1987-05-19

Mr. Doug Lewis (Parliamentary Secretary to Deputy Prime Minister and President of the Privy Council):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 106(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the Government's response to petitions Nos. 332-1876, 332-1977, 332-1978, 332-1990 to 332-2005 inclusive, 332-2007, 332-2010 to 332-2016 inclusive and 332-2142 to 332-2146 inclusive.


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PRESENTATION OF SEVENTH REPORT OF STANDING COMMITTEE Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to submit to the House today the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs in relation to the Economic Council of Canada. Last year the committee was critical of the Economic Council. The committee is very pleased with the work of Judith Maxwell, the new chairperson of the council, and is pleased to say that the council is doing first class work.

Mr. John Oostrom (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 106 I have the pleasure and honour to present to this House a duly certified petition signed by over 1,300 high school students in Ontario from Toronto, Willowdale, Richmond Hill, Markham, Gormley, Thornhill, Agincourt,
Islington, Scarborough, North York, Woodbridge, Unionville, Stouffville, Weston and Pickering who support Motion M-37. The petition calls upon Parliament to amend Section 7 of the Charter of Rights to read: "everyone including a human foetus or unborn human being has the right to life, liberty and security of the person, and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice".


Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Mr. Speaker, although the House has passed the changes to the Patent Act I am still receiving petitions from Canadians who are concerned about what the Government is doing. These people believe that the government measures will unfairly hurt those Canadians whose health needs require the purchase of prescription drugs on an ongoing basis. They call upon Parliament to reject these proposals. They also express their opinion that this is just another example of the Canadian Government making concessions to the United States in the free trade negotiations at the expense of average Canadians.


Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by a number of people asking for amendments to the Canada Evidence Act, the Young Offenders Act, and all corresponding sections of provincial and territorial Acts. 1 will not read the rest of the petition but will present it to you, Sir.


Mr. Jim Manly (Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by a number of Canadian citizens calling for amendments to a number of Acts to enable children to provide uncorroborated testimony in all cases involving sexual offences.



CANADIAN EXPLORATION AND DEVELOPMENT INCENTIVE PROGRAM ACT


Hon. Pierre H. Cadieux (for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-59, an Act

May 19, 1987
Order Paper Questions
to provide for payments in respect of exploration for or development of lands for the production of hydrocarbons in Canada other than coal.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the Elouse that the Hon. Minister shall have leave to introduce the Bill?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


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Motion agreed to, Bill read the first time and ordered to be printed.
Mr. Speaker:: When shall this Bill be read the second time? At the next sitting of the House?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
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(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Philip Derek Lewis: Mr. Speaker, question No. 110 will be answered today.


Mr. Howie: 1.	From January I, 1986 to January I, 1987, how many persons were committed to our penal institutions for life?
2.	What constitutes a life sentence?


Hon. James Kelleher (Solicitor General of Canada):: 1.
From January 1, 1986 to January 1, 1987, 184 offenders were committed to penal institutions for life. The total breaks down as follows:
3 are serving a life sentence for capital murder
20 are serving a life sentence for non-capital murder
48 are serving a life sentence for first degree murder
97 are serving a life sentence for second degree murder
9 are serving a life sentence for manslaughter
3 are serving a life sentence for attempted murder
1 is serving a life sentence for trafficking in narcotics and conspiracy to import narcotics
1 is serving a life sentence for kidnapping
1 is serving a life sentence for armed robbery
1 is serving a life sentence for numerous counts of breaking and entering and kidnapping
2. A sentence for life means that the offender will be incarcerated for the duration of his/her life unless he/she is granted parole by the National Parole Board.


Philip Derek Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Speaker:: The question enumerated by the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary has been answered. Shall the remaining questions be allowed to stand?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


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Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine
East) moved:
That this House condemn the Government for its failure to initiate meaningful reform in the unemployment insurance system and for its failure to commit itself to a full employment policy that seriously addresses high regional unemployment, youth unemployment, part-time work and labour market adjustment.
He said: Mr. Speaker, the resolution before the House today deals with two important issues which are intimately related to each other. First, it deals with the important issue of unemployment and the need for full employment policies which should be our first and highest priority. It then deals with unemployment insurance policies which are essential for those who are put out of work, contrary to their will. I will deal first with the question of unemployment insurance.
On Friday, the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Bouchard) told the House that because the Government could not make up its mind it would do nothing with respect to the reform of the Unemployment Insurance Act.
In November, 1984, when the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson) made his famous financial statement, he said that unemployment insurance reform was one of the priorities of the Government. In his booklet entitled A New Direction for Canada: An Agenda for Economic Renewal, he set out some of the problems that were being experienced with unemployment insurance and also listed some questions that he wanted answered. At that time in November, 1984, he said this was an urgent matter. However, it took the Government until 1985 to set up the Forget Commission which consisted of five persons and eventually cost approximately $7 million.
The House should also note that just prior to the appointment of the Forget Commission there was also the Macdonald Royal Commission on Economic Prospects which studied the issue of unemployment insurance as well as the problems of unemployment, and the Newfoundland Royal Commission on Unemployment. In that period from 1985 to 1987, three Royal Commissions looked at this important subject.
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The Forget Commission reported in December, 1986, with 53 recommendations. The recommendations which received the most attention, because they were the most controversial, were those relating to its annualization proposal and its proposals to cut extended regional benefits and fishermen's benefits. The annualization proposal was one for a new method of calculating unemployment insurance benefits and, according to which, there would have been serious cuts in benefits for people who were plagued with seasonal unemployment, parttime work, and the like.
While recommending this new annualization scheme which would have cut benefits, and recommending the removal of the extended regional benefits and fishermen's benefits, Mr. Forget also made a vague recommendation that new programs be set up for a guaranteed income and for regional development. However, he did not give any detail.
The recommendations in his report would have amounted to S3 billion in cuts in a $12 billion program. Those cuts would have had a particular impact on Atlantic Canada, the east and north of Quebec, the north of Ontario, and in the north of our western provinces, including most of British Columbia and Alberta.
Workers in Canada might have been willing to consider a package of proposals whereby there would have been cuts in the unemployment insurance system due to some inconsistency with the principles of unemployment insurance if Mr. Forget had also tabled a detailed plan for regional economic expansion and development and for a new guaranteed income program. Without such details, however, no worker in this country who has been chronically hit by unemployment will give up a good program, which they know, even if imperfect, for vague, pie-in-the-sky proposals related to guaranteed income and regional development.
On Friday the Minister could have recognized that deficiency in the Forget Commission recommendations, rather than copping out entirely on unemployment insurance reform.
When the standing committee studied the Forget Report, even members of the Forget Commission told us that they understood why Canadians would not be willing to accept their proposal on annualization and the cutting of regional benefits and fishermen's benefits without seeing the details of a replacement program. They said they understood that.
The Minister could have come to the House on Friday and, instead of saying there would be no reform whatsoever in this field, said those proposals of Mr. Forget or similar ones would be put on the back burner while the Government was preparing, as suggested by Mr. Forget, new programs for regional economic expansion and for income support. But the whole subject is forgotten altogether.
Immediately after the tabling of the Forget Report the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration took notice of the report and undertook a study of the
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same issues. It looked at the recommendations made by Forget and at the alternatives which had been discussed in the country, and heard witnesses. As a member of the standing committee I thought that in a short period of time we did a good job in studying the principal issues. We came out with a report in March, just a few months ago, in which we made 90 recommendations for reform. There was unanimous agreement in the committee on 89 of the recommendations. In other words, the Conservative, New Democrat and Liberal Members of the committee agreed that we could and should move ahead with reform of the unemployment insurance system, and we agreed unanimously on 89 recommendations.
If we compare the 90 recommendations with the 53 recommendations in the Forget Report, we find there is a lot of common ground. It is true, as I mentioned a few moments ago, there was a lot of controversy with respect to the Forget recommendations relating to annualization, regional benefits and fishermen's benefits. However, there were other recommendations in respect of which there was less controversy because they were well accepted throughout the country. The standing committee took those recommendations and I think improved on them.
I might just mention some of those recommendations relating to serious deficiencies in the unemployment insurance system, and where there was agreement between Forget and the standing committee, and where the Minister could have taken action.
To begin with, with respect to the whole area of training, it has been a bit of a scandal that in the past an individual was not able to go on a training program he or she had chosen if receiving unemployment insurance, because the basic rules of unemployment insurance require that one must always be ready and available for work.
A few years ago, under the previous Liberal Government, certain amendments were made so that a person collecting unemployment insurance could take certain specified training programs, and we had a certain experience with that, but it was not good enough.
Both the Forget Commission and the standing committee recommended that a person receiving unemployment insurance should be able to participate in a wide range of training programs precisely because if we want this person to go back into the labour market fully employed, and he is an untrained person, the only way he is going to get full-time employment or reasonable employment is by becoming trained. Although, as I said, when putting together the unemployment insurance program we had established a principle that one must be ready and available for work, how silly it is to use that principle to prevent someone from getting training which would give him or her a meaningful chance at employment.
The standing committee made recommendations about that, as did Forget, but those recommendations have been set aside. Both Forget and the standing committee made recommendations to extend unemployment insurance into the area of part-
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time work. This would have meant that those who are in parttime work would pay contributions in proportion to their incomes and receive benefits in proportion to their incomes.
As you probably know, Mr. Speaker, there are many individuals doing part-time work. About 71 per cent of them are women. They are working part time in order to supplement the incomes of their spouse. That additional income is very important in supporting the family. Some of these women are in part-time jobs for two, three and four years and their earnings become extremely important as part of the family income. If that person is laid off, the family is in serious difficulty. There is no reason why people in part-time work should not receive unemployment insurance. That was recognized by Forget and it was recognized by the standing committee.
Another situation about which there is a lot of concern in Canada is when overpayments are made to individuals under the Unemployment Insurance Act and, after the overpayment is discovered, a claim is made against that person to reimburse the amount of overpayment. We can understand a demand for return of overpayment if the overpayment was the fault of the claimant. However, in many cases the fault for the overpayment rests with officials in the Unemployment Insurance Commission. Sometimes there are horrendous situations where people who are still unemployed, or who have gone beyond unemployment and are on social welfare, are asked to pay back sums of money they cannot afford. It is true the Unemployment Insurance Commission will make arrangements with these people, but there is the whole principle of harassing these people for overpayments for which they were not responsible.
Just recently there was an article in The Globe and Mail reporting on a problem in Quebec which was raised by a Conservative Member. Eighteen women in a Gaspe village were being asked to repay up to $13,000 each for overpayments that were made to them, not because of their fault but because of the fault of officials. The Hon. Member from Gaspe went to bat for them but, unfortunately, the matter has not been resolved satisfactorily. In any case, the standing committee made recommendations to deal with this problem. It is again unfortunate that we could not make reforms in those areas.
With respect to maternity and parental benefits, again there was common ground between the standing committee and the Forget Commission in taking action in this area, particularly to eliminate the two-week waiting period in the case of maternity benefits. A birth is something which happens in the natural course of events. It is not planned deliberately in the sense that one cannot pick the date. There was agreement there but again there was no action taken.
Another problem which has lingered on for the last few years which requires reform arises in the situation where workers in a plant who are not on strike are locked out when another union in the same plant goes on strike. We all agree that if one deliberately goes on strike one has no right to unemployment insurance benefits. However, there must be
clarification with respect to those workers who have been locked out due to a strike in which they are not involved, or they cannot cross picket lines. Again, the Forget Commission and the standing committee made recommendations to correct that situation.
Finally, the standing committee and the Forget Commission made recommendations to restructure the Unemployment Insurance Commission so that it would have better representation from both workers and employers; it would be more independent and efficient. Again, this is an area where the Minister could have acted and he did not.
While these issues are all critical to many thousands of Canadians, they are not controversial in the way in which the issues of annualization and severe cuts were. I might say that the standing committee in hearing evidence on these matters heard from trade unions and others that workers would be willing to pay increases in their contributions if they were able to get improved benefits.
As I stated earlier, these reforms could have been implemented pending a more profound reform of the unemployment insurance system coupled with a new income support system and a new regional development program. But, no, the Government has decided to do nothing. It abdicated its responsibility. It took the path of least resistance. And all this after a $7 million study conducted by Forget, not to mention the work carried out by the Macdonald Royal Commission, the Newfoundland Royal Commission and the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration.
Unemployment insurance was introduced in 1940 after the tragedies of the 1930s, the Great Depression of 1929 and the massive unemployment that followed. Unemployment Insurance was a great Liberal accomplishment. But we Liberals have always agreed that reform is necessary. As a matter of fact, over the years Bills have been brought in to reform and update the Unemployment Insurance Act. We still favour fine-tuning and reforming of the Act.
Unemployment insurance is not only good for those workers who are unemployed but it is good for the country. It is good for business. If we look at the phenomenon that took place in the Great Depression of the 1930s when there was no unemployment insurance, we see that as men and women were laid off they lost their purchasing power. The phenomenon hit businesses in the community sooner or later. It hit the corner stores. Mortgages were foreclosed. People could not pay their rents. There was a snowball effect that took place which went well beyond the original numbers of people who were laid off. So unemployment insurance, to the extent that it maintains purchasing power when times are bad, is good for the whole community and also good for business.
There are those people in the country, and their names are listed as witnesses who appeared before the standing committee and the Forget Commission, who complained that we must
May 19, 1987
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make massive cuts in the unemployment insurance system because there are so many cheaters. Forget himself found that cheaters on unemployment insurance amount to less than 3 per cent of the total claimants in a program which amounts to approximately $12 billion. As a matter of fact, there are fewer cheaters on unemployment insurance than there are in terms of income tax.
In his statement on Friday, the Minister of Employment and Immigration also said that his first priority would be to create employment so that people would not have to make claims on unemployment insurance. We all applaud that statement of principle. Unfortunately, the Minister did not go on to give any evidence of new programs or a new commitment to deal with the unemployment problem. It appears that this is just more of the politics of rhetoric.
Since 1984, budgets for employment creation and training have been cut by 30 per cent. Budgets in this area totalled $2.2 billion in 1984. They have now been reduced to $1.6 billion. There have also been cuts in budgets for regional economic development. This morning we read that the entire Department may be done away with. The Government is going to get out of regional development altogether.
It is true that the rate of unemployment has been brought down from about 12.5 per cent in 1983 to 9.3 per cent in the most recent months.
Mr. Charest:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Allmand:: The Minister applauds. Three years after the recession he is applauding a 9.3 per cent unemployment rate.
In 1981, the year before the recession, the rate of unemployment was 7.5 per cent. It jumped up to over 11 per cent in one year due to world-wide economic conditions. The fact is that during the period of time under Liberal Governments from 1965 to 1980 the average rate of unemployment was 5.6 per cent. We were a Government that cared about the unemployed.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Warren Allmand: Here we are three years out of the recession and the rate of unemployment is still 9.3 per cent as a result of the Government's reliance on a laissez-faire approach to unemployment. The Government still takes great joy in the fact that we have a rate of unemployment of 9.3 per cent.
Members of the Government repeat over and over again the number of jobs that have been created. But in a report which came out in February of this year we were told that more than 95 per cent of the new jobs created last year were created in one province, that is, in the Province of Ontario. Some 95 per cent of the new jobs created last year were created in Ontario, and most of them were created in southern Ontario. It must be pointed out to the Government that in Ontario we have a Liberal Government which is at least trying to do something about the situation.
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More than 40 per cent of the 11.6 million jobs in Canada are located in the economic heartland of Canada where 36 per cent of the total population lives. This morning there was a report from the Conference Board of Canada which states that while there may be improvement again next year in Ontario and Quebec, the unemployment rate will climb in all the other provinces.
If we take Ontario out of the picture-and Ontario is an important place and we are all pleased to see things going so well in southern Ontario-we note that Ontario is not Canada. If we rely simply on a market economy approach, a laissez-faire approach, we will end up with a situation in which one part of the country does enormously well while the other part does poorly. That is not acceptable in Canada. It has never been acceptable in Canada.
Despite the challenges, governments of the country, and I might say former Conservative Governments, have tried to do something about regional economic problems, but the present Government has abdicated its role in this area. It seems that it will abdicate it still more.
In addition to the unfair distribution of job creation and the unfair distribution of economic growth we also have a great increase in part-time jobs in terms of recovery in employment. People who were working formerly in highly paid industrial jobs have been cut out of those jobs and are now going back into the job market in lower paying service jobs. Part-time work in Canada increased 73 per cent from 1976 to 1986 while full-time work has increased by only 17 per cent. In 1976, only 11 per cent of those in part-time work did not want to work part-time. Today, 30 per cent are dissatisfied with employment in part-time work.
As I mentioned earlier, 75 per cent of those in part-time work are women. Their wage gap started to widen this year for the first time in 18 years. It is all part of the same picture, this increase in part-time work, more women into part-time work, and their wage gap beginning to widen.
Again, the Government speaks about its wish to do something about high unemployment and problems in the employment field, but it puts forward no new programs. The response of the Government to all of these problems-the high rates of regional unemployment, the high rates of part-time work, the growing gap between the rich and the poor and the growing gap between the wages of men and women-is rhetoric and political flimflam.
The Government has said over and over again that things are better than they were in 1983. That is no great accomplishment. The Government would have something to brag about if it could bring the rate of unemployment down to what it was in pre-recession times, to at least 7.5 per cent or the average of 5.6 per cent that it was in the 1960s and 1970s.
The reason we are left with this situation is that the Government has an extremely laissez-faire approach to it. Liberal Governments have always believed in the free enterprise system, but we also believe that there is a strong role to

May 19, 1987
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be played by Government. Where there are problems in the regions and where there are problems with key groups of unemployed we should do something about them. The greatest levels of prosperity in this country have come when we have had the proper mix of public and private expenditure with respect to employment. When the two have worked together, that is when we have had prosperity. We are not having prosperity now, except perhaps in the greater Toronto region.
According to a Gallup poll taken in February of this year, only a couple of months ago, 41 per cent of Canadians consider unemployment to be the greatest problem in this country. Canadians want action. They know that things can be done to improve the unemployment situation.
Twice since World War II, Liberal governments made a commitment to full employment, and twice it was achieved. After World War II, the governments of Mackenzie King and St. Laurent, following the first White Paper on Full Employment, made a commitment to full employment, and for seven years we had average unemployment in this country of 3 per cent. After returning to power in 1963, the Pearson Government, following the establishment of the Canada Economic Council, again made a commitment to full employment, and we averaged around 3.7 per cent unemployment for four years. That is what can be done, Mr. Speaker, when a commitment to full employment is made; when decreasing the unemployment level becomes the highest priority.
Many things can be done in dealing with this situation, if the Government has the political will. One is to increase the commitment to regional economic development and not to cut it back. Another is to stimulate the slow-growth areas of the country. Another is to maintain or increase purchasing power during periods of economic slow-down and not cut it back, and another is to provide the essential economic infrastructure that is required in this country in order for private business to do its job properly.
The proper economic infrastructure, coupled with a serious commitment to education, training, retraining, upgrading, and research and development, can do a lot to maintain and attract employment.
In conclusion, let me say this. The Government on Friday abdicated its responsibility with respect to the reform of the unemployment insurance system. It said nothing. It just copped out completely on the subject. Some non-controversial measures could have been implemented measures that would have been helpful to many thousands of Canadians, but those measures were not taken. The Government made some brave statements with respect to dealing with the unemployed, but it announced no new programs, in fact it is cutting back while it is talking big.

Once again, Mr. Speaker, the Government has abandoned the Canadian people. Last Friday, the Minister decided to
make no changes in the unemployment insurance system but promised some major programs or measures for the unemployed in this country. Unfortunately, nothing was put on the table, not a single program, and this at a time when we have had 30 per cent cuts in job creation and training programs.


An Hon. Member:: Shame!


William Warren Allmand: The resolution before the House, Mr. Speaker, asks this House to condemn the Government for its lack of action. But better still, I would be willing to applaud the Minister were he to stand up in his place once I have finished my remarks and say that, despite what he said on Friday last, he does have in mind certain reforms for the unemployment insurance program, that he does have in mind some new programs to help the unemployed in this country

the unemployed in the Atlantic part of the country, the unemployed in Alberta, the unemployed in British Columbia, the unemployed in eastern Quebec and northern Ontario.
If he does that, Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to withdraw my motion and applaud the Minister.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: Questions or comments. The Hon. Member for Spadina (Mr. Heap).


Mr. Heap:: Mr. Speaker, I wish to commend the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East (Mr. Allmand) for his motion, and also for his speech, a speech in which he covered a great many important subjects.
Without encroaching on his own time, I should like to put two questions to him. He referred to part-time work. I would ask him to expand on that, in terms of the conditions that lead to people being compelled to accept part-time work.
As well, I would ask him to expand on the conditions accounting for the high level of youth unemployment and what remedies he feels can be applied to youth unemployment.


William Warren Allmand: I thank the Hon. Member for his questions. With respect to part-time work, a sinister phenomenon has been taking place in Canada over the last number of years in that certain large firms are deliberately laying off their fulltime staff and hiring back greater numbers of part-time workers. By doing that, these firms cut the cost of both their benefits package and the wage package. Those working fewer than 15 hours per week are not eligible for unemployment insurance, and are very often not eligible for training programs or pension programs. Often, they draw the minimum wage and are not subject to unionization. In any event, it is a more difficult matter to unionize part-time workers.
Having seen that phenomenon and its effects, the previous Government appointed the Wallace Royal Commission. That commission recommended that benefits be paid pro rata to part-time workers, thereby discouraging the movement by some firms from a full-time work-force to a part-time work-
May 19, 1987

force. Under the recommendations of the Wallace Commission, the firm would still have to pay the benefits on a pro rata basis.
While it suits the purposes of some to work part time, that is certainly not true of all. A good many people are forced to take part-time work simply because there is no full-time work available. The average part-time work week amounts to 14.5 hours, which is just under the 15 hours required to qualify for unemployment insurance eligibility.
Let me now turn to the youth unemployment problem. The major difficulty is that our young people do not have experience. Those seeking employment after high school, or even after acquiring a general arts degree or general sciences degree from university, are told by prospective employers that they do not have the experience required. The reaction of prospective employers is, I do need somebody, but I need somebody with experience.
Over and over again what we have been told by the commissions and experts is that what is needed in this country are better bridging programs, programs which will assist young people in bridging the shift from the school place to the workplace, programs which would combine training and education. It is for that reason that co-operative education programs are becoming more popular; it is for that reason that new apprenticeship programs are being promoted.
The Liberal Party, during the last election campaign, put forward the First Chance Program, a program that would have spent $1 billion putting 100,000 young people into a bridging program, thus providing them with work experience.
This Government does have some youth employment programs in place, and some bridging programs. They are not bad programs, but they deserve a bigger commitment of resources and money. They cover too few people. They are not that bad in themselves, but they do require a much greater commitment, a much greater show of political will on this Government's part.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Hamilton East (Ms. Copps), on a question or comment.


Ms. Copps:: Mr. Speaker, I would ask the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East (Mr. Allmand) to provide us with an update on the status of the almost 50,000 retired workers who are awaiting the reinstatement of benefits, benefits that were denied them as a result of the negative practices of this Government.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, that is another area where there was common ground between the Forget Commission and the standing committee report. Forget recommended that those measures to cut unemployment insurance for those on preretirement pension be completely rescinded. But the Government did not do that. After a lot of starts and stops, finally the Government produced Bill C-50, which would rescind the cuts for those who applied for unemployment insurance benefits before January 5, 1986, but not for those who applied after
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January 5, 1986. The Bill suggests a system which is grossly unfair. The Minister wants us to accept a Bill, one part of which is good and one part of which is terrible. We are not ready to do that quickly.
Despite that, the Minister has not once called the Bill for debate since its tabling in the House. I hear that in certain parts of the country he is blaming the delay on the Liberal and NDP opposition. His House Leader has not once gone to the House Leader of the Liberal Party and asked that the Bill be given time for debate. The burden lies with the Government. If it wants to debate the Bill because it thinks it is so important, let the Government bring it forward for debate. Then we will table some amendments and see what happens.
However, the Government abdicated its responsibility again. It did not follow the recommendation of the Forget Commission or of the standing committee.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East made some comments in respect of the number of cheaters on the unemployment insurance system. He noted that the percentage of cheaters on UI is smaller than what it is for income tax. Could he explain why the Minister, in announcing his response to the Forget Commission last week, said that he would step up activities to weed out those who would abuse the system? Is he hiding behind a red herring?


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, as with the legislation on refugees presented by his colleague, the Minister is catering to what I would call a reactionary element in the country. Unfortunately some people think that those who cheat on unemployment insurance amount to an enormous, massive percentage. However, each time a study has been conducted it has been shown that the percentage of cheaters is relatively small.
The Forget Commission found that just less than 3 per cent of claimants cheated on their unemployment insurance. We cannot approve of that. We must do everything possible to ensure that the money is used for those people who are truly unemployed. On the other hand, some of those people who are recommending harsh crack-downs are not recommending the same harsh crack-downs for those people who cheat on income tax. They have a double standard.
While I think it is appropriate that we try to weed out those who cheat on any program, it must be fair minded and applied on both sides. We cannot just do it against the unemployed yet do nothing about those who are cheating in other areas of government programs.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, I wonder whether the Hon. Member could elaborate on the pretty startling figures which he gave to the House. They show a 30 per cent cut-back in the amount of funds available for job development within the federal Government. Could he give any possible explanation of

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why the Government would cut back this fund by 30 per cent at a time when the unemployment rate is still unacceptably high?


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, as I said, the Conservative Government started cutting back on employment and training programs just after it took office in 1984. Since that time it has cut back those programs from $2.2 billion to $1.6 billion.
The Government did this because, according to its philosophy, things will get done if we leave it to the market economy. In other words it is a real Conservative Party over there; its members believe that the market economy will take care of everything. As I pointed out, in a country like Canada it will not take care of everything. We are a broad, vast country with 25 million people spread all over. If we leave everything to the market-place, we will have situations just like the ones I described where 85 per cent of the new jobs go to the greater Toronto region and growing unemployment takes place in the Atlantic region and in other remote regions of the country.
One must recall that Canada has regions which are based upon one or two industries, either lumber, fisheries, agriculture, or tourism. They are subject to severe seasonal fluctuations in employment.
Since the Second World War, Governments of all stripes in Canada have taken the position that Government must intervene to redress imbalances. That is why the Department of Regional Economic Expansion and the Department of Manpower and Immigration were set up under Prime Minister Trudeau. We believe that if we left things to work themselves out they would not be worked out. We believe in a free enterprise system, but we believe that there are times when the Government must intervene to correct imbalances and to help those who need help the most.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, could the Hon. Member also elaborate on the Government's decision to ignore the suggestion agreed upon by all Parties, that in fact maternity benefits per se are sexist benefits and that there should be available parental leave to allow couples to make the choice, given that there will be a certain period of leave granted to a woman because of the physical condition of pregnancy? Why has the Government chosen to ignore the very progressive notion of parental leave, which was agreed upon by all three Parties?


