1987-05-15

Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Mr. Speaker, the latest statistics from the National Council of Welfare illustrate the tragedy of the children of Canada, more than one million of whom are living in poverty. Almost four million Canadians are living in poverty. Yet, to read an interview given by the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Epp) in Faith Today entitled "Saints in Caesar's Household", you would think that people living in poverty choose their lot in life. He says:
We have to recognize that there are those who are poor because of circumstances, but many by their own decisions are where they are.
Are those million children living in poverty where they are by choice? When the Minister was questioned on this issue earlier this week in committee he suggested that abusing families are also there by their own decision. It seems to me that when the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Epp) expresses this kind of attitude in a magazine he should be giving some answers to Canadian people.
The one million Canadian children are not living in poverty by choice. Abusing families are not abusing by choice. There is in fact work which must be done in this area. I frankly hang my head in shame when the Canadian Minister of National Health and Welfare makes a statement like that in a magazine in which he is labeled a saint in Caesar's household.


THE LATE SUZANNE BARUK
Mr. John Oostrom (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, 1 would like to ask Hon. Members to join me in paying tribute to the
memory of Suzanne Baruk, whose life and work have been an inspiration to hundreds of thousands of Canadians and whose thinking has been discussed at length in this House.
The wife of Henri Baruk made a major contribution to philosophy and to developing the Tzedek theory. Believers and agnostics, Semites and goyim, we are all indebted to Suzanne Baruk for her contribution to our civilization and to Western ethics. Canadians remember well her visits to Canada.
We want to express our sincere condolences to the entire Jewish community in Canada and to Professor Henri Baruk, the father of modern psychiatry and of Tzedek: Baruch Dayan 0'Emeth\ May Tzedek continue to shine as a star in our Canadian firmament!


NATIONAL DEFENCE
Mr. Dan Heap (Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, last fall the Government announced an environmental impact hearing on the proposal to build a NATO base at Goose Bay, Labrador. These hearings were scheduled to evaluate the legitimacy of the complaints that low-level flights would have destructive impacts on the environment and the Innu people of Labrador.
In January the Federal Environmental Assessment Review Panel issued interim recommendations that the number of low-level flights not be increased so that no further damage would be done to the environment or to the Innu people prior to the review being completed.
This week, according to news reports, the Department of National Defence showed its contempt for the FEARO process by rejecting that interim recommendation and by having the Minister sign an agreement with the Netherlands Air Force to engage in low-level flight training with the Dutch which will add 10 to 16 aircraft and a great number of daily or weekly flights.
I call upon the Government to stop using environmental hearings as mere public relations gestures, to take seriously the needs of the Innu people, and to stop breaking faith with the Canadian public.

May 15, 1987


PERFORMING ARTS
Mr. Geoff Scott (Hamilton-Wentworth):: Mr. Speaker, Members of the House of Commons, please wait for the downbeat: A-one-two-three-four-
All this week some 8,000 students from high schools, colleges and universities from across Canada have been competing here in Ottawa in the Annual Stage Band Competition. The grand finale will take place on Monday evening at the National Arts Centre in a big band jazz night with proceeds going to the Eastern Ontario Children's Hospital.
What a line-up to prove that Canadian culture is alive and well among our young people and those of us in a more nostalgic mood. Following rave reviews for the same show at Hamilton Place a couple of years ago, song writer Norm Tufts of Hamilton and Bill Jupp of Ottawa, along with names like James Moodie, Guido Basso, Rick Wilkins, and even the Four Freshmen, will thrill a Victoria Day audience here with a 30-piece big jazz band aggregation. This will be ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths per cent pure Canadian content.
Mr. Tufts tells me that a lot of people have gone to a lot of work to make it happen. Queen Victoria herself would be proud to hear something so stirringly Canadian on her day.

[ Translation]


OFFICIAL LANGUAGES
Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, the Solicitor General (Mr. Kelleher) announced that he would raise the target for francophone participation in the RCMP to 20 per cent.
Mr. Speaker, on 13 occasions, and I counted them, the Minister and his Cabinet colleagues: the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. de Cotret), the Minister of Justice (Mr. Hnatyshyn), and even the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), have given me the assurance here in the House that the 20 per cent target set by the previous Government a few years ago had not been changed.
Mr. Speaker, why did the Minister announce Wednesday in Montreal that he reinstated the 20 per cent target, when we all know he said he never changed it? For six months, we have been fed hogwash.
The Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has admitted to infringing the Official Languages Act for two years. Mr. Speaker, some public servants think the Official Languages Act is a regulation. It is not a regulation. It is an Act of Parliament. It is enshrined in the Constitution. The
Ministers will have to start enforcing this legislation and making their employees understand, especially at the management and senior management level, that the legislation applies to the RCMP as well as to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and Correctional Services.
Mr. Speaker, the Minister ought to do his job. If he cannot, he should resign and let others do it for him.


FORESTRY
Mr. Felix Holtmann (Selkirk-Interlake):: Mr. Speaker, a very serious problem has developed very rapidly in the forests of western and northern Canada. They are tinder dry at this moment and, as I speak, thousands of acres are raging under forest fires, posing a serious problem to all Canadians.
We have already lost $100 million in forests. In Manitoba alone there are 400 people fighting forest fires. Fifty homes in Fisher Bay had to be evacuated and at Wallace Lake there is another extremely serious fire.
This is the first long weekend when thousands of Canadians will go to the forests to enjoy camping. I ask the Government and all Members of Parliament to urge everyone to exercise extreme caution when setting campfires because most fires are caused by human error and carelessness.
I am sure that if it does not rain in western Canada we will lose many more hundreds of thousands of acres of our forests. This is an important concern, and everyone should be very much aware of the importance of our forests.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Ms. Pauline Jewett (New Westminster-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, we in this Party view with alarm and grave concern the military coup in Fiji.
We share the sentiments expressed yesterday by the Prime Minister of New Zealand who told his House of Representatives: "That the parliamentary democracy which was so recently reinforced in Fiji by the general election should have gone in such a way is abhorrent".
All Members of the House will be concerned about the subversion of democracy anywhere. That such subversion by
May 15, 1987

the military should take place in the Parliament of a sister commonwealth country is especially distressing.
While recognizing the clear divisions within Fijian society and politics at the moment, we all feel that the return to parliamentary democracy must be the first priority of the Fijian people and Fiji's friends.
It is important that Canada not give any recognition or support to the military leaders and that civilian government and democracy return to Fiji quickly.


SOCIAL SECURITY
Mr. Jean-Claude Malepart (Montreal-Sainte-Marie):: Once again, Mr. Speaker, Canada's social injustice Minister- the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Epp)-has shown his lack of concern and his incompetence with respect to the Canadian people.
Remember his intention to de-index old age security pensions, remember the de-indexation of family allowances, and remember the tax on prescription drugs, on sick people. But now, Mr. Speaker, the Minister has made an outrageous statement: National Health Council officials have just told us that four million Canadians live in poverty, so the Minister of National Health and Welfare says that these people live in poverty because they like it that way.
Mr. Speaker, all Members of the House should tell the Minister of National Health and Welfare to withdraw his remarks and offer his apologies, and they should urge the Prime Minister to ask for the resignation of the Minister of National Health and Welfare. This is unacceptable from a man who is expected to defend the interests of poor people in Canada.


THE DISABLED AND THE HANDICAPPED
Mr. Barry Turner (Ottawa-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, former Speaker Bosley, and you, Sir, along with myself, the Member for London-Middlesex (Mr. Clifford), and many parliamentary staff members, in co-operation with Ridgemont High School's co-operative education program, through Glen Pettinger, Ilse Turnsen, Bud Crawford, Pat Mainwaring and Charlotte Boroczki, put into place the "buddies" system that
assigned students with intellectual handicaps to staff at the House of Commons.
This program provides valuable work adjustment training and has the potential to evolve apprentice-like skill development for real employment.
U5)
Such a model encourages Governments and businesses to share with educators in the responsibility we all have to our handicapped citizens to provide relevant training and preparation for productive participation in our society.

The House must congratulate the employees who made it possible to launch this program by ensuring its smooth operation and success: Rita Makavic, Bernie Bedard, Rod Despaties, Adele Saulnier, Claudette Larocque, Lucille Ryan, Noella Forgues, Muriel Larabie, Lucienne Lebrun, Claude Nobert and Maurice Poirier. Such small things make life that much more pleasant, and it proved to be a challenging experience for Ridgemont students.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


EFFECT OF FORMER NATIONAL ENERGY PROGRAM
Mr. John Gormley (The Battlefords-Meadow Lake):: Mr. Speaker, Ralph Hedlin writes in the Western Report magazine, and I quote:
It will soon be seven years since Pierre Trudeau's Government laid down a new set of principles to govern western oil and gas policy-the National Energy Program of October 28, 1980.
The National Energy Program was the capstone of a decade of intense Trudeau Liberal Government intervention in oil and gas during the years of 1974-84.
The Trudeau Liberals, among whom John Turner was a major player, put in position policies that transferred a greedy proportion of the benefits from the west to the consumers of central Canada and the tax-gatherers in Ottawa.
Every year new evidences surface that bear witness to the damage done by the intervention of the federal politicians and bureaucrats.
The most recent is the demise of Dome Petroleum. The wild irresponsibility of the debt accumulation of the Trudeau years is only comprehensible if one accepts that the Government was satisfied it could recover by looting the west of revenues produced by $100 oil. Interest charges on those immense debts are a major contributor to today's deficits and a major drag on the Mulroney Government.
In the long history of Canada there has been no economic initiative that has been as utterly wrong-headed and as disastrously damaging as the energy policies of the Trudeau years. It is a root cause of much of the economic frailty and regional distrust in Canada.
The players have passed from the stage, nearly, but we are still suffering the legacy of those policies from those years.

May 15, 1987
Oral Questions ABORTION


RESTRICTIONS ON ACCESS TO ABORTIONS
Ms. Margaret Mitchell (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, recently a 14-year-old girl was refused an abortion at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops. She was forced to suffer a very difficult forced delivery which will scar her emotionally for the rest of her life. Across British Columbia women's access to abortion is becoming more and more restricted as politicians, led by the Premier, are imposing their personal moral views on women despite the fact that the general public supports greater access to abortion under our existing legislation.
The restriction of access to legal abortions, which is approved under existing federal legislation, surely is contradictory to our federal laws. What is our Minister of Justice (Mr. Hnatyshyn) doing about this?
Women of Canada feel strongly that access to abortion is an essential service, essential to their health. Limiting access to abortions approved by committees in accredited hospitals denies the spirit of the Canada Health Act which states that we should have reasonable access to health services.
I urge both provincial and federal Governments to uphold existing federal laws and to work toward more progressive changes in future.


POLICE WEEK
Mr. Dennis H. Cochrane (Moncton):: Mr. Speaker, Police Week was established as a means by which this nation could officially recognize and pay tribute to those men and women who have chosen a career to protect and serve their communities. I am pleased to have the opportunity to express my personal views, my profound respect and heartfelt appreciation for these men and women.
Police work requires a special kind of person. They must have courage to deal with the dangers inherent in their work. They must be fair and impartial in enforcing the law. They must have integrity beyond reproach. They must exhibit and utilize consideration, sensitivity and compassion when dealing with the public. Those personal characteristics have always been, and are still required by police officers.
However, new skills have been incorporated into modern-day policing. The police officer today requires many of the skills of a psychologist, social worker, criminologist, computer scientist, lawyer, accountant and administrator. Police forces have in recent years moved rapidly to adjust to these new demands and have developed and engaged officers to meet the challenge of crime in today's society.
I believe all Members of this House will join in paying tribute to these police officers and to the Chiefs of Police
across this nation who have meet these new challenges with resolve and are serving each and every Canadian as they fulfil their responsibilities on behalf of us all.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
[DOT] (M20)



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Jean-Claude Malépart: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. On April 13, Petro-Canada was the first to raise the price of gas in the Eastern Townships and the Quebec City region. Yesterday, the Quebec Minister of Finance told the oil companies to stop fleecing Quebec consumers. Furthermore, the Quebec Minister of Energy has advised the federal Government to put pressure on Petro-Canada so it will stop taking the lead in raising the price of gas in Quebec, as it has done in the past. My question for the Minister is the question all Quebecers are asking today: Considering this advice, is the Minister willing to ask those in charge of Petro-Canada to reduce the price of gas in Quebec and show it can behave as a good corporate citizen?


Hon. Marcel Masse (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, Petro-Canada, like all oil companies in Canada, is subject to federal and provincial regulations and legislation, according to the respective responsibilities of each jurisdiction. Petro-Canada has been given a mandate by this Government to operate on a commercial basis, in the interests of the consumer and also in the interests of investing in exploration.


PETRO-CANADA-GOVERNMENT POSITION
Jean-Claude Malépart: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary for the same Minister. When we see Gerard D. Levesque calling for help and asking Petro-Canada to stop fleecing Quebecers; when we know that the reduction in the escalator tax-more than 50 per cent of the money will go to the oil companies-and when the Minister tells us that Petro-Canada has a duty to protect the consumer, could the Minister please explain why he is not taking any action? Why is he letting Petro-Canada protect the corporations instead of the consumer? Why isn't he doing anything about that?


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Montreal- Sainte-Marie has indulged in his usual rhetoric in presenting his questions. However, that does not change the situation.
May 15, 1987

Petro-Canada's mandate is a public one. It is supposed to operate on a commercial basis like all other oil companies in Canada. These companies, including Petro-Canada, are expected to act in the full knowledge of the applicable legislation and regulations of the provinces and the federal Government. If Canadians feel there has been abuse in this area, they can file complaints either with the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs in Ottawa, depending on the particular jurisdiction, or with the provinces. It will then be up to the various departments to take action, if necessary.


ESTABLISHMENT OF PRICE CONTROL BOARD IN QUEBEC- GOVERNMENT POSITION
Jean-Claude Malépart: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary. Considering the absence of any action on the part of the Minister of "inertia", and considering his admission that his hands are tied-would the Minister be willing to support the Government or the Minister of Energy of Quebec, who is a Minister who does defend his consumers, to help Quebec establish a price control board like the one in Nova Scotia? Is the Minister prepared to help Quebec do that?


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, it is not up to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources to intervene on a daily basis in the activities of Petro-Canada. If I did so, the Opposition would be the first to criticize me for it. The Hon. Member is indulging in a lot of rhetoric by starting a debate of this kind, because if Parliament had wanted the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources to intervene daily in Petro-Canada's business, it would not have passed legislation making Petro-Canada a Crown corporation separate from the daily activities of the Department and the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources.
Furthermore, regarding Quebec's interest in creating a price control board like the one in Nova Scotia, it is obviously up to the Government of Quebec to take action as it sees fit.


PRICE OF GASOLINE-REQUEST FOR REFERRAL TO COMMITTEE
Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, how funny that we should be listening to Louis XIVth talk about demagogy. Still, my question is directed to the same Minister.
Talking about consumer protection as the Minister does, 1 should like to know whether he would be prepared to accept that we, as Members who are here precisely to speak up on behalf of citizens, refer this question to the Standing Committee on Energy, Mines and Resources where the chairman of Petro-Canada will appear next week to justify what he is doing now, which is not in the interests of either consumers or Canadians.


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, 1 can appreciate the fact the Louis XIVth could not possibly have heard about Petro-Canada
Oral Questions
since the corporation did not exist at the time. But the Hon. Member for Hamilton East should at least know that it is not up to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources to decide whether he will give or withhold his agreement so that a parliamentary committee of this House might be authorized to ask the chairman of Petro-Canada to give evidence and answer their questions. The Hon. Member would know that this Government does not operate that way, and if she wants to invite the chairman of Petro-Canada and ask him a number of questions, there is a procedure for doing just that.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, I fully expected that the Minister would pass the buck on to the committee, in the same way that he passed the buck on to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, in the same way that he passed the buck on to the consumers, and in the same way that he passed the buck on to Petro-Canada.


REQUEST THAT PETRO-CANADA PRESIDENT BE CALLED BEFORE COMMITTEE
Sheila Maureen Copps: I should like to ask the Acting Chairman of the Standing Committee on Energy, Mines and Resources whether that committee is prepared to show some leadership, where the Government is ill-prepared to do so, and in fact call Mr. Hopper before the committee next week to justify the gouging that is going on of Canadian consumers.


An Hon. Member:: No one answers!


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Hamilton East might wish to direct her question to the chairman of the appropriate committee.


An Hon. Member:: Can anybody answer?


Mr. Speaker:: The chairperson of the committee is apparently not here this morning.
I appreciate that the Hon. Member for Vancouver- Kingsway (Mr. Waddell) may be quite prepared to volunteer a response.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Sheila Maureen Copps: I am prepared to redirect the question to the Government House Leader.


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and President of the Privy Council):: The Hon. Member has had a lot of parliamentary experience, and she will know that this is a matter that should be considered at the committee level or at the steering committee level. If she has a representation to make in that regard, she should get on that committee and make that representation.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: You can make a reference.

May 15, 1987
Oral Questions


GOVERNMENT'S ATTITUDE
Mr. Robert Toupin (Terrebonne):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. Yesterday the Minister stated that the market should dictate the price of gas in Montreal, that one of the reasons why gas was more expensive in Montreal was the distances from the various refineries to the gas pumps.
My question is this: Since the Minister is referring to market forces, why did his Government, this Conservative Government, allow a reduction of competition in Quebec and the closing down of the Gulf refinery?


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, the existence of refineries is not dictated by the Canadian Government. It is not for the Minister of Finance nor the Minister of Energy nor the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs to decide whether at any given place a refinery shall open or close. Such is not the Government's responsibility. Companies are responsible for setting up refineries where needed, if warranted by the market.
I know that is not the kind of world the socialist party would like to live in. They would rather live in a system where everything is planned, everything is organized. That is the kind of system, that was set up in the energy sector a few years back, Mr. Speaker, following gross Government interventions, with results such as we have seen in the energy sector, corporate wind-ups, hundreds of people laid off. Mr. Speaker, we have no intention of reverting to that kind of system.


Robert Toupin: Mr. Speaker, with that flow of rhetoric I suppose the Minister conceded his Government was not the mastermind behind that shutdown and that reduction in competition. He is right, Mr. Speaker. His Government was merely the puppet of large financiers and oil multinationals.


REQUEST THAT MINISTER INTERVENE
Robert Toupin: Mr. Speaker, does the Minister intend to ask Petro-Canada-and I insist again-to move to lower its sale prices to Quebec consumers, to reinstate a healthy competition and, as an immediate action, to remit to Quebec consumers the fuel tax reduction implemented by the Quebec Government?


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, the energy critic for the socialist party is pursuing a dream, a myth of a wishful nature in which market forces would not exist, in which entrepreneurial freedom would not exist, in which there would only be bureaucracy, regulations, ministerial decisions. Mr. Speaker, that is not the kind of world we want to live in. We want to live in a world of free enterprise, in which the market is the prime indicator.
It is in that spirit that Petro-Canada has a clear and specific mandate, a business mandate to work with and abide by market forces, in the interest of both consumers and those who invest in exploration.


