians want?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, 1 hope that the New Democratic Party will reverse some of its stands as well. I have in mind that in the November, 1982, Budget we proposed closing a great number of loopholes which were advantageous to corporations and higher income earners. As Mr. Laxer points out, the New Democratic Party there again preferred pious phrases and did not support the Government in a very progressive series of budget measures. If the Hon. Member is counselling reversal of policies, he had better begin looking at his own record.


NATIONAL REVENUE
Mr. Maurice A. Dionne (Northumberland-Miramichi):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National
Revenue. We have been subjected for some days in this House to charges and counter charges with regard to the application of the Income Tax Act. Today the Member for Cambridge has purportedly quoted an official of the Department of Revenue as contradicting the Minister. In order to allay the suspicions of the public, will the Minister cause an investigation to be carried out to determine whether or not those charges were actually made by that official in violation of the statement made here by the Minister and, if so, when will that official be disciplined?


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, I know very well the Hon. Member who asked this question, and I would urge him not to be influenced by such insidious accusations, and especially by the totally erroneous conclusions drawn by Opposition Members from statements made by people who do not even have the guts to identify themselves.


AUDITING OF FARMERS' INCOME
Mr. Lome Greenaway (Cariboo-Chilcotin):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Revenue. It concerns the taxation of farmers. The Minister must realize that many farmers have had to take off-farm jobs in these difficult times. Revenue Canada has been aggressively auditing these people and in many cases has reclassified them, either as part time or hobby farmers, and disallowed all or part of their farm losses. Paul E. Graham, of Lambton County in Ontario, is one such victim, having been reassessed $18,000. In October Mr. Graham had this decision reversed by the Federal Court of Canada. However, Revenue Canada has now appealed the case.
In light of the fact that there are so many farmers in the same position as Mr. Graham, will the Minister not call off his auditors and stop the harassment by the collection department until this unfair issue is clearly settled?
[ Translation]


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, I will remind the Hon. Member that the provisions of the Income Tax Act concerning farmers are very specific. He knows how the classifications are drawn up and what privileges are enjoyed by each. I would also remind the Hon. Member that there is in the Income Tax Act a provision whereby the Minister must collect taxes, from the moment such taxes are assessed or a notification of assessment is issued, even in instances where the taxpayer appeals his notification of assessment as to its amount or its nature. I would remind the Hon. Member that this is a clear responsibility given the Minister by the Income Tax Act. Therefore, I cannot meet the Hon. Member's request to ignore the assessment
January 16, 1984

notifications that were issued under the provisions of the Income Tax Act in respect of those taxpayers, because the Income Tax Act is clear. It lays upon the Minister of Revenue the obligation of collecting those taxes. If the Hon. Member wants the Department officials and the Minister to ignore the Income Tax Act, as is apparently the wish of some of his colleagues, he should say so clearly, rather than implying that there is at that level liberty or discretion to do otherwise.


REQUEST THAT MINISTER STOP COURT ACTION
Lorne Everett Greenaway: Mr. Speaker, if the Minister would take the time to read the federal cases he would see that every judge has commented on how ambiguous, unfair, unclear and poorly worded is this legislation. It is not precise at all. Why does the Minister not simply call off the Department and have his officials drop the case against Graham, and stop harassing farmers who are such an important part of our economy?


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member has referred to the court decision in that specific case. I would remind him that within my Department, as I have already pointed out to him before Christmas, a close review of the nature of the Court decision was made. After that review, we held discussions with representatives of the Department of Justice, and we reached the same conclusion that in view of the implications of the provisions of Section 31 of the Income Tax Act, it was the Minister's duty to appeal the judge's decision. We are waiting for the higher court to study the case and render its decision, before having a further examination of the issue.
In the meantime, we will go on administering the Act as it is.


DEPARTMENT'S TREATMENT OF ARTISTS AND WRITERS
Hon. David Crombie (Rosedale):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister of National Revenue. On November 2, by a unanimous decision of this House, it was required that the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture deal as a top priority with the question of taxing artists and writers in Canada. Since that time, two and one half months ago, the Committee has not met, no action has been taken, and the Minister has failed to stop the tax persecutions of these people. Much damage has been done.
Hundreds of artists are now echoing the comments made by David Silverberg, Professor of Fine Arts at Mount Allison University, an internationally known artist. He said: "Canadian artists are demoralized, dejected, and even stupified by the onslaught from Revenue Canada". Will the Minister not ask his colleagues to proceed with that Committee now? More important, will the Minister not put a hold on those taxes and
Oral Questions
tax assessments which are so unjust and unfair to those people?
[ Translation]


Pierre Bussières: Just as all the other Members of the House, Mr. Speaker, surely you must be aware that I am not responsible for the operation of the various committees. Committee members must decide on their own when they are to meet and what they will deal with. On the other hand, Mr. Speaker, there is no provision in the Income Tax Act which would make it possible for the Minister of National Revenue to exempt certain groups of taxpayers from paying income tax. As a matter of fact, the Minister of National Revenue must make sure that these groups pay taxes on their income. If the Hon. Member feels that changes should be made or that a special status should exist under the Income Tax Act for artists and writers, he should make concrete proposals to the committee or the Minister of Finance, and if the Minister of Finance happened to share his views, he would introduce a bill to amend the Income Tax Act which the House would eventually have to deal with.


UNITED NATIONS DEFINITION OF &quot;ARTIST&quot;
David Edward Crombie: Mr. Speaker, over the last four months I have tried to deal fairly and honestly with this Minister, but my patience is at an end. The Minister must know the absurdity. If Van Gogh or any other great artist were living in this country today as a Canadian citizen, he would not be assessed by the Minister's Department as an artist; he would be assessed as a hobbyist or a failed manufacturer.
The Minister is responsible, not the officials. If the Minister will not put a hold on, and will not do anything to help, will he at least instruct his officials to use the definition which has already been adopted by the United Nations, in the interim, so that these people can have some sense of equity about taxation in this country?


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, we have just witnessed a great performance by an artist, an actor, a sort of Tartuffe. That is someone who knows something and who feigns ignorance.
Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member would like me to give my officials the authority to decide what will be in the Income Tax Act. What I want, personally, is that the government introduce legislation and that the House preserve its right to amend the Income Tax Act. Period.

January 16, 1984


INCOME TAX
Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, for some time now the Minister-


Some Hon. Members:: Question!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Ah, the clowns from Quebec, just wait! It won't be long now, just wait, the people of Quebec have had enough of you. It won't be long. The Minister seems to be telling us that his hands are actually tied by a series of provisions in the Income Tax Act with which he might not agree, provisions which have a negative impact on the average taxpayer. If that is so, may I ask the Minister whether he has made a list of those provisions and whether he has advised the Minister of Finance or the Prime Minister about such unacceptable provisions, and can he tell the Minister of Finance that it would be desirable to change them in the next budget?


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, I must say to the Leader of the Opposition that the Quebec taxpayers will have a very early opportunity to show him what they think of the clowning of politicians. I am convinced that we on this side of the House will not be ashamed of the outcome of a general election. I would suggest that the Leader of the Opposition might have to wipe that smile off his face when confronted with the results in Quebec.
To answer his question more directly, as Ministers of Finance are wont to do, I have already mentioned to the Minister of Finance some of the reservations I have about some provisions of the Income Tax Act. I have similar concerns as well about other provisions and, soon, I intend to write to the Minister of Finance to draw his attention to them.


Martin Brian Mulroney: I saw some faces in the Liberal caucus and I think that, when the Minister talked about the election, he missed a golden opportunity to shut up.
Has the Minister been assured by his colleague the Minister of Finance that the provisions which are totally unacceptable to the average taxpayer will be covered in the next budget and, if so, did he have a similar exchange with the Prime Minister who is also interested in the next election?


Pierre Bussières: I regret that the Leader of the Opposition did not seek more information from his advisors before asking such a question. He ought to know that the Minister of Finance, when he considers any suggestion from any quarter concerning amendments to the Income Tax Act, has the privilege of announcing them. It is up to him alone to indicate his intentions and his decisions in a budget speech, and then to table ways and means motions to meet the concerns which have been expressed to him.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Is the Minister telling us that there is nothing he can do, that he is only the messenger of the Minister of Finance? He has responsibilities towards the Canadian people.
My question is very simple, Mr. Speaker. That is quite an astonishing admission to the people of Quebec. The Minister is saying that his own Department cannot do anything, it simply conveys messages for the Department of Finance. No wonder the Department has so many problems. My question is very simple, Mr. Speaker: did the Minister have an opportunity to meet with the Minister of Finance or the Prime Minister and make serious and favourable representations on behalf of ordinary Canadians in anticipation of the next budget? 1 am not asking whether those representations will be accepted, but whether the Minister has made such representations to the Prime Minister or to the Minister of Finance?


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, I am really surprised that the Leader of the Opposition should insist on showing his ignorance by asking such stupid questions. I have already answered yes to that question, and he should at least have taken the time to listen to my first answer.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. Considering that many of the over 200,000 Canadians of Chinese background have relatives in Hong Kong, will the Prime Minister raise in his meetings tomorrow with the Chinese Premier, Zhao Ziyang, Canadian interest in the early settlement of the Hong Kong issue between Britain and China? Considering that Canada is a former British colony and we have solved some of the legal problems that Hong Kong will have to face and solve, and considering that the Prime Minister's policy has been quite progressive toward China over the years, does he see a mediation role for Canada in the settlement of the Hong Kong issue between Britain and China?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, this question does interest Canada but only in an indirect way. We have many Canadian interests which deal with Hong Kong and trade with Hong Kong. Naturally we are interested in the future of that Crown colony. It is possible that we will discuss the subject.
I must add that I do not see the Canadian Government playing what the Hon. Member describes as an intermediary role. I think we will be interested in ensuring that what happens in Hong Kong is conducive to more successful economic trading with Hong Kong by Canadians, and is a path which is acceptable both to the citizens of Hong Kong and to the two major powers involved.
January 16, 1984


Ian Gardiner Waddell: I hope that the Prime Minister will remember that there are family interests, not just business interests, for Canadians of Chinese origin in Hong Kong.


PROSPECTIVE CHINESE IMMIGRANTS-REQUEST FOR EXPEDITED PROCESSING
Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, a related matter and of concern to the Chinese Canadian Community is family reunification. Will the Prime Minister raise with the Chinese Premier tomorrow the issue of speeding up the process in China of interviewing and processing prospective immigrants so they can more quickly join their families in Canada? Will he also tell the House what other issues he proposes to raise with the Chinese Premier?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, on the first point I can say that the subject has been discussed between myself and the Prime Minister of Great Britain because we were interested in knowing how the situation was evolving. It was also discussed with the Foreign Minister of China when he visited Canada some months ago.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: That's Hong Kong.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I am talking about Hong Kong, yes. But Hong Kong is a subject of negotiation between the two superpowers. If I fail to see what the Hon. Member wants me to say-


Miss MacDonald:: Not the superpowers.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Now the Member for Kingston and the Islands wants to get her plug in. She is no longer External Affairs critic for the Opposition but she has some earnest point to make, and maybe you could look to her next, Mr. Speaker.


THE CONSTITUTION
Mr. Keith Penner (Cochrane-Superior):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Justice. Has he been made aware that the Michipicoten Board of Education, located in the northern Ontario town of Wawa, has passed a resolution which will have the effect of excluding 60 French speaking students from attending high school in the fall of this year? These 60 students come from the community of Dubreuilville, located in my constituency. The Board is having a dispute with the Government of Ontario regarding francophone representation on boards of education, and these students are being used as pawns. Would the Minister of Justice tell us how the constitutional rights of these young people may be protected, the right to an education in their language and the right to attend school and facilities that are in reasonable proximity to them, and to have these paid for out of public funds?
Privilege-Mr. Beatty


Hon. Mark MacGuigan (Minister of Justice):: Mr. Speaker,
I thank the Hon. Member for bringing this situation to my attention. The Secretary of State has a program under which, on the advice of the Minister of Justice, he extends funding in appropriate places to challenges based on language under the new Constitution.
As my hon. friend will know, the Province of Ontario is not subject to the provisions of Sections 16 to 22 dealing with official languages under the Charter. From the situation I understand my hon. friend to pose, this does involve a minority language education problem and it could possibly be dealt with under the provisions of the Sections of the Charter beginning with Section 23.
There is, I believe, this week being argued in the Ontario Court of Appeal a reference, with my Department as an intervenor, in which the Ontario Government has asked the Ontario Court of Appeal to establish what the rights are with respect to language and minority education in the Province of Ontario. I would hope that case will be decided well before the beginning of the new academic term and that it will provide the kind of clarification necessary to protect the rights of these students. Failing that, of course, they can always bring an action on their own behalf, perhaps with the assistance of the Secretary of State's funding.


PETITIONS
Mr. Speaker:: I have the honour to inform the House that the Clerk of the House has laid upon the Table reports of the Clerk of Petitions, with the exception of one, stating that he has examined the petitions presented by Hon. Members on Wednesday, December 21, 1983, and finds that the petitions meet the requirements of the Standing Orders as to form.
The petition presented by the Hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Breau) does not meet the requirements of the Standing Orders as to form.


PRIVILEGE
[Stage Direction]
MR. BEATTY-ALLEGED FALSE STATEMENT OF MR. BUSSIt-RES
Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, the rules of the House require me to raise a question of privilege at the earliest possible opportunity. During Question Period today I gave you notice of my intention to raise a question of privilege if the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Bussieres) deliberately allowed to stand on the record a false statement which he had made, I assume in error, on December 21, 1983.

Privilege-Mr. Beatty
I would like to bring to your attention, Mr. Speaker, page 395 of Hansard. It reads in part:


Chris Speyer: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue. On November 29 last I challenged the Minister on the existence of quotas for auditors in the city of Kitchener. At that time he denied quotas in fact existed. He recanted on Monday, saying quotas did exist but that he had issued a directive to stop them. He assured the House, and gave us his undertaking, that quotas did not exist anywhere else in Canada. In the two days since last Monday has the Minister had time to reflect on whether or not quotas still exist? Will he give us an undertaking today that there are no quotas for auditors in Canada?


Mr. Speaker:: With all due respect to the Hon. Member, he has given notice of this matter as privilege. The Chair is actively considering the matter which was put before the House as privilege. It appears to be a matter relating to the Minister of National Revenue?


Henry Perrin Beatty: It is a distinct question of privilege, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, I will establish that this is a separate and distinct question of privilege, a separate offence against the privileges of Members of this House.
The response given by the Minister of National Revenue on December 21, 1983 is as follows:
Madam Speaker, as I have indicated to the House before, it is not departmental policy to set quotas for amounts to be assessed by auditors of the Department of National Revenue. As I have also had occasion to inform the House, an unfortunate initiative-
And this is the central phrase, "the only one of its kind", clearly referring to the Kitchener case which was the only one being raised in Parliament to that date.
-was taken in a district office, and as soon as it was brought to the attention of senior departmental officials, the latter asked the person who took the initiative to stop this procedure immediately, and this was even before the Hon. Member had an opportunity to raise the issue in the House, that is to say, at the time the Hon. Member brought up the subject, this isolated initiative had been stopped. Madam Speaker, I have received the assurance of senior departmental officials that our policy not to have such quotas is observed across Canada.
Later that same day I did indeed raise a question of privilege with Madam Speaker with regard to the Minister's statements as they related to Kitchener. I pointed out at that time that the Minister had made statements with regard to Kitchener when he had been asked by Members on this side of the House and had indicated that there were not quotas in place with regard to the Kitchener office. I will not go over the grounds that I covered at that time. I believe I gave substantial grounds for a question of privilege. The response, Mr. Speaker, was not given by the Minister. The Minister did not deign to enter into the discussion that day. The response was given by a Parliamentary Secretary.


Mr. Speaker:: The Chair is well aware of the incident cited by the Hon. Member. Could the Hon. Member get to his separate question of privilege?