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, it is sometimes difficult for me to understand this Government. The Forget Commission was described as a rather conservative commission. In recommendation No. 11.1 it suggested that a two-tier system of maternity and parental benefits should be implemented immediately, comprised of maternity benefits available during the period surrounding childbirth and parental benefits available during the period following maternity leave or placement of an adoptive child. The standing committee also made that unanimous recommendation with some improvements. However, the Government did nothing.
In answer to the Hon. Member's question, I can only surmise, because the Minister himself is a very humane person, that he would like to do better but he is in a caucus which is severely divided.


Mr. Bouchard:: Oh, oh!


William Warren Allmand: The chairman of the finance committee sent letters to the chairman of the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration, criticizing his recommendations and so on. Despite the good intentions of the Minister, he is not able to act because he is in a caucus which is severely divided.
I put that on the record because he takes great joy in referring to divisions in other political Parties. He has them over there as well.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, I agree with the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East (Mr. Allmand) that the Minister comes from a severely divided caucus. I wonder whether he makes that assessment because he is a Liberal and Liberals are experts on internal division.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member should be familiar with that as well, because he is in the same caucus as the Hon. Member for Burnaby (Mr. Robinson), the justice critic who has on several occasions over the last few years divided with his Party. I guess it is something common to all political Parties.
What I do not like is when any one of these other political Parties pretends that it is without divisions. They have divisions as well. The reason for its "no policy" announced on Friday was the serious divisions in its caucus, and its members cannot say otherwise.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Hamilton East (Ms. Copps) on the last question.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, I wonder whether the Hon. Member has any comment on the local advisory councils which were established by the Government, in a different way, in an alleged effort to have local input? Could the Hon. Member comment upon how effectively they have been functioning and whether their recommendations have been accepted or ignored by the Government?


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, once again the idea of these local advisory councils was perhaps a good one. However, their implementation has been much less than perfect. As a matter of fact, the Province of Quebec does not have any local advisory councils. They are hit or miss operations throughout the country. Even where they are present, they have not been too effective in making changes or giving advice to the Government that the Government can agree to. It would seem that that part of the Canadian Jobs Strategy is more rhetoric than reality.
May 19, 1987


Mr. Speaker:: I see the Hon. Member for Hamilton East. I think the time has expired for questions and comments, and I think it is the responsibility of the Chair to move on to the next speaker on debate.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the chance today to speak for the New Democratic Party in this debate on the Government's policies on unemployment insurance and full employment.
However, first I wish to let an unemployed worker from Spadina speak to the same question. In a letter I received just recently he says in part:
The reason for this letter is simple. 1 am twenty-four years old and unemployed. I have a good education, I am willing to do most types of work, I am in good health, and I live in Toronto which has a relatively low rate of unemployment. Yet I simply cannot find a job.
I wonder if the Conservative party members really know what it is like to have no future to look forward to? I question whether the Prime Minister really cares about the thousands of people like myself. I sometimes feel that the country as a whole does not really care about the country's youth, after all we are only its future.
Farther down he says he feels that politicians must be made aware that there are thousands of people in Canada who are young, eager, and obsolete. He is far from the only one who experiences that although he says it with perhaps more eloquence than some people are able to muster in a letter.
I commend the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace- Lachine East (Mr. Allmand) for moving this motion against the background of government failure. It demands reform of the unemployment insurance system, the meeting of direct needs, including reform of unemployment insurance, social legislation, upgrading of transportation and urban infrastructure. He also refers to youth unemployment and part-time workers.
I wish to respond to three main points. First, something on which the Hon. Member has spent a great deal of time not only in his speech but in previous years as chairman of that committee, reform of the unemployment insurance system. Second, I wish to deal with the meeting of direct needs of the people, including social legislation, upgrading of transportation and urban infrastructure, and democratization of defence. Third, local control, so far as possible of production of agriculture and manufacturing products, especially for the domestic market.
On the first point, the basic principle of full employment, we must begin by declaring that full employment is not only desirable, it is essential to our people's health and happiness, as well as being economically possible and socially workable. Today we have many voices, some academic, some popular writers, and some politicians telling us that full employment is a dream, a thing of the past. They say modern technology and population growth doom us to a larger and larger share of unemployment for the work-force or, as a last resort, a fawning on the rich for personal service jobs. I say that is nonsense. In
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this, one of the world's richest lands, the population has doubled since I was a youth and we are stronger and wealthier than we were then. Many here can recall, as I can, how in 1945 we returned from the Armed Forces bitterly remembering the misery and unemployment of the Dirty Thirties. We demanded full employment above all and we got it. For five years at least unemployment did not rise above 3 per cent. I firmly believe that what we did in the late 1940s we can do in the late 1980s.
However, there is one big difference. In 1945 North America had a near monopoly with the only industrial economy not wrecked by war, including the basis of industrialized agriculture. We seized the chance to dominate world markets for the export of manufactured and agricultural products and so, along with the U.S., we enjoyed three decades of easy growth. However, that is no more. Europe, the U.S.S.R. and Japan have renewed their industry and industrialized their agriculture. Brazil, India, China and other countries are rapidly industrializing. We are no longer like a man selling water in the desert. We can no longer expand our exports limitlessly. We must now rely more on our domestic market. That means we must not only ask the Canadian people what goods and services they need but also how Canadians are prepared to change our working relations and expectations and attitudes in production; how we will work together to produce these things so as to provide a market for goods and services we produce. That is the first point, the general principle of full employment, which is possible and necessary.
Second, as a foundation, we must recommit our country's resources to meeting the direct needs of the Canadian people individually and socially. The first example, of course, which we have just been considering is the unemployment insurance system which needs to be reformed. Reforms have been unanimously recommended by an all-Party committee of Parliament, predominantly a Conservative committee. They propose to include 50 weeks of benefits for 10 weeks of eligibility, coverage for part-time and short-time workers, pensions and vacations and severance pay not to be treated as earned income so as to reduce unemployment insurance benefits, maternity benefits available consecutively with regular benefits up to 50 weeks, unemployment insurance benefits funded out of general revenue available for training, to start a business, to move to another region, to share in community controlled job creation projects, and have fishermen's benefits continue.
They also propose that the Unemployment Insurance Commission be an autonomous organization accountable to Parliament through the Minister and to the proprietors of that program, that is the workers and employers who pay for it. Furthermore, in addition to reforming unemployment insurance we need much more vigorous job creation programs; not cut-backs but expansion. Disadvantaged groups such as women returning to the workforce, native people on or off the reserve and youth entering the work-force must be better funded than the token programs being offered now.

May 19, 1987
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Third, one of the serious causes of our present high rate of unemployment is the cut-backs and freezes in public employment. For doctrinaire capitalist reasons the Government and most provincial Governments are withholding work opportunities in the provision of social housing, education, especially post-secondary education, in preventive and environmental health, in child care which the Government has put off and put off and put off and does not want to discuss seriously, and in culture and recreation which has been grossly underfunded compared to most other countries. This policy must be reversed and employment in these services must be increased. These services are in fact essential to a modern industrial and commercial country. Without them our society cannot survive let alone produce efficiently.
If you want to see what happens to a country that follows the road of cut-back and freeze you can find a gruesome example in Chile. Pinochet, using the Chicago Boys' philosophy, has brought about an absolute reduction in the number of children in elementary school although the population is one-sixth larger. There is nearly 50 per cent malnutrition among children under six. There has been a doubling of the rate of some infectious diseases, and massive poverty in what was once a prosperous democracy. The only industry thriving there is the military, people who are needed to repress the poor, the workers and the students.
That brings me to the question of Canada's national defence establishment and arms industry. The Government, by trying to follow President Reagan, is in danger of locking Canada into a defence and defence industry policy that would give us the least security and the least sovereignty at the greatest expense. Worship of high-tech schemes like immense radar systems, nuclear submarines, and star wars, lock us into the American war program, and the continued production in Canada of nuclear fuel with the excuse of nuclear power is wasting billions of tax dollars of which the Oerlikon scandal is only a very small part. As defence these programs are questionable and dangerous since they heat up the arms race and make World World III, an unwinnable war, more likely than ever before. As job creation projects they are a sick joke because dollar for dollar they give us less jobs than any other industry, public or private. By spreading the dictatorial role of the military and the rule of secrecy over more and more of the economy, they are undermining our democracy. By starving public projects of funding, they are impoverishing our people and even our industries. Subsidized arms production for export only compounds the problem.
We need those tax dollars for much better programs. There are many urgently needed public projects that private enterprise, the darling of the Government, will not or cannot do. It is well known that our cities are falling into disrepair. Roads, bridges, sewers, waterworks and other basic necessities are wearing out. The federal Government, which helped to build them in the first place through direct grants and generous tax breaks for real estate development, now looks the other way
and tells the municipalities and provinces that they are on their own.
How extremely shortsighted. If this Government would add $1 billion per year to the $2 billion proposed by the cities and the provinces, nearly all of it would come back to the federal Government in unemployment insurance benefit savings and in new tax dollars. Our cities would be more efficient and this would generate a more efficient economy. Above all, 60,000 more self-respecting Canadians would be working at useful jobs for decent wages. Yet the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson) is so obsessed with his paper deficit that he would rather see those 60,000 Canadians unemployed.
In addition, Canada's transportation industries need to be renovated. The railways are worn out. The bus system needs to be expanded. Our air system which is in better shape needs the continuing security of a proper system of regulation, with public ownership, especially of airports. However, besides supplying the essential services and the infrastructure that private enterprise cannot supply satisfactorily, we need to democratize the production of primary and secondary products.
In The Financial Post of June, there appeared an article by Peter Cook entitled: "If We're So Smart, Where are the Jobs?" His subtitle note is as follows:
Countries as diverse as Japan and Sweden have kept unemployment below 4
per cent. Ours is three times higher. What do they know that we don't?
He points out that in spite of 4 per cent growth for four and maybe five years, Canada still has an official national unemployment rate of 9.5 per cent, a combination he calls unprecedented. On the other hand, in Japan where many companies have a commitment to life-time employment, he finds that a laid-off assembly line worker can be switched into the marketing department, sent to a dealership to help reduce inventory or be given a repair job in the plant. Job security like that reduces unnecessary labour market conflict and assists efficient production.
In his other example, Sweden, Cook notes that after 49 years of Social Democratic rule during the last 55 years and a public sector that by 1982 absorbed 67 per cent of Gross Domestic Product, "Growth has averaged 3 per cent to 4 per cent, inflation is down at 3 per cent, the balance of payments is solidly in surplus and unemployment is a mere 2.7 per cent". He finds that while the Swedish Social Democrat Government has refused to prop up lame-duck industries, it has intervened chiefly in the labour market, "to facilitate the transfer of workers from old to new industries and, through high taxes, ensure as much labour mobility as possible". He also says that differences in wage levels in Sweden are small and that if they get large, they get taxed away. As a result of this egalitarianism, Cook says the workers can move to new jobs without facing, as they would in Canada, large differences in living costs and they are helped with retraining and moving costs.
Peter Cook provides a warning which I hope this Government will take to heart. He said:
May 19, 1987

When Sweden got into trouble, it was because, under a conservative coalition,
it departed from its socialist model. In the late 1970s, the government decided
to prop up ailing shipyards and steel works and to spend massively on
subsidized industry-
As we all know, the Social Democrats are back in the driver's seat in Sweden and Cook reports contentedly that they have been retrenching and getting back to basics since. He says that the most flexible labour market among 18 industrial countries is that of Sweden.
In the time I have left, I hope to offer two different parts of Canada as examples of attempting to apply the principles of fair treatment of workers and wages, training, job security and local democratic control.
In Newfoundland, the unemployment rate is as high as 20.4 per cent, the highest, I believe, of any Canadian province. Newfoundland has been richly endowed with fisheries, game, forests, minerals and hydro potential. Unfortunately for the people of Newfoundland, others took control.
In centuries past, the cod fishery in Newfoundland generated its own surplus capital, but as much as two-thirds of that capital was taken away to England. It was not available to build up the economic, social and educational foundations needed by the Newfoundland people.
Likewise, splendid forests were cut down to build large wooden ships, most of which became the property of merchants in England. In second-growth forests, the pulp and paper industry drained off to Britain and the United States the capital resources created by Newfoundland labour, capital resources that ought to have been used to build up a modern Newfoundland.
Mines like the huge iron deposit at Belle Isle and the hydro such as that at Churchill Falls also enriched a few people, mainly in Montreal, New York and perhaps Toronto. This was done at the cost of starving Newfoundland's economic development. No wonder Newfoundland serves employers in central Canada and elsewhere by providing a handy reservoir of the reserve army of labour, the unemployed.
The present Government of Newfoundland is considering a path of job creation that does not rely chiefly on grandiose multimillion-dollar projects of ripping out natural resources and shipping them away as fast as possible along with the future means of living of Newfoundland's children. The Government proposes to concentrate on smaller local projects, viable agriculture for local markets with the help of modern technology and provision of repair, construction and even light industry such as would be proportionate to local financial means and local markets.
The other area to which I would like to refer is Spadina. A local advisory council on employment has been established in Spadina. Many observers find that Canada is becoming deindustrialized and that the bank towers and the fast-food outlets in Spadina cannot take up all the slack in unemployment. Therefore, we in Spadina have focused on the garment
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or fashion industry, on the very substantial hospitality industry and on the busy arts and drama industry.
I give credit to the present Government for having half of a good idea. It has promoted the formation of local advisory councils on unemployment. It was a good hunch to urge local workers' organizations, business organizations, social, cultural and ethnic groups and even politicians to meet together regularly in order to identify local employment needs and to devise workable solutions. Unfortunately, the Government failed to provide either the staff to give continuity to the work of volunteers in searching out necessary labour market information, or the adequate attention of the Minister himself. Vital information about cuts in federal training course allocations was withheld from the local advisory council for nine months. The Minister failed to answer serious questions.
Last May, on the motion of the local advisory council, I wrote the Minister asking that the designation of skills shortages be restored to the title "power sewing operator". Sewing machine operators are vital to the garment industry and that skill is taught at George Brown College which is located in Spadina. Ninety per cent of the graduates of that course had been employed in that trade immediately after graduation, yet the number of places in the course was cut although employers were being held back in production for lack of as many as 200 trained sewing machine operators.
The Minister wrote back in July saying that the course was reduced for lack of applicants. However, his letter pointedly ignored our specific question about the skills designation category. The problem was that potential applicants who did not fit into other programs would have fit under the skills shortage designation but were prevented from doing that. Having prevented them from entering the course, the Government could say it was cutting back on the number of seats in the course for lack of applicants.
The picture of the Minister's ignorance and neglect is much worse than that. In April of this year, after receiving the long-delayed information about the skills shortage designation list, I wrote to the Minister pointing out that he had totally wiped out seven of the eight courses needed for training workers in the fashion industry. He had also wiped out six of the eight courses needed in the hospitality industry, including cooks, in an area with an extremely high concentration of hotels and good restaurants.
Finally, he had wiped out 22 of the 23 courses in the arts, drama and culture industries leaving only "opera singer". In other words, a garment worker or hospitality worker who wants to find a job had better become an opera singer. I am awaiting the Minister's reply without much hope of hearing informed common sense.
I have offered a few thoughts on a practical approach to job creation. The main principle is that we must trust the people of whom the majority are workers. Let them take part in the

May 19, 1987
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planning and decision-making. Assure them of a fair reward and job security and our economic ills can be overcome. We can have a healthy economy and a just society in which people can walk the streets without fearing either unemployment or increased crime as a result of poverty. It can be done. It has been done in other countries. We have done it in Canada before. I hope the Minister will change his policy and begin to follow a well-proven path.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, in my remarks I referred to the report of the Conference Board that came out over the weekend. It says that Alberta will remain mired in recession this year while economic growth in Ontario, and to a lesser extent Quebec, will outpace growth in the other provinces. The report also says that only three provinces, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, would have unemployment rates of less than 10 per cent this year and next. I also mentioned another report which says that of the 137,000 new jobs created in 1986, all but 5,000 were created in Ontario.
In view of those figures, Mr. Speaker, I was surprised when the Hon. Member, at the beginning of his remarks, read a letter from a young person in Toronto saying that despite good times generally in Toronto things were pretty tough on young people. Could the Member elaborate on that? One has the impression that in Toronto everything is just fine, that it is the hallowed land for workers of Canada, that if you go to Toronto you will be all right. I am now led to believe that despite the general picture it is still very tough for certain people.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, what the Member says is true. Toronto is regarded as the place to go. I was told that when I visited Vancouver and Halifax. I am reminded of a story about a march of unemployed people to Toronto City Hall 50 years ago. The people came from Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and British Columbia. The Mayor asked the Alderman who presented them why they had all come to Toronto. The Alderman said, "Mr. Mayor, I guess they are following the money". In fact, the money is concentrated in Toronto and that is one of the points I was making. The regions which produce the money should have more control over it.
With regard to the situation in downtown Toronto, I know that the figures of 4, 5, or 6 per cent are official, but they miss many. For example, they miss the homeless. Our best social scientists and social workers in Toronto estimate that there are 10,000 homeless people in Toronto. I know that many of them live downtown, including the Spadina area. There are at least two food banks in Spadina, one about four blocks from my office and the other about ten blocks from my office, and they are busy.
I know that many immigrant families are afraid to apply for unemployment insurance. They do everything they can to keep their unemployment troubles, as their other troubles, to themselves. There are many immigrant workers who either have no work or are very seriously underemployed with short hours and low pay.
Therefore, although I recognize that Toronto presently has an unfair advantage over many other parts of Canada, the fact is that there are thousands of people in downtown Toronto suffering the same problems as are suffered elsewhere.


Mr. Ravis:: Mr. Speaker, I am interested in making a few comments and in asking a question. My comment relates to the debate this morning from the Liberal side of the House dealing with how well the Liberals did in their day and the fact that, as far as they are concerned-


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe that the Standing Orders permit questions or comments on the comments of the previous speaker. If the Member was not here to ask questions or make comments about the speech of the Member of the Liberal Party, he is a little late. He is violating the Standing Orders.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Hamilton East (Ms. Copps) is correct. The comments made by the Member for Saskatoon East (Mr. Ravis) should be on the speech made by the Member for Spadina (Mr. Heap).


Donald Paul Ravis: Mr. Speaker, I will then make some general comments. My general comments have to do with what the Government is doing today as compared with what was done by the previous administration. It seems to me that the previous administration spent millions if not billions of dollars, in many cases buying people off the streets. People were given short-term jobs and many of them have just reappeared on the unemployment rolls. Why are we in the predicament we are in today? The previous administration spent billions of dollars and there is really nothing to show for it.
That brings me to my next point with regard to the Canadian Jobs Strategy program. The Member for Spadina (Mr. Heap) indicated that it was rather hollow, that there was not much to it. I have taken the time to attend a couple of meetings of the advisory council, as has my staff in my Saskatoon office. The feedback from the Canada Employment Centre is that these programs are different and are in fact making an impact. They are a change from what we have seen in the past.
Last week I met with a group which deals with the severely unemployed in Saskatoon. It is called the Regional Employment Development Program. They deal with people who left school, with ex-convicts, with people from broken homes, and with people from a background of drugs and alcohol. These people are having a very difficult time. The Canadian Jobs Strategy is being used for them and it is producing results. They speak highly of the new approach.
Is the Member for Spadina not prepared to give some recognition to the new approach started by the Government which is already starting to show some positive results? I am sure the Government is prepared to consider some fine tuning of the Canadian Jobs Strategy and possibly there could be a further drop in unemployment from the 9.3 per cent which I believe is a record in these economic times.
May 19, 1987


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member does not show much evidence of having been consciously present during my remarks or he would have heard what I said about my experience with the LAC. I did not simply attend a couple of meetings or become an honourary member, I am the chairman. I have organized and chaired the nine meetings of the LAC since last spring. I have written and spoken to people in government in an attempt to get some answers to the questions that were raised during those meetings.
Perhaps there are no problems in Saskatoon, and I congratulate the people of Saskatoon in that case. However, neither the staff of the Canada Employment Commission, nor the Minister, provided us with appropriate answers to our questions.
For example, we asked about a vital trade course for training sewing machine operators for an industry that was complaining about a shortage of 200 operators. The employers told me that they could provide extra production if they could find sewing machine operators. They were advertising for them but could not find any. George Brown College was not allowed to train them in the numbers in which they were trained before, although its graduates had a remarkably high rate of employment success in that industry.
The Minister responded to everything except my question about how his Government decided there was no need for skill shortage designation for that trade. I never received an answer from the Minister, but some nine months later we received an answer from someone in the CEIC who said that although he is the economist, he was not aware of the problem before. We did not receive an explanation why sewing machine operators were cut, but a description of several other trades that are used in downtown Spadina in the three major industries there which had also been cut out with no explanation.
I said that the Government had half of a good idea, for which I commended it and still do. I have taken action on that myself in an attempt to make the idea work. However, I find that in attempting to use the democratic type of structure in a move toward democracy in industry which the Government has proposed, I am being blockaded by the Government itself through lack of answers and lack of information.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the Hon. Member for raising a number of important issues, including the question of regional disparity. He referred specifically to the very difficult situation in Newfoundland. What is his Party's position on the seal hunt, because he referred to game and fishing in his discussion?


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, I want to respond on two points. With respect to the seal hunt, our Party, in consultation with the section of our Party in Newfoundland, believes that we should replace the seal hunt with better opportunities for those people to earn a living. Until then we will not act against the seal hunt anymore than we would act against the beef farmers
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of Ontario, the wheat farmers of Saskatchewan, or the hog farmers of Quebec.
There are questions about the methods used in the seal hunt, but that is not the issue. The issue is the existence of the seal hunt as the only source of revenue for many people in that region. Our position is that it should be replaced with a better way of earning a living, but, until it is, it should continue under the best conditions possible for human and beast.
Second, in questions such as these it is essential that we listen to the people who are doing the work, whether it is Newfoundland seal hunters, Newfoundland miners, Newfoundland pulpwood cutters, Newfoundland house builders, or Newfoundland farmers of which there are some in Newfoundland who are using modern technology. Those workers, as do others in Canada, know something about their work and should be heard before outsiders undertake to solve their problems for them.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Resuming debate. The Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Bouchard).


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to take part in the debate today, considering the fact that the decision we announced last week is basically attuned to the economic and social realities in Canada.
Mr. Speaker, the unemployment insurance system, and I think it would do no harm to recall this fact, is essentially based on a partnership that was established in an attempt to meet the needs of Canadians generally and, as far as possible, the specific needs of each individual Canadian. Workers, employers and the Government all contribute towards financing the unemployment insurance fund.
Over ten million Canadians are covered by unemployment insurance and have a vested interest in the administration and the future of the system. Basically, they are insured against job loss as a result of layoffs, termination of employment, sickness or maternity leave. Every day, the system helps hundreds of thousands of Canadians to maintain a minimum income.
To do so, Mr. Speaker, the plan's present structure must reflect the realities of this country's economy. In any discussion on unemployment insurance, we must never forget the diversity that is the strength of this country, but which also means that needs vary from region to region. The unemployment insurance system must and, in fact, does take these regional differences into account.
Mr. Speaker, the unemployed are not confined to one and the same region. The Hon. Member for Spadina (Mr. Heap) was referring to the fact that even Toronto had its unemployment problem. However, the problems of the unemployed in Fredericton are not the same as those of the unemployed in Toronto or Vancouver. I think that if we ignore these differences, we are not being realistic. The differences exist, and I think the system must take these into account.

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Mr. Speaker, a system based on the concept that we are dealing with a uniform problem could well turn out to be a system that is basically rigid and totally lacking in flexibility. For instance-and I believe I share the concern that has arisen in the past few months in Canada with respect to annualization-if we were to lose $2 billion in unemployment insurance benefits, I think we all realize this would have a disproportionate and damaging impact on regions with a fragile economy.
Workers would not be alone in suffering the impact of such a measure, since the entire economy of the regions in question would be affected, and I think this is a fact the Government is certainly not denying, and a fact that was considered in assessing the system.
Mr. Speaker, as we said last Friday, our consultations have shown that there are in this country two very much polarized positions on unemployment insurance. 1 think we know them quite well. There are those, like the Hon. Member for the Liberal Party whose position, and his was certainly not clear, as usual, is that the program ought to be expanded, while many Canadians-and I don't think we can ignore this fact, which I found came to the fore this morning in a number of interviews-consider that the system should be made more restrictive. I think the findings of the Forget Commission, the Parliamentary Committee, the Newfoundland House Report and the Macdonald Commission, I think that all these groups finally advocated one position or another, but we must admit that most of the major commissions-Forget, Hawkes, the Macdonald Commission-did favour restrictive measures, among others the Forget Commission recommendation which would have reduced unemployment benefits by up to S3 billion, as we know. And so we came to the conclusion that, since each of the various positions is so radical and leaves no room for compromise, the best approach is to maintain the existing system because it best meets the needs of Canadians under present circumstances.
Some people claim that the Forget Commission was a waste of money, yet it is a lot better to have a study confirming that the system we have, although it has its weak points, is best suited to the situation than to change things just for the sake of changing, or to say that because we paid $6 million for a study we have to spend $1 billion if only because a commission cannot be asked to make a study without recommending changes. Why? Why can a study not reveal that the system we have is the best one available?
We looked at the recommendations to expand the program. We looked at the benefits and the costs. To spend $1 billion or more to enrich the program would not have been in the best interests of the partnership and could have a negative effect on our economic recovery. To increase the benefits, to make benefits easier to get, to pay benefits for a longer period of time, would undeniably change UI. However, a bigger program is not necessarily a better program. An increase in the
scope and coverage of the program would result in a corresponding increase in the cost of the program.
Let us take an example. To lower the entrance requirements for all workers to 10 weeks and to provide an automatic 50 weeks of benefits would cost more than $500 million. This would not improve the over-all program. It would offer more benefits to some workers but would increase premiums for all workers and for all employers. It would increase disincentives to work and to make the program rigid to the detriment of the entire labour market.
I do not believe that workers would rather collect UI than have meaningful employment. The vast majority of Canadians want work first. Yes, there are those people for whom this is not true. There are those who abuse the system and in so doing cheat their fellow workers. However, the solution to this problem is not to wield an axe and cut benefits for all workers across the country. The approach must be specific and precise. As we announced on Friday, we intend to modestly increase our efforts to weed out the abusers by, for instance, seeing that claimants are interviewed more often by more officers to ensure that they are looking for work and are accepting suitable job opportunities.
We have looked at suggestions to cut the program by $2 billion or $3 billion or more, but this would seriously undermine the ability of UI to properly protect Canadian workers. We will not impose such hardship.
The study we have made of unemployment insurance shows that while UI is not perfect, it is a fundamentally sound program. Unemployment insurance not only provides a substantial response but a swift response to changing labour market conditions. It responds directly to individual needs and in so doing assists local economies and the national economy. Both dramatic cuts and dramatic increases carry with them undesirable consequences. Neither promises better than the current broad program. The uemployment insurance program is a balanced national program meeting the needs of individuals and communities across the country.

The Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East (Mr. Allmand) who moved today's motion is usually a well-informed man. Although on this side of the House at the time, he was a Member when Canada's unemployment rates peaked, when interest rates were soaring and the economy was stagnant, but of course this was due to the crisis, it was somebody else's fault. Generally speaking the Liberal Party never did accept responsibility for the economic situation of 1983-84, yet it did create it. Mr. Speaker, suffice to say that Canadians passed judgment on the economic management of the previous administration.
Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East knows full well that unemployment insurance did Canadians a good service before the recession. He also knows that unemployment insurance plays a vital role on the labour market. However it is only one aspect of the
May 19, 1987

efforts made by the Government to help Canadians face the new economic conditions.
Last Friday I stated that the trade, tax and economic policies as well as the regional and human resources development policies were basically aimed at helping Canadians find stable employment. My colleague knows that all these measures have contributed to strengthen the economy, restore confidence and create jobs. A lot of things may appear doubtful, but 800,000 real jobs, 85 per cent of stable jobs are not dreams but facts. Not only have we made progress, but I think we are also building a solid foundation for years of growth, prosperity and employment for new Canadians, such as the co-operation offered in that respect by the Hon. Member for Hamilton East (Ms. Copps). I think we will have jobs for these future Canadians.
Mr. Speaker, the work done by my Department attests to the commitments we made and fits in nicely with initiatives taken in other sectors. Employment planning, to be specific, is based on the strength of the economic growth and makes it even more dynamic. Let us not forget that we are not talking about abstractions but about the needs of individuals, about concrete realities. In all regions of the country, and I suggest this is the big plus about employment planning, it is geared to the person, to the requirements and basic needs of individuals. Practically all programs of previous administrations had been based on labour market theories and presented in attractive manuals which were the latest fad several decades earlier. According to the theory applied by the previous Government, labour market problems fell into certain categories, depending on the factors that caused them. They were either cyclical, seasonal or structural. Cyclical factors were connected with the economic cycle, seasonal factors with the seasonal drop in employment and structural factors essentially reflected the imbalance between the skills in demand on the market, and the skills workers had to offer.
Mr. Speaker, the old programs focused on what were seen as the causes of employment problems, but unfortunately, the labour market does not work like that. It does not operate according to specific rules. In Canada, unemployment has remained high for some time. Although the general situation has improved over the last two years, long term unemployment remains a problem. In this kind of context, the creation of short term jobs is pretty useless as far as most of the country is concerned.
Today, it is impossible to pinpoint one specific cause for a worker's being unemployed. It is more important to give workers a chance to acquire the skills and experience actually in demand on the labour market. The jobs strategy is therefore aimed above all at those who are most in need of employment assistance, whatever the economic cause of the problem. The strategy provides for various combinations of courses, training on the job and practical experience, so as to provide the formula that is best suited to a particular region, community or individual.
Supply
Mr. Speaker, increasingly, people are realizing that the best way to help those who need employment assistance consists in offering them a combination of institutional training and practical experience, while avoiding any rigid distinction between these two types of training. We must remove the barriers between the world of labour and that of education. We want to bring on-the-job training and formal school education closer together, and bridge the gap which still exists between a great many of our labour market training institutions. Employment planning can provide the essential flexibility which Canada needs to adapt to the rapidly changing labour market.
Major changes are taking place in the work place because of technological and market transformations. In an ever-changing situation, programs must adapt and the decision-making process must be extended at the regional or local level, which is the reason behind the existence of local employment committees where such changes are immediately identified.
I am pleased to report that it is a challenge to which Canadians are responding in increasing numbers. Although it is only 18 months since this fundamental change was introduced, more than 400,000 Canadians have benefited from the skills and experience gained through the six options of Jobs Strategy.
Another fundamental change has been the Government's commitment to continually monitor, assess and re-evaluate the program. We cannot and will not assume that what worked yesterday is also the solution for tomorrow. We have established mechanisms to determine the performance of each program. Our aim is clear-we want to eliminate what does not work, to improve what does work and to anticipate continually future needs.
The preliminary results of our first surveys of our programs are really most encouraging. Results show that the entry and re-entry options report success rates of 73 per cent for young people who completed entry and 67 per cent for women completing re-entry. These are good figures. They show that we already have improvement over the 64 per cent success rate of old-style institutional training in the same period.
Results are equally positive with respect to employment equity. Participation of women, natives, the disabled and visible minorities are all higher than under the programs that preceded the Canadian Jobs Strategy. Most targets for women have already been met in the first year of operation.
We have also conducted follow-up studies which reveal an overwhelmingly positive response among participants. Fully 89 per cent said that their participation in the Jobs Strategy provided them with new or better employment or helped them to retain their present jobs.
The results are encouraging. They point to the essential value of the changes we have made. They will not serve as

May 19, 1987
Supply
laurels upon which we rest. Rather, they are spurs to our continuing efforts to assist individuals, communities and regions across the country.
The labour market is not static. Fully 2 million Canadians leave and enter the labour market each year. Such changes and adjustments occur every day. Every sector of Canada plays a part in this dynamic process.

Mr. Speaker, the Government is simply trying to facilitate and integrate the efforts of teaching institutions within the private sector to meet the needs of both the business world and labour organizations, as well as voluntary groups and individuals.
Thanks to the updating of resources, solutions are coming to light in every region, every community, every corporation, and from each and every individual.
In short, Mr. Speaker, our unemployment insurance scheme is providing good results. We have never claimed it to be perfect, and past studies have not striven for perfection either. However, in the consideration of various commissions, various studies that were made, it has been useful in my view to receive all those recommendations which enabled us to realize that the proposed change . . . Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East suggested earlier we should take a proposal here, another proposal there. They were very careful not to say they supported the Forget Report. Of course, they prefer to quote selectively from the Forget Report.
Mr. Speaker, when there is a report with an overall impact that one cannot implement, one cannot choose one bit from a report, another bit from another report, and try to make some sort of melting pot that does not meet today's reality. We have decided the current system in the circumstances was the best one because of that impossibility. And if there is one conclusion to be derived from the Canadian Jobs Strategy, it is that while it is important to provide solid protection to the unemployed, temporary protection under which they can look for a job, the Government first and foremost, and in this we are successful, the Government should first ensure it provides jobs. Such is the goal of the Jobs Strategy. The results are there. Results are now increasingly encouraging, and all we ask is an opportunity to carry on while again protecting workers who unfortunately lose their jobs.

Mir. Allmand: Mr. Speaker, in his remarks the Minister said that we should not implement a report simply because it cost $7 million. I agree with him on that point. Reports are not implemented simply because they cost a large amount of money. However, I do not think we should reject an entire report simply because there are opposing views on different recommendations.
I wish to ask the Minister this. Why would he not introduce those measures with respect to which there is common ground, such as a wider scope for training while on unemployment
insurance, changes in maternity benefits to make them parental benefits in certain cases and some changes with respect to over-payments?
The Minister said that I have never declared myself for or against the Forget Report. There are 53 recommendations in the report. In all my years here I have never seen a report in which all recommendations were either accepted or rejected. Governments pick and choose those recommendations which they believe to be practical and possible and they reject others. Within a few weeks after the Forget Report came out the Minister himself made a decision with respect to cuts relating to pre-retired pensioners. We may have disagreed or agreed with his decision, but we did not condemn him for not dealing with the entire report at one time. So I ask him why he will not accept those recommendations on which there is common ground.
I wish to return to the recommendation with respect to a wider scope for training. It is a recommendation which would not even cost more money to implement. All that is required to implement it is a change in the law. In order to permit those who were on unemployment insurance to take a wider range of training programs we amended the law a few years ago. But we now find that it is not enough. Both the standing committee and Mr. Forget recommended that while one is on unemployment insurance there should be a wider scope for training. I will not get into the details in my question, but why can the Minister not move in those areas by bringing a Bill forward? I mentioned about eight areas in which there are common ground and where there is agreement, not on the details but in principle. I believe that we could do a great deal to improve unemployment insurance by acting on these recommendations.


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member has posed an interesting question. We believe that any kind of reform that deals with the scope, the costs of the program, does not have to be considered for the moment. The standing committee mentioned a cost of $1 billion. Of course, the Hon. Member has other figures. But we could talk about a cost of at least $500 million. The Member has referred to training services being provided under the unemployment insurance system. While that could be a logical move, we believe it could lead to too great a widening of the program itself.
For most Canadians the UI system has to be just that, an insurance plan. However, increasingly for some it has become a part of the social welfare system. That is not a trend that I necessarily condemn. That aspect of the unemployment insurance system is an important one in those regions of the country where the economy is so fragile. But, to broaden the scope of the UI system in order to achieve better results in those areas could lead to other problems.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The period for questions or comments will continue following Question Period this afternoon, assuming the Minister is present at that time.
May 19, 1987

It being 1 p.m. I do now leave the chair until 2 p.m. At 1.02 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.


Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, the inability of the Government to reach a fair and appropriate agreement on the issue of Japanese Canadian redress was most regrettable. The Government failed, during this heightened window of opportunity, to right a long-standing wrong.
Its failure, however, was inevitable and predictable, for the Conservative administration steadfastly refused to attach to this issue the political priority it deserved, and refused to establish a comprehensive process for dialogue.
Moreover, this stubborn and short-sighted attitude makes a mockery of the personal commitment of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) to the issue. He promised urgency. He promised compensation. He promised negotiations. Yet, through three different Conservative Ministers of Multicultur-alism, the National Association of Japanese Canadians was resigned to individual meetings here and there, sessions which were not conducive to a spirit of compromise, to a spirit of give and take, or to a spirit of understanding.
Instead the Government entrenched an adversarial approach, pitting the Government against the Japanese Canadian community, while opposition Parties and parliamentarians were totally ignored and kept in the dark.
I call upon the Minister and the Government to give the process a chance. A sensitive process is needed to reach a resolution of what is a very sensitive and pressing national issue.



AGRICULTURE


Mr. Geoff Wilson (Swift Current-Maple Creek):: Mr. Speaker, Canada's two-price wheat policy pays Canadian farmers $7 per bushel for the 10 per cent of Canadian wheat production which goes into domestic human consumption. The traditional split in the domestic wheat benefit has been
approximately 87 per cent to the Canadian Wheat Board area and 13 per cent to Ontario and the rest of Canada.
Ontario production of good quality red wheat can be sold straight to the miller at the domestic price, thus giving Ontario producers the potential to displace production from western Canada. This spring Ontario producers have increased their red spring wheat acreage by 400 per cent, a pattern which, if magnified, could seriously upset the historical regional balance in the two-price wheat benefit.
I urge the Minister of State for the Canadian Wheat Board (Mr. Mayer) to note the report of the 1986 special committee on the pricing of domestic wheat, which recommended that he explore mechanisms to ensure that the two-price wheat policy continues to reflect the historic regional market share of all wheat types used domestically for human consumption.
This benefit should be available to producers regardless of where they live or who sells their wheat.



SENATE REFORM


Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg-Birds Hill):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Fort Garry (Mr. Axworthy) has come up with what he has called an ingenious way of moving toward an elected Senate, a proposal which has the support of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba Liberal Parties.
The Hon. Member proposes that prairie Premiers hold elections to determine their nominees for any future vacancies in the Senate. This return to democratic principles by the Liberal Parties of western Canada is overdue.
Might I make a suggestion of how the Liberals could show that they are serious about it, not simply trying to exploit the movement toward an elected Senate, a movement which has its origins, in large part, in the failure of Liberal Senators from the West, and western Liberals in general, to understand and meet the needs of western Canada during their many years in government?
My suggestion would be equally ingenious. It would be that the 12 Liberals in the Senate from western Canada who are now clogging up that place, resign en masse, this dirty dozen, and make a significant advance toward an elected Senate immediately possible. Instead, what the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Fort Garry suggested would simply be a vacancy by vacancy advance well into the 21st Century.
If the Liberal Members in the other place would do that, perhaps we could take the Liberals seriously.

May 19, 1987
[ Translation]



OFFICIAL LANGUAGES


Mr. Maurice Tremblay (Lotbiniere):: Mr. Speaker, last Sunday, that is on May 17, the final series of the Stanley Cup between the Edmonton Oilers and the Philadephia Flyers began. The Oilers organization which I am pleased to congratulate had chosen a francophone, Mr. Loriaux, to sing the Canadian and American anthems.
In view of the fact that hockey is recognized as our sport and the overwhelming majority of spectators of that game were French-speaking and English-speaking Canadians, it was entirely proper to expect that O Canada would be sung in both French and English. However, such was not the case and it was only sung in English.
I do not know why but I feel that this is unacceptable and I ask the Oilers organization in Edmonton to reconsider the matter and ensure that French is also used at the opening of Stanley Cup games.



DISASTERS


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, a tragic accident occurred over the weekend when the helicopter chartered by Hull's station CHOT snagged a power cable as a crew was shooting sequences for a hunting and fishing program at Grand Lake, killing all five aboard.
On behalf of the Liberal Party and all my colleagues in the House I should like to offer my most sincere condolences to the families of Messrs. Jacques Beriault, Claude Girard, Clement Diotte and Guy Frechette of CHOT station, and to the family of pilot Jean-Paul Parent. They made up an outstanding crew working to keep the National Capital Region public better informed and thus making it possible for station CHOT to maintain its rating of excellence and popularity among French regional stations.
Again I offer my most sincere condolences to the families and to their station CHOT TV colleagues.



CHARTER OF RIGHTS


Mr. Gordon Taylor (Bow River):: Mr. Speaker, Motion M-37, sponsored by the Hon. Member for Grey-Simcoe (Mr. Mitges), asks that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms be amended so as to protect the unborn human foetus. I and millions of Canadians support this protection for the unborn child.
I believe life begins upon conception and I base this conviction on Scripture which is the word inspired by our omnipotent God. For example, from the Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 1, verse 5: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; and before you were were born I consecrated you."
Some 60,000 unborn babies are murdered every year in Canada. Cradled in the mother's womb should be the safest place in the world for a child, but not in Canada; certainly not for the 60,000 who were aborted during the last 12 months.
Not one Member of this House would be here today had our mothers chosen abortion. I urge every Member to give unborn babies in Canada a chance to live by passing Motion M-37.



MARINE SAFETY


James Douglas Manly: Mr. Speaker, in 1984 a federal inquiry headed by Paul Leblond said that lightkeepers are the only source of information on local weather conditions available to mariners. Their contributions are invaluable. Three years later the Government has again enlisted Dr. Leblond to investigate the impact of the Tory plan to destaff a number of West Coast light stations.
While search and rescue activities are not part of their job description, lighthouse keepers have recorded numerous rescue incidents. How many of these incidents were serious enough to be called life threatening? How many lives is the Government willing to risk?
The assault on Canada's light stations started under the former Liberal Government. Between 1978 and 1985 the number of person-years allocated to light stations declined by approximately 200. In the name of restraint the present Government has taken this scheme further and now plans to replace workers with machines.
Last week one of the witnesses told the Leblond inquiry that automation is a hazard to navigation. We need real modernization of lighthouses and not automation which is unreliable at best.
May 19, 1987

[ Translation]



ENGINEERING


Mr. Guy Ricard (Laval):: Mr. Speaker, today is the centenary of engineering in Canada. For 100 years Canada has been relying on the brains of its residents to ensure its progress.
What would we be today without our Canadian engineers? Without them, where would we rank in research, science and technology?
Canadian engineers have become the driving force behind our development and earned a worldwide reputation. We often see a Canadian heading a major project in other countries of the world. Our engineers are the best and we are proud of them.
I want to thank Canada Post Corporation management for issuing today a commemorative stamp marking the one-hundredth year of engineering in Canada, and 1 urge all Canadian Members of Parliament who are engineers to join me on this historic event.



REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT


Hon. Jean Lapierre (Shefford):: Mr. Speaker, Le Devoir newspaper informed us this morning that the Government intends to withdraw from regional development. This announcement comes after a series of measures taken by this Government which show its lack of interest in fighting regional disparities. I suggest that one of the most important things for this Parliament and Canada as a whole is to make sure that citizens are given equal opportunities, wherever they may live in this country. We have come to realize that with its free enterprise philosophy, the Government is completely abdicating its responsibility of ensuring that people of far-away and disadvantaged areas have equal access to employment and dignity.
Mr. Speaker, I feel it will be a very sad day when the Government of Canada abdicates all its responsibilities and says to the less affluent regions: Take care of your own problems. Mr. Speaker, I think that after having promised the moon to the Canadian people and assuring all regions of equal access, the Conservative Government has again broken one of its promises, thereby jeopardizing the very survival of economic equality in Canada.



AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY


Mr. Joe Reid (St. Catharines):: Mr. Speaker, North American car manufacturers are tied into a trade pact providing for a 60 per cent Canadian value added. Offshore car plants are expected to assemble about 430,000 new cars per year in Canada by the year 1990 and are not subject to the same limitations or to any requirement to source supply in Canada. The only possible result can be a loss of Canadian jobs in the Canadian auto parts supply sector and even more in the assembly plants when North American manufacturers turn to foreign-built cars which are sold in Canada under recognized trade names.
I call on the Government now to review its foreign investment policy to ensure the strengthening of the Canadian automobile industry and to ensure that foreign investment must be an investment in Canadian jobs.



MEDICAL CARE


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, Canada is experiencing a Baby M dilemma of its own with an added twist. Americans are now using Canadian women as surrogate mothers with medicare benefits thrown in for good measure.
Growing numbers of American couples find that by using Canadian women as surrogate mothers, the cost of surrogate parenting is lowered. The dollar amount has been estimated at around $5,000 per birth which is paid by the Canadian taxpayer.
Are we to allow people from foreign lands to exploit our medicare system for personal benefit and gain? Furthermore, this raises the whole question of the contracting of parental responsibility.
It is clear that the American Baby M case does not affect contract law in Canada but we must now ask the Minister of Justice (Mr. Hnatyshyn) to introduce into Parliament the Government's clear position on the issue of surrogate parenting.
As science moves quickly, so do expanded roles for surrogate parents. This raises a number of questions, paramount of which is the interest of the child. Are the interests of children being served? I daresay they may not be and I think the Minister of Justice should show some leadership in this area.

May 19, 1987



MINES AND MINING


Mr. Guy St. Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, the Abitibi area will experience a new mineral resources development through the opening of a new gold field. I am referring to the first stage in the development of the Golden Pond East gold deposit, situated in the Casa Berardi township in the federal riding of Abitibi, some 100 kilometers north of La Sarre, on the Villebois-Selbaie-Joutel highway.
Assistance amounting to $14.5 million has been granted to Inco Ltd. and its partner, the Golden Knight Resources Ltd, to be shared equally by the Governments of Canada and Quebec under the infrastructure program provided for by the Canada-Quebec Subsidiary Agreement on Mineral Developments. It will be used to build an access route and a high-voltage power line in this faraway region. This project will necessitate over $74 million in investments and create some 180 jobs when production starts in 1988.
As elected representative of that region, I am proud, together with the Hon. Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Masse) and the Hon. Minister of State (Forestry and Mines) (Mr. Merrithew), to share in this major development in a remote mining territory.



ACQUISITION OF AMERICAN ENTERPRISE-DOUBLE STANDARDS

Mr. Mike Cassidy (Ottawa-Centre):: Mr. Speaker, last week we had another example of the double standards used by the United States in the matter of foreign investment when their country is involved rather than Canada. Recently, Dominion Textiles in Montreal announced it was ready to make a bid for the Burlington Industries in Greenberg, North Carolina. But that company was not interested in using State politicians from North Carolina and Members of the American Senate to fight against the Canadian take over. It is amusing, Mr. Speaker, that while the Americans are looking for free investment access in Canada, it appears the North Carolina Assembly put in place legislation to block the purchase of an American Corporation by a Canadian company. We may sympathize with American politicians, Mr. Speaker, since foreign ownership in the United States, including the textile industry, could lead to a loss of jobs and technology. But this is something we Canadians know. For that reason we want to protect our interests, our industries and we are asking the Americans not to apply double standards.



THE DISABLED AND THE HANDICAPPED


Mr. Lee Clark (Brandon-Souris):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw the attention of the House to the special needs of the 38,000 visually impaired people living in Canada today. While most of us jot down a phone message on a piece of paper, a blind person must often purchase and use a recording device. Special equipment is also needed for reading and writing.
Many blind people depend upon public transit, but in smaller centres that can be a problem when buses run infrequently and never on Sundays. Consequently, blind people must often take taxis and that is expensive. In short, Mr. Speaker, it costs money to be blind.
Meeting the special needs of the blind can also be costly in the workplace and many employers are unwilling or unable to buy the equipment necessary to hire a blind person. This results in lost work opportunities for people who are capable of doing a job but are denied the right to work because they are visually impaired.
The federal Government has already substantially improved the situation of handicapped Canadians but more needs to be done to remove the economic obstacles which blind people now have to deal with at home and in the workplace.



OFFICIAL LANGUAGES


Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat sorry to inform this House today that the township of Matilda, in eastern Ontario, last week on the request of the so-called Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada passed a resolution declaring that municipality officially unilingual.
Mr. Speaker, I am sure I speak on behalf of a large number of Members in this House when I express my great disappointment with that resolution.

On behalf of all Members of this House I call upon the Township of Matilda to rescind immediately the motion it passed declaring the municipality officially unilingual. Let Canada, Ontario, and eastern Ontario be a land of tolerance and justice for all Canadians. There is no room for bigotry or intolerance. I urge all my colleagues to endorse my position
May 19, 1987

which is to ask the Township of Matilda to rescind immediately its resolution declaring itself officially unilingual.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Marcel Prud'homme (Saint-Denis):: Mr. Speaker, this week, thanks to you, Canada has the privilege of hosting a parliamentary delegation from the People's Republic of Eiungary, chaired by Mr. Istvan Sarlos, President of the National Assembly.

I would like to tell him and his delegation that our relationship with Hungary has great potential. We are both moderate countries with a constructive influence in East-West relations.
We in Canada are proud of our human bridge with Hungary as a result of immigration, and proud that our trade has a high element of finished goods and technology. We believe that broader relations between our countries can contribute to better East-West relations. We believe in increased dialogue, increased contact, and greater co-operation between East and West in order to create the confidence that is indispensable for better and more stable relations.



PRESENCE IN GALLERY OF PARLIAMENTARY DELEGATION FROM HUNGARY

Mr. Speaker:: I wish to bring to the attention of Members the presence in the gallery today of a parliamentary delegation from Hungary led by his Excellency Istvan Sarlos, President and Speaker of the National Assembly of the Hungarian People's Republic and Member of the Central Committee and of the Political Committee of the Hungarian Social Workers Party.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Right Hon. John N. Turner (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, it is no secret that the Government is about to
Oral Questions
announce some major changes at the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion, changes that will be applauded in Washington but not in Canada's regions.
The Prime Minister knows perfectly well that since his Government came to power in 1984, the regional development envelope has been cut by $3 billion. According to the personal estimate of the Minister of Finance, regional development financing has been reduced by 20 per cent.
Mr. Speaker, will the Prime Minister announce today and promise before this House that there will be no termination of the regional development component of the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion, despite pressure from Mr. Peter Murphy, chief U.S. negotiator in the free trade talks?


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, the subject of regional development and job creation in the regions remains a vital focus for the Government of Canada.
The 778,000 new jobs created since the new Government was sworn in have had a very positive impact across the country, but we still have regions that are less well off than others. We are working with the provinces and at the national level to create a better balance of opportunities across this country.
I may add that nothing is going to happen in the course of any negotiations that would diminish the Government's authority in this vital sector.


PROPOSED PURCHASE OF DOME PETROLEUM BY AMOCO CANADA-ALLEGED AMERICAN PRESSURE
John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I think the country has been observing that the Government has been caving in to American pressure on all fronts. The Prime Minister can twist a phrase as he will.
Let me give him another example. Since the Dome Petroleum affair became public, in its struggle to survive, the Government has adopted a hands-off attitude as a result of American pressure. Now that several major secured creditors have said no to Amoco, will the Government of Canada say no to Washington and adopt a more activist stance so that we obtain a Canadian solution for Dome Petroleum?


Hon. Marcel Masse (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, I think the Leader of the Opposition has either a poor knowledge or a poor appreciation of what is being done with respect to the Dome question.

May 19, 1987
Oral Questions

The first responsibility of the Government was to make sure that Dome would receive proposals. This is exactly what happened. It received three proposals, contrary to a year ago when everyone thought that Dome was bankrupt. That is what the Government achieved first.
Presently, the board of directors, the shareholders and the creditors of Dome have a certain number of days, if not weeks, to study the proposal put to them by Amoco. That is the present situation.
In the future other proposals may be submitted to Dome. It is up to those interested in Dome to study the question and discuss the details with the lawyers. I think the Government has achieved its purpose, which is to show that Dome will survive for the good of the country, the people there, and our natural resource reserves in the West.


John Napier Turner: For that to happen, the Minister better start adopting a more activist stance because there are six weeks left before the waivers on those security guarantees lapse.


CANADA-UNITED STATES NEGOTIATIONS-AGENDA INQUIRY
John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I want to direct another supplementary question to the Prime Minister. The regional development programs of the country have been destroyed in the two and one-half years since the Government took office. There have been over 2,200 foreign transactions approved by the Government, mostly involving take-overs, during the last two and one-half years. The Prime Minister has repeatedly allowed our resource industries to be sold out.
What do the Americans now want on the free trade bargaining table that they have not already obtained?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the Right Hon. Leader just said the resource industries have been sold out. Perhaps he could tell us which ones he is referring to.


John Napier Turner: I'll be glad to.


Martin Brian Mulroney: He says he will be glad to. We will wait for that. While he is doing that, perhaps he would be happy to indicate-


John Napier Turner: Lumber, fish, potash, petroleum, oil and gas.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the spirit of Louis St-Laurent may be dead in the Liberal Party, but the spirit of Lloyd Axworthy lives on.


