1986-05-12

Mr. Speaker:: I am in receipt of a notice of request from the Hon. Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion (Mr. Stevens) who has asked me if he can make a brief personal statement. I have examined a number of the precedents in this area and therefore propose to recognize the Hon. Minister now.


Hon. Sinclair Stevens (Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to inform Members of the House that yesterday I wrote the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) to ask that he call for an impartial person to conduct an investigation as to fact respecting allegations of conflict of interest which have recently been made in various newspapers, electronic media, and in the House of Commons. As you know, Mr. Speaker, I have complied with the provisions of the conflict of interest code for public office holders. Nonetheless, there seemed to remain sufficient confusion as to fact to warrant an impartial investigation.
In the circumstances, I believe it is in keeping with our parliamentary traditions and practices that I tender my resignation as Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion effective immediately. I can inform Hon. Members that I have so tendered my resignation to the Prime Minister.
I thank you, Mr. Speaker.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. On a point of order, the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition.


Right Hon. John N. Turner (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, as I understand it, we will have an opportunity when you open the debate in a few minutes to comment on this. However, with your indulgence, I have a few things I would like to say at this stage in response to this ministerial statement.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The right hon. gentleman will know that the Chair is always in some difficulty on these matters. When I received the information this morning I checked the precedents regarding Ministers in previous Governments. They had been handled as matters of privilege. The right hon. gentleman is in the hands of the House if he is seeking the right to make a reply.


John Napier Turner: Without prejudice to whatever we might do on future occasions if this arises again, because of the coincidence of a debate beginning this morning on this issue we will waive whatever rights we may or may not have had in order to await that debate.


Hon. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa):: Mr. Speaker, I make precisely the same point that the Right Hon. Leader of the Official Opposition just made. I am assuming we are proceeding with the debate and any other comments which I might have in mind to make about what the Minister has just informed the House will be made in that debate.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Hon. Jake Epp (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, for over 300 years Canadians have been well served by competent and dedicated nurses. Nursing has been developing and growing as a profession in Canada since the time of Jeanne Mance, who is considered to be the first lay nurse in Canada, in the early years of the 17th century. Today nurses continue to distinguish themselves and their profession by their excellent record of achievement in the provision of high quality nursing care.
The contributions of nurses throughout the world in many and varied aspects of health care have been recognized internationally for many years with the declaration of May 12, Florence Nightingale's birthday, as International Nurses Day. In Canada, nurses have played an active and valuable role in the development of health care policies at all levels. Their commitment to the well-being of Canadians is well established and recognized.
The need for nurses in our health care system is such that they constitute over 50 per cent of Canada's health care professionals. Today there are over 180,000 nurses practising in Canada. Nursing is a profession which touches everyone. Nurses reach into the community to care for citizens ranging in age from the newborn to the aged during health and illness. Their presence is felt in the home, the community and the workplace as they provide health care for Canadians in schools, industry, community clinics, hospitals, nursing homes, and in all other types of health care institutions. In recognition of the many contributions of nurses to the health and well-

May 12, 1986
Minister's Statement
being of citizens of this country, on behalf of all Canadians, I hereby proclaim the week of May 11, 1986, to be National Nurses Week in Canada.


Hon. Douglas C. Frith (Sudbury):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to the Minister's statement on the occasion of the proclamation of National Nurses Week in Canada. About 300 years ago Canada's first nurse and hospital administrator, Jeanne Mance, arrived in Montreal to establish the first hospital in Canada. It was her courage, determination, and caring which set the standard for nursing care in Canada. It is a standard that today's nurses meet and surpass. I need not remind this House of the tremendous contribution made by nurses to our society as health care professionals and care givers. The proclamation of National Nurses Week is a tangible recognition of their efforts and accomplishments.
I would like to remind the Minister, however, of the confusion arising because of the lateness of the 1986 proclamation decision, and I do not believe that is the fault of the Minister. It has been brought to my attention that there will be various provincial nurses' weeks celebrated across the country and, at this late date, it will be difficult to co-ordinate the different celebrations. It has been suggested by the National Federation of nurses' unions that in the future the federal Government make efforts to co-ordinate provincial activities with the nationally proclaimed week.
[DOT] (mo)
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I am sure I am joined by all Canadians as well as my colleagues on this side of the House in thanking nurses across the country for their dedication and caring.


Mr. Vic Althouse (Humboldt-Lake Centre):: 
INTERPARLIAMENTARY DELEGATION
Mr. Bill Kempling (Burlington):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 101,1 have the honour to present to the House, in both official languages, the report of the official parliamentary delegation of the Canadian section of the Canada-U.S. interparliamentary group which attended the meeting with the steel caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., on April 28 and 29.


PETITIONS
Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops-Shuswap):: Mr. Speaker, 1 wish to present a petition today from a number of people from Kamloops, British Columbia, who are concerned about the decision made by the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Miss MacDonald) that after December 31, 1985, their pension benefits would be deducted from their unemployment insurance benefits, effectively eliminating the benefit to the worker of the pension package. They, therefore, call upon the Government to ensure that all retired employees keep their pension benefits and receive their unemployment insurance benefits without deduction of pension income.


Mr. Ray Skelly (Comox-Powell River):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition to the House from many people who live on the east coast of Vancouver Island and the central coast of B.C. They are complaining that the Government of Canada is removing lighthouse services which will eventually impair the ability to conduct search and rescue activities. It will make life on the coast of British Columbia more dangerous. They ask that the Government reinstate this service and, thereby, reinstate the safety of transportation on the coast of B.C.
May 12, 1986


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Hon. Ray Hnatyshyn (President of the Privy Council):: Mr. Speaker, I rise simply to indicate that tomorrow will be designated as the second allotted day in this trimester.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Mr. Doug Lewis (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council):: Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it agreed?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: I wish to inform the House that because of the ministerial statement made by the Hon. Minister of National Health and Welfare, Government Orders will be extended by five minutes beginning at one o'clock p.m.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


John Napier Turner: That this House condemns the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion and the Government for failing to provide full and satisfactory information on the blatant conflict of interest situation involving that Minister.
He said: Mr. Speaker, we learned this morning that the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion (Mr. Stevens) has offered his resignation to the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney). We also learned that he has asked the Prime Minister for what he terms an independent inquiry. In responding to that initial announcement we want to warn the Government and alert Your Honour that Parliament will not be stilled. We were blocked in two separate committees from getting to the root of this issue. We have been trying to elicit answers for two weeks during Question Period. A judicial inquiry may well be an attempt to take this matter away from the House of Commons. We are dealing with the comportment of a Minister and the public administration of the country. The Minister is responsible to the highest court of the land which is Parliament. We will not countenance a by-passing of parliamentary review and parliamentary accountability through an attempt to convert
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this from a matter of parliamentary and political responsibility to a judicial inquiry.
In the last two weeks we have seen a piece-by-piece revelation of a blatant conflict of interest. That conflict of interest has reached such proportions that it not only smells of corruption, but we believe it is corrupt. It is using public office for private gain. No matter what the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Nielsen) may attempt to convince the country of through his stonewalling, it is a breach of the guidelines introduced by the Prime Minister outlining conduct for his Ministers.
I want to put on the record what the Prime Minister said on September 9, 1985, when he introduced the guidelines. He said:
It is a great principle of public administration-I could even say an "imperative"-that to function effectively the Government and the public service of a democracy must have the trust and confidence of the public they serve. In order to reinforce that trust, the Government must be able to provide competent management and, above all, be guided by the highest standards of conduct.
Those were the words of the Prime Minister of Canada at that time.
In an open letter to all Members of Parliament and Senators bearing the same date, the Prime Minister said:
The new Code leaves no doubt that the ultimate responsibility for the ethical standards of the federal Government rests with the Cabinet and, more particularly, with me.
He went on to say:
You will find no quasi-independent agencies in this Code that will allow the Government to shirk its responsibility by saying that the problem belongs to someone else.
I made that point earlier this morning. The Prime Minister cannot divest himself of his responsibility by shuffling it off to an independent inquiry.
In his letter to his Ministers of the same date the Prime Minister said:
I wish it to be understood clearly by all Ministers that they have an individual responsibility to prevent conflicts of interest, including those that might arise out of the activities of their spouses or dependent children on the dealings in property or investments which are owned or managed, in whole or in part, by their spouses or dependent children.
I believe that those guidelines cover the issues specifically. In Ontario there is now a sharing of property during the time of a marriage. Anything that Mrs. Stevens was dealing with, her husband owned jointly. In any event, the shares are registered in a majority fashion in his own name.
We brought this motion before the House today because the recently revealed actitivies of the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion constitute an obvious blatant and flagrant violation of the spirit and letter of the guidelines issued by the Prime Minister. Yet, the Deputy Prime Minister insisted on trying to bring the Minister's conduct within the ambit of those guidelines.
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May 12, 1986
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There will be those calling for the further strengthening and updating of the guidelines. However, apart from the guidelines, what we have here is unethical conduct. It is not possible to codify the whole range of human behaviour. We cannot codify and try to predict every possible conflict and every possible ambit of how a Minister may or may not react in the conduct of his public duty. We must rely on individual judgment, on the ethics of the position and on the understanding by Ministers that they cannot allow their private activities, gain or benefit to interfere with the impartial operation of their public office.
Time does not permit me to outline the whole range of facts that have come to the attention of Parliament. We know about the $2.6 million loan that was solicited successfully by Mrs. Stevens on behalf of her husband, through a company with which her husband was then dealing for tax incentives and grants from the federal treasury. Where was the benefit? An interest-free loan is an obvious benefit and amounted to some $314,000 at interest rates at the time the loan was sucessfully obtained. The very fact of obtaining the loan was a benefit because the Minister and his wife obviously were unsuccessful at getting credit elsewhere. They had already approached the brokerage houses and investment bankers on Bay Street in Toronto in an attempt to get a capital injection, but failed. Presumably, they approached the banks. Finally, they had to go to a company with whom the Minister was dealing to see whether they could get enough liquidity to keep the company going.
There is the earlier $3 million loan from the Korean bank of which 40 per cent of the shares are owned by the Hyundai motor car company which the Minister brought into this country. It is that company from which the Minister freed the requirement of Canadian content and the provision of jobs, all the usual guidelines and rules that are applied within the auto industry to ensure Canadian content. All of that was forgiven; all of that was waived. Was there consideration? We do not know because the Minister has not answered. I believe we can establish that there was clear benefit.
We now have to deal with the second issue of the so-called blind trust. The Minister, on the rare occasions that he spoke, and the Deputy Prime Minister said that the official in the Registrar General's Department assured them that the necessary documentation had been made and the affairs had been put in a blind trust. We asked that National Trust, apparently the blind trustee, be called before the appropriate committee of the House of Commons. The chairman and the Conservative majority on that committee refused to allow that to happen.
Where was the arm's length approach that would constitute a blind trust? The Minister's wife was actively dealing on his behalf for his property or their jointly held property. The Minister tries to maintain that he had no knowledge of that. It strains the belief of the Canadian people that a wife dealing in favour of their jointly held property would not have told her husband about a loan in the amount of $2.5 million that she
successfully obtained in order to preserve the liquidity of their prime asset in life. No one believes it. No one believes that a husband and wife, in a matter so important to them, would not have talked about that at some time. Knowledge or no knowledge,I do not understand why she would have done it anyway. Surely her conduct is subject to some type of review, and I am sure we have not heard the end of that. She was actively dealing on the Minister's behalf. Together with the Minister's former campaign manager, who was also an officer of York Centre, the Minister's wife visited the investment houses on Bay Street. It is these same houses that were vying for the job of adviser to the Minister on the privatization of some Crown corporations, such as de Havilland, Canadair, CDC and Teleglobe. The very firms seeking that business are the firms that were visited by the Minister's wife. Did she say what the quid pro quo would be, or was it so implicit in their conversations that the investment houses knew they had to receive her into their offices and talk to her? I will not discuss names because we do not have the full facts.
This matter has not ended this morning. We will look into the interlocking directorships that give some companies an inside track with CDC. The decision as to who would advise and whose bid would be accepted is cozily decided by a group of men and women having close connections to the Minister. Some of them were even appointed by the Minister to the functions that allow them to make those choices and give that advice. It is self-dealing by insiders. It is rotten, and the people of Canada do not have to put up with it at all.
Let us examine the Deputy Prime Minister's defences, one by one. His first defence is that the Minister fulfilled the guidelines. I believe I have convinced Your Honour, having read the particular guidelines, that those were not satisfied. Certainly, in terms of the letter, they were not satisfied and certainly the ethical spirit of the guidelines were rudely, blatantly and ruthlessly contravened.
The Deputy Prime Minister says that the documentation was in order. He expects us to believe that the case has ended because an official in the Department of the Registrar General says that everything is in order. The problem was not with the documentation. The problem concerns the conduct. What did the Minister's wife do? What did the Minister know? Why were these dealings even contemplated?
I say once again that the guidelines are not a complete code of human behaviour because such a code is not possible. We are talking about ethical spirit and the judgment behind the conduct of the Minister's wife and the Minister.
The second line of defence by the Minister was that the deal with Magna Corporation was a Liberal deal. He maintained that all the grants for Magna were agreed to by an administration under my authority in August, 1984. We pointed out to the House in Question Period that that was a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the former Minister, Ed Lumley. It was an over-all umbrella agreement. According to the terms of that agreement, every specific grant and item had to be negotiated by a Minister in the future and had to be approved
May 12, 1986

by the Cabinet in the future. The Minister who just tendered his resignation this morning is the one who was responsible for that. This will go down as the biggest and most deceitful red herring drawn across the trail of those in pursuit of honesty in the history of this country.
Why did the Minister not tell the House and the people of Canada that every cent of funding anticipated in the over-all agreement required his specific approval of each item? Why did he attempt such subterfuge and deceit in the House of Commons?
What is even more disgusting and shocking is the fact that the Minister did not tell the House that another Memorandum of Understanding was signed by him with Magna International on June 14, 1985, when he and the Prime Minister's Government was in office. It was announced in this press release, just one month after the $2.6 million loan was arranged by his wife, through a numbered company.

