1985-10-01

Hon. Ray Hnatyshyn (President of the Privy Council) moved: that Bill C-74, an Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act to provide for certain matters in relation to the 1981 decennial census, be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee.
He said: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to be able to present this Bill to the House. On September 4, 1984, this Government was given a mandate to make positive changes in our key institutions of Government. These reforms focused on making Government more accountable to the governed for its actions. Parliament, in our democratic society, is the central institution of accountability, and this Government has taken a firm and very positive approach towards finding means by which the individual Member can play an enhanced role in the policy development process.
Very early in its mandate the Government acted on its conviction that the representatives of the people have a right to a significant role in policy development. It did so by placing a high priority on parliamentary reform. The Government took prompt action last spring to implement an important package of reforms to the rules and practices of the House. These reforms have gone a long way to giving committees of the House an important and independent role, which in turn goes a long way to enhancing the legislative and policy development role of the individual Member of Parliament.
You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that the Government has undertaken to consult widely before taking new directions in order to ensure that Canadians feel they have a part to play in the decision-making process. As part of this consultation process the Government published a White Paper on redistribution which I laid on the Table on June 11, 1985, and which was referred for consideration by the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections. After careful consideration of the proposed amendments to the Constitution Act of 1867 and the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, the committee
reported favourably on the subject matter of the proposed draft Bill contained in the White Paper.
[ Translation]
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to thank members of the Committee for their invaluable assistance in preparing this new legislation.

I would like to remind the House of some of the key features of this Bill. The first and most significant is the change in the formula for calculating the number of seats for each province. The alteration will mean that the size of the House will grow more slowly than would have been the case if the current legislation were to be left unaltered. The House will know that under the present formula there would be 310 Members in this House after the implementation of the reports of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Commission. Instead, the legislation we have before us now would see the House grow to only 289 seats after a new redistribution which can be in place before the next general election if we act with expedition now.
When the White Paper was published, most of the media attention focused on the direct costs of adding new Members to this House. I do not wish to dwell on this aspect but I will say in passing that we can anticipate a considerable saving by implementing the Bill now before us. Increasing the number of Members in the House will also necessitate increased expenditures on support personnel for Members, security and protective services, maintenance services, messenger and cafeteria services, and outlays for office renovation and accommodation. I think it is important that Parliament itself make cost effective decisions. The fiscally responsible approach to redistribution set out in the White Paper on redistribution may explain much of the very positive media reaction which was generated.
In the first redistribution after the passage of this Bill, even allowing for the cost of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Commissions, the saving will be in the order of $1 million in the first year alone based on 1984 figures. While cost should not be the sole determining factor in deciding whether the House ought to proceed with this legislation, the House cannot ignore its importance to the taxpayers of this country. If unaltered, the House would increase in size over the coming two decades to 343 Members after the decennial census of 1991, and to a projected 369 seats after the decennial census of the year 2001. Such projected dramatic increases in the size of the House have provoked many Members of the House to consider whether such growth is desirable, and to wonder if it is possible to design a better formula which would be consistent with the needs of the electorate, but would not

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promote such radical growth in the number of Members. It is my view that a major improvement is possible.
In developing a new formula to govern the redistribution process there are a number of matters which must be borne in mind. First, one must assess the impact of increased membership on the character and quality of the House. Mr. Speaker, I am concerned that we will lose an important sense of collegial-ity if the House becomes much larger, and that private Members will have diminished opportunities to become involved in the legislative and policy development process. Participation in debates on the floor of the House and meaningful involvement in committee work are directly related to the number of Members who are in competition for the limited time available in these forums. House time is scarce and opportunities to participate in debate are limited.
You will be aware, Mr. Speaker, of the increasingly important role being given to the standing committees by the House. The reforms brought in with all Party consent in June have radically altered the significance of membership on committees. This enhanced role has made it certain that there will be greater competition for participation on committees. In addition, there has been a trend toward smaller committees since the reforms of 1982, and still smaller committees have been recommended in the third report of the Special Committee on Reform of the House of Commons. If accepted, implementation of this recommendation would mean that members of committees will be given even greater opportunity for meaningful contributions to the policy development process and they will be given the chance to develop some real expertise in the policy areas covered by the committees of which they are permanent members. However, it is obvious that, if at the same time the House is permitted to grow in the explosive manner contemplated by the legislation now in force, there will be greater competition for membership on these smaller committees and, as a result, fewer private Members will have the opportunity to play a significant role in policy development.
The House will appreciate that with the significant reforms the Government has undertaken since coming to office, Parliament is a very different institution today than it was a short 12 months ago. Mr. Speaker, I think that the improved quality of Parliament's contribution to the over-all development and implementation of policy argues in itself for an enhanced quality of representation instead of a rapidly expanding quantity of representation. In my view, no evidence exists that a larger House of Commons would be a better House. I must state that the only way to improve the quality of the House is by courageously undertaking a program of reform to make the institution the best that it can be.
You may recall, as I do, that not too many years ago Members had no staff, no private offices nor constituency offices, and few, if any, of the amenities that Members of this House have come to take for granted. In recent years the capacity and quality of service to constituents by Members of Parliament has increased steadily as sophisticated equipment,
energetic and dedicated staff, constituency offices, householder mailings, and greatly enhanced transportation facilities have permitted Members to have an immediacy of contact with their constituents such as they have never known before. In the near future rapid technological developments, such as the use of computers and electronic mail, will allow individual Members of Parliament to communicate more and more effectively with an increasing number of constituents. For these reasons, 1 concluded that it would be unwise to allow a dramatic increase in the size of the House much beyond its present level. This is the First consideration upon which the proposed formula is based.
The second factor which must be borne in mind with respect to the introduction of a new formula concerns the question of whether provinces with stable or declining populations should lose seats in the House of Commons. The loss of seats has always been a matter of genuine concern in the Canadian system. By way of example, this is reflected in the constitutional amendment of 1915 which provided that no province would be represented in the House of Commons by a number of Members less than the number of its Senators. The legitimacy of such concerns was again recognized in 1982 when the so-called "senatorial clause" was made unamendable except with unanimous consent of the provinces. Such concerns of federal balance have led me to recommend that provinces which, on a strict numerical basis, would see their representation reduced should be allowed to keep those seats, even at the expense of absolute representation by population.
There is a third general factor which must be considered when devising a formula. It concerns provinces with growing populations. Recognition must be given to the fact that population distributions change over time. People living in provinces which enjoy population increases are entitled to expect that there will be concomitant increases in the numbers of their representatives in the House of Commons.
This reform must, if it is to be accepted, be seen to be fair. The new method of redistributing seats throughout Canada is fair because it ensures that the proportion of seats and proportion of population of each province does not significantly deviate from the present situation. This means that the relative imbalances which exist today and have long been accepted as necessary compromises on the principle of absolute representation by population will remain.
You will say that this is a typical Canadian compromise. Perhaps it is. However, in a Parliament with only one elected House, our system has come to recognize the need of finding ways of ensuring adequate regional representation in the elected body and this Bill proposes no departure from this position. It is in view of these considerations, that the formula set out in the Bill was devised.
Accordingly, it attempts to accomplish three basic objectives. First, it limits increases in membership in the House of Commons to levels as moderate as are fair and practical; Second, it ensures that no province or Territory will lose seats
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in the House of Commons through redistribution. Third, it enables provinces with growing populations to get additional seats but in a way that reflects the need to maintain the House of Commons at something close to its present size. [Translation]
Mr. Speaker, this Bill not only concerns the distribution of seats throughout the country but also contains proposals aimed at improving the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act. As Hon. Members are aware, the Act regulates the procedure by which the boundaries of electoral districts are established within the provinces.

The present wording of the Act obliges commissions to ensure that all constituencies in a province have populations which are within 25 per cent of the so-called provincial quotient.
This obligation has been seen by many Members of Parliament as posing problems with respect to rural and sparsely populated areas. It forces the creation of geographically huge districts in many areas of the country.
In order to try to alleviate these problems, the Bill proposes that commissions be given some added flexibility. It suggests that, in extraordinary circumstances, they be allowed to deviate from the 25 per cent rule in order to protect an historical community of interest or to limit constituencies to a manageable geographical size, where possible.
The Bill also proposes improvements in the way in which commissions conduct their hearings. I do not believe that it should be necessary for them to publish both a map and a written description of boundaries with their newspaper advertisements, yet the current legislation requires this. If only the maps had been published for the last redistribution, a saving of approximately two-thirds of the total amount spent on advertising could have been realized. This would have amounted to approximately $1.6 million. Thus, the Bill provides that only the maps be included in the newspaper inserts. Of course, written descriptions of constituency boundaries will continue to be available, free of charge, from the Electoral Boundaries Commissions' offices.
[ Translation]
Finally, Hon. Members will now have a chance to give their views and suggestions regarding the commissions' reports. For the first time, the Bill specifically gives Members the right to submit their views to the commissions.
As well, there will be improved opportunities to debate the reports of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Commission.
Under the old legislation, these reports were discussed on the floor of the House, whereas this Bill would see them automatically referred to a committee for consideration. Members will know of the difficulty in obtaining sufficient time to
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consider legitimate objections to these reports on the floor of the House. Therefore, the Bill proposes to provide Members a real opportunity to have their concerns fully considered in committee with supporting documentation which can be tabled, together with an appropriate period of time which would be made available for each Member desiring to make representation in terms of any electoral district.
As I have indicated, time limits for each stage of consideration by committee of these reports which the Bill proposes ensure that redistribution takes place on a timely basis.
The House may wonder why it is important to ensure that this legislation is considered expeditiously, aside from the requirement to have the new boundaries for the ridings in place well before the next general election. I am convinced that this Bill, as part of the entire program of institutional reform, will help to modernize and make Canadians' key democratic forum an effective institution which will help to point the way to the next century. The Canadian people gave this Government a mandate for change. I believe this Bill helps to fulfil, as far as this institution is concerned, this part of our responsibility.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I would like to ensure that the House is aware of the great period of renewal upon which we have embarked. Reform of this institution can only be achieved by careful attention to the reasons for its continuance and its importance in the society it serves. Reform of obscure rules and arcane practices will not necessarily make Parliament more effective. However, if we have the courage to seize this opportunity to reshape the kind of House this will be, and to raise the expectations of all Canadians for this, the most important democratic institution of our country, we will have done succeeding generations of Canadians, 1 think, a great service.
Finally, let me reiterate my belief that the proposals set out in this Bill not only represent significant improvements in the redistribution process, but also they will assist us all in the task of ensuring that the House of Commons becomes a more effective and productive institution, and that expanded, it fairly represents the population and diversity, which is Canada.


Mr. Jacques Guilbault (Saint-Jacques):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to take part in the debate on Bill C-74, to amend the legislation regulating the number of seats attributed to a province in Canada after each decennial census.
First of all, I may say we understand the Government's intentions and its reasons for wanting to prevent the number of Members sitting in the House of Commons to keep on increasing at a rate that is considered too fast by some, and that, as a corollary, the Government is attempting with this measure to limit spending which is necessarily proportional to the number of Members that represent Canadians in the House of Commons.

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Although we approve the principle or the objectives being pursued by the Government, in other words, although we agree with the reasons for the measure being proposed, we do not, unfortunately, agree with the method.
Although we believe that the Government's intentions are honourable, we think it has not chosen the right way to go about attaining its objectives. In our view, one of the consequences of the measure now before the House will be to undermine the basic principle of any redistribution of seats in Canada, in other words, the fundamental principle of proportional representation. Another consequence would be that the Bill would create an increasing imbalance between the average populations of a riding, from province to province. We also believe this might create an imbalance between the average populations of urban and rural ridings.
[DOT] (U25)
Finally, another obvious result of the procedure the Government has decided to follow is,-and I find it rather strange, since one of the Government's objectives was to limit spending connected with representation of the people of this country in Parliament,-in fact the first consequence of this Bill will be to waste about $5 million which were spent to date by the commissions of various provinces on drawing up the electoral map now before Parliament, which could be considered in a couple of hours and become effective in relatively short order. The Government ought to realize that its decisions involve at the very outset wasting $5 million.
Let me get back to what I consider to be the main weakness of this Bill. I said earlier that I thought the principle of proportional representation would be at risk. I said there would be a significant difference between the average riding population in some provinces as compared to others. In other words, if we divide the population of a province by the number of seats, the resulting quotient will vary fairly substantially from province to province. To support my statement I would refer to certain comments by witnesses who appeared before the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections, and especially to what was said by Professor Andrew Sancton, who appeared before the Committee on June 20. His testimony may be found on page 12:5 of the Committee proceedings. I am just going to quote what Professor Sancton said and comment subsequently. He said, and I quote:
When one divides the population of each province by the number of seats allocated to that province according to the new formula, one finds that the resulting provincial quotients vary to quite a considerable extent. Anyone who has made such calculations for previous redistributions would not be surprised by such a result. The smaller provinces, for one reason or another, always had smaller quotients, and to that extent they have been over-represented in the House of Commons.
What is most unusual about the current calculations is that they produce quotients for British Columbia and Alberta of 91,482 and 97,292 by my calculations, which are significantly higher than the quotients of the two largest provinces of Ontario and Quebec. I think the proper figure for Ontario is 88,919, which is corrected on some of the statements and not on others, and the one for Quebec 85,845.
We already see a sizeable quotient difference of roughly 9,000 between British Columbia and Ontario. Why does the Government tolerate from the very beginning that its proposed measure would create such significant differences, quite obviously built right into the system? As stated earlier by the President of the Privy Council and Government House Leader (Mr. Hnatyshyn), the avowed priority objective and main principle guiding the Government in drafting this Bill were to make sure that the proportional representation principle would be maintained. These figures clearly indicate that the result will be altogether different. More important still, we have to consider the long term impact of those differences. Again I quote Professor Sancton on page 12:5 of the proceedings:
Although the difference in the quotients between Ontario and Quebec themselves-
-since it is now only 3,000 in this case, since this quotient-
-is not large, there is no reason why they cannot become larger if this formula were to be applied in future decades.
There is a gap of more than 8,000-
-these figures are taken from documents provided by the Government-
-if one makes the calculations based on the census projections for 2001.
That is beginning to be quite important between two neighbouring provinces whose ridings have so far been roughly similar.
This goes to show why we do not quite agree on the way the Government seeks to achieve an objective which is highly commendable in itself.
The other matter which has me worried and which also undermines the basic principle of proportional representation is the fact that, through this Bill, the Government wants to achieve a second objective, namely make sure that none of the provinces will lose seats through the implementation of this new redistribution system. First I must say that there is nothing to underlay this principle, in the sense that, at the political level, the Government may want to protect itself against the dissatisfaction which might be expressed by the residents of a province slated to lose seats. From a logical viewpoint however, if we want to respect the principle of proportional representation, that is representation based on population, how can we argue in this House and reach the conclusion that, if the population of a province goes down or if a province realizes that its population is not increasing as rapidly as that of neighbouring provinces, we are justified to claim that such a province will not lose seats? However unpalatable this might be for the residents of that province, we must admit that it would amount to a serious breach of the proportional representation principle.
I therefore conclude that the Government is not proposing this measure to uphold the proportional representation principle but rather to cover its rear and avoid being the target of sustained flak from the disgruntled residents of a province. I
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can understand that the Government would want to protect itself and limit the dissatisfaction of the population, but in my opinion, it would be better to make its pious wishes in other areas of interest, such as the bankruptcy of the banks and the tainted tuna. The Government would be better to try and prevent the dissatisfaction of the population in these areas. However, I cannot say that I agree with the fact that the Government is trying to fool around with the principle of proportional representation.
Once more, I would like to quote the comments made by some of those who appeared before the committee to object to what the Government is proposing, and I again quote from a statement by Professor Andrew Sancton as recorded on page 12:6 of the Minutes of Proceedings of the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections for Thursday, June 20, 1985. In passing, I should point out that Professor Andrew Sancton is not just anybody. He is in a good position to comment the redistribution proposals because he is professor emeritus at the Western Ontario University, where he teaches political sciences. He was also a full member of the later Ontario Electoral Boundaries Commission. He therefore knows all about this issue. Let us hear what he has to say about the provision to prevent provinces from losing seats:
My preference in all this is to fix the size of the House at about its current level and to follow the procedure outlined in the white paper but allow provinces to lose seats down to the level of the entrenched senatorial floor and to gain them to the full measure of their relative growth.
He then continued:
Sure, it will be tough for provinces to lose seats-
This is what 1 was saying earlier.
-but I suggest that the people most affected by such losses are incumbent MPs. If the real objective of this exercise is to limit the growth of the House of Commons and to maintain representation by population, then I am convinced that most people in and out of the House will understand that some provinces will have to lose seats.
In this regard, I think that the Government has tried to have it both ways. On the one hand, it tries to meet its objective of limiting the increase in the number of Members in the House of Commons, and on the other hand, it attempts at the same time to develop a system under which a province would not lose seats even if its population did not increase as rapidly as that of other provinces or even, in an extreme case, if its population were to decrease. Yet, these two principles are mutually exclusive and it is strange to see that the Government, by using an acrobatic scheme, has succeeded in combining them in one Bill.
Although we have to agree that reducing the number of Members of Parliament is a good objective, I would like to warn the Government that there are consequences one has to take into account, one of which is that Members will be called upon to service a larger population. There is nothing proposed
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by the Government to facilitate the work of the average MP. No additional tools are offered; we have no assurances that some of the recommendations put forward in the report of the committee chaired by the Hon. Member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) will be put in place. On the contrary, we believe that the Member will be left with a larger population to service with no additional means. We do not see how this would benefit the people of this country.

Another aspect on which I would like to comment briefly is the issue of timing. The Minister said earlier that these measures would be implemented in time for the next general elections. This does not seem to be quite the case. The Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Hamel, told us in committee that, if this Bill received quick passage this fall, he would be able to organize elections based on the new electoral boundaries, but only in the fall of 1988. Because of a very detailed schedule which he explained to us, he could not, for instance, organize an election in the spring of 1988 based on the new boundaries. This means that, because of the time factor and the schedule presented to us by the Government, neither the population nor any political party will know whether, in 1988, which would seem to be the most logical year to hold an election, four years after the election of the present Government, the election will be based on the present boundaries or on the new ones set in accordance with this bill.
It seems to me that it is rather important for pressure groups throughout the country to know what they can expect. It is important for political parties to know in advance whether they will plan the election based on the new boundaries or on the old ones. I maintain, Mr. Speaker, that the only one in Canada who will know on which basis the next elections will be held will be the Prime Minister because he will be the one to call the elections. So I suggest that the proposed schedule or timing for bringing this legislation before Parliament would give the party in power the upper hand, for it would be aware of both the election date and the electoral boundaries for which it must prepare itself. As to the other political parties and the various organizations which would like to exert pressure on them come election time, everybody would have to prepare for both sets of electoral boundaries, the old ones and the new ones, not knowing under which set the election would be fought.
Mr. Speaker, I think I have clearly demonstrated that this Bill has serious weaknesses. Although we can understand the Government's desire to limit the growth of the House of Commons as well as the resulting expenses, we believe that Parliament and the legislative committee to which this bill will be referred will have to consider some of the weaknesses I have just enumerated and a number of amendments will have to be made to this Bill in order to make it more acceptable to more people and political parties in Canada.

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Mr. Ian Deans (Hamilton Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, I do not propose to take a long time to deal with this. While it is vitally important, I do not think it is terribly complex. I hope that we can get on with the committee deliberations at some early date. I can well appreciate the last comment that was made indicating that if this turns out to be the way the Government will ultimately go, then clearly the decision must be made quickly or else there will be some difficulties all across the country in adjusting to the changes.
Having said that, I would like to begin by expressing concerns about the direction in which the Government is going. I do not doubt for a moment that there would be general support across the country for the intention to demonstrate financial restraint. I think it is fair to say that the majority of Canadians would support that notion no matter who proposed it. Since the majority of Canadians do not pay a lot of attention to the size of the House of Commons or to the work of Members of Parliament other than when it directly affects them, I would be surprised if they were other than glad that the Government has placed such an emphasis on the need to restrain the expenditures of Parliament. I sense, however, from reading various articles and from speaking to people who are directly involved in this question, that there is little support for the way that this measure is being proposed.
I find it passing strange that a reference would be made to the guarantee that there would be no fewer Members of Parliament than there are Senators for any one region. If we wanted to bring about financial restraint, I would have thought that we might have decided to begin with the Senate. We might have decided to ask ourselves if it was appropriate to have a Senate or not. That would be a real financial restraint. Just think of what we could do with the money we would save if we did not have that group of old people from the previous administration and the current administration tripping around the other Chamber. It is interesting to talk about financial restraint and I think it is something with which everyone agrees. However, I think we could have found some place else to start looking for the restraints we need.
I would say to the Minister that we cannot achieve what I consider to be our three objectives through the structuring of this Bill. We cannot limit the size of the House while at the same time ensuring no loss of seats and guaranteeing that each citizen will, to the greatest extent possible, have an equal voice in Government. It cannot be done. Those things are inconsistent with each other. Therefore, there is no point in our trying to pretend that we can do that.
We are changing dramatically the representative system of the Government of Canada. This will not happen in the first year and not even in the second year, but with the passage of time, as we move beyond the year 2000, this measure will have a dramatic effect on the way calculations will be made and on the proportional representations of the regions of the country. Although the need to limit the number of Members of Parliament has some appeal, I would ask why we are doing it. Is it really our responsibility to say that we like things as they are and they suit us just fine? Does the congeniality of the House justify that we should keep it as it is? That is hardly a democratic principle. It may be a principle based on friendship, but if we were to carry that to the extreme, then we could argue that we only need 100 or perhaps 50 Members. Think how congenial we would be then. Look at the opportunities we would all have to take part in debates. Look at the opportunities we would have to serve on committees, assuming we could find sufficient Members to fill them.
When talking about it in this way, we begin to realize that the argument to limit the size of the House in order to preserve the congeniality of it and the opportunities for participation in debate and in committees has some appeal at first blush, but if carried to the ridiculous extreme would be totally unacceptable.
I think the argument being made by the Government is faulty. Representation by population is in fact the cornerstone of the democratic system within which we operate. Guaranteeing that the weight of one vote will be equal to the weight of another vote is a principle which we must attempt to uphold. That principle is being skewered by this particular measure. There is a democratic responsibility on the part of Hon. Members to ensure that we do not mess up the democratic system. I think that the Government is, with all the best intentions in the world, making a determination that would do just that.
The difficulty I see is that we could not, in all good conscience, argue that certain provinces ought to lose representation simply because their growth did not keep pace with others. I think it is commendable of the Government House Leader (Mr. Hnatyshyn) to say that we want to guarantee the smaller provinces representation no less than the representation they now enjoy, but in the process of doing that, I think he recognizes that it does penalize the growth areas. It could be said that it penalizes the growth areas only marginally, but that marginal penalty will grow by leaps and bounds in the course of time. Notwithstanding our best efforts, it will not be possible, come the year 2010-by which time, I hope, most of us will be gone from this place but not from this life-for those here then to redo what we have undone and to put back together what we have taken apart.
I suggest that one of the problems is in trying to find a balance between the regions in order to ensure that regions do not have a sense of alienation from the federal Government and yet, at the same time, to ensure that within those regions the representation of rural against urban areas is preserved. We should recognize that the urban areas are the growth areas and the difficulties that confront urban areas are, under normal circumstances, more complex by virtue of size and pressure than the difficulties that confront less urbanized parts of the country. In fact, it will be necessary for there to be a larger number of representatives from the growth areas, the core areas of municipalities, in order to be able to put forward adequately the many and diverse views and concerns that will
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continue to arise, concerns that we probably cannot even contemplate at this point in time.
In essence, what I am trying to say is that I am not being critical of the Government for considering this measure. I think it is worth considering. I do not think, however, that it will achieve what we are trying to achieve. For example, why would we decide, when making a calculation ostensibly based on the 1971 census for the year 1991, that at some appropriate point in time we would allow for half the number of seats allowed for under the old formula? Why would we allow for only half? Why not a quarter or why not three-quarters? What is the importance of one-half? How has that been democratically determined? What does that mean in terms of representation? I do not think anyone knows. It is simply a figure drawn from nowhere. It is a number drawn from nowhere which would keep the House at a size that we could manage given the confines of the building itself, or some other determination. That is not good enough. There is room in this House for some substantial growth, if need be. I think that if the existing system, which has served us fairly well for a long period of time-


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: It has only been in effect for 10 years since 1974.


Ian Deans: That is what I said, it has served us well. It should not be cast away now this quickly.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: It isn't.


Ian Deans: I think it is. The Minister says it is not, but it clearly is. We are no longer going to follow that which we determined is the way it should be done back in the late 1960s. I suppose that was about the time it was determined.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: With a slight modification, I would think.


Ian Deans: I feel that from our point of view, first, the money saving is not a lot. It depends on how you measure it. It certainly does not measure up to $1 billion for a failed bank, when you think about it. And I do not think that for the amounts of money we are talking about saving, the risks of distorting the representative system would be justified. If we feel that that kind of money needs to be saved-and no doubt it would be nice to save it from the taxpayers' point of view- there are other ways and other places where we could turn to find that necessary capital.
I suggest to the Government that since it took office a year ago in September, there has been much said and much made of its intentions to cut expenditures and to reallocate resources. There has been a lot said up until fairly recently about the size of the deficit. That does not seem to be the big issue now, for some reason. I guess that since we found the $1 billion for the Bank, it is hard to argue that the deficit is too high. Nevertheless, if we looked carefully in other areas, I believe we could save the money which the Minister suggests could and should be saved by this measure.
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To sum up, I am frankly not convinced that this direction is the direction we should take. I am concerned that it will unnecessarily alter the method previously used to determine the democratic representation. I am concerned that it will have an adverse effect over time on the way our provinces and Territories feel about their ability to participate in a reasonably equal way in the federal system.
I am not persuaded at this point that the savings we would derive from not having following the original formula will be sufficient to justify the change-not yet, anyway. I am prepared to listen to further argument on that. I enjoy the congeniality of the argument, but I am not sure it is a good argument for this kind of measure.


Mr. Benjamin:: Or collegiality.