Robert Toupin: Mr. Speaker, I just mentioned the flow of rhetoric we heard from the Minister; well, the Minister just gave us more of the same.


REQUEST THAT MINISTER ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY AND SHOW LEADERSHIP
Robert Toupin: This is my final question Mr. Speaker. Is the Minister prepared to accept responsibility and show some leadership mainly at the level of his Department and this, as I said, in the interests of both Canadian consumers and those in Quebec?


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, the first quality of leadership in the energy sector is to make sure that bogey men and other nasty fellows in the mind of the spokesman on energy for the socialist party does not have any effect on the energy policy.
The Hon. Member lives in a world where all decisions makers are callous capitalists or bogey men who want to gouge the consumer. Mr. Speaker, he is living in a dream or a mythological world. We are living in a world where free market and entrepreneurship exist, where companies have to protect consumers as well as shareholders and their investments. The Government of Canada as the Government of Quebec have enacted legislations to that effect and corporations have to abide by them.

[DOT] (M30)


PROPOSED PURCHASE OF DOME PETROLEUM BY AMOCO CANADA
Mr. Brian Tobin (Humber-Port au Port-St. Barbe):: Mr. Speaker, obviously the Minister needs to learn the difference between free enterprise and price fixing. There is a hell of a difference.
My question is directed to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources and concerns the Dome-Amoco deal. The Minister has been telling Members of the House that the Government will take a hands-off attitude in respect of the deal, and that other offers will only be entertained when it becomes clear that the Dome creditors have rejected the current deal. Now that rejection gets closer every day.
Under the memorandum of agreement signed between Dome and Amoco, is the Minister aware that the concerned parties indicated that even if the creditors turned down the deal, "Dome will attempt to effect the transaction under the
May 15, 1987

Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act or such other procedures"?
In other words, even if the creditors say "no", they will appeal for a trustee to be appointed under a government Act to enforce the deal anyway. Is that an acceptable way for Canadian energy policy to be put in place?
[ Translation]


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, the first responsibility of the Government was to make sure that proposals would be made to Dome and, as a result of our initiative, we saw that three different groups expressed interest in acquiring Dome. The Dome board of directors picked one of the three offers and agreed to convey it to their stockholders and their creditors who were made aware of the offer yesterday and will make their decision after due consideration. We are now at the second stage, Mr. Speaker, and first and foremost we must let these people make their own judgment.


GOVERNMENT POSITION
Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, the people of Canada are wondering why the Minister does not have the guts to admit, notwithstanding whether or not the deal is good for the creditors in Canada and notwithstanding whether or not the deal is good for Canadians in terms of energy policy, that the Government, under a hammer poised by the muscled arm of Washington, is sitting neutered and afraid to take its responsibilities. Why does he not admit that?


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member may well raise his voice and try to use one word or another, but there is one fact he simply cannot ignore: he remained silent at the time, yet the problems now experienced by Dome are first and foremost the aftermath of the policies advocated by the previous Government. Where were you at the time? Today we are in a situation where 4,000 Dome employees want to protect their jobs, where hundreds of acres of land are there awaiting development. The Government wants to make sure that Dome will continue to operate in Canada because we need it for purposes of energy security and supply. We need that company for the economy of Alberta and Saskatchewan, and we also need it for investment purposes. That is what the Government has done. That is the difference between the two policies: yours which drove Dome to the brink of bankruptcy, and this Government's policy which is responsible for the fact that three companies were interested in buying Dome.


DOME'S OIL LANDS LEASES AND HOLDINGS
Mr. Ian Waddell (Vancouver-Kingsway):: Mr. Speaker, 1 have a supplementary question on this matter for the Minister
Oral Questions
of Energy. The Minister must know-and he just mentioned it-that Dome has a net working interest in 14.9 million acres of land, three-quarters of which is in conventional producing areas. It has been described as the best developed acreage in North America, and there are 4,000 workers out there.
Would the Minister not admit that the result of the meeting yesterday was a great deal of uncertainty? Would he tell the House why he is not taking action and showing some leadership? Who is speaking for Canada when one of its largest energy companies is going down the drain, possibly to bankruptcy? Why is he taking this hands-off approach? Why does he not get involved in the bankruptcy of Dome?


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, the uncertainty has been there for the last two years because of the type of policies the NDP pushed on the Liberals. That is where we are; that is the difference. We are working for the real economic future of Dome. However, what they have done, in the last two years has put Dome where it is now. That is what happened.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: That is patently absurd.


Mr. Althouse:: For the last two years you have been in government.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: You have been the Government.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Would the Minister like to exchange seats with us? We will go over there.


Mr. Speaker:: The exchange has been very vigorous, but perhaps the Chair might ask Hon. Members who are asking questions to try to confine their remarks to questions.
Of course long preambles which are argumentative invite a response, and then a further response. 1 would ask the Hon. Member, who I know is very knowledgeable in the matter, to put his question and to put his question precisely.


MINISTER'S POSITION
Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, given the uncertainty, does the Minister intend to take any steps at all to deal with the banks or with the Swiss creditors to decide the future of Dome Petroleum?


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, the offer was unveiled at the meeting yesterday. These people must consider it and respond. Once we get to know their answer, perhaps it will dispel what you call uncertainty.

I do not know.
First of all we have to make sure that we have the proper time to reflect and to take a decision.

May 15, 1987
Oral Questions
1 just want to tell members of the socialist Party that they cannot have it both ways. They cannot have the dumb, stupid policies which they pushed on the former Government and now ask the Government, by other proposals, to clean the same barn which they have already put in a mess.


AIR TRANSPORT
Hon. Andre Ouellet (Papineau):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Transport I have a question for the Deputy Prime Minister.
Because it is now clear that Mr. Fred Turner has been the victim of a series of unfortunate events and possibly overzealous actions by government officials, will the Government now accept the referral of the matter to an impartial, binding arbitrator, in order to give Mr. Fred Turner an appropriate amount to compensate him for the loss of his business?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, of course this action was started under the previous administration. I think that should be clearly noted, and it should also be noted that a number of allegations have been passed back and forth.
There was a certain violation of compliance with respect to the operating licence of the applicant in question, which was dealt with through due process under the aegis of the Canadian Transport Commission. The matter has been reviewed on a number of occasions. It has recently been reviewed by the Minister of Transport. My understanding is that the standing committee is seized of this issue. Perhaps that might be the most appropriate place for the issue to be dealt with further. Suffice it to say that the appeal process has been complied with. It is a fairly clear-cut case in terms of compliance as it relates to requirements under the licence.


Mr. Benjamin:: Clear your backsides.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: This is a very serious matter. I think the heckling from the New Democrats contributes to the fact that they only want to make a political issue out of this thing.
The matter has been considered seriously. It will be brought before the standing committee. I understand that Mr. Turner spoke to the Prime Minister about it yesterday. The Minister of Transport indicated that, while he sympathized, there are certain rules and regulations that have to be complied with.


REQUEST FOR APPOINTMENT OF INDEPENDENT ARBITRATOR
André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, the Minister said that Mr. Turner spoke to the Prime Minister. The last thing that should be done is to treat this question as a legal
matter. I think the Prime Minister said yesterday this was more or less a moral issue. The Minister has to realize that this is a case of big government versus a poor individual.
Since his Government-I think from his own initiative while he was Minister of Transport-has agreed to offer Mr. Fred Turner the sum of $15,000 on an ex gratia basis, would it not be the right thing for the Minister to make sure that an impartial person decides on the proper amount to be given to Mr. Turner?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I hope the Hon. Member is not suggesting that we as a Government and as responsible Members of Parliament should be ignoring some of the basic requirements of compliance with the law and compliance with a licence requirement. Mr. Turner was operating, I am told, without adequate liability insurance.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: He was not operating. His licence was under suspension after you cancelled it.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: His aircraft had been seized, he was not in possession of a valid Transport Canada operating-


Sheila Maureen Copps: You better get a new researcher.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: I am simply quoting the statements of the Minister of Transport who, I suggest, would probably have as good an idea as the Hon. Member from Hamilton who thinks she is an expert on everything but is an expert on nothing.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Donald Frank Mazankowski: I repeat, the matter as I understand it, is before the parliamentary committee. If there are any changes with respect to the disposition of this, those changes will be enunciated by the Minister of Transport.


REQUEST FOR BINDING ARBITRATION
Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question. I met with the Prime Minister and Mr. Turner yesterday. I would like to get to the bottom of this. In 1984 the former Government under the CTC cancelled Mr. Turner's licence. This Government, and I congratulate it for it, gave Mr. Turner his licence back recognizing that what had been done was wrong. In offering the $15,000 ex gratia payment, it is known that Fred Turner and Turn-Air cannot get back in the air.
Will the Deputy Prime Minister agree that now is the time for binding arbitration so that Fred Turner can get a fair settlement so that he can get his aircraft back in the air and his airline operating?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I know the Hon. Member has been very active on this file. I wish he would listen to the answers that I give to the House because it would
May 15, 1987

result in him not having to ask the question again. 1 simply indicated that if there was going to be a change in policy, it would be announced by the Minister of Transport.


BINDING ARBITRATION SOUGHT
James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, something very important is going on here. Mr. Turner's licence was taken away by the CTC. The Cabinet of this Government recognized that was wrong and gave him his licence back. Mr. Turner has lost his six aircraft, he has lost his licences, he has lost his hangar and he is losing his home. This is an honest upstanding Canadian, Mr. Speaker.
Will the Government put forward a binding arbitration process to look at what the losses have been to Fred Turner and give him what is necessary so that this Canadian can get back into the business that he duly deserves?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, while we have shown sympathy toward this issue, 1 think the Hon. Member would be the first one to criticize if this Government or any Minister attempted to circumvent the due process, and now he is suggesting just that.
The Member has repeated the question. I will repeat the answer. If there are any changes respecting disposition, the matter will be considered by the Minister of Transport and he will make an announcement if such is the case.


FILM INDUSTRY
Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, at the Cannes Film Festival this week Canadians still cannot close deals for films for Canada. European and foreign film makers just do not believe this Government and do not believe we are committed to a Canadian film distribution policy. Americans continue to buy and tie up North American distribution rights. My question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.
1 am laughing, Mr. Speaker, because I see that the Deputy Prime Minister is a little preoccupied. My question has to do with the promise that you made that you were educating the Americans to no threats-


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps the Chair could help. First, I know the Hon. Member for Mount Royal would prefer not to use the personal pronoun you. I have noticed that it has been used a bit this morning. We will try not to do it again.
The Hon. Deputy Prime Minister was in some difficulty because a distinguished Hon. Member from the other side of the House seemed to wish to speak with him while the Hon. Member's question was being put. That situation has been rectified.
Oral Questions


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: I will ask the Hon. Member to put her question.


Sheila Finestone: I am seeking guidance from you, Mr. Speaker. Do you think that the Deputy Prime Minister heard the question, or should I start again?


Mr. Speaker:: I am certainly not going to take a vote on that.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: I think the Member should put the question again.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, at the Cannes Film Festival nobody believes that the Canadian Government believes in a Canadian film distribution policy. My question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.
Does he realize that unless the Government removes the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over the reality of tabling your Canadian film distribution policy that no one believes the Minister of Communications and no one is going to accept her policy? Stop scuttling her Bill. Are you going to deposit that Bill in the House before the end of June? Yes or no?


Mrs. Claudy Mailly (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, for 55 years now, the film industry has been seeking a Bill similar to that which the Minister of Communications is planning to introduce. There is no change in our agenda. There are many rumors about. Just the same, the Hon. Member should know that the Minister is firmly committed to this Bill and that she will introduce it as soon as the legislative agenda will allow.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member should know that there is a big difference between a promise and action.


REQUEST THAT BILL BE INTRODUCED
Sheila Finestone: The game plan to promise but not deliver but to delay is the obvious game plan that has been accepted in Cannes right now. That is why we cannot, as Canadian film distributors, buy the films we want from the Europeans.


Marcel Masse: Because of the former Government's policy.


Sheila Finestone: You have been here for three years practically-


Marcel Masse: You did nothing for the film industry at all. [Translation]


Mr. Speaker:: I should like the Hon. Member to please ask her question.

May 15. 1987
Oral Questions
[DOT] (M50)


Sheila Finestone: To the Deputy Prime Minister, to the House Leader, will you deposit that Bill before June 30, yes or
no?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I thought that question was answered fully not only today but on several occasions this week by the Prime Minister and by the Minister of Communications. Why does the Hon. Member not listen once in a while?


CANADA-UNITED STATES NEGOTIATIONS-AUTO PACT
Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to raise a question with the Deputy Prime Minister as well. I have here leaked documents from the United States which-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Marcel Masse: Big news.


Steven W. Langdon: The Government of the State of Michigan last month told the chief U.S. trade negotiator that his state wants the Auto Pact and its safeguards done away with so that auto products would be treated like any other product under free trade. Given the fact that this pressure is coming from the most auto intensive state in the United States, will the Government finally admit that the Auto Pact is now squarely on the bargaining table and that Canada runs the risk of losing those safeguards and the thousands of jobs that go with those safeguards?


Mr. John McDermid (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister for International Trade):: Mr. Speaker, it is Friday. I will explain it to the member of the NDP once more, very clearly, and I will go slowly so he will be able to understand it this time. The Auto Pact is not on the table. There has been no request for it to be on the table. If there is a request for it to be on the table, we will only accept changes if they are better for Canadians and Canadian workers, period.


MICHIGAN'S POSITION
Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, let me read slowly from the document of the Department of Commerce of the State of Michigan which states that if its recommendation is carried through, we will see a shift of production over time from Canadian to U.S.-based manufacturing facilities and the shrinkage of the Canadian auto industry. Will the Government admit that the auto safeguards are crucial, something it has not been prepared to admit
before, and that if these are weakened in any way there will be a tremendous loss of jobs right across Ontario and Quebec?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, members of the NDP are up to their old trick of fear-mongering again. They are frightening the workers. This supposed document of which he speaks, which I have not seen nor had the opportunity to review, says "if'. It is a state document, not a federal document and not an administration document. The Hon. Member keeps saying: "if, if, if'. We are saying that there are no ifs. Quit scaring the workers like that. That is the NDP's tactic; they do it all the time for no just reason at all.


APARTHEID
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Prime Minister my question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. Last week a number of parliamentary spouses received in the mail two propaganda booklets from right-wing organizations promoting apartheid in South Africa. This material was mailed at the House of Commons using the frank of the Tory MP from Okanagan- Similkameen. It describes South Africa as a model multiracial society and describes people against apartheid as radical revolutionaries who are Marxist-Leninists and so on.
What is the new position of the Government on South Africa? Is it the one described by the Hon. Member for Okanagan-Similkameen in this document he sent to us or is it the earlier one that we have been hearing all along?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the policy of the Government on South Africa has been clearly enunciated from time to time by the Prime Minister and by the Secretary of State for External Affairs.


Pauline Jewett: Let your caucus know.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: We can talk about the NDP caucus or the Liberal caucus for that matter. They really have to learn some lessons in being united on certain things as well.
In this case, the position is very clear.


Mr. Speaker:: The Chair is in a bit of difficulty here and I would ask Hon. Members to bear with the Chair for a moment. As I understand the Hon. Member's question, the Hon. Member for Okanagan-Similkameen has apparently sent two documents presumably published by the Government of South Africa or an agency thereof. Unless it is quite clear that the Hon. Member is speaking for the Government in endorsing those statements, and I am not sure that is what the
May 15, 1987

Hon. Member is saying, we do have a rule that we do not attack the motives or propriety of any Hon. Member unless it is quite clearly a case where the Hon. Member has made those statements.
I am a bit troubled because the documentation clearly does not seem to be documentation that was printed or prepared by the Hon. Member. I would ask the Hon. Member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell to keep that in mind in his second question.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I will bear that in mind. Thank you for your guidance.


GOVERNMENT'S VIEW
Don Boudria: I would like to ask the Deputy Prime Minister if the following quote from the document is the position of the Government:
Those behind the scene manipulators who drive the bandwagon against the
moral evils of apartheid in the South African reformist Government are
neither Christian nor moral but rather amoral, immoral, non-Christian, antiChristian and pro-Marxist-Leninist.
Does the Deputy Prime Minister on behalf of the Government share that view?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the answer is no. The Hon. Member is trying to assert that what he is reading from is a government document that represents government policy. He knows that that is the kind of misrepresentation that certainly does not augur well for Hon. Members of the House and, indeed, the institution.


SPACE WEAPONRY
Pauline Jewett: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Prime Minister I would like to direct my question to the Deputy Prime Minister. It has been revealed today by The Toronto Star that Semoptics of Ottawa is selling to the United States vital material that is a key element in the development of star wars weapons. Semoptics is doing this through the use of about $200,000 worth of National Research Council equipment.
In light of the Government's own policy not to offer government support for star wars research let alone for star wars weapons development, will the Government investigate the NRC involvement and will it move now to end any and all
Oral Questions
such support to firms involved in either star wars research or, worse still, star wars weapons development?


Hon. Monique Landry (Minister of External Relations):: Mr. Speaker, the position taken by the Canadian Government was quite clearly expressed by the Prime Minister on September 7, 1985, when he confirmed that there would be no Government to Government participation by Canada to the United States strategic initiative. On the other hand, the Government has allowed the private sector to participate, and I think that is an example of the private sector's contribution to the American initiative.


GOVERNMENT POLICY
Pauline Jewett: Mr. Speaker, is the Minister saying that government Departments and agencies like the National Research Council can lend support to star wars projects? Is she saying that the Government's policy is that now government agencies like the National Research Council can lend support to private firms doing star wars research or star wars weapons development?


Monique Landry: In
my opinion, Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend is raising a hypothetical question and no request has been made directly to the National Research Council. Should one be made, we would analyze the situation before taking any position.


Pauline Jewett: Brief supplementary.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member.


REPORTED USE OF NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL EQUIPMENT
Pauline Jewett: Mr. Speaker, there is a report done by an investigative reporter which shows that National Research Council equipment is in fact being used by Semoptics for its star wars research. Will the Minister commit the Government to give to the House full information on all government agencies or Crown corporations which are involved in assisting or supporting star wars research or star wars weapons development?


Monique Landry: As
I said earlier, Mr. Speaker, this question seems hypothetical to me. Should a request be made, we would examine it in the light of the impact such research would have on Canada's objectives. Then we would make a decision.

May 15, 1987

Oral Questions



INDIAN AFFAIRS


Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard-Anjou):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister responsible for the Canada Post Corporation, In a speech before the National Association of Major Mail Users on May 12 the President of Canada Post said that first class mail, second class mail, and third class mail as well, will be treated the same way.
Can the Minister tell us why first class mail with a 36-cent stamp does not get priority over junk mail which requires only a 7-cent stamp? Is first class mail now third class mail?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: No, Mr. Speaker. I think the President of Canada Post was saying that it is the intention of Canada Post to deliver all mail; first, second, and third class, as expeditiously and on time as possible. Standards have been articulated in the corporate plan as to the number of days which will be required for each class and they are different for each class. An independent auditing company will be reporting on a quarterly basis on the extent to which Canada Post meets those standards.
[ Translation]



ALLEGED EMERGENCY PLAN-REQUEST FOR DETAILS

Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a supplementary question to the Minister responsible for the third class postal service. In the same speech, the President of the Canada Post Corporation indicated that "strike or no strike, we are going to deliver the mail". Could the Minister indicate to us how the Canada Post Corporation will deliver the mail if its employees are on strike? The medias have been telling us that there is a plan. Could the Minister confirm its existence?