Mr. Nielsen:: Allow him to do so.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, what I am trying to do is establish why this is different. This is different on two grounds. First, it is a separate instance. The Minister today took the action having had pointed out to him false information which he had put on the record which had not been pointed out to him previously. The Minister chose to leave that false information intact on the record, and I will get back to that point in a minute.
Second, the defence that was offered, not by the Minister but by the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Evans), in the Kitchener incident is not applicable today. The defence offered was that the Minister unknowingly told the truth in the case of Kitchener, but the Minister, without knowing in fact what had taken place, said that quotas did not exist in Kitchener at that time and that, in fact, his officials, without his knowing it, had indeed cancelled the quotas in Kitchener.
That was the argument made in that instance. That question of privilege stands on its own and you are considering it at the present time. What I am asking you to look at today is the statement with regard to Toronto made on December 21, where the Minister stated explicitly that there was only one instance, one isolated instance in Canada, where quotas have been put in place in a district office, and that was it-clearly referring strictly to Kitchener.
On that same day my colleague, the Hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Speyer), produced documentation proving that there were quotas in place in Toronto. The Minister has had since December 21 to examine the statement that he put on the record that day and to get back to the House and correct it. On at least four separate occasions this afternoon in Question Period, the Minister was asked specifically with regard to that statement-not with regard to Kitchener but with regard to that statement-made on December 21. He was asked whether he would correct the record or whether he would allow the falsehood to stand.
The Minister has in his hand further documentation which was produced to him by the Hon. Member for Cambridge this afternoon. This further documentary evidence proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that quotas existed in Kitchener. The Minister knows it. The documentation is in his hands. He knows what the truth is.
Additionally, Mr. Speaker, during Question Period today, unless the Minister claim ignorance, he had quoted to him the statement made publicly with identification by the director of the Toronto district taxation office who said expressly that quotas had existed in Toronto. This statement was printed in the Toronto Globe and Mail of last Saturday. The Minister would have been aware of that statement. It was included in the departmental clippings summary this morning which he will have received. That statement was quoted during Question Period to the Minister. It was alluded to, I gather, by the Hon. Member for Northumberland-Miramichi (Mr. Dionne), who made reference to it as well. The Minister cannot today claim ignorance.
January 16, 1984

What are the options, Mr. Speaker? First, the director of the Toronto district tax office lied to The Globe and Mail, or in addition the documentation in the Minister's hands now was forged in some way, that it is not in fact what it appears to be. That is direct proof of the existence of quotas in Toronto. Second, an error took place in this documentation and the director was misquoted by The Globe and Mail, yet there has been no indication either on the part of the Minister or on the part of the director, as we have seen today, that any attempt has been made to get The Globe and Mail to rescind the direct statement made by the director of the Toronto district taxation office that quotas had existed. The third possibility is that The Globe and Mail and the documentation produced today are absolutely accurate and that indeed quotas did exist and were in place when the Minister was denying that such a thing had taken place in any place but Kitchener.
Mistakes are made daily in the House of Commons. Each of us has had occasion to say something we later discovered was in error. Nobody would fault a Member for that. Nobody faults the Minister for that. If the Minister were to have responded today during Question Period and had told the House that he was in error when he made the statement that there was only one isolated incident in the country, namely in Kitchener, where quotas existed, and if he were to have said "Here are the facts; I correct that statement", there would have been no question of privilege.
The Minister, having had the falsehood pointed out to him and having been given the opportunity to correct the record, chose his words very carefully in response to allow that falsehood to stand on the record unchanged. Instead, he responded with regard to the broad policy of the Department, not as to whether district tax offices had quotas in place.
The point which you must consider, Mr. Speaker, in protecting the rights of all Members of Parliament, when a statement made in innocent ignorance at the time is proven to be false, when the person who made the statement knows that it is false and is given an opportunity to correct a false statement, as the Minister was on at least four or five separate incidents today, and when he deliberately chooses not to do that, is whether that is tantamount to deliberately leaving a false statement on the record of the House of Commons. If it is, there can be no difference between that and deliberately uttering a falsehood.
It would be absurd to say that it was against the rules of the House of Commons for a Member deliberately to mislead the House when he makes a statement and then to say that it is acceptable and somehow excusable, if he said something in ignorance, made no effort to correct it and left the false information on the record. They are part and parcel of the same thing. If the Minister is allowed to leave statements which he knows to be false on the record uncorrected, the privileges of all Hon. Members are in jeopardy.
If you find, Mr. Speaker, that I have a prima facie case of privilege, I would be prepared to move the appropriate motion.
Privilege-Mr. Beatty


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, there are two things here that must be considered. First of all, we must look at the situation and the facts. We have the general administration of the Department of National Revenue located here in Ottawa, there are various district offices across Canada, which act according to a general policy set by Headquarters in Ottawa. A departmental policy is one that originates from the Directorate General at the Deputy Minister level here in Ottawa and is implemented in all district offices across Canada. I feel we must first understand what a departmental policy and its general practice is, before we go any further.
The second point we must consider: Did I, as the Hon. Member claims, intend to deceive the House when I answered his questions? The question was whether quotas had been set for auditors in the Department of National Revenue, concerning certain sums of money they were supposed to collect, and other matters. I made it clear that it was not the policy of the Department of National Revenue. When I was told about one situation, I made inquiries among senior officials in my Department, and in my answer to the House I stated again that it was not departmental policy, that I had been informed it was an isolated case, and that basically, the Department's policy was observed everywhere. I may remind the House that when a directive is not issued by the Deputy Minister here in Ottawa, it is not considered to be departmental policy.
Second, I pointed out earlier to the House that senior officials of my Department had given me the assurance that a policy not to have quotas was followed by the Department, and moreover, I asked for a directive to be prepared, and that is being done. That will ensure that any unfortunate initiatives that had existed or might exist would be immediately done away with. Mr. Speaker, this was clearly an indication of my concern that if the information I had was not complete, because in isolated cases initiatives could be taken, which is normal in such a large administration, that if such initiatives had been taken, contrary to department policy, we wanted to put a stop to such initiatives. Mr. Speaker, I don't think it was my intention to deceive the House, on the contrary, I wanted to give the House the assurance that the Department's policies were properly carried out across Canada.


Chris Speyer: Mr. Speaker, I will be very brief; I only wish to add an addendum to the comments of the Hon. Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Beatty). The point is that on November 29 I asked whether or not quotas existed in Kitchener. There was a denial. I believe the Minister to be an honourable man, and he denied any knowledge of the existence of those quotas. On December 19 he said that he was aware then of the existence of quotas, and on December 21 he added that it was an isolated initiative. I asked a question on December 21 with respect to whether or not quotas also existed in the City of Toronto. At that particu-

January 16, 1984
Privilege-Mr. Beatty
lar point in time, the Minister in effect denied the existence of quotas.
Today I asked the Minister a question concerning what the director of taxation in Toronto had said, that quotas in fact existed, not only with respect to small businesses but, more important, in other areas as well which that particular director refused to disclose. The question was not one of policy. It was whether or not quotas in fact existed in Toronto; that was the precise question. I asked him whether or not quotas existed in Toronto, and again he refused to answer the question.
By his refusal to acknowledge those facts, he has allowed the record to continue to state that he knows quotas in fact exist, yet he will not admit it. I add my support to the submissions which were just made by my hon. colleague.


Mr. Speaker:: Unless Hon. Members at this point have something substantially new to contribute, I will advise them that the Chair will take the matter under consideration. Is the Hon. Member for Haldimand-Norfolk (Mr. Bradley) rising on the same question of privilege?


Mr. Bud Bradley (Haldimand-Norfolk):: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I will be very brief. In support of what has been said by the Hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Speyer) and the Hon. Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Beatty), I personally have had discussions with individuals in my riding pertaining to this issue. I have advised them that I personally trusted the Minister and took his word as being honest. I have also noted that the director of taxation in the Hamilton office stated that there were no quotas in the Hamilton office and have never been such.
What bothers me now is that in reality I find that what they are called in the Hamilton office are individual production goals, and they are slated at $800 per hour. Not only are they individual production goals, but they are on the performance evaluation reports of auditors in the Hamilton office. At the top of the report it states whether or not an auditor has reached his individual production goal for the year 1983.
Since this issue has been raised, personal evaluation forms in the Hamilton office have had the bottom quarter of the page cut off which stated what were the personal individual production goals for specific auditors. On those grounds I would like to support the representations of my colleague that the record should be corrected by the Minister as soon as possible.


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, I will be very brief and will not go over the arguments already presented by Hon. Members on this side who have contributed to the submission of privilege to date. I simply want to re-emphasize the practice in this place of proceeding on the basis of establishing a prima facie case of privilege. That is all that the Chair requires to have before it in order to trigger the process of dealing further with the matter.
I have before me, and I listened carefully as it was presented by the Hon. Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Beatty), Hansard of December 21 where the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Bussieres) is clearly on record as saying that the quota system which was part of the Kitchener operation was the only one of its kind that was taken in a district office and that, as soon as it was brought to the attention of senior departmental officials, the latter asked the person who took the initiative to stop this procedure immediately.
The important part of that evidence is the statement by the Minister that it was "the only one of its kind". A little further on on the same page, 395, he referred to the Kitchener quota system as being "this isolated initiative". Very dear evidence has been read into the record today and provided to the Minister from a departmental document entitled "Office Examination and Adjustments, Goals and Objectives, 198384". On page three of that document it is very clear that quotas of $700 per hour have been set for the Toronto district office.
The evidence is overwhelming, almost to the point where one could conclude that the Minister has misled the House, but that is not the responsibility of the Chair at this point. All the Chair has to be satisfied of is that a prima facie case has been made. There are two statements that have been made, one which the Minister knows of or should know of as the Minister in charge of the Department saying that there are quotas in the Toronto office, and the other made last December and not retracted by the Minister, that the only area in Canada where this practice existed was in the Kitchener office.
I have not heard in many, many years a more clear-cut case of privilege, a more clear-cut example of a prima facie case that the House is entitled to decide upon. Because that is the next question, as the Chair well knows. If the Chair finds that there is a prima facie case of privilege that does exist and that is constituted by the simple evidence before it, the question is put to the House. It is the House that makes the decision, not the Chair, as to whether there has been a breach of privilege and what should be done about it.
The Hon. Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe said that he is prepared to move the appropriate motion so that that question can be put before the House. I urge you, Sir, to reach the conclusion that there has been that kind of prima facie case established here to warrant the House proceeding with the matter further on the motion of the Hon. Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe.
[ Translation]


Hon. Yvon Pinard (President of the Privy Council):: Very briefly, Mr. Speaker, I simply want to remind you that the Minister has fully explained his previous answers and those he gave today, he has stated the facts as he sees them. May I simply refer you to Citation 19 of Beauchesne's Fifth Edition which states that a dispute arising between two Members as to allegations of facts, does not fulfill the conditions of parliamentary privileges. Further on, Citation 19 reads as follows:
The failure of a Minister of the Crown to answer a question may not be raised as a question of privilege.
January 16, 1984

It is a fact that Ministers are not required to answer questions anyway, and that should meet the latest argument used by Opposition Members to the effect that today the Minister did not answer clearly and to their satisfaction certain questions about the Toronto office.
Consequently, Mr. Speaker, since a question of privilege ought rarely to come up in the House, as stated in Citation 17 of Beauchesne's Fifth Edition, Citation 19 provides you with a clear indication of what your ruling should be in this case.


Mr. Speaker:: The Chair will take the matter under consideration.


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, before doing so, I want to provide you with a copy of the document which has been referred to here today with respect to the question of privilege raised by the Hon. Member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe, which document has been provided to the Minister, so as to enable you to be in possession of all the facts when you consider the question of privilege.


VACANCY
Mr. Speaker:: I have the honour to inform the House that I have received a communication notifying me that a vacancy has occurred in the representation, namely Jeanne Sauve, Member for the electoral district of Laval-des-Rapides, by resignation. Accordingly, I have addressed my warrant to the Chief Electoral Officer for the issue of a new writ of election for the said electoral district.

BUSINESS OF THE	HOUSE


Erik Nielsen: Mr.	Speaker,	may	I	direct	a question to the
Government House Leader as to the business of the House for today and the remainder of the week.


Yvon Pinard: Mr. Speaker, I want to confirm that this afternoon we will resume debate on Bill C-3. We will deal with Bill C-3 tomorrow afternoon. There is a change for Wednesday. On Wednesday we will have the fourth day of debate on the Speech from the Throne. Thursday will be allotted as an Opposition Day. I said the contrary before Christmas, that Thursday would be the fourth day of debate on the Speech from the Throne and Wednesday an Opposition Day. I am now designating Wednesday as the fourth day of debate on the Speech from the Throne and Thursday as an allotted day. I told my colleagues in the Opposition about this change last week. This Friday will be the fifth day of debate on the Speech from the Throne.
Petitions
In conclusion, I confirm to my colleague that 1 will try to have the Chairman convene a meeting of the Striking Committee on Wednesday afternoon.


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Minister for that reply. I was going to ask the latter question. He will realize that before that meeting is called, a motion should be brought into the House to change the membership on the Committee, because our Whip has changed. Perhaps we might consult on that and deal with such a motion with unanimous consent tomorrow so as to change the membership of that Committee.


RESIGNATION OF DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES OF THE WHOLE HOUSE
Mr. Speaker:: It is my duty to inform the House that Rod Blaker, Esquire, Member for the Electoral District of Lachine, has resigned as Deputy Chairman of Committees of the Whole House.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Hon. Paul J. Cosgrove (York-Scarborough):: Mr. Speaker, allow me to present a petition signed by 88 residents of Ontario to draw to the attention of the House that drinking and driving is a serious problem in Canada, with significant economic and social implications. They respectfully urge Parliament to pass legislation to increase penalties for those found guilty of drinking and driving.


Mr. Jim Peterson (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, last Friday I was presented, along with the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Roberts), at the Holy Blossom Synagogue in Toronto, with a petition containing the signatures of 3,800 Canadians from coast to coast. This petition asks that the Soviet Union recognize its international obligations with respect to Anatoli Vasilevsky, his wife Natalia and their child, who have been repeatedly denied permission to leave the U.S.S.R. to join his family in Israel. We call upon the Government of the U.S.S.R. to honour its international commitment.

January 16, 1984
House of Commons



CUSTOMS ACT


Pierre Bussières: for leave to introduce Bill C-6, respecting customs.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, Bill read the first time and ordered to be printed.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the President of the Privy Council (M. Pinard):
That Eymard Corbin, Esq., Member for the electoral district of Madawaska-Victoria, be appointed Chairman of Committees of the Whole House.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I move:
That Hal Herbert, Esq., Member for the electoral district of Vaudreuil, be appointed Deputy Chairman of Committees of the Whole House.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
[ Translation]

['Standing Order 30(16) provides that:\nThe right to move the adjournment of the House for the above purposes is subject to the following conditions:\n(o) the matter proposed for discussion must relate to a genuine emergency,\ncalling for immediate and urgent consideration;\nCitations 286 and 287 in Beauchesne\'s Fifth Edition, read as follows:\n286.\tThe "specific and important matter requiring urgent consideration", for the discussion of which the adjournment of the House may be moved under S.O. 26, must be so pressing that public interest will suffer if it is not given immediate attention.\n287.\t"Urgency" within this rule does not apply to the matter itself, but means "urgency of debate", when the ordinary opportunities provided by the rules of the House do not permit the subject to be brought on early enough and public interest demands that discussion take place immediately.\nI must also point out to the Hon. Member that Wednesday has been designated for debate on the Speech from The Throne. Debate on the Address in Reply has not yet been completed. I believe Thursday of this week has been designated as a supply day, thus there is an early and ample opportunity for the House to address itself to this very important matter.\nIt is with respect, therefore, that I must decline the Hon. Member\'s request for an emergency debate under Standing Order 30 at this point.\nOrders of the Day.']
Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, 1 move, seconded by the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Pinard):
That Jacques Guilbault, Esq., Member for the electoral district of Saint-Jacques, be appointed Assistant Deputy Chairman of Committees of the Whole House.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
['Mr. Speaker, 1 move, seconded by the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Pinard):\nThat Jacques Guilbault, Esq., Member for the electoral district of Saint-Jacques, be appointed Assistant Deputy Chairman of Committees of the Whole House.']
Yvon Pinard: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I apologize to the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary but I intended to move a motion and I did not, so I seek consent to move the motion now. It refers to the business of the House for tomorrow morning.


Mr. Speaker:: Does the President of the Privy Council have the consent of the House to move a motion concerning tomorrow's business?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.
[ Translation]



Yvon Pinard: Mr. Speaker, following earlier consultations, 1 move:
That notwithstanding Standing Order 2(1), on Tuesday, January 17, 1984, the House shall meet at 2.00 o'clock p.m.,;
That the Address of the Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, to be delivered in the House Chamber on Tuesday, January 17, 1984 at 11.00 o'clock a.m., before the Members of the Senate and of the House of Commons, together with all introductory and related speeches, be printed as an appendix to the House of Commons Debates of the day and form part of the records of this House; and
That His Excellency Premier Zhao's speech, attendant and related remarks be made available to the media for transmission in the usual way by the House of Commons Broadcast System.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.
Motion (Mr. Pinard) agreed to.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Mr. John Evans (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council):: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 8, 75, 80, 116, 117, 124, 125, 127, 131, 141, 163, and 164.


Mr. McKenzie: 1.	Was land expropriated by the National Capital Commission for the construction of the Promenades des Voyageurs and, if so, during which calendar year?
2.	(a) On what date was construction to begin (b) what is the projected date that construction will begin (c) what were the reasons for the delay?
3.	(a) What was the total projected cost for construction (b) what is the present projected cost for completing the project?
January 16, 1984

4.	What amount of land was expropriated for the project and at what cost?
5.	How many families lost their homes due to expropriation?


Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of Public Works):: 1. Yes, in 1968.
2.	(a) 1969-70, (b) 1987, (c) Priorities changed with the planning for and signing (in 1972) of the Quebec-NCC agreement to improve the road network in the Quebec portion of the National Capital Region. It was decided to carry out road network improvements and postpone the construction of the parkway.
3.	(a) The $12,000,000 for a four-lane parkway and bridge across Lemieux Island (extension of St-Joseph Boulevard in Hull to Parkdale Avenue in Ottawa), (b) $7,320,000 for a two-lane driveway and no bridge.
4.	100.18 acres of a cost of $3,200,780.
5.	Seventy-two residences.


LAWYERS EMPLOYED BY DEPARTMENT OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Howie: How many lawyers are employed by the Department of External Affairs?


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for External Affairs):: The Department does not employ lawyers per se; rather it hires rotational Foreign Service Officers, a number of whom have legal backgrounds and it encourages those officers who wish to do so to obtain admission to their provincial Bar Association. There are approximately 165 officers with legal degrees. There is also a domestic legal services unit in the Department consisting of three legal officers from the Department of Justice.
As the Hon. Member will be aware, in the new External Affairs Act, the mandate of the Minister extends to the field of international law and its application to foreign relations.


DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT MEDIA RELATIONS
Mr. Howie: How many persons engaged in public relations, media relations or publicity are employed by the Department of the Environment?


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Minister of the Environment: The
number of persons engaged in public relations, media relations or publicity employed by the Department of the Environment is 60.


INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH ASSISTANCE PROGRAM
Mr. Stewart: 1.	For the fiscal years (a) 1980-81 (b) 1981-82 (c) 1982-83 did the National Research Council make payments, in the form of salaries, to university and technological college students under the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP-H), and, if so, in each case, what amount?
2.	For the fiscal year 1983-84 what is the Council's estimated expenditure under the Program?
Order Paper Questions


Mr. Rolland Dion (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State for Economic Development and Minister of State for Science and Technology):: In so far as the National Research Council is concerned the answer is as follows:
1. Technically, the IRAP-H program has made no payments in the form of salaries to university and technological college students. IRAP-H makes its contribution to Canadian firms for specific short-term technical projects for which students are hired in their summer vacations, or on co-op terms. The qualified student provides the technical resource to the small company needing their help.
The client company receives from the National Research Council a contribution equivalent to the student's salary based on the Council's student salary scale. The firm pays all benefit expenses and project costs.
1.	(a) $864,021, (b) $1,832,000, (c) $1,795,009.
2.	$3,300,000.


SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING STUDENT PROGRAM
Mr. Stewart: Was a Science and Engineering Student Program started by the National Research Council and, if so, since its inception, by year, what amount was spent under the Program?


Rolland Dion: In so far as the National Research Council is concerned the answer is as follows:
The Science and Engineering Student Program is the former name for the IRAP-H program which is the subject of Question No. 116 answered this day. The program was started in the fiscal year 1978/79 and expended $128,539. In 1979/80 $746,618 was expended, after which time the program was renamed IRAP-H.


INDUSTRY AND LABOUR ADJUSTMENT PROGRAM
Mr. Stewart: Is there an Industry and Labour Adjustment Program (ILAP) and, if so, for each fiscal year since its inception, what amount was spent under the Program and, in each case, what areas have received such assistance?