Ian Deans: "Colleagiality" my colleague says. It is congeniality, too. With respect to the arguments about participation, I feel we can find ways to encourage further participation. We are doing it now constantly. Therefore, while I like to afford Hon. Members, as does everyone else, lots of opportunity to participate, I do not think we can do it at the expense of representation by population. If we start making that argument and following it to its logical conclusion, we can end up with a real mess on our hands.
I will conclude by saying to the Minister that I think the most important thing that can be done here is to get further input.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: I agree.


Ian Deans: I am persuaded from reading some of the comments which were made before the committee. Certain of those witnesses are perhaps more expert in this than 1 am- perhaps even more expert than the Minister himself, although that is hard to believe-and some of them have expressed genuine reservations, reservations which were deeply felt, that this is not the time to tinker, that it is not necessary. There is not a sufficient amount of growth in the offing that justifies this sudden readjustment.
So I say to the Minister that for the time being we certainly cannot support the proposal. We will, however, after two or three of my colleagues have commented about it, send it to committee. It will be dealt with in the committee, giving some of those who appeared before, and many others who have not yet appeared, an adequate chance to put on the record their analysis of the effects. Then we could make some further refinement, amendment or alteration to try to take into account what I think have probably been well considered views in opposition.
One point that bothers me, and I say this just in passing, is that there is always a tendency among politicians to want to safeguard their own best interests. That is true. We cannot avoid it. It is part of politics to want to protect yourself and your opportunities. We must guard agains that. We must make sure that that does not motivate us into making changes-I am not suggesting that that is the case, mind you,

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but it is something to keep in mind. There is that sort of tendency to say that we really would like to leave things the way they are, we do not want to make any changes because, after all, it would upset the apple cart, upset the way in which we play the game. It reminds me of a comment I made when I appeared before the redistribution committee in Hamilton some time ago. They were advocating a change to my electoral boundaries and I said to them that I would welcome the change from a political point of view because it added an area which was at least 80 per cent supportice of me while taking away an area which was somewhat less than 50 per cent supportive of me. I said to them that I would be quite pleased to have it that way but I thought, quite frankly, that it was wrong. I thought that the lines they had drawn were not in keeping with the realities of the community. However, I said that if they were determined to improve my lot, if they want to give me a sinecure, almost like a seat in the Senate, perhaps there were two or three streets in the middle of my riding they could take out. That would be a damn sight better than what they were proposing. They turned it down. That is what we have to watch.
Quite frequently, our own self-interest creeps into the discussions inadvertently and, in making our arguments, we fail to see the much larger picture, and the much larger picture in this case is that we have to guarantee to the greatest extent possible that the vote of a person in one part of the country will have exactly the same weight as the vote of a person in another part of the country, that when those people vote collectively, their collective vote will have the same weight in Ottawa. I venture the opinion that although the change is marginal, and I admit it, the principle which I consider to be vital is being abrogated by the proposal before us.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. At the conclusion of my remarks I should have said that there have been consultations between the Parties with respect to a motion we have on this particular Bill. I believe you would find there would be a disposition-the House Leaders have copies of this motion and have been consulted-that in view of the fact that the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections has spent some time hearing witnesses and been seized of the White Paper on this matter-and this is not a precedent, by any means-there has been agreement between the Parties that the following motion would be acceptable:
That, notwithstanding any Standing or Special Order of this House, the motion for the second reading and reference to a legislative committee of Bill C-74, An Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act and to provide for certain matters in relation to the 1981 decennial census, be amended by deleting all of the words after the word "That" and substituting the following therefor:
"Bill C-74 An Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act and to provide for certain matters in relation to the 1981 decennial census, be now read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections".


Ian Deans: Mr. Speaker, I just want to confirm, I hope on behalf of my colleague, the Official Opposition House Leader, that we did have this discussion and we did agree that it would
be the appropriate way to deal with this Bill but that it should not be considered to be a precedent. We are doing it because the committee was seized of the matter previously and therefore is aware of all of the ramifications of the legislative proposal.


Jacques Guilbault: Mr. Speaker, I understood that the Government wants to send this Bill to the standing committee rather than a legislative committee. Is that correct?


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Yes.


Jacques Guilbault: We do not disagree in principle but we would like the assurance that the standing committee will be able to hear witnesses.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Oh, yes. No problem.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Continuing debate. [Translation]


Mr. Marc Ferland (Portneuf):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on Bill C-74, an Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act and to provide for certain matters in relation to the 1981 decennial census.
Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this Bill is to limit the unrestrained and very costly increase in the number of electoral ridings in this country.
Historically, the Constitution Act, 1867, as amended in 1975, provided for the readjustment of representation in Commons following every decennial census. The formula for calculating the number of members would take into account the population of each province and Quebec's special situation.
The result has been a constant increase in the number of elected representatives, so that the point of saturation in the House of Commons has nearly been reached. We must remind ourselves that the House has a capacity of some 286 seats or so.
On the other hand, it was necessary to ensure that the new formula would respect the rules of equity and provincial representation, while not limiting the rate of growth of Parliamentarians and, at the same time, the operating costs of Parliament.
Mr. Speaker, I note that our colleagues in the opposition support this Bill and I am glad they do. With the method of calculating provided for under the old Bill, based on the 1981 census, there would be 310 of us here, compared with 289 with the proposed formula.
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In 1991 we would have had under the former system 343 Members instead of the 291 figure resulting from the proposed formula, and in 2001, we would have 369 Members instead of the 296 under the proposed formula.
Mr. Speaker, there are concerns voiced by Members opposite who suggest the vote should be proportional. One vote recorded in this House on behalf of one constituency has to be just as representative as one vote from another constituency.
The possibility of using the Senate formula was also suggested. One could say that whenever a seat in the Commons is lost, it might perhaps be replaced with a seat in the Senate.
Under the old formula, and speaking on behalf of Quebec, we would lose one member and gain one senator this time. In 1991 we would lose four members and gain four senators, and in the year 2001 we would lose six members and gain six Senators.
Mr. Speaker, what is important in my view is to make sure that this House has elected members who adequately represent the Canadian population.
There is provision in the proposed formula to reflect regional disparities, ethnic groups or others. Reference is made to the possibility of more or less 25 percent, on the basis established at the constituency level in each Province.
Mr. Speaker, this legislation assures the provinces of the possibility of maintaining the minimum number of seats they now have; no seats will be lost. I think this was a concern that existed at any rate in my area, as in many others in Quebec; we must make sure that the Quebec representation will remain fair, with at least the existing number of seats.
If we turn to provinces where there was a larger increase .. . We know that in other provinces, for all sorts of reasons, there is some kind of a population explosion, and we now have constituencies where there may be for instance 160,000 votes, while there are constituencies in some eastern provinces which may have only 45,000 voters. The Bill will allow an increase in the number of members in that province, of course, but instead of having the number increased at such an astronomical rate as proposed, it would be increased but in a much slower way.
This will then, Mr. Speaker, result in over-all savings just as significant, and it may also allow the possibility of providing members with better tools, in order that they may better perform their work and better represent their constituents.
Mr. Speaker, under this legislation the House would keep a manageable size, and this would make it easier for all members to be heard. Often Liberal or New Democratic Members have remarked that Government members do not often have an opportunity to speak. I understand that. We are 211 here, Mr. Speaker, and I can tell you our Liberal colleagues opposite are somewhat jealous about that. But, of course, if we are to have a greater number of members speaking in this House,
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it must keep a manageable size, with opportunities for positive interaction.
Mr. Speaker, I am especially happy that our Government has initiated this Bill, and I am convinced that Opposition Members will want to see it through in an expeditious manner, in order that we may send it without delay to the Standing Committee and enact it as soon as possible.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions or comments? Debate.


Mr. George Baker (Gander-Twillingate):: Mr. Speaker, I have just a few words on this legislation. The first thing that catches my eye about it is that the extra seat which was recommended for Newfoundland will not now be put in place. Therefore, I look at this legislation which robs Newfoundland and Labrador of an extra seat in this Chamber and I ask myself: Why? We hear the Government House Leader (Mr. Hnatyshyn) say that we do not want to increase costs for the Government of Canada. We want to save some money. That is funny coming from this Government. I notice that in most of the morning papers reference was made to a new $7 million or $7.5 million electronics communications outfit going into the Prime Minister's Office. That is approximatley the amount of money that would be required to extend the House of Commons by the amount recommended. The hon. gentleman is shaking his head. He should read the figures.


Mr. McDermid:: I thought it was more.


George Baker: The cost is actually $8.9 million, for the edification of the hon. gentleman. If the Government of Canada is concerned about saving money, why is it carrying on as it is today? Is it denying Newfoundland an extra seat in this Chamber because it wants to make savings in this one particular area? Is that the real reason for doing away with the recommendation for redistribution and an increase in seats? We did not have to spend another $5 million or $6 million setting up a commission. We did not have to spend another $4 million or $5 million dealing with redistribution all over again. We only had to pass one final step in this Chamber. However, the Government said no on the basis that it wants to save money. The Government is going to introduce a new system which will rob Newfoundland of one seat and a lot of other provinces of seats in this Chamber.
The other example used by the Government House Leader is even more alarming to me. He said that if we increased the number of people in this Chamber we could not have meaningful debate. He said that the Government of Canada has embarked upon a new procedural change plan and that it is implementing recommendations to give Members of Parliament a greater say in what takes place in this Chamber. That is a very strange recommendation coming from the House Leader, Mr. Speaker. Of all the Governments that have been

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elected in this country in this century, this Government should certainly not be saying that it will give Members a greater say.
The Government says that an increase in the number of seats in the Chamber may destroy representation and that an increase is not necessary because there is a new system in effect. Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that Members in this Chamber will only get the freedom to speak that the Government is willing to give them. I am not speaking now of the structural changes which the House Leader spoke of in introducing this Bill. I am talking about the attitude of the Government of Canada toward individual Members of the House. The philosophy should be "the more the merrier". It would not do any harm, but would do some good, to increase the number.
Last night we had a meeting with representatives from the Department of Employment and Immigration. A policy had been adopted by the Government of Canada on which Members of Parliament on the Government side were briefed last week and on which members of the Opposition were briefed this week. What say do we have in what was gone through? What say do Members of the House of Commons have who are, perhaps, more qualified than anyone else in the country to pass judgment on things which affect ordinary people? We get their letters and telephone calls and we know what is wrong with programs introduced in this Chamber by the Government.
Last night we were told that in order to be employed in a government program, you must have been unemployed for 24 of the previous 30 weeks. When Government members were told of that last week they knew it was wrong. They could see all kinds of pitfalls in that regulation, yet they were powerless to do anything about it. They were powerless because it was the policy of the Government of Canada, it was the ruling of the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Miss MacDonald), and that is it. Members on both sides of this Chamber know that that regulation will mean discrimination against young people and women and anyone who had the gumption to work for seven weeks in the previous seven months because they do not now qualify to go to work or even for a referral. Members on both sides know that that is wrong, but the regulation stands.
For the House Leader to say that the Government has brought in a new era in which Members of this Chamber will have input into government policy is simply not true. If the Government House Leader was serious in accepting all of the recommendations of the committee on the reorganization of this Chamber, and even in going further by giving Members input into this Chamber, that would be a structural change. We are also talking about a change of philosophy by the Government.
The Government House Leader said that we probably have too many Members in this Chamber already and that members do not have a chance to participate. The way to solve that problem is through structural change and a change in the philosophy of the Government of Canada. To profess that this has been done is simply not true. You would have to give
Members of Parliament an opportunity to originate their own terms of reference in committees of this Chamber. You would have to give Members of Parliament the understanding that their first responsibility is to represent the people of their constituencies and that they need not hesitate to criticize a Minister of their own Government.
You know what I am talking about, Mr. Speaker. In the British system Government members criticize Government Ministers. That is the custom in most of the legislatures of the British parliamentary system, or what remains of it. With the present Government attitude and the present situation in the House of Commons we are behind the other Legislatures which operate under the British system. For the House Leader to say that the Government has introduced changes and, therefore, an increase in representation is not necessary, is a pretty shallow argument.
The reason for my intervention is simply to point out-


An Hon. Member:: Get to it.


George Baker: The Hon. Member says "Get to it". He obviously has not been listening very carefully. The point is that the Government is robbing a seat from Newfoundland and Labrador. If you check with any Member of this House from Newfoundland and Labrador, no matter which side of the Chamber he is on, he will tell you that he is overworked. The Hon. Member is laughing. Why does he not ask the four Conservative Members from Newfoundland, of the seven in the House, if they are not drastically overworked? The Hon. Member is shaking his head. He does not know. He does not understand what it is to represent areas with very high unemployment regarding which Members of this Chamber, regardless of which side of the House they are on, have to answer basic questions. It is in these areas that Members, from whatever Party, must appear before boards on appeals or appear before the Federal Tax Court of Canada on behalf of their constituents. They are Members who take calls from constituents who ask why they were not hired on a social assistance program. They are Members who must carry out requests about unemployment insurance, Canada pensions or disability pensions and welfare cases. The hon. gentleman would have to agree that we need more representation in this Chamber, not less.
The rationale given by the House Leader is that it will result in a saving of money. The Government says that it will save money, yet, as was pointed out a minute ago, it gave a billion dollar bail-out to a bank. In fact, when one adds the figures, it comes to $2.5 billion.
I could give further examples of poor management, bad decisions and waste of taxpayers' money that has taken place since the Government came to power. Cabinet Ministers have increased the size of their staff and the Prime Minister has increased his staff by 54 per cent, to 120 people. Yet the Government House Leader does not want to give Newfoundland and Labrador an extra seat in the House of Commons
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because the Government wants to save money. There is no rationale behind that argument.
He also argued that changes that have taken place in the procedures of the House have allowed Members a greater say in Government policy. Not only has that not occurred, the opposite has taken place. The Government of Canada claims that it was elected to govern and therefore no Member of the House will influence its policy, let alone the regulations.


Mr. Dick:: Mr. Speaker, was the Hon. Member a member of the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections last June when it gave approval in principle-including his Party-to this Bill?


George Baker: No, Mr. Speaker, but I have the committee report before me. Why is the hon. gentleman asking the question? Perhaps he could elaborate on why he is asking that question. However, the answer quite simply is no, I was not a member of that committee.


Paul Wyatt Dick: I was wondering if the Hon. Member realizes the appearance of a flip-flop in the position of the Liberal Party between last June and September.


George Baker: Mr. Speaker, perhaps this is the problem in the Chamber. The Government House Leader, who is the boss of the Hon. Member for Larnark-Renfrew-Carleton (Mr. Dick), talked about Members of Parliament having greater input, speaking their mind and so on. I was simply pointing out to the House that under this particular formula Newfoundland was going to lose a seat which would have been given to it had the other formula come into play. That is my input into the debate and it is very important.
I am not talking about committee meetings in June. I do not know what went on, I have not read the minutes, but listening to the Government House Leader, it is clear as the nose on your face why he is introducing the Bill. I simply interjected to point out that I am very disappointed that Newfoundland will not get that extra seat which we believed was assured us with the other recommendation.


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy listening to the Hon. Member for Gander-Twillingate (Mr. Baker) and I agree that Newfoundland, according to the new distribution, will probably lose one seat. However, when we consider that with the rest of the country, Ontario will lose some 10 or 12 new seats that would have been provided under the previous recommendation, it is not only Newfoundland that is losing seats. As a matter of fact, Newfoundland is not losing anything but simply maintaining its current level, as will most provinces across the country.
I do not want the public to be under the misconception that there will be fewer seats in the House of Commons. There will be a very small increase as opposed to an increase of 28 seats that was proposed in the old Bill.
All Members are working hard in this place. I can sympathize with the Hon. Member for Gander-Twillingate because there are 200,000 people in my constituency and I know what
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it is like to work hard for my constituents. I believe that all Members work hard for their constituents, and the Hon. Member should not pretend that he or Members from Newfoundland are the only ones who work hard and under difficult conditions. Every Member of Parliament works extremely hard for his constituents, no matter what part of this great country he represents.


George Baker: Mr. Speaker, I simply elaborated on that point because the Hon. Member who just spoke was sitting in his place shaking his head when I was saying that we need that extra seat because Newfoundland Members of Parliament were overworked. He was shaking his head to signify no- perhaps in answer to another Hon. Member-but that is why 1 commented on that question in detail.
With respect to his other point, it is true that this recommendation will increase the number of Members by four while the previous proposal recommended an increase of 28. 1 am suggesting that the rationale used in limiting the increase to four is not correct. 1 am also saying that Newfoundland needs that extra seat, as do some other provinces.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The period for questions and comments has terminated. Debate.


Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Prince Albert):: Mr. Speaker, I want to bring a couple of points briefly to the attention of the House. We have come a long way from the rotten borough system that caused much of the historical concern about how members were chosen. However, I do not believe that we have alleviated the representation problems that we will face if we do not come to an understanding of what the formula should be.
Representation by population has never really worked in Canada because of our diverse country. There are areas which need representation but have very few people. Therefore, we recognize that while representation by population may have been acceptable in deciding the number of members to represent certain areas, it has not worked totally in the past. We should recognize that it will not work in the future.
In fact, it is quite possible to make a good argument against representation by population under the current structure in Canada because it is much easier for a member to represent a large metropolitan area which has a homogeneous population than to have fair representation of a much larger area which has a heterogenous population. 1 can use as an example the Prince Albert constituency as it has been proposed under the new border structure. It takes in more than half of Saskatchewan. A very small part of the population is a rural farm population. About one-third of the population is comprised of northerners who are of native ancestry and who have a very different lifestyle and interest as far as their representation is concerned. The rest of the constituency is made up of the City of Prince Albert. Not a very large city dominates a tremendously large area. Many northerners in that constituency feel it would be much fairer to have their representation based on the northern area. However, this would be more than half of

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the Province of Saskatchewan but would consist of only about 35,000 people.
As 1 said, you can make pretty good arguments for not using representation by population. The power of a region or a province is more important in some ways than representation by the individual. For instance, Mr. Speaker, being a westerner you will recognize that over the years Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia quite often have groups claiming that we in the West do not have enough representation in the House of Commons. It does not matter what kind of representation or what Party is in power. We do not get a fair hearing because central Canada, Quebec and Ontario form such a large part of the representation in the House that in the end any decision made will be slanted toward central Canada.
In my office I have a hat that was presented to me not too long ago. There is a map on it and it says "the Republic of Western Canada". That kind of feeling in the West arises quite often. In a number of elections lately we have had the participation of the Western Canada Concept Party. Criticism is based on the fact that people do not feel the West has had real representation in Ottawa. Although we have changed Government and have more representatives in the Government, that really does not solve the problem.
The House Leader in presenting this Bill said there was a need to save money. That is a pretty spurious reason. We cannot accept that as a particularly good argument. Over a long period of time, that would not hold much water. If the population represented by a Member gets larger, services must be maintained which will cost more money anyway.
As my colleague stated earlier, if you really want to save money, let us look elsewhere. Let us look at the other place. It costs us a lot without giving the representation which we think is necessary and which should be available, in a democracy.
Let me mention a couple of historical approaches which perhaps the committee would like to look at. There are parts of Canada which, on occasion, say they would like to have representation in the House of Commons. I speak of the City of Montreal and the City of Toronto that say that maybe they should have a Government of their own. Let me give you an example from my own experience. When I first went to Nigeria, there were 12 states there. Now there are 19. When the population of a state got too large, the state was divided in half. Northern Ontario has often said it would like to be recognized as a separate province.


Mr. Mantha:: Never.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Stanley J. Hovdebo: I know that would be an unpopular approach to that problem, but it does make some sense. If you took Montreal out of the Province of Quebec, the population of Quebec would be considerably smaller. It would, though, be a region separate from the rest of Quebec. I know this is an unpopular approach, but it is the kind of innovation we need to
look at in order to get the kind of representation which people think they should have.
What are we trying to do? Are we trying to ensure representation by population, or are we trying to ensure that every region of the country gets the kind of representation which makes it feel it is part of the country? There are many parts that do not. I know from close proximity that western Ontario feels an awfully long way from Toronto.


Mr. Rodriguez:: What about northern Ontario?


Stanley J. Hovdebo: Northern Ontario does too. Even if you get as far as Sudbury, you feel a long way from Toronto.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Stanley J. Hovdebo: Northern Saskatchewan felt so far from Regina that the Department of Northern Saskatchewan was formed in order to give that part of the province some representation in the Government.
Power is important to the region. Power goes with representation. If you develop a program which does not make any part of Canada feel it has representation, regardless of whether representation by population is the direction you should go- that is part of my feeling and traditionally we have gone that way-it will not work. We must recognize that representation itself is our basic concern.
Let us make sure in whatever we do to solve this problem that we give all parts of Canada the representation they think is necessary to have a voice in the Government of Canada.
Large rural areas and large northern areas need some form of representation which recognizes them as a homogeneous group. They have concerns as to how the country is governed. At the moment we would not want to support this Bill in its present form. The committee, when it looks at this Bill, can examine some of these concerns and make sure that Canadians will feel in the end they are well represented in this Parliament.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Are there any questions or comments? If there are no questions or comments, we will resume debate. The Hon. Member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell (Mr. Boudria).


Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-74. I think we should take a minute to talk about the principle of proportional representation in the House of Commons. [Translation]
I heard a while ago the Hon. Member for Portneuf (Mr. Ferland) state that he was in favour of a proportional representation system in Canada and indeed, Mr. Speaker, we have such a system but with some difference, and as you know the difference is that there is a minimum below which a province cannot go as regards its number of seats even when the population of that province is proportionally lower that
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that in other areas and that minimum is the number of seats representing the province in our Senate. This means that a province which has four senators cannot have less than four members in the House of Commons.
Mr. Speaker, apart from that factor, we have to all intents and purposes a proportional representation system in our country.

We could say that in fact we have a modified system of proportional representation right now because of the guaranteed minimum number of seats represented by senators.
I should like to make a comment now, which I hope will elicit a reply later by the Government House Leader. I refer to Article 42(1) of the Constitution Acts in Canada, 1867 to 1982 which reads as follows:
An amendment to the Constitution of Canada in relation to the following matters may be made only in accordance with subsection 38(1):
(a) the principle of proportionate representation of the provinces in the House
of Commons prescribed by the Constitution of Canada;-
In its new Bill the Government is modifying the principle of proportionate representation which I have just described because it is adding a second level at which there is a guaranteed number of seats. I described the first level just a moment ago, that is, the number of seats in the Senate. There is a second level of protection, which is the present number of seats that any province has in the House of Commons. In my view it could potentially infringe upon that provision in the Constitution. It is quite clearly indicated that the only floor level shall be the number of seats in the Senate. If that is being modified, perhaps we require a constitutional amendment in order to accomplish it.
I am not saying that I am totally against what has been announced today by the Government House Leader, but I have some reservations about it. I think we should all be conscious of what we are doing. We are changing the entire system of proportional representation that we now have. From now on the existing.number of seats in the House will be the guaranteed minimum for the provinces represented by Hon. Members. That is vastly different from what we have had in the past.
Hon. Members opposite should be concerned about it. For instance, Members of Parliament representing the Province of Ontario will be representing 88,819 voters in the House of Commons, on average, after this redistribution has been completed. They should also recognize that it will cost some $5 million to effect this redistribution. We have just finished redistributing the number of seats in the House of Commons, to which all political Parties agreed at the time. If this is to be changed, I believe all Members of the House should be very conscious of these facts and of the fact that it will cost millions of taxpayers' dollars to accomplish it.
Of course, I recognize the dilemma. One redistribution called for an increase in the number of seats, bringing it to somewhere in the order of 340 seats, and therefore would have created considerable expenditures in itself. We recognize that
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it costs approximately $300,000 or $400,000 per year for every Member of the House of Commons, that is, for support staff, office space and everything else involved. Of course, the 340 seats would have been after the next redistribution. The other redistribution we were discussing would have brought it to 310 seats, but the number we are discussing now is 288 seats. Frankly, that number is sufficient. Some Hon. Members have said in the past that if the House of Commons were represented by a number larger than that, it would become unwieldy. I tend to agree with that. In fact, at this moment I do not envy Conservative back-benchers; I would not envy anyone being a Conservative in any case. Those back-benchers have very little, if any, occasion to speak. Of course, we recognize that they do not often use whatever occasion is available to them. Nevertheless, they have very little opportunity to speak in the House because of the fact that there is a large number of Members from the same political Party. Once we enlarge the House, of course we compound that problem. There are ups and downs no matter which way we look at it.
I see the Secretary of State (Mr. Bouchard) and the Hon. Member for Hochelaga-Maisonneuve (Mr. Desrosiers) sitting across the way. No doubt both of them will participate in this debate later. There are considerations on both sides of the issue about which we should be aware. I hope the parliamentary committee looking into the details of the Bill will take them into account.
I should like to turn to a local concern involving my constituency of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell.


Mr. Nunziata:: It is well represented.


Don Boudria: Thank you. The people in the western end of my constituency, particularly those in the Township of Cumberland, in the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton, are becoming dissatisfied with the fact that their community is divided in half. There are two municipalities for the area of Orleans, two provincial Members of Parliament, two federal ones, two municipal councils and two of everything else. This has been very divisive in the past, and the community of Orleans has requested that every attempt be made to unite that community. Particularly, the Mayor of Cumberland and the Township of Cumberland indicated that one federal Member of Parliament should represent the area. I hope the committee bears that in mind.
There is another problem involving the area, that is, rapid growth, particularly in the eastern end of Ottawa, and its effect on the constituency of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell and, for that matter, on the constituency of Ottawa-Carleton as well. According to the 1981 census, 82,706 people live in my constituency. That is what is indicated on paper, and in theory it is just about the right number in terms of representation in the House of Commons by one Member of Parliament. However, the Township of Cumberland, according to the 1981 census, had only 18,000 people. It had 25,500 by 1984 and will have 29,860 by the end of this year according to the projections of the municipal officials. By the end of next year it will have 35,159 and 46,682 by 1991. Obviously it is a rapidly

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growing area. That should be taken into account in a special way when the redistribution occurs. I hope the officials doing the preparatory work will bear this in mind. Perhaps they could arrange the electoral map under the redistribution in such a way that if they use the 1981 figures, they make ridings with a smaller number of people in those areas that have experienced the recent urban growth about which we all know. The reality is that at the time of the next election we will have an electoral map with roughly the same number of constituents everywhere. I see the Hon. Member for Brampton-Georgetown (Mr. McDermid) sitting across-


An Hon. Member:: He is sleeping.