Why did the Minister not table this second memorandum as well? What is he trying to hide? Were there other memoranda we have not heard about? Were there other incidents? Question period after question period, will we have to sit here in the House, according to your very narrow interpretation of the Standing Orders, Mr. Speaker. Why did the Minister not make a statement before the House? Why didn't the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), before he left for China, make a statement on his investigation of his Minister's activities?

This is absolute subterfuge.
The third line of defence was that there was no proof. Yet, the facts have been overwhelming. The media has done excellent research on this matter. There has been no denial by the Minister, no explanation and no statement. Before he left, the Prime Minister said we had to allow the presumption of innocence, that a man was innocent until he was proved guilty.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: You find that offensive.


John Napier Turner: I do not find that offensive at all. That is quite in order in a criminal matter. This is not a criminal matter, yet-which has nothing to do with the matter of public administration. In public administration a Minister has the burden of proof, the duty to show that what he is doing is beyond reproach. The burden of proof is not on Parliament. It is not on the opposition, nor the media. The burden of proof is on the Minister-


An Hon. Member:: And the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney).


John Napier Turner: -to show that his conduct is absolutely beyond reproach. It is obvious that not only was there not proper conduct, there certainly was not an
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appearance of proper conduct. The Prime Minister just does not understand the full scope of the issues before us.
The Minister was rendered ineffective. Suspicion engulfs him. He has not spoken. The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Nielsen) did not allow him to rise in this House, and I said to the Deputy Prime Minister in Parliament and on the streets that no Minister can delegate his reputation to a Deputy Prime Minister or even to a Prime Minister. No Minister can delegate his reputation for honesty, for integrity and good conduct. The initial mistake made by the Government and the Deputy Prime Minister was not to allow the Minister to rise. Obviously, there is plenty to hide and the Government is going to use the judicial inquiry as a method of trying to keep it away from the purview of Parliament.
The issue before you, Mr. Speaker, is not just a question of bad judgment. The Hon. Member for Vancouver South (Mr. Fraser) may have exercised bad judgment in the tuna matter but no one in his House ever questioned his honesty or integrity.


An Hon. Member:: No?


John Napier Turner: Not his honesty nor his integrity. I still hold him in high regard. But this is not just a question of judgment, it is a question of ethics, honesty and comportment in the public affairs of this country.
I think I began speaking at 17 minutes after the hour, Mr. Speaker, and I get 20 minutes so I think I have another five minutes.


Mr. Speaker:: Absolutely. I apologize. I had noted 11.16 a.m. The Hon. Member is absolutely right, he has another five minutes.


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, this is not merely a question of bad judgment. This goes right to corruption. This is a mingling of the public and private interests. The question Parliament is entitled to ask, and the question Canadians are already asking, is why did the Prime Minister tolerate this for so long? He must have made an independent investigation of where the Minister stood and what were his dealings. If he did not, he was negligent. If he did make these investigations, did he expect he was going to be able to ride this out? Where does the Prime Minister stand? Did he not ask for an inquiry? This issue has contaminated his Government. It has brought his Government into disrepute. It is just another item in a series of events and ministerial conduct which shakes the people's confidence and trust in the Prime Minister and the Government he leads.
We do not know what went on in Korea or China over the weekend. Obviously the Prime Minister's commissars said to him: "Look. This is out of control. We want to clean this up before you come home. It has already pushed you off the front pages and we want you to come home as a hero". That is a joke. They want him to come home a hero from the Chinese and Japanese trip. The Prime Minister is on the Great Wall of

May 12, 1986
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China and his Deputy Prime Minister and his Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion are grovelling in the mud trying to defend the scandal here in Canada.


Mr. Gauthier:: He is on the Wall and they are stonewalling.


John Napier Turner: Why did the Prime Minister react? It was not because he had a sudden attack of morality. He must have received the polls. He must have been on the phone to Allan Gregg who is more responsible and more powerful than any Minister on the front benches. He probably told him: "Get out of this thing before you come home". The Government tried to ride it out. It put the Deputy Prime Minister in charge and tried to ride it out. I am now convinced that unless a lack of proper conduct is discovered by the public or by Parliament, unethical as it may be, it will be tolerated by the Prime Minister. The morality of the matter is irrelevant. The polls are very relevant. The shedding of his image on his foreign trip is very relevant.
This issue here is the morality of Government and our confidence and trust in our democratic institutions. Freedom is a very fragile thing. Cynicism can eat away at it. Cynicism and lack of proper conduct in public office can erode it. That is what has been happening. The Prime Minister hopes to come home clean. He is contriving not to have to face the music when he steps into this Chamber in a few days. I do not believe it is going to work. Even the resignation of his Minister will not rescue the lost ethical standards of the Government.
The issue goes right to the heart of the Government and right to the Prime Minister himself. Why is this type of conduct tolerated? Why was the Minister not asked to resign immediately? Why did the Government try to ride it out? Why were the Ministers not forthcoming, particularly the Minister in question? Why was the Conservative majority on two committees of Parliament used to close down and clamp an investigation? The Hon. Member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) is here. We support his reform. Why was the committee system not used for what it should be used?
I know Members of Parliament on the Government side cannot be feeling good this morning. This is not a good day for the country, nor is it a good day for Parliament. It is not a good day with respect to the way we run our affairs. However, despite it all, despite the largest majority in Canadian history, the truth is out. The Minister has resigned. It has been a great victory for Parliament.


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, this is a very unfortunate debate to have to take place in the House of Commons now in May of 1986, or at any time. I want to say at the outset, having heard what the Minister said this morning, that in my judgment, rarely, if ever, has a Minister so failed to make a distinction between his private interests and his public responsibilities as in the case of this Minister. Rarely, in my judgment, has a resignation been more appropriate. This resignation, however, ought not to have happened today, but two weeks ago at the earliest. In that interim, I want to say
now, the Minister violated not simply the guidelines in terms of the issue of appearances, but the substance of the guidelines, and I will come to that in a moment.
Before doing so, I want to say that the performance of the Government for the past two weeks has been totally lamentable. Whatever the Minister knew before April 29, he did know on April 29 that his wife had obtained a $2.6 million loan with no interest charged in the first year and with incredible terms after that. He knew that that loan was made with people intimately connected with his own Department and that he was doing continuing business as a Minister with the same individuals. Any Minister with a sense of responsibility ought to have on that very day submitted his resignation.
I also want to say that what we have heard in the interim is a stonewalling from the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Nielsen). Day after day the man who assumed responsibility for the guidelines, instead of ensuring that his Cabinet lived up to them and that the dignity of Parliament was respected, gave us stonewalling. We got more than that. It was suggested that Members of the Opposition who raised questions were not interested in jobs in Quebec. It was also suggested that we did not want new investment in Cape Breton Island. There were all types of spurious, erroneous, irrelevant and unjust arguments made by the Government in defence of its very unjust case. That is what Members of the Government were up to.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: I also want to say that the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), who is away, cannot be absolved of responsibility. I am assuming that he did not hear the news before the rest of us heard it. I will even assume that he did not hear of Mrs. Stevens' loan before Mr. Stevens himself heard of it. However, as Prime Minister, before his departure for Japan, Korea and China when he heard of the nature of the loan to the wife of this Minister who had ongoing responsibilities with people and individuals intimately involved in his personal financial affairs, a Prime Minister who has a sense of probity, ought to have said right at that moment: "Mr. Stevens, I need your resignation, and I need it now". That is what he ought to have done.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: The following is something which I wish to emphasize. If that had been done two weeks ago, then Mr. Stevens' credibility as a Minister might well have been preserved, and as has already been pointed out by the Leader of the Official Opposition (Mr. Turner), if the Government had acted at the proper time, the credibility of Mr. Stevens down the road might have been preserved.
As has also been pointed out by the Leader of the Official Opposition, we on this side of the House have not said at all that there was any dishonesty involved or any criminal wrongdoing. We are not aware of any, nor have we suggested
May 12, 1986

that there was any. What we are saying, and what we have been saying, is that there has been a conflict of interest. However, the Government's refusal to face up to its moral responsibilities has not only damaged Parliament, since that is also what is involved in all this, but it has perhaps damaged beyond repair the personal reputation of the Minister in terms of his being able to move back into another portfolio.
The case I wanted to make before we heard of the Minister's decision this morning is that the Government and the Minister have failed to meet the existing guidelines. The Minister has done so in a way which ought to have been obvious to anyone. It was something which was obvious to the people of Canada. Everywhere one travelled in the past two weeks it was not necessary to bring up the issue. I am sure this is something which members of the Government knew very well. Wherever one went people were saying: "What is going on? When is Mr. Stevens going to do the right thing?"
I wish to put a couple of points on the record since Members on both sides of the House know that this type of matter is extremely unpleasant. It is not something with which Members of Parliament like to deal. I am sure there may be one or two individuals in the House who enjoy this type of thing. I even see some smirks on the faces of Members opposite. However, I wish to say to the Government House Leader that some of us do not enjoy-


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: What smirks?


John Edward Broadbent: I saw a smile, and the implication was that perhaps some people-


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Take it easy.


John Edward Broadbent: I wish to say to the Minister that there are a great many people who would rather be discussing other matters than the matter of conflict of interest in the House of Commons. If the Government had done the right thing, we would not be discussing it now.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: You're disgusting, that's what you are.


John Edward Broadbent: We will hear what the Minister has to say in a few minutes. I wish to say that the point we want to make on this matter has been a point embedded, in our view, in the parliamentary system since democracy evolved in parliamentary democracies, but more recently in different Governments. I wish to quote from the guidelines laid down by a previous Conservative Prime Minister, the present Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark) when he headed the Government of Canada. In those guidelines he stated:
Ministers must perform and appear to perform their official responsibilities and arrange their private affairs in a manner that will conserve and enhance public confidence and trust in Government and that will prevent conflicts of interest from arising.
That was the general principle enunciated by the former Prime Minister in terms of his guidelines.
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I would now like to quote from the principles of the guidelines outlined by the Right Hon. Pierre Elliot Trudeau when he headed the Government in 1980. I quote from the then Government House Leader who stated:
Ministers should also bear in mind their individual responsibility to prevent conflicts of interest, including those that might conceivably arise or appear to arise out of dealings in property or investments which are owned or managed in whole or in part, by their spouses or dependent children.
So although there was not a specific provision for spouses in the 1980 guidelines, as there was in the guidelines of the Clark Government, there was a very specific principle laid down to the effect that the financial activities of spouses were seen to be covered, even if the technical detail of a trust for spouses was not.
I now come to the task force set up by the former Government which was jointly chaired by Michael Starr and Mitchell Sharp. The point they make in their recommendations is: "These guidelines do not directly apply to spouses". This is what the Government ultimately accepted. They recommend:
It goes without saying that Ministers must not transfer their assets to their spouses or dependent children with a view to avoiding the requirements of these guidelines. Ministers should also bear in mind their individual responsibility to prevent conflicts of interest, including those that might conceivably arise or appear to arise out of dealings in property or investments which are owned or managed in whole or in part, by their spouses or dependent children.
Finally, I wish to quote from the words of the Prime Minister himself as set out in the letter he sent to all Ministers accompanying the present set of guidelines. It was the Prime Minister himself who stated:
However, I wish it to be understood clearly by all Ministers that they have an individual responsibility to prevent conflicts of interest, including those that might arise out of activities of their spouses or dependent children or the dealings in property or investments which are owned or managed, in whole or in part, by their spouses or dependent children.
I wish to say that if the last point coming from the Prime Minister himself to his Ministers accompanying the set of guidelines had been acted upon by the present Minister, we would not be having this debate today.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!

Mr. Speaker, we have had a blatant violation of all these principles by the Minister and others who are accountable to the House of Commons, and the arguments presented by the Government in support of Mr. Stevens since the beginning of this affair are deplorably weak.
These arguments are based exclusively on Mr. Stevens' statement that he had put his assets in a blind trust, at the appropriate time and in the appropriate manner.
The Minister carefully avoided answering charges that he failed to conform to other requirements drawn up by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney).
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister had a responsibility to ask for the Minister's resignation before he left for Japan. Since then, I may point out that the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Nielsen) has shown incredible insensitivity. He has shirked his

May 12, 1986
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responsibilities. Whether the Minister was aware or not of the loan obtained by his wife at the time she obtained it, he should have resigned immediately. He should have resigned on the very day he heard about the loan-that is, on April 29- because he was personally implicated in decisions involving millions of dollars regarding businesses and individuals with close links to the person who obtained the loan, which is indeed the case, Mr. Speaker.