Mr. Crosbie:: Right on.


Mr. Rossi:: That's a poor answer.


REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Mr. Brian Tobin (Humber-Port au Port-St. Barbe):: Mr. Speaker, unfortunately the commitments of the Prime Minister continue to live on. Two and a half years ago the Prime Minister promised to inflict prosperity on Newfoundland. Unemployment in western Newfoundland now stands at 31 per cent. It is 24 per cent on average across the province. In the face of these staggering statistics, the Government's response has been the Atlantic Enterprise Program which has resulted in exactly 26 program approvals since that program's inception.
When will the Prime Minister realize that increased unemployment in Newfoundland and other regions is not an example of bad luck, it is an example of bad policy by this administration? Will he restore the 20 per cent or $3 billion cut in regional development programs in this country?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, it is a fact that since this Government was sworn in jobs in Atlantic Canada have been created at a rate twice as fast as those under the previous Governments.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Martin Brian Mulroney: That is a fact.


Mr. Broadbent:: That is two times zero.


Martin Brian Mulroney: I think our commitment, for example, to Newfoundland was indicated by resolving the matter in the offshore-


Mr. Foster:: How many rigs are working?


Martin Brian Mulroney: -and by our co-operation in terms of the fishery and the solution which has just emerged in the fishery to the benefit of Newfoundlanders.
We have been discussing a number of regional development programs including the Atlantic Opportunities Agency which we think will be a major initiative which will bring help and the beginnings of equality of opportunity which has escaped Newfoundland now for 20 years while my hon. friend was a member of the Liberal Party.
May 19, 1987

1 think it is time for him to stand up and salute the beginnings of prosperity that are coming to Atlantic Canada.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, a prime example of the Prime Minister's tendency toward accuracy is the fact that, at age 32, I have been in Parliament since I was 12.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


FUNDING OF DEPARTMENT OF REGIONAL INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION
Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, last fall in St. John's, Newfoundland, the Prime Minister promised the regions a new deal for regional development. That's what he promised last fall in St. John's, Newfoundland. What we have had instead is the region's sacrifice on the altar of deficit reduction.
We learned today, and we know, that an announcement is coming soon that the Regional Development Branch of the Department of DRIE is about to be scrapped. That is on top of a $3 billion cut in that Department's funding for regional development.
Will the Prime Minister put aside the flimflammery? Will he quit twisting and turning and stand in his place and tell the people of Newfoundland, who are suffering under a burden of increased unemployment since his Party came to power, that funding will be restored to the department of regional development?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, we have readily acknowledged the imbalance which has come about over the years in terms of economic growth in Canada. One of the principal reasons we have managed, notwithstanding the fact of bringing down unemployment since we came in from 11.7 per cent to 9.3 per cent-


Brian Vincent Tobin: It is up-up in the regions.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Notwithstanding that fact, there is this imbalance to which I referred as the development of two economies in Canada, which is unacceptable and unfair. One of the reasons this Government has committed itself to new trade relationships with the United States is that this gives Newfoundland and Labrador a chance now for economic equality.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Don't make me laugh.


Martin Brian Mulroney: That is another indication of what this federal Government is trying to do in a constructive way.
My hon. friend says: "Don't make me laugh". I will tell you it was not funny when the Government of which he was a member lost in the previous three years a million jobs, and this Government has created 778,000 new jobs in less than three years. I think my hon. friend will agree that is the beginning, and you will see more with the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. You will see more jobs created as Canada and the
Oral Questions
Parliament of Canada must commit themselves to a greater degree of fairness in building equality of opportunity in the regions and spreading equality more fairly across the country.


CANADA-UNITED STATES NEGOTIATIONS-FOREIGN INVESTMENT
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. He will know that one of the defining characteristics of this sovereign nation is its right to establish for itself the criteria for investment within its own borders including, if it should so decide, the restriction or exclusion entirely of foreign investment from a certain sector. Simon Reisman, our principal negotiator in the free trade talks with the United States, said yesterday that he is still awaiting instructions from the Government of Canada on this important matter.
Will the Prime Minister assure the House, and in particular the people of Canada, that Canada's traditional sovereign authority in this area will remain and that Canada and the Government of Canada will retain the criteria, for example, to restrict or to exclude entirely, if it should so desire, foreign investment from certain sectors of the economy?


Hon. Pat Carney (Minister for International Trade):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member has pointed out correctly that there has been limited discussion of this issue in the free trade talks. The negotiators are meeting today at Meech Lake. Over the last couple of days they have been discussing the issues of subsidies and dispute settlement mechanisms. They have been carrying out their mandate, which is to listen to the Americans to try to determine what areas of investment they would be interested in including in the free trade negotiations since investment is not on the table, except trade related investment.
I can assure the Hon. Member that the kind of sensitivities he has identified is of course the kind of sensitivities that the Government is committed to address.


INQUIRY WHETHER ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY WILL BE RESPECTED
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is directed to the same Minister. He must clarify the situation for Canadians, for Americans and for our negotiator. Are we going to maintain our traditional position of full sovereignty in this area-yes or no? That is my question.


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, I think that the actions of the Government and the

May 19, 1987
Oral Questions
statements made by the Prime Minister and members of his Cabinet have indicated clearly on a broad range of issues that the sovereignty of Canada will remain intact in terms of anything that we carry out.


STATEMENT ATTRIBUTED TO U.S. OFFICIAL
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, the actions of the Government are precisely why we are asking the question. It has given away FIRA. It sold out Prentice Hall. It is about to sell out Dome Petroleum. Canadians want to know when the Government will stop selling out Canada. That is why we are asking the question.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: A senior U.S. official, Mr. Bruce Smart, U.S. Under-Secretary of Commerce, who was objecting to what the Government might do in stopping an Amoco takeover was quoted as having said this:
-it would be one example to us of the kind of conduct that needed to be
negotiated away . . . With barriers that could prevent that kind of takeover,
you couldn't have a free trade agreement.
Will the Minister assure us now that the kind of power to which he is objecting will in fact remain in Canadian hands?


Right Hon. Joe Clark (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I do not know how long the Leader of the New Democratic Party-


An Hon. Member:: The socialist Party.


Charles Joseph Clark: -the socialist Party thinks he can pedal around the country running exclusively on anti-Americanism. He may be interested in trading away the sovereignty of Canada. That may be the New Democratic Party policy. It is certainly not ours.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


MANDATE OF CANADIAN NEGOTIATOR
Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg-Fort Garry):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct my question to the Minister for International Trade. In an interview on March 15 the Minister said in reference to the question of foreign investment in Canada that the issue has been addressed by Cabinet but that the mandate has not yet been completed by Cabinet. She said: "If they want something more dramatic, we will have another look at it".
Considering the pressures which are now being applied by the American negotiator and, indeed, by the Canadian negotiator, does Cabinet intend to reconsider the mandate it has given to Mr. Reisman to broaden the terms by which the issue of investment will be considered as part of the free trade negotiations? Is there an intention on behalf of the Government and Cabinet to broaden the interpretation of investment as it will be applied in the free trade deal?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, I should point out to the Hon. Member that since the Government has taken office we have made a great many moves in the field of investment, to make it much more attractive for foreign investment. We have dismantled the NEP. We got rid of the offensive measures of expropriation introduced by the former Government.


John Edward Broadbent: Why not give the rest away? You can see what Canadians will think of it.


Pat Carney: I am sorry that Members opposite do not wish to listen to my answer.
As a result we have had record foreign investment in Canada which has created jobs, the job record to which the Prime Minister referred.
I have made it clear on many occasions in the House that the Americans have indicated on a number of occasions that they are interested in broadening the mandate in the free trade talks to include more than trade related investment. I have also told the House repeatedly that the negotiators have a mandate to find out what the Americans are looking at, if anything, in terms of what we already have. At such time as they have been able to indicate what their interest is we will see what is being put forward. We have an open investment climate. We have Investment Canada. We have had record investment.


POSITION OF CABINET
Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, the Minister talks about the record of the Government. I simply want to point out to the Minister that in the annual report of Investment Canada it is stated that 95 per cent of all foreign investment has been in takeovers and in acquisition. Only 5 per cent has gone to the creation of new business development. If that is the record upon which the Minister is standing, then it is a very poor basis upon which she will be negotiating a new investment package as far as the free trade talks are concerned.
That is the question to which we want to find an answer. Somewhere in her long description can the Minister direct her mind to this question? Does Cabinet intend to give a further mandate to Mr. Reisman to broaden the terms by which investment will be considered in the free trade talks? Will that mandate be made clear publicly so that Canadians will know exactly what it is the Government is prepared to give away?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that the Hon. Member would talk about our record since the record of the Government of which he was a member led to the out-flow of millions and millions of dollars of capital and the loss of thousands and thousands of jobs. So if the Hon. Member wants to stand on his record, he can stand on it. We will stand on ours.
May 19, 1987


REGIONAL INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION
Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion. According to Michel Vastel, as reported in Le Devoir this morning, the Federal Government wants to discontinue any direct involvement in the various regions of Canada and abolish the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion. Mr. Speaker, my question is this:
Could the Minister advise the House now whether this information provided this morning by the daily Le Devoir reflects the intention of the Federal Government?
Is it really the intention to abolish the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion?


Hon. Michel Cote (Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion):: No, Mr. Speaker.


POSSIBLE REORGANIZATION OF DEPARTMENT
Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, if that is not true can the Minister tell us whether or not he is denying that Cabinet is now discussing or will be discussing soon a plan to reorganize governmental programs for regional industrial expansion? Can he get up in the House and categorically deny that there have been no discussions of reorganization of his Ministry's work and also the work of other Ministries that are relevant to regional economic expansion?


Michel Côté: Mr. Speaker, as the Prime Minister said earlier, we remain committed to regional development. We have the responsibility to promote economic prosperity in each region of the country, which is why we have created close to 800,000 jobs. We intend to continue in our efforts.
Under the Atlantic Enterprise Program, as has already been mentioned, we have examined a lot of cases, leading to the creation in the order of 1,000 new jobs.
That is what regional development is all about, Mr. Speaker.
Oral Questions


PRESENCE IN GALLERY OF MAHAMANE SANI BAKO, MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND CO-OPERATION, OF NIGER
Mr. Speaker:: Order! May I call the attention of Hon. Members to the presence in the gallery of Mr. Mahamane Sani Bako, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Co-operation, of Niger.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


FOOTWEAR INDUSTRY
Mr. Raymond Garneau (Laval-des-Rapides):: Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the remarks of the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion, ever since the Conservative Government took office the budgetary envelope for regional economic expansion has been reduced by $3 billion and certain industrial sectors have practically been abandoned.
I would like to ask the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion what is happening to the footwear industry. For example, in a letter from the manufacturers' association we learned that, as a result of this Government's import policy, during the first two months of 1987 alone, our Canadian manufacturers saw their production drop by one million pairs as compared with last year's figures.
I would ask the Government or the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion, what he proposes to do to help the workers first, but also the regions which have been hit by lost jobs, a drop of 11 per cent in employment over the past few months.


Michel Côté: First, Mr. Speaker, contrary to the argument of my colleague, in July 1986, after consulting the industry, we set up a footwear industry policy to meet the needs which had been pointed out and suggested by the industry. This initiative made it possible indeed to open up new opportunities for the footwear industry.


ASSISTANCE FOR AFFECTED REGIONS-GOVERNMENT POSITION
Raymond Garneau: Mr. Speaker, if the policy was established with industry representatives I simply have to wonder why they keep sending us documents seeking interviews to tell us that their industry is going to pot!
So, I would ask the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion, whose Department is being dismantled, how he will help these regions which have been hard hit by job losses in the footwear industry, how he will be able to help a region like

May 19, 1987
Oral Questions
Matane build a paper mill which the region so badly needs to create jobs.


Michel Côté: Mr. Speaker, a correction first. There is absolutely no question of dismantling the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion. On the contrary, our main concern is to make sure that we work in consultation with the people of the regions and with the provinces precisely to be in a position to meet the needs of the regions, something the previous Governments have never done.


CANADA-UNITED STATES NEGOTIATIONS-FOREIGN INVESTMENT
Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister for International Trade, who has been twisting and turning, trying desperately to avoid answering a straight question.
She has tried to say that it is what Americans want that matters.


An Hon. Member:: Try asking a straight question.


Steven W. Langdon: My question for the Minister is: What is it that the Canadian Government wants? Does it want to have the full range of investment discussed with the United States, or not?
Answer the question clearly, please.


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, obviously the Hon. Member has not been listening either to myself or my colleagues who have answered this very question.
I have made it very clear that the negotiating mandate that our negotiators have deals with trade related investment. I have said that very clearly. I have also made it very clear that they have a mandate to listen to any overtures by the Americans in terms of investment-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Pat Carney: -to define what it is that they want to talk about, since they have made it very clear in a number of bilateral meetings with myself and the Minister of Finance and the Secretary of State for External Affairs that they want to talk further on investment.
I have said that our negotiators have a mandate to listen to what they have in mind. I have pointed out that, unlike the previous Government, we have an open investment climate; we have Investment Canada; we have attracted record-breaking levels of foreign investment-


Lloyd Axworthy: In takeovers.


Pat Carney: -that have created jobs in this country; and we are interested in any job-creating plans that are brought forward in the free trade talks.


John Edward Broadbent: Canada is for sale.


Pat Carney: But I have made it very clear that there is no mandate being given to the negotiators beyond that which I have outlined. I am surprised that the Hon. Member keeps trying to drag this issue forward, at a time when I have said there is no mandate to negotiate it.


Steven W. Langdon: I agree with the Minister that it is a shame that one should be anxious to get the truth from this Government with respect to its intentions. Such a shame!


TRADE RELATED INVESTMENT
Steven W. Langdon: Let me try
once more, with this question of the Minister. Will she be clear on whether she is prepared to take the mandate for trade related investment, to take the so-called open investment policy which she supports, and make that the clear mandate of the negotiator?
Otherwise, the negotiator is left in a completely empty-handed position, himself twisting in the wind as badly as is the Minister.


Pat Carney: I am
not clear, Mr. Speaker just what point the Hon. Member has raised.
Is he asking us to give a mandate on investment to the negotiator? Is he asking us-


John Edward Broadbent: He is asking what your answer is. We want your answer.


Pat Carney: Is he asking us to do that; and if so, I would be interested in his views on the matter.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


REGIONAL INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION
Jean-C. Lapierre: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion. The Minister just denied the comments reported this morning in Le Devoir. I would now like to ask the Minister, if everything goes as well as he suggests, how he can explain that his budget is being reduced year after year, employee morale in his department is at its lowest, all top-notch people in his department are
May 19, 1987

looking for jobs elsewhere and everyone is convinced that the end of the department is in the offing? I want to ask the Minister, if what he is saying is true, whether he can now assure this House there is no question of disbanding the Department, programs are here to stay and the Department's mandate is to be strenghtened rather than reduced, as they have been doing for two years?


Michel Côté: Mr. Speaker, I will simply respond by stating once more that in October, 1986, the Government in the Throne Speech decided to put the emphasis on regional disparities and to work at getting nearer to regions, because regional needs are known by people living in the regions. Such is the direction the Government wants to take. And it is with that kind of initiative we are now implementing that we will keep on ensuring this country's economic prosperity and creating additional jobs.


REQUEST FOR ASSURANCES
Jean-C. Lapierre: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary. The Minister did not answer my first question. This is what I am asking: Currently, in view of the Department's commitment that the mandate to reduce regional disparities across Canada with programs like the RIDP will remain, because even if he does not realize it, all his officials at this point are wondering whether tomorrow they will have a job and the Department will still be there. Let him call any of his regional offices-all are saying: Cote does not know where he is going. Mr. Speaker, here is what I am asking the Minister: Do we have the assurance, on behalf of regions for which he just spoke, do the regions have the assurance the Canadian Government will continue looking after their needs rather than abdicate its role as suggested in Le Devoir's report?


Michel Côté: Mr. Speaker, again the Hon. Member's comments are based on purely hypothetical questions raised in a report in Le Devoir, which in no way reflects nor in any was near the truth. Mr. Speaker, the Government's and the Department's responsibility indeed is to meet the needs of regions, and from time to time it is essential that the Department review those programs, to ensure that they work as efficiently as they possibly can. Such is the responsibility we are assuming, and we will keep on improving in this way Canada's economic prosperity and creating additional jobs.

Oral Questions


AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY
Joseph Lloyd Reid: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for Regional Industrial Expansion, who, I am told, met with the mayors of the automotive-based communities of Canada just last week.
My question for the Minister asks whether he was able to alleviate the concerns of those mayors and assure them that the assemblers of automobiles in Canada will be subject to a "Canadian content" provision.


John Edward Broadbent: Good luck!


Lloyd Axworthy: Let's hear the answer to this one.


Michel Côté: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I could answer that question by saying that it is the responsibility of the Department to look into the automotive industry. We have been doing it on a consultative basis with the industry. As my colleague knows, last week we met with the mayors involved in this sector. We made sure that they would be part of the consultative process.
We should be ready very shortly to submit some recommendations in that regard to the Government.
* *
*


VIA RAIL
Mr. Les Benjamin (Regina West):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct some questions to the Minister of Transport who is also responsible for the line of the flat wheel special, namely, VIA Rail.
We have now spent over $1 billion refurbishing old railway cars since 1977. There have been no orders for new rail passenger cars, and the promise of the Government to create a viable passenger service has been broken. We now have cuts in everything from redcaps to summer schedules.
Could the Minister tell us whether or not he comprehends the devastating effect upon not only employees at Can Car in Thunder Bay and at Bombardier in Quebec but on the future of VIA Rail itself?
Why is he opting for short-term savings ahead of long-term earnings? Why does he not buy the new equipment and quit throwing good money after bad?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, we can easily tell that 1984 has come and gone, because we are hearing Newspeak today.

May 19, 1987
Oral Questions
I am pleased to announce today that we have agreed to spend $361 million more, not less, than was provided in our five-year plan to assist VIA Rail in acquiring equipment, to refurbish up to 200 long-haul cars, in acquiring new high power locomotives, and in continuing station upgrading.
The total over the next five years was to be $2,150 million. It is now going up to $2,511 million.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Carnell Crosbie: If the hon. gentleman does his homework and consults the Leader of the NDP, he will discover that more is more and less is less, and that this happens to be more.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: I am glad the Minister answered my question indirectly by admitting that he still throws good money after bad. Now we are up to $2.5 billion to be spent on old equipment.


GOVERNMENT POLICY
Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Mr. Speaker, do the Minister and his cabinet colleagues on the Priority and Planning Committee not understand that by buying new equipment they could recover the costs in savings on maintenance and operating costs within five to seven years? Why are they throwing away another $200 million this year on refurbishing old cars? Why do they keep perpetuating what the Liberals did, starting in 1977? Why are they doing exactly the same thing?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, we are certainly not doing what the NDP has done, because the NDP "has never done nothing".
We will be asking Members of the House to vote $588 million to help meet VIA Rail's capital requirements and operating losses this year; $588 million, and that ain't hay. It might be hay to the hon. gentleman because he does not seem to know the difference.


PROMISES CONCERNING PURCHASE OF NEW EQUIPMENT-GOVERNMENT POSITION
Hon. Andre Ouellet (Papineau):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport who seems to be forgetting the election promises of his Party. His announcement today does not deal with new train equipment. Does he not realize that, on two occasions, the former Minister of Transport announced, with much fanfare, the purchase of 130 new cars? Why is the Minister unwilling to fulfil his campaign promises?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, my hon. predecessor kept our election promises. He restored a number of routes which had been cancelled by the hon. gentleman's Party without any notice to the public and during the summertime when the House of Commons was
closed. These have been restored, and we are making a mighty effort to support VIA Rail.


Brian Vincent Tobin: What about Terra Transport?


John Carnell Crosbie: In respect of Terra Transport, we are carrying on with the brilliant concept of the hon. gentlemen opposite in containerizing the Newfoundland railway, Terra Transport, about which they are now complaining.
Now I am forgetting what was the Hon. Member's question.


Lloyd Axworthy: It is no wonder VIA Rail has a problem. You have a short attention span, John.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, their questions come all the way from Rhodesia.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Carnell Crosbie: As a matter of fact, the former Minister of Transport announced the purchase of 20 locomotives on June 20, 1985, and they were purchased. With the announcement which I am making today, further locomotives will be purchased by VIA Rail.


PROMISE NOT TO REDUCE PASSENGER SERVICE-GOVERNMENT POSITION
André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, this answer is totally unacceptable, because not only is the Government breaking its promise that VIA Rail would get new equipment and new passenger cars, but also because, since VIA Rail will have to repair and modernize some 200 cars, the company will have to operate with a reduced capacity. What will happen to the Government promise to keep the same services on transcontinental and regional lines? Since there will be less equipment available, how does the Minister propose to keep his promise not to reduce VIA Rail passenger service?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, because there is a limit to the amount of money we can make available to VIA Rail-and I have outlined the plan to spend $2.5 billion over the next five years-unfortunately we are not able to go forward with the purchase of new bilevel cars such as was originally envisaged.
The cost of those cars is considerably in excess of what had been anticipated or contemplated when it was planned to go in that direction. However, we will be revising and refurbishing up to 200 long-haul cars. We will acquire new high power locomotives. We will continue station upgrading. We will continue with new maintenance facilities, including facilities in Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Halifax.
We are doing the best we can, and we are devoting considerable assets to this task.
May 19, 1987


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Ian Waddell (Vancouver-Kingsway):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister. The Conference Board of Canada indicated today that the Alberta economy was one of the worst in the country. It predicted a drop in Real Domestic Product of 1.1 per cent for 1987.
We in the NDP have tried to speak up for the ordinary Albertan-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Ian Gardiner Waddell: -and the response of his Conservative caucus in Alberta, the silent 20, as I call them, has been to raise the Red scare.
I ask the Prime Minister to name one positive measure he is prepared to take today to help the sick economy in Alberta.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, that will come as a surprise to the ordinary Albertan.


John Edward Broadbent: Oh, oh!


Martin Brian Mulroney: The Leader of the NDP says: "Oh, oh". What truly crippled the economy of Alberta was the National Energy Program. That was damage inflicted by the NDP and the Liberals, and that will never be forgotten by the ordinary Albertan.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member is being coached by the Leader of the NDP. I don't want to interrupt anything. Is it okay to go on?
We put an extra $350 million into the economy a few months ago. That was designed to create thousands of new jobs and generate hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment. I met with the leaders of the energy industry in Alberta last week. They confirmed the value of this kind of program in conjunction with initiatives taken by the provincial Government. They also confirmed their appreciation for the rapid action by the Government of Canada in providing $1 billion to western agriculture. That was also of great assistance to the economy of Alberta.
I think the larger answer lies in an economic diversification package which is being put together by the Deputy Prime Minister. That, along with other initiatives, will bring genuine solace and assistance to the ordinary Albertan.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, David Kilgour came as a surprise to the ordinary Albertan and they liked that surprise. As well, the NDP voted against the NEP as much as the Conservatives, and he knows that.
Oral Questions


Mr. Beatty:: It did not go far enough for you.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Tell the truth.


Mr. Speaker:: We are reaching the end of Question Period and that will be the end of questions. I am sure all Hon. Members would want to hear the last few questions.


ECONOMIC DIVERSIFICATION-TIMING OF ANNOUNCEMENT
Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, concerning the positive aspects of the Prime Minister's answer, is he in a position to tell the House when these proposed measures for economic diversification, which we all want regardless of Party, will be announced?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister will be making an announcement at the earliest possible moment.
If my hon. friend wants to place things in reasonable perspective, and if it is still accepted that unemployment levels remain a fair barometer of economic growth and activity, it should be noted that Ontario retains the lowest level of unemployment in Canada, followed by Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta. Western Canada has three of the top four provinces in economic growth and low unemployment. That indicates a tremendous commitment by the people of Alberta and the people of western Canada generally to their own growth in co-operation with the Parliament of Canada. We are determined that we shall do more to be of assistance to western Canada in order to reach new heights of economic growth and prosperity.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for York West, two short questions.


VISIBLE MINORITIES
Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State. The Government's failure to reach a fair and adequate settlement on the issue of redress for Japanese Canadians is most regrettable but not surprising when you consider its refusal to honour its commitment to an ongoing and comprehensive process of discussion was instrumental in that failure.
This sensitive issue requires a sensitive process of dialogue. Therefore, will the Minister agree it is time to establish, as promised, a comprehensive and continuing process of discussion which would be conducive to a spirit of understanding and compromise, rather than engendering an adversarial role through individual and irregular meetings which pit community against government?

May 19, 1987
Supply


Hon. David Crombie (Secretary of State of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, during the last seven months I suppose I engaged in the order of 20 to 30 meetings on this issue. That is pretty sensitive dialogue. All Members of this House should know the net result was that for the first time a Government of Canada said it would acknowledge the injustice of the treatment of the Japanese Canadian community in the 1940s. We stand ready to do that today.
Second, in my letter of March 27 I indicated we would repeal the War Measures Act and make sure those injustices would not occur again under its replacement.
Where we do not yet have common ground is on the question of money-not on the moral principle but on the question of money. We offered a $12 million fund which would produce $1 million to $1.5 million each year for that community. The executive of the National Association of Japanese Canadians is still demanding over $400 million. We have no common ground on the question of money.


REQUEST FOR COMMITTEE REFERRAL
Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Minister's response. With respect to the issue of common ground, throughout the process the two opposition Parties and interested parliamentarians were ignored and kept completely in the dark.
In an attempt to try to reach common ground so that Parliament can collectively obtain an agreement we can be proud of, would the Minister be in favour of involving any and all Members of Parliament in the process by giving a mandate on this question to the Standing Committee on Multicultural-ism? In that way, together with the Japanese Canadian community, all three Parties can harness their efforts to try to reach a settlement of this issue which would do honour to Parliament and all Canadians. Every Member of Parliament would like to resolve this issue during the life of this Parliament.


David Edward Crombie: Mr. Speaker, first, if the committee wants to participate all it need do is so indicate. It has not done that. More importantly, when I first took on this task I met with my critic and two other Members in the NDP who asked me to consider certain facets of this issue. There is nothing in the process in which I have been involved on behalf of the Government which excluded anyone. Indeed, we are meeting again on June 1.
If the Hon. Member, and indeed any member of his caucus, want to participate in this process all they have to do is get in touch with me or the National Association of Japanese Canadians. It seems to me that was open to the Member and his caucus all along.
Finally, what is important here is that there has been an historic offer to the Japanese Canadian community in this Government's acknowledgement of those injustices. The Government stands ready to do that today. As to making sure there is no recurrence of those injustices, the Government has
already indicated it will repeal the War Measures Act and make sure this does not happen again.
With respect to the community fund, I ask the Hon. Member to consider seriously that throughout the country we have many needs. When you consider that, along with the $400 million requested as opposed to a $12 million fund, it seems to me this Government's offer if fair and just. I stand by it 100 per cent.