Don Boudria: He also represents a riding that has a very large number of constituents. Perhaps if such a formula, including taking into account areas of potential growth and putting a slightly lower number of people in those ridings for the purposes of redistribution, had been considered when the redistribution was made in the past, he would not have had the problem of having a constituency which is so large. For the same reason I think we are going to see the same thing happening in the constituency I represent now. We are seeing in the eastern end of Ottawa, where villages such as Orleans only had 2,000 or 3,000 people ten or fifteen years ago and are now communities of 50,000, 60,000 or 70,000 people, almost the same phenomenon that occurred in the suburbs of Toronto a number of years ago. Those responsible for preparing the electoral map should keep these rapidly growing areas in mind.
Lastly, Mr. Speaker, I believe it was the Hon. Member for Frontenac (Mr. Masse) who described the minimum representation given to provinces. He was of the view that in the past if a province lost seats in the House of Commons, it gained additional seats in the Senate, or something to that effect. That is not the case at all. The Senate level is established so that the minimum number of seats that any province has in the House of Commons is equivalent to the number of seats that that province has in the Senate. That is what the Senate minimum means. It has nothing to do with gaining additional seats in the Senate when a province loses some in the House. We have never had that situation, otherwise some of the provinces would probably be represented vastly differently in the Senate. As we know, the original allocation of Senate seats was 24 for Canada West, 24 for Canada East and 24 for the Maritimes, to be divided into 10 for New Brunswick, 10 for Nova Scotia and 4 for Prince Edward Island, had it joined Confederation in 1867, which it did not. Therefore, at Confederation the two Maritime Provinces had 12 seats in the Senate each, and they eventually lost two each when Prince Edward Island joined Confederation. That is how the present number of Senators was arrived at. It has nothing to do with losing seats in the House of Commons as such.
I bring those issues to your attention. Yes, I think that having too large a House of Commons could be unwieldy. I agree with that principle. I am frightened because we are changing the principles of proportional representation and we
are effecting that now. I hope that the parliamentary committee ensures that we do not change that principle, and I believe as well that we should ensure that we do not offend Section 42 of the Constitution, which is a possibility. I invite those experts in that field to consult the document to ensure that that will not be the case.
The only reason put forward by the Government House Leader that I do not agree with is the fact that we are doing this to save money. That somewhat frightens me as a principle, because democracy is always expensive. There are those who say that elections cost a lot of money, but compared to places that do not have elections, I still think it is a pretty good deal. Adhering to the same principle, we would not reduce the number of seats because we are going to reduce costs. That is the wrong reason and it is frightening to think that that principle might be extended to other areas.
If we want to save money, of course, we could always sell the Prime Minister's (Mr. Mulroney) new computer that he brought in this morning or the limousine of the Secretary of State (Mr. Bouchard) or we could reduce the size of the Cabinet. Of course, we could make sure that the job of the Secretary of State is well protected in the Cabinet because surely he would stay. There are many ways of saving money, but the principle of reducing the number of seats in the House allegedly to save money is somewhat frightening, I would suggest.
I invite questions, especially from the Secretary of State.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments? No questions? I think then it is debate.


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I will be brief today.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Horton McDermid: I do want to participate in this debate. With a constituency that, in terms of population, is now the third largest in Canada I, of course, am very interested in redistribution and have followed the procedures very, very carefully. I agree with my hon. friend, the Hon. Member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell (Mr. Boudria)-


Don Boudria: Then I am really worried.
Mr McDermid: -when he talks about expanding areas, the difficulties we have had in the past, using the 1981 census as a base, redistribution taking place some three, four or five years later and growth areas not being taken into consideration.
I am pleased to say that that is one of the major parts of this Act which is being introduced by my friend, the Government House Leader, because it allows the committee to take a look at growth areas and not be held down to 25 per cent on either side of the average within a certain province. In considering an area, they can take a look at planning departments, which they have not done too frequently in the past, to see where the growth is going to be and how it is being phased in and take
October 1, 1985


STATEMENTS PURSUANT TO S.O. 22
[Stage Direction]
that into consideration when they are setting up the new constituency.
I think that is very, very important, especially in areas that the Hon. Member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell mentioned and represents, and areas to the west of Toronto such as Mississauga, Brampton, and Oakville and to the east of Toronto the Pickering-Whitby-Oshawa area, Markham and so on, where the growth is phenomenal.
1 know that right now, with house sales going at record rates, both resale and new homes, due to the new Government and the confidence in the economy that we find today in Canada, we are finding that these homes are being built at a much quicker pace than had been anticipated and that constituencies are growing at a very rapid rate. I must say that with this Act that can be taken into consideration and I am very pleased about that.
I am sorry that my friend, the Hon. Member for Gander-Twillingate (Mr. Baker), is not here because he was concered about Newfoundland not having that extra seat. I will say to the Hon. Member from Newfoundland, and I would argue, that it would be better for Newfoundland to have seven seats in a 289-seat House than to have eight seats in a 310-seat House. I think you will find that it is getting better representation by population because of that than if it had the increased seat. So I think his argument is not really well founded, and I would say to him that if he rethinks his argument he will agree with me that Newfoundland will be better off under this new program.
Mr. Speaker, we are supporting the Bill and we are looking forward to it going to committee to be discussed and to have many of the questions answered. I know there is an added expense in having other hearings, but I think it will be worth it because we will more effectively represent the people in our constituencies with fewer Members here. Each Member will have a little more time available then to make his or her representations to Government, and in turn, more time will be available for consultation by Government. With the down-size increase, if I can put it that way, I think we will have far more effective representation with the Government and I think that because of that we will serve our constituents much better.
I am going to call it one o'clock at the present time, Mr. Speaker.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Thank you. The Hon. Member will have 15 minutes left in his speech plus 10 minutes of questions and comments after Orders of the Day.
It being one o'clock, I do now leave the Chair until 2 p.m. this afternoon.
At 1 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Hon. Bob Kaplan (York Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a minute and a half to call to the attention of the country the way in which the Government has damaged two very important national institutions that belong to all Canadians, the Canadair aircraft company in Montreal and the de Havilland aircraft company in Toronto. These are both companies which we recognize need more work, attention, and time before they become economically viable in the sense in which the private sector knows that expression. Yet the Government, for two reasons, has been talking about the sale of those two companies. That is objectionable and also very damaging to the companies. Stories arise indicating that the companies will be sold and there is doubt as to whether their products will continue to be made. This ideological line being taken by the Government is actually damaging the marketing of the products of these companies.
One of the reasons the Government has been doing this is because of its ideology. It thinks that it is a good thing for a Government company to go out of business. Liberal Members do not disagree that it is better, all other things being equal, to have businesses operating in the private sector. However, the way the Government is going about this is damaging to the companies.
I think the other reason for this, which only became apparent in the last few months, is a balance sheet kind of attitude. The Government wants these companies off its books, so there is a rumour-


Mr. Speaker:: I would advise the Hon. Member that his time has expired.


WAR CRIMINALS
Mr. Ernie Epp (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, on Saturday the Ukrainian-Canadian Committee and several other organizations of Canadians with roots in the Baltic region and south Europe sponsored full-page newspaper advertisements asking "Why Discriminate?" The focus of their concern and anger is the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals appointed by the Government on February 7 of this year.
It is clear by now that the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) made a grievous error in focusing the attention of the Commission only on persons responsible for war crimes related to the activities of Nazi Germany during World War II. The Canadian Government should long ago have dealt with the persistent charge that our country has harboured war criminals. How-

October 1, 1985
ever, the Government made its action unnecessarily divisive by failing to authorize the Commission to look for persons who committed war crimes related to the activities of powers other than Nazi Germany.
All of the judicious qualities for which the Commissioner is noted will be required for him to fulfil his responsibilities properly. He will need to be particularly careful in ensuring that documents drawn from archives located within the Soviet Union are authentic and that witnesses testify freely. Even while he does justice in these ways, the Commissioner is finding the terms of reference he was given being criticized as being partial. When it is vitally important that justice be seen to be done regarding war crimes, Ukrainian-Canadians feel themselves the unexpected victims of an attack of "Mulroney-ism".


AIRPORTS
Mr. Vince Dantzer (Okanagan North):: Mr. Speaker, last week, the Hon. Member for Papineau (Mr. Ouellet) indicated by his remarks in the House that he was badly misinformed about a certain airport in the riding of Okanagan North. This Government, through the Minister of Transport (Mr. Mazan-kowski), recently made available a grant of over $400,000 to improve the alignment of the runway in question and to carry out certain much needed reforms. This has been strongly supported by the people of Vernon and the Regional District of Okanagan North. Admittedly there is some opposition to this because obviously many people do not like to live next to an airport. Nevertheless, the airport is there. It is essential to Vernon and surrounding districts because it does provide the impetus for an enlarged industrial base.
As you know, Mr. Speaker, Vernon is also a tourist destination. Tourism is probably one of our most important economic factors. I would like to assure the House and the people of Canada that the Government was wise in its expenditure of over $400,000, and 1 congratulate the Government for seeing to a very vital need.


INDUSTRY
Mr. John Reimer (Kitchener):: Mr. Speaker, the shoe manufacturing industry makes an important contribution to the socio-economic well-being of many people in the City of Kitchener. Indeed, in the Kitchener-Waterloo-Guelph-Cam-bridge area, shoe manufacturers account for some 4,500 employees who make an average annual wage of approximately $14,000, making a total yearly payroll of $63 million. These
figures do not include the hundreds more people employed in related industries, such as suppliers and sales personnel.
I urge the Government to adopt and pursue a policy of long-term commitment to the shoe manufacturing industry so that it can regain and maintain at least a 50 per cent share of the Canadian market.
Certainly competitiveness within industry is a good thing, but it must be fair. A policy commitment ensuring a 50 per cent share of the market would allow the industry to protect existing jobs, enhance its technology, improve its productivity, and create some 6,000 new jobs nation-wide. Therefore, I call upon and urge the Government to protect the shoe manufacturing industry with a policy that ensures it a 50 per cent share of the domestic Canadian market.


FOOTWEAR INDUSTRY
Mr. Alain Tardif (Richmond-Wolfe):: Mr. Speaker, once again I would like to speak to a very important subject, namely the footwear industry.
The present quotas are about to expire, at the end of November, and we are already starting to feel the disastrous consequences. I have here a document referring to the fact that Chaussures St-Georges is shutting down after employing more than 150 people.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is imperative and extremely urgent to extend the quotas for five years for 50 per cent of the market. The only argument against extension is the interests of the consumer, which I think hardly holds water, since the interests of the consumer lie in extending the quotas, and 1 would say there are several arguments in favour of doing so.
I therefore ask the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) to live up to his clear and specific promise to protect the footwear industry. This is your chance to make up for many of your failed endeavours.


SOCIAL SECURITY
Ms. Margaret Mitchell (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday three very significant events took place. First the Northland Bank collapsed. Second, the Government stifled debate on Bill C-70, the first step in its plan to reduce the deficit on the backs of Canadian families. Third, the latest Statistics Canada figures showed that the real incomes of families are down and real poverty is up.
October 1, 1985

Families are the foundation of Canadian society. They are the institutions entrusted with the care and nurturing of our next generation, yet one in every five Canadian children now lives in poverty. Many are lining up at food banks while Governments stand idly by doing nothing.
Cutting family benefits and increasing family taxes will not help. Instead of closing down the Northland Bank, the Government should be closing down food banks. Instead of giving $1 billion to the banks, it should increase family benefits. The Government must begin to show some commitment and support to families by stopping the cut-backs in family benefits and reindexing the family allowance. I urge Canadians to protest the Government's attack on children and families.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Andre Plourde (Kamouraska-Riviere-du-Loup):: Mr. Speaker, last week the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Wise) announced that a draft tripartite agreement on beef and pork price stabilization programs had been sent to the provinces and producer associations, for comment and, we hope, approval.
The House will recall that last spring, when the Standing Committee on Agriculture was holding its meetings, the Quebec Minister of Agriculture refrained from appearing before the Committee, unlike his counterparts from the other provinces. He thereby deprived Quebec farm producers of their right to be represented by the Minister of Agriculture of their province within the framework of a national consultation process that is important to the future of a healthy agricultural industry in Canada.
Quebec farm producers earnestly hope that this time, their provincial Government will be involved in the discussion, since the proposals made by the Minister are flexible enough to meet the requirements of the provinces and producer associations.
Details of the proposed agreement should be satisfactory to Quebec farmers, because the agreement provides that provinces that have their own programs may still participate in the national program as soon as it is operational.
At the same time, a study will be made to measure or quantify distortions created by all provincial and federal programs in the agricultural sector. In the light of the results of such a study, adjustments will be necessary to ensure that producers in one province do not get more government assistance than producers in other provinces.



Mr. Lawrence I. O'Neil (Cape Breton Highlands-Canso):: Mr. Speaker, in 1941 the Feed Freight Assistance Program was introduced. It provided for the payment of 90 per cent of the costs of transporting grain from the Lakehead to eastern Canada. Between 1967 and 1976 the level of feed freight assistance slipped to 59.3 per cent of transportation costs, and the area to be equalized was arbitrarily moved east to Montreal.
Based on the promise of feed cost equalization, a vibrant and significant livestock industry has been built. The food and agricultural sector is the most important component in the maritime economy accounting for one-third of our total jobs. The livestock industry and its supplemental farm supply and processing industries contribute more than $1 billion a year to our maritime economy. Unfortunately, this growth has not been accompanied by research, technical development, or interest in grain production in the maritime provinces.
In 1982 the Maritime Farmers Council made a proposal to the Government of Canada which is designed to achieve greater independence for the maritime agricultural industry. It calls for the maintenance of the livestock industry and the development of feed self-sufficiency in the maritimes.
We look forward to achieving greater independence. The Feed Freight Assistance Program is an important part of the proposal to achieve that result. We look forward to an early announcement confirming the continuation of this program, an important instrument of regional development.


RAILWAYS
Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg-Fort Garry):: Mr. Speaker, last May 30,1 asked a question in the House of the Minister of Transport (Mr. Mazankowski). It concerned the future of the Transcona railway shops. At that time the Minister said: "The future for Transcona and CN in Winnipeg is very bright indeed". That was a very cruel joke played upon Hon. Members of this House as well as upon the CNR workers. An announcement was made this week of the abandonment of the entire VIA Rail maintenance work at the Transcona shops which will permanently shut down the jobs of hundreds of workers in Winnipeg.
This is just one more example of the way in which the Government has abandoned the historic role of Winnipeg as a transportation centre. It has abrogated the agreements which were signed two years ago which designated Winnipeg as the major western transportation centre.
7202

October 1, 1985
1 would suggest to the Minister of Transport that he go back to those agreements and recognize that there is still one other way in which a solution could be found. Under those agreements there was a development of a light-weight prototype grain car which could be manufactured in western Canada. I suggest if the Government has a scintilla of concern left about regional development, it would make sure that that commitment is upheld and that the light-weight prototype grain car is manufactured in the Transcona shops so those jobs can be saved.


EMPLOYMENT
Mr. Fernand Ladouceur (Labelle):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to draw the attention of the House to the numerous efforts made until now by this Government to improve the employment situation at the national level.
As a result of consultations, given our willingness to cooperate openly with the provinces, and considering that the various interest groups of the economic sector have promised their cooperation, our Government, through the Minister of Employment, was successful in establishing an employment planning strategy whose main objectives realistically and concretely meet the aspirations of our fellow Canadians who are faced with a disastrous inheritance-the fruit of 16 years of Liberal administration.
Mr. Speaker, the new strategy will indeed take into consideration the real and lasting needs of the labour market while stressing our commitment to justice and fairness.
Mr. Speaker, more than 300,000 jobs have been created since the September 4, 1984 elections. The unemployment rate has declined from 11.6 to 10.3 per cent. The unemployment rate among youths has dropped from 18.3 to 15.9 per cent. Those figures cannot give rise to sensational and scandalous headlines, Mr. Speaker, for they reflect concrete facts which obviously-


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


ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Jean J. Charest (Sherbrooke):: Mr. Speaker, 1 would like to draw the attention of the House to plans being made by the U.S. Government, at the U.S. Department of Energy, for the construction of a nuclear waste disposal site in the eastern
United States. At the present time, the U.S. Government is considering 236 sites, including three sites near the border between Vermont and the Province of Quebec.
As soon as our Government became aware of this situation, we asked our embassy to express our concern immediately. The Secretary of State for External Affairs subsequently raised the matter with his U.S. counterpart, Mr. Shultz. The Minister of the Environment did the same with his U.S. conterpart, Mr. Thomas, and later on, the Canadian Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources also took up the matter with his U.S. counterpart, Mr. Herrington.
Recently, on September 26 in Ottawa, U.S. officials gave us the assurance that they were not considering sites near the Canadian border or sites that would require geological or other studies in Canada.
Today, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say, for the record, that the Canadian Government can hardly be satisfied with this situation or with the assurances given by the Americans at this stage.
I would also like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that ever since the beginning of this matter, Liberal Opposition Members have maintained the same silence they had always maintained before September 4, despite the fact that-


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


PRESENCE IN GALLERY OF ITALIAN PARLIAMENTARY DELEGATION
Mr. Speaker:: May 1 draw to the attention of Hon. Members the presence in our gallery today of a parliamentary delegation from Italy, led by Senator Domenico Segreto.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Right Hon. John N. Turner (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, the House Leader is over-anxious. My question is really for the Minister of Finance.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: I was just laughing.
October 1, 1985


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Napier Turner: The Minister of Finance and his colleague, the Minister of State for Finance, have just blown $1 billion on the bank Fiasco. My question relates to another $1 billion, a result of a secret deal by way of a tax ruling in favour of the participants in the Gulf Canada deal. Would the Minister of Finance tell the House whether he knew about that ruling, whether he approved it, and whether that is going to be added to his deficit?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, let me comment on the introduction to the Right Hon. Member's question. The Government of Canada has not "blown" $1 billion on these banks. The $1 billion has been expended on these banks because of certain bad management practices and a bad economy which led to the failure of these two banks. I remind the Hon. Leader of the Opposition that that bad economy is related to decisions taken by previous Governments in relation to the National Energy Program.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Some Hon. Members:: You know it, John.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: So let's get those things clear.
As to the second part of the Hon. Leader's question, matters relating to tax rulings are privileged matters between the Minister of National Revenue and the particular company concerned.


ARRANGEMENT CONCERNING SALE OF GULF CANADA'S ASSETS
John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I put this question to the Minister to Find out whether he was aware of this tax ruling benefiting participants in the Gulf deal-
Would the Minister be agreeable to referring the entire matter to a parliamentary committee, so that all participants in this deal to sell the assets of Gulf Canada ... so that the parties concerned could appear before the committee and recall the nature of these tax rulings and so that the Canadian people may know how much this is going to cost?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I remind the Hon. Leader who, as a lawyer, should understand these matters, that the question of a tax ruling, if there is such a tax ruling, is a matter which is a privileged piece of information between the Minister of National Revenue and the company itself.
Questions on the takeover of part of the assets of Gulf Canada by Petro-Canada are matters which the Hon. Leader might want to put to the Minister of Energy, Mines and
Oral Questions
Resources. However, we have commented on those questions fully over the past few months.


POSSIBLE COMMITTEE PROCEEDINGS
John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I offered the Minister some advice on the question of the Bank Act relating to the depositors of the Canadian Commercial Bank and the Northland Bank. He did not chose to take it. I am going to take this position with him: even conceding that the Minister of National Revenue, within the provisions of the Income Tax Act, cannot reveal those tax rulings, the taxpayers themselves certainly can. Would the Minister of Finance arrange with the Minister of National Revenue to submit the whole affair to a parliamentary committee so that the taxpayers can come up to Parliament and describe the information on the rulings they received?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I think what the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition is suggesting is that certain matters be brought before a committee of the House of Commons. I cannot control what goes before a committee of the House of Commons. Maybe he would like to put his suggestion to the chairman of that committee.


BASIS FOR TAX RULING
Hon. Donald J. Johnston (Saint-Henri-Westmount):: Mr. Speaker, I can scarcely believe my ears.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Clark (Yellowhead):: We can scarcely believe your tie.


Donald James Johnston: Is the Minister of Finance telling us that the Income Tax Act condones secret cosy deals which in this case may have cost the taxpayers of Canada $1 billion? A gift to a group of wealthy Canadians of $1 billion and he is not prepared to tell the Canadian public the basis upon which that decision was made.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, here we have another example of the famed outrage of the opposition Party's Finance critic. He gets so wrapped up in his own words he forgets to ask a question.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Donald James Johnston: If you are going to hide behind it on that basis, stand on your feet and defend yourself!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Donald James Johnston: That was a smart-ass answer.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Mr. Crosbie:: Ask a question, mighty mouth.

October 1, 1985
Oral Questions


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Charles Joseph Clark: The method actor.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Supplementary question.


INCOME TAX PROVISIONS
Donald James Johnston: Mr. Speaker, is the Minister telling Canadians that the Income Tax Act, as interpreted by the Government, permits secret deals which can pass $1 billion to a small group of Canadians, of whom we know there is an acute shortage according to the Minister without examination by the Canadian public?


Mr. de Jong:: You guys did exactly the same thing. What's new?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, what I am saying is that what the Hon. Member, who is a noted author and a tax lawyer in his previous incarnation-


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: And leadership aspirant.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: -what he knows and what his Leader knows is that it is not possible under the Income Tax Act of Canada to discuss specific tax matters relating to a particular company or individual, in public. If he wants to bring before a parliamentary committee a question of general application or a specific element of the Income Tax Act that he would like my views on, I have no hesitation in meeting that committee and discussing the implications of that element of the Tax Act. But only in a general sense.


BANKS AND BANKING
Hon. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Prime Minister I will direct my question to the Deputy Prime Minister. Is it the Government's intention that Mr. Justice Estey should examine the exercise of ministerial responsibility in the bail-out of the Canadian Commercial Bank and the collapse of the Northland Bank?


Hon. Erik Nielsen (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, I answered that question yesterday and the Hon. Member-


John Edward Broadbent: You did not.


Erik Nielsen: Yes, I did.


John Edward Broadbent: You did not answer that question yesterday.


Erik Nielsen: The Hon. Member should pay some regard to Citation 359 of Beauchesne as well.
I repeat that what I did yesterday in response to the question was to say that it would be totally inapproprite for me to be discussing or attempting to set parameters on terms of reference which were the subject of and attached to the press release and which went into some detail with respect to those terms. Why does he not have the patience to allow Mr. Justice Estey to get on with his inquiry using an approach which he sees fit, rather than requiring Government to lay down parameters for that work? He has the broadest possible terms of reference now.


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister knows as well or, dare I say it, perhaps better than anyone else in this House, that the framework within which the Judge acts is the framework provided by the Government. If he wants ministerial responsibility examined, that should have been in the terms of reference. That is what I say to the Deputy Prime Minister.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Now, do you have a question?


TERMS OF REFERENCE
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, in his press conference on Friday the Prime Minister said that the inquiry must include an investigation of all those responsible and they must be held accountable. If that is the intention of the Prime Minister, why was there not a specific reference to ministerial accountability in those terms of reference? Does the Government want to bail itself out of this $1 billion fiasco by giving insufficiently specific terms to the Judge looking into it?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, I have the terms of reference.


John Edward Broadbent: So have I.


Erik Nielsen: The Hon. Member has the terms of reference. It would be a waste of time to read them into the record of the House.


John Edward Broadbent: Oh, no; go ahead!


Erik Nielsen: What they constitute is virtually a blank cheque to Mr. Justice Estey to conduct the widest ranging possible inquiry into all of the circumstances. What more than a blank cheque-maybe two blank cheques? I really do not know. We have gone as far as we possibly can to make those terms of reference as broad as they possibly can be.


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, the problem with the blank cheque is that it may be zero or it may be $1 billion. It could be the whole range. The Government has a lot of experience in wasting $1 billion: we on this side of the House know that very well.
October 1, 1985


GOVERNMENT POSITION
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, 1 again direct my supplementary question to the Deputy Prime Minister. If he looks at the terms of reference, two of them, Subsection (a) and Subsection (b), may cause the examiner to ignore ministerial responsibility completely. If the Government wants it looked at, as was done in the Macdonald inquiry into the RCMP, why did the Government not say so?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, I have more faith in the professionalism and integrity of Mr. Justice Estey than to believe that he would put that kind of distorted interpretation on his terms of reference.


LIQUIDATION OF TWO BANKS-MANNER IN WHICH GOVERNMENT PROCEEDED
Mr. Raymond Garneau (Laval-des-Rapides):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct my question to the Minister of State (Finance).
Last September 1, the Government announced its decision to seek court authorization to proceed with the liquidation of the Canadian Commercial Bank and the Northland Bank. This was mentioned in the September 1 press release of the Minister of State.
Here is my question, the same one I directed to the Minister of Finance yesterday, but to no avail. Perhaps the Minister of State might give me an answer today. Why on September 1 were the Northland Bank and the Canadian Commercial Bank lumped together, which was like giving the kiss of death to the Northland Bank?


Hon. Barbara McDougall (Minister of State (Finance)):: Mr. Speaker, I think it is very clear that on September 1 the Northland and the CCB were not put in the same situation. The Bank Act makes very clear what happens under certain conditions. The Northland had a curator, which allowed it time to try to facilitate a merger. For reasons which have become clear, I think, to the other side, having to do with economic circumstances, the management of the bank, and the curator's report, this became not possible. We did not in any way impede the curator in his role as a curator.


REQUEST FOR EXPLANATION TO LIQUIDATE CANADIAN COMMERCIAL BANK AND NORTHLAND BANK
Raymond Garneau: Mr. Speaker, it would seem that the Minister is not aware of the documents she released on September 1.
In the press release she gave us here in the House it is indicated on page 3 that it was necessary to launch immediate-
Oral Questions
ly a winding up application for each bank. She has just said it is not true. That is what she told us on September 1. So when is she telling the truth?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, once again the other side is deliberately misinterpreting what happened. The Bank Act makes very clear what action is to be taken when a bank is seen to be no longer viable. We appointed a curator and the steps thereafter were laid out in that the liquidation proceedings were not proceeded with on the basis that a curator was there acting as a curator.