Among others there are three different categories of facts which should have led one to have believed that the Minister was in a conflict of interest situation. First, there is his own appointments to the Board of Directors of the CDIC. These appointments include people intimately, personally, and financially associated with the Minister in the past. In terms of their own business interests and their new responsibilities, they now have, in our judgment, a direct conflict of interest.
Second, Mrs. Stevens, as we have learned in recent days, was continually active on behalf of the family business in attempting to make special deals, or to make particular deals with a number of brokerage houses in Toronto, the same brokerage houses which had been selected by the Minister to do work for his Department.
The third item is what I really want to talk about in terms of making my case. It is that we have had a violation, not simply of the appearance of the conflict of interest principle, but the reality of it rests with the $2.6 million loan which Noreen Stevens made on highly advantageous terms from Mr. Anton Czapka whose business connections with the Minister's Department remain very close to this day. One could make this argument at a number of levels. First, there is the appearance of wrongdoing. In 1974, the Minister himself said the following:
It's not enough to be technically correct-you have to appear not to be covering up.
One could make a very good case for the guidelines, to which I have already referred, having been violated in terms of appearance. But I wish to make what I think is the stronger case, that we are not simply talking about the appearance of the violation of the guidelines, we are talking about the reality. Why do I say that? I would ask Hon. Members of the House to follow along with me while I list what I think are selfevident truths and steps which ordinary Canadians would automatically assume to be proper consequences.
We know that the Minister's so-called blind trust originally included shares in York Centre, his own family business. When he originally set up the blind trust, the family business, by definition, went into that trust. We know that Mrs. Stevens received this $2.6 million loan interest-free for one year. In fact, she does not have to make another payment until the end of the second year.


John Napier Turner: She can renegotiate it.


John Edward Broadbent: And she can renegotiate it. We know that she received this loan from one Anton Czapka in order to bail out the family company. We also know that Mr. Czapka and his son hold key positions with companies dealing directly with the Minister's Department.
Quite apart from whether or not the Minister's original company shares that were put into the blind trust are still there, something which we do not know, we do know that the Minister has a direct financial interest in his wife's financial well-being. There is no question about that in terms of one's normal understanding and in terms of family law in the Province of Ontario where they both reside.
We also know that the Minister and his wife want to keep their business. Particularly, they will have that in mind when the first payment comes due a year from now and when they may have an interest in renegotiating the terms of the loan.
Next, we know that it would be clearly in the best interests of the Minister to have Mr. Czapka in a good frame of mind when the renegotiation or the first payment comes up. We know that the Minister has to make decisions in his Department involving auto parts companies almost every week, decisions that could be quite directly beneficial to Mr. Czapka and could be very conducive to keeping Mr. Czapka in a positive frame of mind.
I want to make the next point because no one is talking about honesty here. We know that this kind of a position could distort an honest person's judgement. It could distort the judgement of an honest person who happens to be a Minister of the Crown. That is what a confict of interest is all about.
If we follow the sequence of steps, we know that the Minister, having a direct interest in the financial outcome of a series of decisions, is in a position of conflict of interest-not in appearance but in reality. Therefore, he ought to have resigned the day he heard of that loan. Instead, he was responsible for two weeks of parliamentary time that could have been used for other important matters.
I would like to conclude my comments by making some suggestions. First, I wish to give tribute to some of my colleagues who have brought the issue before two committees of the House and have joined with other opposition Members in a sincere effort to get the Committee on Privileges and Elections to look into this issue. They were denied that access by Conservative back-bench Members who sat on the committee.
I am now proposing, quite apart from the announcement made by the Minister earlier, that the suggestion made by the Hon. Member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Rodriguez) that the Committee on Privileges and Elections now be given a mandate to have a fresh look at the conflict of interest guidelines ought to be pursued.
I would like to suggest that the committee also look at the guidelines of the former Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Those guidelines were tougher in 1979,
May 12, 1986

particularly with reference to spouses. It seems to me that those of us who accept the equality argument that there ought to be equal division of assets between spouses, something which is long overdue in this country, have to accept the corollary of that, which is that a marriage is in part an economic unit and therefore any effective guidelines for Ministers must have detailed specific reference to their spouses.
I also suggest that the committee look at the need for tougher regulations pertinent to blind trusts. For example, if a Minister puts shares in a trust, he or she ought to assume that those shares are still there and that the Minister has a Financial interest in what happens to them unless informed that they have been sold. That kind of requirement exists in the United States where there are tougher trust guidelines.
The final suggestion I make is that the suggestion of the Sharp-Starr task force that there ought to be a person independent of the Prime Minister responsible for enforcement of conflict of interest guidelines be looked at with a great deal of care by the committee. It seems to us to have a lot of merit.
In conclusion, this has been a messy, unpleasant business involving the resignation of a Minister of the Crown. I suppose the only good news that has come out of all this is that the Parliament of Canada does an effective job from time to time.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but commence my remarks today with something on which I wish to touch later on. I think the speeches we have heard up to now were prepared in advance of the announcement made by my colleague, the Hon. former Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion. Unfortunately, in my humble estimation, the speeches did not reflect that and were made to be delivered in any event, still full of all the weaknesses and deficiencies with respect to this issue that prevailed in the Opposition approach during the course of this debate.


Some Hon. Members:: Blame everybody else.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Hon. Members are saying that I blame everybody else. Unfortunately, I think that that is precisely what the Opposition has been doing over the course of the last two weeks.
In preparing for today's debate, I took time to reflect on the events of the past few days and the terms of the motion put by the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner) this morning. I doubt that any Member could participate in this debate without stopping to consider the importance of this institution and our role in it. Without wanting to over-simplify the matter or to run the risk of seeming trite, I believe that we have to remind ourselves from time to time of the central principles of public service and the public good which must govern our deliberations in this place.
The charges, innuendo and political manoeuvrings which have dominated the House and its committees in the past two
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weeks have added what I consider to be a particularly unedifying chapter to parliamentary history. In a sense this is understandable because the strategies employed have centred on short-term issues, the inevitable by-product of the political process.
The House of Commons is a place of strong feelings, focused issues, harsh critiques, and fleeting concerns. This means that all too often it becomes a cathedral of the here and now. Debate on significant issues becomes reduced to black and white assertions of dogma which serve neither to provide new insights nor to contribute to national reconciliation. However, I do not believe that this is an inescapable pattern. Moreover, I think the Canadian public has the right to expect better of us. Indeed, Canadians have a right not only to expect the very best of each of us but have a responsibility to accept nothing less.
Keeping those responsibilities in mind, the actions of Members in the past few days bear most lamentable testimony to the public trust vested in Parliament. It would be presumptuous of me to attempt to speak for all Members, but I believe my experiences since first coming to this place as a political assistant in the 1950s, and subsequently, have left me with a clear perspective on service in the House. A large part of my political experience was gained while in opposition. I understand what it means to have to spend one's day looking for issues which will capture media attention.

I understand it may be necessary to find topics that are easily condensed into 20-second items for the national news. I also realize it is easier to sell sensational news than substance. However, I am sure that in the final instance, the public will judge not only the Government's mistakes and achievements but also the Opposition's actions and its proposals for intelligent alternatives. This last item is essential if we are to maintain a healthy parliamentary system. Without debates on substance, Parliament will be useless.

Looking back to the sense of renewal, optimism, and national purpose which prevailed at the outset of the Diefen-baker mandate, and indeed that of subsequent administrations, I am struck with the sense of purpose and vision that each new administration brings to this place. That vision cannot be sustained for long in the face of obstructive and unrelenting negative opposition. When in this manner Parliament allows the transitory issues of the day to divert it from its original mandate, it fails all Canadians-


Mr. Nunziata:: Look at yourself in the mirror.


Mr. Cassidy:: Look in the mirror.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Hon. Members listened attentively to the speeches of the first two Leaders. It seems to me that the same courtesy is appropriate.

May 12, 1986
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Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, I regret very much that the Opposition, on an issue which it brought to the House, refuses to allow members on the government side to be heard. It speaks of the message which I am trying to get across, and I think the Canadian people understand that very clearly.


Mr. Penner:: Are they giving points for hypocrisy today?


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: I would have thought opposition Members might understand that there is sense in listening to debate. I disagree very strenuously with the Opposition positions that have been put forward. However, I displayed courtesy by listening to the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner) and to the Leader of the New Democratic Party (Mr. Broadbent). I did not spend my time sitting in the House caterwauling and trying to shout down their positions with which I disagree. That is something about which I might want to speak in the House of Commons, but Canadians do not want irresponsible opposition with Members standing and shouting down people who are trying to speak out in legitimate debates. I think Parliament has reached just such a crossroad. Over the course of the past few days the House has engaged-


Mr. Keeper:: Why don't you speak to the issue?


William James Kempling: Why don't you shut your mouth, or I will come over and shut it for you.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Did you hear that? Physical threats now.


Mr. Marchi:: Civility!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The Hon. Member is entitled to make his speech without interjections on either side, please.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, I think the Opposition has conducted this assault on the character and conduct of a Member of the House of Commons, a Member of the Ministry, without spelling out any specific charges-


John Edward Broadbent: Oh, come on!


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: -without providing any evidence of a breach of the established Code of Conduct, without outlining any specific recommendations for improvements to that Code, without concern for the rules of the House or its committees, and without concern for the long-term implications its actions hold for that Member of this institution.
The motion which we are now debating today serves as a perfect example of those tactics. It condemns without showing cause. It provides no suggested course of action. It does not permit the House to vote and thus reach a conclusion. It furthers the objectives of those who seek to wound through innuendo.
If I may, I should like to take a few moments to expand on each of these themes. The history of Parliament is not one of a tepid debating society. Quite the contrary, this institution has
long been a place where the clash of passions, personalities, and ideas have led to vigorous debate and harsh criticism. There can be no doubt that this House, which was developed from the model of the Parliament at Westminster, has not had an entirely calm and passionless past. We all understand that the width of the centre aisle in the Mother of Parliaments was that of two sword lengths because at one time it prevented real bloodshed. Parliament has grown to be the central democratic institution of our nation by being the forum for the combat of the mind. It replaced the much less constructive forms of combat which preceded it. When we agree to join this combat, we must do so on the understanding that there are certain rules of conduct which govern it so that it is fair to all sides. Over the past hundreds of years these rules have been refined and improved upon to ensure that reasoned debate and argument takes place rather than open warfare, and that the Government of the day is properly held to account.

Many years ago, this House adopted the practice of refraining from attacks on the behaviour of a Member of this House without first establishing precise and detailed charges regarding the behaviour in question.

For two weeks now we have seen an anomalous situation develop where innuendo and supposition have formed the basis of just such an attack, yet no charge has been laid.


John Edward Broadbent: What were the innuendoes?


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: I think all Hon. Members would agree that there is value in adhering very closely to our practices, for it is this very body of practices which helps to keep this institution operating, particularly in times of stress.
I heard the Hon. Leader of the New Democratic Party ask about innuendoes. During his remarks he indicated that there was absolutely no allegation of wrongdoing. He complained that somehow there was some type of appearance of wrongdoing, but he did not suggest that there was any wrongdoing on the part of the Hon. Minister. He is now telling me that he is carrying on in this debate without laying any specific charges of wrongdoing.
Democracy is often a fragile and delicate flowering of what is best in the nation from which it springs. However, no democratic people ever have but one view of what ought to be done. We must therefore develop the means to arrive at compromises between conflicting interests. If we begin to tear down those practices which make democracy possible, then we risk serious consequences.
If the House reflects upon the last two weeks and considers the consequences of destroying, or at least conveniently ignoring long established practices, I think many Members will conclude, as have I, that this is not the appropriate way to proceed.
May 12, 1986

The motion before us for debate today does not tend to reasoned consideration. Like the many unsubstantiated allegations which have appeared in newspapers over the last two weeks, this motion is nothing but supposition based upon innuendo. This debate should have provided the ideal opportunity, yet the Opposition did not attempt to lay a charge or to seek an inquiry to determine the facts, nor indeed to make any constructive suggestion at all. We all know that the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) promulgated a Code of Conduct for public office holders on September 9, 1985. Moreover we also know that he wrote at the same time to the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition asking for his suggestions and co-operation in extending that Code. The Prime Minister has yet to receive a reply to that letter.
I hold the view that standards of conduct must be generally agreed and supported in order to ensure that they are fairly applied to everyone. In the circumstances I believe that some statement of substantive position from the Leader of the Opposition on the matter of the Code of Conduct is long overdue.
I have listened with great interest to find out where the Leader of the Opposition stood with respect to the Code of Conduct. His position, if I may just put it in one sentence, is that there is no such thing as a Code of Conduct that is enforceable. I take it that is also the position of the Liberal Party.


John Edward Broadbent: You even make babies cry.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: I take the support I am getting from the galleries as cries of support and a cry of condemnation for the Opposition.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: 1 believe we are entitled to find out from the Leader of the Opposition where he stands on a code of ethics. He has been absolutely silent on his position-


An Hon. Member:: It's better than yours anyway.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: I do not say this in a condemnatory, way but there was an opportunity here which could have elevated the debate for the Leader of the Opposition in his first motion in this trimester and enabled him to set down some constructive suggestions on the resolution of a particular situation, but we have had nary a word. If the code is not to his satisfaction, let him make his position absolutely clear.
We live in a society that not only permits but encourages individuals to hold diverse views. We foster freedom of speech and association because we believe that the validity of various ideas and opinions must be tested in the crucible of the public forum. This willingness to accept the existence of conflicting and contradictory points of view is one of the primary strengths of our democratic system.
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It is, however, imperative that we recognize that our willingness to entertain an infinite variety of opinions on a given subject does not translate into a willingness to allow an individual to conduct himself or herself in whatever manner he or she happens to feel is appropriate. In a very basic sense,, that is why we have developed a set of laws, a jurisprudence, to which individuals may refer to measure the appropriateness of their behaviour.
This view is encapsulated in the principle that the rule of law is preferable to the rule of man. But how to structure the law so as to achieve the legitimate ends of society while not unduly infringing upon the rights of the individual is a question with which we as legislators are forced to grapple every day. There is no formula that is, a priori, right or wrong. The final product, the law, will hopefully reflect the balance that we are trying to achieve. However, once that law is adopted we have, for better or for worse, provided a set of rules which establishes a standard of behaviour for everyone.
I have made these rather basic observations about the difference between subjective opinion and objective standards of conduct because this is a distinction that is critical to the matter under debate today. Subjective opinion, no matter whether or not it is well founded, should not and cannot take the place of codified objective standards of conduct.
On September 9, 1985, when the Prime Minister tabled the conflict of interest and post employment code for public office holders he established just such an objective standard of conduct. That Code provides in some detail a set of compliance measures. It requires that all Ministers of the Crown follow those measures and, in so doing, comply with the code.
[ Translation]
To the best of my knowledge, every one of my Cabinet colleagues and myself have followed the very letter of the conflict of interest guidelines. That is how things should be and that is how they must be.