Harvie Andre: No, I cannot, Mr. Speaker. Canada Post is a Crown corporation and operates at arm's length as was intended by Parliament when the Crown Corporations Act was created. In that context the corporation was directed by Parliament, as it has been consistently, to deliver the mail to the extent possible. As I understand the speech, the intention is to do that.


Mr. Speaker:: I would like to advise the House that we are over time. The Hon. Member for Cochrane-Superior may ask one question to close off Question Period. I am sure the New Democratic Party will note that I allowed one of their Members three questions.



POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION ASSISTANCE PROGRAM

Mr. Keith Penner (Cochrane-Superior):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. As the Minister knows, the Post-secondary Education Assistance Program for Indian students has been among the most successful federal government programs which we have had. In fact, over a decade it has grown from an expenditure of $8 million to $93 million because more and more young Indian people have seen this as the route to selfsufficiency and independence.
Yesterday the Minister moved to limit this program. Does he believe it is right and fair that when so many other government programs have universal access we should have a different policy for Indian people? How can he explain to the House that this year's high school graduates and those studying law, education, and medicine have the lowest priority for access to this important program?


Hon. Bill McKnight (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, in his question the Hon. Member recognized the growth from $8 million to $93 million. Unless other programs within the Department are reduced we cannot state with certainty the number of dollars which will be made available for post-secondary education for Indian and Inuit students.
The dollars that have been identified this year are beyond the historic increase in expenditures. An additional $12 has been identified. The establishment of criteria in an interim manner for this year, while we discuss with Indian leaders and bands changes that can be put in place, was necessary so that we could maintain dollars in other Indian programs.
To meet the increase that was necessary last year money from other very important Indian programs such as housing, infrastructure and band support had to be used to supplement the education budget.


Mr. Speaker:: Is the Hon. Member for Regina East rising on a point of order?


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: No, Mr. Speaker. I was hoping you would relent and allow my question.


Mr. Speaker:: I deeply regret that I cannot. We are over time. I ask for the co-operation of all Members.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Don't see the clock.


Mr. Speaker:: I am sure the Hon. Member can give me much advice.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: It's Friday.


Mr. Speaker:: I have to advise that that was the last question.
May 15, 1987



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Speaker:: I have the honour to lay upon the Table an extract from the minutes of a meeting of the Board of Internal Economy held on Wednesday, May 13, 1987, concerning revisions of the salaries of certain eligible employees of the House of Commons effective April 1, 1987.

[ Translation]


COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE
Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the Government's response to the report of the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration on the reform of Unemployment Insurance.


TABLING OF GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO REPORT OF STANDING COMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS AND CULTURE
Hon. Tom Hockin (Minister of State (Finance)):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 67(2) I have the honour to lay upon the Table, in both official languages, copies of the Government's response to the report of the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture on taxation of artists and the arts.


PETITIONS
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 No. 332-1785, 332-1814, 332-1896 to 332-1898 inclusive, 332-1919, 332-1921, 332-1926, 332-1931 to 3321934 inclusive, 332-1946, 332-1960, 332-1964, 332-1967, 3321976 and 332-2008.
Statement by Ministers UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about Unemployment Insurance.
Since its inception over 40 years ago, unemployment insurance has evolved into one of our most important national programs, touching almost every Canadian and forming an important element of Canada's economy. Originally, unemployment insurance was meant to provide temporary income protection against an unexpected job loss. Over the years, it also became a response to seasonal unemployment. Today, for many, it remains temporary income protection. For others, it has become a frequently used source of guaranteed income. For others it provides what are called "social benefits" such as income support during maternity leave.

Few government programs affect so many people in Canada. This was never clearer than during the recession of the early 1980s when, out of necessity, more and more people from all walks of life turned to unemployment insurance for support. Such an important and broad program having such an important effect on so many individuals, economic sectors, and regions of the country was naturally prone to criticism from different quarters for different reasons.

When we came into office, Mr. Speaker, we decided that the Unemployment Insurance program needed to be reviewed. We had to ensure that it continued to meet the needs of Canadians. We established a Commission of Inquiry to examine the program and its place in the Canadian economy. We asked that, for the first time, there be public hearings across the country to receive the views of all interested Canadians.
In December we received the Report of that Commission, which included a minority report by two commissioners and supplementary statements by four commissioners. In the past six months the Government has considered carefully the advice of all of the commissioners. As well we have studied the recommendations of the Royal Commission in Newfoundland, the Macdonald Commission recommendations and those of the Standing Committee.
Members of this House will know that there are sharp and irreconcilable differences between these studies.
The Government has listened closely to the public debate. We have consulted widely on the subject. I have met with worker and employer groups. I have received representations from many Canadians, who have made their views known to me. These consultations made it clear that opinion on Unemployment Insurance is divided-even polarized. Some want a more generous unemployment insurance system while others want a more restrictive program.

May 15, 1987
Statement by Ministers
I have also met twice with the provinces on the Unemployment Insurance Program. Some provinces are strongly opposed to any move to a more restrictive program, while others want the social aspects to be removed. Mr. Speaker, two distinct schools of thought have emerged. One school holds that to achieve the objectives of the current program, it should be broken apart into at least two distinct programs: insurance on one side and what are called social benefits on the other. It is argued that the current system actually encourages people not to work-that unemployment insurance should return to strict insurance principles and let the social benefits be handled by another, unspecified, mechanism.
The other school of thought holds that the scope and coverage of unemployment insurance should be expanded and enriched. It is proposed that unemployment insurance play a stronger income support role. This school rejects as "myth" the notion that substantial numbers of Canadians draw unemployment insurance in preference to holding a job. Thus the proposals are for more money to be introduced into the program. The distinction between social benefits and insurance principles is simply not accepted.
Each of these schools is not only sharply critical of the other, but each forecasts disastrous results if the other's proposals are implemented. But everyone is agreed that any change in the design of the program would profoundly affect millions of individuals and the economies of the regions where they live.
The Government has considered carefully the current program and all of the proposals for a change in its design. We reject the argument that unemployment insurance benefits should be expanded and enriched. Not only would this be expensive and require an increase of premium payments by all Canadians, it may well create disincentives to work.
Equally, we reject the proposals for a reduction of unemployment insurance benefits. Such reductions would hurt blameless individuals and would damage the economies of certain regions of the country.
As the Government charged with representing an interest of all Canadians, we have concluded that the competing and conflicting opinions of all the interested parties are, at best, reconciled within the current structure of unemployment insurance.
The common element in all the proposals for change is that they would cause hardship among individuals, businesses, and regions, all for an uncertain result. This would be counterproductive to the progress we have made in rebuilding our economy, supporting regional development, and creating jobs.

The Government acknowledges unemployment insurance is not a perfect program, but the current system is helping millions of Canadians and we will not induce unnecessary
uncertainty by attempting change for the sake of change. Our plan is not to reduce unemployment insurance but to reduce the need for unemployment insurance.

We must continue to do what helps Canada achieve durable employment. All our economic, fiscal and regional development, trade and human resource development policies are dedicated to this end. Unemployment insurance is assisting in those efforts and will continue to do so.
Unemployment insurance is only one tool within the package of our labour market and employment development programs. The Canadian Jobs Strategy plays a vital role in assisting Canadians to adjust to changing economic circumstances.
While the employment picture is steadily improving- 778,000 jobs have been created since September, 1984-and we have an excellent and effective set of programs, I cannot and shall not rest complacent. I intend to ensure that the jobs strategy remains responsive to regional needs and labour market changes, responsive to the needs of individuals such as women re-entering the workforce, the older unemployed, youth making the transition from school to work, those workers facing shifts in global trading pattern, and technological change, and the long-term unemployed.
Reducing regional disparity is a major goal of the Government. We are giving special emphasis to diversifying the economic base of western Canada. We have taken steps to assist the oil industry and we are working to help the agricultural sector. The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency will improve federal development initiatives in Atlantic Canada.
Throughout my consideration of unemployment insurance, I have been struck by the importance of how the unemployment insurance program is administered. For most people, the way the program is delivered is the first issue raised. Our staff in the Canada Employment Centres do a fine job in what are often difficult circumstances, but I believe that we can and must do better in administering the program. We can provide better and mQre sensitive service to our clients and we can better control abuse by those who would cheat the unemployment insurance program.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to outline administrative initiatives which we will implement, and which should be fully operational in 1988.
We will place Claimant Services Officers in our busiest offices. These people will work directly with our claimants to provide clear explanations and help when it is needed. We will provide public awareness sessions, so people can understand the system, and will know what to expect. We will provide better telephone access so our clients can be spared the frustration of busy phone lines, and can get the information they need about their claims.
May 15, 1987

We will implement a simplified Record of Employment after consultations with employers and employees to reduce the paper burden on employers.
We will step up our activities to weed out those who would abuse the system. There will be enhanced job search and availability interviews. We will serve our claimants better- those honest people who would rather work than collect unemployment insurance. The small group who would cheat the Unemployment Insurance Program, and who tarnish the reputation of all claimants, will not be tolerated.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to thank each member of the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration for their work on the Unemployment Insurance Program.
Their report was most helpful in our consideration of not only the current program but the other proposals for reform we received. The committee suggested we consider its recommendations as a package and we have done so.
1 am tabling today a letter to the Chairman of the Standing Committee reflecting the contents of my statement which will serve as the Government's response to the Report in accordance with the Standing Orders.
Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine
East): Mr. Speaker, Canadians are laughing at the Government this morning but they are not amused. After two and a half years and millions of dollars spent on four commissions and studies, the Forget Commission, the Macdonald Commission, the Newfoundland Royal Commission and the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration, the Minister comes to the House this morning and says he is going to do absolutely nothing about unemployment insurance reform. There will be no Bill dealing with necessary reform of the Unemployment Insurance Act. The Minister mentioned a few administrative changes which he could have put in place two years or three years ago without any study whatsoever.
On November 8, 1984, the Minister of Finance in his Economic Statement said:
To ensure that this program-
The Unemployment Insurance Program.
-meets the needs of individuals in adjusting to rapidly changing labour market conditions at a reasonable cost to workers, employers and the Government, statutory changes are likely to be required. Accordingly, the Government has initiated a review of the Unemployment Insurance program to be undertaken on an urgent basis. A discussion paper will be published shortly by the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Miss MacDonald) followed by appropriate parliamentary review.
The Minister then went on to give us more details in his book entitled A New Direction for Canada. An Agenda for Economic Renewal. Talk about urgency. The Government then took seven months to set up the Forget Commission which cost this country nearly $7 million. After more than a year and
Statement by Ministers
a half of research and study and hearings, Forget produced his report in December of 1986, along with two minority reports. The commission was very severely divided.
At that time we in the Liberal Party took strong exception to proposals by Forget to reduce benefits by a method of calculating them on the basis of annualization, and to his proposals to cut seasonal and regional benefits. The Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration then undertook a study of the Forget Report and made its own report on the subject in March of 1987. The committee unanimously rejected the annualization proposal and cuts in benefits and made 90 recommendations for improvement to the Unemployment Insurance Program. Many of these recommendations were similar to the Forget Commission's recommendations. There were agreements between the standing committee and the Forget Commission on some essential points.
The Minister, however, has ignored all these proposals. He has done nothing to extend unemployment insurance to the growing number of part-time workers. He has done nothing to improve maternity and parental benefits. He has done nothing to provide more training opportunities for those on unemployment insurance. He has done nothing to clarify the law with respect to those locked out or unable to work during strikes. He has done nothing to bring equity to the problem of overpayments.
During our hearings we heard many horror stories of people who were paid the wrong amount of unemployment insurance benefits. It was through no fault of their own but was the fault of government officials. Yet they were asked to pay back thousands of dollars while they were still unemployed. Nothing is going to be done about that. The Minister has said nothing about the restructuring of the Unemployment Insurance Commission to make it more efficient and independent.
The Government is once again abandoning its political agenda. Once again it has ignored a unanimous committee report, despite great claims for parliamentary reform.

Mr. Speaker, this Government brought in parliamentary reform, but this month it managed to ignore two unanimous reports from the Committee on Employment and Immigration, one on refugees and one on unemployment insurance.

Twice in one month the Government, which has prided itself on Parliamentary reform, has ignored two unanimous committee reports from the same committee. The Minister's claim in his statement that "Our plan is not to reduce unemployment insurance but to reduce the need for unemployment insurance" is a real farce. If the Minister has in mind some new programs to combat unemployment, where are they? He certainly did not announce them this morning.
The rate of unemployment in this country is still 9.3 per cent with 1.2 million persons out of work. We have not yet returned

May 15, 1987
Statement by Ministers
to the pre-recession rate of 7.5 per cent unemployment which existed in 1981 and we are three years out of the recession. We have nowhere approached the average rate of unemployment of 5.6 per cent which existed in this country from 1965 to 1980. In fact, the Government has cut the employment and training programs by 30 per cent, from $2.2 billion in 1984 to $1.6 billion in this fiscal year. The Government's approach is one of laissez-faire resulting in low unemployment figures in the Toronto area but a 20 per cent rate in Newfoundland, a 12.6 per cent rate in British Columbia, a 10 per cent rate in Alberta and a 14 per cent rate for youth in this country.
The Government is doing nothing with respect to the growing number of low-paying, non-union part time jobs which have no benefits, 70 per cent of which are held by women. Nothing is being done about the growing gap between the incomes of men and women. This year for the first time in 18 years the gap widened rather than narrowed. The Government is also doing nothing about the growing gap between rich and poor as a result of the growing tendency to low paying parttime jobs.
The Unemployment Insurance Act was introduced by a Liberal Government in 1940 following the unemployment tragedy of the 1930s, The legislation was a great accomplishment of the Liberal Party under MacKenzie King. Over the years the Liberal Party has continued to refine, reform and fine tune the legislation. We still favour reform and improvement. We supported all the 90 recommendations in the standing committee report but one.
Much could have been done by the Government without touching controversial issues, but it has shown absolutely no leadership. The statement by the Minister today will not please anyone. It is a complete abdication of responsibility.


Mr. John R. Rodriguez (Nickel Belt):: Mr. Speaker, first, 1 want to express to the Minister my thanks for the promptness with which I received his statement. He said I would receive it in my office shortly after 9 a.m. and it was there shortly after 9 a.m. That is certainly an example which should be emulated by every Minister on the benches opposite.
Having said that, and that is the only one nice thing I am going to say about the Minister today, I do not think Canadians are laughing. I think that at 12.08 p.m. today, a collective sigh of relief went up from all the unemployed Canadians across this country. They are relieved because the Minister did not implement any of the Draconian recommendations of the Forget Commission. In fact, the Standing Committee of the House of Commons on Labour, Employment and Immigration is largely responsible for getting the Minister off the hook. He should get down on his knees and thank every single member of that standing committee of the House of Commons.
[ Translation]
Mr. Speaker, May 15, 1987 is a great day for the rights of Canadian workers, who will keep unemployment insurance as a form of income support when looking for a job. It is probably
a slap in the face for Mr. Forget and his recommendation for annualization.
Members of the Standing Committee managed to put their personal views aside and unanimously recommended a set of measures and some thorough reforms for unemployment insurance. Members of all Parties in this House made it possible for the Government to save face and reject the abomination of annualization. Much remains to be done, however, to gain acceptance for measures that will improve the unemployment insurance system.
It is too bad that the Minister could not summon up his courage. As I read his statement I felt like a mosquito in a nudist colony-I just did not know where to begin.
First, I should set out very clearly that the only good thing that I can see in the statement is the fact that the recommendations of Forget have not been implemented. It is too bad that the Minister preferred to do this balancing act. As a matter of fact, I am surprised that he has been sitting on the fence for five months and 10 days from December 5 to May 15. It is five months and 10 days since the report of Forget was tabled in the House. The Minister sat on the fence for that length of time. I am surprised that today he is still on the fence and that there are not any splinters in his derri'ere. For five months and 10 days the Minister has been sitting on this egg. He was sitting on this egg, clucking and clucking, and what we have today in his statement is a scrambled result.
The Minister could not find the courage to deal with the unemployment insurance program in the positive way that was recommended by the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration. In his statement the Minister mentioned the Macdonald Commission Report, the report of the Newfoundland Royal Commission and the report of the committee of the House of Commons as if all three are separate reports. In fact, the Forget Commission Report was set up to study the recommendations of the Macdonald Commission. The standing committee of the House examined the Forget Report.
In the standing committee there sat members from all three Parties dominated by Conservatives. We considered Forget's report. We heard witnesses. In fact, the committee came back with 90 recommendations, 89 of them unanimous. Yet what has the Minister done instead of taking some of our recommendations? We recommended 10 weeks and 50 weeks of benefit. Yet what did we get? We got five and ten-five months and ten days that the Minister has been sitting on this issue.
We expected the Minister to deal with some of the positive recommendations we made. Some of the recommendations were with respect to maternity benefits. There was agreement from 99.99 per cent of the witnesses we heard that maternity benefits ought to be enhanced.
May 15, 1987

One of the most serious problems starting to emerge in our economy is with respect to part-time workers who are not only mostly women but young people. We looked at the question and we made a positive recommendation to the Government. Yet there has been no response to it.
We considered training, which was one of the issues in the Forget Commission Report. We specifically recommended to the Government certain items with respect to training. We did the same thing with respect to administration. In our report there are specific recommendations with respect to improving the records of employment so that delays to claimants can be avoided. So what will the Minister do with records of employment? He is going to consult. He is going to consult employers and employees. He is going to do more studies when there was a specific recommendation dealing with records of employment.
As for administration and local offices, we will improve the profits of Bell Telephone. A few more telephone lines will be put in. Does it take the $6 million or $7 million of taxpayers' money which was spent on Forget, the thousands of dollars which were spent on the expenses of the standing committee which studied Forget and five months and 10 days to discover that we do not have enough telephones in local offices? Has it taken that long for the Minister to discover that claimants are getting busy signals?
The Minister has set up a great straw person. Oh, there is abuse in the system, he says. We thoroughly examined the UI Program and all the evidence from the Minister's bureaucracy. The Minister clearly indicated that abuse in the system is 3 per cent or less. That compares with doctors in the medicare system. It compares with lawyers in the legal aid system. Three per cent abuse and the Minister says that we are going to cuff them with respect to benefit control to claimants.
We made specific recommendations with respect to how to deliver the services to legitimate claimants in an effective and efficient manner with as little delay as possible. The Minister has those recommendations in the report of the standing committee. Yet what does he do? He completely ignores the report and goes off to say, "Oh, well, we are going to consult with employers and employees to improve that. We are going to do this and do that".
We have entered into a new era with respect to standing committees of the House. They are supposed to have more power. They are supposed to participate more fully in what goes on and what should come from government. Well, our committee unanimously supported 89 recommendations. One recommendation, the ninetieth, was a majority recommendation. The Government has chosen to ignore these recommendations.
Ours was the first report on unemployment insurance that I have ever seen around here in which there was unanimity. Conservatives, who share the same ideology as the Minister, and some of them come from the same region as he, sat and discussed Forget with us. We called witnesses. We called
Petitions
Forget twice, and we called the members of his commission twice. We called the members of his commission who wrote the minority report. We talked to the bureaucrats. We talked to the Advisory Council on Employment and Immigration. The committee meetings were extensive. The Minister has a blueprint. Yet all the recommendations he picked out of the 90 amounted to zilch-zero. It is shameful that the Minister would ignore completely an arm of this House in the form of the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration and not recognize the work it has done by implementing its recommendations which are positive and which enhance the Unemployment Insurance Program. It is indeed sad that it took the Minister five months and 10 days to come up with his statement.

Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Roberval and Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Bouchard) should realize that, from now on, beating around the bush and political rhetoric will no longer be acceptable. We demand the implementation of a set of measures and of reforms of our-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I regret to interrupt the Hon. Member but his time has expired. Is the Hon. Member for Montreal-Sainte-Marie (Mr. Malepart) rising on a question of privilege?


Jean-Claude Malépart: Mr. Speaker-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Member for Montreal-Sainte-Marie (Mr. Malepart).


Jean-Claude Malépart: Mr. Speaker, the Minister is leaving and when we consider that Hon. Members did not receive the text of the Minister's speech . . . Six million dollars were spent, four inquiries, and we have a Minister with the face of an angel but a heart of stone . . . Seven million dollars of taxpayers' money wasted!


Claudy Mailly: They have a nerve talking about wasting money



André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, I should like to present a petition on behalf of those who feel that the Government of Canada has inflicted an extreme injustice on one of its citizens, one Mr. Fred Turner, by wrongfully

May 15, 1987
Order Paper Questions
depriving that individual of his right to earn a living through the operation of his family business.
The petitioners hope that the Government will appoint an independent arbitrator to investigate the details of this case, thus ensuring a settlement that better reflects the true nature of Mr. Turner's loss.


Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, 1 have here several hundred petitions from various parts of Canada, including Repentigny, Rigaud and Ville Saint-Laurent, in the Province of Quebec, as well as Weston, in Ontario, i also have many petitions covered with the signatures of hundreds of residents of Belleville, in Ontario.
The petitioners feel that the new Canada Post corporate plan will create two classes of citizens through the permanent installation of superboxes in both urban and rural areas; that the closing of post offices in rural areas will deprive the citizens of a unique federal presence and reduce the level of postal service which is vital to rural communities; and that the rate increases, especially for second class mail, will jeopardize the distribution of many newspapers, regional weeklies, magazines and religious publications.
They humbly pray and call upon Parliament to turn down the Canada Post Corporate plan and urge Canada Post to deliver mail indiscriminately to all Canadian taxpayers.


Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, I have close to 1,300 names on three petitions dealing with the Auto Pact. The petitioners are resident in various parts of my constituency.
The first petition contains a total of 441 names, with the petitioners in this particular case coming mainly from the City of Windsor itself; the second petition, with 232 names, is from auto workers in the rural areas of the constituency; and the third petition contains the names of residents of many of the small towns throughout my constituency, such as Amherst-burg, Essex, Belle River, Stoney Point, and La Salle.
These petitions, as a whole, say to the Government that there is a great deal of concern that the safeguards built into the Auto Pact will be given away in the free trade talks with the United States. The petitioners call upon the Government to prevent any threat to the Canadian content safeguards of the Auto Pact and to maintain the promise that the Auto Pact will not be a subject for negotiation in the free trade talks with the United States.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition, duly certified by the Clerk of Petitions,
from a number of Canadian residents, from such places as Halifax, Sackville, Toronto, Cooper Creek, B.C., Hamilton, Winnipeg, Wolfville, Victoria, and Cote des Neiges.
These petitioners point out that the low-level flight training of pilots of NATO countries at the Canadian Forces Base at Goose Bay, Labrador disrupts the way of life of many of the native people in that area, and that it is also an aggressive and war-fighting action which tends to endanger world peace. They therefore ask Parliament to ensure that the Prime Minister ends all low-level flight training at Goose Bay Canadian Forces Base and ceases negotiating with NATO for the establishment of a larger base at that location.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Next I have a petition from some 150 Canadians, from such places as Saskatoon, Whitby, Grand Falls, St. John's, Newfoundland, Ottawa, Amherst-burg, Varennes, Quebec, Scarborough, St. Bruno, Charles-bourg, Hamilton, Montreal, Toronto, Mississauga, Estevan, Swift Current, Neville and Regina in Saskatchewan.
This petition points out that many people around the world are being forced to seek safety from persecution by coming to Canada. It goes on to point out that we have in the past in Canada had a good system for refugee determination but that system has now broken down.
There has been a proposal put forward, with support from all sides of this House, as well as from the Canadian Council of Churches, the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Jewish Congress, and other groups, that Parliament should enact legislation that will embody the principles of fair and quick oral hearings for refugee claimants before a refugee board, independent of the Immigration Commission, and that there be provided universal access to these hearings for every claimant in Canada and adequate opportunity to arrive in Canada to make the claim that one is a refugee.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Claudy Mailly: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 105 and 107.


Mr. Vankoughnet: 1.	Since January 1986, did the government give financial support to educational organizations in South Africa and, if so (a) what were the names of these organizations (b) for each, what was the amount of financial support?
May 15, 1987

2.	Is the Government presently giving financial support to any educational organizations in South Africa which condone violence and, if so (a) what are the names of these organizations (b) for each, what is the amount of financial support?
3.	Has a (a) Canadian Prime Minister (b) Canadian Minister of External Affairs ever visited South Africa and, if so, on what date did the last such visit take place?


Philip Derek Lewis: I am informed by the Department of External Affairs and the Canadian International Development Agency as follows:
1.	See below.
2.	The Government is not giving financial support to any organizations in South Africa which condones violence. The organizations funded have education as their mandate and their projects are evaluated using developmental criteria.
3.	There has not been an official bilateral visit to South Africa by a Canadian Prime Minister or a Secretary of State for External Affairs. In October, 1978, the then Secretary of State for External Affairs, Donald Jamieson, visited South Africa with the other four Contact Group Foreign Ministers to encourage South Africa to continue talks on agreeing to United Nations supervised elections in Namibia. In July, 1980, Secretary of State for External Affairs, Mark MacGuigan, transited through the airport in Johannesburg en route from the funeral of the President of Botswana. Dr. MacGuigan met the South African Foreign Minister at the airport.
In July, 1985, a new initiative for educational assistance to South African blacks was announced by the Secretary of State for External Affairs. A $7 million program was approved in May, 1986, toward this end. As part of this $7 million initiative, CIDA's bilateral program provided funds to support the educational organizations in South Africa listed below.
(a)	The Educational Opportunities Council (EOC) of South Africa-Undergraduate Scholarships tenable in South African and awarded by EOC in collaboration with the Canadian Embassy ($1.6 million over the next three years; $60,000 disbursed as of March, 1987).
(b)	Through the Canadian Education Fund (CEF), which was established as a component of the $7 million program for the purpose of supporting small scale educational initiatives, the 12 organizations below received support. Two million dollars have been allocated to CEF over the next three years, of which $196,000 (approximately R310,000) had been disbursed as of March, 1987.
(i)	St. Ansgars Primary School (R50,000)
(ii)	Witswatersrand Council of Churches (R10,000)
(iii)	Winterveldt Community School (R40,000)
(iv)	Christian Outreach and Education (R30,000)
(v)	Ikageng Education Centre (R 15,000)
(vi)	Four Universities (Witswatersrand, Natal, Capetown and Rhodes) (R20,000 each)
(vii)	St. Alban's College (R20,000)
Order Paper Questions
(viii)	The Rudolf Steiner Centre for Adult Education (R 10,000)
(ix)	The Moltena Project (R50,000)
CIDA's Special Programs Branch provided funds to support the following educational organizations.
(a)	The South African Insititution of Race Relations, through World University Service of Canada (WUSC), for scholarships to 110 black South Africans. In fiscal year 83/84, $1.5 million was approved over five years; following the announcement of the $7 million program, an additional $814,000 was earmarked for this purpose; between January, 1986, and March 31, 1987, $702,400 were disbursed.
(b)	The University of Kwazulu, through the University of Calgary for extension staff and faculty member upgrading ($246,000 over three years).
(c)	The Self Help Associates for Development Economics (SHADE) through the Coady International Institute ($520,000, of which $386,000 was approved in May, 1986, and $134,000 was approved in September, 1985, and of which $107,000 were disbursed since January, 1986). These funds are used for adult education, self-help activities and community development.
Twenty-two organizations received support through the Mission Administered Fund; these are listed below.
(a)	Masazane open school ($2,946)
(b)	English language teaching information centre ($5,892)
(c)	Alexandra Art Centre ($7,070)
(d)	Christ the New Man Youth Centre ($1,673)
(e)	Independent Educational Trust ($5,892)
(f)	South African Council for Higher Education and Development ($5,892)
(g)	Cape Mental Health Society ($3,235)
(h)	Montagu-Ashton Community Service ($6,285)
(i)	Association for Christian Education in Venta ($5,358)
(j)	Children's Resource Centre ($4,890)
(k)	Servants of Christ the Priest ($5,358)
(l)	Intermediate Technology and Small Industries Development Unit ($9,020)
(m)	Woodlands Daycare Centre ($5,564)
(n)	Community Development Projects Association ($6,802)
(o)	Grassroots Education Trust ($28,693)
(p)	Catholic Welfare Bureau ($8,428)
(q)	Education Information Centre ($6,515)
(r)	Molobasane Secondary School ($2,189)
(s)	Itusheng Community Health Association ($9,939)
(t)	Pelong Catholic Creche ($2,342)
(u)	Confessing Fellowship Lutheran Community Development Organization in Venda ($8,209)
(v)	Centre for Social Development ($4,132)


Mr. Boudria: May 15, 1987
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1.	On March 24, 1987, did the Ministry of State for Science and Technology release an information package entitled "lNNOVACTION" and, if so (a) what was the total cost (b) how many kits were prepared (c) what was the cost for (i) production (ii) printing (iii) distribution (d) were any other costs incurred and, if so, what were they?
2.	What was the purpose of the information package?


Mr. Gordon Towers (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State for Science and Technology):: 1. An information package entitled "1NNOVACTION" was released on March 24, 1987. (a) The total cost was $49,915.94. (b) 10,000 kits were prepared, (c) The costs for the following were:
(i)	production: $10,000
(ii)	Printing (including typesetting): $37,201.20
(iii)	distribution: $2,714.74
(d)	No other costs were incurred.
2. The purpose of the information package was to inform the public of the details of the strategy.
"INNOVACTION" is a five-part strategy designed to provide a framework for Canada's science and technology efforts. It will involve a number of specific initiatives introduced by federal departments and agencies, which will strengthen our scientific and technological resources, as well as improve Canada's ability to compete within the global marketplace, in the area of science and technology.


Claudy Mailly: Mr. Speaker, if Question No. 95 could be made an order for return, this return would be tabled immediately.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The question mentioned by the Parliamentary Secretary has been answered. Is it the pleasure of the House that Question No. 95 be deemed to have been made an order to return?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Fulton: For the period September 4, 1984 to March 4, 1987, did Members of Parliament travel outside of Canada at the expense, in whole or in part, of any department of the Government of Canada and, if so, for each Member and each trip what was the (o) sponsoring department (b) purpose (c) destination (d) cost?
Return tabled.


Claudy Mailly: Mr. Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Concerning the corrected answer to Question No. 95, Mr. Speaker, I assume that the answer to Question No. 95 which was tabled two days ago has been withdrawn. There could not be two answers to the same question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I have to agree with the Hon. Member. Certainly this will be done.
Shall the remaining questions be allowed to stand?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Before proceeding to the consideration of the opposition motion, I should like to advise the House that because of the ministerial statement, Government Orders will be extended by 30 minutes beginning at one o'clock p.m.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: -That this House urge the Government to endorse, adopt and advocate, at home and abroad, the goals and recommendations of the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Report), entitled "Our Common Future";
That this report, dealing with global concerns, challenges and endeavours, be adopted as the central policy of the federal Government, its agencies and commissions; and
That the Minister of the Environment advocate the spirit and the substance of this report at the coming General Assembly of the United Nations on behalf of Canadians and of the global community, thus continuing Canada's tradition of giving leadership on environmental matters.
He said: Mr. Speaker, through this motion we urge the Government of Canadato endorse, adopt and advocate, at home and abroad, the goals and recommendations of the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development-
-widely known as the Brundtland Commission whose report is entitled "Our Common Future".
We are asking:
That this report, dealing with global concerns, challenges and endeavours, be adopted as the central policy of the federal Government, its agencies and commissions.
And finally, Mr. Speaker, we insist:
That the Minister of the Environment advocate the spirit and the substance of this report at the coming General Assembly of the United Nations on behalf of Canadians and of the global community, thus continuing Canada's tradition of giving leadership on environmental matters.
May 15, 1987



The history of the report goes back a few years to when the global community came to the conclusion that the environment and its protection and the understandable aspirations of developing nations had to be examined at the same time by way of a global commission. The debate was long and difficult. Finally, in December, 1983, the General Assembly gave the green light to the commission which came down with the report that we are discussing and debating today.
Canada's role or involvement in the time leading to the decision in December, 1983 was central, important, and of considerable significance, because of the role which Canada played in preceding years in other initiatives such as the discussions and negotiations leading to the adoption by the United Nations of the Law of the Sea.
In 1983, the then environment critic of the Official Opposition, who is now the Speaker, lent his support to the initiative. It is important to make that point because there has been, therefore, strong parliamentary support in addition to the government initiative at that time for what we are debating today.
What we are debating today is only one step in a long series of steps behind us and a number of important steps still ahead of us. The commission consisted of 22 individuals drawn from many regions of the globe. Among them were two Canadians. One was Maurice Strong who was very well known for the fact, among other things, that he was the Executive Director of UNEP and as Secretary General was the person in charge of the Stockholm environmental conference in 1972. The other Canadian was the Secretary General of the commission itself, Jim MacNeill. Preceding that assignment, he was the Director of Environment of the OECD. We can see that there was also participation in terms of human resources in the work of the commission by Canada, which lends additional significance and dimension to the report.
The report was released in London on April 27 of this year. I am glad that only 19 days later we have the opportunity in this House to debate its contents and to advance the cause embodied in the report entitled Our Common Future.
The commissioners advanced the debate on the environment from a theme of protection to a theme of survival of the human species on this planet, involving not only us as the human species, but the totality of living beings, with the background notion that between now and the year 2025 the population of this planet will double to almost nine billion persons. Given that today's population of 4.5 billion already has a substantial impact upon the environment, one can imagine the impact upon the resources of this globe if the population doubles and if we do not take certain precautions.
Therefore, the commissioners viewed the environment not only in the context of another public interest competing with existing interests, such as transport, finance, industry, agriculture, forestry, and the like, they stressed the importance of our capacity for a sustainable economy. In other words, they
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stressed the importance of careful management of the natural resources available on earth and the immense impact upon natural resources being implemented in a manner which would ensure the regenerative capacity of nature.
It was in this sense that the words "sustainable development" suddenly emerged. These two words imply and require a longer definition, which I have just attempted to give, namely, to ensure that the regenerative capacity of nature is assured in order to provide sustainment and a capacity to draw from our natural resources-from fish, forests, water, soil, and air-in a manner which accommodates a population that is expected to double. In a nutshell, that is what sustainable development is all about. Therefore, it becomes a concept or almost a precondition for our approach to the business of Governments and to the public interest in years ahead.
In this scenario, for instance, the Minister of Finance becomes an agent for the environment, as do his colleagues such as the Ministers of Transport, Energy, Mines and Resources, Industry, Agriculture, Forestry, and so on. It sees the totality of the public interest becoming a force intended to ensure sustainable development in Canada and abroad.
Therefore, the commissioners have conceptually incorporated the environment in a global survival theme which brings together, perhaps for the first time, the ambitions and aspirations of developed countries with those of developing countries. No longer will the dichotomy exist; the two hemispheres are brought together with the theme of sustainable development. That I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, is the genius of this report. For the first time this dichotomy of interests, north and south, has been put aside and the theme of sustainable development has provided the common denominator for the totality of mankind.
According to the commissioners, change must occur along three basic tracks; placing on our national Governments the onus of implementing at home and abroad the report's recommendations; confirming the present mandate of the United Nations Environment Program and giving it new technical responsibilities; and three, by calling on the U.N. Secretary General to act globally through existing United Nations agencies in their totality. In other words, not by reinventing another bureaucracy or mechanism but by using better, and reorganizing, existing United Nations agencies which, as we know, are many and important but have not yet adopted, in their own way of thinking, budgeting and setting their own goals, the importance of sustainable development. This is a first in the history of the United Nations.
As with many other things in life, a task like this requires political will. I am sure that if national Governments, and Canada in particular, will generate pressure in the United Nations, governments will manage to bring the change about. There is only until October in time, of course, for governments to prepare themselves at the General Assembly, but it can be done.