GOVERNMENT'S VIEW
Ian Deans: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Deputy Prime Minister. In response to my Leader he indicated that perhaps the Hon. Member for Oshawa was distorting the facts when he suggested that Justice Estey may not have to look into ministerial responsibility. Is it the view of the Government that Justice Estey should look into the question of ministerial responsibility?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, that is the same question again that I answered yesterday and again today. The terms of reference to Mr. Justice Estey are broad and clear, "an examination of all the circumstances and factors contributing to the condition of the bank and resulting in the cessation of their operation". If the Hon. Member cannot understand that, I would be glad to see him after Question Period to explain it to him word by painful word, if it is not clear enough now.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Ian Deans: That would be painful. I would prefer not, if you don't mind.


PROVISION OF DOCUMENTATION TO COMMISSIONER
Ian Deans: Mr. Speaker, is it the position of the Deputy Prime Minister that all of the documentation and information that the Minister of Finance and the Minister of State for Finance had in their possession at the time that they were reviewing the situation of the Canadian Commercial Bank and the Northland Bank will be provided to Justice Estey?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, why should the Hon. Member be so presumptuous as to assume what Mr. Justice Estey is going to call for and what he is not going to call for?


Douglas Jung: Order. Through the Speaker.


Erik Nielsen: In order to address the House properly I do not have to look at the Speaker. I would sooner look at my handsome friend across the way.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, order.

October 1, 1985
Oral Questions


Ian Deans: 1 think you were insulting the Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: This only seems like a beauty contest.


Lloyd Axworthy: It's the first good choice you've made all year.


Erik Nielsen: After all, Sir, he only has a moustache.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Erik Nielsen: 1 think it would be most appropriate if we allow Mr. Justice Estey to determine the approach and direction he wishes to take in the conduct of his wide-ranging inquiry, concerning which he has virtually total authority to go into every nook and cranny that he pleases.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: What do you mean by "virtually"?


REQUEST FOR LIST OF UNINSURED DEPOSITORS
Miss Aideen Nicholson (Trinity):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of State for Finance. Since the Government's legislation to reimburse uninsured CCB and Northland depositors is on the Order Paper today, will the Minister now assure the House that, as part of our consideration of this Bill, we will have disclosure of who these depositors are so that taxpayers will know where their money is going?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, I have indicated to the House before that I am prepared to provide a breakdown by categories to the House committee, and that those categories will make very clear where the funds are going. I might say once again that the intent of the Bank Act is that the names of depositors do not go public. If there is not clarity on the legal aspects of the Bank Act, I am quite prepared to release the lists to the commission and have Mr. Justice Estey decide what the legality is in that case.


REQUEST THAT LEGAL OPINIONS BE TABLED
Aideen Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, we are dealing with former banks, the affairs of which are now subject to the provisions of the Winding-up Act rather than the Bank Act. Will the Minister table in the House the legal opinions on which she has based her refusal to provide this information up until now?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, when I present the legislation later this week, we will enter into a debate in the House and all the information that is required will be forthcoming.


NATURAL RESOURCES
Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs in the absence of the Prime Minister. The report on federal water policy was released yesterday and it indicated that massive overland diversions of water to the U.S. raise profound environmental, economic, and strategic questions. It, however, did not oppose such exports. It did say that it was up to Cabinet to make the decision.
Given that there are a number of demands from the U.S. for more water, and that massive proposals have already been made in this country for diversion schemes, will the Secretary of State for External Affairs now exercise his political responsibility and give the House and the people of Canada guarantees that Canada's water will not be exported?


Hon. Tom McMillan (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, one of the major recommendations of the Pearse Inquiry was that Canada proceed cautiously on the matter of interbasin transfers. That is one recommendation the Government will be quick to accept. We will be cautious. There are no specific proposals from the United States, or from any other country to Canada for Canada to divert, in a large scale way, water to that country. Therefore, we do have time and we will take advantage of that timetable.


REQUEST FOR EXCLUSION OF WATER FROM NEGOTIATIONS
Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is also addressed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs and is with regard to free trade negotiations. Will the Minister assure the House and the people of Canada that Canada's water heritage will not be an item at the bargaining table?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, as the Hon. Member, the House, and the country know, those are separate questions and they will be treated in that way.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: How are you going to treat them? That's the question.


CANADIAN ARMED FORCES
Mr. Len Hopkins (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Defence. There are reports today that National Defence orders are being filled by Star-Kist for 131,000 cans of tuna. This is of great concern to personnel of the Canadian Armed Forces because they have been asked to accept substandard tuna in the past. Will the Minister assure Armed Forces personnel and
October 1, 1985

the employees of the Star-Kist plant about the quality of this tuna? According to the Department of Fisheries, there have been no inspection certificates issued for tuna from that plant since the month of May.


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, there will be no product served in DND kitchens that is not wholesome, fit, healthy and consumable.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: That will be posted in all the kitchens now.


INSPECTION CERTIFICATES
Leonard Donald Hopkins: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the same Minister. He stated in an answer to me last Friday that Armed Forces personnel eat very well. Will he reassure the thousands of people in the Canadian Armed Forces, whose well-being he is supposed to protect, by tabling all federal Fisheries inspection certifications issued prior to and pertaining to the orders of tuna that are being filled as we speak here in the House?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, I can tell the Hon. Member, Sir, that despite great obstacles which were inherited, the Armed Forces are now being fed better-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Edward Broadbent: Answer the question.


Erik Nielsen: -and they are equipped better and, quite frankly, it is my belief that they feel a heck of a lot better about the change.


NUCLEAR ARMAMENTS
Mr. Ian Waddell (Vancouver-Kingsway):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs and it is with regard to the use of Canadian uranium in the production of U.S. nuclear weapons. 1 have a letter in which Mr. John Longenecker, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Uranium Enrichment of the Office of Nuclear Energy of the United States, says:
The depleted uranium is stockpiled at the enrichment facilities. By contract, if it is not claimed by the enrichment customer, it becomes the property of the United States Government. Some of it has been ... converted into uranium metal-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: -for applications for the U.S. Department of Energy and-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Does the Hon. Member have a question?
Oral Questions


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Yes. It is converted by the United States Department of Defence. Given that evidence, how does the Minister square the difference between what the American officials are saying and what he and his Canadian officials are saying?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, there is no difference between the letter that was quoted by the Hon. Member and the statements I have been giving in the House. The treaty arrangements that are in place between Canada and the United States are being honoured. As part of those treaty arrangements, there is a requirement for administrative arrangements. There is now an intergovernmental mechanism operated in the United States, out of Washington, by the Department of Energy which ensures that the equivalent amount of depleted uranium to that which is derived from Canadian sources is not being used for military purposes.


REQUEST FOR INVESTIGATION
Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, given the fact that in the same letter the American official says that there are no separate Canadian uranium tailings at the enrichment plant, and given the fact that the Minister's Department has been quoted yesterday as saying that there are separate tailings and separate measurements, would the Minister not at least look into the problem because there is a possibility that this is not being monitored correctly and that uranium is being diverted into the production of bombs?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, we are making some progress on this case of accusation by innuendo. Not very long ago, the Leader of the New Democratic Party, without being prepared to offer any evidence or submit any proof, made some general accusations in the House. Now the Hon. Member is saying that there is a possibility of some inconsistency in the reporting of administrative arrangements.
I give the Hon. Member the assurance again that the administrative arrangements called for in the treaty are being carried out in a way which respects Canadian treaty obligations. If he wants to send me the letter, I would be delighted to have it. If he wants to send me any proof that he claims to have, I would be delighted to have it. If his Leader has any proof, instead of innuendo, I would be delighted to receive that proof.


ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Bill Attewell (Don Valley East):: Mr. Speaker, my question, which is directed to the Minister of the Environment, concerns the important topic of acid rain. Last March, Wil-

October 1, 1985
Oral Questions
liam Davis was appointed Canada's emissary along with Drew Lewis of the United States to prepare a report by March 31, 1986 on this vital issue.
Since they are now half way through that mandate, will the Minister enlighten the House on their progress up to this time? Is there every indication that they will meet that deadline?


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, as the Hon. Member will know, the United States and Canadian envoys do not report to me. They were not appointed by me, nor by my predecessor. They report, rather, to the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of the United States.
I have met, however, with William Davis and I intend to meet with Drew Lewis. I understand from both of them, either directly or indirectly, that they are making a great deal of progress.
They are scheduled to report before the President and the Prime Minister meet again in summit, and my understanding is that they will be able to report even before that time.


PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE
Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Prime Minister who is probably working on his new mailing machine, my question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. Earlier this year Canadians learned that the budget for the Prime Minister's office increased by 57 per cent. Now Canadians learn that it will cost $7 million for a new communications computer system for the Prime Minister's Office. Will the Deputy Prime Minister explain to the House or justify this kind of expenditure at a time when ordinary Canadians are told to tighten their belts and a time when family allowances are being cut by the same Government?


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Acting Minister of Communications):: First of all, Mr. Speaker, there is no question of spending $7 million in the Prime Minister's Office. The simple fact is that the Department of Communications is carrying out an experiment costing about $500,000, but I hasten to add that what is costing us $500,000 now cost the previous administration $7 million two years ago. We are simply making an experiment which has nothing to do with the Prime Minister's mail, it concerns the internal proceedings of the Privy Council and the Prime Minister's Office.
As to the $7 million in question, it relates to a general project which has not been approved by the Department, so it has not materialized any further than in the research documents of the Hon. Member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell.


CENTRALIZATION OF POLL TAKING, CORRESPONDENCE AND INFORMATION
Don Boudria: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker.
We know that the Prime Minister wants to centralize within his own office the whole system of public opinion polls, and now, with expensive equipment, correspondence and information. Can the Minister say, explain or justify why this equipment is necessary, and what guarantee do Hon. Members have that it will not be used almost exclusively by the Progressive Conservative Party to try to solve some of their current problems?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that, as usual, the Hon. Member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell did not understand anything I told him.
I told him that there is enough correspondence within the offices of the Prime Minister of Canada to justify that, not only-if the Hon. Member would pay attention he would not have to ask a third question-not only in the Prime Minister's Office but in all the operations of the Privy Council as well. Some of the communications now originate from the Clerk of the Privy Council and if you need more details just ask him, 1 am sure he will give you the correct answer this time.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Ms. Pauline Jewett (New Westminster-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. It has come to my attention that a representative of the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research is visiting the British Columbia firm of MacDonald Dettwiler this week to consider the purchase of a computer program that is financed almost entirely by the National Research Council through the Industrial Research Assistance Program. Clearly the Government is giving the Government of South Africa conflicting messages.
Will the Secretary of State investigate this matter and assure the House that federal Departments and agencies of the Crown like NRC have been instructed that in no way are they financially to support exports, indluding technology transfers, to South Africa?
Right Hon. Joe Clark (Secretary of State for External
Affairs): Mr. Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for her question. The statements that I have made with regard to South Africa have, of course, been drawn to the attention of Government Departments. I will, as she requests, look into the particular matter that she has raised and I will report back to her and to the House.
October 1, 1985


NOTIFICATION OF GOVERNMENT POLICY
Pauline Jewett: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Secretary of State. It is an extremely serious matter because it has arisen since his announcement in the House on September 13.
While he is doing that, would he also communicate to all businesses in Canada that it is not "business as usual" any longer when it comes to exports and technology transfers to South Africa?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, as it happens, I have had the opportunity to hold a number of meetings with Canadian business people who are or have been active one way or another in South Africa. I have been most impressed by the degree to which they stand in support of the policy that has been enunciated by the Government, and indeed they are looking for ways themselves to use channels that they might have that the Government does not have to bring to bear upon the Government of South Africa the sense of repugnance and revulsion that exists throughout this country-in Parliament, in business, in labour and everywhere-to the system of apartheid.


PUBLIC WORKS
Mrs. Lise Bourgault (Argenteuil-Papineau):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Public Works.
With only a few months to go before the complete shutdown of the Lac Saint-Denis Canadian Forces station at Saint-Adol-phe d'Howard, my constituents in that area are concerned, and rightly so, about what is going to happen to the installations on the base, assessed at more that $3 million.
My question is: Does the Minister agree with the documents submitted by the local adjustment committee, proposing that a feasibility study be financed to look into the various ways the facilities on the base could be used?


Hon. Roch La Salle (Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, for the time being, as you all know, the base installations still belong to National Defence. I am delighted to be able to inform my colleague today that a departmental committee will be responsible for making an assessment with a view to diminishing the potential negative impact on municipalities in the area. However, if the committee were to conclude that a feasibility study would be necessary, in response to the concerns expressed by the parishes in the area, I would not hesitate to recommend such a study.
Oral Questions


FISHERIES
Hon. William Rompkey (Grand Falls-White Bay-Labrador):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Employment and Immigration. I have raised this question with her before but unfortunately there has been no response.
Last week the Evening Telegram stated that the fishing season in the Nain area of Labrador has been so bad it has left most families with little or no money and a very old tradition has been revived; exchanging clothing for locally picked berries.
The situation is disastrous. The evidence is there. Why is the Minister sitting idly by while her Government lashes out with a billion dollars to the banks and not one cent for fishermen and plant workers in Newfoundland? Why is that situation allowed to exist?


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: It is just like the Liberals.


Hon. Flora MacDonald (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, we have been monitoring the results of the fall fishing season very carefully. We are aware of the gravity of the situation.
I would inform the House that, in conjunction with my colleagues, the Minister for DRIE and the Minister of Fisheries, we are examining possible options for assistance to those concerned. I can assure the Hon. Member and, indeed, the people affected in the Province of Newfoundland, that action will be taken to alleviate the hardship that might otherwise occur.


REQUEST FOR MINISTERIAL ACTION
Bill Rompkey: Mr. Speaker, we thought the Minister was a Cape Bretoner who understood us, a Minister with a heart, but she is not showing that she is.
In all seriousness, she cannot change the unemployment insurance system. If she waits until November she cannot start work programs. Will she face reality and look at the evidence? Will she act now to help fishermen and plant workers on the Labrador coast?


Flora Isabel MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, I have informed the Hon. Member and those concerned that action will be taken-


An Hon. Member:: When?


Flora Isabel MacDonald: -far sooner than the Liberal Government would ever have taken it.


Lloyd Axworthy: We didn't cancel the program, you did.

October 1, 1985
Oral Questions


Flora Isabel MacDonald: I can also assure the Hon. Member that the action that will be taken will be to the long term benefit of the people who are concerned.


PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE
Mr. Ray Skelly (Comox-Powell River):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. It pertains to the article today in the newspaper indicating that the Prime Minister's Office will have a new $7.5 million direct mailing program.
Would the Deputy Prime Minister be prepared to admit that this program, in conjunction with the polling contract about to be let, will be used to transfer the cost of campaigning from the Conservative party to the taxpayers of Canada and that it will be under the control of the Prime Minister's Office?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, the suggestion contained in that question is almost as scurrilous as its source.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


GOVERNMENT POLLING CONTRACT
Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, my second question and supplementary is to the Minister of Supply and Services. Would the Minister of Supply and Services confirm for this House that the Government is now prepared to grant a $10 million plus contract for Government polling and that the primary recipients will be two Conservative polling firms?


John Carnell Crosbie: The master of scurrility.


Hon. Stewart Mclnnes (Minister of Supply and Services):: Mr. Speaker, I might advise the House that invitations have been extended to more than 32 firms to tender on a polling process now being considered.


John Edward Broadbent: Who is getting contracts?


Stewart Donald McInnes: Twenty-two of those have responded. They are now being evaluated, and a large number of firms all across Canada will be involved in the final decision.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


BANKS AND BANKING
John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I am encouraged by the unusual frankness of the Deputy Prime Minister to my colleague, the Hon. Member for Renfrew-Nipissing. Let me, therefore, put a question to him. The Deputy Prime Minister knows that it is vital to the inquiry of Mr. Justice Estey to analyze, in the affair of the CCB and the Northland Bank, how the Minister of Finance, the Minister of State for Finance and, indeed, how the Prime Minister exercised their ministerial responsibilities during this whole matter. Does he not think the Government is putting a very eminent judge in as almost impossible position, I suggest even an improper position, for a judicial review of ministerial responsibility, which should be judged by Parliament alone and a committee of Parliament?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, I have read the terms of reference once today. I am certain that I do not have to read them again to get through to the Hon. Leader of the Opposition.


John Napier Turner: We know the terms. Just give us the answer.


Erik Nielsen: I would hope that that inquiry will look into the justification of the kind of statement made September 9 by the Leader of the Opposition that the House had been "misled by the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance and, indeed, the Governor of the Bank of Canada," and that obvious inside trading in the deposits of the Canadian Commercial Bank before the plug was pulled occurred. That statement was made by the Leader of the Opposition. A few other such wild statements were made. The terms of reference are broad enough to encompass that kind of inquiry. 1 would hope that it is examined.


POWERS OF COMMISSIONER
John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, does the hon. gentleman, the Deputy Prime Minister, believe it is the judge's role to review what happens in Parliament? Is Parliament not responsible for the actions of Ministers and for the action of everyone here? Why is that being imposed upon a judge?


Erik Nielsen: It would appear that it is necessary, Mr. Speaker, again, to refer to the words of reference where Mr. Justice Estey is empowered to conduct an examination of all of the circumstances and the factors contributing to the condition of the banks resulting in the cessation of their operations. I do not know how much broader such terms of reference could get, even to satisfy the Leader of the Opposition.


An Hon. Member:: What are you trying to hide, John?
October 1, 1985


EXAMINATION OF MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister for the first time, in reply to questions on the terms of reference, has said he would like statements of the Leader of the Opposition examined. Will he now stand up and say categorically that he wants the ministerial responsibility in these cases examined as well? Will he come clean on that?


Erik Nielsen: Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, I was reminded in answering a question from the Hon. Member for Comox-Powell River of a citation from Through the Looking Glass. I cannot help but make the analogy of Tweedledum and Tweed-ledee here today with respect to this kind of question.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: I just say categorically to the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker, that he is being a complete and utter phoney in this, and he knows it.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


An Hon. Member:: You are as bad as Johnston.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mickey Mouse the second.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I think the Hon. for Oshawa knows that that language is improper.


An Hon. Member:: Ed, you are the phoney.


REQUEST THAT ROLE OF MINISTERS BE EXAMINED
John Edward Broadbent: My last supplementary, Mr. Speaker, is to the Deputy Prime Minister.


Charles Joseph Clark: Stand up and make another innuendo.


John Edward Broadbent: Having said that he wants the role of the Leader of the Opposition examined, will he have the consistency and the integrity to say that the role of the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister ought to be examined as well? That is the question.


Erik Nielsen: Nothing, Sir, could more pointedly-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Edward Broadbent: Right.


Mr. Chretien:: Erik is losing his nerve.


Erik Nielsen: -demonstrate the need for a commission of inquiry by Mr. Justice Estey than this sort of question.
Oral Questions
With respect to the definition of my character by the hon. gentleman as being a phoney, I can only say that, unlike him, 1 am not the real one.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


APARTHEID
Mr. Barry Turner (Ottawa-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. As you know, Sir, many prominent South African businessmen are calling upon the South African Government to move, and to move very quickly, to break down the barriers of apartheid. Does the Minister feel that the course the Government of Canada has set for its sanctions is still the right one, and does he feel that it is working?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I think all Members of this House are encouraged by the increasing degree to which members of the business community in South Africa are exerting their influence to try to achieve a change in the repugnant apartheid policies of that Government.


An Hon. Member:: You are losing money.


Charles Joseph Clark: Obviously, movements by the business community are only one step, albeit an important one. What we will continue to judge is whether or not there will be action by the Government of South Africa itself. In those circumstances I think it is very important the Government of South Africa understand that the Government of Canada will, if left with no alternatives, resort to the kind of sanctions I outlined in my statement in this House earlier this month.


BANKS AND BANKING
Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, following on the answers or non-answers given by the Deputy Prime Minister, 1 want to ask him for the assurance that the Government, facing the Commission of Inquiry, will not claim Cabinet confidentiality, and that the advice given to Ministers by the Governor of the Bank of Canada, the advice given to Ministers by the Inspector General of Banks, and these frequent consultations, about which the Minister of State for Finance has talked, between herself, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance-all this information-will be available to the Commissioner of Inquiry?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, I am really surprised at that

October 1, 1985
Point of Order-Mr. Gray (Windsor West)
kind of question coming from a former Solicitor General because he knows, as well as I do, that it would be most inappropriate, if not improper-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Erik Nielsen: -to proscribe in any way the conduct of the inquiry by Mr. Justice Estey. Maybe he does not have faith in Mr. Justice Estey, but I certainly do, and we on the Government side of the House certainly do. I would ask him, having been part of the administration of justice, to allow it to take its course within the very broad terms of reference that have been given to Mr. Justice Estey.


CLERK OF PETITIONS' REPORTS
Mr. Speaker:: 1 have the honour to inform the House that the petition presented by the Hon. Member for Vancouver East (Ms. Mitchell) on Monday, September 30, 1985, meets the requirements of the Standing Orders as to form.
I am in receipt of a request to raise a point of order from the Hon. Member for Windsor West (Mr. Gray).



POINT OF ORDER


Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, during the Question Period, the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Nielsen), in answering a question from the Hon. Member for Comox-Powell River (Mr. Skelly), used the word "scurrilous" in referring both to the Hon. Member's question and to the Hon. Member himself.
However, Mr. Speaker, if you look at page 110 of Beau-chesne's Fifth Edition, Citation 320, you will find that the word "scurrilous" has been the subject of a ruling in 1930 to the effect that that word is unparliamentary. Therefore, pursuant to Citation 323 of Beauchesne's, I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to call upon the Deputy Prime Minister to withdraw that offending and offensive word.


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, it is comforting to know how quickly the Liberal House Leader comes to the rescue of the NDP Member, but-


Lloyd Axworthy: Of Parliament.


Mr. Gauthier:: Of Parliament.


Mr.   de Corneille@: Of the House.


Erik Nielsen: -I have no hesitation in withdrawing the word "scurrilous" and substituting therefor the word "rancid".


Mr. Speaker:: I suggest to Hon. Members that my difficulty at the time was that the deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Nielsen) said: "the question and its source", and 1 did not know in fact whether he meant the Hon. Member or someone else or an outsider, or I would have intervened immediately. However, I will take that as a retraction; I think it was intended as such.


Ms. Copps:: There was no retraction.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Comox Powell River (Mr. Skelly).


John V. Nunziata: That was not an unequivocal withdrawal.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for York South-Weston (Mr. Nunziata) is hardly in a position to talk to me about what is an unequivocal withdrawal.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John V. Nunziata: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Comox-Powell River.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, l rise on the same point of order. It was with some misgiving that I heard the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Nielsen) use the kind of term that he did in the House in reference to the source of my question today. I think it was just in a moment of pique that he did it and 1 would be more than prepared to forgive him, knowing that the basic question was true and that he did not have an answer for it.


An Hon. Member:: Pick?


Mr. Speaker:: I take it the Hon. Member meant "pique"; it is a golf term. The Hon. Member for York South-Weston (Mr. Nunziata)-


Sheila Maureen Copps: Who is a scumbag?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Sheila Maureen Copps: The Hon. Member just called us a scumbag.


An Hon. Member:: Maggot.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Mr. Rossi:: Look at the sheep behind you.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The language continues to deteriorate in this place, on all sides.


Carlo Rossi: He is a phoney.


Mr. Speaker:: I invite all Hon. Members-and may I use this phrase one more time-to remember who we are, who put us here, and where we are.
October 1, 1985


PRIVILEGE
John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, after the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Nielsen) had spoken, I stated that it was not an unequivocal retraction in respect of his words. You replied that I am hardly one to talk about unequivocal retraction. Mr. Speaker, I would ask you to stand in your place right now and explain to the House-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John V. Nunziata: -and to my constituents what you meant by that.


Mr. Speaker:: Gladly.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: I meant that Hon. Members throughout the House should know that the tradition is to withdraw unequivocally. There has been, to my knowledge, only one occasion in the House when an Hon. Member has withdrawn a statement unequivocally in my presence, only one. It was not the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Nielsen) today, nor was it the Hon. Member for York South-Weston when it was his turn. It has happened once. It was made by the Right Hon. Member for Yellowhead (Mr. Clark) in my presence. That, to my knowledge, was the single unequivocal withdrawal.
The Hon. Member for York South-Weston asks what I was trying to get at. I will tell him what I was trying to get at. Every Member should know that withdrawals should be unequivocal. When one Member does not do it properly, it is surely wrong for that Member to say about another Member that that Member is doing it improperly. That is what I meant.


John V. Nunziata: A point of privilege, Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for York South-Weston claims a point of privilege. What is the Member's question?


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, I am repeating my point of privilege. You indicated that I am hardly one to speak about retracting unequivocally, and I want an explanation of what you meant by that, with specifics, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member, I take it, is not raising a question of privilege. He wishes an explanation of what I meant. I invite him to chambers, as I have before.


John V. Nunziata: You made the statement in the House; you should explain it in the House.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member will resume his seat.


John V. Nunziata: You made the statement here-


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member will resume his seat. I thought, with respect, that my comment in the beginning, whether it is true or not, was inappropriate. I say that to the Member, but I also say to him that he on one occasion made a
Petitions
withdrawal in here, and he knows my views, because he has had them from me in private, as to whether that was an unequivocal withdrawal.


Sheila Maureen Copps: That is not relevant.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Hamilton East (Ms. Copps) says that that is not relevant. The Deputy Prime Minister made a withdrawal that I suggest, if the Hon. Member for Hamilton East checks the record, was just as unequivocal as that of the Hon. Member for York South-Weston.


An Hon. Member:: Well, get though on him, then.


Sheila Maureen Copps: You are ruling on this point.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Hamilton East wants to tell me my job? My job is to decide whether there was a question of privilege-


Carlo Rossi: They get away with everything.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The Hon. Member for York South-Weston claims a question of privilege. He has yet to present to me a question of privilege. I therefore find that he does not have a question of privilege.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Pat Nowlan (Annapolis Valley-Hants):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Transport, in both official languages.
[Editor's Note: For above report, see today's Votes and Proceedings.]


PETITIONS
Margaret Anne Mitchell: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition from the Ottawa Council for Low Income Support Services which represents many low-income mothers across Canada. They ask the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) to restore full indexation to the family allowance and child tax credit. This budget measure will take away $55 million in family benefits by 1987.