But, Mr. Speaker, I would ask you to reflect on just how fundamentally unfair it is to establish an objective set of rules and then to claim that in addition there is a further subjective set of standards which also apply. No one can be expected to meet those new standards for the simple reason that one can ever know for certain and in advance precisely what they are.
Notwithstanding the sound and fury generated by the Opposition in the past two weeks, there has been no suggestion that the Code has not been complied with. The Opposition chooses to make accusations of non-compliance with standards, such as they are, which are known only to them. Today's motion seeks to condemn the Government for "failing to provide full and satisfactory information on the blatant conflict of interest situation involving the Minister". Yet that motion, in itself, presumes what it seeks to condemn. It provides no basis for the allegation of conflict of interest. In fact, on a strict reading of the motion the question of whether there was a conflict of interest is not even open to debate. In

May 12, 1986
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this sense, the approach taken here is similar to that taken by the Opposition throughout this debate, pose a loaded question and then proceed to make the facts fit the premise.
The Opposition alleges failure to provide full and satisfactory information, yet provides no yardstick against which to measure the phrase "full and satisfactory". Are we to presume that this is to mean what the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner) says it means or what the Leader of the New Democratic Party (Mr. Broadbent) says it means or what the Press Gallery says it happens to mean? The approach taken is reminiscent to that taken in Lewis Carroll's-


Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: Charles Dickens, a Christmas Carol?


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: -when he referred to Humpty-Dumpty. He said:
When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less.
However, in the case before us, not only has the Leader of the Opposition established his own definitions for the words "full and satisfactory", but he refuses to tell us what they are.
The Opposition complains of non-compliance with its standards only after the conduct about which it complains had taken place. There is a principle at law, Mr. Speaker, that conduct cannot be sanctioned retroactively. Yet that is precisely what the Opposition is attempting to do in this case. You may agree or disagree with the provisions and appropriateness of the Code of Conduct, just as you may agree or disagree with any other codified standard of behaviour, but surely even if you disagree, it is unfair in the extreme to pillory someone for meeting those standards. In such circumstances, instead of attacking the individual, the Opposition's energy might better have been directed toward suggesting improvements to the Code. Regrettably, and to the Opposition's discredit, it has not yet seen fit to do so.

It is absolutely unfair to proceed the way they have been proceeding, because they gave their tacit consent to the Code. Now they think they can get some political mileage out of it, they have decided to add a new, imaginary chapter to the code.
Ministers are obliged to conform to the rules as they exist today. As for the imaginary rules of the Opposition parties, we have been waiting for them since February 9, 1985.

I might also say that if a charge is going to be advanced, one should always keep in mind that the reputations of public figures are hard won but easily lost. While the fact of parliamentary immunity makes it very easy to allege misconduct, such an allegation ought not to be made lightly.
I am sure that we are all aware of examples where the stigma of wrongful accusation endures long after it has been proven groundless. That is why it is appropriate that such charges be made only on substantive motions where the Member carrying the motion has the burden of proof and the
House is provided with an opportunity to decide the question. The motion before us today has neither of those two fundamental prerequisites.
In reflecting upon the events of the last week, I have become concerned that this Parliament has been diverted from the essential issues facing the nation. Unfortunately, although this diversion has occurred, it will not result in a constructive outcome. That time could have been spent considering issues as varied as the Tokyo Summit, efforts to improve economic returns to farmers, the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, the ongoing scourge of terrorism, or any number of other important issues. It might even have been spent considering what changes, if any, could be made to the conflict of interest code to improve its effectiveness. In doing so, we would have been fulfilling the role for which we were elected. We would have been dealing with the important issues of the day in the context of the fundamental directions charted for this Parliament, that is, national reconciliation, enhancement of social justice and economic renewal.
My colleague the Minister performed an honourable act today in tendering his resignation. I am disappointed that, under the circumstances, the speeches made by the Leaders of the two Opposition Parties did not recognize that fact and were not supportive of the Minister who has taken this very important step.


Mr. Deans:: Question.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member seeks to ask a question. The Chair had not called for questions on the first speech, therefore did not call it on the second speech, and therefore intends to move to the next speaker.


Ian Deans: On a point of order.


Mr. Speaker:: On a point of order, the Hon. Member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Deans).


Ian Deans: Mr. Speaker, it is not the Chair's prerogative but, rather, a Member's prerogative to rise and indicate the desire to ask a question. If no Member rose and indicated that desire in the first two speeches, that should not in any way interfere with my right to ask a question.


Mr. Speaker:: The point of order is on the Hon. Member's side and I agree with him. What the Chair is trying to point out is that the Chair normally calls the question and answer period and did not earlier. It therefore left the Chair in the position where it would have had to interrupt the Hon. Member's Leader to come back to a question and answer period. The Hon. Member is absolutely correct on the point of order, therefore, if he wishes to continue with his question?


Ian Deans: Yes, quite frankly I want to ask a question. It is a simple question. Why is the Government House Leader now defending the conflict of interest position of the Minister when
May 12, 1986

up until now it had been claimed to be the prerogative of the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Nielsen) to undertake that kind of action? Where is the Deputy Prime Minister now that we need to hear from him about what happened?


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, I find that to be a curious, indeed mischievous question. He knows that in these debates representatives from each Party have an opportunity to speak. He also knows that the Deputy Prime Minister is here during Question Period on a daily basis subject to questions placed by the House Leader for the NDP or anyone else in the House. The mere fact that a particular Member does or does not participate in a particular debate is hardly worthy of observation. I could have easily asked him the question: Why do we have to sit through his Leader's speech? Why didn't he speak for his Party?


Ian Deans: My question is not as to his presence or absence, my question has to do with the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister indicated for two weeks that he and he alone was asked by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) to be in charge of and answer to the conflict of interest issue. Now that we have something to deal with, questions which could be answered by the Deputy Prime Minister cannot be asked because he does not deign to show up for the debate.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. Such a comment is of course out of order.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, to show the fact that the Hon. Member is not being responsible, he presumes what is going to transpire for the rest of the day. Does he now know who our speakers are? Does he have a list of who is going to speak in this debate? I would like to ask him if he would give me his speakers list, too; I would be very interested.


Ian Deans: I'll be glad to.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. The Hon. Member for York Centre (Mr. Kaplan) on a question, please.


Mr. Kaplan:: Mr. Speaker, the opportunity to question the Government House Leader has now come open and I want to take advantage of it to try and get to the bottom of this question of unproven allegations. I do not have sworn statements which constitute evidence admissible in a courtroom. However, how can the Minister go on saying day after day that there are unproven allegations when statements have been made by responsible people in the community such as Anton Czapka and Trevor Eyton, statements which have not been challenged by the Government? There has been financial information about the companies involved. Surely these constitute adequate facts from the point of view of Parliament. How can the Minister say it is not proven that money was borrowed from a bank in Korea, or that it was borrowed through the assistance of Magna International or Brascan? What are the facts which require substantiation in order to put the onus on this Government of clearing the Minister's name? That is what I would like to know. What kind of proof is the
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Government looking for before it acts to enforce its own conflict of interest guidelines?


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, through the words of the Hon. Member for York Centre (Mr. Kaplan) comes proof positive of precisely the point I was making. No one could have articulated the point better than he did just now. I said a lot of statements have been made with respect to what may or may not have transpired concerning dealings, not necessarily by the Minister. However, the fact is that I think the Hon. Member, as a former Solicitor General, understands the necessity of having an element of fairness. He would be the first one to defend that particular proposition. You cannot say on the one hand that there is compliance with the Code of Conduct, and then suggest there is something wrong, that there is a blatant conflict. The allegation in this motion is that there is a blatant conflict of interest, but there is no spelling out of exactly what that conflict of interest is. I can get up and say that the Hon. Member is incompetent. Does that make it a charge subject to debate in this House? Of course not. I would have to list why the Hon. Member is incompetent in the opinion of the House. Nothing of that sort is contained in this motion.
I simply say to the Hon. Member, in fairness, he understands that what is happening here is a repetition of a series of statements quite unrelated to the Code of Conduct; the suggestion is that somehow there are actions which may or may not have been taken. However, there has been no charge specifically that there has been a conflict of interest, and at no time has any Member of the House been prepared to make that charge.


Mr. Guilbault (Saint-Jacques):: Mr. Speaker, while in the lobby I thought I heard the Hon. Government House Leader say something to the effect that Parliament has been diverted for awhile from the essential matters facing the nation. Maybe I misheard him but, if that is the case, I would like to ask him what in his opinion is more essential to this nation's business than the integrity of the Government? We in the Opposition are the first ones to say that there are other areas of government activities which could have been probed during the last two weeks. Why has the Government waited so long to call for the inquiry we are getting today? It is two weeks too late. The House could have dealt with other matters in the meantime. It is my opinion that the Government simply waited until public opinion had been cranked up enough that it felt compelled to do something. What is more essential than the integrity of the Government?


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, I suppose that was the basis of the remarks I made. I listed the procedural ways in which these items can be discussed in Parliament. The way in which they can be discussed is not through what I would call this rather irresponsible motion we now have in front of us for debate. Allegations are being made without substance in fact. The Opposition continues to use that device throughout the debate. I think what the people of Canada want us to do is debate the important issues facing our country. I would think

May 12, 1986
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the Hon. Member will understand that if the Opposition decides, as they have, that this is all they want to talk about, with a general broad brush approach and without laying a charge, then that is a very unfortunate way in which to conduct the affairs of this House. There are ways in which the matter can be dealt with under the rules, and 1 listed those in my remarks. I hope the Hon. Member will read them.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Resuming debate.


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, while the Government House Leader was speaking I was awaiting the defence the Government was going to make of the alleged conduct of his colleague. I thought that if there was anything one could say to contradict what is on the record, that would have been the time to make it. That would have been the moment to have given us facts we were not aware of, or the facts that would contradict those facts which are so clearly on the public record, facts that virtually every interested Canadian knows. I had expected to hear how the conflict of interest guidelines of the Government could be interpreted to exculpate the Minister, to permit him to do what it is that the record so clearly and without contradiction shows he has done.
Yet, we got nothing in the way of defence from the Government House Leader. Never has a Government stood up with so little to say on its own behalf on such a serious matter. We heard accusations that we in the Opposition are being disorderly, that we in the Opposition are, somehow or other, not using the tools at our disposal to make the claim that the Government's conflict of interest guidelines have been violated.
As the facts came out in the last two weeks, the Government had many, many opportunities to contradict them. An inquiry is being launched today. It may well be that there will be the odd fact brought forward by that inquiry. It may well be that the contradictions which may exist in some people's minds will be clarified. However, the essential facts are there.
When the Government House Leader was in the Opposition he once asked, in speaking about Mr. Trudeau's conflict of interest guidelines: "What does the Government want from us?" He asked if the Government wanted them to have coloured photographs of the Minister with his hand in the till. Events do not happen in such a way as to permit the Opposition to deliver coloured photographs of Ministers with their hands in the till. Nor do they happen in such a way as to allow us to get long, sworn statements of testimony to present to the Government for it to deal with.
Responsible people in Canadian society and responsible journalists have put facts on the record about what this Minister's wife did to try to bail out their troubled business, the York Centre Corporation. Every few days new statements have been made by responsible people. The Government has never chosen to deny these statements. Did the company get a loan from the Hanil Bank, a company which is related to
Hyundai? The Government did not challenge that it did. That is right on the company's books. Did the company get a loan with the help of the president of Magna International from Anton Czapka, a former big shareholder and promoter of that company? The Government did not challenge the truth of that. It is true. Did the Minister's wife ask Trevor Eyton of Brascan, a member of the Canada Development Investment Corporation, to try to help her raise money to bail out the company? There was no challenge of those facts.
If those fundamental statements were not true, the Government surely should have stood up and denied them in the past two weeks. The Government's failure to deny them implicates the Government by its acceptance of them. Those are the facts and the Opposition is entitled to have answers based on those facts. The Government is not entitled to shoot them back in our face and say "bring us coloured photographs" or "bring us sworn affidavits". That is not our function and it would place an impossible burden on the working of Parliament.
What have we been getting from the Government in the way of defence of the behaviour of its Minister? We have gotten the most unbelievable series of cheap shots. The Government has asked whether we believe that women are chattels and whether we do not think that spouses of Ministers should be able to have their own lives. That is one of the cheap shots which was taken to try to deflect attention from the charges against the Minister. We were asked whether we were against investment in Quebec or Cape Breton. Those are the kinds of answers the Government gave when we raised our concerns.
Another defence was that the former Government made the Magna deal. The Government said that it should not be accused of conflict of interest because the former Liberal Government signed the Memorandum of Understanding. I categorize that as another cheap shot, not only because of the good arguments made by my Leader showing that the Memorandum of Agreement did not settle the terms on which the Magna loan would be based but because there was another Memorandum of Agreement signed by the present Government so that it could claim the credit for all of the subsequent arrangements made with Magna. The Government cannot have it both ways, and I consider that to be a cheap shot.
At the end of last week the Government accused the media of conspiring to prevent the actual facts from being known. If there is any responsibility for not bringing out facts in defence of the Government it falls upon the Government. Day after day, instead of bringing out facts in its defence, it has engaged in cheap shots. Another cheap shot taken by the Government House Leader today is that it is up to us to change the rules of conflict of interest, having been given the opportunity to do so. The present rules are sufficient for the purposes of what this Minister has done, which we consider to be a conflict of interest. The rules are clear and would work, but only if the Government would make them work. We cannot make them work, but I would like to explain how we tried.
Our House Leader asked in the House if, under the rules, we could call witnesses to the Bar of the House of Commons to
May 12, 1986