Hon. John Roberts (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Yes. ILAP is composed of five community and industry based adjustment programs administered by CEIC, IT&C/ REE and Labour Canada. The programs are: community-based labour adjustment measures (CEIC), community-based industrial adjustment measures (IT&C/REE), community-based pre-retirement benefits (Labour Canada), increased incentives for the Critical Trade Skills Program (CEIC)*, industry-specific adjustment measures (auto parts and major appliances) IT&C/REE).
Expenditures for these programs for 1981-82 and 1982-83 are shown below by province and responsible department.
446

January 16, 1984
Order Paper Questions
1981-82 ($000)	1982-83 ($000)
Labour	Labour
CEIC	1T&C/REE	Canada	Total	CEIC	1T&C/REE	Canada	TotalNova Scotia	364	367	731	822	1,036	6	1,864New Brunswick	91	6	-	97	444	84	-	528Quebec	1,695	517	-	2,212	4,426	2,738	280	7,444Ontario	1,257	1,629	-	2,886	3,252	17,586	180	21,018Alberta	-	-	-	-	-	77	-	77British Columbia	-	-	-	-	18	-	-	185,926	30,949
*ILAP also funded increased incentives under the CEIC Critical Trade Skills Program. ILAP expenditures were $26.8 million in 1981-82 and $18.4 million in 1982-83.


WOMEN IN NON-TRADITIONAL OCCUPATIONS
Mr. Stewart: Is there a program for training women in non-traditional occupations and, if so (a) how many women received such training (b) what was the total cost, for each fiscal year since the inception of the program?


John (Moody) Roberts: There have been specific measures taken under the National Training Program to train women in non-traditional occupations.
(a)	From the inception of the special initiative to the end of September 1983, 13,130 women have received such training.
(b)	The total cost for each fiscal year since the inception of the specific measures were:
1980-	81	$11.3 million1981-	82	$18.8 million1982-	83	$18.4 million1983-	84	$ 11.3 million (to Sept. 30/83)


WORK SHARING PROGRAM
Mr. Stewart: Is there a Work Sharing Program and, if so (a) did the Government provide any assistance to either employees or employers under the program (b) what type of assistance has been provided (c) what was its total cost to the taxpayer?


John (Moody) Roberts: Yes. Work Sharing is administered under the authority of Section 37 of the Unemployment Insurance Act.
(a)	Since the program was implemented on a nation-wide scale in January, 1982, 286,727 Canadian workers have participated in the Work Sharing Program to avert the layoff of 118,500 fellow employees.
(b)	These workers have been partially compensated for reduced hours by the payment of $116.4 million in Unemployment Insurance Benefits. These benefits are paid through employer and employee contributions to the Unemployment Insurance Account.
(c)	Work Sharing costs are covered by the Unemployment Insurance Account. The net cost of Work Sharing is about .9 cent per week for each insured worker and 1.3 cents per worker per week to each employer.


GENERAL INDUSTRIAL TRAINING PROGRAM
Mr. Stewart: 1.	Is there a General Industrial Training Program and, if so, for the fiscal year (a) 1980-81 (b) 1981-82 (c) 1982-83 what amount was given to employers in the form of reimbursements for employee wages and training costs under the Program?
2.	For the fiscal year 1983-84 what is the estimated expenditure under the Program?


John (Moody) Roberts: 1. Yes, there is a General Industrial Training Program. Expenditures (to employers) for 1980-81 to 1982-83 were:
1980-	81	$ 99.9 million1981-	82	$103.1 million1982-	83	$67.5 million
2. For the fiscal year 1983-84, the estimated expenditure under the program is S89.0 million.


GROSSE ISLE
Mr. Herbert: Is the Government considering preserving Grosse Isle in the St. Lawrence River as an historic site or a national park and, if so, has a study of the historical significance been completed?


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Minister of the Environment: Yes, the Government is considering preserving Grosse Isle in the St. Lawrence River as a national historic park. In 1980 a commemorative plaque was erected in recognition of its national historic significance.
A study of the theme of immigration, which will allow the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada to recommend whether Grosse Isle warrants preservation as a national historic park, is in progress. The study should be completed by early summer 1984.


IMPACT OF INTEREST RATES ON GOVERNMENT DEFICIT
Mr. Mazankowski: 1. Is the Bank of Canada's econometric model capable of estimating the impact on short-term and long-term interest rates in Canada for varying levels of the government deficit and (a) if not, for what reason (b) if so, what change in
January 16, 1984

short-term and long-term interest rates from current levels does it predict if the deficit were (i) 0 (ii) $10 billion (iii) $20 billion?
2. What impact would the changes in interest rates have on the cost of servicing the national debt?


Hon. Roy MacLaren (Minister of State (Finance)):: 1. Yes. (a) Not applicable. (b)(i), (ii) and (iii) Precise changes in short-term and long-term interest rates from current levels cannot be predicted unless the way in which the deficit is to be reduced to the specified levels is also indicated by the questioner. In general, however, lower deficits would influence interest rates downward.
2. The direct effect is clearly positive; that is, changes in interest rates lead to changes in debt servicing costs, in the same direction, given no change in the government debt portfolio.
Indirect effects of interest rate changes on national debt servicing costs can also occur. For example, rising interest rates may lead to decreased economic growth which, in the absence of policy change, would reduce government revenues and increase government expenditures, thereby raising the level of the stock of government debt or changing the composition of the government debt portfolio toward higher yield debt instruments. This would also increase the cost of servicing the debt.
A full response to the question would require consideration of the causes of changes in interest rates, over-all economic responses to these changes, and government policy and program reaction to both the direct and indirect effects of interest rate changes.


Mr. Mazankowski: 1.	Is the Department of Finance's econometric model capable of estimating the impact on short-term and long-term interest rates in Canada for varying levels of the government deficit and (a) if not, for what reason (b) if so, what change in short-term and long-term interest rates from current levels does it predict if the deficit were (i) 0 (ii) $10 billion (iii) $20 billion?
2.	What impact would the changes in interest rates have on the cost of servicing the national debt?


Roy MacLaren: 1. Yes. (a) Not applicable. (b)(i), (ii) and (iii) Precise changes in short-term and long-term interest rates from current levels cannot be predicted unless the way in which the deficit is to be reduced to the specified levels is also indicated by the questioner. In general, however, lower deficits would influence interest rates downward.
2. The direct effect is clearly positive; that is, changes in interest rates lead to changes in debt servicing costs, in the same direction, given no change in the government debt portfolio.
Indirect effects of interest rate changes on national debt servicing costs can also occur. For example, rising interest rates may lead to decreased economic growth which, in the absence of policy change, would reduce government revenues and increase government expenditures, thereby raising the level of the stock of governmnent debt or changing the composition of the government debt portfolio toward higher yield
debt instruments. This would also increase the cost of servicing the debt.
A full response to the question would require consideration of the causes of changes in interest rates, over-all economic responses to these changes, and government policy and program reaction to both the direct and indirect effects of interest rate changes.


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


Mr. Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions stand?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE UNDER S.O.30   ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS SPILL OF RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL AT KEY LAKE
Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Regina East (Mr. de Jong) has given notice to the Chair but I must first point out to the Hon. Member that his notice, pursuant to Standing Order 30(2), was received only at 12.37 p.m. today.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We gave oral notice but with the confusion of the day we were not able to send the written notice in until the noon hour.
I wish to present the case that the House should adjourn and have an emergency debate on the extensive spill of radioactive material at Key Lake in Saskatchewan.
I wish to emphasize two major points to show why this is an emergency which falls under Standing Order 30. First of all, there is the scope of the spill. Over 100 million litres of radioactive material have been spilled. It is an acute danger to the environment of our northern river system as well as to the health of northern residents.


Mr. Speaker:: The Chair has some difficulty at this point. All the Hon. Member can do at this point is to read his notice to the House and then, if it is accepted by the Chair for debate, the debate can commence. The Hon. Member cannot commence a debate at this point. I would invite the Hon. Member to read his notice to the House.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to your ruling I move, seconded by the Hon. Member for The Battlefords-Meadow Lake (Mr. Anguish);
That the House do now adjourn to debate the spill of radium contaminated water at the Key Lake mine.

Canada Health Act


Mr. Speaker:: Standing Order 30(16) provides that:
The right to move the adjournment of the House for the above purposes is subject to the following conditions:
(o) the matter proposed for discussion must relate to a genuine emergency,
calling for immediate and urgent consideration;
Citations 286 and 287 in Beauchesne's Fifth Edition, read as follows:
286.	The "specific and important matter requiring urgent consideration", for the discussion of which the adjournment of the House may be moved under S.O. 26, must be so pressing that public interest will suffer if it is not given immediate attention.
287.	"Urgency" within this rule does not apply to the matter itself, but means "urgency of debate", when the ordinary opportunities provided by the rules of the House do not permit the subject to be brought on early enough and public interest demands that discussion take place immediately.
I must also point out to the Hon. Member that Wednesday has been designated for debate on the Speech from The Throne. Debate on the Address in Reply has not yet been completed. I believe Thursday of this week has been designated as a supply day, thus there is an early and ample opportunity for the House to address itself to this very important matter.
It is with respect, therefore, that I must decline the Hon. Member's request for an emergency debate under Standing Order 30 at this point.
Orders of the Day.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS

[Stage Direction]
[ English ]

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Miss Begin that Bill C-3, an Act relating to cash contributions by Canada in respect of insured health services provided under provincial health care insurance plans and amounts payable by Canada in respect of extended health care services and to amend and repeal certain Acts in consequence thereof, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Health, Welfare and Social Affairs.
Monique Bégin: I am told, Mr. Speaker, that I have only a few minutes left, although so much more can be said about medicare. However, let me try to conclude in these three minutes.
We were speaking, just before the House adjourned for lunch, of the alleged under-funding of the system. I have widely distributed the figures on that. I have not, like some of my provincial colleagues, forgotten the tax points, because to me it is money just as a credit card and a cheque is money. I would just like to say that for Canada on the average, for all of the provinces except two, we pay over 50 per cent of medicare. In the two provinces where we pay just below the 50 per cent,
we do so for excellent historical reasons. One of the provinces is British Columbia which always had the problem of far too many doctors imposing, of course, a much bigger burden on the system. I understand that the Minister in British Columbia is addressing that question right now. The other Province is Alberta where I believe they have a hospital in every village and in that sense the Province has overburdened its own cost a great deal. These problems are of some historical dimension and are totally provincial. There are provinces where we pay as much as 62 per cent and 58 per cent of medicare. Of course, when we say "medicare"-which is the word which has always been used-we mean buying for Canadians who have prepaid for it all of the expenses related to going to doctors and hospitals. That is what we mean. We do not speak of denticare or pharmacare. I believe I have always made that extremely clear to all Canadians. The $9 billion approximately which we transfer to the Provinces from all Canadians is exactly half of the total cost of what Canadians have given themselves as a society.
Therefore, in a nutshell, why should we have a new Canada Health Act? It is for a very simple reason. We do not want any overcharge. We do not want any direct charges for Canadians in need of health services, which are, however you want to say it, a tax on the sick.
I started my remarks by saying that it is with some regret that I am speaking on the second reading of this Bill. But it is also with some pleasure. It is with some pleasure because we anticipate now and can see the end to overcharges, extra billing and user fees on medicare. I am pleased because we Canadians in the medicare program-and 1 believe all Members of the House will agree with me-have in this program one of the best, if not the best, universal, top quality prepaid health care systems in the world, and we as a society have been wise enough to make it continue through the recession. This is what it is all about.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. I believe I see Hon. Members rising to put questions to the Minister. I must remind Hon. Members that at this time questions and comments are not provided for by the rules for the first three speakers.


T.A. Bud Bradley: Unless the Minister agrees.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Unless the House agrees.


T.A. Bud Bradley: Would the House agree to questions being put to the Minister?


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Would the House agree to allow the Hon. Member to put a question? Of course, the Minister must agree as well to receive a question.

Is the Hon. Minister willing to receive questions now?


Monique Bégin: With pleasure, but I understand this is unfair to both principal debators, or whatever. With the new Leader of the Opposition, everyone's French is getting confused. I will therefore have many other opportunities to answer.
January 16, 1984


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: We will now proceed with debate.


Hon. Jake Epp (Provencher):: Mr. Speaker, it is indeed an honour to address myself to the proposed Canada Health Act because it provides the opportunity to reiterate the perceptions and strong traditional support for the principles of medicare of the Progressive Conservative Party. There are times in the development of a country which stand out as landmarks of achievement. The evolution of our health system in Canada is replete with such landmarks. Many in this House and in the media have professed to be surprised at the support of my Party for the Canada Health Act. I know the Minister has expressed that same surprise. They should not have been surprised for the Bill is simply a consolidation of achievements which stand as landmarks in which we as Progressive Conservatives have participated.
More importantly, Mr. Speaker, the second reading debate allows us to discuss the future of health care in Canada with a view not only to enhancing medical and hospital care but ultimately to enhancing the health of all Canadians. That should be the primary objective which must be at the forefront of this debate and clearly in focus at all times. Neither partisanship not electoral considerations ought to cloud our vision and judgment in that respect.
Medicare is more than medicine and economics. Medicare is a service for individual Canadians and one of the critical bonds of Canadian federalism. Without it, we would suffer both as individuals and as a country. That is why our Leader has proclaimed medicare a "sacred trust". Our objective as a Party committed to medicare is twofold. First, we wish to fine-tune medicare through the legislation which is now before us so that the safety net serves as a trampoline which would boost Canadians to improved levels of health. Second, we wish to ensure that medicare remains and is strengthened as a bond within Canadian federalism and does not become either an irritant or a wedge between Canadians. Naturally, legislation alone cannot achieve that dual objective. Consultation, cooperation and responsibility among and between all participating governments, groups, individuals and health care professionals, is absolutely essential. Consultation and co-operation will allow everyone to feel that he has been part of the emerging consensus, and this in turn will result in a greater sense of personal and shared responsibility toward better health care. That sense of responsibility is crucial for two reasons: first, to ensure that health care resources are used effectively and efficiently so as to minimize costs and maximize benefits; second, to ensure that medicare remains a durable and lasting social program of which Canadians can be proud and confident.
In short, Mr. Speaker, we are convinced that non-partisanship, consultation, co-operation and responsibility, which we will exercise throughout this debate and thereafter, is required to enhance the health care system and the health of all Canadians.
Canada Health Act
There have been those who have said that medicare is slowly disintegrating, and the reasons for that can be varied. The Minister, for example, has said that medicare was in crisis and it was for that reason that the Canada Health Act would be introduced. But that disintegration, if it is there, is not disintegration, I suggest, because the Canadians are not committed to a universal health care program, but rather it is a result of the issues now facing the health care system. 1 would like to address a number of those issues today, Mr. Speaker, because I believe it is important, when we look at the Canada Health Act, that we look beyond the narrow provisions of the Act to what is really facing the health care system.
To understand where we are and where we are going, and possibly even where we should be going is, I feel, absolutely essential in this debate. In order to do that, I point out to the House and to Canadians, such involvement in the medicare system by all levels of Government is useful only if a co-operative spirit prevails. In their words, Canadians rely "on the good sense of public health officials and political authorities ... to effect co-operation to work out an economical division of functions between the Dominion and the Provinces."
What I am referring to, Mr. Speaker, are commissions such as the Roweli-Sirois Commission back in the 1930s which laid the groundwork for co-operative federalism and for social policy. Although they might have been stated 50 years ago, it is absolutely critical that we do not forget those principles. I say to you, Mr. Speaker, that although some people in this House might feel that from time to time we stress co-operation too much, I am absolutely convinced that there is no point in even discussing this issue if the bottom line is not the willingness to co-operate. I say frankly to the Minister that I think she would have progressed a lot further if she had shown that kind of co-operation from an early point. That co-operation is essential because we are a federal country. If that co-operation in an effort to win a battle is not there, however noble that battle might be or however noble its purposes, the possibility for co-operation in other areas will be jeopardized as well and thereby the harmony and unity in our country will be endangered.
I was deeply disturbed by the paper the Minister put forward this summer entitled, "Preserving Universal Medicare". Today she said it was not an attack on a specific province, namely the Province of Alberta. Any person reading that paper could not come away with any other conclusion than that the primary target of the Minister at the time was the Government and the people of Alberta and the health care system which they have in that Province. I intend to put a few remarks on the record today to show the commitment, not only of the Alberta Government but of its taxpayers, to a universal health care system in that Province.
When one takes a look at the Roweli-Sirois Commission of the 1930s it is important to see that it established another principle which has become part of Canadian life, that is, the matter of equalization. Equalization became a modus operan-

January 16, 1984
Canada Health Act
di between the provinces and the federal Government. In fact this was so much so that it was included in the Constitution. Premier Hatfield of New Brunswick was the principal spokesman on that issue. Not only did he want it to be the manner in which we operated in Canada, but he also wanted it enshrined in the Constitution. That becomes essential in this debate, Mr. Speaker. There are provinces today in Canada which are receiving well over 50 per cent not only of their health care budget but of their total provincial budget through federal transfer payments. As I have said to the Minister and to others before, those provinces, their premiers, their health Ministers and their governments are not mean spirited because of wanting to have either user fees or extra billing. That is not the point. The problem that they face is a lack of co-operation with the federal Government with regard to how they are going to fund a system. That is the point that they constantly make. I suggest to the Minister that after having equalization entrenched in the Constitution, it is absolutely critical that that principle never be violated, or that the war in which she sometimes seems to engage, never be used to destroy the health care system, especially in those so-called have-not provinces.
This has been the position of our Party, Mr. Speaker, since 1956 when delegates at a national convention in this city passed a resolution explicitly stating: "When contributions cannot be made and where need exists our principles will guarantee assistance of the state''. That was in conjunction with a national health care system. Our Party has a history of that commitment to medicare. It is that sense of commitment that allowed the Government of the late Right Hon. John Diefenbaker to have endorsed the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act of 1957.
There has been co-operation on this matter of medicare, Mr. Speaker, whether with former Liberal Governments or Conservative Governments federally or with provincial Governments of various political stripes. It is interesting that in 1961, still in the time of the Diefenbaker Government, a royal commission was established on health care services. We know what that royal commission stated. Again in 1979 the Government of the Right Hon. Member for Yellowhead (Mr. Clark) asked Justice Emmett Hall to study the health care system and to analyse fully whether the health care system was still meeting the objectives which had been determined by the founders at that time. I found that report interesting, and especially its title. It was called, "A Commitment for Renewal". I would suggest to the Minister today that if she looks at the Canada Health Act as a renewal she should not limit the renewal to the Canada Health Act only but extend it to other issues which we intend to raise in this debate.
Members who have been in the House for some time also know of the period which we went through when the debate on established programs financing took place and on those federal-provincial agreements in which changes from a so-called fifty-fifty cost share basis to block funding were made. It is my understanding, and I think the Minister would concur with this, that block funding is generally accepted by the provinces.
They also want to have a certain flexibility in terms of services which are now not generally insured services. In her definition of medicare today the Minister was very specific when she spoke of the 50 per cent, indicating that it will cover only the costs of medical care and acute care hospitals. I intend to address that matter more fully later on. There are Members on our side of the House, such as the Hon. Member for Kingston and The Islands (Miss MacDonald) and the Hon. Member for Lethbridge-Foothills (Mr. Thacker), who spoke during the time of the discussions on EPF and who were members of that task force. They will be stating our position relative to those debates as well.
The bottom line for us, Mr. Speaker, and we cannot emphasize it sufficiently, is co-operation. Not only was it stated in our own words, but I would like to quote for the record of the House the last words, so to speak, of Justice Emmett Hall in his report dated July 17, 1980. He said:
Finally, may I say I do not believe that a viable program can be expected or is even possible, based on the assumption that Ottawa can unilaterally withhold funds from a given Province which Ottawa thinks is in some kind of default.
The maintenance of the Canadian Health Services Program is dependent on continued co-operation between the Federal Department of Health and the Provinces. This co-operation is vital. Provision should be made for uninterrupted consultation. This could be achieved by the creation of a continuing committee consisting of the Federal Deputy Minister of a selected Assistant Deputy Minister and the Deputy Ministers of Health of the Provinces required to meet at least semi-annually and to monitor the Health Program continuously.
I see the Minister of Health and Welfare (Miss Begin) nodding her head in assent. I take it that that will also be a commitment on her part because it is absolutely essential that, no matter what is in existence in fact, that co-operative base remain. The Minister knows full well that she wanted to go to war with the provinces. She wanted to go to war with the health care professionals. There is no doubt in our minds that that was one of her objectives.