May 15, 1987
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The report outlines how to proceed from now in anticipation of this doubling of our planet's population. In order to get from here to there, one of the essential prerequisites is to rekindle the flame of international co-operation, which has a special meaning to Canada if one considers the difficulties we are having with acid rain and with other trans-boundary pollution problems experienced in the last decade or so. We do not want this report to become just another report. We do not want it to collect dust. The commission calls for a high level centre of leadership at the U.N. which can only be brought about by the political will generated among the nations which are members of the United Nations.
While national Governments are asked to reinforce the system, they ask why is it the responsibility and authority of the United Nations Secretary General? The commission at the same time is calling upon the Secretary General to constitute under his chairmanship a special United Nations board for sustainable development. In that sense, they give a signal that if the United Nations Secretary General were to assume this responsibility and develop it, then he would become the pivotal force, so to speak, for environment and development in his office at the head of the United Nations. His office would become the centre of three global preoccupations; one being peace, as well all know, the second being the environment, and the third being development. These are the three themes which would be the cement and the bond because of the community of interest in all member nations of the UN. Not one member nation of the UN would disagree with the fact that the main preoccupations globally today are these three points; peace, development and environment. In this sense, time is of the essence.
In her forward to this report, Madam Brundtland who, as you know, Mr. Speaker, is the Prime Minister of Norway, makes a number of interesting observations which I will quickly put forward for your consideration.
First, in the present times we have seen a deterioration in global co-operation which must be replaced by a return to multilateralism. That means co-operation between neighbouring nations in one region, globally as well. Second, the environment does not exist as a sphere separate from human actions, the environment is where we all live, and development is what we all do in attempting to improve our own lot within that abode called the environment. The two are inseparable. Third, many of the development paths of the industrialized nations are clearly unsustainable. I repeat, they are unsustainable, one of Madam Brundtland's points. The development decision of these countries, because of their great economic and political power, could have a profound effect upon the ability of all people to sustain human progress for generations to come.
What is needed is a new approach to economic growth, a new era so to speak; growth that is forceful and at the same time socially and environmentally sustainable. You can see the importance of the word "sustainable" which pops up almost on every page of this report, the theme of finding ways to
maintain sustainable growth that can accommodate larger and larger numbers of inhabitants on this planet.
The commissioners, as I mentioned to you, Mr. Speaker, came from widely differing backgrounds. After three years and starting with a variety of different approaches, they managed to produce a unanimous report. That is no minor feat considering the background, the education, the outlooks and the cultural values of the 22 commissioners from five different regions of the world.
In the report, the commissioners address governments, private enterprise, industry and labour. First and foremost are people, in particular, the young people of the world. Madam Brundtland stresses the fact that the world's teachers will have a crucial role to play in bringing this report to the attention of the young.
The report has an optimistic tone in contrast to other environmental documents. It expresses the belief that people can build a future more prosperous, more just and more secure. Rather than predicting ever increasing environmental decay, poverty and hardship, the commission seized the possibility for a new era of economic growth based on policies that sustain and expand the environmental resource base. Such growth is absolutely essential to relieve the great poverty in many parts of the world poverty which is deepening in much of the developing world.
The commissioners give the reader an urgent message based on the latest and best scientific evidence that the time has come to take the decisions needed to secure the resources to sustain this and coming generations. What is required is a spirit of international co-operation with the future of mankind in mind.
As you know, it is an historic fact that over time humanity has developed loyalties with greater and greater scope, Mr. Speaker. We started with the family, of course, and developed loyalties within the family. We then went to the clan to which we belong, then to the region, and eventually in the political history of mankind we developed the concept of nation and loyalty to the nation. In recent decades we have developed the new concept of loyalty to groups of nations and to the United Nations in general.
The authors of this report point to a new loyalty, a loyalty to the planet. The test of this report and of the political will in the parliaments of the world will be whether we will have the ability and foresight to make these loyalties ours, not only in theory but in practice. That will be the real test. The report refers to who the beneficiaries of the report will be.
I notice that my time is up, Mr. Speaker. I wonder whether, with the consent of the House, I could be permitted to carry on.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is there consent?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.
May 15, 1987


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia) has consent to continue for a few more minutes.


Mr. Caccia:: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also wish to thank my colleagues. I will accelerate my pace.
My colleagues and others watching these proceedings may ask who benefits from this report. In the case of Canada 1 would say that over 25 million Canadians would benefit from this report.


Mr. Nunziata:: And their children and grandchildren.


Charles L. Caccia: As the Member for York South-Weston (Mr. Nunziata) is suggesting, their children and grandchildren would benefit as well.
In the implementation of the ideas of this report, which may take several generations of parliamentarians, in the time period leading up to the launching of the commission, during the life of the commission, and from then on, there are very good reasons for Canada to develop the same relationship with the World Commission on the Environment and Development as Switzerland has developed with the Red Cross over the last century.
We certainly have a stake in that which is in this report because our well-being depends so much on natural resources. If we can turn things around in a manner which will enable us to better develop our relationship with our natural resources, our economy will benefit as well as our well-being.
The process will not be as simple as I have outlined it so far. The process will require changes in thinking, in behaviour and in structures. If the changes in thought take place, structures can change, particularly governmental structures with regard to how we govern and organize ourselves. As Madam Brundt-land emphasized very strongly in her report, there would be a return to multilateralism and an international spirit of cooperation.
I will move on to Chapter 12, the action chapter of the report, in which six priorities are outlined. The first priority deals with getting at the sources, in other words, to begin to focus on the source of the problem of how we affect the resources rather than on the effects, as we often do.
The second priority is to deal with the effects. The importance of that can, of course, be the subject of another intervention.
The third priority is the importance of assessing the global risks. In this respect Canada is playing a leadership role right now under the auspices of the present Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) on the question of the depletion of the ozone. We congratulate the Minister on that very fine initiative because the depletion of the ozone is one of the global risks which we must face. In addition to that we must be concerned about the warming up of temperatures, better known as the greenhouse effect.
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The fourth priority is the importance of making informed choices. There is a phenomenal range of informed choices which must be made through the actions of NGOs, teachers and governments in informing the public and so on.
The fifth priority is to provide legal means. This again is the subject of a speech by itself which the Hon. Member for York South-Weston will tackle later this afternoon. The sixth priority is investing in our future. There are a number of very important considerations with regard to this which time does not permit me to put on the record.
I would like to put the following paragraph from page 336 of the report forward for your consideration because I think it is so important. It reads:
Nations, industrial and developing, that did not make these investments have paid much more in terms of damage costs to human health, property, natural resources and the environment.
And these costs continue to rise at an accelerating pace. Indeed, countries that have not yet instituted strong programmes now face the need for very large investments. Not only do they need to roll back the first generation of environmental damage-
This is something which we are doing on the Niagara River and the St. Clair River and are trying to do with acid rain.
-they also need to begin to catch up with the rising incidence of future damage. If they do not, their fundamental capital assets, their environmental resources, will continue to decline.
What are these environmental resources? Obviously they are water, soil, forests, and all the other natural resources on which humanity depends that are so essential in maintaining the growth and well-being of the human species.
What should the response be to this report? The Government could and should direct each Deputy Minister to review the content of Our Common Future and report to their respective Ministers which recommendations in this report their Department can adopt and incorporate by way of a change of internal policy, and which they cannot adopt, and to indicate the reasons why.
Further, the Government can, as it has already, form a task force on the environment and the economy which has the mandate to consider this report; the group presently consists of seven Ministers of the Environment, provincial and federal, representatives from industry, from NGOs and one academic. We deplore very much the absence of labour from that committee. The committee could be expanded to include other people as well, but time does not permit me to go into that.
The Government could also ensure that the basic recommendations which impinge upon Canada's performance in our common future become standing items on the agenda of the meetings of the committee of provincial and federal environment and resource Ministers from across the country. That is a must.
Further, sustainable development should be made a permanent item on the agenda of the regular meetings of the First Ministers when they meet at regular intervals. Parliament could launch a joint committee of the House and Senate to ensure that the basic concepts of this report are known to

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the public, and to solicit and invite suggestions and input from Canadians at large. That in itself would be a very interesting and exciting parliamentary experience.
Looking beyond our boundaries, the report makes a recommendation which I commend to you very highly, and that is that Canada should develop an environmental foreign policy. As we develop a peace policy we should certainly start to think in terms of an environmental foreign policy.
What can be done outside government does not require much elucidation. I would only say that non-governmental organizations could perform a major role, as well as interested individuals and groups and native groups who will become increasingly interested in finding ways of supporting the transition that lies ahead to an economy based on sustainable development.
As well, a suggestion could be made to establish a "futures committee", comprised of leaders in business and labour, in environmental organizations, in the educational sector, in the arts and communications to look at the concepts of sustainable development as they apply to Canada and the globe, and to tap new ideas and resources. Public education will be the key in the adoption and implementation of what is in this report.
It is absolutely essential to provide a kit for teachers that will give them an understanding of Our Common Future so they will be able to pass the message on to the children and youth in our school systems across the nation.
The reason for this motion today is to provide for a constructive debate on the report of the World Commission on the Environment and Development only 19 days after it was released in London. We do this in order to bring to the attention of the House and Canadians at large the concepts involved in this very crucial and important document, and to register and reinforce the urgency of the situation and the overwhelming need to act now if we are to assure the survival of the human race in the long term.
In October of this year the Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) will be addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations to deliver Canada's response to this report. Many of our colleagues who have attended international conferences will know that Canada is looked upon for leadership in global environmental, peace and security matters. To this end, we on this side of the House urge the Minister of the Environment, with the help of his Cabinet colleagues and Members of Parliament, provincial Governments, public groups and NGOs, to develop not just a message of process and policy but of specific projects and concrete examples on how to reach the goals of sustainable development within the systems of three levels of Government in our nation, as basically advanced by the Brundtland Report.
I will conclude by quoting the last paragraph of that report which states:
We are unanimous in our conviction that the security, well being, and very
survival of the planet depend on such changes, now.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Before 1 recognize the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment (Mrs. Browes), do I have consent to call it one-thirty o'clock? Questions and comments have terminated, therefore I will not recognize any questions and comments.


Mr. Prud'homme:: Mr. Speaker, while we were listening attentively to our colleague, I had discussions with Members, and I think you will find agreement by all Parties to call it one-thirty so that the Member who speaks at two o'clock can make all of his comments at one time.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being 1.30 p.m., I do now leave the Chair until 2 p.m.
At 1.25 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2.07 p.m.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: When the House adjourned at 1.30 p.m. I had recognized the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment.


Mrs. Pauline Browes (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure for me as Parliamentary Secretary, to speak today on behalf of the Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) on this very important subject. We are discussing today the work of the World Commission on the Environment and Development, commonly known as the Brundtland report. That report is named, of course after the Prime Minister of Norway. 1 had the very great pleasure of welcoming some musicians from Norway just a few days before the report was tabled in London. I must say the Norwegian people are very proud of the report being named after their Prime Minister.
We are all in agreement with the World Commission Report on the Environment and Development. It is a major step towards tackling global environmental challenges. There are a number of serious challenges which affect us all, such as acid rain, air and water quality, pollution, toxic wastes, to name a few. However, the commission focuses on the most important challenge of all, and that is the challenge of encouraging economic growth while protecting our ecological environment.
Economic growth together with environmental protection is the theme of this report called Our Common Future. Today we have an opportunity to consider the environment on a global plane. By providing people in Canada and around the world with this report the commission has performed a most useful function. The presence of Dr. Maurice Strong and Jim MacNeill, Secretary General, both Canadians, ensured that the commission was made well aware of Canadian concerns.
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In choosing Canada as one of only four countries in which to hold public hearings, the commission chose wisely. Canada is a unique resource for any environment related studies. There are several reasons for this. First, this is a very large country. It is the world's second largest land mass embracing, as it does, three oceans, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the Arctic Ocean. Since we are managers of such a large part of the globe's real estate, how we manage what we have has to be important to the rest of the world.
Much of Canada rests on the Precambrian Shield which sustains vast forests and pockets of mineral wealth, but we have a relatively small population. In the West, farmers are plagued by drought, falling water-tables and unstable soils. The mountains in the west, magnificent in their majesty, restrict two-thirds of the population of that area to the lower Fraser River valley. The north is dominated by cold, dry tundra. In fact, the north, because of the limitations of its ecosystems, has a very delicate environmental balance. Economic development must therefore be undertaken with care.
Let us look more closely at the reality behind the popular image of Canada as a country of hewers of wood and drawers of water, at the parts of the country-the Province of Ontario in which we are sitting today, the Province of Quebec which we can see across the river, the eastern provinces, including Prince Edward Island, where once there was a sea of white pine, wave after wave of trees that grew so tall that they seemed the very pillars holding up our skies. It was not uncommon to fell trees that were 15 metres high and perhaps three metres in diameter. We need to do more to replant what has been harvested. As a result lumbermen have been reduced to cutting black spruce 1,500 kilometres northeast of Ottawa in our less fertile forests.
Within our mammoth land is a diversity that parallels much of the rest of the world; geographically, climatically, economically and culturally. There are within Canada greater differences than exist between entire countries elsewhere in the world. Looking at Canada is like viewing conditions around the globe, as if we offered the commission a world visit for the cost of a single airfare; from virgin forests in South Moresby to the fragile high Arctic to the towering but delicate sand dunes of the Cavendish Beaches; from Quebec City, a UNESCO heritage site, to the Old Port of Montreal; and from Toronto, which is now praised as North America's most livable large city, to the Scarborough Bluffs which are on the edge of Lake Ontario just south of my riding, right to Vancouver.
Beyond what Canada is lies what Canada does. What Canada does best goes to the very heart of this debate. We were pioneers and have now become seasoned experts in the reality of environmental interdependence. Whether acid or toxic rain, nuclear radiation, or in any other form, pollution moves around our planet irrespective of the maps we have made and the national flags in which we wrap our pride.
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Pollution moves upward and outward as well, piercing the layers of the stratosphere nature gave us as a protective blanket and threatening the purity of space beyond our space.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the shared Canadian-American environment where, on a less global scale, two countries are linked by waterways, mountain ranges and even by wind patterns. We in Canada have, with our American friends, pioneered international co-operation. We have resorted to every form of co-operative measure to keep each other's garbage off our own front lawns. We have reciprocal laws, bilateral mechanisms, agreements, treaties and regular summits between heads of state.
We are very pleased with the recent Niagara River memorandum of understanding signed by four levels of Government: Ontario, New York, United States and Canada. There is a Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and, of course, the International Joint Commission which has been dealing with transboundary water boundaries and now soil, pollution, air, and, of course, the high water levels that are of particular importance today.
I recognize, of course, that these Canadian-U.S. initiatives are the result of interaction between two wealthy countries. By contrast, the commission faced environmental questions in countries where poverty is an economic reality. Countries are forced to sacrifice their precious natural resources for urgent short-term purposes at the expense of their immediate environment and future generations.
The consequences of encroaching on our environmental capital have been identified by the report of the commission. Some of them include the greenhouse effect, which threatens to overheat the world by wrapping it in a layer of carbon dioxide; the dangers of a nuclear winter imposed on us by war or by accident; arctic haze, which reminds us that airborne pollution travels thousands of miles, and even countries away from its industrial origins; lessened genetic diversity, which may eliminate potential sources of medications that alleviate human suffering; and the destruction of the natural heritage so essential to human survival. Humankind's life support systems-the air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil that provides our food-is under seige. A steadily growing population means that more and more people will be trying to live on less and less environmental capital, much of which is under environmental strain.
The commission report asks what can be done to stop this spiral. Despite the best intentions, foreign aid and favourable trade arrangements, the industrialized world has work to do in assisting developing countries and nations to solve their root problems. We live in a fortunate country blessed with a wealth of resources and opportunities. That wealth gives us a unique role to play in helping less developed countries reach their potential.
Part of that role includes providing development assistance that takes into account both economic development and environmental protection. Canada's development agency,

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CIDA, now budgets 20 per cent to 25 per cent of all funds for bilateral aid projects to the environmental concerns associated with them. That is a significant part of the CIDA budget. In addition, all Canadian aid projects in the Third World are subject to an in-depth environmental assessment. The Government is also tackling our own domestic environmental issues.
One of Canada's most troubling environmental problems is that of toxic wastes. The Department of the Environment is now preparing legislation to help manage toxic chemicals through their entire life cycle, from formulation, manufacture, distribution, sale and use, to eventual disposal.
Even as that legislation is now being developed, there is growing concern, because of toxic rain, about the presence of lethal chemicals in the environment. If we are to take action, and we are, we will find solid ground on which to tackle this problem in concrete terms. The commission has already identified anticipation and prevention of economic environmental mismanagement as essential, and I certainly agree.
The Minister of the Environment established the National Task Force on the Environment and the Economy to improve the co-ordination of economic and environmental decisionmaking. Further, the Minister of the Environment is also ensuring that his cabinet colleagues take environmental considerations into account when federal economic decisions are made.
In Canada, studies show that in all of the policy questions that have dominated the public agenda since the end of World War II, attitudes have shifted on only one major issue, the environment. And even in respect of the environment there is a need to increase an understanding of the true state of the environment and of the importance of preventive measures.
We have to ensure that today's consumers of the environment, and tomorrow's, understand the consequences of the chemical society, of the overfished lake, of the carelessly set forest fire; and moreover, we have to make the consumer aware not just of the problem but of how we as individuals can help prevent it.
A better understanding by youth is especially important, for half of the present and all of the future belongs to our youth.
The State of the Environment report, released by the Department of the Environment in May of 1986 is an analysis of the Canadian environment, over time and on the total system, on a stress-response basis, not on the basis of individual problems in specific parts of the country. While there have been such surveys in other countries, the State of the Environment report in Canada remains the first of its kind anywhere in the world, both for its thoroughness and for its holistic approach.
With the release of this report. Our Common Future, we have a global State of the Environment report.
Canadians, for their part, participated in the events leading to the report during the visit of the commission to Canada last summer. We see throughout the report the importance placed on the Canadian input. Throughout the pages of the report, many Canadians are quoted, including the federal Minister of the Environment. I should like to quote some of the words of the Minister of the Environment, as set out in the report, as follows:
The world's environmental problems are greater than the sum of those in each
country. Certainly, they can no longer be dealt with purely on a nation-state
basis.
The commission met with Canadians in Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, Quebec City, and Halifax. It also visited Fort McMurray, South Moresby, and James Bay, all very important parts of Canada from an environmental standpoint. In addition, the commission held two days of public hearings in Ottawa, for the purpose of hearing submissions from Canadians from across the country.
During the public hearings in Ottawa the commission received 124 written submissions. At the same time, there were discussions with 140 individuals, representing industry, labour, native and environmental groups, the voluntary sector, and the general public.
This Government welcomes the clear demonstration of interest and concern expressed by Canadians. We are going to be sure that the voice of Canada, and of Canadians, is heard in the follow-up to this report.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions or comments. The Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia).


Charles L. Caccia: Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Secretary, in her most informative and interesting speech this afternoon, made reference to CIDA, a reference which I should like to pursue for a moment by way of one question.
If I understood her correctly, she indicated to the House that CIDA projects are now subject to an in-depth environmental assessment before a decision is taken. I should like to know the date on which that policy was put into place by CIDA, and the date from which such in-depth environmental assessments have been carried out in respect of CIDA projects.


Pauline Browes: Mr. Speaker, in speaking to the Minister for External Relations (Mrs. Landry) and her officials, I learned of this policy. I think it is important that such impact studies be carried out in respect of CIDA projects. It is my understanding that during the time the public hearings were held in Ottawa there was a fair amount of discussion about this particular policy. As to the date on which impact studies began to be carried out on CIDA projects, I cannot say. I can tell Hon. Members that the discussions and hearings that were held in Ottawa and across the country played a major role in having CIDA projects analysed and reviewed in relation to the environmental impact that would flow from such projects. Because Canada puts the environment on such a high plane, it
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is important that we show a good example in terms of the environmental impact of projects that we sponsor in developing countries.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Tupper) on a question or comment.