ask them the questions which the Government was telling us we needed to ask. The Government, with a majority of Members, refused to allow us to use that rule. We tried to take the matter to two committees to try to get to the bottom of it. The Opposition did what it could to bring out the facts in the House in a way which would meet the phoney tests which the Government was setting before it would admit responsibility for defending the Minister. It did not work. The door was closed to us. Yet, day after day in Question Period, as we tried to get answers, we were told that it was up to us to lay a charge.
What about laying a charge, Mr. Speaker? Conflict of Interest is not a matter which falls under the Criminal Code, if that is what the Government meant when it spoke about laying a charge. The guidelines are not a matter of the criminal law. It is not up to the police to investigate them. They are not a matter on which one would swear an information. It is not an order in council. The conflict of interest guidelines are not derived from any delegated law-making powers which the Government has under any statute of Canada. The conflict of interest guidelines are not a matter of privilege. I do not believe that Members of the House can stand up and claim that their privileges are violated when the Government refuses to live up to and apply the conflict of interest guidelines.
Those guidelines are an administrative policy voluntarily accepted by the Prime Minister of Canada (Mr. Mulroney). He can change them, he can reinterpret them, or he can throw them in the garbage can, and that is exactly what has been done. The conflict of interest guidelines which he introduced with so much fanfare have been thrown into the garbage can by the Government and the Government has no intention of enforcing them.
When the conflict of interest guidelines were first introduced by the Government last September the Prime Minister made some very proud statements about the responsibilities which he and the Government would assume for their enforcement. They did not say that it would be up to the Opposition to lay charges, or that it would be up to the police, or that somehow or other coloured photographs would be needed before the Government would get serious about them. In his letter to his colleagues the Prime Minister said:
In carrying out that responsibility the Government is directly responsible to Parliament and through Parliament to the Canadian people.
You will find no quasi-independent agencies in this Code that will allow the Government to shirk its responsibility by saying that the problem belongs to someone else. Nor will you find anything which will relieve me and my colleagues of the necessity of exercising judgment.
That is what the Prime Minister said in September. However, in April, when all of these facts about the behaviour of the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion (Mr. Stevens) and his wife were on the record, the Minister said in a press conference on April 30:
Supply
All I can do is tell you that there are rules that Parliament has established, that the government established in regard to this kind of activity. We laid them out. I wrote to all Members of Parliament. 1 laid them out publicly and-
The Prime Minister adds:
-the Deputy Registrar General is charged with their application.
I charge the Prime Minister with a total distortion and abandonment of the conflict of interest guidelines. They were his baby when he brought them out. We could look to him to enforce those guidelines. Suddenly, the Assistant Deputy Registrar General is charged with their application. What authority has he to patrol and enforce these guidelines? He can only ask the Minister if he is still in compliance with the guidelines and if his statement remains true.
The Assistant Deputy Registrar General asked that question.


Mr. Mantha:: How do you know?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: According to the Prime Minister and to those of us who asked him. Did he go beyond that to ask if the facts appearing in the newspapers were true? Did he ask the Minister if he had any explanation as to why his wife was doing these things? The Assistant Deputy Registrar General had no responsibility to do that, yet the Government tried to pin it on the Assistant Deputy Registrar General.
I want to examine one sentence of the Prime Minister's letter to his Ministers and use it as an illustration of how ineffective it is to put the responsibility on the form filed with the Assistant Deputy Registrar General. In the days when the Prime Minister wanted us to believe that there would be conflict of interest guidelines that would be enforced, he said:
-I wish it to be understood clearly by all Ministers that they have an individual responsibility to prevent conflicts of interest, including those that might arise out of activities of their spouses or dependent children or the dealings in property or investments which are owned or managed, in whole or in part, by their spouses or dependent children.
A Minister cannot simply file a form in order to comply with this. In such cases, a Minister must say something to his or her spouse and dependent children. Let us take a hypothetical example of the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark), whose wife is an active lawyer in a busy practice in Toronto. If the Prime Minister's statement is to be taken seriously, the Secretary of State would have to ask her not to act for foreign governments or for customers of CIDA, or for people who are coming to his Department for favours. He must state that the Prime Minister has asked him to try to prevent conflicts of interest in relation to the behaviour of his spouse. What else could that statement possibly mean?
Yet, in the matter we are discussing today, without any denial by the Government, a Minister's wife is approaching firms, through which billions of dollars worth of business may or may not be channelled in the distribution to the public of the shares of the Canada Development Corporation, to try to raise approximately $3 million for her husband's troubled business. What could be a clearer violation of that sentence in the guidelines than the behaviour which I just described?

May 12, 1986
Supply
If the Government had anything to say in its defence, surely the time to do it was when these allegations were made by responsible people in the media. Instead, Parliament was stifled and the Government adopted a cynical strategy-a media strategy-of saying as little as possible on the record.
I hold the Prime Minister accountable for that because he started it. As he was leaving the country he said that the Deputy Registrar General was responsible. Later in that interview he talked about the presumption of innocence, as if we were talking about the Criminal Code rather than conflict of interest guidelines which were his responsibility to administer. Those conflict of interest guidelines are not the responsibility of the Opposition or the Assistant Deputy Registrar General, but the responsibility of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister had the nerve to say that there is a presumption of innocence.
The Prime Minister has a blind spot about morality which prevented him from taking the necessary steps at the beginning of this matter. The Prime Minister should have taken immediate action, as was the case in the situation of the Minister of Communications (Mr. Masse), who stepped aside, either on his own or at the suggestion of the Government, until he was cleared of certain allegations. In this case, no effort was made to challenge allegations. The Government has lived with those allegations. I do not believe that an inquiry will change the fundamental facts which have been put to the Government frequently and not challenged. An inquiry will not change the obvious interpretations of the provisions of the conflict of interest guidelines which we say are violated by the behaviour of the Minister's wife.
I have dealt with the responsibility of the Prime Minister for letting this situation get out of hand. I also want to look at the responsibility of the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Nielsen) during the mandate of the Government. Time after time, he has defended the indefensible and then backed away from his position. For instance, he defended the former Minister of National Defence. He said that his behaviour was perfectly acceptable, that there was nothing wrong with his behaviour. The former Minister of National Defence then had to resign.
The Deputy Prime Minister said there was nothing wrong with the behaviour of the former Minister of Fisheries and challenged the Opposition to make a charge. He suddenly changed his tune and we saw the former Minister of Fisheries depart.
During the Hatfield matter, we repeatedly stated our belief that the former Solicitor General was wrong and had violated the conflict of interest guidelines by trying to help or give the appearance of trying to help a friend. He was defended by the Deputy Prime Minister until the day he had to leave that portfolio.
The Deputy Prime Minister claimed there was nothing wrong with the former Minister of the Environment's trip to Europe, and if Members wanted to make a charge they could
do so. Suddenly, the former Minister of the Environment was gone.
The Deputy Prime Minister defended his own behaviour in bugging the Liberal caucus many years ago. He said there was nothing the matter with that and there were many good arguments in favour of it. He challenged Members to make a charge if they wish to do so. Suddenly, we received a form of apology, indicating that that type of behaviour is considered reprehensible by the Government and would not be repeated.
I do not believe that the Deputy Prime Minister can continue to perform that function. The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defence is discredited by the way he has acted as the Government's trustee of proper behaviour of Ministers. He cannot continue to perform that job with any credibility.
Let me conclude with a reflection that came to me over the weekend. I believe it is a realization that has come to all Members as they went to their ridings over the weekend. What do Canadians think about this behaviour that has been revealed and not denied by the Minister? Canadians think that politicians are involved in politics only for what they can gain and that their purpose in serving public office is to try to benefit themselves. Businesses are also under a cloud as a result of the manner in which the Government has handled this matter. Canadians out there are thinking that if a business gets ahead, if it is doing anything which involves the Government, there is some element of influence peddling behind it. Both those propositions are wrong. It is up to the Government to restore standards in which Canadians will have confidence. This is not the Philippines, nor is it Korea. Yet the attitude the Government takes towards conflict of interest guidelines gives the Canadian people the feeling there is just no difference. It is appalling and I welcome the opportunity in today's debate to try to make that clear to Canadians and to force the Government to assume its responsibilities in this matter.


Mr. Blenkarn:: Mr. Speaker, I have a comment first and then a question. When a Member of Parliament says he obtained no benefit, when he makes that flat declaration, it would seem to me it is the obligation of his colleagues to accept his word at face value. Otherwise, we tear ourselves apart as Members of Parliament, we tear this place apart, we hurt the representative system and we call into disrepute Members of Parliament generally. If we are going to have Members of Parliament involved in key economic portfolios, we have to have Members of Parliament in those positions who have been there before, who have borrowed large sums of money from banks and know what the "street" is all about.


John V. Nunziata: Boloney!


Donald Alex Blenkarn: It would seem the only kinds of persons we should ever have in those portfolios, with the kind of attitude expressed by the opposition, would be people who have no business experience, or have made no outright effort in the
May 12, 1986

business world. However, my question does not deal with that subject. My question deals with the question of women.
Is it the viewpoint of the opposition that wives of Members of Parliament are suddenly second-class citizens-


John V. Nunziata: Don't be sexist.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: -that they cannot operate on their own and take business decisions on their own because somehow they conceivably might be in conflict? In this particular case, a well-respected lawyer who has practiced law in the Province of Ontario for over 25 years, who is involved in business deals, running fairly large public corporations in the marketplace, and who is involved with brokers and with financial transactions, is all of a sudden, because she happens to be a wife, in conflict of interest. I wonder to what extent wives of Members of Parliament are suddenly second-class citizens in the eyes of the opposition?


John V. Nunziata: That is a sexist question.


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member began by saying we had to accept the Minister's word when he said: "I received no benefit". I thought when I heard that answer that it was a pretty cute answer. It was not a denial of the statement that his corporation received a loan interest-free for the first year and with no principal repayable until the end. If the Minister had stood up and said: "We did not get the loan. It does not have the first year interest-free. The principal has to be paid back during the term", that is the kind of answer which would have been responsive. But when he said: "I received no benefit", I thought it was simply a cute way of putting a good line on the record which did not deny any of the fundamental facts we were saying constituted the basis of the conflict of interest. That is why we dealt with that statement by the Minister as we did. If he had not received that loan, if it was not interest-free in the first year, or if the payment of principal was not deferred, I think he would have said that. That is why I think the facts are clear enough for us to make the statement and take the position we have.
To come to the question of how much is a wife independent when her husband is a Minister-and it is a spouse I am talking about-there are female Ministers and the same rule applies to their spouses. It does not have to be a Minister. There is no law which says a person has to take the responsibility of being a Minister of the Crown. It is up to them. But when they do, certain responsibilities flow through them to their families.
What is my authority for that? It is the Prime Minister of Canada. He is the one who said: "Ministers have a responsibility to prevent conflict of interest including those that arise out of the activities of their spouses". That is his statement. If a Minister or a candidate to be a Minister does not want to put this kind of constraint on his wife, if he feels it is unfair, if he discusses it with her and she is unwilling to do so, then he does not have to be a Minister.
Supply
The Government was elected with 211 Members, a lot of them better qualified to be Ministers than those who sit in the present Cabinet. There is no shortage of people to become Ministers of the Crown. Mrs. Stevens is a lawyer in Toronto with a good reputation, who is entitled to practice her profession, as is Ms. McTeer, as are many others whom I do not know, who are doing their own thing. However, as far as the Prime Minister's conflict of interest guidelines are concerned, the wives have to accept a certain responsibility for their husband's career in public life. Otherwise, these conflict of interest guidelines are thrown in the garbage. And I can see by the interpretation put on them by the Hon. Member who just spoke that they have been thrown in the garbage.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, I think it is abundantly clear that what is at issue is the moral fabric of the Government. However, I would like to make a few comments with respect to how the Government has dealt with this particular issue.
You will know, Mr. Speaker, that the Government, through the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Nielsen), over the last two weeks has attempted to defend the former Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion. What was its defence? It was that the Minister received no benefit and that the conflict of interest guidelines were complied with. We do not need conflict of interest guidelines to tell us the difference between right and wrong. Canadians understand this particular issue. They do not have to refer to a Code of Conduct, or to the Prime Minister's guidelines to tell them it was wrong for the wife of the industry Minister to go out and seek financial support from individuals and companies which were doing business with the Government through her husband. The fact that she was able to obtain an interest-free loan for the first year of $2.6 million would suggest very strongly that the conduct was wrong.
I would like the Hon. Member for York Centre (Mr. Kaplan) to comment on the defences which have been put forward by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Government itself over the last two weeks. The Hon. Member pointed out quite rightly a few days back that it was the same Deputy Prime Minister who stood up in this House to defend himself over the course of a number of parliamentary days, who stood up to defend the former Solicitor General, who stood up to defend the former Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and who stood up to defend the former Minister of Communications. The fact that all those Ministers ended up resigning would leave one to seriously question the conduct of the Deputy Prime Minister. I would like the Hon. Member for York Centre to comment on the actions of the Deputy Prime Minister over the last number of weeks, and whether his conduct has in any way served this Parliament or the integrity of the Government and this institution.


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, I would just like to observe that I think the Deputy Prime Minister has disqualified himself by his behaviour in handling the situation to which my friend has referred. He has disqualified himself from performing the

May 12, 1986
function which he has been performing in the Government for the Prime Minister. I say that without reflection in any way on his excellent war record.


Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin with a brief comment about the dignity and grace with which the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion (Mr. Stevens) resigned this morning. I think that nothing in the events thus far has done more credit to him than the manner in which he left his office this morning.
I wish to contrast his manner with the approach taken by the Government House Leader in this debate. If we are to believe the Government House Leader, then we have a Government which won power with vision and leadership and which has been frustrated and destroyed by an irresponsible Opposition. There are some facts which have to be put on the record to show just how ludicrous that suggestion is.
The first is that the Opposition is outnumbered by 211 to 69. It is a massive gap. Within the Government there is a concentration of power because of the number of seats it holds. This is something which in my view is unparalleled in Canadian history.
Second, this is a Government which is dominant in the committees of the House. We have seen in the past week attempts to take this issue before a committee of the House, such as the Standing Committee on Elections, Privileges and Procedure, which have been frustrated by the Conservative majority. This is also true with respect to attempts to take the issue to the Standing Committee on Regional Industrial Expansion. In fact, this is a Government which holds massive power. If it is not exercising its power to give us the vision and leadership which it wishes to give us, then it is the fault of the Government and not the fault of the Opposition.
The debate this morning has centred about the question of the Code of Conduct for Ministers. Again, this is contrary to what the Government House Leader has suggested. In fact, within the code there are a great many subjects covered. One of the subjects which is quite clearly covered is the behaviour of spouses. It is quite clear that the letter of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) which was written in September is considered to be a full part of that Code of Conduct. It makes it the responsibility of each and every individual Minister to take account that such conflicts of interest do not arise.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Essex- Windsor (Mr. Langdon) will have 15 minutes in which to conclude his speech after Question Period.
It being 1.05 p.m., I do now leave the chair until 2 p.m. this day.
At 1.05 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.


Mr. Len Hopkins (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke):: Mr. Speaker, last Friday the Associate Minister of National Defence (Mr. Andre) attempted to take the maximum credit possible for the award of a $ 1.2-billion contract to update four Tribal-class destroyers by waiting until after his ten o'clock press conference had finished before providing me with a copy of his remarks. While the Minister's behaviour represents a break with what is considered common parliamentary decency, he achieved little, since one need only know the history of this program to know that all was complete before the present Government set eyes on it.
The former Liberal Government gave this program preliminary approval in 1980 and final approval in principle in 1984. We see again the Conservative Government's failure and inability to put forward anything new. How long will the Government continue to piggyback on former Liberal programs? Why does the Government need two Ministers of National Defence when all they are doing could be done by half a Minister-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Sixty seconds.



POLICE WEEK


Mr. Carlo Rossi (Bourassa):: Mr. Speaker, during Police Week in this country, already two policemen, one in Quebec City and another in Montreal, have been shot down while on duty.
Mr. Speaker, I think we often forget to appreciate the dedication and importance of the police who are prepared to lay down their lives so that Canadians can enjoy the freedom they have.
To the family of Officer Claude St-Laurent, his wife and his three children, I wish to offer my condolences, both personally and on behalf of my party, and as a former colleague of Officer St-Laurent, I share the grief of his colleagues.

May 12, 1986___________________________



CANADIAN CULTURE


Mr. Gabriel Desjardins (Temiscamingue):: Mr. Speaker, last Saturday on May 10, the first regional library convention of Abitibi-Temiscamingue was held in Rouyn-Noranda.
The general meeting, attended by more than 300 volunteer workers, was held to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the central lending library and pay tribute to hundreds of volunteers, the majority of whom are women, who are known throughout our region for their dedication to promoting books and reading.
I would like to point out that in 1976, we had only five or six libraries in Abitibi-Temiscamingue. Today, in 1986, we have about 80 libraries throughout the region, in communities with a population of less than 5,000.
In a region where organizing recreational activities is left up to the major municipalities, these several dozen small libraries play a fundamental role in promoting cultural activities locally.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to offer my sincere congratulations to all administrators and the 900 or so volunteer workers on their dedication to improving our cultural and social environment.



THE ECONOMY


Mr. Lawrence I. O'Neil (Cape Breton Highlands-Canso):: Mr. Speaker, the economic policies of the Government are working. Progress is being made in rebuilding the Canadian economy. The national unemployment rate has fallen to 9.6 per cent, down more than three percentage points. More than
600,000	jobs have been created.
These benefits are being felt in Atlantic Canada. The Government's regional development policies are bringing benefits to my riding. For example, the Government, through the Minister of State for Forestry (Mr. Merrithew), has announced a $ 10-million forestry renewal project. A special multimillion-dollar tourism agreement is being prepared. Other policies like the Atlantic Enterprise Program and the Atlantic Opportunities Program have been announced and will bring more benefits to the region.
Some of the first industries in recent decades have been announced for my region. Guysborough, Richmond, and Inverness Counties have received manufacturing facilities. This is success that was not achieved before, and there will be more success stories to talk about in the future.



S.O. 21 TRADE LUMBER EXPORTS TO UNITED STATES-THREAT OF COUNTERVAILING DUTIES

Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, making off the record deals that are not in the best interests of Canadians is fast becoming a hallmark of the Government. Today we learned of yet another deal. Today the United States Forest Producers lodged a petition with the United States Commerce Department and the United States International Trade Commission calling for countervailing duties of $53.65 U.S. per thousand board feet to be levied against our $2.8-billion softwood lumber exports to the United States of America.
We New Democrats always believed that President Reagan had made a deal with the United States Senate Finance Committee to get it to agree to a fast track free trade proposal and that the deal was that the administration would support a countervail proposal. Obviously the Canadian Government was aware of this off the record deal and was quite prepared to make our softwood lumber industry the sacrificial lamb in the free trade talks. How can free trade talks continue with this lumber countervailing duty axe hanging over our heads? Why has the Government of Canada apparently abandoned Canadian lumber producers?



IMPORTANCE OF CANADIAN LUMBER EXPORTS TO UNITED STATES

Mr. Gerry St. Germain (Mission-Port Moody):: Mr. Speaker, our upcoming trade talks with the United States are about to begin. I should like to say a few words on the importance of these talks.
In 1985 trade between our two countries totalled more than $150 billion; 79 per cent of our exports goes to the United States and 21 per cent of theirs comes to Canada. Last year we sold more than $100 billion of goods and services to Americans. We are the closest and most important trading partner of the largest and richest market in the world. We must secure our access to that market if Canadian export industries, such as our lumber industry and the B.C. cedar shakes and shingle industry, are to survive.
If these trade talks are to be launched successfully, politicians on both sides of the border must steadfastly resist creeping protectionism in all sectors. It is in this spirit that I am sure the President of the United States will deal with the current recommendations of the International Trade Commission. Let us be positive about this, not negative.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Sixty seconds.



CITIZENSHIP


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, on April 11 I attended a citizenship ceremony in my constituency, and a message was sent from the Prime Minister's Office which I have confirmed is authentic. I should like to read a sentence of it with which I disagree very strongly. In part the message reads:
The act of changing one's citizenship is a dramatic and emotional moment; it signifies a carefully considered decision to commit oneself for the future to a new land, and represents a cutting of ties with one's homeland.
I think this statement by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mul-roney) shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the meaning of Canadian citizenship and of the broader concept of multiculturalism.
I urge the Prime Minister to reconsider such a misguided message and in future to send something which takes a more positive view of the relationship immigrants in Canada are permitted to have with their homelands as far as the Prime Minister is concerned.

May 12, 1986



INDUSTRY


Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, I have a statement which will now have to be dealt with by the new Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion.
On November 18 I wrote the former Minister to warn him that a grant which he made to establish a hog processing facility in rural Manitoba would have dire implications for the meat packing industry in Winnipeg. Unfortunately that warning has now come true. A full 200 to 300 jobs are now to be lost at the Canada Packers plant in Winnipeg in its hog killing operations. They will be replaced by 70 jobs at the new plant, and these jobs will pay about half what Winnipeg workers earned. Canada Packers is now reconsidering whether to proceed with modernization of its entire Winnipeg operation.
The new Minister must look at this use of public money when a $865,000 government grant results in fewer jobs at lower wages. If not, the Minister would better be named the Minister of Deindustrialization, in charge of moving plants to constituencies of Conservative Members of Parliament.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Sixty seconds.



WAR CRIMINALS

[Stage Direction]
SOVIETS' REACTION TO DESCHENES COMMISSION	[DOT] <14l0>
Mr. Bob Pennock (Etobicoke North):: Mr. Speaker, it seems as though the Soviets are once again trying to fester the historical wounds which exist between Canada's Ukrainian and Jewish communities. Recently the Soviets responded positively to the request of Justice Deschenes that his commission travel to the Soviet Union to obtain evidence against alleged war criminals in Canada. However, the Soviets were silent on the important safeguards which Justice Deschenes included in his original request. Their silence on this most fundamental issue reinforces my concern over their desire to manipulate these proceedings to serve their own political goals.
Representatives from both eastern European and Jewish community organizations in Canada have repeatedly called for these safeguards in order to protect against Soviet deception. Let us not be fooled by the motives of the Soviets. They want to be perceived as supporting an inquiry, but they are not willing to tolerate an independent and fair treatment of evidence. They want nothing more than to see an open conflict between Canadians of eastern European and Jewish heritage.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Sixty seconds.



NATIONAL PAROLE BOARD


Mr. Alan Redway (York East):: Mr. Speaker, Bill C-67, a Bill which gives the National Parole Board the power to refuse to release inmates on mandatory supervision if there are reasonable grounds to believe that they could commit a violent crime, was reported back to this House for third reading after extensive debate in the Justice Committee, three and a half months ago. Almost two months ago, on March 21, a coroner's jury in Toronto investigating the death of a man released on mandatory supervision endorsed the spirit of Bill C-67 and recommended that the Solicitor General of Canada (Mr. Beatty) implement it expeditiously following its proclamation. That was one and a half months ago, and Bill C-67 has still not reached the Order Paper for third reading.
The public wants this legislation, Mr. Speaker. I call on all Members of this House and all Parties in this House to get on with it and to pass the Bill quickly. Don't let it die on the Order Paper in June.
May 12, 1986



AGRICULTURE


Mr. William C. Winegard (Guelph):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge Dreamstreet Holsteins to negotiate with Holstein Canada, the University of Guelph and others to develop a new and sound research proposal in order that the majority of the funds provided under the scientific research tax credit scheme can be used for research of benefit to Canada.
The current proposal does not have the support of the agricultural community and will not have that support until Dreamstreet decides to turn the project into a major comprehensive research effort. In the meantime Revenue Canada should use every means at its disposal to ensure that only research approved by the scientific community is undertaken with taxpayers' dollars.



GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURES


Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Prince Albert):: Mr. Speaker, the awarding of a $130 million contract to Marlin Travel Ltd. for government travel will save very little money in the long run. The main effect of the move will be the loss of 90 jobs in Air Canada and CP Air. Some people may be hired by Marlin Travel but most will be out looking for jobs. Those who do find jobs with Marlin Travel will do so at much lower salaries and much reduced benefits, such as medical, dental and pension plans.
Can this kind of reduction in work conditions be considered a saving, Mr. Speaker?



THE ECONOMY


Mr. Jack Scowen (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, Bank of Canada interest rates have dropped 3.75 percentage points since the Government took office in September, 1984. The Bank of Canada rate now stands at 8.72 per cent while most banks are charging 10.75 per cent to preferred borrowers. There is a 4.5 point spread between top savings accounts and the cost to preferred corporate customers. The spread is much greater for operating and consumer loans.
One of the high costs to our agriculture communities is interest rates. For the good of the country we must get agriculture loans to below 6 per cent.
Oral Questions IMMIGRATION



ISSUANCE OF MINISTERIAL PERMITS

Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, while the Government is dragging its feet on the backlog of over 21,000 refugees, and while many Canadians are having a difficult time in successfully sponsoring relatives, we have a Minister of Immigration (Miss MacDonald) who is prepared to issue ministerial permits to a former spy for the Samosa regime in Nicaragua and two former members of the Chilean secret police. In both cases there are serious allegations of disappearances, torture, and other human rights violations to which these individuals have admitted.
I find it shocking and indefensible that such characters should now be seeking sanctuary in Canada with the blessing of this Conservative Government. What are the Minister's priorities? Where is the fairness in the system?
The Minister should facilitate the entry of decent individuals who are prepared to work and to contribute to Canada, rather than offering a haven to undesirables. Her appalling decisions should be reversed immediately.



PRESENCE IN GALLERY OF CHAIRMAN OF SELECT COMMITTEE ON PROCEDURE-HOUSE OF COMMONS, WESTMINSTER

Mr. Speaker:: May I advise Members of the presence in our Gallery today of Sir Peter Emery, Chairman of the Select Committee on Procedure, from the House of Commons in Westminster, along with members of his committee.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, the front benches aren't very crowded today.
In any case, I would like to put a question to the Deputy Prime Minister regarding the statement made this morning by the ex-Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion. For two weeks now, there has been a smell of corruption in the air in this country. Why did it take two weeks to obtain the Minister's resignation, when a Prime Minister who is really concerned about the ethics of the matter would have acted from day one? My question is as follows: Did the Prime

May 12, 1986
Oral Questions
Minister ask for the Minister's resignation or did the Minister offer his resignation?


Hon. Erik Nielsen (Acting Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition tries to leave the wrong impression when he speaks of the former Minister's responses. He is aware that a week ago last Thursday the former Minister commenced answering questions. He answered all throughout last week, including two hours in a subcommittee. It was on that basis, reflecting on it over the weekend in all likelihood, that led the former Minister to write to the Prime Minister in terms which are now in the public domain.