Mr. Speaker:: I very much regret that we have time for only one more question.


ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE
Mr. Alan Redway (York East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Solicitor General. According to a recent study prepared for the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police dealing with the number of visible minorities in large Canadian police departments, the RCMP refused to provide the study with any information on the grounds that it does not keep records of that sort of thing. Will the Minister advise the House whether or not the employment equity policy concerning visible minorities put in place by this Government for the first time in Canada some two years ago applies to the RCMP? If it does, why do RCMP officials not keep records which government Departments are now keeping, and when will they start to comply with government policy?


James Francis Kelleher: Mr. Speaker, I am aware of the study but I have not as yet received a copy. I would like to assure the Hon. Member, however, that there is no discrimination within the RCMP with respect to the hiring of visible minorities. The reason we do not keep statistics of that nature is in keeping with the spirit of the Human Rights Act.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Allmand:
That this House condemn the Government for its failure to initiate meaningful reform in the unemployment insurance system and for its failure to commit itself to a full employment policy that seriously addresses high regional unemployment, youth unemployment, part-time work and labour market adjustment.
May 19, 1987
Mr. Deputy Speaker:: When the House rose at one o'clock, there was still time left in the question and comment period of the Hon. Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Bouchard), so we will proceed with that question and comment period.
[ Translation]


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Employment and Immigration is supposed to have a reputation for being fair and equitable. That is why I would like to ask him, not during question period but in the course of this debate, why he is not willing, as of today, to offer all retirees affected by the decision to reinstate unemployment insurance benefits for those who retired in 1985-86, why he is not willing to give them their benefits as of today instead of letting them wait and holding them hostage, pending the passage of a Bill he intends to table which considers more universal aspects of unemployment insurance? Why doesn't he, in a spirit of co-operation, give these retirees who number nearly 50,000 across Canada the benefits owed them?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I hope the Hon. Member erred because she was unaware of the fact we cannot reimburse retirees for the year 1985-86 because these are retroactive payments and, as such, must be approved by Parliament, otherwise the Minister has no authority to make these payments. Since we will soon be considering the second reading stage of Bill C-50 in the House, I hope to be able to count on the co-operation of the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party to proceed quickly with second and third reading, and we will be able to reimburse the retirees.
I repeat, as far as making the payments now, we have no authority to do so since these payments have not been approved by the House.


Mr. Rodriguez:: Mr. Speaker, the Minister pointed out that the Forget Commission report was highly controversial and that the recommendations of the standing committee report were highly controversial. However, 22 of the recommendations were supported by both the Forget minority and majority reports and the standing committee.
For example, there were recommendations for the coverage of part-time workers, the paying of benefits to those workers who were illegally locked out in a dispute and the extension of maternity benefits by two weeks, just to name three. Why would the Minister not have used this opportunity to move in those areas where there was common agreement in both reports?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out to my colleague from Nickel Belt that the question of unanimity on 22 recommendations does not mean that the Government took the decision it did because there was not unanimity. There were many other reasons for deciding not to move forward on giving more benefits or on giving a wider scope to the application of the UI review.
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As well, we took into consideration that the UI system cannot afford more expenses in terms of benefits. I must point out to my friend that, contrary to what the commission said, this means about $1 billion more, not $175 million. Maternity benefits alone would be $475 million.


John R. Rodriguez: Two weeks, two weeks.


Benoît Bouchard: No, I am talking about maternity benefits.


John R. Rodriguez: We are talking about two weeks.


Benoît Bouchard: I was not talking about a waiting time of two weeks, I was talking about maternity benefits.
My friend knows very well that 70 per cent of part-time workers already receive UI. He knows as well that many parttime workers do not want to work on a full-time basis. Considering all those components, the decision we took last Friday and in the weeks before is certainly the best decision we could have taken under those circumstances.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, the Minister knows that northern Ontario has been going through a very difficult time since the severe cut-backs in forestry, mining and the steel industry which have occurred in the last couple of years. As well, the federal civil service has been cut back by several hundred jobs.
I wonder if the Minister could explain the value of cutting down on the number of counsellors at the immigration offices in Sault Ste Marie, Sudbury and Thunder Bay. When these positions are cut back as dramatically as they have been in the last couple of months, immigration counsellors are effectively removed from the offices but these counsellors are the ones who assisted and encouraged entrepreneur immigrants to come to northern Ontario.
In northern Ontario, we need new industries and new small businesses. We need new entrepreneurs coming from Hong Kong, Europe and even the United States. Now there are effectively no people available in those offices to assist in those entrepreneurial inquiries.
I wonder if the Minister would review that decision with a view to reinstating those positions. Surely a time when a whole region of Canada like northern Ontario with 700,000 or 800,000 people is facing economic downturns is not the time to remove unemployment insurance assistance, immigration counselling positions and people in direct job-creation programs. These people are really needed now. We should not be facing cut-backs in direct job creation or in immigration counsellors who really assist in bringing in foreign investment and new entrepreneurs.


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, what we have done in northern Ontario is to follow a national operation according to the policy of the Treasury Board about person-years available for any Department. It is the same operation we have undertaken elsewhere. I do not agree with my colleague that it necessarily means fewer services for entrepreneurs or anyone else. We agree that it will be a little tougher than it was before in terms

May 19, 1987
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of job development but, at the same time, northern Ontario is one of the regions where the Canadian Jobs Strategy has been applied and I think that has been quite efficient in its application.
On the specific question about Sault Ste Marie, at the request of the Solicitor General (Mr. Kelleher), who is the Member of Parliament for Sault Ste Marie, I agreed to look at the possibility of maintaining the same number of people in that office. I promise to give a very quick answer, hopefully this week.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, before the Minister leaves I would like to put some facts on the record. In response to the question I asked him about unemployment insurance, I think he inadvertently misled the House and the almost 50,000 Canadians who are waiting to receive assistance through unemployment insurance, which assistance was duly announced by the Minister in the House.
I asked the Minister today why he was not prepared to move immediately to allow those pensioners who qualified for pension benefits up to 1986 to receive benefits while we are awaiting further discussion on Bill C-50. He said only a few minutes ago that he is unable to do so because it was passed by legislation and new legislation has not been put in place to reverse that decision.
The Minister will know that his Government introduced the move to cut off almost 50,000 Canadian workers who applied for unemployment insurance after they were laid off, through no fault of their own. The changes were invoked by regulation rather than legislation. What the one hand giveth by regulation, the other hand is now taking away.
I cannot believe the Minister when he stands in the House and claims that he cannot, in a show of good faith today in the House, insist that at least those 50,000 Canadians who made the decision to retire in 1985 and 1986 be enabled to receive that benefit. The Minister has agreed with that logic. He said that false information was given out and the Government is therefore prepared to reverse its position. In the meantime he is holding those 50,000 Canadians hostage by refusing to return any of those moneys until Bill C-50 is passed.
The Government's policy was so bad that even Progressive Conservative Members of Parliament were standing in the House to dissociate themselves from it. Now that the Minister has come forward with a positive initiative, why does he not state that he is prepared to move immediately without holding those 50,000 workers hostage?
I am not even the critic and I have in my possession letters from people across the country, some of whom have lost their homes. You will be aware, Mr. Speaker, of one very sad and difficult case which actually resulted in a suicide. That case was raised by myself in the House. The Minister is turning his back on these thousands of Canadians who have written to
him, exhorted him, and contacted their Members of Parliament. Why does he not move away from his very rigid position of refusing to grant cheques to those pensioners while waiting for the full development of Bill C-50?
Unfortunately the Government is once again playing politics on the backs of the unemployed and the workers. Anyone who had the opportunity to hear the very articulate argument put forward by the Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine-East (Mr. Allmand) this morning will realize that the Government has no employment policy. That is why we are introducing a motion to condemn the Government.
We are three years out of the recession and the unemployment rate across the country is still hovering at almost 10 per cent. That is completely unacceptable, particularly when you consider that during the last 20 years while Liberal Governments were in power the average level of unemployment was around 5 per cent. This morning the Minister and members of the Government were laughing in glee over an unemployment rate of around 9.3 per cent. The Liberal Party does not think a full employment policy is a joke. We think it is an objective toward which we should be working.
I would like to spend a few minutes outlining the lack of a full employment policy of the Government in relation to older workers.

And I know for a fact that there are a number of Hon. Members, Conservative Members, who have indicated an interest for the issue of older workers, and I believe that the Hon. Member for Jonquiere (Mr. Blackburn) has indicated a deep interest for older workers. What I would like to do, Mr. Speaker, if I could, would be to attend Cabinet meetings or even caucus meetings of the Conservative Government to find out why the Hon. Member for Jonquiere and other Conservative back-benchers did not have the courage to stand up to the Finance Minister (Mr. Wilson), who had committed himself a year ago to introducing in the House a specific policy for older workers.

We hear government Members making pronouncements on all these issues in committee, yet when the telling moment comes in the House to vote on a resolution, such as the one before the House today, or to confront the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson), they are afraid to do so and disappear. We do not hear them speaking out.
In February of 1986 the Minister promised that he would be introducing a package for older workers. Several months before February of 1986 the Government unilaterally and with one fell swoop did away with the Labour Adjustment Benefits Program which was the only program targeted for older workers. The Government slashed it and bashed it and did away with it. Nothing was put in its place and it was not until repeated questions were asked by the Opposition that the Minister made his promise in February of 1986.
May 19, 1987

He said: "The position of older workers deserves special consideration. I am announcing federal funding of up to $125 million over a four-year period, "-peanuts, Mr. Speaker, my words, not his-"to finance a new Program for Older Worker Adjustment". It even has an acronym, Mr. Speaker- POWA. Unfortunately, the only people who have been "pow- ed" and planted in the face are the older workers who have been waiting for more than a year for this program to materialize. This $125 million over four years is a pittance. The Government comes up with $1 billion in 48 hours to bail out the banks and then tells the older workers of the country that they will be given $125 million over four years.
Even that paltry, pathetic sum has not been handed out by the Government more than a year after the promise was made by the Minister of Finance. That is because the Minister fobbed it off to the Minister of Labour (Mr. Cadieux) who fobbed it off to the provinces, who fobbed it off to the provincial labour ministers. The Government is blaming the provinces, passing the buck and the responsibility in the same way it did with the national housing program.

Mr. Speaker, according to the most recent statistics on unemployment among older workers, as presented in a March 1987 article entitled Les pertes d'emplois, et adaptation au marche du travail dans I'economie canadienne, it is already an established fact that once they lose their job, these workers, older workers that is, are more likely to leave the labour force. First of all, in January 1986, no less than 42 per cent left the labour force. And second . . .
Second, for those who did remain in the labour force, the job search was longer for older workers than any other age group. When they finally found jobs, those jobs tended to pay much less than the previous employment and much less than the national average.
The job search for the 45 per cent who did locate new fulltime employment was the longest. It took them 33 weeks to find a new job, and the average wage loss between the lost and new full-time job was 12 per cent, also the largest of any age group. Furthermore, the one-half of those workers who took pay cuts lost an average of one-third of their wages in the job change. These pay cuts are likely related to the fact that many of these older workers lack levels of education and had already undergone longer than average job searches.
The job loss and labour market adjustment in the Canadian economy will show that those people who are suffering are not only located in the regions of the country that have been ignored by the Government. We learned in Question Period the startling statistics which show the cut in regional development moneys spent to assist the underprivileged regions of this country. At the same time, the Government is washing its hands of the plight of older workers and turning its back on
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those people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves out of work and, in some cases, taking an average of 33 weeks to find another job that will pay less.
What response has been made to the plight of older workers? Did the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Bouchard) talk about older workers in his statement on May 15 which deals with the Forget Commission and unemployment insurance? Did he talk about the lack of worker adjustment programs or the Government's decision to turn its back on older workers? Instead, he talked about the abusers. He said: "We will step up our activities to weed out those who would abuse the system".
Unfortunately, the Minister is reinforcing the notion expressed to Forget and to the committee on employment that those people who are receiving unemployment insurance are attempting to rip off the system. However, Forget and the committee studying unemployment insurance changes were able to discover that the number of abusers of the unemployment insurance system is less than 3 per cent and that the record of the abuse inflicted upon the income tax system is far greater than that in unemployment insurance.
In spite of these statistics, the Minister talked about the abusers of the system and the kind of "fraud squad" that was launched by his predecessor, the Member for Kingston and The Islands (Miss MacDonald), when she promised to hire an extra 700 people to investigate job claims. This is only pandering to the notion expressed by some Canadians that people who are seeking unemployment insurance are out to rip off the system.
My experience as a Member of Parliament as well as a Member of the Ontario Legislature convinces me and, I believe, members of our Party that people who apply for unemployment insurance do so because they are in real need. These include the people who have written me about the issue of changes to the definition of pension as income. They include firefighters of Hamilton who have written to the Government and me on this issue. I think of the workers at Firestone. I also think of the workers at Miracle Mart who were thrown out of their jobs. These workers were primarily women, many of whom had literally 20 to 25 years of service. They were told they would no longer have a job at Miracle Mart and, to add insult to injury, were told they would not be entitled to collect unemployment insurance.
The Minister has partially revoked that Draconian measure of his predecessor who attempted to take money from the mouths of the families of Miracle Mart workers. He has decided to change that unjust law partially, but he could make regulations or at least introduce a separate legislative package upon which Members could vote in one day, as we are prepared to do, in order to turn that money back to the workers. Why is he using this issue as a club with which to force us to accept other unjust changes to the regulations he is suggesting?

May 19, 1987
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The motion of the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East (Mr. Allmand) simply states:
That this House condemn the Government for its failure to initiate meaningful reform in the unemployment insurance system and for its failure to commit itself to a full employment policy that seriously addresses high regional unemployment, youth unemployment, part-time work and labour market adjustment.
The Government literally laughs in the House at our proposal for a full employment policy. I believe the purpose of the motion of the Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace- Lachine East is to make a full employment policy a goal for us all to attempt to achieve.
During his remarks he mentioned how two previous Liberal Governments have been able to keep the level of unemployment below 3 per cent because we set a full employment policy as our first national priority. Yet the Government will not even make a commitment to set 7 per cent, 6 per cent or 5 per cent as a national target for a reduction in unemployment.
We do not expect the Minister or the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) to achieve this goal tomorrow, although the Prime Minister stated during the election campaign that tens of thousands of jobs would be created overnight. It has been over two years since the mandate of the Conservative Government, and the average unemployment rate is higher than it ever was during the tenure of Liberal Governments in the past century.
It is difficult to understand why the Government is not prepared to set the objective of achieving a full employment policy by the end of its mandate. I believe that the Government is so committed to non-intervention and is so free market driven that it believes it has no place in the area of job-creation. This has been illustrated quite clearly in the cutbacks and slashes to the Canadian Jobs Strategy. The Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East outlined the cruel reality of a 30 per cent cut in funds that the Government should make available for job strategy programs.

And today, the Conference Board of Canada provided data which suggest that the situation in all provinces except Ontario and a few parts of Quebec will be worse.

We have heard the dire predictions of the Conference Board with respect to employment. The unemployment situation in certain sections of the Province of Newfoundland is worse than it ever was under the previous Liberal Government. Yet the Government will not make a commitment to a full employment policy.
While I certainly respect the work of government Members on the all-Party committee that came forth with unanimous recommendations dealing with part-time work and the question of unemployment insurance, I believe those Members on the government side who truly believe that there should be some drastic changes in the Government's approach to the unemployed in this country have no choice but to support this motion whole-heartedly. I invite them to do so.
The Minister and the Prime Minister have stated that they want to involve the regions and localities in the decentralization process. Therefore, the Government must begin to give some credence to the recommendations coming from the local advisory councils. The local advisory council in Hamilton is becoming quite frustrated by a Government that consistently ignores the advice of an advisory body that it established. I ask government Members to support this motion which will at least encourage the Government, if it does nothing else in this Parliament, to make a full employment policy its first priority in the goals we attempt to achieve. That will mean that those older workers who so far have been ignored by the Government, and those people who are not working, can have some hope.
If you wish to share our dream, then obviously you must agree with a motion which aims at eliminating unemployment in Canada.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Questions or comments. The Hon. Minister of State for Youth (Mr. Charest).


Jean J. Charest: Yes, just one question, Mr. Speaker. The Hon. Member for Hamilton East (Ms. Copps) suggests that the Government did not set clear-cut objectives. I suppose that, as the spokesperson for the Official Opposition, she will be in a position to tell us what the exact position of the federal Liberal Party is, and if so, whether the federal Liberal Party of Canada is indeed promising today every Canadian man and woman that if they were to win the elections some day, they will restore full employment in Canada and if not, what exactly do you have in mind as your objective?


Sheila Maureen Copps: Well, Mr. Speaker, of course full employment is indeed the goal of the Liberal Party. That is what was agreed upon at the National Convention of the Liberal Party, and if this Government is not at least committed to the objective of full employment, I wonder what they are doing here! Now, we are not saying that as early as 1988 or 1989, as soon as we are back in power, we will be able to achieve that goal immediately, but at least we can have full employment as an objective.
In answering this question, Mr. Speaker, I think that the federal Liberal Party is at least willing to support the changes suggested by the committee of all parties, including Conservative Members, Liberal Members and Members of the NDP with respect to the unemployment insurance program, that is the changes in family benefits, not only maternity benefits, but also changes for part-time workers, changes which would make the system more efficient and would streamline its bureaucracy. And I really wonder why the Government is not even willing to endorse those objectives as suggested by its own Members!
May 19, 1987


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased the Hon. Member for Hamilton East (Ms. Copps) mentioned that at its national convention in November the Liberal Party passed two resolutions favouring full employment. As she pointed out in her speech, twice since the Second World War, Liberal Governments have made full employment their highest priority and twice it was achieved, once under the Mackenzie King- St. Laurent Governments of the late 1940s and early 1950s and again under Mr. Pearson in 1963.
In a report dated February 28, 1987, it was pointed out that more than 95 per cent of the new jobs created last year were created in the Province of Ontario. In fact, out of 137,000 new jobs created, only 5,000 of those jobs were created outside of Ontario. I know the Hon. Member is from what is considered the Golden Horseshoe of Ontario, which includes Hamilton, Toronto, Oshawa and so on. It is more than likely her area is one of the better off areas with respect to employment. No doubt that has happened under a free market economy and a Liberal Government in Ontario.
As a Liberal, does the Hon. Member believe that it is just that employment gains are so unevenly balanced in one area of the country, even within her own province? We know northern Ontario has suffered more with respect to unemployment than southern Ontario. Is the Hon. Member willing to leave it to the market economy to decide whether one region of the country should get all the jobs and others none at all or very little, or would she take a more pro-active approach?


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, I think it is pretty clear, even from statements made by the Premier of Ontario, that Ontario is prepared to share in the benefits and good times and to share in some of the difficulties and bad times. When I look, for example, at the level of unemployment in Newfoundland, traced since the time of the Conservative Government coming into power, we see from the figures that both in Newfoundland and in British Columbia there is only a marginal drop in unemployment. In the case of Newfoundland, it was 23.8 per cent in September of 1984 to an unacceptably high level of 19.2 per cent in January of 1987. In British Columbia, there is a drop of about 1.6 per cent, which is completely unacceptable considering that we have gone from a period of recession into a period of world-wide resuscitation, as it were.
What I cannot understand is that the Minister of State for Youth (Mr. Charest) actually questions even the objective of a full employment policy. No one is suggesting that any Government, whether the Liberal Government of Ontario or the federal Conservative Government, has all the answers to all the problems of the unemployed. For a worker in Toronto or in Hamilton who does not have a pay cheque coming in, who has lost a job and who has no money to put food on the table, it is just as painful as it is in other areas of the country. The very least we can do is to support this motion which calls on the Government to endorse a full employment policy.
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If we are not prepared to set national objectives, if we are not prepared to hope, how can we expect that from these thousands of workers-in fact over a million workers-and the number of children we know are living in poverty along with their parents who are not earning wages? How can we expect them to have hope, to hold up their heads and go out and fight for a job, having faith in the Canadian economy, if the leaders of our country and Conservative Members of Parliament will not even endorse the objective that at some future point we might have full employment again in this country?


Mr. Caldwell:: Mr. Speaker, in listening to the last speaker, I could not help but think about the full employment program of the Liberal Party. I would like to bring to the attention of the House some figures on unemployment. The Hon. Member who proposed this motion indicated that we are not creating jobs outside of the Province of Ontario. The Government is creating jobs in Quebec at a rate of 7,258 jobs per month. That is 10 times faster than the Liberal rate of only 727 jobs per month. More jobs have been created in Quebec in the last three months than were created by the former Government in four and a half years. I think that is coming closer to a full employment program than the program proposed by the Liberal Party.
In the Prairies, 79,000 jobs have been created since September of 1984, including 31,000 jobs in Manitoba. In British Columbia, 87,000 jobs have been created since the election in comparison to only 26,000 jobs in British Columbia during the entire mandate of the previous Government. So who is creating new jobs?
Jobs are being created at a monthly rate of 25,097, compared to 7,700 under the Liberals. We have created 778,000 in 31 months, as compared to 424,000 jobs in 55 months created by the previous regime. The Liberals created only 87,000 fulltime jobs in 55 months; we have created 667,000 full time jobs in just 31 months. I think that indicates that this Government is working toward a full employment situation in this country.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, the unemployment rate in the Province of Quebec-

-the unemployment rate in the Province of Quebec is still close to 10 per cent. If that is acceptable to the Progressive Conservative Party, I doubt very much that they will keep all their seats when the next election comes, because 10 per cent, in any province, is considered too much by the Liberal Party. If the members of Conservative Party of the Hon. Member for Essex-Kent (Mr. Caldwell) are satisfied with an unemployment rate just under 10 percent, I hope they will be running in Quebec for the next federal election.
I would just like to draw the attention of the House on the rates of unemployment as they stood for almost 20 years when the Liberal Party was in power.

May 19, 1987
Adjournment Debate

Between 1965 and 1980, before we were plunged into a recession which was accepted as a world-wide recession by any economist who examined the situation, the average unemployment rate under Liberal Governments in that period was 5.6 per cent. For 15 years we had consistent unemployment rates of less than 6 per cent.
As the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East pointed out, during two periods of time when the Liberal Government made it a national priority we had unemployment rates which were actually less than 3 per cent. Now, during the course of this Government's time in office, a Government which campaigned on the promise made by the Prime Minister that tens of thousands of jobs would be created overnight immediately upon the election of a Conservative Government, we see that the Government is still sitting on its fat fanny satisfied with having unemployment rates of more than 9 per cent.
In certain areas of the country there exists the unacceptable situation of 20 per cent to 30 per cent plus unemployment. That is not acceptable. The Liberal record in the last years of our Government was not acceptable to the Liberal Party either. We were fighting to try to change it. However, it is obvious that the record of complacency on the part of this Government is acceptable. If it were not acceptable then Members of the Government would have no other choice but to support the motion put forward by the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 66, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the Hon. Member for Parkdale-High Park (Mr. Witer)-External Affairs-Request for listing of honorary Baltic consuls; the Hon. Member for Hamilton East (Ms. Copps)-Canadian Human Rights Commission-Appointment of Antonio Arcangel to Human Rights Commission, (b) Request for investigation of appointee; and the Hon. Member for York East (Mr. Redway)-Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation-Compliance with rent control regulations.
[ Translation]
Resuming debate. The Hon. Minister of State (Youth) (Mr. Charest).



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Allmand:
That this House condemn the Government for its failure to initiate meaningful reform in the unemployment insurance system and for its failure to commit itself to a full employment policy that seriously addresses high regional unemployment, youth unemployment, part-time work and labour market adjustment.
Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to take part in the debate today, especially since quite frankly, I have been listening with some fascination to my opposition colleagues and to everything they had to say. I have heard some of the most incredible statements I have ever come across in such a short time. I must admit I was surprised at the kind of statements being made in the House, without any real relevance, about a number of subjects to which I will be referring to shortly.
First of all, perhaps we should stop and reflect for a moment on what lead up to today's debate, and I am referring to the fact that last Friday, the Government, through the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Bouchard), announced that following a number of studies that had been ordered, not just Mr. Forget's study but a number of other studies published in this country, the Government had decided to make no substantial changes in the unemployment insurance program.
Mr. Speaker, we had a situation where the Government was literally confronted on one side by part of the population that wanted important changes, and on the other side by people who were not as keep on these changes.
Several people, Mr. Speaker, suggested making some entirely extraordinary changes in a system which for many Canadians, especially in the regions, has become vitally important.
Considering the lack of consensus across this country, it would probably have been very difficult to implement any effective changes in the system. The Government has preferred to make a number of administrative changes within the unemployment insurance system while attempting to improve the system, but in the short term, it will make no important changes.
Our Opposition colleagues are surprised. We are not surprised at their reaction. They are surprised, and that is why today, they have introduced a motion that refers to reform and at the same time condemns the Government for not having developed a full employment policy for Canada. I think that part of the motion also refers to the situation of youth in Canada, Mr. Speaker. And that is why, whether I like it or not, I feel I must intervene today to try and contribute a small
May 19, 1987

measure of serenity and common sense to a debate which if we left it completely to the Opposition, would merely be a repetition of the entirely incredible statements we have been hearing since this morning.
Interestingly enough, Mr. Speaker, ever since the Liberal Party of Canada, among others, has had an opportunity to speak up this morning I have yet to hear a suggestion as to what we could have done. It is an absolutely extraordinary intrigue, they have been sitting on the opposition benches in this House for two years, so I have to presume that they may be experiencing difficulties such as those prevailing now about the Constitution where accusations are flying right and left, with racist overtones in some cases. Besides, when the cruise missile or the free trade negotiations come up for discussion, we simply have to conclude that we are facing a divided Opposition which is suffering from a flagrant lack of leadership, of inspiration, of research, of I do not know what, but in any event the result is that Canadians are being deprived, because in the end that is what it amounts to. Let us forget our situation for a moment, under our political system we have a Government which proposes solutions and tries to establish policies, and an Official Opposition which is expected to offer alternatives. In this case, after nearly three years of opposition, three years in this Parliament, the Official Opposition still has nothing to offer or to say to Canadian men and women.
What is surprising, Mr. Speaker, and I suggest this may explain today's motion, is this kind of utterly incredible statement on the part of our colleagues of the Official Opposition who are bragging about the fact that when the federal Liberal Party was in office between 1965 and 1980 the unemployment rate was about 6 per cent or lower-


William Warren Allmand: 5.6!