Mr. Tupper:: Mr. Speaker, I want to offer some comments on the remarks of the Parliamentary Secretary. Before 1 do so, I wish to note my disappointment at not being able to engage in questions or comments in relation to the remarks of the opposition environment critic. In agreeing to provide him with extended time, I did not realize that I would be denied the questions or comments interface.
In relation to the Task Force on the Environment and the Economy, he made the point that there was no labour representation. It is my understanding that in fact the CLC was invited to participate in that task force and that they in fact turned the invitation down. I wanted to set the record straight in that regard.
While I think we need to compliment the opposition environment critic for bringing this subject forward at this time, I do wish to note my disappointment at the generalities of his suggestions. I really wanted to find out this afternoon the direction that the Liberal Party wishes to take in response to this report. That is the sort of thing I would have tried to draw from the Hon. Member in a questions or comments session.
But, Mr. Speaker, let me compliment the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment (Mrs. Browes) for her presentation this afternoon. I welcome very much the Government's endorsement of the report because I think its tone, thrust, and direction are important to all Canadians.
Recently I have taken a considerable interest in this topic, because the Standing Committee on Research, Science and Technology has been addressing the problem of global change. The report deals with those aspects of the earth support structure as they relate to the ability of man to survive on this globe.
I should like to share with my colleagues in the House of Commons the fact that one organization within the Canadian fabric which is delving deeply into the matter on behalf of all Canadians is the Royal Society of Canada. Over the last 18 months it has been discussing on an international level how we should approach matters of global change which affect all of us. In that process the Royal Society of Canada has come to the conclusion that the best way Canadians and Canada can contribute is through detailed studies in the Canadian Arctic, in the Canadian North. It is concerned about how little we know about that important part of the earth. In fact, we know far more about Antarctica than we do about the Canadian Arctic. The Canadian Arctic and the ice mass associated with
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the whole north polar region play a dramatic role in terms of the earth's climate. It is reflected in many ways relative to rainfall, aridity, soil erosion, and a whole host of other things.
The message I really want to leave with my colleagues is that the Royal Society feels, in that our best contribution can be through studies in the Canadian Arctic, that we should develop the high technology tool of satellite observation known as Radarsat.
We as a Government should ensure that this project goes forward, because it will be one of the most useful tools to study the environment, particularly the Canadian Arctic. It will provide information on ice thickness, ice temperatures, soil erosion, soil alkalinity, and many other areas which are important to all of us who have the privilege of laying the foundation for our next generation.
In closing I should like to repeat that the main theme of the report is that humanity has the ability to make development sustainable and to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations. I take that to mean that there is considerable hope for all of us if we apply our talents in the right direction.


Pauline Browes: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Carleton (Mr. Tupper) for his enlightened comments today and for his sustained interest in environmental issues. The issues about which he spoke, the Arctic and satellite observation, are important. However, I want to mention to the Hon. Member some specifics in terms of what will be taking place and will be of concern to the Canadian population.
The Canadian Government is hosting an international conference in Montreal in September of this year. It will concern an international agreement on the ozone layer.
In June, 1988 the Department of the Environment will be hosting in Toronto a conference on the impact of man's activities on climatic change.
In a few short days an international conference will be held in Regina, the Ramsar conference relating to the wetlands. We will also have a visit from royalty, from Prince Philip, at that particular conference.
Of course the federal Minister of the Environment will be making a very important address at the United Nations in culmination of the report and discussions flowing from the national task force.
Also, during the first week of June we will be celebrating environment week in Canada. Its theme is "It is up to all of us".
It is very important that 400 or 500 network organizations are being funded by the Minister of the Environment and that we also participate in our local communities in those very important projects.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, I regret very much that the Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) is not here today to participate in this most important debate, but I appreciate

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the fact that the Parliamentary Secretary made some remarks-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Member, if I may interrupt him for a minute, knows very well that he should not comment upon the presence or absence of Members of the House. There are television cameras outside the Chamber which Hon. Members could be watching. They are in committees, and they are working in other places such as their constituencies. I do not think it is fair for the Hon. Member to keep saying this. He has done it a number of times, and that is the only reason I bring it to his attention.


John V. Nunziata: In her comments-


Mr. Cote (Lac-Saint-Jean):: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. If they want to play that game, we waited for the Liberal Party until 2.07 p.m. and this is their motion-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: That is a perfect example of what can happen when this type of thing occurs in the Chamber. Therefore I ask the Hon. Member for a short question and comment, please.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, in her comments the Parliamentary Secretary indicated that the Government of Canada puts the environment on a high plane. I believe I am quoting her correctly. If that is the case, could the Parliamentary Secretary explain why the Conservative Government of Canada cut $46 million from the environment portfolio two and a half years ago? Could she explain, as well, why the Conservative Government of Canada is participating in an ongoing program to cut nearly 750 jobs in that particular area over the next five years? If the Government is as committed as the Parliamentary Secretary is suggesting, why has almost every major environmental group in Canada criticized the pollution policies of the Government? Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary could explain the obvious inconsistency between her words and the actions of her Government.


Pauline Browes: Mr. Speaker, I reiterate what has been mentioned on numerous occasions in the House, that is, the commitment of the Government to environmental issues. Indeed, I outlined some major specifics relating to the environment which I believe deserve a great deal of credit.
Let me also say to the Hon. Member that the budget for Environment Canada this year is now higher than it has ever been in the history of the country, except for one fiscal year, and that is very excellent.


Mr. Simon de Jong (Regina East):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to participate in this very important debate. At the outset, let me say that the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie) was unable to be here today. He very much wanted to participate in the debate, but a long-standing invitation to a speaking engagement in his riding prevented him from being
here. He very much regrets it. However, I do not regret it, because it gives me the opportunity to speak on the motion.
I also wish to congratulate the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia) for introducing the motion and for encouraging the creation of the World Commission on Environment and Development and its report entitled Our Common Future. He has played a positive role in that regard, allowing for a very positive and important report to be issued by the international commission.
The commission warns us of the environmental disasters that are waiting to happen. It outlines for the public of the world some of the social, economic and environmental trends. In doing so, I think it functions in a very important way. It gives us a warning that we should heed. For example it says:
In terms of absolute numbers there are more hungry people in the world than ever before, and their numbers are increasing. So are the numbers of those who cannot read or write, the numbers of those without safe water or safe and sound homes, and the numbers who are short of woodfuel with which to cook and warm themselves. The gap between the rich and the poor nations is widening-not shrinking-and there is little prospect, given present trends and institutional arrangements, that this process will be reversed.
It goes on to outline that:
Each year another 6 million hectares of productive dryland turns into worthless desert. More than 1 1 million hectares of forests are destroyed yearly, and this, over 3 decades, would equal an area the size of India.
It talks about acid rain.
The burning of fossil fuels puts into the atmosphere carbon dioxide which is causing gradual global warming.
This is the greenhouse effect. It maintains that in the early part of the next century the greenhouse effect will increase average global temperatures enough to shift agricultural production areas, raise sea levels to flood coastal cities, disrupt national economies and so forth. It also warns of the depletion of the ozone layer and the effect this will have on increasing human and animal cancers.
The commission did not deal with that area I would call social and psychological pollution. We are living in an age of tremendous social and economic change. You start out in life after some training, never being certain that the job you have trained for will be there. Most people realize now that they will have to change jobs two or three times in a lifetime. We have also seen that the social glue holding communities, societies and families together is now also disappearing. Individual human beings are somewhat in a free flow. A tremendous state of instability exists among our social institutions. There are increases in crime rates, depressions, mental breakdowns and suicides, particularly, and alarmingly, among the young. We have psychopaths who wander the streets and commit mindless murders. These are all symptoms of a society becoming unglued. They are examples of social and psychological pollution.
There is no doubt that we are living in an age of tremendous change, unparalleled in the history of the human race. I
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remember a few years ago attending a conference in Vancouver listening to the eminent American futurologist, Buckminster Fuller. He was explaining to us that all of the important discoveries made in the history of the human race had been made in his lifetime-in his lifetime, Mr. Speaker.
So fast are the rates of change that nobody is unaffected. The industrialized developed world is also finding the effects of those rapid economic, social and cultural changes. It is obvious that present social institutions in many respects are not capable of dealing with these rapid changes. There are social institutions based on a mind-set in vogue as we entered this century, yet the events that have occurred in this century have made many of those mind-sets obsolete and dangerous.
The commission talks about-and I was very pleased to read this-viable, sustainable social and economic institutions. It talks about sustainable development and growth. In that word "sustainable" lies a whole world of different thoughts, a whole different civilization, a whole different way of doing things, living lives and doing economic and social activities that put a roof over our heads and bread on the table. In that word lies the real importance of this document. In many ways we live in two different worlds. We are all caught in it, particularly we as Members of Parliament.
Let me give two examples. The commission talks about energy, and the need to plan. Oil is a finite resource for which alternate energies must be developed. Conservation has to be dealt with. Last night when I was preparing for my remarks I came across an old copy of the December 1983 report put out by Canertech, a division of Petro-Canada, dealing with alternate energies. In its report it states that alternate energy and energy conservation will create more jobs, save so many billions of dollars to the consumer and so forth. In a recommendation it says that the days of burning fossil fuels have to be numbered. A greenhouse effect is forming that will totally change the climatic patterns and therefore the social and economic patterns of this globe. We cannot continue to put out garbage. Other ways have to be found to dispose of it.
The warnings are there. Yet we live in this other world. We live in this world of jobs in which the economy of your Province of Alberta, Mr. Speaker, and my Province of Saskatchewan are almost in ruins because of the oil price collapse. We stand here in the House of Commons asking for more assistance for the industry, yet we know that that industry over the long term is not sustainable. It is not a life forming sustainable industry because it is threatening the very atmosphere of this globe.
The other example, is the field of agriculture. The commission points out rightly that the heavy subsidization of agriculture in the developed world has meant more planting from fence line to fence line, putting land into production that should never be in production, with the use of chemicals and fertilizer-mining the soil, so to speak. We in western Canada know this. Commissions and studies have warned us that one cannot continue doing this forever and ever. We have a finite world. Our resources are finite. The soil is finite. We do not
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have an infinite world in which we can continue to exploit the soil as people have in the past. On the other hand, when wheat prices fall, my colleagues and I ask for further assistance from the Government. I raise this in all honesty because if we take a look we will recognize the contradictions that exist. We are living in two different worlds simultaneously. They are worlds in conflict and worlds apart.
The commission talks about a new type of world that we have to move into if we are to survive as a human species. We are still in this other world which assumes that our resources are infinite. We are in a world which demands short-term decision making, not long-term, meaning governments from poll to poll and election to election. We should be guided and motivated by that. With business it is the bottom line at the end of the month or at the end of the year. That is what shareholders are concerned about.
If we as a human species are to survive we have to expand our consciousness. We must begin to realize that what we do in one place has an effect on other places around the globe. We have to expand our collective consciousness to realize that what we do today will affect tomorrow and the days after. We have to expand our consciousness so that we begin to realize that things have effects and then act accordingly in the best interests of future generations. The institutions, of which we are a part, force us to act on a short-term basis and not in the best interests of the global village, and not necessarily in the best interests of tomorrow and the heritage of our children.
I do not know what the solutions to these problems are. If, for example, the oil industry is not a sustainable industry in the long term, we must be able to offer a social net so that those employed in that industry can find other meaningful employment. We must, for example, allow for the evolution of another form of agriculture that is on a smaller scale, is sustainable and would allow people to live economically viable lives in a rural setting without being forced into the cities. However, evolving those programs and policies requires a different mind-set, a different consciousness, a different civilization. I hope that this report is a step in that direction and I hope that this debate in the House is a step in that direction.
The human race has embarked on a journey into the unknown. The old patterns no longer fit. It is not a question of the old ideologies, public versus private ownership, because either can be as unconscious of the environment and its workers. It is not a matter of workers versus capital because they are both motivated by their own self interests. Workers want and need their jobs and incomes, and capital, of course, requires a rate of return. It is not a question of left versus right. New thinking is required.
This new thinking must be co-operative. People must work together in the common interest and for the common good. That surely is the first priority. If we are to evolve sustainable economic, social and political institutions, those institutions

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must surely be built on a co-operative model and not on an adversarial one. That is true of labour and capital and of our justice and political systems.
It is the adversarial nature of our present civilization that in many ways creates the bottle-necks. Humanity must evolve more stable and life-sustaining forms of social institutions.
I am particularly happy that the commission addressed international arms expenditures. The commission states that out of a world economy of some $16 trillion, about $1 trillion gets funnelled into the development of arms, the machinery of death. Over all this hangs the danger of a nuclear war and the destruction of the human race as we know it. Surely of all the environmental dangers that face humanity, that is the most important one. The resolution of that danger again requires a different mind-set. It is not East versus West, the communists against the capitalists, the Russians against the Americans. It is a question of our mutual survival. It is a question of addressing the fears of nation states and political and cultural alliances, not through the production of more deadly means of destruction but through the development of sustaining forms of social, economic and political institutions.
The commission pointed out how ironic it is that because of decisions that were made, the deserts in the Sahara are increasing at such an alarming rate that more destruction is being done there than would have been done if an army had invaded and practised the worst kind of scorched-earth policy. Against such an army, we would invest hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. Yet hardly a gesture has been made to block the desert. How strange our priorities for surviving in this day and age.
In creating those institutions which are meaningful in what I would call a post-industrial society, we must see that they are co-operative in nature. They must take a long-term view of decisions that are made. They must imply planning and care and the proper husbandry, not only of our soil but of our resources and our environment. This requires an intelligence in the decision-making process. It will be a long journey and the human race has embarked on that journey. There is no turning back. As we come to the end of the century, we will continue to meet increasing crises in food and starvation, environmental damage on a global or a regional scale and further economic, social and psychological upheavals. These are indeed very dangerous times.
The members of the commission and 1 have come to the same conclusion, that there is hope that the human race has the capability of developing those institutions that are sustainable. The human race can develop a higher level of consciousness and all men and women on the face of this planet can begin to benefit from the richness of human intelligence, the vastness of our resources and the beauty of our mother, this planet Earth.


John Martin Oostrom: Mr. Speaker, before I ask the Hon. Member for Regina East (Mr. de Jong) a question, I, like the Hon. Member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Tupper), would like to
express my regret for not having had an opportunity to ask the former Minister of the Environment in the previous Government some questions. We know the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia) is sometimes long on words and short on action. Perhaps we will get another opportunity to question him in the future. At least the Hon. Member for Davenport thanked this Government extensively for working-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia) on a point of order.


Charles L. Caccia: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I did abide by your ruling that, because you were kind enough to extend the time for my speech, there ought not to be a period of questions and comments. I would be more than happy to respond to questions and comments if that is your wish and the wish of Members in the House. However, to be criticized in the manner that I have just been I do not think is fair.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: 1 appreciate what the Hon. Member is saying. I did allow the Hon. Member more time because it was his motion. As he did take a few extra minutes which extended into the question and comment period I felt it only fair, so that other Members could have an opportunity to speak on this debate before five o'clock, that there not be a question and comment period. I appreciate the fact that the Hon. Member would like to respond to questions and comments.
After we have completed the period for questions and comments on the speech of the Hon. Member for Regina East (Mr. de Jong) we will consider the matter of a period for questions and comments on the speech of the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia). I will now recognize the Hon. Member for Willowdale (Mr. Oostrom) on questions and comments on the speech of the Hon. Member for Regina East.


John Martin Oostrom: Mr. Speaker, we certainly do not want to take away the rights of other Members who would like to speak on this important topic this afternoon. I would, however, like to thank the Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia) for his laudatory comments, not only with regard to the Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) but also with regard to the Government which is finally taking some action on the environment.
The report on the environment stresses that the fundamental links between economic growth and environmental protection is very important. Would the Member for Regina East (Mr. de Jong) not endorse some constructive policies as a means of helping Third World countries to a higher level of growth such as better trade relations around the world? I am sure he will agree that enhanced trade, for example, will help the poorer nations break out of the cycle of poverty and expand their economies. In that way they will have money and resources for environmental protection in their countries.
May 15, 1987


Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for his very valid question. I am not certain what the answer is to all of this. Of course if Third World countries are able to export more and earn more income they can increase their standards of living and have the resources to deal with the environmental problems which will arise as they develop.
Another voice inside of me says that that was the same argument used to get them into forms and patterns of development which now have them so badly in debt that there is more hunger now than there ever was before in those countries. They were lured into this pattern of development and got into cash crops. They now have surpluses of coffee and sugar but not enough basic substances to feed their people on a day-today basis. There is starvation in the midst of plenty.
Something has gone wrong with the pattern of development. We must make certain that whatever pattern of development we suggest to Third World countries will not put them deeper in the pit than they are now. So far we have not been very helpful to them.
We hear everyone saying that we need more international trade in order to balance our payments and create jobs and prosperity at home. That is what the Americans are saying and that is what they are saying in Brazil and all over Europe. If everyone is going to be exporting more, who is going to be importing? There is a myth that the more we export the more wealthy we will become. Who is going to import? I have not heard of one country saying that it will import more.
Something else is amiss, Mr. Speaker. I do not have all the answers but before we find answers we will have to explode some of the myths. There are a few around which deserve to be discredited and questioned.


William Tupper: Mr. Speaker, I realize that there is very little time left for this discussion. I would very much like to hear from the Member for Regina East (Mr. de Jong) what his Party's position is on the specific areas in which Canada and Canadians could make a contribution to solving the problems of global change.


Simon Leendert de Jong: That is a great question, Mr. Speaker. Could 1 have an hour? It is a very valid question. The New Democratic Party, and particularly its membership, is very committed to, conscious of and concerned about the environmental question. There are contradictions and difficulties within the Party. Sometimes the contradiction is between jobs, jobs, jobs and the environment. I will be perfectly truthful and honest in admitting that there are difficulties and contradictions as there are in all political Parties.
We believe that Canada can make a tremendous contribution. We do have the technical ability and human know-how to make a very strong contribution to global development. New Democrats believe that this can be one of Canada's missions, so to speak. We have a tremendous responsibility to the human family to make this contribution. My colleagues and members of the New Democratic Party are strongly committed to
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ensuring that human institutions on this globe remain a viable life form.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The period for questions on the speech of the Hon. Member for Regina East (Mr. de Jong) has expired. Is there unanimous consent to allow a short question and comment period on the speech of the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia)?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: As I heard a "no" I will recognize the Member for York South-Weston (Mr. Nunziata) for debate.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, I find it somewhat strange that Conservative Members of Parliament would deny unanimous consent to allow questions to be asked of the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia) after several members of the Conservative Party complained that they did not have the opportunity to ask questions, and particularly after the Hon. Member for Davenport indicated a willingness to answer any questions which might be presented to him.
In any event, Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in this debate this afternoon. I am very proud and pleased that the Parliament of Canada is debating the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development entitled Our Common Future less than three weeks after it was tabled and made public in London. The credit, of course, must go to my colleague, the Hon. Member for Davenport, the critic for the Ministry of the Environment for the Official Opposition, for taking the initiative to bring this matter before Parliament to allow all parliamentarians the opportunity to discuss this document which will be discussed world-wide for the remainder of this century.
The report, Our Common Future, is probably one of the most important documents ever produced because it addresses the very future of the world. The Hon. Member for Davenport has moved what I consider to be an extremely important motion which, with your permission, I would like to read. The motion reads:
That this House urge the Government to endorse, adopt and advocate, at home and abroad, the goals and recommendations of the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Report), entitled "Our Common Future";
That this Report, dealing with global concerns, challenges and endeavours, be adopted as the central policy of the federal Government, its agencies and commissions; and
That the Minister of the Environment advocate the spirit and the substance of this Report at the coming General Assembly of the United Nations on behalf of Canadians and of the global community, thus continuing Canada's tradition of giving leadership on environmental matters.
If this motion were to be put to a vote, 1 suspect that it would receive unanimous consent of the House.