John Horton McDermid: That is right, and it did not work.


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: This being the case, let us take a look at what now faces the health care system. When one takes a look at the percentage of the Gross National Product that is spent on health care it is interesting to note that Canadians spend a smaller percentage of their GNP on health care than our neighbour to the south. And Canadians should be justly proud of this. I think that is another reason why Canadians support the medicare system in Canada, although they might not have that figure at hand. For example, in 1971 the figure in the United States was 7.7 per cent and in Canada it was 7.5 per cent. Through the 1970s and early 1980s Canada's figure of about 7.5 per cent of GNP spent on health care remained relatively constant. In fact it clipped a little below that and then started rising. The last figures I have are for 1982. In 1982 two things happened. The American percentage of GNP spent on health care jumped to 10.5 per cent. In Canada it jumped to 8.4 per cent. We were and are still lower than the United States in those raw figures. I would like to make two points. Be it health care or any other social service, it can only be sustained and maintained with a healthy economy. The economy has seriously affected the ability of this or any other
January 16, 1984

government, or the provincial Governments, to maintain not only the system as we know it, but other programs that are valid as well. That is the first point that has to be made. As the GNP drops, these systems not only maintain their costing levels but in fact very frequently go up. That is the one point that I make. If there is any indictment which should be levelled against the Government, it is that its mishandling of the economy has seriously affected the ability of Canadians to maintain these health care systems.
Another point which must be made is that when one looks at the growing national debt in Canada, it reflects on these two figures which I have been using for the United States and Canada. The American 10.5 per cent does not reflect any part of their national debt as having been accrued through health care costs. However, a substantial part of the 8.4 per cent for Canada is health care costs. Therefore, the figure of 8.4 per cent as compared to the 10.5 per cent is not quite accurate. With respect to the debt, that cost factor has remained and is now a constant which is built into the system, and as a result of the economic mismanagement of the Government the ability for Canadians to maintain and in fact expand programs is seriously jeopardized because of the debt load they now face as a result of the actions of the Government. That is the other point which must be stressed.
I do not have time to pursue all of those factors but I know that others in my Party intend to do so. When we address the question of the Canada Health Act today, let us accept the principles but let us also critically examine the health care situation today. The principles of universality, accessibility, comprehensiveness of coverage, portability and non-profit administration are essential principles which we support. Therefore, we must be absolutely sure that we do not introduce contention either between the provinces and the federal Government or among the health care professionals, because I suggest that that contention can affect those principles detrimentally, resulting in conditions being breached and the very support on which the system depends being withdrawn. How ironic that by making an enemy of provincial counterparts in order to defend someone, one ends up making those who need the service most often the victims of that confrontation.
It is very interesting to note the Minister's defence with respect to the level of funding. It has been that the present level of funding of the federal Government for the health care system has always been maintained at 50 per cent plus and that in fact the Government is fulfilling its requirements under the terms of the agreement. I refer to Hansard of May 31, 1982, at page 17908 and an exchange between the Right Hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and the Member for Churchill (Mr. Murphy). The Member for Churchill was asking about the Government's commitment to extra billing and user fees and specifically whether there would be penalties attached to those two practices. In view of the Canada Health Act being before us today, I will quote the Prime Minister's answer. He said:
Canada Health Act
I put the question to the hon. member that the Constitution does not permit us to legislate in this area. We can only proceed by agreement. 1 have heard a member of the New Democratic Party shout across the way that we should withhold the money. If that is the position of the New Democratic Party, no doubt it would have effect. It would destroy medicare and extra billing with it.
After that answer of May, 1982, it is strange that we then have the Canada Health Act under these terms and that the Minister still states that her motivation was health care only and that politics, political consideration and electoral possibilities have absolutely nothing to do with her thinking on the Bill.
Our Party would like to see user fees and extra billing eliminated. That is why we are supporting the Bill. But in so doing we are saying to the Minister that she has an obligation not only to funding but to the health care professionals to treat them not only with the respect they deserve but to acknowledge the expertise they have and the service they are giving to Canadians. When I talk about health care professionals, I am talking about doctors, nurses, orderlies and people who are working and doing their very best in that system under the circumstances and with the funding which they have to give Canadians a health care system which is universally applauded.
I think it is important that we see these health care professionals in the best light possible. I have before me a paper that was written by a medical doctor, a general practitioner. He is a person who I know has studied the system very thoroughly. He says in part:
Physicians should realize that, while benefiting from an independent fee-for-service system of payment, that they also enjoy certainty of payment and ease of billing. On the other hand, governments should realize that provision for cost of living increases must be established which takes into account the net realizable income which physicians receive.
The fee-for-service method of remunerating physicians is frequently condemned and may not be perfect, but it may well be a less costly method of assuring medical care.
I know that Canadians, including physicians and nurses, do not like to take their salary disputes on to the picket lines. I say to the Minister and to those in the Department: once the Canada Health Act is passed do not use it as a cudgel against people who are legitimately trying to work within the system and do not use it as a cudgel to make them scapegoats in the health care system, because I do not believe that that is fair. Also, when we speak about the so-called funding process, it is strange that the Minister says that while she is supporting 50 per cent of insured services and that that funding is adequate, in the 1980 budget of the Minister of Finance the Government signalled, and the Minister stated that, that it was the Government's intention to cut, in the fiscal years 1982 to 1986-87, an amount equal to $5.7 billion from insured health care services. If the Government is cutting $5.7 billion over that period of time when we know that health care costs are rising at an average of 12 per cent plus per annum, how can the Minister then argue that she is still maintaining her side of the bargain?
While we want a national health care system, when one looks at the figures it is interesting to see the disparity in the amount of money that the provinces spend. I mentioned earlier that I thought the pamphlet entitled "Preserving the Universal Health Care" was an attack on the system in Alberta. For the

January 16, 1984
Canada Health Act
benefit of the House I note that the highest per capita spending on health care is in the Province of Alberta. In fact, that health care spending in Alberta is $1,013. Next in line, if we take a look at the figures, we see that Newfoundland's spending is $797; Prince Edward Island's is $735; Nova Scotia's is $832; New Brunswick's is $797; the Province of Quebec's is $884; Ontario's is $828; Manitoba's is $925; and Saskatchewan's is $889. 1 have mentioned Alberta. British Columbia's spending is $994; the Northwest Territories, spends $848 and the Yukon $734. While there are certain obvious disparities in terms of population distribution and in terms of specialists and so forth, the fact remains that certain provinces that are greatly dependent on health care transfers cannot afford the kinds of cuts which the Minister identified, namely the $5.7 billion, and maintain some of the expenditures that I have just read out. It is important we keep that in mind in this debate.
It is also important that this problem of funding has nothing to do, I would suggest, with partisan consideration. I know the New Democratic Party from time to time has campaigned, at least in my province and I am sure in other provinces as well, on the issue that that Party primarily is the defender of medicare.
It is interesting to note that the Province of Manitoba is running into the very same problems as governments in other provinces. I have before me-and I do not have time but I am sure somebody would like to devote part of his or her speech to it-articles that have appeared over the pre-Christmas and Christmas period in the Winnipeg Free Press under the heading "Hospitals in Crisis". These articles outline the difficulties which the New Democratic Party Government of that Province is having with the health care system. I am not suggesting to the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie) that the Party he supports and the Government he supports in that Province is not committed to health care. But I am saying to him and to all Members of the House that provinces are having great difficulty meeting the obligations, no matter what the philosophical commitment or stand on the issue is. As I said, I have before me a long list of articles that have appeared in Manitoba under the heading "Hospitals in Crisis". I will read some. They are headlines primarily that I will put on the record, but I will make the articles available to the House. These articles are based on the provincial Government's statement that it will increase health care funding to the hospitals by only 3 per cent next year. Just 3 per cent, that is all. There are good financial reasons for it. But I am saying to the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill that he should take note of this issue in Manitoba. The opening paragraph of an article that appeared on December 21 reads, "About four people die each year in Manitoba while waiting for up to three months for open-heart surgery, doctors say." That is the first article. The headline of another one reads, "Experts warn of second rate hospital care". Another one which was published on December 23 reads, "Bed shortage cited in deaths of 4 patients". Another one reads, "Ceiling on funds posing difficulties." Another one, which is dated December 24, reads,
"Money is so tight at some Winnipeg hospitals that patients are being asked for the first time to bring their own Kleenex, soap, toothpaste, mouth wash and slippers when they check in". I do not mind that, Mr. Speaker. The reason I raised that for the benefit of the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill is that back in a previous administration people used to talk about the menu being changed from three strips of bacon to two. I am just reminding the Hon. Member of what was said at some other point in time. Here is another headline, "For eye surgery, doctors say 'People going blind' waiting".
Here is another one that reads, "Intensive care beds short". I could go on and on but I think I have made the point. The point is simply made that the only way provinces are going to maintain the health care system is through co-operation and an absolute assessment of what is essential in that system.
Let me refer to the last Throne Speech, Mr. Speaker. What happened in the Throne Speech? Members of this House will recall that approximately $500 million additional were identified by this Government. It was an example of this Government's commitment to the health care system. It did not take Members on this side of the House and the media long to discover that the Government was obligated to pay that under the agreements it signed. Even 24 hours after that another $269 million was found on the road from Ottawa to Montreal. I say that the Government cannot argue that the health care system is healthy without addressing the question of funding. I said to the Minister when she met in Halifax in September with the health care Ministers that it was not helpful, not helpful at all, when she was asked to discuss funding of health care to have replied, "That is not my responsibility, that is for the Minister of Finance. I am only here to discuss health care". She walked out after an hour and a half and said it had been a waste of her time. That is not the way to go about things.
As my Leader stated back on July 1 in the riding of Central Nova, a PC Government led by him would restore co-operation and funding to the Canadian health system. That commitment stands and that commitment will be honoured.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: As well, we are saying that when the next election comes, whenever the Prime Minister decides to call it, we will call a federal-provincial conference not to study again but to discuss with the provinces how the health care system is functioning and what funding should be examined, and the agenda will be open. We will be willing to discuss that agenda with the provinces and look at those issues and look at where extra money should be put in areas where they are not covered now by the cost shared arrangement. There are provinces which would like to get into alternate care. Some would like to try lower cost care programs, but they simply cannot do so because they are now strapped for the funding which they have to maintain for the present program. We are saying that not only is the agenda open but we intend to fulfil that commitment as well. I would suggest it is important to address it in that way, all of us knowing the provincial rights in this matter,
January 16, 1984

because of certain concerns that we have. In the remaining minutes I want to list some of them.
For instance, one of our concerns is the main demographic trend in Canada today, the so-called aging population. It is known that caring for the elderly is on average more expensive than caring for other sectors of society. But that trend has implications for the health policy. First, Canada must seriously explore the increased use of home care and nursing homes as alternatives to acute care hospitals. Right now, in a number of provinces in a number of hospitals 30 per cent of the acute care hospital beds-high cost beds-are being occupied by people with chronic disease or geriatrics. We must ensure an adequate supply of specialists and researchers in the field of gerontology. The challenge facing Canada and the testing degree to which we are a caring society is whether or not we can actively provide for not just the physicial needs of the elderly sick but attempt as best we can to address the emotional, the family and the spiritual needs of the aged and the dying. As well, and this must be a priority, we must find new approaches to improving care for Canada's natives. One just has to take a look at the statistics on infant mortality, on the reduction of life expectancy of Canada's native people, to know that this is an area that we must address much more seriously than we have in the past.
A closely related issue is that of preventive medicine. The goal of the Progressive Conservative Party is to move from what has necessarily been known as a sickness policy to a health policy. The economics of preventive medicine, while they cannot be fully known or accurately forecast, I suggest, give us enough incentive to pursue that issue very diligently. Neither can the rightness of preventing sickness by generating health be questioned. I know governments are sometimes a little leery of becoming involved in the area of lifestyle because of the imposition of Big Brother on society. However, I think all reasonable Hon. Members of the House recognize that that is not only good for society but has a very positive effect upon curbing health care costs.
On the matter of preventive health care, I can commend no one more on that issue, in bringing it to the attention of Canadians, than the Canadian Nurses' Association. The Association has pushed that issue. I have enjoyed its co-operation and the manner in which it approached the question of preventive health care. I look forward to further consultations with the Association.
Also we must take a look at the best economic use of our resources. In recent times health care economists have raised questions about the reasonableness of expecting that everyone who is sick should have access to the latest advanced diagnostic or treatment technology. One of the reasons we maintain that increased medical and technological research should be carried out in Canada is to increase the affordability and therefore the availability of such technologists and to keep them in Canada. That is important as well.
Adjournment Motion
Health care economists have expressed concerns-and they are shared by provincial governments, hospital administrators and others-that they must have the co-operation of provinces to control health care costs right in the hospitals. As a layman I know that sometimes that is dangerous territory on which to tread; I am not a health care professional. I say to the Minister and to the medical profession of Canada that we need their help, co-operation and expertise to maintain the health care system and to have cost reductions or at least to maintain the cost level at the present time so that we can generally afford the system.
At the beginning of my presentation today, I started by saying that our theme would be not only to preserve medicare but in fact to enhance it. I suggest to the Minister, with all the kindness I can muster, that in looking at the Canada Health Act and any regulations flowing therefrom we should not only look back or just look at the present; we must look at the future.
While this is a wide topic and obviously I would have liked to have more time, let me reiterate simply today-and some of my colleagues will make other points-that we support the principles which underlie not only Canada's medicare system but the Canada Health Act. Additionally, we want to see the debate expanded to address the issues which are really facing Canadians and the health care system.
We expect that co-operation not only from the Minister. In my discussions with health care professionals and with the provinces, everyone has pledged co-operation. All they are requesting in return is that they be heard, listened to, and that their expertise and experience be respected and in fact taken into consideration. That is our request as well.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 45, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the Hon. Member for Fundy-Royal (Mr. Corbett)-National Revenue-Tax reassessment of small entrepreneurs; the Hon. Member for Fraser Valley West (Mr. Wenman)-Administration of Justice-Claim of influence exercised by Sidney Jaffe. (b) Legal residence of Sidney Jaffe; the Hon. Member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Schellenberger)-Crown Corporations- Northern Transportation Company Ltd.-Request for investigation of management practices.

January 16, 1984
Canada Health Act



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Miss Begin that Bill C-3, an Act relating to cash contributions by Canada in respect of insured health services provided under provincial health care insurance plans and amounts payable by Canada in respect of extended health care services and to amend and repeal certain Acts in consequence thereof, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Health, Welfare and Social Affairs.
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg-Birds Hill):: Mr. Speaker, next month this Parliament will be four years old. For the duration of those four years I have served as the NDP health critic in the House. On the third sitting day of this Parliament, on April 17, 1980, I asked a question concerning the erosion of medicare. It was the first of dozens of occasions when I rose in the House on behalf of my colleagues in the NDP and called upon the Minister to do something to preserve medicare and to address the many problems which it faces.
That first year the Minister hid behind the fact that the Hall Health Services Review was not completed, and did nothing. When it was completed in September 1980, she then hid behind what she called the "complexity" of the situation for a winter until the Special Parliamentary Task Force on Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements was created in the spring of 1981. After it reported in August 1981 and seconded Justice Hall's call for action against extra billing by physicians and user fees, the time seemed ripe for action. The Minister could have responded to an active consensus against extra billing and by now we could have been putting our energies into the many other problems which medicare faces. Instead, she rolled over and went to sleep for awhile and let the then Minister of finance take over. The opportunity of concerted action by a concerned government against extra charges was ignored, and the politics of medicare were made even more complex by what followed.
In April 1982, federal transfer payments to the provinces under EPF were cut back. This aggravated federal-provincial relations concerning medicare and harmed medicare itself in so far as the cutbacks gave certain Progressive Conservative provincial governments philosophically hostile to medicare a political pretext on which to advance increased tolerance of extra billing, the reintroduction of user fees and the tying of benefits to high and rising health care premiums in British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta, something of which I warned the Government in the fall of 1981.
Most recently, only days before the introduction of the Canada Health Act, the federal Government further damaged the political context by trying to portray an automatic increase in its payments to the provinces as a discretionary response on its part to perceptions of underfunding and provincial concerns about the federal-provincial relationship over medicare.
This is the context into which the Canada Health Act comes after years of delay which between user fees and extra billing is estimated to have cost sick Canadians in the neighbourhood of $100 million just last year. Nevertheless, having long called for the federal Government to do something about the medicare crisis, we are pleased that the Government has finally tabled the Canada Health Act so that Canadians can see for themselves the extent of Liberal solutions to the problems which beset medicare. Despite the fact that the long-delayed Act comes into a political context which is not the best the Liberals could have contrived, we in the NDP will do our best to make the debate and the process which accompanies this Act an opportunity to do much more than what might be accomplished only by the Canada Health Act as it now reads.
The Minister of National Health and Welfare (Miss Begin) has disappointed many people. After dangling the Canada Health Act in front of Canadians concerned about medicare for two years, the Minister had a responsibility to come up with a lot more than she has. In the days and weeks ahead I hope that we can not only improve on the mechanisms the Minister proposes for getting rid of extra billing and user fees, but that we can also get on with addressing other issues important to the survival of medicare.
The problems which beset medicare are at least fourfold, and this Bill deals with only one of the four dimensions of the problem. The four problem areas are: first, the need to clarify, strengthen and enforce the five basic principles of medicare as national health care standards; second, the need for the federal Government to re-open the federal-provincial funding relationship with a view to restoring a full federal partnership in medicare; third, the need to realize the full economic and ideological consequences of the fact that the economic climate which sustained medicare as a political compromise is no longer there and that new and deeper commitments to medicare will be required if it is to be preserved; and, fourth, the need to provide leadership and incentives for moving the health care model with which medicare currently co-exists away from the present physician-dominated, curative model, toward a more comprehensive, community-based preventive health care model such as groups like the Canadian Nurses' Association have suggested.
The Canada Health Act addresses only one of those four concerns, that is the concern about principles. It is a very important one and it is addressed through, first, the proposal to penalize provinces which continue to allow extra billing and/or charge user fees by withdrawing a dollar of federal funding for every dollar of such extra charges in any given province, and, second, the proposal to give the Minister of National Health and Welfare the power to determine discretionary reductions in the federal payment if a province fails to comply with any of the other program criteria concerning portability, universality, etc., or either of the two new conditions of payment-the provision of information and visibility.
We in the NDP are concerned with the dollar for dollar penalties for extra billing and user fees. Although we along with others, such as the Special Parliamentary Task Force on
January 16, 1984

Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements, have long called upon the federal Government to give itself more flexibility in responding to provinces which violate the principles of medicare by making itself able to gradually withhold portions of the federal Government payment according to the level of the offence in any given province, we never specifically called for dollar for dollar penalties. Thus, although we have long supported the idea of financial penalties for offending provinces, we have, complementary to our concern about the over-all political context into which the Canada Flealth Act comes, serious doubts about the effectiveness of the penalties proposed.
As a purely punitive measure, it may well be that dollar for dollar penalties are simply not tough enough to bring certain provinces into line. The penalty may not be great enough to be persuasive and may only be used as an excuse for more fed-bashing, for higher health care premiums, and for continued penalization of the sick through continued extra billing and user-fee charges. The $14 million that extra billing amounts to in Alberta is not a fiscal nightmare for the Alberta Government. It may well decide to absorb the cost of sticking to its free enterprise view of medicine, and in the meantime the actual extra bills for individual Albertans will be a burden on them.
This concern about the effectiveness of the penalties is further complicated by the fact that no positive incentives are included for provinces that want to respect the principles of medicare and want to act quickly. The only incentive is for violating provinces which are promised that at the end of three years following the inception of the Act, they will get all their withheld money back if they reform. If they have not cleaned up their act, the federal Government will pocket the money, thus creating another problem, which is that, under the terms of this Act, the federal Government stands to gain financially from continued extra billing and user fees. This is not exactly the highest moral ground that the Government could have sought. Why could not any money permanently withheld from an offending province be put to an appropriate health care use, provided that it was used in a way that did not offset the effectiveness of the penalties?
In recent weeks I have had the opportunity to meet and talk with representatives of a number of groups concerned about the Canada Health Act, groups such as the Canadian Health Coalition, the National Anti-Poverty Organization, the Canadian Council on Social Development, the Canadian Nurses' Association, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Ontario Medical Reform Group and the National Federation of Nurses' Unions, plus several health care economists. I think it is fair to say that all of them are concerned about whether the penalties will do the job they are intended to do. Likewise, there were concerns expressed that the three-year waiting period given to the provinces to eliminate extra billing and user fees before they are permanently penalized may be too long, and they may serve only to delay a resolution of the question in various resisting provinces while making it more difficult for
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those provinces which want to act quickly against extra billing. It has been five years since the SOS medicare conference in the fall of 1979. Why wait another three years and make it eight years before we finally have action against extra billing in those provinces where we most need that action?
To illustrate, a province might like to move to eliminate extra billing in the first year of the three years. What if it borders on a province which for one reason or another decides to wait until the end of the three-years, hoping perhaps for a more sympathetic federal government, a successful constitutional challenge against the Act or whatever? Practically speaking, the neighbouring province that moves quickly against extra billing in particular would bear a burden in terms of the fee schedules it would have to negotiate with doctors in order not to lose certain specialists to the province next door which was continuing to allow extra billing. Yet there is nothing in this Act for such a province. There is no positive encouragement or incentive for that kind of province.
All this is by way of saying that surely we can come up with a more creative and effective combination of negative and positive measures designed to truly eliminate extra billing user fees in a time frame that will see provincial governments having to take a position quickly. If, regrettably, some decide to carry on with extra charges in spite of all the provisions of an amended and improved Act, then the political process in such provinces will ultimately have to resolve the matter.
We will be suggeting a shorter time frame, a less generous stance toward those provinces that take their time or do not act at all, and a more generous stance toward those provinces that do show a willingness to respect the need to do away with extra billing and user fees. New cost-sharing programs with such provisions for initiatives in preventive and laternative health care models would be one way of encouraging them in their stand against extra billing and user fees, while at the same time such programs would address the question of federal under-funding and the need to reform the health care model. All of these concerns could be integrated. We will be providing more detailed suggestions in this regard at the appropriate time. We look forward to hearing from witnesses in the committee stage as to what they might suggest in this regard.
With respect to the discretionary power given to the Minister concerning perceived violations of other program criteria and conditions of payment, we are concerned about the incredible power seemingly thereby given to one person. Concerning extra billing and user fees, the provinces will at least know what they are getting into and what they are bringing on themselves if they allow these charges.
With respect to other principles and conditions, the same clarity is lacking in the Bill as it is now drafted. There is a concern that the Minister might be given final powers in this area which are inconsistent with the degree of co-operative federalism that medicare must continue to represent. We may be suggesting alternatives in this area when the Bill gets to the committee stage.
Parliamentary accountability for ministerial reductions in transfer payments was an idea that we proposed in our initial

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response to the Canada Health Act. I was pleased this morning to see that the Minister of National Health and Welfare seems to have accepted that idea. She talked about having to come to Parliament if there were to be reductions in federal transfer payments so that the provinces would have the opportunity of a hearing. I was also pleased to hear her respond to provincial concerns about the wording of Section 12, (a), (c) and (d). That seems to be taken care of.
Lastly, as 1 have not seen the regulations at this point, I will be interested in the details of the demands made of the provinces with respect to principles such as universality, portability, the provision of information and the visibility of federal involvement in medicare.
We in this Party will be particularly interested in the provisions affecting universality and the collection of health care premiums. With universality re-defined upwards from 95 to 100 per cent, provinces like Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, which insist on paying a part of their health care costs in this regressive way will, we take it, be forbidden to deny anybody medical treatment on the basis of non-payment of premiums. These Governments, if they insist on making their people pay premiums, will have to find other ways of making people do this.
Incidentally, the existence of premiums in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, conveniently points out the ideological nature of so many medicare issues. It is the three richest provinces in Canada which cannot afford to abolish health care premiums. It is not a question of economics at all. It is a question of philosophy. In Alberta there is no gasoline or sales tax. They are not broke. For some strange reason they just prefer to tax the sick rather than drivers or consumers.
The Canada Health Act does not, as I said earlier, deal with the remaining three problems which face medicare; the federal-provincial funding question, the economic question and the health care model question. I would like to deal with these in turn.
With respect to funding, by remaining close-minded on funding, the Minister is still playing into the hands of those who falsely seek to justify extra billing and user fees by citing under-funding. Under-funding is a problem, a complicated problem, but user fees have never been demonstrated to generate significant revenue beyond the cost of collecting them, and extra billing only helps the self-perceived under-funding of a minority of doctors' income expectations and provides a morally dubious rationalization method for allocating scarce resources such as opportunities for elective surgery.
Medicare began to be threatened the day that federal-provincial cost sharing was abandoned in 1977 and bloc funding began. This ended direct federal involvement in health care decisions and put the federal government in a position where if it felt that a province was violating medicare, all it could do was lecture that province in public and hope for the best. The only other alternative under the 1977 legislation was to withdraw all federal funding from the offending province, an option which involves many known and unknown risks to medicare and which, as we know, was never used for that
reason. Indeed, an analogy comes to mind concerning the prospect of total federal financial withdrawal, that this really was the federalist equivalent of a nuclear deterrent, something only useful, if at all, as a threat but not as a sound long-term policy. It is out of that paralysis that the Canada Health Act comes.
In 1977 we warned the Liberals against the perils of bloc funding. At that time they admitted they were gambling with the future of medicare. They argued, however, that medicare was an established program that no one would tamper with. This was either an incredible display of political naivete about the nature of the political tensions inherent in medicare and the extent to which anything can be said to be established after only 10 years, or, more likely, it was a rationalization for the successful attempt by the Liberals to cap their contributions to medicare.
As I have said many times in the House, the federal Government made a major political error in the spring of 1982 when it unilaterally reduced the amount of money it had previously claimed it was providing to the provinces for health care and post-secondary education. The money attributable to compensation for the termination of the revenue guarantee was consistently used by the federal Government in the period 1977-82, in its own calculations of what it was spending on health care. Those calculations were often self-righteously used to show that the provincial percentage spending on health care was declining in relation to the federal percentage. The removal of this money in 1982, of course, at first glance was a clever move because most provinces argued that it was not earmarked for medicare and post-secondary education and that it was unfair of the federal Government to regard it as such. When the tables were turned on the provinces in the fall of 1981 and their own arguments were used against them, one could hardly resist the temptation to conclude that the provinces had got what they deserved. Sophistry abounded and in order to know who was lying first you would have had to be at the table in 1977 when the deal was struck.
The provinces may have got what they left themselves open to, but Canadians in all provinces were dealt a triple blow in terms of medicare. First, they were treated to the spectacle of the federal Government arguing the provincial position and the provincial Governments arguing the federal position. There was a paucity of honest debate about what was going on. A veritable tower of Babel was created about who was funding whom at what level had been created and even the experts cannot sort it out now.
The provinces did suffer a decreased ability to pay for medicare in absolute terms as any withdrawal of funds from the provinces, whether earmarked or not, was bound to affect the provincial health care system. This is especially so in the case of Manitoba and Quebec where this was combined with a drastic and inequitable reduction in equalization payments as a result of the new formula established, again unilaterally, in April, 1982. Only the commitment to medicare of governments
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like the present one in Manitoba has stood in the way of the effects of such cutbacks.
What is perhaps most important is that Canadians in medicare were dealt a blow by the federal reduction in transfer payments in that this unnecessary move by the federal Government provided the provinces with a handy political excuse for not responding to federal overtures concerning standards and further conditions for funding.
The Canadian medicare system was founded on a partnership, a federal-provincial partnership to establish and defend the right of all Canadians to an equally accessible, quality health care system, no matter where they lived in the country, no matter what their income. Both levels of government must stop pointing the finger at each other and stop engaging in manipulative number crunching. They must clean up their acts because all levels of government have a responsibility for what has happened to medicare so far.

Mr. Speaker, on the economic level, medicare is facing difficulties because the economic context in which it was created has vanished, probably forever. Like other segments of the Liberal welfare state, it was funded through revenues generated by economic growth rather than by a true redistribution of wealth or power in the Canadian society.
When the economy was buoyant, the Liberal Party could promote social reform while serving the business elite's values and economic interest. This is no longer possible, and to that extent the medicare crisis is the crisis of Canadian liberalism. In fact, judging by the way in which our Liberal friends will look after the future of that universal program, which is clearly popular and a source of pride for many Liberal supporters, we will know once and for all whether the Liberal Party is capable of maintaining our post-war social accomplishment.
If we allow medicare to disappear, all other programs will be at the mercy of those who contend, as most Conservatives do for instance, that social programs such as medicare, funded as they are through general revenue, are part of the problem rather than a part of its solution, and that we should revert to the days when social programs were more selective, that is more directed to the needy.
At best, those arguments reflect pessimism as to the will of the wealthy to permit a true distribution of their wealth, and reflect a real compassion for have-nots and a desire to more adequately meet their needs. For instance, it is sometimes suggested that the universal social programs have not changed the relative distribution of wealth and power. However, the left defended by those programs initially never thought they would change that distribution unless it was accompanied by fundamental changes in the economic system. What is apparent here is a kind of realism that had no basis in theory and that politically reflects a form of defeatism. At worst, those arguments come from a right that would have governments spend
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less on social programs and transfer the costs to the various users. In this way, business would receive from government further tax breaks as incentives to invest and compensation for declining profits and rising competition for their products on the international scene, resulting not from lower worker productivity as many would have it, but rather from global economic conditions manipulated by the multinational corporations, whose freedom of action they would aggressively defend to the social and environmental limit of the economic model within which those corporations are now operating. [English]
In any case, Mr. Speaker, a choice is at hand for countries like Canada in the way they face up to the restructuring of the global economy, the intransigence of the wealthy at home and the attack on the economic viability of universal social programs. Are we going to determine Canada to be the kind of country in which the amount of sharing that is necessary to maintain programs like medicare, will be achieved through authentically progresssive taxation, or are we, as the Conservatives would have us do enthusiastically and the Liberals without as much fanfare, going to grovel before international market forces instead of trying to shape our own economic destiny in a way consistent with the social principles we say we hold and which we entrenched through programs like medicare? Now that times are tough our principles are to be tested and medicare will be a crucial test.
The pressures on medicare which can be attributed to the health care model which we find in medicare are all related to each other in so far as they cause greater and greater demands on a finite pool of money. As we have seen, for political and economic reasons it is an often dwindling pool of money.
There are three of these pressures which I should like to deal with, Mr. Speaker. Medicare is an ideological compromise between entrepreneurial medicine and truly socialized medicine. Thus, despite the rhetoric of the Canadian Medical Association about state medicine, doctors have actually had the best of all possible worlds. They and their patients have enjoyed their traditional freedom to pick and choose each other and to operate within a fee for services system, while at the same time they have been able to avoid all the risks of genuine entrepreneurship like unpaid bills. This is a fact which led some people, at the beginning of medicare, to say that medicare should actually have been called "doctorcare".
This compromise between the open-ended income expectations of those who think in an entrepreneurial mode and the unopen-ended nature of publicly funded programs has always been there and over the years has played a part, along with certain questions of principle for a minority of doctors, in the persistence of extra billing. The tension and the compromise have become even more tense with what some would argue is an increasing oversupply of doctors in some areas who are all trying to satisfy the same income expectations from the same finite source and with the widespread feeling among doctors that they are not being rewarded as generously as they used to be in comparison with other groups. These comparisons, how-

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ever, always leave out the fact that their incomes rose abruptly with the introduction of medicare.
In any case, either by extra billing or by seeing patients more often than they really have to or, even worse and as has been documented, by doing unnecessary operations, doctors who are not happy with what their provincial plan pays them for a responsible, caring day's work in which the needs of patients come first, are able to generate more income for themselves, either consciously or unconsciously, whatever may be the case. If they do it by manipulating the market, so to speak, then they reap all the benefit of their marketing skills without the so-called discipline of the market place. The Government guarantees the fees of their captive clientele, and financial pressure on medicare is the result. If they choose to generate more income through extra billing, then the principles of medicare are endangered, and the threat of a two-tier health care system is increased, while provincial Governments which are not devoted to the principles of medicare see such extra billing as a welcome relief for the system and a handy way of passing on health care costs.
Analyses of extra billing which ignore this ideological tension in medicare and which, for instance, argue in its favour on the basis of the almost spiritual values attached to patient participation-which is the euphemism used for the cash transaction between doctor and patient-are a combination of psychological garbage and philosophical fluff which constitute an insult to the quality of relationships which all other health care professionals have with their patients. Furthermore, the whole argument is belied, in any case, by the often proven and nowhere denied relationship between the incidence of extra billing and the perceived adequacy of the most recent fee schedule.
A second pressure on medicare, Mr. Speaker, in the health care model is the increasing competition for funds caused by the advent of new medical technology and various life-saving surgical breakthroughs, such as transplants and bypasses and the expensive diagnostic and therapeutic equipment which goes with them. These demands have the advantage of being perceived as related to sensational successes, and also, of course, are genuinely important in an ultimate way to the patient and to the families who look to them for hope. But in a time of finite or diminished funding, whatever is gained on one front is often lost on another, and what is gained by the technological attention given to a limited number of patients may be lost in the attention not given to the care of the many who are not candidates for such technologies, or to the prevention of the conditions which create demand for those technologies in the first place. So increased over-all funding will have to occur if Canadians are to avoid having such difficult choices.
We in Canada must face up to the fact that we will need to have a debate on the allocation of health care resource and to move toward a system which is less physician-dominated and in which health promotion is as important as the treatment of
illness. Which brings me to the third pressure on medicare which comes out of the health care model, to which I have already alluded, and that is, the emphasis within the established model on the treatment of disease at the expense of disease prevention and health promotion. This emphasis is related to the role of doctors and the increasing role of expensive technology in that both the doctors and the technologies they are now able to employ tend to focus almost exclusively on the treatment of the sick. Thus, these three pressures complement and mutually reinforce each other. Under our present system, doctors are not paid for keeping us healthy. They are paid for treating us when we are ill.
Finally, there is the ideological dimension to the debate when it comes to medicare. The lip service which is paid to medicare by politicians from every end of the political spectrum has lulled a great many Canadians into forgetfulness of the real ideological divisions which existed about the idea of a publicly funded health insurance plan which sought to make good quality health care available to all Canadians. We need only recall that the two stages in the development of medicare both had to be pioneered by the CCF Government in Saskatchewan over great obstacles, fulfilling a promise which had first been made by the Liberals in 1919. But only when a have-not Province like Saskatchewan could do these things, did the federal Government feel that it could do no less. Nevertheless, Mr. Speaker, there remained long-standing tensions over this and the long-standing constitutional fact that health care was a jurisdiction of the provinces. That fact, combined with the ideological objection of many provincial governments against what they saw as socialized medicine, made for very difficult negotiations. Indeed, medicare had to be completed in stages from 1968 to 1972, as one by one the provinces responded to the fiscal mid-wifery of the federal Government. Governments today, like the Government of Ontario, are in direct political continuity with the Government which resisted the introduction of medicare in that Province, and that is something we ought not to forget. The jurisdictional and ideological tensions built into medicare simmered through the years of federal money aplenty, Mr. Speaker, but they are out in the open now and we have to deal with them.
Unfortunately, however, the ideological inclination of most provincial governments is not to answer the economic questions raised by the recession by going beyond the limits of the Liberal welfare state, but rather by trying to go back to pre-welfare state ethics and pre-welfare state economics. This is something we make no apologies for resisting when we hear those kinds of arguments offered. Instead of seeking genuine remedies to the under-funding problem which I have described, we see a happy coincidence of interest between the doctors and the provincial governments, neither of whom want to face up to fundamental economic questions or fundamental questions about the health care model.
Thus, not only do the principles of medicare need to be preserved, clarified and strengthened, but our health care system needs to be fundamentally reformed. The difficulty is in harmonizing thee two objectives. In the short run it contin-
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ues to be a fact that the health care expectations of Canadians are determined by their familiarity with the present model. The increasing difficulty in funding these expectations is creating the situation in which those who do not support the principles of medicare are making headway. If health care continues to be the object of provincial and federal restraint and more and more Canadians have a negative experience of one kind or another with the availability of expected services, the enemies of medicare will get their way as more and more Canadians who can afford it demand to be able to pay for the kind of care which medicare is seen not to provide.
Before medicare, health care was allocated by the marketplace. Having it allocated by the bureaucracy or by the fiscal policies of Government is no great moral advancement, and we have to face up to that question. We are going to have to face up to these problems of funding, otherwise Canadians will eventually rebel against the allocation of health care resources by the bureaucracy and the enemies of medicare will be victorious. There must be, in the short run, expanded funding to preserve the principles of medicare and in the long run reform of the health care system. We hope that the debate on the Canada Health Act might be the beginning of such a debate and that some progress might be made even within the debate on the Canada Health Act in moving our health care system toward a more viable future. In this respect we welcome the support in principle which was quickly given to the Act by the federal Progressive Conservatives against the objections of PC Governments. Although we retain a healthy skepticism about the depth of their sincerity, we genuinely hope that their support of the Canada Health Act does actually reflect a new stage in their commitment to the principles and philosophy of medicare. We hope it is not just pre-election caution on an issue where that Party's traditional position is weak. May I say only half in jest that we hope it is not further evidence that under the Hon. Member for Central Nova (Mr. Mulroney) the Conservatives are becoming more and more like the Liberals every day, so much so that we now have to worry about the Conservatives moving into our territory on issues like medicare.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: As the debate unfolds, Mr. Speaker, we will see more clearly. Meanwhile, let us work to preserve what actually may be an emerging national consensus against extra billing and user fees so that we can go beyond that to address some of the other problems which are facing medicare.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, in the course of any such public debate about the nature of our health care system, all Canadians must face up to the fact that good health is intimately related to the social and environmental dimension of our lives. The strongest medicare principles imaginable, even in combination with a new emphasis on health promotion, will not bring all Canadians to the health potential which is really possible if we do not go beyond the individualized view of health care which we find both in the traditional health care model and in the newer emphasis on individualized prevention.
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Healthy lifestyles are to a great degree limited by the constraints placed upon most Canadians by the social and environmental context in which they live. No amount of jogging or Fleischmann's margarine will counteract exposures to hazards in the workplace, malnutrition caused by inner city poverty or carcinogens in our food. Fundamental economic questions will have to be posed and pro-medicare people should have no qualms about asking such questions. Those whose economic interests are threatened by such questions are the same people who would resist the economic and fiscal reforms necessary to continue funding medicare within the five basic principles. Let the war, therefore, be waged on all fronts. We are not just fighting for a particular health care system. We are fighting for the total health, which can only be achieved as we achieve greater social, economic and ecological justice.
The Canada Health Act, after a substantial opportunity for concerned Members of Parliament to express their views on medicare should proceed to committee where we can hear from the public and then go about the work of amending and improving what, as it stands, is in so many ways a woefully inadequate response to the problems of medicare. The Government is well advised to be open to suggestions if it wants the continued co-operation of the New Democratic Party.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. It being five o'clock, the House will now proceed to consideration of Private Members' business as listed on today's Order Paper.


PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS-PUBLIC BILLS   INDIAN ACT REMOVAL OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN-LOSS OF STATUS
Flora Isabel MacDonald: that Bill C-211, an Act to amend the Indian Act (loss of status), be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Indian Affairs and Northern Development.
She said: Mr. Speaker, the Bill before us today, Bill C-211, an Act to Amend the Indian Act, is certainly not a new one before the House. I had it as a Private Members' Bill before the House for much of the previous session. This Bill seeks to repeal what I believe is the most discriminatory and unjust piece of legislation which exists in Canada today. That is the infamous Section 12 (1) (b) of the Indian Act. This Section denies Indian status "to a woman who married a person who is not an Indian". As is well known, there is no similar restriction against Indian men.

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For years most Canadians have recognized how unjust, improper and inequitable this particular measure is. But that same majority does not have to suffer the impact of this piece of legislation. We should be asking ourselves what it means in real human terms to those whom it does affect. It means that upon marriage to a non-Indian an Indian woman must leave the reservation, may not lease or inherit property on the reserve, must give up any property she already owns, cannot participate in band business, cannot have her children recognized as Indian and is prevented from returning to live with her family, even if she is ill, widowed or divorced. Finally, she loses the right to be buried on the reserve. All of this is because an Indian woman marries a non-Indian. The same thing does not apply to Indian men. There can be no more distinct example of officially sanctioned discrimination in Canada than this.
Let me personalize this situation even further by referring briefly to three individual cases which I think graphically illustrate the injustice of the present Indian Act. Jeanette Laval lost her status after she married a non-Indian back in the 1960s. In an effort to have this decision overruled she appealed her case all the way through the judicial system to the Supreme Court of Canada, without success. That Supreme Court decision denying her Indian status was rendered in 1973. At the beginning of 1984, 10 years after that decision was taken, Jeanette Laval, a full-blooded Indian by birth, is still waiting to have her status restored.
Given the outcome of the Jeanette Laval case, and knowing that the Canadian judicial system would not guarantee her rights, Sandra Lovelace, another full-blooded Indian by birth, formerly of the Tobique reserve of New Brunswick, tried a different route. She took her case to the United Nations Human Rights Commission on the basis of the discrimination which clearly existed in Canada. Her case was upheld in 1981 at Geneva. In effect what happened was that the United Nations Human Rights Commission told Canada to clean up its act. That was over two years ago, Sir, yet despite the international embarrassment that was caused to this country the Government has yet to act to address the problem of Sandra Lovelace and the many others like her. Sandra Lovelace too is still waiting.
A third well known case is that of Mary Two-Axe Early. She has fought long and hard. I know of no one who has fought more than Mary Two-Axe Early to gain full status for the many Indian women who have lost it over the years. Undaunted by numerous rebuffs and delays, she carries on that battle. I have great admiration for her work. Her anguish about the situation is clearly voiced in a comment which she made to me some time ago. She said: "It is easier for a dog to be buried on the Caughnawaga Reserve, my reserve, than it is for me, a full-blooded Indian who has been stripped of my rights". Mary Two-Axe Early is still waiting but she has almost lost count of the many years that she has had to wait.
Jeanette Laval, Sandra Lovelace, and Mary Two-Axe Early are just three of the approximately 8,000 Indian women who
lost their status in the last 20 years alone. It is estimated that something like 15,000 women have done so since 1920.
Let us not forget, when we are considering the loss of status of these Indian women, that what applies to the women also applies to their children. If the mother loses her status, then her children cannot ever become status Indians. It is estimated that almost 38,000 children have been affected due to the fact that their fathers are non-Indian. They are denied access to their ancestors' land, to their culture and to their traditions because of a law which was conceived and put into effect many years ago, not by Indian people, but by non-Indian bureaucrats and legislators.
These unacceptable statistics have been with us for many years. It is almost three years since the United Nations Human Rights Commission rendered its decision. That agency, one of the most highly respected international bodies, censured Canada because of the Sandra Lovelace case. Still the Liberal Government has failed to act. Years and years have gone by and it falls back on promises to correct the situation somehow, someday. It falls back on promises that it will act quickly and promises to guarantee Indian women their most fundamental human right. These promises, Sir, are rhetoric only. They are just so many words. There is never action to go with them. Legislation to correct this injustice has never been tabled.
The best, or perhaps the worst, example of this Government's lack of serious commitment to this measure arises from a statement that was made by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) back in 1981 after the decision in the Sandra Lovelace case was rendered by the United Nations High Commission. At that time the Prime Minister promised that within a year changes would be made to the Indian Act to eliminate all forms of discrimination. In other words, those discriminatory clauses would be done away with before the end of 1982. He made that clear promise in the House of Commons. It is now the beginning of 1984, and still we have seen no action. In fact, the very presence of this Bill before us today, almost two and one half years since the Prime Minister made that statement, proves that the Government is still dragging its feet on this matter while others are having to pay a terrible price, the loss of their most basic human rights.
To be fair, the Prime Minister is not the only one who should be blamed for this. There are, after all, other Ministers who do have some responsibility in this area. I refer, of course, to the Minister responsible for the Status of Women (Mrs. Erola), who is here in the House, and to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Mr. Munro). Like her leader, the Minister responsible for the Status of Women has been making promises in this field for a long time but without any action. But at least, I must say, this is one better than the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development who just last month on the radio program "Our Native Land" said that he did not even list discrimination against Indian women as one of the legislative priorities which he included in his area of changes to be made to the status of Indians in this country.
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With examples such as these before us, it is hard to believe that the Government is truly committed to do something about this and to reform. Of course, in the most recent Throne Speech action was once again promised. It was set out in the following words:
The Government will introduce a Bill to remove the longstanding grievance of discrimination against Indian women under the Indian Act.
Where is the legislation to deal with that matter? Why has the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development or the Minister responsible for the Status of Women so far not tabled a Bill to do what the Throne Speech said? If they were sincere, if the Government was sincere, if the Prime Minister was sincere when he said, in response to a question from the Hon. Member for Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands (Mr. Manly), on December 12, just last month, that ending discrimination against Indian women would be a legislative priority, why has nothing concrete been done? Why has no Bill been introduced? I hope that it is not simply because the Government believes that the issue will simply go away, because it will not, or that it can easily and passively wait for Section 15 of the Charter of Rights to take full effect in 1985. Going that route would only bring about prolonged legal battles and further delay the removal of this discrimination. It is to prevent such a delay that this Bill is before us today.
I say to the government Members that if they are serious about eliminating all forms of discrimination against Indian women, then here is a Bill and a vehicle by which they can proceed. As a Government, they should take action now.
I would tell them that the previous Government had already moved, in the short period of time that it was in office, to take the action that this Bill contemplates today. The then Prime Minister, the Right Hon. Member for Yellowhead (Mr. Clark), said that if there was not an agreement between the Government and the band councils within six months, there would be unilateral action to remove Section 12(1)(6) from the Indian Act. That was a firm commitment which he made and not a vague promise.
That there continues to be a serious injustice created and preserved by the law of Canada in this part of the Indian Act cannot at all be denied. The evidence is incontestible. Its results are tragic. The first step in resolving this problem is before us today, to eliminate Section 12(1)(6). If the Government wants to go further than that and feels that other steps must be taken, then it can introduce those steps in committee. But most important is to give this Bill approval in principle today and to refer it to committee.
Since we all know how great an injustice this is, I ask that Members put aside partisan considerations and accept this Bill in principle and agree unanimously to send it to committee.


Mr. Jim Manly (Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands):: Mr. Speaker, first I would like to express my appreciation to the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands (Miss MacDonald) for bringing this important matter before the House. I believe that all members who have studied this question will
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agree that Section 12(1) (b) of the Indian Act epitomizes the injustice, racism and sexims of that Act. It typifies the whole patriarchal and colonial attitude that we had at the time that the Indian Act was first developed.
One can see three different ways in which Indian women suffer as a result of that Act. First, there are those women who married non-Indians and as a result of Section 12(1)(6) lost their status. As the Hon. Member pointed out, they lost their birthright and all rights to participate in the life of that Indian community even to the extent of being buried there. That is the first category of women who suffer from Section 12(1)(6), and perhaps they are the ones who feel it most keenly.
Other women have also suffered from this Act. There are those women who perhaps had hopes to marry someone who was not an Indian, but seeing that the application of this Act would have meant depriving them of their status as an Indian they decided it was too high a price to pay for that particular relationship. Therefore, they let go of the opportunity for that particular marriage, and in some cases this has resulted in a great deal of sorrow and disappointment.
Third, there is an increasing number of women who recognize that the provisions of Section 12(1)(6) will deprive them of their status. Since they do not want that to happen or to have their children deprived of status but want to have a relationship with someone who is not an Indian, they enter into a relationship which does not involve a recognized marriage. There are still situations in Canada where this involves some kind of social stigma both for themselves and their children. This is the kind of suffering that should not have to take place.
This Bill should not have to come forward as a Private Members' Bill. It should have been the subject of a Government Bill. Action has been promised time and again but nothing has happened. For example, on December 7, 1982, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Mr. Munro) appeared before the Special Committee on Indian Self-Government and when he was asked about the Government's commitment to remove this discrimination, a commitment which we have heard many times before, he said, "We intend to move with considerable haste on this question". He said that he was preparing a Cabinet paper on this question for his colleagues to study. What does "considerable haste" mean for this Government? Obviously it does not imply what ordinary people understand by "considerable haste" because we have not even seen a Bill.
Due to the complexity of this issue I have asked the Minister to table a Bill at the earliest opportunity so that Indian governments, Indian women's organizations as well as Members of Parliament and members of the Standing Committee on Indian Affairs and Northern Development can study it and appreciate the different ramifications that will be involved in the Bill.
I do not believe that the kind of Bill brought forward by the Hon. Member is really the answer. There are too many complexities involved. Therefore, we need a chance to study this and make sure that it covers all of the bases.

January 16, 1984
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The Throne Speech promised such a Bill but again the Minister indicated on the radio show Our Native Land that this was not one of his priorities. When I pressed the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) on this subject on December 12, he said that it was a legislative priority, but the fact is that we still have not seen the Bill. We still have nothing before us from the Government side to which we can react. I believe that this question is important enough that the Government should give it the very highest priority so that we may deal with it. It will require some time both in the Committee and in the House. It is not something that can simply be pushed through in a matter of a few hours or days. It affects too many people and too many communities.
I want to see some legislative commitment to this question. I sat as a member of the subcommittee which studied Indian Act discrimination against Indian women. I think some of the things it said must be emphasized. In our final report on page 39 we pointed out that a straight removal of Section 12( 1 )(b) implies retroactivity back to the beginning of the Act. Unless there are amendments to the contrary, an amendment would permit the addition of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
There are a number of questions involved in this question of retroactivity. First, there is the question of reinstatement of those women who lost status. We know this is not universally acceptable by Indian bands and Indian governments. Some Indian communities oppose it very strongly. Other Indian communities are on record as saying it should happen right away and that these women should be reinstated. Indian people are not unanimous one way or another on that question. In my view and in the view of my Party these women who were born as members of a certain Indian community have a right to continue as members of that community. Marriage should not have altered that right. It is a birthright, it has to be respected and any law that denies a person her birthright is an unjust law and has to be changed.
Our Party will support measures that lead to reinstatement of those women who lost status by virtue of the action of Section 12(1)(6). At the same time we say that we have to recognize the poverty that occurs on many Indian reserves and the shortage of land and homes on most Canadian reserves. Many Indian people have expressed concerns to me about this.
I think this Parliament has to recognize the need for an enlarged land base and an enlarged financial base for Indian communities. People have said that money should not stand in the way of justice. I agree. I believe there are two sides to that statement. First, as far as Indian leaders and Indian communities are concerned, they should welcome back their sisters and their daughters without regard to their financial needs. These women have a right to belong to those communities, and I believe Indian leaders should be open to receiving them back as members. They are part of the family. This is one side of the statement that money should not stand in the way of justice. The more important side as far as this House is concerned is that the federal Government on behalf of Canada
has an obligation to make money available so that Indian communities will not be further burdened by the addition of more people when their resources are already very tight. There is a housing shortage on Indian reserves. When there was talk about possible action to remove this section of the Act, there was a rumour that some housing money would be made available to provide homes for reinstated women. There was a concern expressed by other people on the reserves, who in many cases are living in deplorable housing conditions, housing conditions that every Canadian should be ashamed of, that perhaps giving housing money to reinstated women would mean that they would lose their right to get a home.
I believe the federal Government has to recognize the need that it is dealing not only with individuals but also with communities. The federal Government has to tackle the problem of Indian poverty head on and make money available not only for homes for reinstated women but make housing money available for all those people who at present are living in deplorable and substandard housing. There is a need for large sums of money. Section 12(1)(6) was not an Indian law. It was a law imposed upon the Indian people by non-Indians, and I believe the non-Indian Canadian public should bear some of the burden and Indians should not have to bear the full burden of reinstatement because of a law imposed upon them.
Our Party supports reinstatement of those women who lost status. But what of their children, their grandchildren and their great grandchildren? In many cases it would be very desirable for these people to have Indian status. Certainly many of them would like to have status as Indian people. They would like to be part of the community of their grandparents, for example. However, it is one thing for us as a Parliament to reinstate people who once had membership in a band, women who were born into the Indian community. It is something else for us to give membership to people who never have been members. This is not an easy question for us to determine. I believe, perhaps, this question is not really ours to determine at all. 1 believe there is a right of Indian communities, bands and governments to determine their own membership criteria in accordance with international covenants.
While we support the concept of reinstatement of Indian women who lost status, we cannot give a blanket support for the reinstatement of their children, their grandchildren or their great grandchildren. What we do support is the idea that all first generation children of Indian women who lost status would have status as Indian people without necessarily being attached to Indian bands. Indian status would give them the right to have their names placed on a general list. They would be eligible for certain federal programs, and if the bands developed membership criteria that were non-discriminatory, that allowed for the reception of these people into membership, then they would go with our blessing. I do not believe that we as a Parliament have the right to say that these people will automatically be accorded membership. We believe bands have the over-all right and responsibility to develop their own criteria as to what constitutes membership. Many bands in the last couple of years have taken that step and have developed
January 16, 1984

their own citizenship criteria-their own membership codes. In most of the cases that I have seen these have been non-discriminatory. We need to recognize that what is necessary to some bands in southern Canada is not necessary or desirable for Indian people in northern Canada. Different Indian peoples in Canada have different, membership needs. It is important there be some flexibility, that our Government recognize in Indian governments the possibility of developing different membership codes among different Indian nations. I think our Government's responsibility has to be limited to ensuring that these codes are in accordance with international standards and that they do not discriminate on the basis of sex or marital status.
Finally, we believe there has to be an appeal body established to decide on matters of disputed membership. There are different mechanisms by which this could take place. The Special Committee on Indian Self-Government has recognized some of the complexities involved in this. It recognized that there has to be some degree of reinstatement. It also recognized that Indian bands themselves, Indian Governments, Indian nations, have the right to determine their own citizenship criteria and that the basic unit for determining that should be the band as it is newly constituted, including the reinstated women who once had status and had it denied.
In conclusion, I am in support of the basic intention of this Bill. However, 1 wish the Government would be more forthright and would not only say that it will act but indeed will act and will bring in a Bill which can be studied in the House and in Committee and will provide an end to that discrimination.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. The Hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.