PRIME MINISTER'S RESPONSIBILITY
John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, the ex-Minister answered only when he was given the go signal by the Deputy Prime Minister from time to time. My question now relates to the Deputy Prime Minister's responsibility, and even more important, the Prime Minister's responsibility. Would he, and the Prime Minister on his return, be prepared to answer when, for how long, and what they knew about the conflict of interest of the former Minister, and would they be prepared to make that kind of statement to the House?


Erik Nielsen: What the right hon. gentleman accuses me of, namely, the former Minister responding only when I gave the go signal, is totally false. If he goes over the record carefully, he knows better than to say that. Here we have the spectacle of the right hon. gentleman and his colleagues in the Opposition saying for over a week that there should be an impartial investigation as to the facts. His remarks and two questions today are a shining example of why such an investigation is not going to be impartial in this atmosphere.


CONFLICT OF INTEREST INQUIRY
John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I heard an interjection from the government benches and it was reflected in the ex-Minister's statement this morning. Does the Government not admit there was a conflict of interest? If not, why the resignation?


Erik Nielsen: The answer is obvious, Sir. After the Minister's responses for two weeks, here and in committee, there was still an apparent confusion as to facts-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Erik Nielsen: -to put the best light on it. They ridicule even now the response of the Minister himself-


Some Hon. Members:: You!


Erik Nielsen: -when he asked, in his letter to the Prime Minister, for an impartial person to be appointed to investigate the facts.


Ian Deans: I'll do it.


Erik Nielsen: Surely that is the proper course to pursue. That impartiality is obviously not here by virtue of the intemperate charges of corruption by the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition and the conduct of his own members in committee.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


CROWN CORPORATIONS
Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the same Minister. I would like to know whether the Deputy Prime Minister could inform the House whether, now that an inquiry has been proposed, the Government is willing to stop the sale or consideration of the sale of Canadair, in order to find out whether the Minister's conflict of interest has in any way affected the public interest and the sale of Canadair in the best interests of Canadians.


Erik Nielsen: No, Mr. Speaker. As the former Minister and I have explained for well over a week now, that matter is in the hands, not of the Government at the moment, but of a divestiture committee of the corporation itself-


David Orlikow: Appointed by that Minister.


Erik Nielsen: -which in turn will be reporting and which in turn is being guided by a task force on privatization chaired by the President of the Treasury Board.


SALE OF DE HAVILLAND
Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, will the inquiry which is to be set up to look into this conflict of interest be able to look also at the sale of de Havilland to see why that company was sold for such a ridiculously low price and whether there is any ulterior explanation for that?


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, the former Minister, Members in both opposition Parties, and
May 12, 1986

the media have requested an impartial investigation into the facts. That is what is going to happen-


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Also for de Havilland?


Erik Nielsen: -and surely that is, in all fairness and reasonableness, what opposition Members want.


John Napier Turner: What about Parliament?


Erik Nielsen: I have answered the question with respect to Parliament. That impartiality, which is absent in the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues by virtue of the conduct of his own caucus Members, ensures that there will be no such impartiality in this place.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: With 211 MPs? Come on.


PRIME MINISTER'S POSITION
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister and is based on the assumption that he has recently talked to the Prime Minister. In the House on May 2 the Deputy Prime Minister said:
-compliance by the Ministry with the Code of Conduct. That is the beginning and end of his responsibility. He has done that. 1 am satisfied, as is the Prime Minister, that that has occurred.
In other words, he was satisfied that compliance had occurred. In his letter of resignation to the Prime Minister the Minister repeats that he is innocent, says he has complied with the code and, in addition, with the provisions in the letter sent to him on September 9 by the Prime Minister. He is still contending that he is innocent of any violation.
Has the Deputy Prime Minister consulted with the Prime Minister? If so, does the Prime Minister still believe that the Minister has not violated the code with regard to conflict, or the letter of September 9?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister will obviously stand by his responses made in this House and elsewhere with respect to this matter, as do I. I am sure that neither one of us will prejudge, as the hon. gentleman would have me do, the result of an impartial investigation into the facts. Surely that is what he wants and surely that is what is in the best interest now with regard to all the circumstances.


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, if there is one person who has prejudged the case it is the Deputy Prime Minister who made only one phone call on this whole matter.


GOVERNMENT POSITION
John Edward Broadbent: I want to be very clear on what the Minister is saying. I understand him to be reiterating the Government's position, namely, that the former Minister has violated neither the code pertinent to conflict of interest guidelines nor the letter sent to him by the Prime Minister on September 9. Is that the Government's position?
Oral Questions


Erik Nielsen: When the hon. gentleman accuses me of having made one phone call, he states something which is totally false. He should know that and should use words with more caution than to fling about accusations of that nature. I made a good deal more than one telephone call and had a good deal more than one discussion.


John Edward Broadbent: Answer the question.


Erik Nielsen: I stand by what I have said in this House during the last two weeks.


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, it will be interesting for the whole country to learn that the Deputy Prime Minister stands by what he has said because the whole country has, of course, appropriately reached a different conclusion.


CONDUCT OF INQUIRY
John Edward Broadbent: When will the Deputy Prime Minister be in a position to tell us who will be conducting this inquiry and what the terms of reference of the inquiry will be?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, that must obviously be done without any delay. It is a matter which is under current consideration by the Prime Minister and his advisers. I can assure the hon. gentleman that there will be no delay in bringing about an impartial investigation as to the facts in these circumstances.
[ Translation]


NATURE OF INQUIRY MENTIONED IN STATEMENT BY MINISTER OF REGIONAL INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION
Jacques Guilbault: Mr. Speaker, I would like to put a question to the Deputy Prime Minister and try to clarify the nature of the proposed inquiry that was mentioned in the Minister's statement this morning. Earlier, the Deputy Prime Minister seemed to be saying that the Opposition had asked several times last week for an independent inquiry. Perhaps I may refresh his memory and say that the Opposition was specific in its request, and my question is therefore: Will the inquiry be held as requested by the Opposition parties last week, namely, before a committee of this House? This option was turned down twice by the Conservative majority last week, before two different committees. Where will the inquiry be held? In Parliament or somewhere else, hidden away from the public eye?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, 1 will ignore the intemperate accusations in the question, on this occasion. The impartial investigation which is being considered will be governed by terms of reference broad enough to encompass all of the accusations, allegations-unfounded or whatever-

May 12, 1986
Oral Questions


John Napier Turner: Or founded.


Erik Nielsen: -that have come from opposition Members and, I might add, from the media.


EXAMINATION OF ACTIVITIES OF MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT-GOVERNMENT POSITION
Jacques Guilbault: Mr. Speaker, since the guidelines and the Code have no legal clout, and since Canadians have to rely on the honour of those who hold these positions, will the Prime Minister agree that only Parliament or one of its committees may examine the behaviour and actions of one of its Members, and not an outside agency?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, I have already stated in response to questions by his Leader that, in my judgment, there can be no impartiality in the investigation of the facts in these circumstances if for no other reason-


Mr. Tobin:: You have a majority.


Erik Nielsen: -than that we have an overwhelming majority in the House and in its committees. Given a favourable report, I can just see them calling it a whitewash because of our majority. Surely we must seek a degree of impartiality in this investigation of the facts that will be conducted impeccably.


INVESTIGATION OF ALLEGATIONS
Michael Morris Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has acknowledged the concern of millions of Canadians in accepting the resignation of the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion and also in agreeing to set up an inquiry into the very serious allegations which have been made regarding conflict of interest, beginning some 11 or 12 days ago. Will the Deputy Prime Minister say what he did over the course of that time in order to carry out any investigations, since he now alleges that he did more than simply make a call to the Assistant Deputy Registrar General? Is he also not aware of the very serious disquietude among Canadians about his actions in this affair in stonewalling for two weeks rather than taking action-


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, that accusation by the hon. gentleman is totally false and again is evidence that impartiality is not going to be found in Parliament in ascertaining the facts in these circumstances. The Minister himself was here all last week answering questions. That did not satisfy the Opposition. Nor were they satisfied in committee. Nor, in the view of the Government, has public opinion been satisfied through the media and editorial writings. Therefore, it seems to me that honourable
gentlemen and honourable ladies opposite would be welcoming-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. A supplementary question.


DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER'S DUTIES
Michael Morris Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister should be aware that public opinion was not satisfied a week and a half ago. It is not something that just occurred this weekend.
The Prime Minister assigned the Deputy Prime Minister responsibility for the conflict of interest code. Does the Deputy Prime Minister believe that he has performed his official duties in such a manner that public confidence and trust in the integrity, objectivity and impartiality of the Government have been conserved and enhanced? Has the Minister's stonewalling impaired public trust and the integrity of Government?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, that is a statement of opinion by the hon. gentleman which I do not share and it is further indication to me that he would, along with his colleagues, welcome an impartial investigation of the facts.


ACCEPTANCE OF MINISTER'S RESIGNATION
Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also directed to the Acting Prime Minister. Does he now understand that the issue has become a question of the moral leadership of his Government, in particular, his Prime Minister? In light of the "Dear Sine" letter the Prime Minister sent out today in which he lauds the work of the former Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion-


Some Hon. Members:: Order.


Sheila Maureen Copps: -does he not realize that he is sending the signal to all Canadians that it is perfectly all right for a Cabinet Minister's family to use his influence to gain loans for the family?


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Order.


Sheila Maureen Copps: The only thing that went wrong was the public outcry.


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, no, I do not believe that, and anyone who is at all familiar with the dedication and selfless manner in which the former Minister went about his tasks to achieve economic renewal in this country would not say that sort of unworthy thing about him.
One thing the Hon. Member's question does indicate to me is that she is coming to her own conclusions, and I would
May 12, 1986

suggest not impartially, about something which would be better left to the impartiality of an investigation of the facts.
[ Translation]


MINISTER OF REGIONAL INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION-CONFLICTS OF INTEREST-GOVERNMENT POSITION
Sheila Maureen Copps: As a Member, Mr. Speaker, it is I who should have moral leadership, not somebody appointed by the Prime Minister.
I would like to ask him whether he is prepared today to tell the people what happened in the case of the former Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion, whether there was a conflict of interest when his wife used his connections as Minister to obtain a loan for the family business. Is that a conflict of interest, yes or no?


Erik Nielsen: Well, Mr. Speaker, I choose to believe that most Canadians will endorse the course of an impartial investigation-


John Napier Turner: Oh, no.


Douglas Cockburn Frith: They are not going to do that.


Erik Nielsen: -as to the facts. They certainly, in my judgment, do not endorse the conduct of the Hon. Member asking the question, of leaping over chairs and tables in committee to harass the Minister.


MINISTER'S JUDGMENT
Cyril Keeper: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Acting Prime Minister. The Government continues to say it will investigate the facts with regard to the conflict of interest. I wonder if the Acting Prime Minister would also take the trouble to investigate the judgment used by the Minister when it came to compliance with the conflict of interest regulations, which read that Ministers must prevent-


Some Hon. Members:: Order.


Cyril Keeper: -real, potential or apparent conflict of interest.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The question is now becoming long.


Erik Nielsen: I would have thought that Hon. Members opposite would have anticipated as a natural matter of course that any impartial investigation would be conducted very much in the context of the conflict of interest code for public office holders, not just in one or two provisions, but in all of the provisions of the code.


CONDUCT OF MINISTER'S SPOUSE
Cyril Keeper: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the Acting Prime Minister is then saying that this
Oral Questions
investigation will not only investigate the facts but will also investigate the judgment used by the Minister? And will it cover the conduct under this code of the spouse involved?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, the conduct of an impartial investigation would naturally include the conflict of interest code for public office holders and would naturally include the Prime Minister's letter of September 9, 1985, to Ministers.


REASON FOR GOVERNMENT DECISION
Mr. George Baker (Gander-Twillingate):: Mr. Speaker, on May 8 I asked the Acting Prime Minister to start the same investigation which has been requested by the former Minister, and I referred to page 4 of the Prime Minister's letter to Members of Parliament, which reads:
Obviously, from time to time, circumstances may arise that call for an impartial person to conduct an investigation as to fact.
The Acting Prime Minister said in response that he saw no reason for such an investigation. Could the Acting Prime Minister tell us what has transpired since May 8 to cause him to agree to an investigation which he said before was completely unnecessary?


An Hon. Member:: Right on.


Erik Nielsen: That is very simple, Sir.


Jacques Guilbault: Damage control operation.


Erik Nielsen: I answered that question earlier today when it was put by the Hon. Member's Leader. The answer is that after assessing the week's events, and the fact that the Minister had been responding throughout the week and in committee, and in assessing the obvious dissatisfaction of members of the Opposition and of the media with those explanations, that brought about the action which was taken by the Minister.


PRIME MINISTER'S POSITION
George Baker: Mr. Speaker, two weeks of this Chamber's valuable time has been lost-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


George Baker: -because the Prime Minister and the Acting Prime Minister failed to act. Why did the Prime Minister and the Acting Prime Minister fail to act? Granted, the Prime Minister was in China, but China invented gunpowder. Surely he could have mustered another bang.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Bang, bang!


Nelson Andrew Riis: Don't touch it, Erik.


John Edward Broadbent: Handle this one with care.

May 12, 1986
Oral Questions


John Napier Turner: Some days are worse than others, Erik.


Mr. Beatty:: Did you look behind you when you said that, John?


Mr. Ouellet:: Come on.


Mr. Benjamin:: Time's up.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. If the Hon. Minister wishes to answer that?


Erik Nielsen: I would like to respond to the question, Mr. Speaker, if I could be heard. I see the right hon. gentleman chortling with glee in his reaction to that question, but the question itself, surely, Sir, is the strongest possible indication of the need for an impartial investigation into the facts.