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I believe the report Our Common Future is probably one of the most important documents that will be discussed in Parliaments throughout the world, including the countries in the western world and behind the Iron Curtain.
When the report speaks of our common future, its authors are not speaking specifically with regard to the future of any particular country but are speaking of the future of humanity and the world as we know it.
The point has been made that the world is finite, that we can grow only so much before we run out of room and deplete the necessary resources to sustain growth.
By the year 2025, the population of the world will double. Presently, the population of the world is 4.5 billion. In a short 38 years, the population will be nine billion, and that fact alone would suggest very strongly that every Parliament, every parliamentarian, every politician and every person in the world must address the question of the future of the globe. It is not only timely that we in Canada should be discussing this report, it is timely for the world.
In 1983, the United Nations General Assembly took a timely decision and established the World Commission on Environment and Development, to study and recommend action on global trends which require urgent attention. Let us examine these trends. One trend is the doubling of the population in 38 years. The report made several other important observations. For example, there are more hungry people in the world today than ever before and more will be hungry with each passing day.
Canada is not immune to the problem of hunger. Members will know that there are food banks in Canada and some of our fellow Canadians suffer the indignity of standing in line for food. There is a problem with poverty and hunger here in Canada, and when we speak of these problems that exist in the world, we must recognize that while we, as Canadians, are fortunate, we are not immune from each of these problems.
The commission also recognized that the gap between the rich and the poor nations is widening rather than narrowing. Each year, another six million hectares of productive dry land turn into worthless desert. More than 11 million hectares of forest are destroyed yearly.
Acid rain kills forests and lakes, damages buildings, structures, monuments, and acidifies water and soil. We in Canada are blessed by the environment. We are indeed fortunate to have some of the most beautiful country anywhere in the world.
However, our environment is threatened. Our lakes and forests are being threatened because of the problem of acid rain. We in the Opposition, through our critic on the environment, have been working very hard to ensure that this issue is treated as a top priority.
The commission also observed the problem with the greenhouse effect, which is the burning of fossil fuels which
puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere causing gradual global warming. By early next century this phenomenon may increase average temperatures enough to shift agricultural production areas, raise sea levels to flood coastal cities, and disrupt national economies.
The commission also observed that industrial and agricultural activities release toxic substances into the human food chain and into underground water tables where removal is virtually impossible.
The commissioners found that the separation of economic development issues from environmental issues is a shortsighted policy. Many forms of development erode the environmental resource upon which they must be based. Environmental degradation can undermine economic development.
Poverty is a major cause and effect of global environmental problems. Attempts to deal with environmental problems without a broader perspective, encompassing the factors underlying world poverty and international inequality are becoming futile.
These main concerns led to the establishment of the commission some three or four years ago. Linked to, but outside the control of, governments and the UN system, the commission which was headed by Harlem Brundtland, pursued three objectives. They were: first, to re-examine the critical environment and development issues and to formulate realistic proposals for dealing with them; second, to propose new forums of international co-operation on these issues that will influence policies and events; and third, to raise the levels of understanding and commitment to action of individuals, volunteer organizations, businesses, institutes, and Governments.
The World Commission on Environment and Development consisted of 22 individuals drawn from five continents. I am pleased to say that the commission consisted of two very eminent Canadians, Mr. Maurice Strong and Mr. Jim MacNeill, who contributed tremendously to the report Our Common Future.
The commission held public hearings throughout the world. Observing that many development trends leave increasing numbers of people poor while at the same time degrading the environment, the commissioners pursued the question: "How can such development serve next century's world of twice as many people relying on the same environment?" As the hearings and meetings progressed, the commissioners came to view development not just in the restricted context of economic growth in developing countries. They concluded that a new development path was required, one which sustained human progress not just in a few places for a few years, but for the entire planet into the distant future. Thus the term "sustainable development" is a goal not just for the developing nations, but for industrialized nations as well.
The conclusions of this report are somewhat of a departure from previous thought in the area. Not long ago there was a general opinion that co-operation between the environment
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and economic development was not possible. Many people cited gloomy statistics and were not at all optimistic about the future.
This report says that the environment can sustain economic growth and that the goals must be to ensure that economic growth occurs while considering the impact on the environment. In the Chairman's foreword to the report entitled Our Common Future, Mrs. Brundtland makes a number of interesting observations. She says in part, and I quote:
After a decade and a half of a standstill or even deterioration in global cooperation, I believe the time has come for higher expectations, for common goals pursued together, for an increased political will to address our common future.
We are here for a short period of time in the scheme of things. The average life span today in this country is age 65 years to 70 years. When we speak of the environment, we are talking about the future, not only the future of our children, our grandchildren and the generations to follow but the future of the world. All too often we become preoccupied with things which affect our country and our well-being simply in the short run.
Of course it is important to talk about the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. However, all too often issues dealing with the environment are put on the back burner. What this report, and hopefully this debate, will do is to put the issue of the environment in the forefront to ensure that not only this Parliament but people throughout the world think about the future of the world so that as we continue to grow, as our population increases, and the population of the world doubles in the next 38 years, this planet will be able to survive. In effect, what we are talking about is the survival of the planet.
The two world powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, are spending billions and billions of dollars in the arms race. Other nations in the world are spending billions of dollars as well to build arms to defend themselves. But who is spending money and resources to protect themselves not from one another but from the ultimate destruction of the world? The ultimate destruction will not come by war but because our environment might become destroyed making it impossible for human life to continue. Would it not be a Utopia if all those resources used today for building nuclear weapons and arms, defence systems and star wars systems could be spent on the environment? Would it not be great if we could deal with the problems of acid rain which are articulated in the report?
As the report points out, there is a way of ensuring the continued existence of humanity in this world. All that is necessary is the political will. The World Commission on Environment and Development quite correctly points out that the political will is not there at present. There must be political will in order to pursue some of the recommendations and objectives of this particular report. I suppose one of the reasons the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia) presented his
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motion to the House is to try not only to raise the consciousness of this Parliament and the country on this particular issue but also to try to urge every parliamentarian to somehow acquire the political will in order to ensure that we can continue to grow while at the same time protecting and improving our environment.
The environment should not be a partisan issue. Unfortunately, at times it does become a partisan issue, but such is the nature of our adversarial system and our Parliament. However, I am sure all three political Parties can work together in pursuing some of the very important objectives which are outlined in this report.
The remarkable achievement of the report is that it lucidly advances the debate on the environment from a protection to a survival theme. People have to become aware that we are talking about survival. We are not simply talking about protecting our lakes, our forests and our soil. We are talking about the future of humanity. In effect, we are talking about the survival of the world. How do we ensure sustainable development on this planet while the global population will double between now and the year 2025? Some of us, God willing, may still be alive in the year 2025. Our children and grandchildren will be alive. Future generations will be born in the years which follow the year 2025. Looking at this prospect, the commissioners place the environment not in the context of just one public interest competing with others and at times even in conflict with the economy. The commissioners lead the reader to conclude that the only sensible answer to global problems is through the careful management of the natural resources available on earth and man's impact on them in a manner which ensures nature's generative capacity.
The environment is thus brought to the very centre of economic activity and becomes a pre-condition for development. The dichotomy which has plagued some policy makers so far, that there is a choice to be made between the economy and the environment, is put neatly to rest, hopefully once and for all.
In this scenario, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson) becomes an agent for sustainable development, as do other political forces such as the Minister of Transport (Mr. Crosbie), the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Masse), the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion (Mr. Cote), the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Wise), and so on.
In closing, let me say that it is not sufficient simply to have a Minister of the Environment and a Ministry of the Environment, and to say that this particular Ministry and this particular Minister are responsible for the environment and that somehow other Ministers of the Crown should not address that issue. What this report is saying is that each and every Minister of the Crown and, indeed, every policy maker in Canada, when deciding public policy, must ask: "What impact will my decision have on the environment? How can I ensure that we can sustain growth?" I simply ask Hon. Members opposite to support this very worthwhile motion which was presented by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Davenport. I

May 15, 1987
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am grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in this important debate.


Mr. Warner:: The previous speaker mentioned a few points, one of which was that this debate is non-partisan and probably should remain that way. It is a concern which all Members of the House share. The importance of the environment to all Canadians, and to the whole world, is certainly supreme in our minds.
The Hon. Member mentioned the tremendous growth rate expected in the next 38 years. Our world population will increase from five billion to double that, and the report suggests that it may stabilize sometime in the next century in the eight billion to 14 billion person range. The report does note that 90 per cent of this growth will take place in the world's poorest nations, quite obviously putting very severe stress and pressure on the economies of already very fragile countries. Would the Hon. Member have specific recommendations as to how to approach this oncoming and very real problem?


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, obviously there is no quick and easy solution to the problem. I recognize that most of the growth will occur in the underdeveloped nations in terms of population. 1 suppose our immigration policy is a way in which we can assist to a large extent with regard to that particular problem. We have a population of some 25 million in Canada. We know, just in terms of land mass, that our country can accommodate millions and millions more individuals. Of course, our social programs may not.
The important conclusion from this report is that we can sustain growth, which is in opposition to a body of thought prevalent in the past which suggested that the world could not sustain the growth that will occur. Because of the fact that the population is about to double in 38 years there was a feeling of almost surrender, a feeling of despair that nothing could be done. What makes this report so important is that it concludes that we can sustain growth. It does not say that growth has to stop at some future point in time and that the environment will be adversely affected. This report says that we can continue to grow while at the same time protecting our environment.
If all the Governments of the world were to adopt some of the recommendations in the report, then we could have this sustainable growth and accommodate the population increase that is predicted over the next 20 or 30 years.


Norman Melvin Warner: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member mentions that our immigration policy could relieve this problem somewhat. In reality what we are looking at is an increase of five billion once the world population doubles. Our economy and our resources cannot offer very much assistance to that type of problem. I suggest that more effort will have to go into areas in which the expected growth will take place and that perhaps the focus should be on poorer countries and how we can assist
them in terms of their quality of growth. We also have to take into consideration the fragile nature of our world environment.
Does the Hon. Member care to offer specific suggestions for what we should be doing in the poorer countries of the world and how we can assist their quality of growth at a time when such assistance is very vital and much needed?


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, unfortunately my time is limited. 1 refer the Hon. Member to Chapter 12 of the report, which is a lengthy chapter. I am sure it will address some of the questions raised by him.
In my previous reply I was not suggesting that we can solve the problem simply by opening up our doors here in Canada. I was simply suggesting that there are ways that we can participate in this global strategy. There are quite a number of things that can be done.
What is important is that the report speaks of a new loyalty that is emerging. Whereas in the past we had loyalties to a particular region, to our country, for example, there is a new emerging loyalty which is articulated in the report. That loyalty is to the planet on which we live. If each and every person who lives in the world increases that loyalty to the planet then that will go a long way to ensuring its survival.
[ Translation]


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments are over. Debate. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Vincent).


Mr. Pierre H. Vincent (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on this major issue of the environment which is vital to Quebec and Canada, and of course, as you can appreciate, Mr. Speaker, to the riding of Trois-Rivieres and its residents.
As mentioned, last April 29 the Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) received the report of the World Commission on the Environment and Development. It was a highlight in the history of the world ecological movement.
Last year Canada and the Conservative Government were delighted to play host to the World Commission on the Environment and Development, and we welcome their report entitled "Our Common Future". We will participate actively in the debate on the report which is on the agenda of the governing council of the United Nations environment program and that of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Compared with other diagnoses made on the condition of the world, the World Commission on the Environment and Development report has a rather uncommon history. To begin with, the 21 commission members led by Mrs. Brundtland met with ordinary people, farmers, workers, students, tribesmen, shanty towm. residents as well as with heads of state, scientists, industry and financial leaders. Public hearings, free of official constraints, were also held in a number of cities, in 10 countries including, of course, Canada.
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The Commission's mandate consisted of re-examining urgent problems for the environment and development; drafting proposals for innovative, concrete and realistic measures to try and resolve those problems; and also increasing public awareness of these problems.
Mr. Speaker, this mandate is unique in that it deals with the environment and development together instead of separately, as is customary at nearly all levels in international and governmental organizations.
Today, however, the connection between ecology and economy is becoming more and more apparent. The report is based on case histories, statistics, personal testimony by participants at the public hearings and scientific assessments, which give a clear picture of the close links that exist between matters as apparently diverse as debt payments and natural disasters, the arms race and the disappearance of tropical forests.
In additional to the Commission's public hearings and its meetings with political leaders and figures throughout the world, the Commission received 75 studies by experts on all aspects of environmental and development problems. It set up task forces with the best experts to be had, to draft recommendations on food security, industry, energy and law. These recommendations formed the basis for the report's 12 chapters, which cover new approaches to the environment and development, the concept of sustainable development, the role of the international economy, population and human resources, the common future of the world and the environment, and proposals for institutional and legal change.
Finally, a decision had to be made, and the Commission did in fact decide, to avoid pointing an accusing finger at certain Governments, leading some to predict that the report would be wishy-washy.
"Our goal was to create a debate on these questions at the highest level and to promote international co-operation on those questions that could rally the support of all parties", explained Jim MacNeill of Canada, the Secretary General of the Commission. "Putting governments on the defensive would do nothing to encourage co-operation. The major players would simply refuse to play."
"Wherever the Commission went in Canada, it heard people passionately express their concern at realizing that, in their own part of the world, something had gone wrong" continued Mr. MacNeill. "This gave the Commission members a particular motivation, a feeling of responsibility towards all these people."
This approach reflects the wishes of Mrs. Brundtland. A former Minister of the Environment in Norway and Leader of the Opposition when she was appointed to chair the Commission, Mrs. Brundtland became Prime Minister in May 1986. Two weeks later, she left for Canada with her Commission for eight days of public hearings.
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The members are personally committed to this job, which they feel very strongly is of major importance, since the decisions to be made will determine mankind's future.
They do not see in this report the end of their assignment, but rather its beginning. They have been invited to submit their report next May to ministerial representatives of countries belonging to the European Community and the European Association for Free Trade.
Canada was one of the first countries to receive a copy of this report. Mr. Maurice Strong, a member of the Commission, presented the report to the Minister of the Environment on April 29, 1987, two days following its international release in London.
One of the purposes was to let the Governments peruse the report and be familiar with it when they take part next fall in the United Nations' debate. Another was to provoke public awareness and secure the support of the people for such important issues as the environment.
Canada shares the hopes of the World Commission on Environment and Development that the United Nations' debate will not mean the end of their efforts to build a more prosperous, fair and secure world. Canada supports the Commission's proposals to integrate the notion of sustainable development in current economic and assistance programs.
Mr. Speaker, I repeat that, during the United Nations' debate scheduled for next fall, Canada intends to participate fully and actively in the discussions on these and other issues raised in the Brundtland report.


Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, I should like to start with some broad points which clearly emerge from the report entitled Our Common Future, a report of the World Commission on Environment and Development.
To be serious, it is, I think, a very difficult report for Members of Parliament to relate to. Its complexities are considerable. The extent of the subject matter which it looks at is quite widespread. However, there are some aspects of the report that I should like to highlight in my remarks.
The Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia), in his remarks, spoke of the optimistic tone through the report. And reading through the report itself, one can certainly see the optimism. We have such comments as the following: "We see instead the possibility for a new era of economic growth"-and this despite the problems of "environmental decay, poverty, and hardship in an ever more polluted world among ever decreasing resources".
The analysis goes on to say that the possibility for this new era has to be "based on policies that sustain and expand the environmental resource base". It goes on:
And we believe such growth to be absolutely essential to relieve the great
poverty that is deepening in much of the developing world.