Mr. Neil Young (Beaches):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition from petitioners who state that the deindexation of the universal family allowance is an unfair

October 1, 1985
Petitions
attack on women and families. They further state that the attack will not be offset by changes to the child tax credit, and that other tax increases in the May Budget will place an unfair burden upon low and middle-income earners. They ask that the House rescind all those measures.


Stanley J. Hovdebo: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present to the House a petition signed by people from every province, from many cities all the way from St. John's to Victoria. They, the undersigned, humbly pray and call upon the House of Commons to reinstate full indexation of the universal family allowance and to rescind unfair tax increases.


Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Mr. Speaker, I too have a petition to present signed by women from across this country who are most outraged by the cut-backs with respect to family allowance and the effect of increases in taxation on families. They call upon this Government to reverse its course of action and to be faithful to the promises that were made during the election campaign.


Abram Ernest Epp: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. 1 have the honour to present two different petitions. The first is signed by persons across the country resident at various points in the Provinces of Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia protesting the plans of the Government to deindex the family allowance and stating particularly that that is a sorry contrast to the tax break such as the capital gains holiday which the Government is also proposing, and praying Parliament to change that.


Abram Ernest Epp: Mr. Speaker, the second petition is signed by persons resident in the City of Thunder Bay who are very concerned about the very real possibility that the U.S. Congress will take action in legislation soon to be before it against lumber exports.


John Carnell Crosbie: Stick to the rules.


Abram Ernest Epp: The woods industry is of enormous importance in northwestern Ontario as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: May I say something to the House?


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Why not, you have been doing it all day.


Mr. Speaker:: Earlier today, a few minutes ago, I did something that I think is wrong. I lost my temper, and I do not have the right to do that, and I named a specific member and I should not do that. I wish to apologize both to the House and formally in the record to the member.


[Stage Direction]
On the Order: Introduction of Bills:
May 7, 1985-The Minister of Justice-Bill intituled: "An Act to amend the Governor General's Act, the Governor General's Retiring Annuity Act, the Salaries Act and the Judges Act".
Mr. Speaker:: May I ask the Hon. Minister just to suggest that this matter stand?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, I have to move first reading of the Bill today. The information is already out, so rather than standing it I would like to read the title of the Act for you.


Mr. Speaker:: I cannot. My problem is this, that I cannot introduce a Bill without receipt of the Bill. May I suggest therefore that in order to try to expedite matters we will, with the concurrence of the House, revert to this matter within the next 15 minutes or half an hour to give those who have to try to find-the matter must be delivered here or we cannot read it, I am afraid.


John Carnell Crosbie: That would be fine with me if the hon. gentlemen opposite would agree to begin first reading a little later.


Mr. Speaker:: I sense there will be consent later to revert to the Introduction of Bills.


John Carnell Crosbie: They are nice guys.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: You are getting to be like the Liberals.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Speaker:: Agreed?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: Shall all the questions stand?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.
October 1, 1985



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Hnatyshyn that Bill C-74, an Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act to provide for certain matters in relation to the 1981 decennial census, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections.
John Horton McDermid: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I was just winding up my remarks on this particular Bill. There are a number of constituencies in Canada today that are of great size with over 200,000 constituents in each individual riding.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Or 50,000 square miles.


John Horton McDermid: Certainly, there are also very large ones as we know in the northern extremities of our country. We feel that redistribution must take place and that it must get under way and go to committee as quickly as possible.
In listening to the debate today I conclude there is general agreement on the philosophy of the Bill. Although there may be a few technical problems that have to be straightened out, those can be done in committee. I would urge the House to pass as quickly as possible on this Bill because otherwise we will not have the time to plan on the new boundaries and by the next election we will still have our old boundaries. That is going to cause considerable problems for certain constituencies, mine included, which now has close to 200,000 people within its boundaries.
One of the major problems, of course, with that number of people is to serve them properly with the limited staff we are given. So it is important that we get under way with this important work of redistribution as soon as possible. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions or comments? Before I go to debate, is the Minister rising to ask for unanimous consent?


John Carnell Crosbie: Can we revert to the Introduction of Bills?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is that agreed?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.
Representation Act, 1985



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


John Carnell Crosbie: for leave to introduce Bill C-78, an Act to amend the Governor General's Act, the Governor General's Retiring Annuity Act, the Salaries Act and the Judges Act.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Shall the Hon. Minister have leave to introduce the Bill?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


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


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of Bill the motion of Mr. Hnatyshyn that Bill C-74, an Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act to provide for certain matters in relation to the 1981 decennial census, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections.
Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: I want to say a few
words on the Bill introduced by my old friend from Saskatoon, Bill C-74, on redistribution.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Old in ideas.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: I am speaking of chronological age.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: No, it is his ideas that are old.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, I have some concerns about the Bill and, like others in my Party, this morning I would like to see this Bill referred to committee so we can do some real questioning. I want to spend a few minutes this afternoon just talking about the whole process of redistribution in this country and the whole electoral system because I think the whole system probably needs a real overhaul. First, I believe very strongly that we must have representation by population. My colleagues, such as the Hon. Member for Regina West (Mr. Benjamin) who have big ridings, have a point when they say that there must be representation by population in a democratic system. However, in any democratic system, we also need

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Representation Act, 1985
representation by region or geography. Those are the two conflicting principles that we have not quite resolved.
The American system has resolved this conflict. In the American Senate, every state, regardless of its size, has two Senators. Whether it is Rhode Island or California, North Dakota or New York, they all have two Senators, so there is representation by region in the Senate of the United States. A small state, through the electoral process, is able to elect Senators to the American Senate and that state then has as much clout as a larger state. We do not have a system like that in this country.
First, in Canada we have an appointed Senate. I think that is a tremendous slight on our democratic image. It is a throwback to a couple of hundred years ago. The Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) can appoint any of his pals as Senators until the age of 75. This is supposed to be a democratic country. Most Canadians would like to see the Senate as it exists now abolished. If we do keep a second Chamber, we should have it as an elected body so that the people can vote for those who sit in the other place.
I would like to suggest this afternoon that we send this matter to the committee and discuss issues other than the addition of six seats, something that merely delays the ultimate decision and is like putting a band-aid on a wooden leg. It does not resolve anything. Let us have a really good discussion in committee about the kind of representation we wish to have. There are a great many new Members of all Parties in the House of Commons. I think now is a good time to make a break with the past.
My colleague, the Hon. Member for Regina West, sat on a special committee of this House on redistribution in 1969-70. Back in those days, we kept trying to solve the problem of representation by population and representation by region by adding Member after Member. This place is growing like Topsy. We have gone from 265 Members to 284 Members. The next proposition is to have 290 Members. Soon we will have over 300 Members. I suggest that that does not solve the problem. It simply makes this place more bureaucratic, expensive and frustrating.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Where are you going to put them all?


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: My friend asks where we would put them all. At that time it was suggested that we take out the back doors, knock down the end wall and add another 50 or 60 seats. Another suggestion was to take down the curtains and put in two extra rows, or to do like the British House in which there is not a seat for each individual Member. Benji and I could use the same seat. One day I would use it, and the next day he would use it.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Oh, no.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: I do not think that that is the way we want to go. That is certainly not the way I want to go.


Mr. Gormley:: I'll take Benjamin.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: That would not help the small provinces. Saskatchewan now has 14 Members in a House with approximately 280 seats. It would not make any difference if we had 20 Members in a House with approximately 400 seats. We would have no more clout. We would simply spend a lot more money and make the system more bureaucratic. We would slow down the entire process and increase the frustration of Members.
I would argue that we need to look at the entire system. We should try to come up with a system that recognizes representation by population on the one hand and representation by region or geography on the other. We may, for example, decide that we ought to have rep by pop in this Chamber and have rep by region in another elected chamber, a chamber with equal representation from all provinces. This would reflect the wishes of people at the provincial level. Each province would have a certain number of Senators. That way, we could have a melding of rep by pop with rep by region or geography. I think it is very important that we do that.
The present system will become very distorted, bulky and cumbersome. The electoral boundaries map proposed by the former Parliament contains some very strange looking ridings. In Saskatchewan, for example, there are now two urban seats in Regina and two urban seats in the City of Saskatoon, two of which are a little bit rural. Under the new proposition, there will be three seats in the City of Saskatoon and three in the City of Regina, and a few of those seats in each case will be almost half urban and half rural. The proposed new riding of Regina East, for example, will be about 50 per cent urban and 50 per cent rural. Those who live in rural areas have nothing in common with people who live in the cities. We get these strange boundaries because of the kind of system we have.
As well, there are all kinds of unique situations in this country. Labrador, for example, is an entity by itself and is different. Perhaps we should have a seat for Labrador. I know my colleagues from northern Ontario will be speaking later on about the uniqueness of their region. Their concern is that if we go strictly for rep by pop, there will be a loss of seats in the northern part of the Province of Ontario. There is also the unique factor of Quebec and Francophone Canada and the need for a protection of representation for Francophone Canadians. The same thing is true, of course, of native Canadians.
My main purpose in rising today is to suggest to my colleagues that we not do this on a piecemeal basis by adding two seats to Ontario, two seats to British Columbia and two seats to Alberta. Rather, we should refer this entire matter to the committee so that it can look at the whole process of representation and try to meld together rep by pop and rep by geography.
Right now there is discontent in various parts of the country. People feel alienated and left out of the system. There have been western separatist movements and unrest in Quebec. There has been alienation felt by native people and those in northern Ontario. I think we must look at the system in terms of trying to protect those differences.
October 1, 1985

Another point I would like to make is that there is a difference between rural and urban ridings. Urban Canada, and particularly the suburban ridings, can be a homogeneous community composed of people with very similar problems. Many Hon. Members say that that is not so because every individual has a different problem. However, in a rural riding like mine, there are 60 communities, eight Indian reserves and tens of thousands of square kilometres. There are radical cultural differences between one end of the riding and the other. It makes it rather unfair for those who represent rural ridings. If there were a melding of rep by geography and rep by pop, those differences would not be as important. Members with huge, sprawling rural ridings would be allowed extra staff or an extra allowance or whatever it would take to represent the riding adequately. That is not done today except in the case of seats in the Far North.
I suppose one could go on to mention a number of other things that are very important in terms of representation but I would like to stop here and make an appeal. We live in a great country with much diversity between regions and provinces. Rather than adding a few seats every now and then, perhaps we ought to postpone this entire process until the 1991 census, at which time we could make a general proposition that will change the entire system to make it more reflective of what Canadians really want. The Americans and the Swiss have accomplished this. We may not necessarily want to take those routes. Perhaps we would like to have one chamber with the melding of the two systems right here. Perhaps we could have a constitutional floor for the smaller provinces so that in Saskatchewan, for example, no matter what the population would be, there would still be 14 Members. Members from Toronto and Montreal might have twice as many electors as we have. Perhaps that is the way we will go. However, by not analysing and studying the whole thing, all we are doing is postponing making a decision and we could stumble right back into the old decision, which was to keep adding 30, 40 or 50 members after every census. I believe that is going the wrong way and making it a much more costly, complicated, bureaucratic and frustrating chamber in which to represent the people of Canada.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions or comments? Debate.


Bill Attewell: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a few comments about Bill C-74. It is a Bill of which I am very supportive. Canadians do not want to see Government grow larger and larger.


Don Boudria: Like the Prime Minister's office, by 57 per cent.


Bill Attewell: The people to whom I speak want us to be more responsible in our deliberations. 1 do not think we have to reinvent the wheel on this process. We can benefit a lot from history and I compliment the people who have spent hours and hours coming up with these final recommendations.
Representation Act, 1985
Rather than the House jumping in size from 282 Members to 310 Members, there is a suggesiton for six additional members. I submit that that will go a long way in alleviating a number of very large ridings such as the riding of my colleague, the Hon. Member for York-Scarborough (Mr. McCrossan), which is of a very punishing size. There are over a quarter of a million people to serve. My own riding of Don Valley East is well above the average.
In this, the computer age, when each Member of Parliament has advanced telephone equipment, I believe we can reach the people of our ridings in a satisfactory manner. We do not have to keep expanding and, as someone suggested, start to move out the walls of this House of Commons. Canadians do not want that. They want us to serve in a responsible way. However, cost savings do not start somewhere else. I feel they start with the thinking of Hon. Members right in this House. There has been some suggestion that the amounts involved are not significant. They are significant, Mr. Speaker. Many, many millions of dollars will be involved over the coming years. If we are to act in a responsible way, we should be considering that.
In summary, may I say that I support the legislation. It is not a perfect system, but we could spend 10 years trying to get a "so-called" perfect system. I recognize the uniqueness of a number of ridings. The legislation does give more flexibility and, very importantly, it does help a number of very specific ridings where the burden is too heavy by dividing them to that we can serve Canadians to the best of our talents and skills. Also it will be at a much lower cost than the original proposal. It will mean tens of millions of dollars less over the coming years.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions or comments? Debate.


Mr. John Parry (Kenora-Rainy River):: Mr. Speaker, in addressing the questions posed by Bill C-74, I would like to, first, go back a little in the history of redistribution and, indeed, on the idea of proportional representation. Obviously the idea of proportional representation within a democratic system has been around for a number of centuries. However, it is equally evident that the population shifts and changes in balance of population which necessitated redistribution were not evident in the then very few democratic societies until the time of the industrial revolution.
I believe that while we can fairly state that both the American and French revolutions were founded in the initial structuring of their democratic chambers on proportional representation, the first serious effort at redistribution took place in the United Kingdom during the reform period in the 1840s, I believe-


Abram Ernest Epp: Eighteen thirty-two.


John Edmund Parry: My colleague tells me it was 1832, and I thank him for the correction. The pre-reformed Parliament of the United Kingdom was characterized by vast differences in representation, not only in terms of quality, obviously, but also

October 1, 1985
Representation Act, 1985
in terms of the area and the population represented by an individual Member of Parliament. It was said in those days that there were some Members of Parliament who literally had no constituents. The Borough of Higham Ferrers was frequently mentioned as being almost entirely depopulated yet still having two Members of Parliament to represent it. In those times they had this archaic mechanism, which one would hope, of course, never to see perpetuated in this day and age, of a two-Member constituency. Therefore, Higham Ferrers, with very few people, was electing two Members to the House of Commons as were, indeed, many heavily populated boroughs and parts of the City of London.
There were also, interestingly enough, seats established for the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, another precedent which perhaps we would not want to see repeated in this day and age. The debate in those times was the degreee to which Members should represent equal population units within the country, equal numbers of people. Of course, there were those at that time who spoke out against redistribution on the grounds that it was best to play it safe and stick with what tradition and history had hallowed and sanctioned, that there was no advantage to be gained in having Members of Parliament actually represent people, let alone the same number of people.
Moving through history, we can see the sad tale of the redrawing of constituencies to suit the narrow political interests of a single Party, always, of course, the Party in power. It was said that a type of press conference, a public meeting was held in one of the southern states of what is now the United States-I forget which one it was-and someone pointed to the map and said to Governor Gerry, "But this. Sir, looks like salamander". He replied, "No, sir, that is a gerrymander". So the term "gerrymandering" passed into the language.
I am glad to see that we are not today confronted by a situation of gerrymandering or Rotten boroughs, however much some of us may feel that some boundary changes do not reflect community reality or the sense of the constituency which had grown up in the area. Rather, we are faced with the overhauling-and, I dare say, it is not exactly overhauling but more tinkering-of a typical Canadian practice in which inequities have been reduced but then left unattended with the obvious result that inequities of a new and different nature creep in and are then themselves institutionalized and hallowed by tradition.
I believe there are a number of examples in the present representations in Canada which I would like to speak about. Perhaps, first, I should say that I believe that what we are engaged in today, and what I hope the committee will take very seriously, is a task of great gravity and significance and one which should be accorded due attention, for it is nothing more or less than the maintenance function in our democratic system. It is said that one can have the greatest architect in the world, the most beautiful and most technically elegant design, but none of it is any good unless there is a plumber around to fix the pipes. That is a paradigm of which we should be very cognizant. In a sense we are in the position of the plumber who
has to fix a little more than the pipes. It is rather more significant and we should devote our attention to that maintenance task with a full appreciation of the gravity it entails.
What is it, Mr. Speaker, that really governs the divisions of our constituencies as they exist today? I am afraid to say it appears that the number one determinant of those constituency demarcations is that of history; where the population was in the past, sometimes 100 years ago. I am also afraid to say that the Canadian tradition of gradualism has led to some areas of the country being grossly under-represented. 1 am afraid to say, also, that in the drawing of constituency boundaries great attention has been paid to lines of latitude and longitude and very little to lines of communciation, be they physical or cultural. Some attention has indeed been paid to geography but I suggest that the weight given to geography is such, and done in such an unsystematic fashion, that it does not fundamentally serve to recognize the effect of geography on the nature and quality of the representation that Members of Parliament are able to give their constituents.
There are several examples which I would like to draw out and, lest I be accused of favouritism or merely priming the parish pump in my own constituency, I would start with the City of Scarborough and its federal ridings. I acknowledge that the people in that burgeoning suburban area of Metropolitan Toronto are indeed under-represented when we see the number of electors who elect a single representative in that area. In revising our system of representation we should be taking into account the very real and legitimate concern of citizens of places like Scarborough and adjust boundaries and allocations of representation accordingly. We should also look at the example of the Northwest Territories where we have enormous geographic areas, where either of two constituencies is capable of encompassing the same geographical area as perhaps 150 of the smaller constituencies. The population is culturally and ethnically very different from the majority of Canadians in the provinces. It is not my purpose to say that, because each of the constituencies in the Northwest Territories encompasses far fewer people than the average constituency in the provinces, we should be reducing the number of seats in that area. I think the problems of geography and communications, and the differences in culture, must be adequately recognizes by our system. Let us bear in mind, after all, that the number involved are not of an excessive order of magnitude in my interpretation, being something in the order of three or four to one. I would also like to take the example of Prince Edward Island. That province is a place, and the Islanders a people, which I cannot praise highly enough. I spent my first Canadian holiday ever in Prince Edward Island and enjoyed it greatly. Yet we must question the provisions which fix the representation of that province to a number of people per constituency which is almost exactly the same as the number in the Northwest Territories.
Redistribution must not be a process which swims against trends. It must be a process which follows trends but with a reasoned gait, a measure of caution, and a step which does not
October 1, 1985

either overly weight the past or overly discount the visible trends going into the future.
I would like to also turn to my own constituency and instance the problems of an area which is slightly larger than Germany, that is both the Federal and the Democratic republics put together, and which has 110 communities spread out over most of the area, not all concentrated in one single part.
I, or indeed anyone else who represented that constituency, would be physically incapable of providing the sort of representation that every Canadian ought to enjoy and which should be extended to a number of communities, more than 20, which have no road access. I feel in a sense a prisoner of the present system's not taking into account the geography of this country, not taking into account the difficulties of transportation and communication, and above all, in that context, not taking into account the very special and unique situation of the first peoples of this country with a cultural tradition which is very much under threat-not under deliberate attack but nevertheless under threat-by the majority trends in our society. I believe that just as is done in the Northwest Territories, the boundaries of constituencies ought very much to take account of the differences between people. Where there are obvious identifiable ethnic groups, that should be something that is taken into account in the drawing of constituencies. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The Nishnawbe-Aski Nation, as the Cree and Ojibway people of northern Ontario in my constituency are known, are sliced by those lines of longitude up and down the map. There is no relation to geography, no relation to tradition, culture or the traditional or present day economies of the area. They are divided between four constituencies and thus is their collective interest and political voice muted in the conduct of the affairs of this nation. I am afraid to say that is not the only instance where tradition and culture and geography have been ignored in the formulation of constituency boundaries. In reference to that 1 would like to congratulate my friend, the Hon. Member for Algoma (Mr. Foster), on the introduction of his Bill which proposed to fix the representation of northern Ontario at the number of ridings it has today rather than lose ridings in an area which is so vast and so hard to represent because of an internal redistribution process within the Province of Ontario.
It is a phenomenon of the democratic process that only when a certain mass of support or pressure gets behind an issue is there really a serious examination of that issue. I would suggest that in examining the issue of redistribution we should also examine some connected and related issues. It has been suggested that there would be a considerable financial saving by limiting the expansion of this House. I, for one, am not one to advocate an extension of the House except at the most modest pace because I do not believe that a new varnish of additional layers of Members at every general election will obscure some of the flaws presently inherent in the system. I would rather see us do with approximately the number of Members we have today. However, we also have other entrenched formulas which would appear to compel the increase in the House. One of these, of course, is the relation
Representation Act, 1985
postulated between the number of seats in this House on a province-by-province basis, and the number of seats in the Senate. I am sure you, Mr. Speaker, would not be surprised to hear me say that the best way to get out of that particular dilemma would be to abolish the Senate. I have observed in this House, and in many other places, that that is not a democratic institution but an anti-democratic institution functioning at the heart of an otherwise democratic society. My belief is that if the saving of money is an objective, the saving by abolishing the Senate would be twenty times what the addition of six seats to this House would cost. Therefore, that question should also be brought before the committee when this Bill is referred to it.
I would like to go on at some length about the principles which underlie representation by population and I can see, Sir, that you are only too willing to hear me, even if others might not be. However, I will content myself with these final observations. When this Bill comes to committee there is a far larger number of factors which need to be considered than have been postulated by the Government side. The process of consideration should be undertaken in a far more serious and effective fashion than seems to be predicated.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions or comments?
There being no questions or comments, I recognize the Hon. Member for York-Scarborough (Mr. McCrossan) on debate.


Mr. W. Paul McCrossan (York-Scarborough):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today because I think this issue is one of very serious concern to my constituents. My riding of York-Scarborough is so well known that three of the last four speakers have referred to it as being the most populous riding in the country. It has been the most populous riding in the country for approximately 30 years even though we have had roughly three redistributions. It would remain the most populous riding in the country under the redistribution which was proposed in the last Parliament. This points out certain problems which I believe are addressed in this Bill in a positive way. I would like to indicate my support for the Bill because I think that, for the first time, we see a hint of something which will make the redistribution process fair for those people who live in the rapidly expanding suburbs of our country, particularly Metro Toronto.
The Bill as proposed does two things which I support. First, it slows down the rate of growth of the House which should have a considerable effect in savings. At the same time it offers protection to certain regions of the country in two different forms. There is protection for provinces such as Prince Edward Island, for the northern areas of the country, and for the Northwest Territories under Clause 2 of the Bill which says that the number of representatives of any area shall not decline. Clause 6 of the Bill states that special consideration shall be taken of northern and very large, sparsely populated regions in drawing up the electoral boundaries. For the first time, in Clause 6 there is also a provision that in

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drawing the boundaries the commissioners should try to take steps to ensure that each electoral district in the province remains more or less within the 25 per cent average of the province. It is that particular part of the Bill which I feel is the most important part for the rapidly expanding areas, and one which I endorse whole-heartedly.
As an example, when my riding was redistributed in 1978 it was, as I mentioned, the largest riding in the country. At that time there were roughly 155,000 voters and a population of nearly 300,000. That is about 12 times the size of the smallest riding. That riding was divided into the ridings of Don Valley East, Scarborough Centre and York-Scarborough. From the 1979 summer election to the 1980 winter election, a brief period of nine months, the remaining part of York-Scarbor-ough increased by 9,000 voters, a thousands voters a month. The riding of York-Scarborough now has almost 50,000 more voters than it had when it was first created.
The direction to the commissioners to take into account the trends in growth in various areas of Canada to try to ensure that each riding remains within the limit for the ten-year period is very important. If such a limit had existed at the last redistribution, they would not have lumped all of the remaining farmland in Metropolitan Toronto into my riding. They could not have conceivably done it. They could not have set up the ridings of Brampton-Georgetown, York North, or Mississauga North, the other three ridings in the country which have over 100,000 voters. The average riding has close to 40,000 voters. The ridings which I just mentioned were all growing very rapidly. That was known at the time redistribution came into effect in 1978, yet there was no direction whatsoever to the commissioners to take account of anything other than the numbers of the 1971 census or indeed, this time, the numbers of the 1981 census. It is because that particular provision gives direction to the commissioners that I feel this Bill deserves the support of the House. It will rectify a very serious inequity which has existed in my region of the country for many, many years.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Are there questions or comments on the Hon. Member's speech? There being no questions, I recognize the Hon. Member for Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands (Mr. Manly).