André Maltais: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be speaking today, now that the House has resumed sitting in the new year. Interestingly, the matter of native rights is being raised for the first time this year. Mr. Speaker, before getting down to basics, I may say I have the impression that the Bill being presented in the House by the Member for Kingston and the Islands has the agreement of Members on all sides of the House as far as principle, wording and expectations are concerned, and I think we all share the desire to eliminate discrimination on the basis of sex from the Indian Act.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


André Maltais: Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out that the agreement expressed by these two Members, is shared entirely by the Government. The only difference at this point is a matter of time, of weeks. I would like to make it clear right away that this was included in the Throne Speech read by the
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Governor General. It is understood that the matter of native rights, the matter of equality among the sexes will be maintained, that is, it is made quite clear in the Throne Speech that the Government will soon act on the report by the Parliamentary Committee on Indian Self-Government. It will table a long-awaited Bill aimed at deleting provisions of the Indian Act that discriminate against Indian women. It will provide for funds to maintain job creation programs on the reserves.
Mr. Speaker, the Private Member's Bill presented by the Member for Kingston and the Islands (Miss MacDonald) is the same kind of Bill presented during the last session on adoption, income supplements and unemployment insurance benefits. The proposals were made in a private Bill, and only three weeks elapsed between the time the Bill was tabled here in the House and our reply.
Mr. Speaker, for the benefit of Hon. Members and of Indian women who are the people most directly concerned, here again it is a matter of weeks, not months but weeks. The important thing is that we shall have an opportunity to check it over time, Mr. Speaker. I think the Member for Kingston and the Islands will see the case settled in about eight weeks, since the Hon. Member has already raised some very basic problems.
The principle being defended by the Member for Kingston and the Islands is quite clear and it is to eliminate discrimination on the basis of sex. I could not agree more, there is no problem as far as that goes, but as the Hon. Member who spoke earlier pointed out: What are we going to do with the people who have been affected by this form of discrimination? The Bill presented by the Hon. Member fails to mention a series of problems that will have to be solved by the legislator. The only action proposed in the Bill is to abrogate paragraph 12(1)(6) of the Indian Act. Nothing more. There is absolutely no mention of what we will have to do with the people who over the years, over the past hundred years, have suffered as a result of this discrimination. And that is an important point as far as the principle of justice is concerned.
So we must make a distinction between two things, Mr. Speaker, in the Bill presented by the Hon. Member. First of all, the Government fully agrees with eliminating discrimination on the basis of sex, but second, there are also a number of elements that need improvement, and subsequently, if we look at this in greater detail, we must consider the impact of the changes to be made in the Indian Act.
Mr. Speaker, here is the kind of question the Government will have to answer before changing the Act. What are the rights of Indians who marry non-Indians? What are the rights of children born of such marriages? Anyone who has natives in his constituency is well aware of the advantages and privileges but also of the constraints on Indians who live on the reserves.
Those are some of the factors which ought to be considered before we amend the legislation. Some questions should be asked: What will be the rights of children born from such marriages? Will the first, second and third generations enjoy

January 16, 1984
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the same privileges? What happens in subsequent marriages with persons who have not been Indians for one, two or three generations? Will band councils always agree to consider those people as Indians? With respect to that factor, Mr. Speaker, the major difficulty has often been to know just how long one remains an Indian after marrying an Indian. I have no intention of going into generic considerations, but that has often been at the root of the problem. Except that, in keeping with Indian traditions, more often than not the rights belonged to the men, which raises the issue of discrimination, but still, Mr. Speaker, we must keep in mind the whole Amerindian tradition. The role of the legislator was not to steer the evolution of mentalities.
The riding of Manicouagan is home to eight Indian bands, Mr. Speaker, they do not always see eye to eye and it is now difficult for the Indians to reach a consensus on full recognition of the rights of men and women, but the evolution is fast enough when it comes to recognition based simply on the equality of individuals rather than the difference in sex.
I would like to emphasize one of the major factors, Mr. Speaker, namely that mentalities vary considerably among Indians, depending on the reserve where one happens to be. Indians who live in the core of a city or close to a significant concentration of white people have a different way of thinking. However, Indians who still live in extremely traditional regions have a way of thinking which is altogether different from ours, as white people, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Indian Affairs should take that factor in very serious consideration before making any change whatsoever.
I would like to remind the House, Mr. Speaker, that the Subcommittee which examined this whole question received briefs and representations from various native groups who were naturally not unanimous on how the Indian Act should be amended. I do not think that the legislator could unilaterally decide on the amendments to the Indian Act. This in no way contradicts what the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands is proposing, Mr. Speaker, except for the fact that this problem had to be examined more thoroughly and extensively even though we have always recognized the principle advocated by the Hon. Member.
Earlier, the Hon. Member for Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands (Mr. Manly) asked some pretty basic questions. What is important is not simply to amend the Act, but rather to correct certain inequities and ensure that there would be a uniform system once the Act had been amended. I asked only two questions, but many others come to mind. For instance, what are the rights of Indians who marry members of another band?
I should point out to Hon. Members that I am regularly in contact with the Indians of my region and that, for those who know them, the Montagnais are not Hurons and the Hurons
are not Iroquois and the Denes are not Inuit. For the Indians, this notion of belonging to a band and its designation as such is extremely important.
In this regard, I would like to underline an important fact, namely that we have a tendency to consider the problem as though the Indian people thought as we do, which is a basic mistake. As a white man and as a politician my thoughts are exactly those of the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands, However, I must say that before speaking for the Indian people, I always ask for their opinion. Before speaking about this bill, Mr. Speaker, I therefore wanted to know the position of the Indian leaders, and I express their views very carefully because this issue is also important to them.
We must do a good job of representing those for whom we speak, when we represent the Indian people, it is very easy to mix our prejudices or simply our ideas with some of the concepts in which the group we represent believe. I thought it important to point this out. This is why I noted this afternoon how happy the Inuit people of my constituency were to see someone like Mr. Charlie Watt appointed to the Senate to represent them properly because there are major differences in the way of thinking of a white man and of an Indian, which takes nothing away from the fact that rights should be recognized and Indians should be allowed to give their views on the matter. I have here extremely revealing letters received by the Department about whether or not we should now recognize the principle of equality among the Indian people, even though the Department has already taken position on this issue after coming to an agreement with the Indian people as the result of lengthy consultations. The delay now required simply concerns formulation of the Act. As of January 9, 1984, seven days ago, Mr. Speaker, 87 bands had asked to be exempted from application of Paragraph 12.1(b), which deprives Indian women who marry non-Indians of their status. However, 298 bands have asked to be exempted from Paragraph 12.1(a), which deprives from their status at the age of 21 people whose mother and paternal grandmother were not born status Indians.
Without wanting to contradict the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands, with whom I and the Government agree completely, we must point out that we are dealing with individuals and not with volumes, areas or quantities, but rather with a certain mentality, certain traditions and the respect of the individual. You are contrasting collective rights with individual rights. We must therefore be very careful about how we amend an Act which will apply not to the Hon. Member, but to other people, because this bill concerns people who have a very specific environment and a special way of thinking and who are very proud of some of their traditions. For the benefit of Hon. Members, or people who may be listening to such comments, I would like to say that when you visit the Band councils and try to apply to the Indian and Inuit people solutions which are appropriate to the white man or to
January 16, 1984

city dwellers, you find that native people do not completely agree with us, and I want to point this out because, in my constituency, we do not apply the same solutions to the Montagnais people of the Lower North Shore as to the Montagnais of Schefferville or the Inuit of Fort Chimo. Now, for the benefit of the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands, I should like to mention that we have in Schefferville the Montagnais reserve and the Neskapi reserve, which are approximately six miles apart, but the way to administer Neskapi affairs is quite different from the way to administer Montagnais affairs. And the way the Montagnais live in Sept-Iles is quite different from the way the Montagnais live in Saint-Augustin. And the Inuits in Fort Chimo live differently from the Inuits in the New Quebec Territory. Mr. Speaker, these differences which stem from very old traditions among North American Indians must end, but they must end while respecting the people who will be affected. Mr. Speaker, this new approach is the result of years and years of efforts, and we see changes every day. Mr. Speaker, at the departmental level, we must take into account the views expressed by the band councils, by individual Indians, men and women, and as I was saying, the amendments which will be introduced in a few weeks will not be rash.
These amendments are the results of a series of questions which have been raised by the Hon. Members who have spoken before me and by various people who are involved in the defence of rights and freedoms.
Mr. Speaker, I should like to emphasize that when this government put forward its Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it had taken into account all the problems and issues addressed by the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands. But there exists no quick remedy to these problems, because one must deal very carefully not only with individual cases, but also with the people affected.
Mr. Speaker, before suggesting amendments, the Department has had to find answers to other questions. For instance, what are the rights of non-Indian spouses? It had to address these questions before drafting amendments to the current legislation. What are the rights of a child whose parents belong to two different bands? As you can see, we had to look into this before drafting amendments which would affect the private lives of these people. That is important. You are dealing here with people and traditions. When we consider the past, we realize that we can do things in 1984 that could not have been done 50, 25 or even 10 years ago. It is a matter of evolution.
From the white man's point of view, Mr. Speaker, we can see that there are inequalities, but before we deal with them and amend the legislation, we must try to foresee the consequences. Also, Mr. Speaker, we are often anxious in this Parliament to blame this or that party. 1 simply want to say this: the Penner report required hours, days, weeks and months of analyses before being finalized. This is an extremely lengthy
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process, and we know quite well that those who really know the Indian people could have made similar recommendations even before the committee began its work. However, in the name of democracy and of respect for human rights, we had to hear all interested parties before finalizing recommendations which will have to be acted upon during the coming months. That is the important thing.
The principles contained in Bill C-211 sponsored by the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands are recognized by the Government. There is no problem in this regard. However, the Government had to go much further to ensure that, by amending the Act, we would not cause other and worse problems than those being denounced. This is important because, once the Indian Act is amended, there will have to be a series of legal and financial compensation measures applicable to those who were victims of discrimination throughout the years. Therefore we could not improvise. Indian men and women as well wanted and wished for such a change, but from the point of view of white people, it could have happened more quickly. On the other hand, the native people wanted balanced measures through which men and women would again be guaranteed full rights while removing distinctions because of sex.
In addition, Mr. Speaker, looking at native people in other lands, we realize that we have had to face a similar problem, namely a problem of traditions. And you know, Mr. Speaker, that the native people are not the only ones to resist changes. It is exactly the same with white people, but some political decision has to be made eventually. As I have already said, such a decision will be made within a few weeks, and will see that the Indians will be pleased with the Bill and with the compensation granted to the victims of discrimination.
Before concluding Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind you that when we legislate on individual rights as opposed to collective rights, we should be extremely cautious because it is quite easy to be high-handed. We are now considering a Bill which seems hardly controversial because it tends to remove sexual discrimination, but there are others which bring individual rights and collective rights into conflict. One of the basic reasons why Parliament should discuss such issues is that it would be quite easy to be high-handed. And what 1 would object to in the Bill introduced by the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands is that it merely states the principle and does not consider all the consequences of that principle in terms of enforcement and compensation of the individuals concerned. While endorsing the principle of the Bill introduced by the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands, we on this side of the House will deal with the matter to make sure that a compensation is granted so that all Indians will be satisfied once the Bill is tabled. When I speak of Indians, I refer to both men and women. They will all agree with the terms of the Bill and its new implementation.

January 16, 1984
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Now, Mr. Speaker, since the time allotted to us has expired, I will merely add before concluding that we will not vote today for the Bill introduced by the Hon. Member and that very shortly she will vote for the implementation of her principle and several other fine procedures for the benefit of the native people.


Lorne Everett Greenaway: Mr. Speaker, we have just heard 20 minutes of the same old stuff. We have had promises and promises that something would be done about this terrible situation. I should like to point out to the Parliamentary Secretary that on August 4, 1982 the House gave directions to the Standing Committee to strike a subcommittee to look into this issue. That subcommittee comprised seven Members from all Parties in the House, a member of the Assembly of First Nations, a member of the Native Council of Canada and a member of the Native Women's Association of Canada, so all the major Indian organizations were represented. The Parliamentary Secretary went into great detail and claimed that all kinds of things have not been studied and so there are no answers. He raised the question of what will happen to the Indian children. All that has been addressed by the subcommittee in its unanimous report to the Standing Committee, which was presented to the House on September 20, 1982. It has been languishing ever since. I do not believe the Parliamentary Secretary when he says that this is going to be resolved in eight weeks. The answers are here.
When the Minister appeared before the Committee he said that the Government wanted to complete the review with recommendations for amendments that would eliminate sex discrimination from the Indian Act. All those things were done, Mr. Speaker. For instance, the subcommittee recommended that children of mixed marriages should be granted Indian status and, furthermore, that the first generation children should automatically become members of the band of the Indian parent. The subcommittee also recommended amendments that would permit Indian women and their first generation children who lost status under Section 12(l)(b) of the Indian Act to regain their status immediately upon application, and so on. It also raised the question of band control of band membership. These matters have also been addressed by the Committee on Indian Self-Government.
There is no need to study the matter any further. Mary Two Axe Early has been working on this since 1965. The testimony that she gave to the Committee would make one weep.
I am not going to say any more about this, Mr. Speaker, as it has been well covered today. I will sit down and watch Hon. Members opposite squirm around and talk it out.
[ Translation]


André Maltais: The Hon. Member has just pointed out that we needed more time to answer the various questions I have just raised. These questions referred to fields of study which
had to be considered before drawing up the bill soon to be introduced for approval.


Mr. Jack Burghardt (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, I am really surprised at the timing of this Bill introduced by the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands (Miss MacDonald). The Hon. Member for Cariboo-Chilcotin (Mr. Greenaway), was a member of the special subcommittee on Indian women and the Indian Act, which I had the opportunity of chairing. The Hon. Member for Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands (Mr. Manly) was also a member of that subcommittee but the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands was not.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Horton McDermid: What are you trying to do?


Flora Isabel MacDonald: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker.


John O. (Jack) Burghardt: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. Will Hon. Members please resume their seats. The Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands (Miss MacDonald) rises on a point of order.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, I would like to mention at this point that I came into this House in 1972. I was named as critic on Indian Affairs and Northern Development. I have had this Bill before the House for the better part of 10 years, trying to get the Government to do something about this matter.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: That may be a point of disagreement but it is debate.


John O. (Jack) Burghardt: Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to take anything away from the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands (Miss MacDonald) or her experience and work on this particular subject. I agree with what the previous speaker said, that a lot of these questions have been addressed in the recent report dealing with Indian women and the Indian Act. We heard specific answers from many people involved, but Hon. Members who served on the Committee will know that we heard varying degrees of answers. We heard very pleading testimony from Mary Two Axe Early and I remember very well the night she gave it. We also heard from Sandra Lovelace and many other people who have been discriminated against in many ways. The Committee concurred with their representations and their presentations.
We also heard from othe sections of the Indian community, however. People were very concerned about how the Act would be implemented and how the changes would be made to accommodate not only those who felt they were being discriminated against but also to maintain the status quo of various Indian bands. That is why the second subcommittee was set up to deal with Indian self-government and to look at the entire matter of the Indian Act as such. We all know the report that the special subcommittee presented to the House.
January 16, 1984

1 agree with the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Mr. Maltais) that legislation will soon be forthcoming regarding Indian women and the Indian Act. It was mentioned in the Speech from the Throne. That is why I am surprised at the timing of the Bill and wonder why it is being debated now. The subject has been addressed and when the legislation is forthcoming, I am sure all Members will agree that it is something they will be able to debate and, we hope, approve and vote on and pass so that this discrimination can be ended. I think all Members of the House find this particular discrimination abhorrent.
If Hon. Members would listen instead of trying to-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. I regret to interrupt the Hon. Member but he is relating to a point which the Chair is prompted to make as well. The Parliamentary Secretary was given the floor to make a speech and in my opinion he should not be interrupted. That is the rule of debate.


John O. (Jack) Burghardt: I agree with the essence of the Bill put forward by the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands, Mr. Speaker. There is no argument about that. The Hon. Member even admitted that she heard in the Speech from the Throne that legislation would be forthcoming.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: That is not the first time I heard that.


John O. (Jack) Burghardt: Let us wait for the legislation to be presented to the House and then we can debate it fully. We hope that we will all agree with it and pass it.
I do not know why we have to go into this in Private Members' hour and refer this particular Bill to the Standing Committee on Indian Affairs and Northern Development for further debate and consultation. We have been through it all before. I think it is pretty well the recommendation of the House to approve the legislation that will be forthcoming. I do not know what the argument is this afternoon because we can all agree on this. I know that when the legislation is forthcoming-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: A point of order-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

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

Mr. Bob Corbett (Fundy-Royal):: Mr. Speaker, last month I had the opportunity to raise an issue in this House concerning the treatment of the Department of National Revenue of small businessmen and small part time farmers in this country, and others who I suggested were being treated less than fairly by the Government. I was in the process of asking the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Bussieres) how his Department was going to respond to certain circumstances which the unfair treatment of taxpayers by this Government was creating.
The particular situation to which I refer is that many taxpayers in this country are now having their tax assessments reassessed and are now being asked to go back four years, five years and six years and pay taxes on deductions which had been allowed in previous submissions to National Revenue. As a result, a great many of these people have been put in grave financial danger. They have been strapped because of the demands put on them. It has been extremely difficult for these people to stay in business.
As you can understand, Mr. Speaker, any new business starting up, unless it is very fortunate, is bound to encounter a period of time during which the operation is not going to be profitable from the point of definition of the Government. This is so with any new and growing company or entrepreneurship. It is something we normally expect in our system. However, it seems to be the intention of this Government that a business must be profitable from the very outset and, indeed, if it does not show a profit, then it is not going to be allowed to claim expenses.
What this has done, besides driving a number of people out of business because of the demands on their bank roll and on their pocketbook, is stifled ambition in the country. Because of the unfair practices of Revenue Canada there are now people who will just not take the chance or the risk of attempting to start a business. This is an unhealthy attitude for any government to be creating in the country. Certainly, this country was founded on the free entrepreneurial system and I believe that any move on the part of this Government to stifle and put down that entrepreneurship is certainly not a good thing.
I am concerned today, Mr. Speaker, that I will not have an answer to my question for the people in this country who have been afflicted with this obsession of the Government to gouge them to the degree that it has forced them out of business. My question, however, is quite simple. What happens to these companies who, in the meanwhile, do become profitable? Is the Government going to turn around and tell them that it obviously made a mistake in the past and should not have reassessed them for those five or six years causing all this money to be paid out in back taxes, and will therefore return all of that money that it has gouged out of them during this past year? Or is it going to turn around and say, "We have already determined that you were not going to be a profitable business and we have disallowed your expenses in the past so now, under those circumstances, we are going to allow you to keep all the profits you make without charging you any tax on

January 16, 1984
Adjournment Debate
those profits"? No, I think not, Mr. Speaker. We are not going to have any clear answer to those questions today, and the reason we are not going to have a clear-cut answer is that this Government does not have the answer.
This system is contrary to our basic British parliamentary heritage. The Government has made you guilty until proven innocent. It has burdened this nation with a monetary burden which is totally unfair. If you want to take your case to court you have to pay a lawyer in order to do so, and in most cases, as they quite blatantly point out on all of the material with which they provide you, they will not necessarily be liable for any fees that are imposed on you, the taxpayer, in order to justify this wrong that they have perpetrated. Mr. Speaker, they scare most people to death.
The taxpayers in this country have been yipped by this Government. In case the Government does not know what yipping is, fishermen off Grand Manan will tell you that when they haul a fish up off the bottom which they want to use for lobster bait they just take that fish and yip it; in other words, turn it inside out and throw it into the bait bag. That is what the Government has done to the taxpayers of this nation. Besides stifling the incentive for this nation to grow they have been yipping the taxpayers. Mr. Speaker, this is a wrong which this Government has perpetrated in this country, a wrong which this Government should make right, but will not.