Jean J. Charest: -5.6. Well. The Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East (Mr. Allmand) says 5.6 per cent, with a proud smile. My God! What a great thing for this country! It is absolutely unbelievable. It is unbelievable that we should come to the House today, on May 19, 1987, to be told something as ridiculous as this. Is the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East going to tell us that the world has not changed since 1965? Can he and the Hon. Member for Hamilton East (Ms. Copps) have overlooked the fact that from 1965 to 1987, the world, the environment, the labour force and industry have changed in Canada? Did they fail to note, for instance, the changes in the natural resources industry? They would have us believe that the situation in this country in 1987 is exactly the same as in 1965. Come on, I just cannot believe such a thing! My friend the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East would be the first to say that one would have to be something of a moron to try and convince the House and the Canadian public that the economic situation in Canada and the rest of the world in 1987 is comparable to what it was in 1965. One would have to be a complete imbecile to imply indirectly that which we are living in exactly the same world. As soon as I have completed my
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remarks, I am sure, because I know him well, that my friend, the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East will want to stand in the House and say: Mr. Speaker, hon. colleagues, I did not mean to say that the world in 1987 is exactly the same as it was in 1965. I am sure he will want to say that. Knowing him to be an honest man, I am sure that he will want to correct this, at least in the minds of Canadians.
Mr. Speaker, they have shown courage by speaking about the unemployment rate among young Canadians, which we recognize as much too high. As a matter of fact, we had already recognized that fact in the Throne Speech delivered on October 1st of last year. I do not think anybody could blame me for mentioning today that the unemployment rate among young Canadians in April was about 13.9 per cent. Since we came to power in 1984-let us be frank and direct about this, Mr. Speaker-our Government has managed to reduce the unemployment rate among young Canadians by about 6 per cent.
Well, I suppose it would be just too much to ask the federal Liberal Party of Canada, and even the Socialists, to stand up in the House and recognize that the situation has improved.
And, Mr. Speaker, to get away somewhat from the partisan nature of the debate to which Hon. Members are challenging us, let me tell you this: One rule is clear in the case of young Canadians, as far as their performance or their level of activity within the economy are concerned: When the economy is in a slump, either in Canada or elsewhere, the young are the first to be laid off. When the economy recovers, the young are the last ones to be recalled. In conclusion, the golden rule for the young more than for any other group in our society is this: It is important that the economy be healthy, that government expenditures be well managed, otherwise they will suffer the most. Although this is not romantic, it is one of the basic realities, and today at any rate, statistics are ample proof of it.
Even, my God, I listened with interest to our colleague from Hamilton East, a Member of the federal Liberal Party of Canada, when she referred to the fact that the unemployment rate since the turn of this century was always low under a Liberal Government. Well, my God, a hundred years ago there was no unemployment in Canada, Mr. Speaker. Nobody was working either, according to current definitions. But it is unbelievably gross for someone to suggest such things to Members of the House of Commons in the hope Canadians will swallow everything without uttering a word, as if citizens in this country were vases one could fill as one pleased. The times are over, Mr. Speaker, when one could tell people anything at all and have them believe it.
What puzzles me most on the other hand is this. The federal Liberal Party of Canada-perhaps and certainly our colleagues for the socialist party also advocate the same thing- are telling us: What we are promising Canadians is full employment. This is what we should have in Canada. Everyone should be rich. How are we going to be rich? Oh well, I do not

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know. That is no problem for them, but everyone should be a millionaire.
Well, we must remember this, Mr. Speaker. First, countries that have employment policies made a number of choices. First, they made choices as to their trade policy, in the first place. Are those exporting, importing countries? Is their market small enough? Will they try to specialize in a certain number of products, and so on? They made choices as regards their trade policy, on one hand.
Second, after making that choice, they subsequently developed an industrial development policy, or in some cases an industrial and regional development policy, in line with their initial choice. That is what was done in those countries.
Third, they developed an employment policy compatible with all their choices. Mr. Speaker, that is really the way to develop an employment policy. It has not always been clear in Canada for the following reasons, Mr. Speaker, and if my colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East wants to be honest, he will admit it. Since World War II up to the 70's, in Canada, economic growth was almost continuous in a country with an economy largely based on natural resources. That was really the economic fabric of Canada. But there was a radical change in the last few years, and my Hon. colleague knows it. We are moving from an economy largely based on natural resources to a quite different one, an economy that requires substantial adjustments in the labour market which will not take place overnight.
As regards youth, for instance, we note the following: first, my colleague made a speech this morning without even mentioning youth once, and somebody had to ask him a question before he said something about our youth, but beyond all that, there was a debate on an Opposition day on youth, about two weeks ago in this House. At that time, everybody was surprised to hear that neither the federal Liberal Party of Canada nor the socialist party had developed a policy on youth. Neither one of them had taken the time to identify what could be the most important problem for young Canadians.
One must admit, Mr. Speaker, that it is quite ridiculous to ask others to spend more money, to develop other programs, to do this and that, when you do not even take the time to sit down and try to identify the most important problems of young Canadians. Neither one of those parties did that.
And today, I have never sensed and I have never had any indication of what they see as the main problems of young Canadians.
The federal Liberal Party of Canada, believe it or not, made a commitment today to achieve full employment when they are totally unable to come to an agreement on a trade policy for Canada. Mr. Speaker, the Liberals cannot really claim they can develop an employment policy separately from a trade policy. That is impossible. You cannot even agree among yourselves about the trade policy Canada must adopt but that does not stop you from rising in the House to tell Canadian men and women: "We will bring in full employment." My
goodness, you could not be more ridiculous. That is unbelievable, Mr. Speaker. How could anyone suppose Canadian men and women could be so gullible as to listen and trust the Liberals.
The choices on the socialist side are at least clearer. Their contradictions are apparent. They tell us: "We promise full employment to Canadian men and women, but do not deal with the Americans, do not sign any free or freer trade agreement with them", when Canada is the second most export dependent country in the world, in terms of Gross National Product; about 30 per cent of our GNP depends on exports. We follow West Germany as the second most export dependent country in the world, at least within the OECD. In fact, more than one job out of three depends on our exports.
So, how can they separate a full employment policy, that is the ultimate job development, throughout the economy, from a trade policy? How can you claim that this objective can be met in the absence of a policy on freer trade within your party? Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace- Lachine East will have to provide us with further explanations, because such a contradiction is unreconcilable, at least in my own mind.
As for the Socialists, that obvious contradiction is in their heart and in their mind and they will have to live with it and be accountable for it. We accept that. At least their position has the merit of being clear.
Mr. Speaker, over and above this whole debate about reforming the system or the Unemplyment Insurance Act is best summarized by the Employment and Immigration minister who is interested in creating as many jobs as possible in Canada. My Opposition colleagues keep repeating since this morning that all the new jobs are being created in Ontario, which is wrong. Mr. Speaker, I say with no hesitation that in fact, about 46 per cent of the jobs created since we came to power are located in Ontario. I dare hope, Mr. Speaker, that anyone who disagrees with me, any of my colleagues who do not believe what I have just said in this House will immediately stand up and contradict me. As I said, the rate is around 46 per cent.
We recognize the regional inequities of economic development in Canada.
Fundamentally, Mr. Speaker, the question day after day confronting us is that of economic development and job creation. As far as this issue is concerned, I will not hesitate one moment to say that the present Government does better than any previous administration, including the Liberal Government that was in power in 1965, at the beginning of this century, or at any time one might choose.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, perhaps it is because the Conservative Party and the Minister are doing such a wonderful job on employment that they have dropped down to 25 per
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cent in the polls and even lower among our young people; perhaps it is because of their fantastic record in employment creation!
Perhaps it is also because of their fantastic record that when Gallup asked Canadians in February what was the most important and serious problem in the country, 41 per cent said unemployment! A country mile ahead of any other problem was unemployment at 41 per cent.
In his remarks the Minister of State for Youth (Mr. Charest) inferred that because the industrial world has changed, because 1987 is not 1977, full employment is not possible. He suggested that it was ridiculous on our part to say that we should have the same rates of unemployment in 1987 that we had in 1981 or from 1965 to 1980.
Is the Minister aware of the fact that with a changed industrial economy Japan is averaging less than 3 per cent unemployment? Sweden has just over 3 per cent unemployment. Austria has just under 4 per cent unemployment. Switzerland has a similar rate. These countries have experienced very definite industrial change. As a matter of fact, Japan is in the third generation of computer technology. Despite that, and because it put a high priority upon full employment, Japan had less than 3 per cent unemployment last year and just over 3 per cent this year. Is the Minister aware of that?
Is the Minister saying to the House and to the people of Canada that because we are in a modern technological age we cannot have full employment? Is that what he is saying?


Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that my colleague would choose Sweden as an example. He should know that a certain number of years ago clear choices were made in Sweden on what would be the commercial, industrial, and labour policies of that country. Even today, in 1987, the Liberal Party of Canada is incapable of coming to grips with that.
The Hon. Member raised the resolutions of the Liberal Convention in November when they had to reconfirm the leadership of their Leader one more time. There were three different resolutions on trade.
I presume the Hon. Member should know-and if we put the question to him, I presume he will admit it-that any employment policy or full employment goal must first arise from clear choices being made on commercial policy. Does the Hon. Member agree with that?
There is no answer, Mr. Speaker. It is even worse than the other Liberals who offered three different answers. Now we have no answer. It is like multiple choice-a, b, c, or all of the above are right, and that is what was chosen today.
I hope the Hon. Member does not want to compare the economic situation of Japan with that of Canada and the way it has evolved from a one resource-based country. I hope not, especially in that its culture is not the same.
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I am far from saying that full employment is not an objective in Canada. However, if we want to develop policies which have full employment as an ultimate objective-and I presume every righteous Government must have it as an objective-we must make choices on the commercial policy side, which the Liberal Party is totally incapable of doing.
We have made the choice. We have stated that Canada is a trading nation, the second most important country in the world which depends so heavily upon trade. We wish to pursue that objective through trade negotiations with the Americans, our most important trading partner, and through the GATT. We have made that choice. It remains to be seen whether the Liberal Party of Canada can come to grips with such a fundamental issue, to start with.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Minister indicated to the House this afternoon that not only is he incapable of projecting proper policy decisions, he cannot read. If he read the resolutions of the Liberal Convention and thinks he read three different ones in respect of trade, perhaps he should take a corrective reading course.
If he wants to compare trade policies-and I challenge him to do so at the end of his four-year or five-year mandate, if he hangs in to the very end-with any five-year period in the forties, fifties, or sixties in respect of trade, he will see that we will beat them by a country mile.
The Minister said that the Liberal Party-and I think he even said the NDP as well-had no policies in respect of youth. When the Conservative Government came into power in 1984, there was the First Chance Program to help 100,000 young people at a cost of $1 billion. That was cancelled. There was the Katimavik program. That was cancelled. We had dedicated $2.2 billion for job training and job creation. That was reduced to $1.6 billion. There were moneys for recreation and sport. That was cut back. There were more moneys for post-secondary education. That was cut back.
If First Chance, Katimavik, support to post-secondary education, training, job creation, recreation and sport were not a policy, I should like to ask the Minister what is his policy. It seems to be cut, cut, cut. That is great for youth!


Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, had my hon. colleague been in the House when we had a full Opposition Day on youth two weeks ago, he would have had the opportunity of listening to his own colleagues and to members of the socialist Party debate in a very non-partisan way what is the youth policy of the country.
First, we proceeded to identify what is the most important problem facing young Canadian men and women in 1987. That is what I explained to the House on that day. I am not sure whether the Hon. Member could tell us at this point in time what is that problem. I do not think he knows. That is their problem, and that is the problem of the NDP also.
However, for his benefit and for the benefit of all Hon. Members in the House, we identified as being the most

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important problem the transition from school to work. He can read Hansard of that day, because I presume he has not read it. We proceeded to enter into discussions with the provinces in respect of their jurisdictions on how we can develop policies to deal with the transition from school to work. That is the direction in which we are going. It goes way beyond the usual, typical, partisan, paternalistic speeches we have been hearing from the other side.
I find it intriguing that the First Chance Program, which I think was supposed to encompass all youth programs of the federal Government, would help 100,000 people. For the last fiscal year, we helped over 250,000 with our programs. Perhaps that is why our performance is so good and unemployment for young people has gone down approximately 6 percentage points.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, I listened to the Hon. Member for Hamilton East (Ms. Copps), and then I listened to one of the most pompous and arrogant speeches from the Minister of State for Youth (Mr. Charest) that 1 have ever heard in the House.
I should first like to deal with the Liberals. We heard the Hon. Member for Hamilton East and other Liberals talk about the new discovery of a full employment policy. Have we forgotten that their Leader in the previous Government, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, when unemployment was at 6 per cent and rising and when inflation was rising, turned around and said to workers who were demonstrating on the Hill: "If you think 6 per cent is high, you just watch me"? We watched as unemployment sky-rocketed into the teens. Can we believe that is the same Party whose Leader, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, went out to Salmon Arm and, when all the unemployed lined up at the side of the railway tracks, gave them the finger? Did I hear the Hon. Member for Hamilton East bellowing from Hamilton against the policy of high unemployment in order to bring inflation down? Is that their version of employment? They are the same group who allowed interest rates to sky-rocket and caused the recession of 1982. That, in turn, put the unemployment insurance fund into hock for about $3 billion.
Then we listened to the pomposity of the Minister of State for Youth. Was it not his Government who, three short summers ago, in August of 1984, during the election said there are three main issues in this campaign: jobs, jobs, jobs?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John R. Rodriguez: Here we are in 1987, three years later, and what does the Minister stand up and say? We are changing the base of the economy from resources to technology, and that takes time. Yet today we have over a million people unemployed, and that is only the official figure. The youth in this country are experiencing the highest unemployment rate of any group at more than 20 per cent.
If we look at the regions of this country, leaving Ontario out of it for the moment, unemployment is as high as it was under the previous Liberal Government. Then we look at Ontario. The vast majority of all jobs the Government claims have been created, over 75 per cent, are within a 60 mile radius of Toronto. We in northern Ontario do not experience any of the fall-out from the economic resurgence in Ontario.
It is also very disturbing to note that most of the new jobs are being created in the service sector. That sector is the soft underbelly of the economy in general. For example, in communities that depend on the exploitation of resources, any rumour of a lay-off or actual lay-off immediately results in the shutting down, closing up and laying off of workers in the service sector. Furthermore, the service sector is fragile and pays the lowest wages.
When we hear the Liberals talk about how many resolutions on full employment they passed at their convention, we know what that currency is worth. No sooner had the delegates left for the airport after the convention than their Leader said he is not bound by policies passed by the convention. Over on the other side they do not talk about policies. It is the backroom boys, the Dalton Camps and Lowell Murrays, who sit down and decide what they think Canadians would like to hear. If the Minister thinks they have done such a great job over there, he should know that the public does not have the same myopic vision.
What I have said has a direct bearing on the unemployment insurance program. I want to thank the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East (Mr. Allmand) for putting this motion before the House today. I also want to congratulate the Conservative Members who sat on the Standing Committee on Employment and Immigration. They are the Hon. Member for Willowdale (Mr. Oostrom), the Hon. Member for La Prairie (Mr. Jourdenais), the Hon. Member for York-Sunbury (Mr. Howie), the Hon. Member for Jonquiere (Mr. Blackburn), the Hon. Member for Calgary West (Mr. Hawkes) and the Hon. Member for Hochelaga- Maisonneuve (Mr. Desrosiers). There were six Conservatives, one NDP and one Liberal on that committee.
What was the committee's task? To examine the Forget Commission report and table a response in Parliament in the hope it would guide the Minister in his response on May 15 to that report. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that when the committee sat down, many Conservative Members were infected by myths concerning unemployment insurance. They were and are myths propagated by the National Citizen's Coalition, a right-wing organization in Canada, the Federation of Independent Business led by John Bulloch, various Chambers of Commerce, the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, and the Construction Association of Canada. These myths were expressed, at first, by Conservative Members on that committee, and I want to discuss them.
Myth number one is that unemployment insurance is generous and abused. In fact, the average benefit in 1987 was $180.69 per week. Extrapolated over a year, that amounts to
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about $9,000. That is way below the poverty line for a single person and far, far below the poverty line for a married individual with dependent children. 1 hear that the program is abused. All the evidence which came before the committee indicated that abuse made up 3 per cent, and that includes claimants receiving benefits in error. In other words, when the UIC makes a mistake and people collect money in error that is included in the 3 per cent. Yet that 3 per cent compares very well with medicare and legal aid. In addition, some 15 per cent of clients quit their jobs voluntarily. The vast majority have been laid off. That 15 per cent includes those who quit for what is called just cause. If it is not just cause it is good cause.
Then we have the story that there are 10 and 40 wonders out there, that is, people who work for 10 weeks and then quit and collect 40 weeks of benefits. That is a myth. We found out that those people constitute less than 3 per cent of claimants.
The second myth is that people in seasonal industries ought not to be able to collect unemployment insurance. For example, fishermen know they are going to be unemployed for four months in the winter and therefore that is predictable and they ought not to be covered by the program. The same would apply to all seasonal workers. Well, is it or is it not important that the fishing resource of this country be exploited by Canadians? I have not spoken to a fisherman on the East Coast of this country who would not like to fish 12 months of the year. Yet the Government tells them when they are going to fish, where and how much they are going to take. If the Government establishes these limitations on seasonal workers and the Government believes this is a resource that should be exploited for the benefit of Canada, then in fact the Government and society as a whole have a responsibility to ensure that when seasonal fishermen are not fishing, they are not starving and dependent on the community as a whole, and that goes for all seasonal workers.


Mr. MacKay:: Don't forget Mother Nature.


John R. Rodriguez: The Hon. Minister of National Revenue (Mr. MacKay) has reminded us not to forget Mother Nature. Of course we cannot forget the boss upstairs. He has a say in this. It seems to me that the myth that seasonal workers rip off the unemployment insurance system is simply that, a myth.
Another myth is that we should return to running the Unemployment Insurance Program on true insurance principles. There is the argument that the Unemployment Insurance Program should not be a social insurance program. To do that, we would have to take benefits away from fishermen and seasonal workers and we would have to take away maternity and sick benefits. Any aspect of the program that speaks to the social needs of the working class would be taken out of the Unemployment Insurance Program. If we were to do that, where would we put them? What would we do with a person who is sick but works for a business too small to have a sickness insurance program? I do not care how the facts are
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twisted or turned, the benefits come from one pocket and that is the pocket of the taxpayer.
Those are the myths I have heard consistently. I have heard that UI benefits discourage people from leaving an area with low employment opportunities and moving to an area with high employment opportunities. However, when people move away from an area, the people left in the area that is denuded of workers are told that they do not have a workforce so they cannot attract industry. If the people stay there, they are told that the UIC benefits are keeping them in place and they should go abroad to look for work. We cannot have it both ways.
These are the myths that were prevalent among Tory Members when we were trying to determine our response to the report of the Forget Commission. It was a moving experience for me to see Conservatives, some of whom are to the right of Genghis Khan politically, after listening to the persuasive evidence-


An Hon. Member:: Easy, now.


John R. Rodriguez: It certainly was not my eloquence that moved the Conservatives. God give me the grace to move Conservatives. Then every motion I would put to the House would be agreed to unanimously.
I observed Conservatives questioning the witnesses closely day by day, hour by hour, probing with their minds set in the myths they brought to the committee. We heard from witnesses and were provided expert research. Mr. Forget was before the committee twice. We had both the majority and the minority commission reports. We had evidence from both sides of the spectrum. We listened, we questioned and when the dust cleared, we proposed 90 recommendations, three score and 30. Support for 89 of them was unanimous and the majority supported the ninetieth one. Only one Member, the Hon. Member for Jonquiere voted against pension income as UI.
The committee that looked at the Forget report reflected the reality of this Parliament. There were six Conservatives, one NDP and one Liberal. All six Tories voted along with the lone Liberal and the lone New Democrat to support 89 of the recommendations unanimously.
Then the recommendations were tabled in the House. God only knows when the Minister would have found the time to do that kind of an in-depth study of the Forget Commission report and the UI Program. I suspect that he was listening to the nattering nabobs in the bureaucracy. In fact, I have absolutely no doubt about it. He was listening to those who are determined to maintain the status quo, those who feel that the only good ideas come from the bureaucracy.
We expected something different from this Government. After all, that is why we changed the parliamentary rules dealing with committees. The Government could have had its way in the committee. The whips could have been put on in

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committee, but they were not. To the credit of the Conservative members of the committee, they recognized that what we proposed was fair and just.
I compared what the committee proposed to what Forget proposed. There are similarities in 22 areas. The Minister could have moved in 22 areas. There would have been a considerable positive improvement in the Unemployment Insurance Program if the Government had moved in those 22 areas.


James Douglas Manly: Why didn't it?


John R. Rodriguez: That is a good question and I will deal with it, but I want to set the stage first.
The Minister is now saying that he did not want to rile up the people on the right or the people of the left. It reminds me of the story of a Minister of Employment and Immigration who got lost in the maze of the UI system. As night was falling, he saw a light shining. As he moved toward this light, he saw that it came from a little cottage in the maze. He went in and saw that there were three bowls of porridge on the table. He took a little sip from the first one and he said: "Oh, that's too cold". Then he took a sip from the second bowl and he said: "Oh, that's too hot". Then he came to the third one, he sipped from it and he said: "Oh, just right, just where I want to be, up on a fence getting splinters". That is the position the Minister took on the Ul Program.
I want the Minister to know that the UI Program is not a fairy-tale. The unemployed do not want the Minister to use fairy-tales to solve the problems they face.
For example, the Minister could have moved on maternity benefits. The committee proposed and Forget supported the elimination of the waiting period for maternity benefits. The cost to the UI Program would be $60 million. We proposed and Forget agreed that we have to use UI benefits that the unemployed have collected to help with training programs and to start new businesses because the people who are unemployed could in many cases create their own jobs. We proposed that they should be able to draw on their benefits at the back end of the program in order to be able to go where there may be a job. We proposed reforms of the administration.
For example, there are 214 vice-presidents at the very top to run the unemployment insurance program. Their total cost to the UI program is $15 million. We argued for more services on line to help the unemployed. We recognize that the Unemployment Insurance Program is generating a surplus. Last year it generated $800 million and this year it is expected to generate a surplus of $1.7 million. All of that is to pay off the deficit created by the recession of 1982.
We say that $450 million would have been the cost of putting into effect the proposals of the standing committee. Had they put in place only the 22 areas which were agreed upon, it would have cost less than $450 million. We could have
created equity, flexibility and simplicity in the Unemployment Insurance Program. God knows that the unemployed right across the country and those who represent them have been crying to the Government to improve the Unemployment Insurance Program.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, I was surprised when, in his opening remarks, my good friend, the Member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Rodriguez), suggested that the Liberal Party may not be sincere in opting for a full unemployment policy. Is the Hon. Member not aware that following the Second World War the Liberal Party, under Mackenzie King, opted for a full employment policy and in fact maintained employment at an average of 3 per cent for seven years? When Mike Pearson came to power in 1963, the Liberal Party again opted for a full employment policy and maintained an average of between 3 and 4 per cent unemployment for three years.
I know that from 1977 to 1984 that was not our highest priority. I admit that we in the Party make mistakes from time to time. However, since it was done before in this country, does the Member not think it is possible to do it again, especially when we look at the examples of Sweden, Japan, Austria and Switzerland? All of those countries have adopted full employment policies in recent years and have been able to achieve more or less full employment. If they can do it in those countries and if we did it before in Canada, can we not do it again?


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend for the question. It is interesting that he chose the period right after the Second World War and the period of the Pearson era of 1962. The answer to that is very simple. In the first case, the CCF was breathing down the neck of the minority Mackenzie King Government. During the Mike Pearson era, the NDP was breathing down the necks of the Liberals. There is nothing like a minority government to concentrate the minds of Liberals on full employment. In contrast, every time they have a majority government, that is forgotten. That is very unfortunate. I propose that the Hon. Member read our document, Canada Unlimited, which lays out the New Democratic Party's strategy for creating full employment.
During most of the years that I have been in Canada I have experienced Liberal rule. I have lived in northern Ontario and have seen a resource economy devastated by unemployment. I have never seen any kind of economic strategy, regional, provincial or national, put in place which would allow the resources of Canada to be refined where they are produced. Falconbridge still ships raw nickel to Norway to be refined and the finished product is sold back to Canada. Hardwood pulp from Nackawick, New Brunswick, is still shipped to Belgium where it is refined into photographic paper and then shipped back here. That is where the jobs are.
I remember Tommy Douglas preaching when I joined this Party that we are nothing but hewers of wood and drawers of water. The Minister has now proposed free trade as the panacea to create employment. We have free trade in the
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nickel industry. Our nickel crosses the United States border without any duty being paid, but I have seen no investment in northern Ontario in the equipment which goes underground to mine.
One would think that we would be the centre of manufacturing of mining equipment. One would think that the North would be the centre of research and development in new mining techniques. That is not the case, Mr. Speaker. That is all done abroad in Virginia in the United States, in England and in Europe. We do not even produce the technology here for the things that we do well such as mining. I know how my western colleagues feel about eastern Canada because we feel the same way about Toronto. Even the iron ore which is taken out of northern Ontario is shipped south for refining.
We in the NDP are committed to full employment and have policies which bind our Party to establishing an environment in which we can have full employment. It is an achievable goal which has been reached in other countries where social democratic Governments are in power. When we have been in government in this country we have worked toward full employment and have achieved it.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, I know the Hon. Member is a fair person and would not want to mislead the House. It is true that in 1963 Mike Pearson had a minority Government, but there certainly were not minority Governments in 1948 or 1952 when Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent were Prime Ministers. I admit that in the 1944 election the CCF fought a valiant battle and elected a large number of Members to this House, so what he said is partly true.
I am pleased that the Member's Party has such an elaborate policy for full employment, because we know that after the next election he will be able to support our Party in putting a full employment policy into effect.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, I was in this House when my Party did that once before. At that time I swore that I would never let it happen again. I am hoping that it will not get to that. The way things are going these days there may be several baby Liberal Parties rather than one Liberal Party running in the next election. However, that is in the future and I do not want to deal with the future or with the past which my hon. friend has put forward.
Everyone who has studied the Unemployment Insurance Program has said that unemployment is not the problem- employment is the problem. Beyond that the positions are all over the place. The Minister and the Government seem to accept that you cannot achieve full employment in this country.
I have 26 municipalities in my constituency. The sewer systems, roads, and water systems need to be refurbished and we have the people to do the work. However, these municipalities do not have a sufficient corporate tax base to raise the money to spend on those refurbishings. If this were to be done, the cost would rest very heavily on the home owner. We do not
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have the corporate tax base, which means the home owner would be overtaxed in order to do this essential refurbishing.
The mayors of this great country presented a brief to the Government in which they asked it to establish a municipal fund. Over a period of five to ten years some millions of dollars could be spent refurbishing the communities and their infrastructures. In the long run, this is very essential to the attraction of entrepreneurial endeavours, and I suggest that this is a direction in which we should be moving because it makes common sense.
If the Government is sincere about defeating the scourge of unemployment and can find a billion dollars to bail out the depositors of two banks, why can it not find the money to invest, not only to improve the quality of life in the communities, but to provide gainful employment and maintain the dignity of people while doing so?