Mr. Jim Manly (Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak on Bill C-74 which amends our Constitution with regard to the redistribution formula. I am very concerned, both as a Canadian and as a British Columbian, about the effects of this Bill. As a Canadian I see Bill C-74 as one more step away from the principle of representation by population. As a British Columbian I am very concerned that the historical imbalance in our representation in the House of Commons will not only continue, but will be made worse.
Bill C-74 victimizes the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta and, to a lesser extent, the Province of Ontario. The Province of Ontario is victimized to a lesser extent because at the present, on the basis of the 1981 census, it takes a smaller
population in Ontario to elect a Member to the House of Commons than it does in British Columbia or Alberta. This will have a lesser effect on the Province of Ontario because our national political life is already dominated by the Province of Ontario which holds 95 seats and the Province of Quebec which holds 75 seats. The two western provinces, which have had population growth in the last few decades, have not had that kind of clout in the House of Commons. The introduction of this Bill, which restricts the rate at whch they will be able to attain proper representation, directly penalizes the voters of those two provinces.
Redistribution is always a rough tool with which to try to provide some equity of representation in a country such as Canada which has constant population shifts. The population of one area grows while that of another declines or remains static. The machinery for redistribution has always been rather cumbersome and redistribution has, therefore, always been seven or eight years behind the population growth and the census which reports on it. For example, the 1971 census showed very clearly that there should be increased representation for the Province of British Columbia but that was not taken into account in the House of Commons in the 1972 or 1974 elections. It was not until 1979, eight years after the census, that British Columbia had the increase in the number of Members of Parliament that the 1971 census indicated we were entitled to have. What was only a lag in previous provisions for redistribution will now become a permanent disability. Provinces like British Columbia are being made victims of previous agreements made to be generous to some of the smaller provinces.
Bill C-74 enshrines those provisions in our Constitution. It enshrines the doctrine that no province will, ever have a decrease in the number of MPs, no matter what population shift might take place. This is a very generous provision that is made to some of the provinces that suffer from population decreases or have a fairly stable population growth. However, it works directly against the interests of provinces like British Columbia and Alberta which have suffered historic discrimination in the whole question of representation in the House of Commons.
When the doctrine that no province should ever suffer a decrease in its representation in the House of Commons takes precedence over the principle that there should be some equity in the representation that different parts of the country have in the House of Commons, then we have moved very far from the basic principles of democracy. The reason we have moved from that principle is that the Government has decided that it does not want a dramatic increase in the number of seats for Members of Parliament. It says that it will be too expensive. Other Members from our Party have pointed out that if the Government is really concerned about the expense of operating the Parliament of Canada, there should be some fundamental reform. The Hon. House Leader himself knows that what needs to be done is to abolish the Senate.
October 1, 1985

The previous redistribution formula tried to protect the historical number of MPs from some of the smaller provinces and to provide increased representation for provinces that had population growth. However, it was only able to do that by increasing the number of Members of Parliament as a whole. Now, the Government says that we cannot increase the number of Members of Parliament as a whole and, as a result, the entire move toward greater equality in terms of representation suffers.
In any conflict between these two doctrines-the doctrine of equality of representation and the doctrine that no province should ever lose the number of seats that it already has in the House of Commons-I believe that the doctrine of equality of representation should be paramount. However, Bill C-74 reverses that and the doctrine of equality of representation has lost out to the doctrine that no province should ever lose the number of MPs it presently has. During his speech, the Government House Leader said that it represented a typical Canadian compromise. Perhaps it is a typical Canadian compromise but democracy will still be the loser from this compromise. The long-term cumulative effects will hurt and further distort the social, economic and political union of Canada.
I do not think it can be said that somehow the population size is balanced by the geographic size of the different ridings because that is simply not the case. Let me present a dramatic example from the Province of British Columbia-the riding of Skeena. It is the largest riding in British Columbia in terms of geography and the tenth largest riding in Canada. It has 253,472 square kilometres, which is almost twice the combined size of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. There are 64 different communities in the riding of Skeena, all of which have diverse problems. Apart from major centres such as Prince Rupert, Terrace, Kitimat and Smithers, the riding of Skeena has a number of Indian villages, some of which are extremely isolated. The riding consists of isolated light houses, logging camps, mining towns and isolated ranches.
Many of these areas can only be reached by boat or charter plane. Some of these communities must be reached by the Member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton) travelling into the Yukon and then back down into British Columbia. Obviously, it is difficult to serve this riding which covers an area which is almost twice the size of Provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island combined.
In terms of population, Skeena is the second smallest riding in British Columbia with 75,509 people, 40,000 of whom are voters. Skeena, with its huge and difficult geographical area, had a larger population than 6 of 11 seats in Nova Scotia; 7 of 10 seats in New Brunswick; a larger population than all 4 seats in Prince Edward Island, 9 out of 14 seats in Manitoba; 11 out of 14 seats in Saskatchewan and 24 of 75 seats in Quebec. Skeena has a larger population than six urban Montreal ridings and a larger population than four Toronto ridings. This illustrates the kind of imbalance which exists in the present system of redistribution.
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Comox-Powell River is another British Columbia riding with abundant geography. Many of the communities must be reached by boat and plane. It comprises 84,664 square kilometres which makes it larger than either Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. Yet Comox-Powell River, in its 1981 population, had 121,000 people. It is much larger than the Canadian average.
Therefore, we must ask how people in ridings like this, that are difficult to reach in the First place and difficult to travel within, can be expected to have some equality of service and access compared with downtown Montreal or Toronto ridings, some of which have populations that are less than two-thirds of the population of the riding of Comox-Powell River.
I want to stress that this is not a partisan issue. The riding of Cariboo-Chilcotin, held by a very respected Conservative Member of the House, has 111,474 square kilometres and a population of 85,000. The ridings of Kootenay East-Revel-stoke, Prince George-Bulkley Valley and Prince George-Peace River all are huge ridings that have populations of over 80,000. Again, I compare those ridings comprising huge areas with some of the ridings that have much smaller areas and populations in other provinces of Canada.
There is a different problem with respect to the suburbs. The riding of Surrey-White Rock-North Delta has the largest population in British Columbia, with 137,642 according to the 1981 census. Four other suburban ridings-Mission-Port Moody, North Vancouver-Burnaby, Richmond-South Delta and Fraser Valley West have populations of over 120,000.
There is a similar situation in Alberta where there are 21 ridings with an average population of over 100,000. This is not fair when one compares it with the situation inother provinces. Calgary East has a population of 155,450, according to the 1981 census. Calgary South has a population of 140,677; Edmonton North has a population of 127,931 and Pembina has a population of 138,712. I expect to hear from some of the Alberta Conservatives speaking out on this issue. I think it is of great concern to them as I know it is to you, Mr. Speaker.
I do not believe we can deal with this kind of a problem in a patchwork fasion. We need to make a decision on principle. I suggest if Members on all sides of the House sit down and think about the principles involved, they will agree that the first one should be fairness in representation in accordance with shifts in population. Once wy accept this first principle, we can, if we want, accept a secondary principle, namely, that within reasonable limits no province should suffer a decrease in the number of Members of Parliament who represent it.
In accepting that secondary principle, we must realize we need to increase the total number of Members of Parliament, otherwise we will end up protecting a secondary principle at the expense of a first principle. I find this unacceptable. Unfortunately that is what Bill C-74 does and I find Bill C-74 unacceptable. I hope the Government will take a hard look at this whole question of principles when we look at this Bill in committee.

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Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the Hon. Member on his speech and the feeling he described about some of these very large constituencies. It is very difficult for any Members to serve constituents of such large ridings.
One of the principles we have at the present time in Section 42 of the Constitution of Canada talks about representation by population. This is a modified principle of representation by population that we have used all along. When I say modified, it refers to the base established by the number of Senate seats in any province. Apart from that, we have generally gone with representation by population. The more we see the urbanization of our country, the more we seem to be having problems in that regard. The rural ridings are getting bigger and bigger. The Hon. Member has just described how his constituency is already very large. How does he see reconciling on the one hand representation by population as a system in order to apportion the representation of this House while on the other hand trying to give some kind of a balance whereby we will not end up 20 years down the road with half a dozen members representing two-thirds of the physical land mass? Maybe we will not be quite that far, but we are certainly going in that direction.
In my own case, although my riding is much smaller, at one time in the past there was a Member for Glengarry, a Member for Prescott and a Member for Russell. As you know, Mr. Speaker, I represent all of Prescott, all of Russell, three-quarters of Glengarry and part of Ottawa-Carleton. That shows the shift of population and what is happening. I invite the Hon. Member to comment on that.


James Douglas Manly: Mr. Speaker, the question points to one of the basic problems that any redistribution formula that does justice to Canada will have to look at if we are to depart from the basic formula of representation by population-we have moved a long way from that already-that there should be some basis on which there would be a recognition of geographic area.
As I pointed out in my speech, there is no recognition of that at present. We have a situation where a riding like Skeena, the tenth largest riding in Canada, has a population larger than the population in many ridings, including many urban ridings.
We have the situation of Comox-Powell River which has a very large and difficult area to serve because of the nature of coastal British Columbia. It has a population of over 120,000. In British Columbia, we suffer from having very large areas and from having very large populations. We are very proud of the kind of geography we have but it makes it very difficult to serve. All we are asking for is a little equity. We are not getting that in Bill C-74.


Don Boudria: I am trying to identify in my own mind how we would establish such a system Mr. Speaker. At the present time we have one base which is a representation by populaton. We add a further ingredient, which is the number of Senate seats in one province. Today with this new Bill we have a third form, which is the existing number of seats within a province.
Am I hearing a suggesiton that we should also have another mechanism which recognizes land mass as a form of a base to be incorporated in all of this? I recognize that whoever will be doing the redistribution will have a very complicated formula by the time we get to the end. Nobody said it would be easy. Am I correct that, according to the Member, we should have another form of base; beyond a certain number of square kilometres or square miles that that would guarantee representation as well?


James Douglas Manly: Mr. Speaker, I would appreciate it if the Hon. Member would not try to put words in my mouth.


Don Boudria: I was not doing that.


James Douglas Manly: I was not making that suggestion as part of my basic presentation. I was pointing to the inequity in the present situation, the fact that provinces like British Columbia and Alberta suffer from an historic gap. I said I would be open to the development of some kind of a formula that would take account of geography as well as population. 1 think that whole question has to be looked at very carefully before we opt for it.
The Hon. Member brought forward the very real problem that as we have growth in urban areas resulting in larger and larger populations, we will have a corresponding decrease in the percentage of the population who live in more isolated areas. There has to be some way of looking at that, and I suggested perhaps there could be a formula.
1 am not prepared at this time to suggest what that formula should be or what it should contain. That is something for the committee look at.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 46, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows; the Hon. Member for Trinity (Miss Micholson)-Banks and Banking-Role of chartered banks. (b) Expenditures of taxpayers' money; the Hon. Member for Cape Breton-East Richmond (Mr. Dingwall)-Trade-Proposed EEC tariff on blueberries. (b) Effect on employment in Nova Scotia; the Hon. Member for London East (Mr. Jepson)-Pornography- Request for stronger laws.
October 1, 1985



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Hnatyshyn that Bill C-74, an Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act to provide for certain matters in relation to the 1981 decennial census, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections.
Mr. Brian Tobin (Humber-Port au Port-St. Barbe):: Mr. Speaker, my riding takes in the Humber Valley, a large land mass, a river and a mountain chain which go through the central part of western Newfoundland. That explains Humber. Port-au-Port is a large peninsula unto itself, 200 miles south. St. Barbe refers to the St. Barbe northern peninsula of Newfoundland. It runs about 200 miles north from the Humber Valley. In total, it consists of a land mass of about 500 miles of coastline with some 90,000 souls. That is an accurate description of my riding.
I should like to take this opportunity to support what was said by the previous speaker. In the system of representation which now exists in the Parliament of Canada, there is no recognition or substantial distinction between large rural ridings and urban centres. In my judgment that distinction is not made either in respect of determining electoral boundaries nor in respect of determining Members' services.
We are all Members of Parliament. We all take our responsibilities seriously. We rise in our places to speak and to put forward our views and the views of our constituents. We all have offices. We were all elected by vote. However, that is where the similarity between an urban and rural Member stops. Our system is designed, with slight exception, to provide nearly identical services and resources to all Hon. Members. That system does not recognize the incredible and dramatic difference in the work of and the requirements on a rural Member of Parliament and those of an urban Member of Parliament. It is a serious flaw which leads to unequal service being offered to constituents, depending upon whether they live in downtown Toronto or in Cook's Harbour, on the tip of the great northern peninsula in Newfoundland. That is unfortunate, but it is something with which we can deal with in the Standing Committee on Management and Members' Services.
Bill C-74 proposes to limit or to place, theoretically, some kind of cap on unending growth or increase in the number of members sitting in the House. I can understand that, and I have some sympathy for the fact that there is a limit on how many Members of Parliament can sit in this Chamber, or in any Chamber for that matter, and provide good Government. As the previous speaker suggested, the Bill is flawed in that it contains no recognition of the huge geographic land masses regardless of population which some Hon. Members represent.
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In the previous Bill there was to be an increase in the number of members because the principle of representation by population was acknowledged. However, even that old Bill made no recognition of geographic land mass.
I should like to refer to the situation facing those of us in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The land mass of Labrador exceeds the size of the Island of Newfoundland, the Province of Prince Edward Island, the Province of Nova Scotia and the Province of New Brunswick. This area called "Labrador" does not have its own Member of Parliament. The communities of Labrador are not accessible, except by air, for six months of the year. That land mass and its various communities are not accessible by road any time of the year. At least in the summertime there is air and water transportation. People literally live thousands of miles apart in communities separated by thousands of miles of open tundra and northern terrain. There is no means of contact except by air. The people in this land mass do not even have a single Member of Parliament to represent their interests.
When one considers that to be available in a Labrador community, a Member of Parliament has to fly from Ottawa to Montreal, on to Newfoundland and then to Goose Bay, to pick up a chartered boat to sail up to Nain, one begins to understand the demands on a Member of Parliament serving not only Labrador but a good chunk of the Province of Newfoundland. One also begins to appreciate that the Parliament of Canada has not done justice either to the Member or Parliament or to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador in not recognizing their need for a separate Member of Parliament. The current Member for Grand Falls-White Bay-Labrador (Mr. Rompkey) has been eloquent and persistent, in the interests of the people of Labrador, in suggesting, as the Member of Parliament who currently represents all of Labrador and a good chunk of Newfoundland, that his riding needs to be split, that Labrador needs its own Member of Parliament. Yet, we see absolutely no recognition in Bill C-74 of that huge geographic land mass.
I chuckle when I think about urban ridings. God bless their Members of Parliament; they work hard and their demands are certainly as much as mine. However, I think they are able to do more with their time than I am. I chuckle when I hear them talk about a tough weekend. When I want to return to my riding to meet with the fishermen of Port au Choix who have had a disastrous year, for example, I leave Ottawa at 7.15 in the morning. I leave Montreal at 10.05 and I arrive at Stephenville at 1.30; I jump in a car and I arrive at Port au Choix five hours later, at 6.30, at which point I start my meeting, a meeting for which departed 11 hours earlier. I spend a day travelling to have such a meeting, and it takes me a day to return to Ottawa. If I want to leave Port au Choix and go to Cape St. George, I have to spend another nine hours driving there.
The Government has not attempted in this Bill-and 1 suggest that the previous administration, of which I was a Member, did not attempt it hard enough-to come to grips with the reality of Canada where 25 million people are spread

October 1, 1985
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across the second biggest nation on the face of the earth. If citizenship and if service from Government and from Members of Parliament are to have some degree of equality, no matter where one lives, we in Parliament have to begin to address the nature of Canada. The nature of Canada is not only Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax. Our primary producers do not live in those centres. The people who make their living off the land and from the sea, the people who have dirt under their fingernails, do not live in those centres. God bless the people who do. We in the rural areas envy the amenities which have been provided to them. We as parliamentarians have to do our homework and to take another look at Bill C-74. We have to reach out in all ways and do everything within our power to make Canadians feel that, no matter where they live, they are part of the mainstream and their votes count. We have to make Canadians feel, no matter where they live, that their voice can be heard. We have to make them feel these things by the way we divide political boundaries or constituency boundaries, circonscription, en frangais. This is a bilingual country; I started my French last weekend. I guarantee in six months that I will talk the leg off a brass stove en fran<;ais. We have to begin the process.
I heard an Hon. Member opposite say that I cannot even speak English. That is a frequent complaint made about Newfoundlanders.


Charles Joseph Clark: You made that up.


Brian Vincent Tobin: We may not be very articulate. Although we are people of few words, although we come here with the handicap of being shy and quiet and unable to express ourselves without the benefit of a written speech, we know our duty and we stand and do our best. I see the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark), who sits next to the Hon. Member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie), grinning.


Charles Joseph Clark: With approval.


Brian Vincent Tobin: As I said a few moments ago, I plead with the Government to take another look at the Bill and to give it another shot by bringing in a Bill which recognizes the rural nature of Canada and the huge geographic land masses and how they are currently represented in the Chamber. I do not necessarily disagree with the Government that it may not be wise to proceed with a formula which will result in ever increasing numbers of Members of Parliament sitting in this Chamber after each census.
I accept the concept that if we simply let it go on ad infinitum we can eventually develop a system where we have more Members than are necessary and a cost borne by taxpayers that is not ncessary. As a Member who represents a rural riding I have quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, felt frustrated knowing that I am provided with a budget for a constituency office just like the Hon. Member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Cassidy), for want of a better example, who is provided with a budget for an office for his constituency which is two square miles and
he has his office in the middle of it, when my constituency is 500 square miles. I have my office in the middle of it. I have felt the frustration of knowing that my constituents do not have the same access to their Member as the constituents in Ottawa Centre because they have access to only one office. They might as well be going to Montreal as to try to come to my office to see me from the tip of the great northern peninsula. I have felt the frustration quite frankly of knowing that I have x number of dollars to travel within my riding.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: They could hear you for 500 miles.


Brian Vincent Tobin: That's right, I have to speak loudly so they can hear me, echo off the northern lights. An urban Member has basically the same kinds of provisions to do his work. If we are not going to make the changes in the House of Commons within the formula provided under Members' services to recognize the disparity in requirements between an urban and a rural Member, then certainly we have to make changes within the provisions of the Electoral Act contained in Bill C-74 to recognize the geographic differences in the ridings in this country.
I urge the Government, because I think its Members are well intentioned to this point, to go back, to have another look, to seek advice from the Right Hon. Member for Yellowhead who smiles and nods his head with compassion and understanding-


An Hon. Member:: And leaves.


Brian Vincent Tobin: -and to do the right thing. Mr. Speaker, I can tell by looking at you and I know from your long years in this place and your distinguished record of integrity and compassion and understanding for we poor, young, inexperienced, rural MPs that you have an appreciation for what I am trying to say today. I recommend to the Government House Leader that he confer not only with the Speaker but confer with the Secretary of State for External Affairs and listen to the modest words of wisdom, the plea of desperation spoken on behalf of the people in the large geographic areas and rural areas of this country.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Any questions for the humble Hon. Member for Humber-Port-au-Port-St. Barbe (Mr. Tobin)? Any questions or comments?


Ian Gardiner Waddell: The Hon. Member is so articulate I think if he is ever defeated from this House he could be a good vacuum cleaner salesman.


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


Abram Ernest Epp: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The question before us is Bill C-74 which has to do with the representation of the Canadian people in the House of Commons. The proposal of certain safeguards is designed not to recognize the growth of population in some parts of Canada or the shifts in population which have taken place through the past decade and which were reflected in the 1981 census. It
October 1, 1985

seems to me that the proposal the Government has put before us is pretty clearly a depression proposal. It reflects quite obviously the concern of the Government to avoid expenditure and to undertake desperate measures in order to achieve that.
I am reminded of events of something over a half century ago in the Province of British Columbia, which is one of the provinces which will suffer from the proposal the Government puts forward, which were very much like this. A poor Conservative Premier named Simon Fraser Tolmie was staggering under the burden of Depression problems and he felt sufficiently desperate that he was prepared to consider the advice of a collection of Vancouver businessmen who would tell him how to solve the problems of the province. When this collection of businessmen reported, they had all kinds of drastic measures for balancing the province's budget, as they were convinced in those early days of the 1930s that the very source of the evils under which the people of British Columbia suffered was a budget in deficit. They did not appreciate that it was the falling revenues, on the one hand, resulting from Depression circumstances and the increased costs that produced this deficit situation. They felt that if they could only balance the budget they would save the people of the province.
The Tolmie Government, so convinced of the truth of these principles, which have never been heard of again, listened to this commission of Vancouver businessmen who had proposals for balancing the budget. Those proposals included drastic measures in the educational system of the province including drastic action against the University of British Columbia. For our purposes this afternoon the really interesting proposal was the one to reduce drastically the size of the provincial legislature and see one particular area of expenditure by the provincial Government reduced markedly.
It is a very similar Depression mentality based on similarly primitive economic thinking that the Government has brought before us. We heard this morning from the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Hnatyshyn) a number of arguments for the proposal and I must say in a fairly skillful way-new Members of the House always listen with interest to see what tricks we might learn for passing things off in later years-he had a number of arguments in support of the proposal. One of them was an argument for a more accountable Government and Parliament.
That particular proposition strikes me as quite contradictory to the reality with which the Government has faced us. How it is possible to slow down the legitimate growth or expected growth of the House of Commons and achieve a more accountable House I fail to understand. How it is possible to prevent the people of Canada in the natural increase that occurs and the shifts, the movements of people across the country, how it is possible to force more of them, if you will, to talk to a Member of Parliament and yet achieve a Government that is more accountable, is hare-brained reasoning. It is the kind of argument that this Government will want, I suppose, given 211 Members, numbers it hardly know what to do with in the House, and the conviction it can do anything it likes, and in those circumstances it surely is not necessary for it to add to
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the number of Members of the House of Commons. There are more than adequate to do the job.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: I would not bet on that.


Abram Ernest Epp: As I said, based on the desire to economize, it seems quite contradictory for the Government to suggest that it is going to economize in the area of adding to the number of Members of the House of Commons and consequently hold down somewhat the growth of the salary bill and expense accounts and so on, make savings in those areas and yet begin this new regime by sweeping away millions of dollars spent over the last few years in carrying out the work of redistribution, the work of boundaries commissions, work which was in a state that could have been accepted by the Parliament of Canada quite readily without very much more effort, and obviously without a great deal of expense. That sort of waste by a Government that is anxious about savings strikes me as a second contradiction in what the President of the Privy Council put before us this morning.
Another argument was that to increase our numbers will somehow make it more difficult for Members to participate. Although coming to this House for the first time last fall with a knowledge of the opportunities for participation that Members have had in years past, opportunities to speak at real length on topics, 1 must say the Standing Orders of the House which restrict one to 20 minutes for most of us private Members on both sides of the House seem to me already a real restriction on participation. There has in fact been a proposal before us which we have accepted and upon which the Government has acted through the new Standing Orders under which Bills will be considered in legislative committees. I am sure Members will have plenty of opportunity to participate. The growth of the House by a dozen Members rather than six would not in fact represent a significant infringement on the opportunities to participate given the way in which the rules of the House presently operate. It seems to me that the argument put before us this morning were contradictory to reality. We have every reason to look very carefully at what the Government is proposing.
It seems to me that with the majority this Government holds and with the conviction that because of the choice of the people, it has the right to do anything it wants, we could end up in highly undesirable circumstances. On our side of the House, we have been pointing out a variety of failures of commission and omission on the part of the Government. I would suggest that the same is true of this Bill.
What I find curious about the way in which this Bill has been debated today is the silence from government Members regarding the proposals in this Bill. One of the features of this Bill, on the face of it, is the doing away with the well established recognition of the Province of Quebec. I am surprised that a Government with so many Members from that province has allowed itself to make this particular proposal in the legislation.

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I must also say that this deflation of representation which the Government is putting before us affecting the Province of Alberta and to a lesser extent the Provinces of British Columbia and Ontario should have aroused other Members to protest. I realize, Mr. Speaker, that you, as a Member from the Province of Alberta, are constrained from saying anything. However, I would expect that in private, it would be possible for you to put a little pressure on Members to debate this issue.
As a Member living far from the Province of Alberta, I could, of course, wonder if there is a particular slyness involved in this proposal, the assumption being that after the 1991 Census, it will become clear that the numbers from 1981 would not have justified representation because of the migration from the Province of Alberta that has occurred over the last several years. However, that is a rather sly and insidious notion which I should hesitate to mention since I am trying to create a context of concern for the people of each province of Canada. It seems to me that when Members of Parliament from the provinces of Alberta and Quebec sit silently and let the Government carry on with these proposals to deflate the expected growth of the House of Commons, something quite insidious is going on.
In fact, this action is a revision of the Constitution Act, one of the basic documents of the country. It is a document which created parliamentary monarchy which is based fundamentally upon the will of the people as expressed in the election of Members who serve in the House of Commons. To think that that Constitution can be changed in these insidious ways without arousing Members from all the provinces of Canada is a sorry reflection on the state the Government has reached since September 4, 1984. There is much more reason for concern than has been reflected in today's debate.
In considering the particular problems that will arise if this Bill becomes law, I would like to deal quite particularly with the "province" of northern Ontario. I should, of course, for our friends in the Hansard office, put quotation marks around the word "province", although those who recognize Canadian realities realized many years ago that the only appropriate way to deal with the geographic and demographic realities of this country would in fact have been to recognize a province of northern Ontario. Since there is no such province in the Constitution of this country, the operations of Bill C-74 need to be considered very carefully by all of us who are Members of Parliament from northern Ontario.
We have already heard some representation of the difficulties that arise from the present anomalies in sizes of ridings. Before the last redistribution, northern Ontario had 12 ridings. After the last redistribution, that number was reduced by one. The question that will surely arise when the new formula is worked out for the Province of Ontario is what its effect might be on northern Ontario. According to this Bill, Ontario will only get two more seats while there has been very significant growth in population in various areas like Ottawa and Metro Toronto. In fact, there are inequities in representation there
and that will create pressures which we in northern Ontario will do our very best to resist.
The challenges to representation that now exist in northern Ontario ought not to be exacerbated in any way. To have only two more seats to deal with all of those difficulties while the population has grown so much in southern Ontario creates a very great pressure on us in northern Ontario. Particularly in northwestern Ontario, the difficulties involved in providing service to constituents, something which is surely fundamental in fulfilling the functions of a Member of Parliament, are very great. I recognize, of course, that my colleagues from the Metro Toronto area have 100,000 or perhaps even 200,000 constituents-


An Hon. Member:: More.