Mr. Garnet M. Bloomfield (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member is seeking an explanation of the way in which the income tax law is applied when a person declares business losses and in return seeks to offset these losses from taxable income from another source, such as a full-time job. Before the deduction of such losses can be allowed there are a number of questions that might have to be asked about such a return. Are the expenses reasonable in the circumstances? Were they in fact laid out to earn an income? Are they all related to the business or are some of them wholly or in part of a personal nature, such as would be the case when an automobile is used for personal non-business purposes and for business purposes as well? The most fundamental question when losses from a business are being claimed is whether or not the taxpayer can really be said to be engaged in a business. There are a number of ways of assessing this fact.
When the Hon. Member first raised the question in the House, as he did again today, he spoke of people being assessed for the last five or six years. He should know that reassessments going back more than four years are not allowable under the Act except in circumstances involving fraud, which I would suppose are not the circumstances he is talking about. Moreover, even though the law would allow reassessments covering four years, the assessing guidelines of the Department make numerous exceptions so that the period is often shorter.
There is another point to be made. The law places limits in some cases on the loss that may be claimed from a farming
enterprise even where it may be established that a farming business has been carried on. I will not go over what must be a familiar ground to many Hon. Members other than to say that where the taxpayer is mainly engaged in some other occupation, though engaged in farming as well-and I admit that this is a gross oversimplification-the limit on the loss which may be claimed for a year is $5,000.
Finally, there could be circumstances in which the losses are originally disallowed because there was no expectation of profit, and it could be appropriate to reopen some of the years reassessed because later years did show a profit.


ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE-CLAIM OF INFLUENCE EXERCISED BY SIDNEY JAFFE. (B) LEGAL RESIDENCE OF SIDNEY JAFFE
Mr. Robert Wenman (Fraser Valley West):: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Sidney Jaffe has been involved in legal proceedings in New Jersey, Nevada, California, Florida and Canada. He was convicted of contempt of court in New Jersey and was later abducted by bounty hunters on behalf of a Florida bail company. Before I start today, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that that was a reprehensible, indefensible action and an affront to Canadian sovereignty. On that issue I have no reservations whatsoever. I concur with the Minister of Justice (Mr. MacGuigan) in his answer to my question on December 19. The international law does not include the right to seize people from other countries. The matter of extraterritoriality and the seizure is before the courts. On that issue I have no question.
The issue I raise is the question of application and the granting of Canadian citizenship to Mr. Sidney Jaffe that seems so clearly to be a matter of convenience. That is demonstrated by the following timetable.
In the Spring of 1977, Mr. Jaffe moved to San Francisco, according to a court transcript of his own testimony. On June 13, 1979, a bankruptcy petition was filed by Mr. Jaffe in San Francisco. On July 19, 1978, at a trial in San Francisco, Mr. Jaffe states in his testimony that his residence was in San Francisco for the previous two years. On August 7, 1980, on a bail bond application, Mr. Jaffe lists his address as 1000 Green Street, San Francisco, for the previous three years.
On January 19, 1981, there was an application for Canadian citizenship and also an application to regain his driver's licence, and he stated in his application that he had stayed for 150 days outside of Canada in the previous four years, which is obviously incorrect according to all of the testimony that has been brought forward.
In April of 1981, he jumped bail posted in the United States by the bail bond company. On May 18, 1981, information was filed on failure to appear and a capias was issued; that is, a warrant for his arrest was issued. On June 17, 1981, he became a Canadian citizen under Section 5(1). Mr. Jaffe's licence was given back to him after it was revoked for non
January 16, 1984

payment of fines for 1978. He became a citizen on June 17, 1981. It is very difficult to understand how residency could have been intended or met under these circumstances.
In a letter dated March 23, 1983, from Nevada State Senator Bill Hernstadt to the Florida Parole Commission, he stated that he objected to Mr. Jaffe's release on parole based on his previous experience with Mr. Sidney Jaffe in Nevada. He said:
In my opinion, he has an almost congenial compulsion to steal from customers, shareholders, friends and associates for his own selfish ends.
-Sidney L. Jaffe is a congenital thief and his white collar crimes can wipe out a family's savings just as completely as a hardcore criminal with a firearm. If you do release him he will return to Canada, sail his yacht at the Toronto Yacht Club, and laugh in the faces of his thousands of victims who are paying for his luxurious and glamorous lifestyle.
The Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Mulroney), in speaking in his first speech in the House of Commons spoke of the value of Canadian citizenship or what the value of Canadian citizenship should be. He rose in the House in October, 1983, and gave a glowing maiden speech in which he talked about the quality of Canadian citizenship. He said "We have come through so much together-against overwhelming odds-that our citizenship has become a privileged symbol in our lives." He went on to attribute our respect for the rule of law and our respect for neighbour and property as a cornerstone of our valued citizenship. How sad it is to see this citizenship besmirched.
In the United States, circuit court Judge Perry said:
In Canada, Jaffe is hailed as a fellow of the Yacht Club, a patron of the ballet, in Canada he's hailed as Joe Nice Guy. But in the U.S., Sidney Jaffe is nothing but an economic predator. Mr. Jaffe is plain and simply a crook and he didn't get a damn thing he didn't ask for . . . He's guilty as hell.
I am quoting a judge of the United States court.
In the Canadian courts, just after Christmas, Judge Di Cecco said he was fed up with Mr. Jaffe's "skating" in the witness box and that it had become abundantly clear that there were gaping contradictions in Mr. Jaffe's testimony. He then went on to warn Mr. Jaffe's lawyer that Mr. Jaffe should be notified regarding his potential for perjury.
Mr. Jaffe's lawyer in the United States court said:
Jaffe (would) use his influence to stop the Canadian criminal prosecution of Putnam County public officials resulting from the kidnapping.
Mr. Jaffe claimed that his influence was with the Canadian ministry of External Affairs.
What does all of this add up to? To me it indicates that amendments to the Citizenship Act in 1975 were inadequate and inappropriate, injuring and cheapening the value of Canadian citizenship. The currency of Canadian citizenship has been debased to a level of Canadian passports known internationally amongst criminals and terrorists as flags of convenience to travel internationally and carry on with their scurrilous deeds. The Citizenship Act, its regulations and administration disgrace hardworking Canadians who worked for five and three years to qualify for something they felt had high value, Canadian citizenship. It is now debased. It is now no more than a flag of convenience.
Adjournment Debate
Where was the investigative process of the Citizenship Court in this case? Where was the investigate process of the Justice Department in that in spite of the overwhelming volume of court and public documentation available the Minister of Justice proceeded with Mr. Jaffe's defence without apparent in depth knowledge of Mr. Jaffe's character and background as identified in the documents I have mentioned?
Will the Minister attempt to protect Canadian citizenship laws by prosecuting under the Citizenship Act with the same zeal that he has prosecuted for the protection of Canadian sovereignty? Or, in fact, is there something behind the allegations of influence? Will the Minister identify with whom and where in the Justice Department or the External Affairs Department does this alleged influence lie?
Mr. Jaffe is not the problem. It is the system and his manipulation of the system that exposes the system's inadequacy and therefore the inadequacy of the law and of the political and governmental system that administers and creates it. The Minister may wittingly or unwittingly be co-conspiring to make the law and Canadian justice not only appear to be but in fact to be an ass. Mr. Jaffe gained citizenship, a citizenship of convenience. At the same time we find that the reigning world champion bobsledder, a Canadian immigrant, comes to Canada, works to become an Olympic athlete, a champion for Canada, yet because he is competing for Canada for gold he cannot gain Canadian citizenship on the same basis. I conclude with the question, why is it that our Olympic athlete cannot gain citizenship on the same basis as Mr. Jaffe? Does he not have influence?


Mr. A1 MacBain (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, on December 19, 1983, the Member from Fraser Valley West (Mr. Wenman) asked questions concerning the case of Sidney Jaffe, the man seized forcibly by bounty hunters in Toronto on September 23, 1981 and taken to Florida to face trial on charges under the Florida land sales practices statute.
The Metropolitan Toronto Police investigated the case and in late October, 1981 laid charges of kidnapping against two bounty hunters.


Robert Lloyd Wenman: That is not the question.


Arthur Allister MacBain: Their extradition was subsequently requested by Canada and both were subsequently surrendered to Ontario law enforcement authorities. The kidnapping prosecution is being conducted by counsel on behalf of the Attorney General for Ontario.
The Member for Fraser Valley West, with specific reference to some letter dated December 22, 1981, from Jaffe's Florida lawyer to the Assistant Attorney General of Florida stating that Jaffe would use his influence to stop the Canadian criminal prosecution, asked about the nature and extent of Mr. Jaffe's alleged influence. He asked further to what extent officials of the Canadian Government have been protecting Mr. Jaffe from due process of United States laws.

January 16, 1984
Adjournment Debate
The answer to the first part of the Member's question is very simple. Mr. Jaffe appears to have exercised no influence whatsoever with respect to the prosecution of those kidnapping charges against his bounty hunters. In the first place that prosecution, as 1 have already indicated, is being conducted by and under the authority of the Attorney General for Ontario.


Robert Lloyd Wenman: Stop skating.


Arthur Allister MacBain: Second, that prosecution is before the courts at this very moment. I can say nothing further which will assist the Member in understanding what Jaffe's Florida lawyer had in mind when he wrote the letter the Member referred to. As far as can be ascertained, Jaffe had and has no influence of the sort the Member refers to, at least with federal officials.
Next, the Member suggests that officials of the Canadian Government are protecting or attempting to protect Mr. Jaffe from due process of United States laws. Such a suggestion is a complete misconstruction of everything that the Government of Canada has done in the Jaffe case. Jaffe was abducted from Canada contrary to Canadian law and contrary to the express provisions of the extradition treaty between Canada and the United States. This treaty is a part of the United States law. Canada has consistently argued that Jaffe's seizure was in direct breach of international and domestic United States law. Had the extradition of Sidney Jaffe been properly requested, and had the courts committed him for extradition, he would have been surrendered in the normal course to be dealt with according to due process under United States law.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. The Hon. Member's time has expired.


CROWN CORPORATIONS-NORTHERN TRANSPORTATION COMPANY LTD -REQUEST FOR INVESTIGATION OF MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
Mr. Stan Schellenberger (Wetaskiwin):: Mr. Speaker, on December 15, I rose in the House to ask the Minister of Transport (Mr. Axworthy) a question regarding the management, safety and accounting practices of Northern Transportation Company Ltd. and about concerns that a conflict of interest existed because employees and managers of NTCL are also directors and shareholders in a competing company in marine transportation in the North. Since then I have not received a direct answer from the Minister, although he indicated at the time that he would look into the matter.
I have furnished the Minister with the required information he needs to begin his investigation into the operations of NTCL. As well, I have placed a number of questions on the Order Paper respecting my concerns in regard to this public company.
To assist the Minister, I would like to expand somewhat on my earlier questions. First, regarding management practices, there is sufficient evidence that management is involved in questionable contract arrangements with various companies,
for example, a 400,000-tonne tug in Tuktoyaktuk for which there does not seem to be any need. NTCL is stopping its operations in the Athabasca region, yet there is business there. In the Churchill operation, a number of items have been bought which have questionable value or use in that area. As well, the company's profits have decreased from about $8 million in previous years to about $1.4 million in the most recent year.
Contractual arrangements have been made involving a northern welding company in Hay River. At the same time as NTCL lays off its welders for the season, within a matter of weeks it is hiring welders through a private company in the area. The welders of NTCL are very concerned about this.
Also, it would be good if the Minister would explain to the House why NTCL has failed to obtain a multi-million dollar contract in recent years and why, after it had failed, Arctic Transport Ltd. was called in by the company and awarded a contract to complete the contract because there was insufficient material for the successful bidder to finish it. At a time profits are decreasing to the company it would seem to me it should be an active bidder for work.
NTCL has a contract with the United States air force to deliver fuel and other goods for operations in the North, particularly to the Pine Tree line, and to other areas as well. It has a contract to operate a floating drydock owned by the United States air force, referred to as ARD-31.
Could the Minister verify that NTCL is operating ARD-31 for its own business and other purposes which are prohibited directly by the contract it has signed? Would the Minister ask for a copy of the contract and table the information in the House so that I and others could use it? Would the Minister check if this drydock is also being openly offered by NTCL to companies for service this year?
In terms of safety, the Minister is now aware of the numerous hazards which exist relating to fuel handling, fuel shipping and cargo handling on the Mackenzie River and the Beaufort Sea. The most pressing concern relates to the unsafe practice of shipping dead cargo on fuel barges and operating combustion engine vehicles on barge decks where explosive fuel containers are still on the below deck. Certainly these practices are not in accordance with Coast Guard regulations. In fact, insurance companies are unwilling to ensure fuel barges which are used to haul dead cargo, yet NTCL persists in these practices. I am concerned that if these proper safety procedures and practices are not respected, there may be a serious accident in the North.
These cargo-laden fuel barges travel to many communities in the North. They are docked and used as floating piers for other barges, which greatly increases the potential for serious consequences such as an explosion or a major fire. That is why it is important to investigate these safety practices.
I would also ask that there be an investigation as to whether proper equipment and training is available to employees who are operating in these areas and on these barges. It is impor-
January 16, 1984

tant for the Minister to inquire about the operation of this floating drydock in order to ascertain precisely how much cash flow is being generated by NTCL while operating the drydock over the last four years.
Regarding conflict of interest, why is it that this Crown corporation is operating without any guidelines or direct accountability to its shareholders, the people of Canada? I have information which shows that upper management and middle management officers of NTCL own shares in a private company which is in direct competition with NTCL and marine transportation in the North. In fact, a superintendent for NTCL operations and contracts is a member of the board of directors of the company as well as a shareholder.
Is it the policy of this Government to allow senior management people who are employed with taxpayers' dollars, despite their positions within a Crown corporation, to invest in a competing company? If it were in the private sector, they would be down the road so fast it would make their heads spin.
Accountability is an important issue with regard to Crown corporations. They should not be privileged creatures free of the exigencies of private business environment, yet protected from public scrutiny. The Minister, through the privilege of the office entrusted to him, is the representative of the majority of shareholders of NTCL, the people of Canada. Therefore, it falls upon his shoulders to guarantee that the companies are efficiently and effectively managed to best serve the public interest and not just private ambition. The Auditor General has stated this over and over again in his recent reports. He did so just recently in a speech wherein he suggested that the political officers of this country, Members of Parliament, ought to look into this.


Garnet McCallum Bloomfield: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to respond to the comments of the hon. gentleman opposite on the subject of the Northern Transportation Company Ltd. I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that we are satisfied that NTCL is well managed and carries out its business in a safe, efficient manner. I would like to go over some of the general points made by the Hon. Member in order to demonstrate the secure foundation for our confidence in NTCL.
The Hon. Member questions the management practices of the company. I remind him that the management now in place has taken NTCL from a position in 1975 before recapitalization in which it lost over $5 million, with a $2.5 million net deficit in shareholders' equity, to a position at the end of 1982
Adjournment Debate
in which the company earned $4.7 million on revenue of $47.5 million and had shareholders' equity of $35 million. Retained earnings at the end of 1982 were more than $9 million. Furthermore, while accomplishing this feat the company continued to provide the high quality customer service for which it is justly renowned. The management of NTCL should be complimented for the success it has achieved.
The Hon. Member questioned the safety record of NTCL. I can assure him that the company has an enviable safety record. NTCL has a full safety program for its employees, including comprehensive training in the handling of hazardous materials. The company's record in preventing industrial accidents, oil spills and other safety-related incidents is one of which it and we can be proud. Not prepared to rest on its laurels, NTCL is continuing to improve its safety-related procedures and training.
The Hon. Member raised the issue of NTCL's accounting practices. I am surprised at his suggestion, particularly in view of the fact that NTCL's auditors are Deloitte Haskins and Sells, a respected firm of chartered accountants in Edmonton. That firm, which has been involved in the audit of NTCL accounts for several years, reported favourably in NTCL's 1982 annual report. In addition, the Hon. Member might not be aware that NTCL was the subject, several years ago, of a comprehensive audit by the Auditor General and Deloitte Haskins and Sells. I am happy to report that the Auditor General gave NTCL a clean bill of health in his report of March 31, 1982.
The final point raised by the Hon. Member relates to a purported conflict of interest involving company officers. No director, corporate officer, or manager of Northern Transportation Company Ltd. is a director of Arctic Offshore Ltd. There is a second line supervisory employee, working at NTCL's Hay River marine maintenance base, who is currently a director of that company. This employee has no control or influence over the awarding of NTCL business, or over solicitation of business or relations with NTCL customers.
I trust I have been able to reassure you, Mr. Speaker, and the Hon. Member, that our confidence in NTCL and the way in which it carries on business is well founded.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: A motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m.
At 6.31 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Tuesday, January 17, 1984