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Resuming debate, the Hon. Member for Richmond-Wolfe (Mr. Tardif).


Mr. Alain Tardif (Richmond-Wolfe):: Mr. Speaker, I also welcome this opportunity to express my views on the motion put forward by my colleague, and I would like to quote it for discussion's sake, if you allow me, Mr. Speaker:
That this House condemn the Government for its failure to initiate meaningful reform in the unemployment insurance system and for its failure to commit itself to a full employment policy that seriously addresses high regional unemployment, youth unemployment, part-time work and labour market adjustment.
Mr. Speaker, I am especially pleased to have an opportunity to speak on that important matter. I would like if I may, for the purposes of discussion, to refer to the days following September 4, 1984 when faced with the important issue of unemployment which affected thousands of Canadians, the Government said it was aware, it was concerned, it was conscious of the thousands of problems it faced with unemployment insurance. Faced with that real problem, that real evil, the Government told us during the first months of its administration: We will strive for reconciliation, communication-ours will be a policy of analysis and consultation. It was trumpeted there would indeed be major consultation initiatives, also major pauses for thought.
It must also be understood that while those pauses for hesitation, reflection and analysis were going on, they had the Forget Commission travelling across Canada to hear representations from all those who were concerned with the important matter of unemployment. Each time the Opposition tried to know what would be the Government's position in that strategic area, we were told: Look here, we will make no decisions, if only out of respect for the Commission who is now sitting, we will wait for the Commission's report.
We were also told at the time, Mr. Speaker, that Parliament's work should be enhanced, committees should

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regain prestige and in some way credibility, they should also be involved in the redirection process, the process of suggesting to Government measures needed by the country. Of course, since then, the Forget Commission has tabled its report. Also, a committee of the House has spent months studying very seriously and thoroughly the whole question of unemployment in Canada and has tabled recommendations just as the Forget Commission did. And following those two exercises of very great significance and value, in my view, what is the answer of the government? The status quo.
I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that this is another proof of the almost complete and widespread carelessness of this government. The government had there, I think, an opportunity to propose to Canadian men and women an alternative- admittedly not a panacea-but an approach, a new direction that constitute a real improvement compared to the current situation. But the government has chosen to continue with the status quo, ignoring naturally the important issue of youth unemployment, ignoring the important issue of unemployment among part time workers, ignoring or rather simply dismissing the dramatic problems facing remote regions. The Government said: Even though we are always blaming and criticizing the former Government, let us continue exactly as before. That is why the House is being asked to maintain just about the same system.
I suggest that in view of the circumstances, the motion moved by my hon. friend is quite in order and that this decidedly scandalous decision demonstrates that the Government does not give a hoot about all these men and women who have worked for months and years to put together valid proposals. In its arrogant and insensitive attitude, it demonstrates that it could not care less for all these proposals and suggestions, which I feel were quite reasonable and equitable and which simply had to be put forward.
Mr. Speaker, I represent in the House of Commons a riding which is partly rural, which depends to a very large extent on regional development policies, and which has been very seriously affected by various problems these past few years. A lot of my constituents were economically dependent on the production of asbestos which, as you know, has had to be curtailed, and is still going through an incredibly difficult period, so much so that workers by the thousands have lost their jobs, and very well paid ones at that. This industry plays a major role in the economy of my riding.
An other issue with tremendous economic impact within my riding is that of the footwear industry. My riding depends very heavily on the footwear industry. Well, the Government announced over a year ago the total elimination of quotas, implying that it would take steps to compensate for these thousands of jobs which were automatically lost because of its decision.
Such is the situation of two major industries in my riding, and it is not unique in Canada. There are many other such
ridings dependent upon sectors like asbestos mining and the shoe industry, which were really counting on a new direction and new provisions to get a glimmer of hope that they could overcome the difficulties they had been facing, in many cases for several years. What response is the government giving those thousands of workers? Things will remain exactly as they are now.
Mr. Speaker, the main town of my riding is Asbestos, a community of about 13,000 people six or seven years ago, which now has only 6,500 or 6,700 people. Workers in Asbestos had bought a house, they were homeowners with a decent income, earning enough to live comfortably. Most of those workers were aged between 35 and 45. They had worked all their life for a concern called Johns-Manville, an asbestos producing corporation. These people, who had no special training, who had not had to change jobs, who had not much experience outside the specific sector of an asbestos mine, lost their jobs because of a stagnant market due to decreasing consumer demand and decreasing production. Of course, UI provisions allowed them to get unemployment benefits after a certain waiting period. But in order to find another job, they had to be able to take advantage of what could be called transitional measures or training courses not only to become aware of the market opportunities, but also to gain the qualifications necessary to fill a second or third job. What is the Government's answer to that? Nothing.
Mr. Speaker, the problem is the same in the case of the shoe industry although it might have been a bit more dramatic, because workers in this industry are, in many cases, relatively older and extremely difficult to retrain. In the absence of training or retraining courses, these people have, in effect, no chance whatsoever of finding another job.
Mr. Speaker, to all these workers, we said: You do not have any chance with the federal Government. Do whatever you want. We are throwing in the towel. We do not have anything to offer you that can make you more optimistic about the future.
It was a real opportunity, a great chance for this Government to regain its credibility in terms of the regions and to prove that they are important. Once again, I think that the regions have no importance whatsoever for a Conservative Government and that the Tories try, by all means, to put all their eggs in one basket to the detriment of the large regions, including the one I represent.
The Governement also had, Mr. Speaker-and I think that this is clear enough in the many recommendations-the opportunity to modify, to simplify, the provisions relating to the Unemployment Insurance Act, to make them more consistent, if I may say so. In the last few years, I have had to represent dozens, if not hundreds of beneficiaries, people who lost their jobs and who had a number of problems when the time came to collect their benefits. I therefore had several dozens of occasions to represent and defend them in front of the arbitration board, so that they could receive what I consider, in many cases, to be barely a fair amount.
May 19, 1987

One need not have experienced the arbitration process very often, Mr. Speaker, to realize what a mess it is. I am not questioning the competence of those nominated to arbitration boards. Quite to the contrary, these people do their best to simplify and to humanize the Unemployment Insurance Act and its regulations. But it is all so complicated that one often gets the impression that these well intentioned and extremely competent people get lost in the maze and do not really know what to base their decisions on. We had a unique opportunity to simplify all this legislation and all these regulations to make them into one coherent and accessible body so that once and for all it would have been within the grasp of the average person to understand what one was entitled to or not.
Mr. Speaker, in a rural or semi-rural riding like the one I represent, I would venture to say that 80 per cent of the constituents we meet wish to bring to our attention problems which have to do with unemployment insurance.
As far as I am concerned, I do not think that it is exaggerated to say that eight cases out of 10 have to do with unemployment insurance. And after eight years as the Member for Richmond-Wolfe, it has become unequivocally obvious to me that those who come to my office are generally upstanding breadwinners who are at fault or have lost their job. It is usually their first or second experience with unemployment insurance and unfortunately, in the vast majority of cases, they are innocent victims. By that I meant to say that those who are used to bridging the gap or who have had the opportunity to collect unemployment insurance on 10, 15 or 20 occasions finally manage to understand the system to some degree and to act accordingly.
But, Mr. Speaker, particularly in a riding such as mine, where many people are new entrants looking for a job for the first or the second time, they might experience problems with unemployment insurance services and they can't figure out why. And regrettably, there is also an unpleasant attitude on the part of unemployment office personnel, which can be explained by the fact that they probably see more people in a single day than any other government office, but there the people looking for jobs have the feeling they are just numbers, nobodies, being treated in a very callous and inconsiderate manner, without any kind of consideration althought they are up against administrative problems or perhaps just a lack of understanding. So it seems to me that it would not have been presumptuous to expect to see a more accessible, more sensible and more coherent system thus allowing the people facing problems with the Unemployment Insurance Commission to quickly know their entitlement to benefits. Instead of that, the Government has chosen to perpetuate the complexity, the confusion, to keep the "monster" alive. Mr. Speaker, for the area I represent, which is far away in many respects from the larger centers, there seems to be within the recommendations some sort of major and real improvement which is summarized in the first recommendation where it is said that we should adopt a standard entrance requirement of ten weeks of
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insurable employment. Taken out of context, that recommendation per se may seem a bit generous, even questionnable. However, in context, this recommendation illustrates quite well how with such a simple measure we could have solved dozens of problems.
My riding is in the immediate vicinity of what is known as the queen of the Eastern Townships, the City of Sherbrooke. Recent statistics showed the economic recovery in that community to be one the most dynamic in Canada. It is from this buoyant, job creating community of Sherbrooke, with over
150,000	residents that the economic situation is assessed and statistics prepared. My riding which, as I said, is located in the immediate vicinity of Sherbrooke, is an indirect victim of this prosperity in the sense that, to determine entrance requirements to qualify for unemployment insurance benefits, the statistics concerning Sherbrooke totally misrepresent the whole situation to the point that, in Asbestos and surrounding areas, the rate of unemployemnt is actually in the order of 35 per cent, and even 38, 39 and 40 per cent. At some 60 or 70 miles from Asbestos, the rate of unemployment is much or rather substantially lower, which directly contributes, you will agree with me, Mr. Speaker, to penalizing heavily all of those earning their living from, and depending on the activities related to asbestos, textiles and shoe manufacturing.
I will conclude, Mr. Speaker, by saying that, after all the time taken by the Government to supposedly ponder the matter and fully understand the situation, it was quite a disappointment to see it come up with such an appalling and callous decision for all those men and women hoping for a new direction. I do hope that next polls will once again make the Government realize it is totally off the track and that, unless it comes to its senses, it might not survive the next election.


Mr. Hawkes:: Mr. Speaker, I was looking forward to making a speech this afternoon but I guess that we will soon run out of time. It is almost as if the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East (Mr. Allmand) has been filling in the question and comment period to the point that it is now impossible in terms of time to make a speech.
I sat here throughout the day listening to members of the Opposition, including the Hon. Member who has just spoken, bemoan the fact that Canada does not yet have full employment. Over the past two and a half years I cannot think of a single exception to the following rule. Every time the Government proposes something that is good for the economy and good for job creation it is opposed by members of the Opposition. In this regard I wrote down a short list while listening to other Hon. Members speak. The list is as follows: the Patent Act, free trade, tax reform, transportation reform, agricultural war and what we are doing about it, reducing the deficit, getting rid of the National Energy Program, changing FIR A to Investment Canada, and the selling of Dome to a company which has some money and which can create some activity.

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Every single one of those initiatives created jobs in the country. Every single one is being fought by members of both opposition Parties. It is a bit hypocritical to have to listen to a debate wherein Members opposite challenge the Government for its record in terms of full employment and then turn around day after day and fight everything that can produce jobs for Canadians. It is time to call a spade a spade and to make the point that I have made.
In terms of unemployment insurance, it is an astounding phenomenon to me as chairman of the committee which reported to the House on March 19 the degree to which business had a knee-jerk reaction to its report. I think it is fair to say that every single national business organization in the country condemned the report of the standing committee. I suggest to the House that they did so out of ignorance rather than out of solid knowledge about what was contained in the report. I think that has created a dilemma for the Government.
The owners of the fund, as the committee makes clear, are the businesses in the country which contribute premiums and the workers who also contribute premiums. They really own the fund.
In light of the very solid position of labour on one side and business on the other, with labour saying that the report of the Forget Commission is terrible while the standing committee's report is great and business saying that the Forget Commission report is great but the standing committee's report is much less than great and is terrible, will the Hon. Member tell us on which side he wants the Government to come down on, the labour side or the business side? Or does he want it to come down somewhere in between, somewhere like: "Let's continue the dialogue. Let's make no major changes at this point until we can get business and labour together at a table to quit taking firm positions and start to talk to each other about what the country needs"?
The committee said that the country needs a labour force adjustment mentality, that the workers of the country want jobs and they want to work. They want careers. They need to be insured against rapid technological change and against the changing patterns around the world. Business took the view with respect to Forget, which is an historical Liberal view, that unemployment insurance is basically an income supplement plan. What view does the Hon. Member have? He stood in the Chamber and said that the Government did the wrong thing. Let him tell us what he believes the right thing might have been.


Alain Tardif: Mr. Speaker, my colleague is asking a question which is somewhat similar to that which the Minister of State for Youth (Mr. Charest) put last week to the Hon. Member for Montreal-Sainte-Marie (Mr. Malepart) when he said: What would you do in our place? My colleague from Montreal-Sainte-Marie replied: It is rather like someone who goes to see a lawyer who asks him: "What
do you want me to do?" It is quite simple, he will hire another lawyer. This is what Canadians will soon be doing .
This being so, you told us that amendments to the Patent legislation concerning drugs would create jobs by the thousands. I am still waiting for them. The government has taken the same approach we have seen with respect to farming problems in Western Canada. They say: "Listen, the small ones have to disappear, but we encourage and support the biggest ones because they soon will be creating jobs in the place of the small ones which will no longer exist.
Mr. Speaker when I was elected in 1984, there were so many people in my constituency; today, there are 1,500 or
2,000	less. Where have they gone? I say that the Government is responsible and this is the reason why Canadians trusted you. You were supposed to create jobs in the regions. And at present, your performance is quite dismal in that respect.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, 780,000 jobs in two and a half years is not bad compared to the loss of jobs under the previous Government. We have been creating jobs at three times the previous rate. They are full-time jobs and not part-time jobs. The policies which members of the Opposition are fighting day after day in this Chamber are policies which the country needs. They are working. Employment is coming, and it is coming at a rapid rate. If we were to get a little co-operation from Members opposite from time to time, employment would come at an even more rapid rate.
I wish to ask the Hon. Member opposite about the issue of abuse. In my view the biggest abuser of unemployment insurance today is business. When we really dig into the fund and consider the degree to which the data with respect to the record of employment are fudged or inaccurate, then it seems to me that the biggest abuse is on the business side of the ledger as opposed to the individual side of the ledger. Does the Hon. Member opposite care to comment on that?
j Translation]


Alain Tardif: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for his question because it allows me to emphasize one aspect. I have been in politics for eight years and out of a thousand cases of unemployment insurance that I see in my office, I would say that 950 involve men and women acting on good faith. The unemployment insurance professionals, as I call them, never come to see me because they have no problem. It was alarming to hear the Minister state last week that he is going to tighten the control and supervision mechanism. In fact, I approve such a step. But the innocent you will victimize with those systems are the real problem, the reality you would have seen had you kept in close touch with the people, because you are not hurting the unemployment insurance professionals and you will never hurt them with such measures.
In conclusion, I personally endorse all measures that would tend to penalize those who abuse the system, but you must keep giving benefits to those who need unemployment
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insurance, those who need training. It is a matter of regional development survival.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, I too wish to put a question to the Hon. Member. We just heard the Hon. Member for Calgary West (Mr. Hawkes), who was Chairman of the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration, point out that business abuses the Unemployment Insurance Program in terms of record of employment. Does the Hon. Member not think that it would have been wiser for the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Bouchard) to have implemented the recommendations of the standing committee with respect to the record of employment rather than dodging the issue by having more discussions with employers and employees about how to improve the record of employment? The Minister has in front of him specific recommendations with respect to how to improve the whole record of employment process. The Minister has dodged it. Does the Hon. Member not think that the Minister could have been more courageous in implementing those recommendations rather than showing cowardice and avoiding the issue by undertaking further studies and discussions with employers and employees?


Alain Tardif: Indeed, Mr. Speaker, I too wish more consideration had been given to the recommendations of that committee, all the more so since it must be understood in this debate that there were NDP and Liberal committee members but the majority of members were Progressive Conservative, Mr. Speaker. The committee had a majority of people who had to have the ear of the Minister. They have just been given a slap on the face by their minister who is telling them: "You made your homework, but it does not impress me." Brushing the work aside, the Minister has simply ridiculed them. I cannot understand how you can just sit there in front, as a gang of do-nothings, without any reaction. You lack guts. You are not very courageous, because if you had the least bit of courage, you would tell your Minister: "Hold it, fellow. We believed in parliamentary reform, but you will deliver and take into account the examination we made."


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The debate will proceed with the Hon. Member for Jonquiere (Mr. Blackburn).


Mr. Jean-Pierre Blackburn (Jonquiere):: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to take part today in this debate on the motion tabled by my colleague in the opposition, the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East (Mr. Allmand), regarding the reform of unemployment insurance.
I wanted to take part in this debate because the Hon. Member worked with us on the report of the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration concerning unemployment insurance.
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Mr. Speaker, what is the Hon. Member of the Official Opposition proposing in his motion? He says:
That this House condemn the Government for its failure to initiate meaningful
reform in the unemployment insurance system and for its failure to commit
itself to a full employment, youth unemployment, part-time work and labour
market adjustement.
That is the motion from the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East. He is condemning the Government for failing to initiate meaningful reform in the unemployement insurance system. Really, Mr. Speaker, what I perceive in this motion is some frustration on the part of the Hon. Member. He is frustrated because the recommandations contained in the report of the standing committee have not been accepted entirely by the Government.
I understand why the Hon. Member is unhappy to see that all of our recommendations have not been accepted by the Government. I too, Mr. Speaker, worked on that committee. We each have spent may be a hundred hours studying the Forget Report and the minority opinions. We have met with some 50 groups of witnesses. We fought each other to have our views accepted by the standing committee, or to have them endorsed in a consensus. And above all, members of the three Parties, New Democrats, Liberals and Tory Government members, attempted together and succeeded in reaching a consensus on 89 of the 90 recommendations of the Hawkes Report.
That was some achievement, Mr. Speaker. We could have done what the Forget Commission did and submitted three reports to the Government: one report for the New Democratic Party, one for the Liberal Party, and one for the Government Party, the Conservative Party. And even possibly individual reports too. We could have done that, Mr. Speaker. It would have been quite different. But no, Mr. Speaker, we managed to reach an agreement and a consensus on 89 of the 90 recommendations.
The Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East is disappointed and frustrated to see that our work was not acknowledged. However, Mr. Speaker, I believe that the Hon. Member should instead be proud and satisfied to see that a major recommendation of our report, the standing committee report, the Hawkes Report, was acknowledged and accepted by the Government. Yes, Mr. Speaker, there was a recommendation or a kind of preamble in our report which said that our committee opposed in the strongest terms the implementation of the annualization formula of the Forget Commission.
It was an extremely important suggestion, Mr. Speaker, and it was accepted by the Government. The viewpoint of the standing committee on that matter was upheld.
With respect to the Government accepting our point of view in the report, I think that the annualization formula was in itself worth all our efforts in the standing committee, because the annualization formula meant for all practical purposes that unemployment insurance benefits were to be cut in half.

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What the Forget Commission advocated, Mr. Speaker, was that the income of claimants should be determined on an annual basis. Let us take for instance a worker who earns $400 per week and works for a period of 26 weeks because he is seasonally employed. The unemployment benefit payments to that worker after that period of 26 weeks at work would normally amount to 60 per cent of his income, or $240 per week. With the annualization formula presented by the Forget Commission, we would have brought the amount of $400 a week on an annual basis, which would have meant that the person would have earned $200 a week since it would have been on an annual basis. Sixty per cent of $200 a week equals $120. You see the difference for those who are unfortunately on unemployment insurance. Instead of having $240 as before, they would have seen their income fall to $120.
Accepting the annualization formula would have had disastrous effects in some areas, namely in those which have a strong touristic potential. It would have had serious consequences for seasonal workers, fishermen, etc. Moreover, it would have transferred the bill to the provinces. This is why, as members of the standing committee, we must be pleased that this recommendation was rejected, as recommended by our committee.
Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind my colleagues and more particularly the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East (Mr. Allmand) that the positions of business people and of unions were completely opposed. They were even polarized in the debate. On the one hand, business people were looking favourably at the Forget Commission Report, but it was not the case for the unions which simply rejected it. As far as the report of our standing committee is concerned, positions were simply reversed, Mr. Speaker. What could we do then? Accept the first report and reject the second one? Or accept the second report and reject the first? There is something worse than an imperfect status quo on unemployment insurance, namely to make a reform leading to social chaos.
However I agree with my colleague, particularly, as a Member from a region with a high unemployment rate, that some job creating proposals should have been implemented concerning, for instance, work sharing and lump sum payments to claimants wishing to start a business. I was hoping for that kind of recommendation, Mr. Speaker, but I still hope that some of them will be implemented at a more appropriate time.
As I was saying earlier we have reached a consensus on 89 of the 90 recommendations of the standing committee's report. Mr. Speaker I am the one who broke the consensus on one of them, recommendation No. 17, which stated:
That pension income not be treated as earned salary during a benefit period.
It meant that we had to go back to the situation prevailing two years ago when pension income was not considered as an income for unemployment insurance purposes. Mr. Speaker, we know perfectly well that this Government will not accept it, so why should we give false hopes to early retirees? I refused
to accept it because the new pension policy had been implemented since January 1986 and had already created problems because those who had gone into early retirement had "misinterpreted" the rules. Workers who retired before January 5, 1986 thought that they would be entitled to unemployment insurance for a year, and rightly so. And Mr. Speaker, we should have gone back a year and a half. What were the people supposed to do from January 5, 1986 until the adoption of the new legislation? Can you imagine the confusion it would have created among early retirees when all this had been clearly announced and all Canadians are aware, since January 5, 1986, that pension income is considered as income?
So, I opposed this recommendation because I refuse to create false expectations. It is not true that I could be made to vote in committee for something contrary to my conscience and which would create false expectations.
Going back to the Opposition motion, Mr. Speaker, that motion implies that this Government has no full employment policy, that it does not seem to contemplate any action in that direction. 1 suggest that a few statistics are in order if we are to adopt the proper perspective. Since our election on September 1984, we have created 778,000 jobs in Canada according to figures and more than 80 per cent of those jobs were full time employment compared with a reverse 80 per cent parttime jobs for the previous Government. Of those 778 000 jobs, 427 000 were for women. The national unemployment rate decreased from 11.7 per cent to 9.3 per cent. There is still work to be done of course. But we are fully aware of it and we will keep on working to achieve full employment.
As far as young people are concerned, as recently as yesterday, I received in my office a 22-year-old young man who came to see me for a job. He is one of those persons who have problems finding their way into the labour market. It is never easy meeting with unemployed in search of the job they want to regain their self-esteem and achieve their full potential in our society. I will spare you the details about that young man. Yesterday, for instance, I saw a 22 year old who had finished Grade 11. When we look at the employment opportunities in regions like ours, when companies like Alcan, Abitibi-Price and Cascade are no longer hiring but introducing new technology and reducing the number of jobs, it is definitely something to be concerned about. We have to start asking ourselves what kind of focus we want to give our regional economy so these young people can develop their potential and get the jobs to which they are entitled. And that is why I still believe in the concept of job sharing, something for which I fought as a member of the standing committee. What good does it do to work 40 hours a week when the Government takes our taxes to pay some unfortunate who has to stay home and who would much rather have a job and develop his own potential? I think our big corporations will have to take this step some day. Why not take advantage of the situation to improve the lives of Canadians and give young people and older workers who lose their jobs because of technological
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change a chance to have the jobs they need to support their families and continue to develop their potential in our society.
Mr. Speaker, to get back to the figures, we have created
778,000	jobs, and I repeat, the unemployment rate is 9.3 per cent. So there is still a lot to be done, and that is why we need the Opposition's help to get the unemployment rate down even further, but not systematic opposition to our proposals. I wonder how much time Opposition Members have made us waste in some committees, voicing objections as a matter of principle. That is what happens, and that is when reforming the standing committees becomes important, Mr. Speaker.
We have been told we have no comprehensive policy. I beg to differ. Unlike the previous Government, we have dispensed with the shortsighted policy that consists in creating short term jobs. Our predecessors' only concern was the unemployment rate in the here and now. They ignored the structural and cyclical aspects of the economy and the specific needs of the various regions in this country. Mr. Speaker, I heard one of our Members referring earlier to Toronto, where the need for unemployment insurance was not that great.
I may remind Hon. Members that Canada is more than just cities like Toronto. There are regions like the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean where the unemployment rate is not 4 or 5 per cent but 12 and 14 per cent, most of the time. In Toronto there may be some newspapers that have employment sections 30 pages long, which is not the case in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean. We have to consider the situation across this country. And across this country, there are regions that are disadvantaged. There is regional disparity, and we must take that into account.
This Government has dropped the concept of short term measures and opted for a long term policy. Long term employment means employment that requires adequate preparation and training that is relevant to the job. Hence our jobs strategy program.
For the first time, our country has a national policy based on a consensus of social and economic experts and involving specific goals to ensure that specific clients are provided with the skills required for their involvement in the labour market. Mr. Speaker, I am not going to take up too much time dealing with those objectives. Let me just deal with one of them.
The Canadian Jobs Strategy meets the needs of people who are most in need of a job. It is an innovative strategy which recognizes the fundamental relationship which should exist between training and employment creation. Its goal is to give people who need it most the means to find their way into the labour market, on the occasion of their first experience of the labour market or when they are forced to train into another job or to take a new direction in their career.
Mr. Speaker, here are those client groups. Young people, young men and women who have difficulties finding their way into the labour market, because of the usual Catch 22: no job without experience, no experience without a job; women who wish to become gainfully employed after being away from the
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labour market for a long time; workers whose employment is threatened by the evolution of technologies or of markets; workers in communities affected by an economic slowdown when there are signs of a possible recovery; and students who need to earn money to complete their education, and I think our Challenge Program speaks for itself in this respect: $180 million this year for the Student Employment Program. And every year, Mr. Speaker, we reject requests by companies and private businesses, non-profit organizations and others. Many more requests than we can cater for. That is an indication that the program is efficient and effective. Finally, people whose professional activity may improve the workings of the labour market.
During the last financial year, actions taken under the Canadian Jobs Strategy have resulted in the involvement of over 450,000 people, or 5 per cent of our labour market. That is an achievement which would not even have been dreamed of by the Government of which the sponsor of the motion before us today was a Member.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, I shall not vote for the motion introduced by the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace- Lachine East (Mr. Allmand). I would only like to say that if the Opposition showed the least interest in the Canadian people, it would not introduce this kind of motion and would co-operate with the present Government to bring about some improvements to the programs already in place and whatever measures we intend to introduce for the Canadian people.