Abram Ernest Epp: Or more. I heard the figure mentioned before. The Hon. Member really does not need to remind me. There will be some deflation in those realities as well given the Bill before us. However, those Members are still able, without long-distance telephone charges and without unusual amounts of travelling to provide for their constituents. Compared to that, I am inclined to single out the provincial riding of Lake Nipigon because of the incredible problems I see faced by my provincial colleague. The provincial House has 125 seats. One would think that that would make it possible to avoid difficulties. However, the riding of Lake Nipigon which begins about halfway across the north shore of Lake Superior and wraps around the City of Thunder Bay some distance to the southwest is a riding that is very large. The MLA can get to most of the communities he serves only by road. Of course there are northern areas into which he can fly but that requires chartered flights in most cases. The MLA finds himself spending hours and even days on the road simply in order to be able to meet with his constituents in various areas.
I mentioned that particular challenge as a way of indicating that in my own Schedule III riding of Thunder Bay-Nipigon, I face challenges not quite as severe, but a change in distribution along the lines that this Bill suggests would certainly move me in the direction of the challenges faced by the provincial Member for Lake Nipigon. I find myself with communities to which it takes four hours to drive. I leave at 9.30 in the morning, spend some time at a meeting and some time en route and I arrive home at 10.30 that night, as I did just a week ago when I visited one of the small Indian communities. That is a community to which I do not believe I could fly. I have not investigated a charter but I do not think I could fly there. If I wanted to take the train into some of these communities on the northern CN line, Armstrong and Collins on the one side, Ferland and Mud River on the other, around to Auden and through Aroland and Nakina-and I have carefully examined the schedules-I find that a train that goes in one direction is matched by a return train three days later. Using that particular form of land transportation hardly provides for any reasonable form of travel, and that is a line on which there is no matching road at all. A number of those
October 1, 1985

places are located on lakes or rivers so there is a possibility of flying in but no one is going to tell me that getting to those sites is going to save the people of Canada any money. No one can tell me that there are not costs for the people of Canada involved in extending the size of these ridings. One can take the subway in Toronto and be anywhere one wants to be in Metro and there are streetcars, buses and so on at a quite reasonable cost. However, the expense of serving these northern areas is something which should be kept in mind at a time when we have a Government with a Depression mentality, and which is only concerned about saving costs in a number of areas.
Recognizing that it is access to the Member of Parliament and it is the Member's service to each of his constituents which is a fundamental principle of a democratic Government, I suggest that the proposal put before us by the Government slights those principles. In the desperate pursuit of some saving of money, the Government is prepared to violate time-honoured principles in distribution of representation of the House of Commons, particulrly in the Province of Quebec. I have assailed Members of the Government for their silence on this. It is quite incredible that we have had all of this put before us, a few Members of the governing Party having spoken, and the battle being left to us in the opposition who recognize the challenges which can result from what the Government has put before us, which is an enormous mistake.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I have a brief comment and a question which I would like to raise with the Hon. Member for Thunder Bay-Nipigon (Mr. Epp). The Hon. Member and I represent two Ontario constituencies. I have in the past travelled on a number of occasions to the area represented by the Hon. Member and can relate to the provincial riding of Lake Nipigon which he describes and which was so well represented for a number of years in the legislature by Jack Stokes. The constituency in question, we were told by the Hon. Member, was larger than the country of West Germany and was being served in the legislative assembly of the province by one person. At the federal level, many of the constituencies are even larger than that. I wonder if I could come back to a point I raised earlier. I must preface my remarks by saying I am not trying to put any words in anyone's mouth. I am trying to elicit information and obtain constructive suggestions as to how to reorganize this whole system of electoral redistribution.
I wonder if the Hon. Member could give me his views as to whether he could see some sort of a formula which would use the land mass as a basic criteria, at least for certain regions of the country, such as exist, as I understand it, in the Province of Ontario for its electoral redistributions. I wonder if the Hon. Member would like to comment on that?


Abram Ernest Epp: My thanks to my colleague for a challenging question. I am not going to be able to provide him with any formula in any neat way, although I understand that the work done by the provincial legislature, through commissions to establish arrangements, have led in
Representation Act, 1985
fact to a very complex formula. I realize also that there are dangers in exaggerating representation of land as such. Our system of Government is based on representation of people. However, the key principle linking these two is surely that need for access to the Member to which I referred at the end of my speech, and it is in that context that there must be some recognition of the distances Members face in reaching their constituents, and even more-given the fact that our constituents do not have the travel budgets and funds we have-their difficulty in getting to us. That is a reality which needs to be respected.
We have tried, I suppose over the years, to do that to some extent by being conservative in the representation of areas which were not growing proportionate to the country or to the new regions, and being realistic in recognizing the population growth which was occurring there. What this legislation fails to do is to deal realistically with growth while still, of course, honouring the principle of maintaining or, at least, not decreasing what exists in areas where population is more stable or, conceivably, even falling in relative terms. I think it is a sound principle and democratic for Government to ensure that constituents, in terms of access to their Members, are given some leeway in the arrangement of distribution.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Are there are any other questions or comments? Debate.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Mr. Speaker, I want to use the few minutes remaining to say that I was on the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections and the Committee on Election Expenses from 1968 to 1974. We went through then what we are going through now with respect to the matter of reconciling the principle of representation by population and taking into account our geography and where our people live. This is a non-partisan debate because it affects all Hon. Members and all Parties. Therefore, where I might part company with some of my own colleagues and my own caucus, so be it. I will be parting company with some Hon. Members in the other Parties as well. An Hon. Member who represents an urban riding with 100,000 voters within 50 square miles can keep in touch with his constituents as easy, if not easier, that the Hon. Member who has 50,000 voters within 50,000 square miles. That is what we tried to resolve in 1968, 1969, 1970 and 1971.
In my province we had 25 Members of Parliament with one million people. Then we had 21 Members of Parliament, then 17, then 13, then back up to 14, which is supposed to be the minimum. We have smaller representation with the same population to accommodate the parts of the country which have a larger population. We still have to continue to reconcile the principle of representation by population and at the same time we must take into account where the heck our people live and how accessible they are to their Member of Parliament. If they have to cover a riding of 50,000 square miles, it is a lot tougher than covering a riding like mine with 50 square miles and 95,000 people. That has to be taken into account by all Members. This country does not just consist of downtown

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Missing Children Search Act
Toronto or southwestern Ontario. It has to take into account whatever we deal with here, every region and every part of the country.
The principle of representation by population is not disagreed with by any other Member of this House, but over the last 15 or 20 years this House has succeeded in reaching some reasonable representation for those with large populations in small ridings and those with small populations in large geor-graphical areas. Surely, in a country like this, we can do no less than continue with that. I do not agree that we should increase this House to 350 or 400 Members. Where the hell are you going to put them? Let's have an elected Senate, if we are not going to abolish it, and take care of the other ones there.


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Mr. Hnatyshyn, seconded by Mr. Kelleher, moves that Bill C-74, an Act to amend the Constitution Act, 1867, and the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act and to provide for certain matters in relation to the 1981 decennial census, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Abram Ernest Epp: On division.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, Bill read the second time and, by unanimous consent, referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Order, it being 5 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.


PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS-PUBLIC BILLS   MISSING CHILDREN SEARCH ACT SUGGESTED MEASURE TO ENACT
Mr. Howard Crosby (Halifax West) moved: that Bill C-230, an Act to require assistance in the search of missing children, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.
He said: Mr. Speaker, as indicated in the motion before the House, I have presented a Bill, the short title of which is the Missing Children Search Act. I will deal with the content of the legislation in a moment. Before I do so, I want to explain
in broad terms my purpose in presenting this Bill relating to missing children to the House of Commons for consideration.
For many years those engaged in the administration of justice-police officers, prosecuting officers, social workers and the employees of the provinces and the federal authority who are concerned with justice in Canada-have been faced with the problem of missing children. More important, the problem has had to be faced by the parents and families of those missing children. It is in those interest of the parents and families that I ask the House to give consideration to this matter. While it is a matter of great interest to those responsible for the administration of justice, and while there are a great many technicalities involved in legislation that might be designed to protect children and assist in the search for missing children, we have to put aside those technicalities when we consider the plight of the parents and the families who are the victims of this social situation involving missing children. I want Members to remember that as they consider this Bill. We are not concerned with the mere technicality of the legisative provisions before us. We are concerned with the problem that is presented to Canadian society by missing children. I underline that because I want Members to know that it is not just my idea to do something about missing children. The public has the same idea. An organiation called Victims of Violence wrote to all Members Parliament in January of this year outlining the plight of missing children. I want to read part of the letter. It begins:
As parents of murdered children, we are deeply concerned with the lack of a good system in Canada to track, and hopefully find missing children.
Firstly, policies must be changed at local levels as far as officially considering a child missing. Usually, since most missing children do show up within a number of hours, police do not respond to missing children reports with the seriousness they do with a missing car.
Without blaming the police across this nation and without condemning anybody involved in the administration of justice, a fact of life in the administration of our penal laws is that a missing child does not receive the same attention as a missing car. Parliament surely has to do something about that. I ask Parliament to consider this legislation that I presented because of that fact. It has been stated by a parent of a missing child. It goes on to say, just to underline the point-as if it needed underlining-that if you were to ask the police in Canada for a list of missing children they would not have one, but if you ask them for a list of missing motor vehicles or recreational vessels, they would have such a list. That is the horrible situation in which we in Canada find ourselves.
I want to again refer to some literature on the subject of missing children. I came across an article in a periodical, Teaching Today, which was sent to all teachers in the Province of Alberta. This is from the spring 1985 issue. The author of the article, Aaron Bushkowsky, states that the slowness of local law enforcement authorities with respect to investigation of missing children cases is disheartening. He states, and 1 want to make this point very clearly:
-to be missing is not a crime:
Because being missing is not a crime, the police are often excluded from the process and procedure involved in the
October 1, 1985

search for missing children. That is exactly what this Bill is designed to deal with. Let me very briefly outline the provisions of the Bill which I have introduced.
What it does is define a missing child. It simply says that a child under the age of 16 whose whereabouts is unknown to his or her parent is a missing child. It is as simple as that. When a child is missing, the parent under this legislaiton has the right to execute a warrant which is then given to any police officer in Canada. The police officer is then required to commence a search for the child. I am sure the representative of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Crosbie) if he has an opportunity to speak on this Bill, will say that this Bill creates difficulties with respect to jurisdiction between the Parliament of Canada and the legislatures of the provinces of Canada. I certainly admit that that is a problem. I have attempted to overcome that problem by declaring that the missing child procedure as outlined in the Act is to be part of the criminal law of Canada. Clearly the Parliament of Canada has the right and authority to legislate with respect to criminal law. Whether that disposes of the argument I am not prepared to say except that it is the best attempt that I can construct. I want to return to the real heart of the problem which is the missing children across Canada.
Statistics are lean. Inquiries have been made. The Ministry of the Solicitor General of the Province of Ontario had a missing children project and it attempted to compile some statistics. The indication was that approximately 1,081 children are still missing in Canada. That does not include the thousands and thousands of cases involving missing children which are resolved quickly or over a period of time. In the United States it is considered to be an even greater problem with literally thousands and thousands of cases being reported. I have an article here which indicates that no one is sure of the exact numbers but it is estimated that 1.5 million children are missing from their homes each year. The report indicates that many or most of them are returned but some of them end up as victims of abuse or victims of homicide.
If the Parliament of Canada cannot act to at least provide some method or process to deal with the problems, then we are shirking our responsibility to the people of Canada, in particular to the parents and families of missing children. We want to find a viable method that can assist in resolving the problem. Nothing is perfect. Let me depart from that point by saying that so often in the House of Commons and legislatures across the country we abandon any hope of taking action for fear that our action may not be as effective as it could be. In other words, we do not make a start. Missing children is an area in which we have not made a start. At some point we must put some legislation on the statute books which at least recognizes that there is a problem under the laws of Canada and the provinces with respect to missing children.
I do not want to reflect badly on the police, but the problem is that missing children do not fit into our framework of criminal law. The extent to which they fit into the framework
Missing Children Search Act
of child protection laws is lacking in effectiveness. Child protection laws are affected by provincial boundaries which are difficult to cross in search of a missing child. In some cases it is even difficult to cross municipal boundaries in search of a missing child because quite often child protection agencies are confined to a municipal territory. It has been demonstrated time and again that there must be a national vehicle for dealing with missing children.
The second point which gives rise to legal difficulty with respect to missing children is the characterization of that state. If a 15-year old simply wants to escape the wrath of a person in the home, or for some almost legitimate reason wants to leave home, we must consider whether the child is not entitled to protection outside the home. Consequently, in that kind of a situation, the police authorities are unwilling to become involved and often the child protection authorities act without haste. We get confused in terms of trying to characterize the case. Once you recognize that there are almost legitimate cases of missing children, you tend to colour all the reported cases with that possibility and give the benefit of the doubt and some police agencies and other persons engaged in the administration of justice prefer to take no action. The result is that nothing happens and the missing child is then endangered by being subjected to harmful treatment or even, in some cases, homicide.
We are trying to characterize the cases of missing children which should be assisted by the legal process. That is the first task of this or any Bill which purports to deal with missing children. The second task is to provide a process which will allow a search for missing children and for the return of them to their proper homes. The fact that this Bill may not accomplish that and that some more perfect means can be imagined is not an excuse for not making a start.
I do not want to take all of the time which is available to me because I know there are other Members who want to speak on this Bill. However, I should not leave this subject without referring to the fact that there has been a great deal done by various organizations which are concerned about the subject of missing children. A program called Adam, which was aired in the United States on NBC Television and subsequently in Canada, brought a great deal of national attention in the United States and in Canada to the subject of missing children. It also brought attention to organizations such as Child Find and its programs. There is an organization called the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children which regularly publishes pictures and identifying material concerning missing children. In many cases, this has resulted in the lost child being found, often in very difficult circumstances.
I do not want to imply that there are not a great many Canadians and other people across North America vitally concerned with this matter and who have taken steps to resolve it by forming organizations in the hope of getting all of the people who are interested in the problem together. I would like to emphasize the fact that most of this work is being carried on by volunteers in our society. That does not excuse Government from taking a specific interest in the matter and seeking

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Missing Children Search Act
techniques, processes, and procedures that will assist at Government levels in resolving this problem.
I would like to end my remarks by repeating that my motivation for bringing this matter before Parliament is to get recognition of the fact that missing children are a problem in Canadian society. We have seen heinous crimes involving missing children. We have seen difficulties experienced by families of missing children. I have responded to this problem by formulating Bill C-230, the Missing Children Search Act. That is only to demonstrate that it is possible to have legislation. 1 am sure that there are greater legal minds than mine which can formulate more effective legislation. I hope that those minds will be put to work on this subject rather than having it merely swept away and forgotten to become another musty record of the House of Commons. I appeal to all Members of the House of Commons to take into account the concern that has been and will be expressed with respect to missing children. Let us make a start.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the Hon. Member for having brought Bill C-230 to the attention of the House. It is a very important subject indeed when we consider that over 1,200 children over the age of 10 are known to be missing. There are 160 children under the age of 10 who we know are missing in this country as we speak right now. In any given year 2,000 children are reported missing. This happens as a result of many things. Some children leave the home, some are abducted by strangers, and some are abducted by family. It is with regard to the latter that I want to make my remarks this afternoon.
On October 13, 1982 a child by the name of Tina Lynn Malette was abducted. At the time the child was in my daughter's class at school. She was abducted by her natural father who, for all intents and purposes, had never seen the child. The father had only lived in this country for a short period of time. He came from another country, abducted the child, and took her to Tunisia. To this day we are still looking for a way to bring the child back to this country. We have found out where the child is and the mother can speak to her by telephone, but we are not able to return her to this country. I have asked for the assistance of the Right Hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark) and I believe that he has done all that he can. However, unfortunately, there are no extradiction treaties between Canada and Tunisia and we are, therefore, powerless to do anything.
The father was never married to the mother and never lived with her for any length of time. For all intents and purposes, he was a complete stranger to that child before the date of the abduction. Since this man is the father of the child, Tunisian authorities claim to have sufficient legal grounds to allow her to stay there. They claim that they have no authority to deport the child. Of course, this is the daughter of a citizen and therefore the child is a citizen as well, even though she never lived with the father, does not bear his name and the father does not even have a birth certificate which attributes him with the paternity of that child. Nevertheless, the child is there.
On several occasions I have attempted to do what I could about this situation. In July, 1983, I wrote a letter to a Member of Parliament from Tunisia whom I met at a parliamentary conference and who purported at the time to be interested in the case. He never responded. In December, 1983, I wrote again to that same Tunisian Member of Parliament about the same issue but the letter was never answered.
I wrote on two other occasions to the leader of the only political party, as I understand it, in that country. Those letters were never answered either. It was only this year, once I became a federal Member of Parliament and raised the issue in the House that we could at least get some reaction from the Tunisian authorities. At that time the Tunisian Ambassador finally said that there was nothing he could do about the case. It is strange that if they thought they were so right in their actions that they would find it so difficult to express it publicly before.
Be that as it may, after writing to the Tunisian Ambassador in December, 1984 and February, 1985, we managed to get some form of a statement from the Ambassador in April or May of this year when he expressed the position of his country which I have already enunciated.
The Secretary of State for External Affairs tells us that the only way to bring this child back to Canada is to launch legal proceedings in the courts of Tunisia. A number of people whom I know have started a Tina Lynn Malette trust fund. A number of prominent people from the Ottawa-Carleton area are trustees of this particular fund. We have begun to raise the money necessary to hopefully launch a successful legal campaign in order to return the child to Canada.
As a father of two children, with one child who was in the same class as this particular girl, one really discovers how powerless each one of us is if someone wants to come to our home and take our child away to another country or even a different province in certain cases. Even if that man was the natural father of the child-because he was otherwise a total stranger, not even in possession of a birth certificate or anything else acknowledging the paternity, much less a passport or visa-what would be the difference if someone came to my house and took away my child who was the same age, her best friend and in the same class at school? I suggest the situation would be almost identical.
If it was my child who was over there, what would I do to bring her back? I would probably do the same as the mother of Tina Lynn Malette and cry a lot and try hard without success to this point. I do not believe that all those officials with whom I have dealt on this issue had anything else but good intentions. Certainly, the Right Hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs and his precedessor as well as others have made a legitimate effort to assist me and, of course, my constituent in bringing this child back. However, we have not had any success as yet. I commend any Member of the House who attempts to work in such a way as to enhance the chances of bringing lost children home.
October 1, 1985

The situation that I have described is somewhat different than the one brought to our attention by the Hon. Member who proposed the Bill, but it is another example of lost children in this country and how each one of us, as parents, are really powerless and helpless when these things happen. We always think that it happens to someone else, but this incident happened so closely to me that I really believe I would be totally powerless. I am sure when Members think about it seriously, they will see that we are powerless in such cases.
I tabled a petition in the House earlier this year, consisting of some 7,000 names of Canadians who are concerned about the case of Tina Lynn Malette and wanting a resolution to the problem, urging the Government of Tunisia to bring her back. Of course, it still claims that under its law it is not possible.
It is my hope that the legal action that has begun will be successful. I cannot wait for the day when we will go to Mirabel Airport and hopefully take the child off the plane. However, it is bound to be a while yet. Certainly I, and I am sure my colleagues, intend to allow this Bill to pass. It is a good Bill with good intentions.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the New Democratic Party to speak to this interesting Bill. Before doing so, I want to make a couple of comments. The Hon. Member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell (Mr. Boudria) made a very powerful and interesting speech. For the record, I would like to associate myself and I believe my Party with the cause of Tina Malette. I hope that the Government and the Ambassador of Tunisia are listening and will be sent a copy of Hansard to see that there is unanimity in the House of Commons with respect to this issue.
Second, I want to take this opportunity to say personally, Godspeed and recovery to the Hon. Member for Saint-Michel-Ahuntsic (Mrs. Killens). She is a wonderful person and a great friend to all of us in the House. It would be nice if she were watching-I do not want her to become more sick by watching the House of Commons-and I hope she will get better and return to the House quickly. I believe that hope is shared by all Members.
Let me make some remarks about the Bill and the speech made by the Hon. Member for Halifax West (Mr. Crosby). I wanted to hear some facts and figures from the Hon. Member for Halifax West but they were given by the Hon. Member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell. I believe it is necessary to have more detailed facts on the number of missing children to determine the number missing as a result of a family situation, a non-family situation or whether it is a poor family home situation where the child seems to have run away.
I attempted to find those facts in the Badgley Commission but there is not much information with respect to the problem of using the police power to return missing children as proposed by the Hon. Member in his Bill.
I certainly agree with the Hon. Member that it must be a terrible experience to be a parent of a missing child. As I listened to the speech by the Hon. Member for Halifax West, it appeared that there is a grass roots movement to deal with
Missing Children Search Act
this problem as often happens in Canadian society. Members will recall the group called MADD. These were people against impaired drivers. They campaigned for tougher penalties because some of their family members had been victims of impaired drivers. They began to pressure Members of Parliament. They were not represented by any funded group, business or labour body. They were ordinary Canadians who were concerned about this problem.
Members of Parliament did receive a letter from a group called The Victims of Violence and I thank them for writing to us. We appreciate the kind of grass roots nature of this group. I will come back to that in a minute.
The Hon. Member for Halifax West says that the police do not respond as quickly to missing children as they do to missing cars and boats. That is a pretty sad thing. I cannot believe, although one notes the concern with property in our society, that that is the situation. The Hon. Member tells we there is no list of missing children but there is a list of missing cars and boats. I agree with him that that sounds wrong and it is terrible. He said that to be missing is not a crime. He is right. This is one part of his Bill I did not understand. Perhaps when it gets to committee the point will be clarified. Is this an amendment to the Criminal Code or not? I think it should be, and it should not stand as a separate Bill. If it becomes an amendment to the Criminal Code, there are certain aspects of the Bill we should look at very closely. We have to balance our concern against missing children and the ability to do something in terms of an investigation and in getting the children back.
Some of the wording in his Bill is not crystal clear. I know he said that this was a general approach to flag he issue and to keep pressure on so that something will be done. I have looked at Clauses 6 and 7 of the Bill. Clause 6 calls for a person to advise the Minister in writing that a police officer has refused to assist in the search for a missing child and that the Minister may order the police officer to take certain actions. In Clause 7 there can be a search warrant to search premises and so on when people suspect a missing child is involved. This goes a little far, and there are some civil liberties concerns here. Do we want to give the police that kind of power? Can that kind of power be abused? We have to weigh that against the concern of getting the bureacracy, and I include the police, to pay more concern to missing children as opposed to missing cars and boats.
The Hon. Member said that 1.5 million children went missing each year in the Unites States.


Howard Edward Crosby: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. 1 do not want to interfere with the debate and I hesitate to interrupt the Member, but since there are people listening to the presentation, I want to make it clear that I was taking the information from a presentation made by an organization called Victims of Violence. It is that organization which made the statements about missing children in relation to cars and other matters.

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Missing Children Search Act


Ian Gardiner Waddell: I will accept that statement, Mr. Speaker. I can see that happening.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: That really is not a point of order. It is a point of clarification. I hope we will not get into an argument.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: The organization made the statement. It is a serious allegation, Mr. Speaker. We are more concerned about property than we are about people. We are more concerned about missing cars and boats than about missing kids. If that is true, it is something we have to change.
The Hon. Member said that 1.5 million children went missing each year in the United States. That is an awful lot of children. We could do well when this Bill gets into committee to debate why that situation is happening. Is it because our victims, in a sense runaways, are a product of home abuse? Are they taken away by another parent because of marriage breakdown and the difficulties associated with that? Are they abducted by the Clifford Olsons of this world because of crime in our society? It would be good to have a breakdown of those figures.
We need to look at the cause of the situation. Is it racism in the United States in terms of black families? Is it poverty? There is certainly a lot of poverty in the United States and in Canada. That should be investigated when we consider the Bill in committee.
I can tell the Hon. Member that there are different ways of dealing with-and I don't think they are mutually exclusive- missing children. One is enforcement; putting some fire under the police in a procedural legal way to search out and take serious reports of missing children. Another way is to deal with the matter in a preventive state so children never go missing in the first place.
In my province of British Columbia, the Government has cut back family services. It has cut back services to children. It has cut back on the number of social workers and on abuse centres. We should be looking at those as preventive measures. If we can ensure strong families, ensure that people do not live in poverty and ensure that there is no family abuse, then things at the other end will change and we will have fewer missing children.
I have to point out that this is a Government prepared to cut back on family allowances while spending a billion dollars to bail out a bank. If the Government cuts back on family allowances, it will guarantee more family problems because income is being cut back to families that really need it. You cannot have it both ways, Mr. Speaker.
The Badgley Report of which I spoke listed a number of preventive measures. It suggested minimum standards of service be set up for the police and for the social workers. The report talked about sexual abuse cases. In this context, the same could be said generally about missing children. A way of reporting to the police, getting the information to other provinces and agencies, ways of making people aware should be approached. It was suggested we have an office of a commissioner for children which would bring some of these departments together. These are useful suggestions. I think the Hon. Member and I agree that what he was reflecting today is the general grass roots feeling saying that bureaucracy is not doing enough, the police are not doing enough, and it is of real concern that no one is listening and we are frustrated. These are real problems and they must be listened to.
There is alienation and frustration in our society which is reflected in problems like missing children. I know some of it is inevitable and it has always been with us. It seems in our materialistic society that there are more breakdowns and less stability in the family and in society. This is reflected in prostitution where the frustrated in a less caring society find they must resort to prostitutes. It is reflected in children running away and in the crazies in the streets, the Olsons of this world, who murder children. It is reflected in all sorts of ways. That is the negative aspect to society. On the positive side the Hon. Member has taken the time to bring this Bill forward. He is responding to a grass roots situation. 1 have some concerns about the wording of the Bill, the civil liberties aspects and the way it fits in with the Criminal Code. Also I have some concerns about whether it would really be effective. However, I say to the Hon. Member that it is an initiative well worth looking into.
I will take my seat now and hope that the Bill will pass into committee today so that we can discuss the matter further.