CANADA-UNITED STATES NEGOTIATIONS-CANADIAN LUMBER EXPORTS
Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of International Trade. As we predicted, after Senate free trade approval, at noon today U.S. lumber producers launched a new thrust to cut back Canadian lumber exports. Will the Government tell the United States that this new attack makes a mockery of the freer trade talks? Will it tell the United States that this destroys any good faith beginning in these free trade talks?


Hon. James Kelleher (Minister for International Trade):: Mr. Speaker, in reply to the hon. gentleman I think the simple and short answer is that it is my understanding that no announcement will be made today by the U.S. lumber producers launching an attack, as the Hon. Member calls it, on our lumber industry.


Mr. Blackburn (Brant):: How about tomorrow?


GOVERNMENT POSITION
Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, I want to put to the Minister as a question-are there finally going to be commitments on the part of the Government to get tough on this issue now, as it should have done long ago, and will it say to the United States that if there are such attacks made to get countervail, there will be no proceeding with free trade talks at this time?


Mr. Clark (Yellowhead):: Did the CLC write that?


James Francis Kelleher: Mr. Speaker, I think the record of the Government stands to
show that we have taken a very firm position in the lumber issue and that, indeed, we have protected the interests of our lumber producers.
If I may say so, the very threat of this type of action points out the reason why we need this type of trade agreement with the United States. I do not know why the Party of the Hon. Member wants to thwart that type of action by the Government to protect our lumber producers.


COQUITLAM AND VANCOUVER WATER SUPPLIES
Gerry St. Germain: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Health and Welfare. Given the conflicting reports which have been circulating on the contamination of the Coquitlam water supply reservoir regarding abnormally high levels of radiation, will the Minister tell the House what actions his Department has taken to assure that the Greater Vancouver Regional District receives adequate assistance to guarantee accurate testing of all water sources in the area and, in particular, in the Coquitlam reservoir?


Ms. Jewett:: That's a dead story.


Gerry St. Germain: It's not dead in B.C.?


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: Mr. Chairman-Mr. Prime-Mr. Speaker-


John Napier Turner: This is not caucus!


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: -I wish to say to the Hon. Member that there have been two tests done on the Coquitlam-the Leader of the Opposition laughs about these types of matters. Does he not take them as serious? Has he gone to levels which even he cannot describe?


An Hon. Member:: You're pretty raw!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


André Ouellet: This is a planted question, that is why we object.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Does the Hon. Minister want to finish his response, briefly?


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: Mr. Speaker, tests have been done on the Coquitlam water supply.
I wish to remind the Hon. Member that the levels which we use as acceptable were very, very low and very much on the side of prudence. We have done two tests. I think we can indicate that the first test was right at the level of some concern. The second test indicated that it is below that level.
May 12, 1986

So the water radiation is safe. However, we are conducting further tests and we will keep the Hon. Member informed.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg-Fort Garry):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Many Canadians are becoming increasingly concerned about the embroilment of the Canadian Government in the impending investigations and, in fact, in the scandal associated with Mr. Michael Deaver who is a former counsel in the White House. I think that part of the problem has been confusing and contradictory information. Will the Secretary of State for External Affairs supply information to Parliament-not down south-regarding the report released today from the General Accounting Office which confirms that Mr. Fred Doucet of the Prime Minister's Office was the gentleman in question who raised the question of the employment of Mr. Deaver by the Canadian Government-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. That is a bit long, I think. Is that the Hon. Member's question?


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I was asking a question. I would like to continue.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Lloyd Axworthy: Was it Mr. Doucet of the Prime Minister's Office who raised the question with Mr. Deaver concerning his potential employment with the Canadian Government?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I do not know who raised that question; but I know when it was raised. It was raised after Mr. Deaver left the White House.


John Edward Broadbent: How do you know that if you don't know who raised it?


LETTER ISSUED BY CANADIAN AMBASSADOR
Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, that is right. We now have another example of a clear answer.
When the Canadian Ambassador to Washington referred to the fact that a senior official of the Government raised the question of employment prior to Mr. Deaver leaving the White House, was that senior official Mr. Doucet of the Prime Minister's Office?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, most things the Hon. Member does are inadvertent, so I assume that his twisting of the facts is
Oral Questions
inadvertent. The letter issued by Ambassador Gotlieb indicated that a Canadian official made a comment in a light-hearted way to Mr. Deaver. That official was Doctor Doucet.


Lloyd Axworthy: That is what we wanted to know.


SEARCH AND RESCUE
Ian Deans: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister either in his capacity as Deputy Prime Minister or as Minister of National Defence. Will the Minister order an investigation into the search and rescue efforts which took place last November in seeking two people who apparently lived for a number of days after rescue efforts had been abandoned?
Hon. Harvie Andre (Associate Minister of National
Defence): Mr. Speaker, there has been a preliminary investigation conducted already. It is being carried on in some depth in an effort to try to answer these questions.


CO-ORDINATION OF OPERATIONS
Ian Deans: Mr. Speaker, will the Deputy Prime Minister or the Associate Minister of National Defence not only table in the House the results of that investigation, but will they also look into the co-ordinated efforts of Search and Rescue between the various component parts of such an effort? Will they table in the House the clear method used by the various groups which take part, who was in charge, and who makes the decisions as to if, as, and when an effort should be abandoned?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Associate Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member has asked a great many questions. I am quite prepared to answer them in the appropriate forum on an appropriate occasion. The Hon. Member could write or come to committee when we are discussing Estimates and talk about the matter. However, he is asking me to table something on the assumption that there is some sort of document which will contain all of the information. I am not sure that that type of document is available in the form that he would like. There is no desire on our part to hold back any of the information which the Hon. Member seeks.


ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Alan Redway: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment. There was a report this

May 12, 1986
Oral Questions
weekend that dioxin is flowing directly into the Niagara River and Lake Ontario from a storm sewer in Buffalo, New York. Will the Minister advise the House what he and the Government intend to do to avert a potential disaster, one potentially greater than that at Chernobyl in Russia? What will he do to save the drinking water of approximately 20 per cent of the people of Canada?


Hon. Tom McMillan (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, the information about the presence of dioxin in the Niagara River was, in fact, released by my Department under my authority. The information adds urgency in the sense that we in the Government feel that something dramatic needs to be done to deal with the discharge of about one tonne a day of toxic chemicals into the Niagara River. Some experts say that it is as high as nine tonnes per day. Because of the urgency I will be going to Washington this afternoon. We will be there all day tomorrow and possibly the next day to deal with high-level officials in the United States administration to complete, I hope, arrangements being made between Canada and the United States for a major action plan to clean up the Niagara River.


THE ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. In the Prime Minister's letter of September 9, 1985, in which he wrote to Members of Parliament, he stated:
You will find no quasi-independent agencies in this Code that will allow the Government to shirk its responsibility by saying that the problem belongs to someone else.
In view of the fact that that was said, will the Deputy Prime Minister not agree with me that the only appropriate measure is to have a committee of the House investigate the situation in order to fulfil the mandate which the Prime Minister gave to Members of Parliament on September 9, 1985?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, as I have explained several times today, the answer is that that would not be in the best interests of this institution itself. All the Hon. Member has to do is look at his own colleagues and their conduct to see that there can be no impartiality in the investigation which must be conducted as to facts. What the Hon. Member fails to do is to read on in that same paragraph of that letter where reference is made to the fact that there may be circumstances which might require the appointment of an impartial person to conduct an investigation as to the facts. That is exactly where we are now in those-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


RESPONSIBILITY FOR INQUIRY-GOVERNMENT POSITION
Don Boudria: According to the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker, one could use the same logic and shut down the whole Parliament!
Since he said in the same speech that these measures would not in any way free the Government from being answerable to the House, I would ask him how he can tell us today that another agent, not a parliamentary committee, should look into this matter. Were we told the truth on September 9, 1985? Yes or no?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, I suggest that the proper course to follow is the course that the former Minister requested, consistent with the paragraph in the Prime Minister's letter from which the Hon. Member is quoting and, I think, consistent with the demands of the opposition Members and the media. I do not think there is any better course that can be followed in these circumstances than to identify a means of conducting an impartial investigation as to the facts.


HUMAN RIGHTS
Pauline Jewett: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs who will know of the ruthless suppression of the mildest form of political dissent occurring in South Korea, as well as the police beatings and torture. Is the Prime Minister, who is in South Korea today, not only going to raise these gross human rights violations with President Chun but will he also explicitly urge the reinstatement of the civil and political rights of South Korea's Opposition Leader, Kim Dae-Jung?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister will be using the occasion of his conversations in South Korea to bring to the attention of South Korean authorities our very deep concerns about civil rights abuses and civil rights situations in that country. He will be available to report on the nature of those conversations upon his return.


TREATMENT OF OPPOSITION LEADER
Pauline Jewett: Mr. Speaker, since the Minister did not answer about the Opposition Leader, perhaps he does not know about the denial of his civil and political rights. Can the Minister tell the House whether the Prime Minister will in fact meet with the Leader
May 12, 1986

of the New Korea Democratic Party, Kim Dae-Jung, while he is in South Korea?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, while 1 would not compete with the right hon. incumbent Leader of the Opposition for any claim to experience of terrible treatment of Leaders of the Opposition, I will-


John Napier Turner: Careful, Joe.


Charles Joseph Clark: Because in my caucus, there was never a rat pack gone rabid.


Lloyd Axworthy: You just lost your job.


Charles Joseph Clark: I will certainly bring the Hon. Member's representations to the attention of the Prime Minister and he will be available to report on questions he has raised and responses to those questions, upon his return.


CANADIAN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AGENCY
Mr. Barry Turner (Ottawa-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also addressed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. I am concerned about reports of public funds from C1DA being used to pay for recent air fares for Canadian officials and their wives to witness a cheque presentation in Peking. Could the Minister clarify this situation and explain if this is actually what happened?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, those news reports constitute a serious injustice to both CIDA and officials of the Civic Hospital of Ottawa. The Ottawa Civic Hospital has been involved for some long time in a project totalling something like $1.6 million designed to help train, in Canada, those people who would train the mentally handicapped in China. Those officials are in China to help advance that project. That project and their plans were put in place long before the Prime Minister's visit was arranged. CIDA has not paid for the travel of any spouses.
In the circumstances, since the Ottawa Civic Hospital is also proposing to launch a $4 million fund raising campaign to help another project in China, I would respectfully suggest that those newspapers that have contributed to this maligning of reputations should be the first to contribute to the fund raising campaign.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear hear!
_________________________________13177
Oral Questions THE ADMINISTRATION


RESIGNATION OF MINISTER OF REGIONAL INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION
John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. What is at issue is the moral fabric of this particular Government.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, the Minister did the right thing for the wrong reasons. The Government refuses to admit conflict of interest. It even refuses to admit an appearance of a conflict of interest.


Mr. Speaker:: Question, please.


John V. Nunziata: Would the Deputy Prime Minister not agree that the resignation was the result of public opinion rather than the result of the Government's sense of morality and decency?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, no, I am not prepared to agree with that, but I can tell the hon. gentleman that I and other members of this Government can stack our moral fabric against that of the hon. gentleman any day of the week.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: That's not saying much.


REQUEST THAT MINISTERS APPEAR AS WITNESSES
John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, I did not do any bugging. The Deputy Prime Minister has said that the investigation the Government is planning is going to be an impartial one. In view of that, will the Deputy Prime Minister, the former Minister, and the Prime Minister, appear before the investigator under oath to enable the Opposition to get to the whole truth of this matter?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, it is obvious from the hon. gentleman's conduct in committee last week that he will never be convinced, even with a totally and utterly impartial investigation, of the facts.


INDUSTRY
Mr. Ernie Epp (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of State for Forestry. The Minister has received a telegram from the Canadian Paperworkers' Union asking him to take action, together with the Ontario Government, to seek a reopening of the Great Lakes wafer board mill in Thunder Bay. What action has the Minister taken to get 150 men back to work at this mill in Thunder Bay

May 12, 1986
Supply
since my friend, the Hon. Member for Thunder Bay- Atikokan, asked him about this same matter on April 30?


Hon. Gerald S. Merrithew (Minister of State (Forestry)):: Mr. Speaker, I am rather surprised that the Hon. Member put two questions the day the plant was actually going to close, or the day after it closed. I will certainly deal with my colleagues, the Minister of Labour and the Acting Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion, and I will take that as a representation.


REQUEST FOR FEDERAL-PROVINCIAL ACTION
Abram Ernest Epp: Mr. Speaker, the Minister promised action on April 30. I would like to have his commitment this afternoon that he will get together with representatives of the provincial Government, the Premier of which has promised to take action, and do whatever is necessary to ensure that this mill, which is perhaps under new ownership since Great Lakes is moving out, will go back into production.


Gerald Stairs Merrithew: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member knows full well that we cannot force a company to reopen a plant which does not pay or is not economical. I indicated that we would investigate the matter and that is exactly what we are doing.


Douglas Cockburn Frith: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. You cannot start. It is three o'clock.


Douglas Cockburn Frith: It's one minute to three. One question.


Mr. Speaker:: My watch says three o'clock. One question only?


Douglas Cockburn Frith: Just one.


CROWN CORPORATIONS
Douglas Cockburn Frith: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. Is the Government prepared to instruct whomever is appointed to head the inquiry to investigate and review the tangled web of corporate selfdealing with respect to the disposal of Crown corporations under the CDIC umbrella? The Canadian public no longer have faith in the Government's ability or the ability of its appointees to look after their interests.


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, I tried to assure Hon. Members of the House, in response to an earlier question by a member of the Opposition, that the impartial investigation would have the broadest possible terms
of reference to include even intemperate remarks such as his last intervention.