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, time is running and unfortunately, I will probably not have enough time to take part in this debate. 1 would therefore take advantage of our rules to put a question to the Hon. Member who just spoke in this debate on a motion introduced by my colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East (Mr. Allmand). He has rightly blamed the Government for its failure to initiate meaningful reform in the unemployment insurance system and especially for its failure to commit itself to a full employment policy that seriously addresses high regional unemployment, youth unemployment, as well as labour market adjustments.
When we deal with regional unemployment, it seems that the Government tries to have us believe that it is responsible for the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs. It is a fact, however, that there are still some one million unemployed in Canada and that some regions are affected more than others. The further we go from the main centres of Toronto and Montreal, the more unemployment there is. Today, the daily Le Devoir had this title: "Ottawa withdraws from regional development. A reorganization plan proposed by the federal Government would mean the end of direct involvement of the central Government in the regions."
I would like the Hon. Member who just spoke to explain to us why the Conservative Government is preparing to abandon in such a manner the remote and under-developed regions. It is

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quite obvious that if we let the market decide, the companies will set up shop in the large urban centres and the regions with strong economies. A department of regional development, which gives incentives to companies settling outside large urban centres, is essential to balance opportunities among Canadian workers. If this program is approved by the Government, workers in remote areas of Canada will have no other choice but to move to the large urban centres of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver to find work. This appears to me as very unfair to the regions.
After the announcement by the Minister, who promised so much about the unemployment insurance system and gives us so little, we are wondering where the Conservative Government is going. We must remember that upon taking office, the Conservatives vowed to reduce the unemployment insurance system to a bare minimum. They said in November 1984 that they would give new leadership to Canada. However, we had to wait until July 1985 to see the Forget Commission created. That Commission has only served to exacerbate the various opinions found in the country about unemployment insurance, rather than rallying new converts to the Conservative Government philosophy.
And we now realize, after all those months, after those $7,000 million spent on an inquiry, we find that the former chairman of the Commons standing committee on employment, manpower and immigration, the Hon. Member from Alberta, expresses one view, while the Hon. Member for the Toronto area, who chairs the Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs, expresses another view-total confusion among Conservative Members on that matter. Now, at a time when we realize the Minister really has no policy and he has been wasting our time for two years, it seems quite normal that the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East (Mr. Allmand) complains about this Government's lack of action and especially about the possibility that this government drop a regional development policy that is absolutely essential if we are to improve employment in the most remote areas of the country.


Jean-Pierre Blackburn: Mr. Speaker, I realize the Hon. Member for Papineau (Mr. Ouellet) very rapidly draws conclusions. He should be cautious with newspaper reports.
I would like to take this opportunity, Mr. Speaker, and as it happens I have here a letter to all Members of the House, not only Progressive Conservative Members but all Members of the House of Commons, dated May 11, 1987, from Lawrence O'Neil, chairman of the committee of the House on private legislation. Here is what he has to say:
"The Standing Committee on Regional Industrial Expansion will be undertaking over the next few days an in-depth study of the Regional Industrial Development Program (RIDP), which hopefully should lead to the tabling of a report in the House of Commons by the end of June, 1987. Should the proceedings of that Committee on that program which is of critical importance for many areas of the country be of interest
to you, I would invite you to contact one of your party's representatives on the Committee, the list of permanent Members being as follows". And in the case of the Liberal Party, it is Mr. Tobin. All this, Mr. Speaker, to say that as far as I am concerned, as a Member from an area such as Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, as the Member for Jonquiere, on a number of occasions I expressed to the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion my disappointment at the current rules respecting grants paid out to certain industries in the regions. The current rules discriminate against some regions, and I have a quite recent case, Mr. Speaker, which I would like to bring to your attention.
The said business, Fenetres Polico in Jonquieres, a new venture which will be making PVC windows, has asked a grant to the Department of Regional industrial Expansion, but its application has been rejected because it was told that such a business would jeopardize sales of others making traditional windows made of wood or aluminium. However, according to experts, it would have been an excellent business with a new technology and a great potential. Here we have a business with an extremely promising future that could create hundreds of jobs but its application is turned down. But other applications coming from centres such as Montreal and Toronto where funds are easily obtainable will probably be approved.
That is an example of things that must change. We have to see to it that such industries can get off the ground in our regions and help them do so. But fortunately there is nevertheless a good side to this story. The industry got off the ground by itself and is now doing very well, and that is why we as a Government have to help our industries get started, especially in remote, disadvantaged areas.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Papineau (Mr. Ouellet) for a brief supplementary question.


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, I sympathize with the Hon. Member. He is perfectly right to say that the system as presently operated by his Conservative Government is not working as well as it could. I am glad that an industry in his region had the guts to get off the ground by itself without the help of a subsidy from this Government.
There is something I want to tell the Hon. Member, and I ask him to think about it. When the Department of Regional Industrial Development was created, the first to hold this portfolio was the Hon. Jean Marchand. It was especially established for the specific purpose of helping to create jobs in remote regions of the country. It is a Department with a definite job creating vocation away from the major urban centres, and for years and years, that Department provided small, medium-sized and large corporations with a great many subsidies to set up shop away from the major economic centres of the country, so as to create jobs for young and not so young Canadians in remote regions of the country. Now, not only do we know that the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion has been paralysed for years and is no longer pursuing its
May 19, 1987

original goal, but we hear from the Minister that the Government is planning to get rid of his Department and stop giving subsidies to create jobs in remote areas. Is it not the opinion of the Hon. Member that abandoning such a program would be a serious mistake?


James Douglas Manly: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe the time for questions and answers is over, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Yes, but I think we should allow the Hon. Member a short reply before going on with debate.


James Douglas Manly: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member gave a lengthy reply to a lengthy question before you allowed the previous Hon. Member to go on at some length. It is time to close off the debate. I believe I should have the floor.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, in defence of the Chair, I believe the Chair is allowed to see the time as the Chair sees it, not as the Hon. Member from the NDP sees it.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I think we should allow the Hon. Member for Jonquiere (Mr. Blackburn) to make a short reply, and then we will proceed with debate.


Jean-Pierre Blackburn: Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the Hon. Member for Papineau (Mr. Ouellet) that this is a great opportunity for him to indicate what policies he would like the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion to implement, and that he should do it now, not later, so that we might learn about them and find out what his position really is in this debate.


James Douglas Manly: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate having the opportunity to close off this important debate this afternoon. I would like to express appreciation to the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace- Lachine East (Mr. Allmand) for having introduced the motion, and I would like to begin by asking when the Government will bring in for debate Bill C-50, the Bill that would redress the ill-considered, ill-advised and unjust measures that were put in place in 1985 and that discriminated against pensioners. We want to see that injustice redressed.
I would like to emphasize the importance of this issue, and perhaps a good way of doing that would be to refer to a Canadian film I saw the other night, John and the Missus, starring Gordon Pinsent. The film deals with the implications of a mine closure in Newfoundland. If Hon. Members had a chance to see that film, they would feel something of the hurt that individuals, families and whole communities feel when a single-industry town is destroyed.
I grew up in the 1940s and my father was a seasonal worker. Some years he had enough stamps to collect unemployment
Supply
insurance and other years he did not. Whether he was able to collect unemployment insurance or not made all the difference to our family's Christmas and to our standard of living. The importance of unemployment insurance to many families in many communities cannot be underestimated. That is particularly the case for seasonal workers.
It is sometimes easy for people who have never missed a pay cheque to think that seasonal workers with their dependence upon the unemployment insurance system are ripping the system off. Yet the basic primary industries on which the Canadian economy depends, forestry, fishing, construction and agriculture, are all industries that are to a large extent seasonal. Canada depends upon these industries, these industries depend upon seasonal workers, and seasonal workers depend upon unemployment insurance. Yet these are the very people who were the major target of the Forget Commission's recommendation that there be a system of annualization which would reduce the benefits these people bring home. The elimination of regional benefits and the phasing out of benefits for fishermen and their families would affect seasonal workers, the people who were targeted by the Forget Commission.
The Government did the right thing in rejecting those recommendations, but we must ask why it appointed someone like Dr. Forget to head that commission in the first place.


John R. Rodriguez: A Liberal.


James Douglas Manly: My friend says that they appointed a Liberal. I suppose that when they really want cut-backs, they know where to go to get them.
Those recommendations of the Forget Commission were refused by two committees of the House, the Labour, Employment and Immigration Committee and the Fisheries and Oceans Committee. Members of the Fisheries and Oceans Committee heard testimony from the workers and workers' organizations about the importance of unemployment insurance. We recognized that there were changes that could be made, yet we saw this major threat of the Forget Commission recommendation to eliminate regional benefits. We brought in a very simple report saying: "Don't touch the fishermen's program, don't accept this recommendation for annualization and don't eliminate regional benefits".
The Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration took a much more comprehensive view. Not only did it reject those major recommendations of the Forget Commission but it went on to devise a program of unemployment insurance that was much more responsive to the needs of Canadian working men and women. In some cases, what the committee said corresponded with some of the more minor recommendations of the Forget Commission. Unfortunately, not only did the Government reject the recommendations of the Forget Commission that were wrong but it refused to touch any of the recommendations at all.

May 19, 1987
Adjournment Debate
As my colleague, the Hon. Member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Rodriguez), has pointed out, some 22 of the 90 recommendations of the standing committee were right in line with the Forget Commission recommendations. Yet the Government refused to deal with them. These recommendations would have helped deal with unemployed workers who need further training or want some help starting small businesses.
1 and many other Members have had many unemployed workers come to us with a great desire to use their time of unemployment in a constructive way. They want to further their education or perhaps to start small businesses. They do not simply want to be on the dole. Yet the present restrictive unemployment insurance policy does not allow them to use their time constructively. Our recommendations would have allowed for that, but the Government chose not to act on them.
The Government did not act on the recommendation for some kind of assistance for older workers. Again, certainly in my constituency and in many other parts of Canada which are dependent upon single-resource industries where those resources are in trouble, there are many older workers who need desperately some kind of additional assistance over and above that which the present program provides. The Government has chosen not to act there.
The Government could have eliminated the waiting period for maternity benefits. On a number of areas on which there was consensus, the Government has chosen not to act. We must ask why this is so.
In the minute I have left, I would like to emphasize that the primary problem is not with the Unemployment Insurance Program but with the lack of jobs in Canada. The Government is not addressing that problem in the way it should. It has cut back on regional programs, on job-creation programs and on several Departments. For example, it is refusing to fund adequately the small craft harbours to maintain infrastructure for fishermen and tourism and to provide jobs. Small craft harbours will be closed down because of the programs of this Government which refuses to see the need to maintain basic infrastructures and keep basic jobs for a vibrant economy. I lay that upon the Government. I ask it to take a second look at the recommendations of the standing committee and bring in a UI proposal which will be responsive to the real needs of the Canadian people.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: It being six o'clock, it is my duty to inform the House that pursuant to Standing Order 82(12) proceedings on the motion have now expired.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 66 deemed to have been moved.

Mr. Andrew Witer (Parkdale-High Park):: Mr. Speaker, on April 1 I directed a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark) with regard to the listing of honorary Baltic consuls in the External Affairs directory of diplomatic, consular and other representatives in Canada. The Minister responded that the question was under review by his Department.
This matter has been in limbo since 1972 and clearly should have long since been resolved. For 10 years prior to 1972 the consuls were listed in the directory and it was only on the death of the acting Honorary Consul General of Estonia that year that the listing of the consuls were removed from the directory.
The federal Government has received countless representations from the Estonian Central Council in Canada, the Latvian Federation in Canada, the Lithuanian Canadian Community, the Captive Nations Committee in Canada and the Baltic Federation, yet their efforts have produced no results. Despite Canada's de jure nonrecognition of the illegal occupation of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by the Soviet Union, the Baltic consuls are still not listed as the representatives of the pre-Soviet occupation, freely and democratically elected governments of the Baltic States.
Over the years there have been many answers given as to who is responsible for the listings. On different occasions the Baltic communities have been informed that the listing is at the discretion of the Secretary of State for External Affairs, that the responsibility lies with the Parliament of Canada in persuading the Secretary of State for External Affairs to list the Baltic consuls, that the question of listing of Baltic consuls must be decided by the Cabinet, and that the question of listing the Baltic consuls should be decided by the inner Cabinet.
With all these conflicting responses, it is small wonder that the Baltic communities are left confused and concerned as to how this matter can be resolved when it cannot even be established who is responsible. In the past, two Secretaries of State for External Affairs have commissioned reports to study the issue, neither of which were ever made public. The Minister's assurance that the issue is under review can therefore be of little comfort to the Baltic communities.
In discussions with representatives of the Department of External Affairs, representatives have been told that the listings would have a negative effect on "other areas". Such statements have led to the conclusion that the Department of
May 19, 1987

External Affairs is concerned that the listing of consuls would anger the Soviet Union and, consequently, allows that fear to determine our policy on this important matter.
There are those in our Department of External Affairs who advocate that Canada should not do anything to ruffle the feathers of the U.S.S.R. They always recommend the path of least resistance and are proverbial fence-sitters. Such a position is an abrogation and betrayal of our principles as a free and democratic sovereign nation. For us to appease a morally bankrupt Soviet regime, whose only trumps are a mighty military apparatus, an aggressive stance toward the rest of the world, and their traditionally arrogant rhetoric, would constitute a betrayal of all those who gave their lives for freedom and democracy, all those who came to this country believing that Canada was a country which stands for fundamental freedom and human rights, including respect of territorial integrity and the right of self-determination.
If Canada continues to sit on the fence by refusing to list Baltic consuls, the Soviets will tell the people of the Baltic States that while Canada pays lip service to the principle of withholding de jure recognition of the captivity of their countries, in practice Canada has conceded Soviet sovereignty and Soviet right to enforce its illegal annexation. This is a discredit to our entire system of government.
The United States already accords the Baltic consuls full diplomatic recognition. It has led the way, and Australia has followed its lead by recognizing the honorary consul of the Latvian consulate.
The time for Canada to act is now. I urge Canada to stand up and be counted. I urge the Minister to list the Baltic consuls in the External Affairs directory of diplomatic, consular, and other representatives in Canada. In doing so, we demonstrate our continuing commitment to the principles and purpose of the United Nations Charter and to the cause of peace and freedom in the world. By our action, we will be sending out a message to oppressive regimes throughout the world that our principles are not and will not be for sale.
Given that the issue of listing Baltic consuls has already undergone at least two previous reviews, and in light of the decision by Australia to accord recognition to the honorary consul for Latvia, will the Minister now agree to take advantage of the opportunity to once and for all put an end to continuous studies on this matter and restore the listing of the Baltic consuls?


Mr. Jean-Guy Hudon (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State for External Affairs):: On behalf of the Government, Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to state Canada's policy with respect to the Baltic States, namely Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Every Canadian Government since 1940 has firmly refused to give de jure recognition to the forced annexation of these countries by the U.S.S.R. However Canada does give de
Adjournment Debate
facto recognition to their incorporation into the Soviet Union since the latter country exercises authority. The refusal of Canada to give de jure recognition to the annexation of the Baltic States goes far beyond mere words and includes measures which underscore the special status of the Baltic States as independent nations illegally annexed by the U.S.S.R. during World War II.
The Government allows the acting honorary consuls of the Baltic States to continue exercising their duties in Canada, although it does not formaly recognize them since honorary consuls are not appointed by a government with which Canada maintains diplomatic or consular relations. These consuls are Canadian citizens and for this reason have no immunity nor diplomatic privileges. Canadian ambassadors do not travel in the Baltic States.
As much as possible, other Canadian officials who do travel there avoid all contacts with local authorities. For purposes of Canadian passport and immigration documents, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania remain acceptable as references for places of birth. Since Baltic passports do not guarantee reentry into Baltic countries, Canadian legislation does not consider them acceptable for admission to Canada. This is why extraordinary procedures have been adopted to clear the way for admission to Canada of Baltic representatives of other countries who come here in the discharge of their duties. These measures prove that Canada continues to reject the legality of Soviet control over Baltic countries, a fact which Soviet authorities have duly noted. The Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark) has already advised the House that he is reviewing the question of adding the names of Baltic acting honorary consuls in the publication of the Department of External Affairs entitled "Diplomatic Corps and Consular and Other Representatives in Canada". The Minister is fully aware of the views expressed in this respect by the Baltic community in Canada; he will give particular consideration to them and to the general implications of such a decision for Canada's foreign policy.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I can assure the House that the Government of Canada does not intend to change this policy under which it does not give de jure recognition to the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States.


CANADIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION-APPOINTMENT OF ANTONIO ARCANGEL TO HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION. REQUEST FOR INVESTIGATION OF APPOINTEE
Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, I am rising to object to the Government's cavalier and callous appointment of those people who would represent our country on the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
The House will recall that my specific question related to the case of one Antonio Arcangel who was appointed by the Government to sit on the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, even though he had given a public interview in which he supported the long-term imposition of martial law in the

May 19, 1987
Adjournment Debate
Philippines. He basically suggested that life in the Philippines was good during the tenure of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos but had deteriorated since the arrival of Corazon Aquino.
As a result of my intervention in the House, the appointee subsequently withdrew from consideration but, at the same time, we witnessed the ridiculous situation of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Hnatyshyn) suggesting to the House that it was the fault of the Opposition or, in some way, my fault because I had brought the facts surrounding Mr. Arcangel's appointment to the attention of the public via the Question Period process.
We see today a second appointee, another one of these rather questionable Conservative appointments to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in the form of an appointee in the Yukon who gave an interview in the local press, making some comments suggesting that the native community was living at the expense of other taxpayers for the last number of years. When this question was raised in the House today and in committee, the Minister not only refused to expedite the investigation, but proceeded to suggest that it was perhaps all right in the interim because this particular individual might not be appointed to hear a human rights case.
As a result of the Arcangel case and subsequent cases which have been repeatedly brought to the attention of the Minister, who seems bent on appointing Tory hacks who have no interest in human rights and who in fact have shown to our committee that they not only are not interested in human rights but do not even understand the basic question of equality, the Minister should come forward with some specific recommendations to ensure that people who are appointed by this Government, or any government, to rule on matters of a quasi judicial nature-which is what we see in terms of human rights rulings-have a demonstrated competence in the area of human rights. The Minister should also be prepared to act quickly and expeditiously when problems are brought to his attention.
The Minister in the past has doctored resumes, removing, for example, in the case of Progressive Conservative appointees, any reference to their affiliation to the Conservative Party. Through his own Department, he has been involved with or condoned meetings which were set up in the Privy Council Office to brief appointees so that they knew exactly how to respond to members of the committee. Further, when matters such as the case of Flo Whyard in the Yukon are brought to his attention, as it was by letter more than a month ago, the Minister seems unprepared to act.
It seems a shame that Members of this House, either through Question Period or through committee, have to repeatedly bring to the attention of the Minister and the Government individual cases of concern with respect to human rights appointees. Quite clearly, it is the responsibility of the Minister and the Government to ensure that an objective
process is put in place to ensure quality appointees to the Human Rights Tribunal.
That was not the case in the Arcangel situation. Certainly the Minister has dragged his heels with respect to concerns raised about the statements made in a newspaper article entitled "The Problem of Handouts", which was actually written by a human rights appointee. The so-called investigation the Minister plans to carry out has been dragging. The newspaper article was published in February. The Minister today in committee attempted to defend the potential for further delays by suggesting that perhaps this appointee might not hear tribunal hearings.
It seems to me that the Minister is not prepared to show leadership in this area, which has in fact been hailed around the world as an exemplary human rights process. The tribunal and the commission have been set in place. Over the last decade in Canada we have developed a forum for Canadians to bring forth grievances, whether they be in employment or with respect to sexual orientation. Of course, in the area of sexual orientation we certainly need further definition and clarification from the Minister. That process is now being threatened because the Minister has continually and repeatedly refused to set down a series of objective criteria for the appointment of officers and commissioners for the purpose of hearing complaints.
If the Minister does not act expeditiously in the case of Whyard, and if the Minister continues to shirk his responsibility as he did in the case of Arcangel, then, unfortunately, the whole human rights process in Canada will be undermined. As a result, what was in fact an exemplary system which was written about and exhibited throughout the world as a stellar example of human rights development will be destroyed. I think the responsibility for that destruction lies squarely on the shoulders of the Minister of Justice who has repeatedly shown that he is not interested in appointing quality members to the Human Rights Commission but, rather, is interested in using the tribunal as a resting place for old Tory hacks.


Mr. Francois Gerin (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member knows what are delays, because she raised that question in the House in November 1986. About three months ago, she had asked for 10 minutes of the time of the House to make the very same remarks she just made, but she did not come forward and thus wasted 10 minutes of our time. Here she is now, three months later, saying the Government is taking too much time to proceed. It is the people on that side when they were in office who delayed for too long. The Hon. Member is accusing the Government of not acting properly in appointing the members of that tribunal. The Liberals were in office for 20 years. They made appointments without ever consulting anyone. And what did we do? We said: "Our
May 19, 1987

appointments will be submitted afterwards to a committee of the House for a full public examination."
That is an initiative our government has taken, contrary to the Liberal government which did nothing for 20 years and practised shameless and excessive patronage. About Mr. Arcangel, Mr. Speaker, let me quote from a telegram he sent the Minister of Justice in November 1986:

-I am hereby withdrawing my name from the list of human rights tribunal panel because Ms. Sheila Copps unfair remarks and unjust allegations have seriously impaired my ability to serve effectively as a member of such a tribunal. I have always been a law-abiding citizen and a firm believer in a democratic process. My efforts as a member of Canada's multicultural society have always been to promote the cause of human rights and equal opportunity.

And the telegram does not end there.
So I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that respect for human rights should start with the Hon. Member for Hamilton East (Ms. Copps). She should behave in such a way that the Canadian public understand that Members of Parliament should be the first and foremost to respect human rights. In this case, the Hon. Member has disregarded Mr. Arcangel's most fundamental rights. And today, almost eight months later, a big fuss is to be made of it.
Therefore, I find her blameworthy and I am laying the blame on her, where it belongs. I would like to hear her comments on that aspect of the issue. And I would ask her not to try to take advantage of every possible circumstance and to slant the facts, Mr. Speaker.


CANADA MORTGAGE AND HOUSING CORPORATION-COMPLIANCE WITH RENT CONTROL REGULATIONS
Alan Redway: Mr. Speaker, you may not be aware of it, but there are more senior citizens in my constituency than there are in any other constituency in the country with the exception of Victoria, British Columbia. It is a very stable constituency, a very stable community. Usually, seniors live in their homes for years and years. Some of them go on until they reach the age of 90 or more but, inevitably, as you know, Mr. Speaker, they are forced to sell their homes eventually and to go into apartments.
Usually, Mr. Speaker, this happens when a spouse dies. The surviving spouse, often a widow, finds it very difficult to carry on in the family home. There are difficulties in doing the work that is needed around the house; there are difficulties in finding tradesmen to do the work. At the same time, of course,
Adjournment Debate
expenses are going up. Generally speaking, at that stage, the surviving senior moves into an apartment setting, where someone else looks after the home. It is also at this stage that our seniors can expect to be able to live on the income generated from the proceeds of the sale of the family home, and hopefully, if they are lucky, to have sufficient left over to enable them to live a little better life-style than had been experienced to that point.
All of that is true, Mr. Speaker, before one takes into account inflation-and we all know what happens when inflation hits.
There was a period of time when, for years, we experienced very modest inflation, and then we shot up to double-digit inflation. Of course, when inflation was in the double-digit category, interest rates also increased, so that at least the investments of seniors generated a little more income. But all of that has changed now, with falling interest rates. While falling interest rates are good for the economy, they are bad for the income of seniors. Today we have falling interest rates, with inflation continuing to rise, with the consequent increases in the cost of living: higher food, clothing, and shelter costs.
In my constituency, and in Metropolitan Toronto as a whole, and I expect across the country, rents have risen enormously in the last few years, reaching the stage where senior citizens, and tenants generally, live in fear of receiving the rent renewal notice announcing the inevitable rental increase.
For these people, rents have increased, while their income has either stayed the same, or perhaps even fallen off. Our seniors are finding that the increased cost of living is eating into the capital that they had hoped to retain to keep themselves self-sufficient during their lifetime.
As Hon. Members may be aware, in the Province of Ontario a number of years ago the provincial Government instituted rent controls and a rent review process, to try to control, in some modest manner at least, the impact of inflation on rents. Those controls are subject to a great deal of controversy. Some people contend that they make things worse rather than making them better. But, at the same time, Mr. Speaker, they were put in place to control rents for people who needed that control: seniors on fixed income, or whose incomes were falling.
It is hard enough for seniors living in apartments that are subject to rent review and control in times like this, but there are those who live in apartments that are not subject to such controls, specifically those owned by governments: apartments owned by municipal governments, and apartments owned by the federal Government through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.


Mr. Claude Lanthier (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to respond to the question raised by the Hon. Member for York East (Mr. Redway) on March 27 and tonight.
The issue of affordable housing in Canada is one that has concerned my government ever since we took office almost three years ago.
Following a complete review of all national housing policies, new directions were established that have resulted in far more truly disadvantaged Canadians receiving assistance.
The Main Square Complex, the home for many seniors, disabled and others of modest income which we are talking about tonight, continues to receive our attention and assistance.
Residents of Main Square who will have to renew their leases between July 1987 and June 1988 will experience the lowest rent increase in several years, 6.2 per cent. This level is within both the spirit and intent of the Ontario provincial rental guidelines.
Many of the tenants of Main Square already receive assistance in the form of subsidies if their rent exceeds 25 per cent of their gross income. Should the additional monthly payment result in any tenant exceeding the 25 per cent ceiling, assistance will be made available.
The additional revenue from the rent increases in 1987/88 will allow for a level of maintenance adequate to ensure clean and pleasant surroundings for the tenants while keeping rents at a reasonable level.
Mr. Speaker, my government believes in social justice and in assisting those in need. Main Square is another tangible evidence of our commitment to help the truly disadvantaged, even if it means a small sacrifice on the part of those who can afford it.
May 19, 1987


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House
Adjournment Debate
stands adjourned until tomorrow at two o'clock p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 3(1).
At 6.29 p.m. the House adjourned.

Wednesday, May 20, 1987


[Stage Direction]
Prayers