Mr. Alan Redway (York East):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to say a few words in support of Bill C-230, standing in the name of the Hon. Member for Halifax West (Mr. Crosby), an Act to require assistance in the search for missing children. As he has indicated, the propose of the Bill is to make it possible for the parents or persons responsible for a child who is missing to obtain assistance to locate that child in Canada. Human and other resources are part of the administration of justice and should be made available for that purpose. Of course the purpose of the Bill is to try to make them available.
I am particularly interested in supporting it because of my own personal experience with a friend, Mrs. Inge Cant, who has gone through a terrifying experience of a similar nature with her own child. Mrs. Cant separated from her husband in about 1981. They had one child. They fought a very bitterly contested custody battle. She received custody from the courts. Her husband appealed and received access to the child on weekends. On one of those weekends, he and the child, Jonathan, disappeared. Mrs. Cant then spent 20 months trying to find her son, Jonathan. Not only did she spend that length of time, but she spent a lot of her own money. Mr. Speaker, you may have read about this case in the newspapers. I should like to quote from an article which appeared in The Toronto Star, on February 16, 1984. In part, it reads:
With painstaking accuracy, Inge Cant has kept accounts.
From the $100 long distance telephone bills, to the $20,000 legal bills, the search for her abducted son, Jonathan, cost more than most people could afford.
October 1, 1985

Certainly more than Cant, a legal secretary who made about $20,000 a year, could ever hope to pay for on her own.
But from the day Jonathan was taken from Cant's estranged husband ... the search was on. In total, it cost Cant, her family and friends more than $100,000.
That $100,000 was spent as follows-$40,000 for private detectives at $35 per hour, $20,000 in legal fees and other expenses for long distance telephone calls, travel and accommodations. Finally, her search took her to Australia; after 20 months she located her son in that country.
She took with her to Australia a police officer who kindly agreed to accompany her. She paid all the expenses of that police officer to go with her to Australia to try to bring back the child. Once they had boarded the airplane with the child, Australian police got on and took her and the child off the airplane, because the estranged husband had obtained a court order to fight for custody in that country. She had to go through the custody struggle all over again.
Finally, she is back here in Canada with her son, Jonathan. However, the estranged father, who went to Australia on a stolen passport, still has it. She lives in terror that everything will happen again. As I said, it cost here some $100,000 to find her child. That is the type of problem which the Bill tries to address and tries to find a logical solution for.
Just this afternoon I talked with the Deputy Chief of Metropolitan Toronto, Jim Clark, about this problem. He told me that in the last 10 years in Metropolitan Toronto there have been 64,000 reports of missing children and that that figure did not include those abducted by their parents. Of that figure, six have remained missing for a period of over one year. Also he said that from 35 to 70 cases involving missing children are outstanding in Toronto at any one time.
The Hon. Member for Halifax West referred to a number of voluntary organizations which are interested in and try to assist with this problem. Child Find is one to which my hon. friend referred. It takes the fingerprints of children and tries to use them for assistance. There is the Child Photo Program which takes photographs of children, and of course there are the block parent programs which try to keep an eye on children in neighbourhoods. All these organizations are helpful, but it is a sad commentary, as other Hon. Members have said, that it has to be done by volunteers and that the Government is not involved in the program. It is high time the Government became involved.
Also Deputy Chief Clark of Metropolitan Toronto said that the United States had a federally funded program called the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. It coordinates information on missing children. We do not have such an organization in Canada. Our police departments are linked by computer and they have to try to search out information via computer when they obtain a report on a missing child. Unfortunately they cannot necessarily access the computer information of all other police departments. The present system is ineffective in dealing with the problem. We need something like a national centre for missing children. It may well tie in with the program under the divorce legislation as well as the maintenance and custody legislation currently
Missing Children Search Act
before the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs. Perhaps that information system can be used to assist in these situations.
The Hon. Member brought forward another excellent suggestion as to how this matter should be dealt with. In one way or another, I believe that the matter has to be dealt with quickly by Parliament. We should refer the Bill to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs today so that we can get on with solving the problem.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, I should like to begin by congratulating the Hon. Member for Halifax West (Mr. Crosby) on bringing forward Bill C-230. I assure him and all Hon. Members in the House that the Liberal Party supports the Bill in principle. We in Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition would like to see the subject matter referred to either a legislative committee, especially set up to deal with the subject matter, or to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, so that we can look into the entire question of missing children. The Hon. Member made an excellent submission. I assure him of our full support in having the subject matter dealt with as expeditiously as possible.
I need not articulate the pain and anguish which parents suffer as a result of their children who go missing. If there is anything that we as parliamentarians can do to try to assist those parents in finding their children, I think we will have served this subject matter well. The fact remains that nationally we are not doing what we can to assist parents. The Hon. Member for Halifax West has introduced a particular Bill which will address the problem in a particular fashion. As other Hon. Members have indicated, as of January, 1984, a total of 1,224 children between the ages of 10 years and 16 years went missing in Canada. An additional 160 child under the age of nine years were also missing. In total, over 2,000 children are reported missing each year. The Canadian Police Information Centre usually has an accurate record of the number of children missing but not the circumstances of their disappearance. Some police departments across the country may enter incomplete descriptions or conflicting information. As the Hon. Member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell (Mr. Boudria) pointed out, missing children fall into three categories-runaways, stranger abductions and parental abductions. Contrary to popular belief most police departments do not wait a prescribed period of time, for example 24 hours, before recording a child as missing. They treat each case individually, taking into consideration factors such as whether the child is known to be a runaway or there are feuding parents where parental abduction is likely.
As other Members have indicated, corporations are eager to get involved in searches for missing children. There are more than a dozen corporations who want to put their names and dollars into any program involving missing children. So we have the private sector that is quite prepared to get involved in this particular area, to try to assist in whatever way possible. What we need is a federal Government initiative. We all know
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October 1, 1985
Missing Children Search Act
that there is no Canadian legislation dealing specifically with missing children.
In the U.S., as has been pointed out, the Missing Children Act was signed into law in October of 1984. It provides a $4 million fund administered by the Department of Justice to co-ordinate the work of volunteer groups and help them establish toll-free telephone lines and information clearing houses. I think the Government of Canada should look at that particular legislation as a model and as a basis to develop our own procedures to deal with missing children. The United States also requires Attorneys General in each state to allow parents access to police computer systems to ensure that their missing children's names have been entered and if not to find out why not. In this regard it is important to note that RCMP officers and officials of Statistics Canada have not kept national statistics on missing children since 1976 because of conflicting reporting methods. This is another subject matter that ought to be considered by the appropriate committee.
The Liberal Party as well as, I am sure, all Hon. Members in this House are extremely concerned with respect to the problem of missing children. Last February Mr. McGuigan, an Ontario Liberal Member of Parliament, released the results of his three-month study on missing children. He concluded that police departments lack the resources to conduct proper investigations, that Governments have been slow to pass legislation to protect children and that there is a low level of public awareness of this particular problem. His report is an important contribution to the literature that we already have on this particular subject. Mr. McGuigan debunks many of the myths concerning missing children. Some of his conclusions are that most children who run away do so because of intolerable conditions at home, not because they are searching for fun and adventure as some would argue. They are often fleeing from physical, emotional or sexual abuse.
While about 95 per cent of missing children are runaways, an increasing number are victims of abduction. Few children abducted by strangers are recovered alive. The abductors include pedophiles, pornographers, black market baby peddlers or psychotics. He says "Child prostitution, sexual and physical abuse, mental anguish and torment and even death await many of these children in such unfortunate circumstances".
There are an increasing number of cases involving the abduction of children by parents, usually after a divorce or a custody battle. The McGuigan Report said that the main motive is revenge against the other parent, not love for the child. It is a mistake to assume that children abducted by parents are in no real danger. Organizations which are concerned with such children have reported that the majority of them were either beaten, molested or neglected.
Mr. McGuigan also noted in his report that there were 22 children murdered in Canada last year and that children frequently are the victims of serial murderers such as by Clifford Olson in British Columbia and by U.S. mass killer Henry Lee Lucas.
Mr. Speaker, may I take this opportunity to applaud the efforts of Mr. McGuigan on that in-depth study in which he
was involved. He indicated that he plans to introduce a resolution in the legislature in Ontario asking for a full scale inquiry into the problem of missing children and hopes that this inquiry will be conducted by the Legislature's Social Development Committee.
Among some of the recommendations in the McGuigan Report is that a province-wide and eventually nation-wide registry of missing children should be established. I think that is an excellent suggestion and something that Parliament can address and can do so quickly. He also noted that police forces are hampered in their investigations by the lack of an up-to-date central data base. Once again, the federal Government can assist with respect to an up-to-date data base to ensure that as much information as possible is available to parents and others, including police departments in the search for missing children.
It is important to note that most abducted Canadian children are taken to the United States, where provincial custody orders are not always enforced. The McGuigan Report stressed that there has to be a broader international agreement to respect foreign court orders. I call on the Government of Canada to address the problem of parents who abduct their children and take them to foreign jurisdictions, especially to the United States. I should point out that several nations have signed an international agreement called the Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction which binds the signatories to help return missing children within their boundaries. France, Portugal, Switzerland, Ontario and several other Canadian provinces have ratified the agreement. Britain and the United States have signed it but have yet to ratify it.
In conclusion I would urge all Hon. Members in this House to support this particular Bill in principle and to refer the whole subject matter of missing children to a parliamentary committee to ensure that whatever can be done is done by this Parliament to assist those who have searched in vain to find missing children. I think it will be a tremendous step forward and a credit to each and every Member of this House.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak on this most worthwhile proposal.


Mr. Don Ravis (Saskatoon East):: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I do not have very much time but I certainly intended to make a presentation on this Bill and I will go through some of the highlights very quickly.
I support this Bill particularly because it is national in scope and because of the fact that we are bringing to the recognition of all Canadians that there are many Canadian families who are undergoing a great deal of anxiety and suffering. In the City of Saskatoon with a population of 180,000 we had something like 1,205 children reported missing in 1984 and 1,200 were found. Five of those children are still missing and I say that that is five too many.
I would like to very quickly touch on a program that has been operating in Saskatoon as a result of the Child Find Program which operates across Canada and in the United
October 1, 1985

States. This particular program is called All About Me ID and it was referred to by a number of other speakers this afternoon. The instigators of this program, in conjunction with a number of corporate sponsors and a number of media, designed a passport-I have a copy of one here-which includes the picture, fingerprints, and medical history of the child and also a fair bit of information in terms of preventative care. In the City of Saskatoon I am sure we would not have had 1,200 missing children if many parents had taken some of these precautions.
As it is very close to six o'clock I will not have an opportunity to make my complete presentation here. I think there are a number of excellent points in this Bill and one of the things I want to touch on, which may be in opposition to what I have heard from some of my colleagues, is that in my view Government cannot do everything in this country. I very much applaud the gentleman from Halifax West who is suggesting that we have this Act passed. However, I think the private sector, as proven in Saskatoon, can play a very important major role in seeing that they, too, can become involved in assisting the police, the national agency and of course the provincial agencies through the Attorneys General. I would certainly like to see this Bill passed by this House and referred to the Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs for further consideration.


Mr. Reg Stackhouse (Scarborough West):: Mr. Speaker, sitting through this debate has been a highlight for all present because it has shown us the kind of message that the committee on enhancing the role of the private Member has been trying to convey, namely, that the private Member has an extraordinary opportunity to bring to the attention of the House issues that might be overlooked by Government and by other leadership. As we have seen today, it is possible for a Member to rouse the House of Commons to focus its attention on a pressing and important human issue. I know that we are all grateful for that.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hour allocated for the consideration of Private Members' business has now expired.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 46 deemed to have been moved.
Adjournment Debate

Aideen Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, on another occasion during the Adjournment Debate I stressed my agreement with the Minister of State for Finance (Mrs. McDou-gall) when she spoke of the importance of confidence to the health and stability of our Financial institutions. I pointed out that when Opposition Members ask questions in the House, it is not out of a desire to undermine confidence or create doubts or uncertainty; on the contrary, it is because we have a responsibility as Members of Parliament to assure ourselves and the taxpayers that the decisions made by the Government are sound, reasoned, considered and based on full and complete information.
Since the Government First announced its intention to bail out the Canadian Commercial Bank on March 25 we have tried repeatedly but with limited success, to assure ourselves of the Government's care in examining all the information before committing large sums of taxpayers' money.
We in the Official Opposition supported the Government in the original rescue operation because, although we were not given a full account of what had occurred, we expected to get one when the matter reached committee stage. We also believed that the Government's statements about the Canadian Commercial Bank's viability were based on fact and analysis.
The Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs was in fact given relatively narrow terms of reference when it came to study the CCB issue. We were operating under significant time restraints and for various reasons much of the information requested by the committee was not provided. We were not much better informed after the committee's examinations than we were before. This is why, when the CCB's closing was announced on Labour Day, we came back into the House asking many of the same questions we had been asking all along, questions to which we still do not have full answers.
We know enough from what has been said in the House and from what has been said by players in the financial and banking community to be sure that the Government's many assurances about the effectiveness of the bail-out and the viability of the CCB were not, as we had believed, based on knowledge of the facts. I have not counted the number of times the Minister of State for Finance has said that she acted on the best information available at the time. She has said it often but she has never told us just what that information was.
We know that the decision to bail out the CCB was reached without a full assessment of the bank's loan portfolio. Some of the banks taking part in the bail-out offered to provide expert staff to conduct a complete audit over the weekend the negotiations were taking place. We know that this offer was refused, and that instead the unprecedented decision to use taxpayers' money to bail out a bank was taken with only partial analysis of the bank's loan portfolio and, furthermore, that the CCB itself decided what segment of its loan portfolio was made available to the bail-out group.

October 1, 1985
Adjournment Debate
The Minister had access to the reports of the external auditors of the CCB but she has not given any assurance that this information was used in the decision-making process. It seems as though there was information available that the Government did not use when it decided to bail out the CCB, and since we are not getting any specific answers about what information was used, we must conclude that last March the Government took an enormous and unwarranted leap of faith.
Not until mid-July did the Government set about finding out just what it had got itself into, and not until mid-August when the results came in did the Government know what little basis there was to believe the bail-out would have saved the CCB. This is an error of truly mind-boggling proportions.
We have had an attempted bail-out which resulted in the failure of two banks, and which will cost the taxpayers of this country up to $1 billion. We have seen the Government bail out a bank, then liquidate that bank and another. Shortly we will be debating the legislation to reimburse uninsured depositors in those institutions, and those who made the decisions that are now costing taxpayers SI billion are refusing to provide information to this House and refusing to give straight answers to the questions that we as responsible Members of the Opposition have been asking.
The establishment of a commission of inquiry, as announced by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), takes the matter outside of Parliament. While the commission may be a useful and valuable exercise, it does not answer for the fact that the Government and its Ministers are accountable to Parliament for their decisions and actions and that so far they have not seemed willing to satisfy the House that they have acted properly.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that Hon. Members of the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party did not agree at an earlier stage some three or four weeks ago to the proposal of an all-Party committee and it is unfortunate that they have not asked proper and straightforward questions because they would have received proper and straightforward responses.
The Hon. Member and her colleagues have on several occasions suggested that the arrangements for the support of the Canadian Commercial Bank in March were put in place by the three Governments, six chartered banks and the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation without adequate knowledge of the condition of the assets of the Bank, and that they relied solely on information provided by the Bank. It has also been suggested that one or another of the chartered banks offered to provide personnel in sufficient numbers to have carried out a more complete examination and that the Government declined such offers.
It is the case, however, that an independent review of certain of the assets was made by a team drawn from a number of the participating banks, working under the direction of an official of the office of the Inspector General of Banks. During the
week of March 18, assets booked in both Edmonton and California were reviewed. In the course of discussions with the participating banks, the question of asset values naturally received a great deal of attention.
Accordingly, on Friday, March 22, arrangements were made to have credit officers of some of the participating banks review a sample of the loans to be included in the support arrangements. That work was carried out on Sunday, March 24, by 10 or 11 bankers at the two locations. As mentioned, those officers devoted their attention to the loans identified by the bank as being unsatisfactory.
Following the completion of the support arrangment, two bankers were appointed as special representatives of the Inspector General of Banks as required by the agreement. Over a period of several weeks those individuals reviewed all of the accounts included in the support arrangement.
As the Minister of State for Finance (Mrs. McDougall) has said more than once, the decision to proceed with the support package was based upon the best information available at the time. Of necessity, in the circumstances, that information was primarily prepared by the bank but it was subjected to a degree of independent review by experienced bankers. The support group of banks offered to participate in a review. The offer was accepted by the other participants, including the CCB itself, and a group of bankers was made available for the prupose. All participants recognized, however, that the final decision and announcement had to be ready for the opening of business on Monday, March 25, 1985.


TRADE-PROPOSED EEC TARIFF ON BLUEBERRIES. (B) EFFECT ON EMPLOYMENT IN NOVA SCOTIA
Mr. Dave Dingwall (Cape Breton-East Richmond):: On
March 21, Mr. Speaker, I asked a question of the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Wise) concerning a commodity in my province which was being cited by the European Economic Community. They were to impose a sanction, if you will, on the importation of blueberries into the EEC.
I want to say at the outset that the whole issue of trade and trade policy is very important and very germane to any economic policy the Government wishes to see followed. In my province of Nova Scotia we have a number of products which are earmarked for export, both to the rest of Canada and to the international market. We think it is very peculiar, if not strange, that the Government of Canada has been somewhat slack in meeting its responsibility to protect those markets for our producers, whether they be producers of blueberries or any other commodity.
I am not talking about protectionist measures, I am talking about a policy whereby those markets could be improved upon. I do not see from this Government or the Minister of Agriculture any coherent policy to assure those markets which we have enjoyed over the past number of years. Those markets create hundreds of jobs for Nova Scotians in an area where the economic situation is not al that good. I had hoped that the
October 1, 1985

Minister of Agriculture would have shared with us the answers to the questions I had raised.
For example, is there a Cabinet directive? If there is, will it be considered by the relevant committee? Who are the negotiators in Brussels in this regard and what will they do or not do? Unfortunately, he has not. What we have found is a sort of jump here, jump there, jump everywhere approach by this Government. There is no coherent, well thought out policy.
Then, of course, the issue of competence and being able to execute such a policy is certainly in question by all members in view of the disastrous steps which had been taken concerning the collapse of the two banks and the bail-ou of-


Paul Wyatt Dick: Blueberries or banks?


David Charles Dingwall: He chides me regarding this industry in Nova Scotia. I want to tell him that this industry is an important one to approximately 800 people. It is important that the Government of Canada be sensitive to the industry and those people involved. I hope the Hon. Member, when he stands in his place to give me a response, will be very forthcoming with the answers 1 have requested of the Miister of Agriculture on this topic. I hope he understands what I and my Party are attempting to do.
We are not trying to play one region off against the other. We hope the Government will initiate policies which will give us an opportunity in the poorer provinces of this country to raise our families and enjoy a good lifestyle. It does not serve us well in Atlantic Canada, including those workers, for the Hon. Member opposite to make fun, to laugh, and to accept these representations in jest. He should be more serious and diligent on behalf of all those workers in the economy of the Province of Nova Scotia.


Paul Wyatt Dick: First of all, Mr. Speaker, a note should be made that no one was laughing and that nothing whatsoever was taken in jest. If the Hon. Member would like to try and tailor his remarks to the question he put, he might do an awfully lot better. The question has nothing to do with banks, and in fact this question First arose before there was any collapse of any bank. Considering that the Hon. Member did not know what he was talking about, although he comes from an area in which this product grows, it is rather unfortunate that he was not better prepared.
I am pleased to elaborate on the answer that was provided to the Hon. Member for Cape Breton-East Richmond (Mr. Dingwall) on March 21 regarding the hypothetical imposition of a tariff on Canadian blueberries entering the European Economic Community.
As the Hon. Member pointed out last March, the ECC had officially notified GATT of its intention to retaliate against quotas that the Canadian Government imposed on imports of beef and veal when we invoked the Meat Import Act on
Adjournment Debate
January 1, 1985. The European Economic Community threatened to impose a 25 per cent tariff on imports of Canadian blueberries. The tariff was supposed to go into effect on April 15 and last until the end of the year. Retaliatory actions were also threatened against our exports of beef, veal and pork offals, natural honey, mustard seed and flour, maple syrup, rye whiskey, feeds and unmanufactured, unstemmed tobacco.
The European Economic Community is our leading customer for blueberry exports. In recent years the European market has accounted for nearly 60 per cent of our blueberry exports worth an average of $15.5 million per year. Last year our exports gained strongly, thanks in part to the lower value of the Canadian dollar compared to the U.S. dollar, the absence of tariff barriers, and a strong market development effort by Canadian producers in co-operation with the federal Government.
I should explain that under GATT rules Canada has the right to take action restricting beef and veal imports, but adversely affected trading partners, such as the EEC, also have the right to retaliate if it is not possible to negotiate a mutually agreed upon solution. Mr. Speaker, officials from the Department of External Affairs have, in fact, negotiated an equitable solution to this problem and the blueberries were not affected.


PORNOGRAPHY-REQUEST FOR STRONGER LAWS
Mr. Jim Jepson (London East):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to raise the issue of pornography in the House of Commons once again. I am sure that every Member of Parliament agrees that this is one issue which must be kept on the top of the agenda. This House has an obligation to give as much attention as possible to this matter until significant progress can be made in arresting the harm that is being inflicted on our children, our families, and our society.
There are not very many issues which enjoy such a broad base of support as does the opposition to pornography. Everyone recognizes that pornography is a bad influence on those who are directly involved. As well, I think everyone would agree that even those who choose not to involve themselves, including most of society, are in many ways hurt by it. Many innocent young people, and indeed Canadians of all ages, become victims of those depraved individuals who feed on the warped moral values depicted through the pornography industry.
People who buy pornography, and people who become wealthy in promoting it, do so with the justification that they are not hurting anyone. Who are they kidding? It is very clear in speaking to police, doctors, and social agencies, that this industry is claiming more victims with each passing day. People who buy pornography, first and foremost, hurt themselves. It is quite clear that it draws people into a vortex of dependency and addiction leading to increasingly more difficult tastes to satisfy and to a host of related personal problems. More importantly, the person who buys pornography contributes to the health of a vast and growing industry.

October I, 1985
Adjournment Debate
This industry does not exist without supporting a great many undesirable industries, including drugs, prostitution, crime, and the exploitation of women and children.
Finally, those who say that pornography does not hurt anyone are ignoring the effect it has on a community where it is permitted in plain sight in the local variety stores, and now in the shops that rent videos for home use. Our children begin to take it for granted when they see adults making use of such material. Do we want the children of our country to consider such trash as the norm? Absolutely not.
The political and social traditions of our country have overwhelmingly supported our community's proper role in defending itself from the creeping social disintegration that is, in a continuous cycle, both a result and a cause of pornography, and a direct attack on the family unit which I believe is the foundation stone of our country.
The Minister of Justice (Mr. Crosbie) has indicated that the Government will present a package of legislation to deal with pornography some time around Christmas. The Government will, to some extent, anchor this legislation on the recommendations of the Fraser Report on Pornography and Prostitution.
The Fraser Report presents a very sophisticated analysis of the problem, but there was a strong suggestion of tolerance toward the pornography that is not of the most offensive quality-that is explicitly violent, or featuring children. In fact, the report recommended that if pornographic material does not reflect these two themes, then it should be freely available if it is marked clearly and only sold to adults over 18. This is totally unacceptable.
Most Canadians do not want pornography in their corner stores, and most do not want to encounter it at all. There is absolutely nothing good or of redeeming value about pornography. So if some people do want it, let us not make it easily accessible.
Because of the increasing flood of pornography on the market today, I believe the time has come for Parliament to deal with its removal in a decisive and forthright manner. Too often in the past, our legislators have been handcuffed by a definition of pornography that is at the same time narrow and vague. Too often material has been defended because it might not be associated with some overt violence, or because it has some transparent claims of artistic merit. Only if the Government provides a broad and sweeping definition of pornography will significant gains occur in reducing this problem.
I believe the stiffest penlaties should be reserved for material exploiting children, or displaying violence. The publishers, wholesalers and retailers of these materials must be held accountable through our courts.
At the same time, let us never for one moment show the slightest tolerance for other forms of pornography. I hope the Government will show the decisive leadership that is necessary to reverse the alarming trends that have been developing. A good example is reflected by the adolescent-oriented material
we see daily on television that is obscene in every sense other than the graphic depiction of obscenities. This process can only start with the Canadian people clearly stating, through the Government in Parliament, that pornography in our society is both undesirable and unacceptable. I believe it is our responsibility as legislators to provide the necessary laws to protect our children, not only from the harm inflicted by those individuals who absorb pornography, but more important, from the gradual destruction of their collective sense of moral standards. The future of Canada, above all, depends on the healthy and mature attitudes of our younger generation. I urge the Government to act on this before it is too late.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that my hon. colleague has brought this topic up for a more detailed reply than can be given during Question Period. Of course, 1 am happy to see that so many Members of the House here tonight who want to be informed further on this subject.
Recent years have seen a dramatic upsurge in the availability of sexually explicit material, a significant diversification of form of that material such as paperback books, comic books, movies, video tapes, so-called marital aids and other paraphernalia and an ever extending system of distribution of the material.
In 1981, the Ministers of Justice and National Health and Welfare created the Committee on Sexual Offences Against Children and Youths, known as the Badgley Committee. The report was submitted on August 22, 1984. It contains recommendations for amendments to the Criminal Code to prohibit the use of a person under the age of 18 years in the making of ponorgraphy and to prohibit the possession and distribution of such material. Further, it recommends that the sale of pornographic materials to persons under 16 should be a criminal offence and that measures should be adopted to improve the investigation and enforcement of these offences. These recommendations are being reviewed by the Department of Justice.
On June 23, 1983, the Minister of Justice announced the creation of a special committee to study pornography and prostitution, under the chairmanship of Mr. Paul Fraser, Q.C. of Vancouver. The committee held a series of public hearings in 20 cities across Canada. The interest generated by the work of the committee was apparent at the public hearings, where there was very active participation of both organized groups and concerned citizens. The Department of Justice conducted a program of empirical research for the committee. This program included: a national population survey on the attitudes and views of Canadians concerning the control of pornography; a comprehensive review of the literature on the impact of pornography; experimental studies on the effects of pornography, and several other related studies of areas not covered by existing research findings.
The report of the Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution, the Fraser Committee, was tabled in the House of Commons on April 23, 1985.
October 1, 1985

The proposals of the Fraser Committee with regard to pornography would fundamentally alter the present Criminal Code provisions on obscenity. Mere possession of certain clearly defined pornographic materials, most notably child pornography, would be a criminal offence. The distribution or sale of materials falling within a category of "sexually violent and degrading pornography" would be proscribed unless the material could be shown to have educational or scientific purpose or artistic merit. All other sexually explicit materials would be required to be enclosed in a wrapper and clearly labelled so those who wish could avoid exposure to such materials. Sale of all types of pornography to those under 18 would be prohibited.
The recommendations of the Fraser Committee are now under review by officials in the Department of Justice, and following a period of consultation with provincial Governments and private sector groups, the Minister of Justice (Mr. Cros-bie) will announce the Government's response to those recommendations and those of the Badgley committee.
Adjournment Debate
Until a Federal Court of Appeal decision in March, 1985, Luscher and the Department of National Revenue, Customs and Excise, customs officials could interdict at the border materials which they deemed to be "immoral or indecent" pursuant to a provision of the Customs Tariff. The court struck down this legislation as unconstitutional on the basis that it violated Section 2(B) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and freedoms,-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: 1 regret to interrupt the Parliamentary Secretary but his time has expired.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Could 1 have unanimous consent to continue, Mr. Speaker?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I regret but the three minutes provided for the answer have terminated.

The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 3(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.28 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Wednesday, October 2, 198S