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But the Commission's hope for the future is conditional on decisive political action now to begin managing environmental resources to ensure both sustainable human progress and human survival.
We are not forecasting a future; we are serving a notice-an urgent notice based on the latest and best scientific evidence-that the time has come to take the decisions needed to secure the resources to sustain this and coming generations.
So, while it is a message of hope, it is very much, too, a message of urgency, a message which tells us, as societies, that we must start to review the policies that we now pursue, the structures of society that are now in place. We have to look at new directions and to put in place these new directions for the sake of future generations.
As someone who has worked in developing countries a great deal, 1 was particularly struck by those portions of the report dealing with the gross poverty which exists in many parts of the Third World. For instance, at one stage in the report, the commission speaks of the economic crisis which faces us all, a crisis which the commission says is based on the slow-down of economic expansion and the stagnation in world trade in the 1980s, something which has challenged the ability of all nations to react and adjust.
Here we have a diverse group of people from all parts of the world identifying, in powerful terms, problems in the world economy.
The developing countries have been particularly hard hit by this economic crunch. Between 1980 and 1984, according to the commission, developing countries lost about $55 billion in export earnings because of the fall in commodity prices.
As a consequence, there has been a period of slow growth in the world economy, a slow growth which has hit especially hard the poorer countries of the world, those countries which can least afford to experience economic stagnation.
Looking at the change in per capita Gross Domestic Product for the middle range developing countries, those countries that we are most concerned about, in many respects, and leaving the large countries aside, leaving the oil-producing countries aside, we see that since 1981, in every single solitary year up to 1985-and I suspect beyond, though we do not have the statistics before us to substantiate that-there has been an absolute decrease in the per capita Gross Domestic Product, a decrease which, in 1982, for instance, was as high as 3.1 per cent per capita.
In talking about our environmental concerns, Mr. Speaker, we have to do so against that backdrop of economic crisis. It is against that backdrop that we have to consider the economic solutions that will mesh with our environmental concerns.
As the report itself stresses, reforms at the international level are needed to enable us to deal simultaneously with economic and ecological aspects in ways that allow the world economy to stimulate the growth of the developing countries while giving greater weight to environmental concerns.
Such an agenda requires a deep commitment by all countries, from the satisfactory working of multilateral institutions
such as the development banks to the making and observance of international rules in fields such as trade and investment, and a constructive dialogue on the many areas where national issues do not immediately coincide.
It is possible for us as Members of Parliament to have a debate on a Friday afternoon like this about what is a very heartfelt, well organized and important document; but I think it is absolutely crucial that we bring back to earth here in Canada some of the concerns which are being discussed in this report.
It is not simply a matter of work and improvement at the international level. The report and the motion, which we would support if it were a votable motion, concern the need for us to do something about the serious and urgent environmental problems facing us in Canada without putting at risk the economic concerns of many of us.
In order to bring the debate down to earth, I will talk about three or four specific environmental concerns which I think Canadian Governments have not recognized as being serious or have not dealt with urgently, as the report suggests is badly required.
For instance, I should like to refer to the report of the International Joint Commission on the Great Lakes in Ontario because it is so easy for us to forget, after dramatic incidents like the St. Clair River crisis, that the basic problem goes on. In respect of the Great Lakes area, the report indicates that the intrusion of toxic chemicals on our lives, including the incidence of specific toxic chemical disasters, is occurring with greater impact and frequency. These occurrences cannot be viewed as systemic aberrations or something we can forget about. Rather, they may be the inevitable, if unintended, consequences of our industrialized societies. More toxic chemical-related incidents are therefore bound to occur. The questions thus become: how many, where, how serious will be the consequences, and what can be done to mitigate the production and use of toxic chemicals?
The report also suggests that we do not have a comprehensive solution in Canada in respect of the Great Lakes, one part of the body of freshwater lakes in the country. This represents a source of shame for us as a country. It is important to accept the urgency suggested in the Brundtland report. It asks us to do something not only about world problems but about the problems in our own backyard which so far we have not been able to tackle successfully. As far as I am concerned, that is certainly at the top of the list of crucial issues which need to be tackled and require the urgency essential to come up with some sort of solution or plan toward a solution, at the very least.
We must also talk about the extent of air pollution which exists in many communities across Canada. We have a predilection for looking at the United States and saying that
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that country and its acid rain delays are the crucial environmental issues facing us. I frankly say that in community after community across the country, as is the case in my constituency and I suspect in the constituencies of many Hon. Members sitting in the House today, there are air pollution problems which are damaging the environment and threatening the health of our constituents. We must apply to those problems the sense of urgency which the report asks us to emphasize.
For instance, we have been working in my constituency with BCM Technologies for over a year to try to reach a complete solution to its chlorine emissions. We have found, despite commitments on the part of the company and on the part of the provincial Ministry of the Environment, that a year later the commitments have not been honoured. The air pollution continues and my constituents continue to experience health hazards and the lack of satisfactory environmental conditions which I think they have the right to expect as Canadians.
I want to talk about even more exciting topics, aside from air pollution, and to take a step down to what often seems to be the level of discussion in this Chamber. I want to talk about sewage and about garbage. When we talk about environmental problems, we must remember that there are sewage problems across the nation which we are not treating with urgency. One example is contained in a letter which I wrote in July, 1985 to the then Minister of the Environment, that is, the sewer system in south Windsor.
One might say that sewage is not something which reaches the levels of the high power rhetoric we have heard in the debate today, but fundamentally that is what the issue is all about. It is about ensuring that sewage systems in our communities are able to meet the needs of the people. We found in our community that our constant efforts to try to push the Government to accept the responsibility to provide assistance in the area of sewage systems have simply been rejected. We have seen this in the southern part of the City of Windsor and in the Township of Sandwich West. Recently a public meeting focused on this question.
We will be taken seriously as a country which cares about environmental issues when we start doing something about such mundane but serious problems as the antiquated sewer systems of our cities. As it stands at the moment, we simply let sewers run into international waters, with the result that rivers get polluted, again a potential health hazard, again a lack of the environmental protection which Canadians should expect in this country.
I have to say that it is just not sewage we have to talk about but garbage as well. For instance, the City of Detroit is planning to erect the largest incinerator in the United States without the latest technology to prevent the escape of material which will damage the air and be injurious to people's health which, it has been demonstrated in laboratory tests, will cause increases in cancer rates. We have to recognize that that kind
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of problem is as crucial and urgent and is as serious as the concerns which have been indicated here.
I am impressed with this report. There are interesting and innovative ideas being suggested at the international level. I want to make the point that we in Canada, to prove our seriousness, have to start dealing with some of these mundane, down to earth problems of water pollution, air pollution, sewage and garbage. When we start doing that with the urgency and with the support of our people, then I think we will be taking the first steps to a safe environmental future for this country and for the world.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, 1 wish to speak to the motion moved by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia):
That this House urge the Government to endorse, adopt and advocate, at home and abroad, the goals and recommendations of the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Report), entitled "Our Common Future";
This Report, dealing with global concerns, challenges and endeavours, be adopted as the central policy of the federal Government, its agencies and commissions; and
That the Minister of the Environment advocate the spirit and the substance ol this Report at the coming General Assembly of the United Nations on behalf of Canadians and of the global community, thus continuing Canada's tradition of giving leadership on environmental matters.
Canada's leadership on the evolving world stage is becoming more and more important as we mature and become a respected nation in our second decade of development. Although perhaps not particularly relevant to the subject matter, I think in an ancillary way it is. 1 had the opportunity, it was a glorious one, to meet with Mr. Yehudi Menuhin today. In a conversation with him, he brought to my attention how important Canada has become on the world scene. He said that he found it particularly interesting that we, as Canadians, have developed culturally very distinctively. We have developed an artistic community with talents found almost nowhere else in the world where he has taught as a master. He equates that with the fact that we have in Canada a specific attitude, one of accepting the world as part of our responsibility, and that people who come here are welcomed and are encouraged to maintain their identity, their roots and to go back to their roots. He said, "It is not like teaching students from the Julliard School because they would not do what the students here do. Here they go back to their roots and the original interpretations. They have a sense of participation and belonging to past history which they bring with them and do not want to remove in any way. They want to maintain the links with the old and the new and they have pride in their heritage".
This brings me to the report which the World Commission on Environment and Development put together when it established this UN commission in December, 1983. This was strongly supported by Canada. We do have a very special role as a mature nation and as a partnership for the diverse beauty of this country as it is reflected by the people who are in it.

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I would suggest that we listen very carefully to what has been written in this report by Dr. Brundtland, Norway's Prime Minister, and the 22 commissioners, two of whom are highly respected Canadians, namely, Maurice Strong and Jim MacNeill, who was the Secretary General for the commission. The report was released in London on April 27, 1987. This report is exciting because it is a positive one. It is not a doomsday report. It does not make you feel that the world is going to blow itself away, or that we are in inherent danger of disappearing as a race. This report lucidly advances the debate on the environment from a protection to a survival theme. It looks at the world in which we live to the global society and puts us all in this great big envelope. We do live together in an envelope. It might be trite to say that it is a global village, but, truly, Mr. Speaker, it is. What happens in other countries of the world impacts on us right here. There is no greater lesson than the Chernobyl affair which impacted on our reindeer herds, the caribou, milk and everything else. It is a reflection of something that happened seemingly so far away, and not too long ago it would have seemed very far away.
Looking at the prospects outlined in this report, it is important that the commissioners have placed the environment not in the context of just one public interest competing with others, but in the context of all our interests collectively, whether trade, health, the growth of our wheat or the development and concerns around acid rain. All of these economic activities and the fall-out from them impact upon our environment, which bring us to the very centre of economic activity and the pre-conditions that we have for the development of our world.
Each one of us has to live in our own community and one tends not to think of the larger world. We can ill afford that isolated view of society. We can ill afford to ignore our neighbours in this larger world.
The message is that we have to find a sustainable development process. 1 think all the forces of all the Ministries together here in Canada and around the world must put their heads and efforts together to ensure that our children and grandchildren and their children's children will have a world in which to live.
It is true that the document-for those who care to pick it up, and 1 would encourage people to do so-would seem to be very dry. It contains 348 pages, and 1 must admit that leafing through it I had to sort of push myself to find some of the areas of particular interest to me. It is, however, a vital and important document. It will be front and centre in the discussions to be held in the capitals and in the Parliaments around the world, no matter what the political bent of the Government in question. It will affect each and every one of us.
What is exciting about this report is that it is not a doomsday report. It offers new approaches and scenarios. It links the environment with what we do and how we live on a daily basis.
It indicates that there are unsolved problems and that there are no immediate answers, but it does offer some directions and ideas. It took three years, a lot of effort and a great deal of money to compile this report, and it has come up with some very positive facts which we would all do well to examine quite carefully.
The answer is not simple. It is not: "Stop the world, I want to get off'. The message is that there is room to grow in the world. We can make the economic ball roll. We like to call for jobs, jobs, jobs, but there are other ways of living without degrading the life around us. We do have the capacity to solve environmental problems.
I thought it was interesting that the report indicated that mass poverty could be overcome. I know that all of us have contributed to world hunger campaigns and have been sensitized through the mass media to the plight of starving people in the world.
The report tells us that there are absolutely no limits to our growth. The report actually links the problems of poverty in sub-Sahara Africa to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and it links the deforestation of South America with acid rain in West Germany and here. It is fascinating that we think of each one of those as being separate entities. In reality, these crises are not separate. Environmental crises, developmental crises and energy crises are all one crisis that must be faced by each and every one of us. We must try to find a healthy and sustainable balance so we can live in this world. The fundamental question to be asked is how we are to find that sustainable balance.
We should listen to the report's call on world Governments, particularly those of the developed world, to think more broadly and deeply about environmental and developmental problems. It calls on us to think not just in terms of me, myself and I, not just in terms of instant gratification, and not just in terms of how I can climb the ladder, have more goods and services and be a bigger and fatter consumer. We must ask if we can live in society tomorrow. Will we be able to breathe, will society be here? This report says yes, if. That "if' is important.
The report suggests that we must use the intelligence that created the problems to resolve them. I think that is a modest enough aim and we should all try to devote our political will to making this world a place where we can live together.
I would like to deal with the interlocking crises. Until very recently, the world was a place where human activities and efforts were neatly compartmentalized by nations, by sectors such as energy, agriculture or trade, and by broad areas of concern, environmental, economic and social. All these concerns were related to cultural patterns that had evolved throughout the world and reflected common communal values which resulted from the choices and options taken by particular cultural entities. I suggest that most of these compartments have been dissolved and the world has become a global village.
I suggest as well that in these various global crises, there are
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common public concerns. We began to recognize that just a short time ago.
I would suggest, and I do not think I am going beyond reality, that much of this recognition has to do with the feminine revolution. Women have become sensitive to the world and their environment. More particularly, the communications systems that now exist link us to the world within seconds. Women have been the nurturers of society and have begun to raise environmental concerns, nuclear concerns and survival concerns. I would salute the women's movement for having sensitized the world to this issue.
In Nairobi, a meeting of women was held at the end of the decade. Groups of women came from all corners of the world, from all socio-economic levels, and from every political Party imaginable. Some of the things that were said I found abominable and some of the things they did I found abhorrent. However, one common line ran through the entire debate and that was the volition on the part of women around the world to live in a better environment, a safe environment in which to bring up their children. That line transcended all ideologies and every sector, no matter what colour, race, creed, language or religion.
This report contains some very substantive facts and figures. It talks about the fact that the planet is going through a period of dramatic growth and fundamental change. It indicates that our world, which is presently made up of five billion people, must make room in a finite environment for another huge mass of humanity. The population will potentially level out at eight billion to 14 billion sometime within the next century. That is an awful lot of people.
It goes on to talk about the fact that economic activity has multiplied to create a world economy of $13 trillion. I cannot even imagine how many zeros there are in that figure. I am trying to indicate that these facts have to be translated into individual lives and individual survival. If we are to have economic activity that creates $13 trillion in the world economy and could grow five-fold to ten-fold in the coming half century, then I think we must develop the kind of survival policies that will allow us to consider the total environment, whether we are pulling raw materials from our forests, our soils, our seas or our waterways.
People are the ultimate resource. Improvements in education, health and nutrition allow people to better use the resources they command and to stretch them even further. The concern for the population problem is underlined in this report, and if one reads it carefully, one sees that there is a sense of hope that there could be human equality if we would simply sit down long enough to develop common policies to live together.
One additional person in an industrial country consumes far more and places far more pressure on natural resources than one additional person in the Third World. Consumption patterns and preferences are as important as numbers of consumers in the conservation of our resources.
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What about environment and development? Population growth and development are linked in very complex ways. In the past, the intensification of agriculture and the production of higher yields helped nations cope with increasing populations and pressures on available land. However, that is not the case today. Today there is over-production, yet there are starving people. There must be something wrong with our international policies. It seems to me that if we could find a way to balance our agricultural policies so that the starving people had food and we, overstuffed people, did not waste food, we could find a solution to some of the problems to which I have been referring.
We are facing rapid technological change. It is important that the commission has made some positive recommendations. It has recommended alternatives to allow us to continue to live with a decent life-style throughout the world. The commission talks about sustainable economic development and growth. It directs us on how to think and act in order to make life sustainable. We must look at new ways of living if we wish to survive as a species. As you and I know, our resources are not infinite. Whatever we do, we must think on the larger world scale as we all impact on each other in this world.
The population increases to which I referred earlier bring a series of additional concerns for social and economic development. This has created the problem of unmanageable cities which we must be seriously concerned with. A concern for population growth is part of the broader concern for the rapid rate of economic and social development in developing countries. We cannot afford to be selfish. We must think about education, growth, and development for all the world's children. As we think of our brothers and sisters around the world we must think of what will make life liveable for them. A balance must be established between population size and available resources.
We must find ways to make sustainable human progress a reality. This report has been able to do this. We need policies which will enable us to control our enormous population growth and enable people to have choices. We need improved public health and child nutrition. Family planning services must be further developed and integrated with other health programs such as mother and child care programs, preschool education, and education in general.
We need a commitment to rural development. We cannot empty the countryside, make vast parklands, and put everyone into huge cosmopolitan centres. We must develop policies which will allow people to grow and develop in their own areas. Canada has a good model which has partially worked within our regional development projects. Perhaps we can share with others and learn so that we do not depopulate the countryside, so that we find a better pattern of development for the entire world.
We must find a way to spread employment opportunities throughout the nations. Not every nation can be a producer

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with no nation being consumers of the products of others. That will not work. We must determine how to control and develop our cities and encourage people to stay in their natural environment without feeling that they do not have an adequate chance in life.
1 talked about the need to improve health. This is absolutely fundamental in the developing world. The problems are critical. The concerns for ill health are closely related to environmental conditions and developmental problems. There is inadequacy of water supply and sanitation, which are direct causes of widespread and debilitating diseases such as diarrhea and various worm infestations.
Clean water is not accessible to 1.7 billion people, and 1.2 billion do not have adequate sanitation. If we could solve that problem alone many diseases would be controlled and life would be more liveable for many people. Canada is doing very good work throughout the world with some of our programs. Other nations must do the same.
1 know that my time is running out. 1 would like to urge strongly that through the United Nations we find some way to answer the questions raised. There is a sunset clause of December 31 in this report. The United Nations Secretariat must find a way to implement this document by then. We do not want it to gather dust. There is an urgency for everyone in the world. We should support the call of the United Nations Secretary General to constitute, under his chairmanship, a special United Nations board extending to all the nations of the world.
If we really believe that we have a common future we should consider the words of the poet, Bliss Carmen, who said that we are moulded by the conditions and surroundings in which we live, but we often forget that the environment is largely what we make it. I hope that we will be considerate and make it liveable for all.


Pauline Browes: Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the Member on her speech on this very important subject. I would like to commend her on her commitment and the sincerity of her comments.
The mover of the motion spoke about responses. 1 would just like to mention that the Canadian Council of Resource and Environment Ministers is meeting in Quebec City in September, 1987. It was suggested that this report should be put on the agenda of that meeting, and I would like to inform the Member and the House that it is indeed on the agenda. We look forward to having those Ministers discuss this report. That is only one of many responses which the Government has made to this report.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, I am very encouraged by that. 1 hope, however, that we will go beyond that. There are so many aspects to this complex problem that it will require cooperation among and concerted action by all Ministers and Ministries. We need support for the projects which CIDA has been financing as well as those on which the International
Research and Development Foundation is doing superb work. There is work being done in Chile with regard to diseases affecting children. Wells are being dug to provide water.
In response to my friend and colleague I say that we should not stop there. That is a good step, but there is a giant step between that and the moon.


Mr. David Daubney (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in this debate on the motion of the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia) with regard to the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, the Brundtland report entitled, Our Common Future. I would like to congratulate the Member for raising this issue today. I recognize his genuine interest in environmental concerns. We on this side of the House sometimes tend to heckle him in a partisan way a little bit unfairly. While he may not have been as effective as the present Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) when he held that important job, it was not due to any lack of sincerity or genuine interest in the issues on his part.
As a member of the Standing Committee on Research, Science and Technology I would like to add a few comments to those which have already been made this afternoon. Canadian technology can play a significant role in achieving the objectives set out in Our Common Future. I hope 1 will have time to talk a little about that toward the end of my speech.
The report on the World Commission on Environment and Development recommends that new mechanisms be established to ensure that, as a matter of routine, environmental consequences be considered when economic decisions are made.
The report was presented at the beginning of the second meeting of the National Task Force on Environment and Economy. This task force, in itself, is an innovative response to the Brundtland Report in that it brings together the federal, provincial, public and private sector to improve co-ordination of economic decision-making in Canada.
The Minister of the Environment, upon receipt of the report, pointed out: "As the thinking which went into the establishment of this task force illustrates, better integration of environmental considerations into economic planning and decision-making is and has been a priority direction set by this Government".
1 am pleased and encouraged that the importance which the Government attaches to the integration of environmental and economic decision-making has been taken up as a major thrust of the Brundtland report. The report is both timely and appropriate, and fully in keeping with the priorities of the Government.
The report dramatically underscores the need to make the leap from focusing our environmental efforts on dealing after the fact with the adverse impact of economic development, to starting, instead, to concern ourselves more with economic
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strategies and developments which are environmentally sound and sustainable in the first instance.
The fact is that the environment and the economy are not two distinct entities. They are not two solitudes. They are interrelated and indivisible. In fact, they are the two sides of the same coin.
The commission was composed of 22 eminent people, most of them politicians from around the world. The Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Brundtland, formerly her country's Environment Minister, headed the group. I want to emphasize again that the majority of these investigators were, like us, politicians. They were not theoreticians, academics, or ecological ideologues, but people experienced in identifying practical responses to actual problems. What their report makes clear is that our planet's survival is at stake and that only concerted international action undertaken now can save it. In effect, either the buck stops here or the world does.
That message confirms what scientists have been saying for some time now, that the human race is progressively eliminating, through environmental mismanagement, its own chances of a future. Pollution has become so widespread, so varied, and so pervasive that no corner of the earth is free from it. Nations are threatened, not just by their own sources of contamination, but also by those of their neighbours and by those of countries half a world away. Sulphur dioxide rises from smokestacks in northeastern United States and falls as acid rain here in eastern Ontario, killing our trees and lakes. Nuclear fall-out drifts westward from Chernobyl over northern Europe and the Arctic, polluting crops and livestock. The indiscriminate use of chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs, in the developed world is thinning the stratospheric layer of ozone that blankets the earth from the sun's ultraviolet rays. In the process, millions of people around the globe are being exposed to an increased risk of cancer. The problem is contributing to a greenhouse effect that may eventually reduce Canada's rich prairie grain belt to a desert and cause floods in Atlantic Canada.
Pollution respects no state boundaries or political divisions. It carries no national passport or corporate key. That fact is inescapable as well as dismaying. It also, however, points us toward the approach we must take in the face of such an enemy. In our present situation, it makes no sense to argue unduly about jurisdictions and responsibilities. We are all part of the human family, the global village. We must, therefore, co-operate willingly, energetically and immediately if we are to preserve our world.
It is not a question of saving developed nations at the expense of the Third World, or of cleaning up North America without regard to Europe or the USSR. We are all in this together; and, as that old saying goes, if we do not hang together, we shall all hang separately. Those are our options, plain and simple.
The Brundtland Report makes the point clearly that: "These are not separate crises, an environmental crisis, a development crisis, an energy crisis. They are all one".
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Economies depend, for their survival, on the resource bases supplied by a healthy environment. The environment depends, for its survival, on economic decision-making that takes full account of impacts on resources. Any society that ignores that equation does so at its peril.
The implications of the link between the environment and the economy are far-reaching and complex.
Canada is, after all, perhaps the pre-eminent candidate to take the lead in helping meet the needs that arise around the globe from environmental requirements. The solutions we find to soil erosion on the Prairies, the equipment we develop to curb pollution, the methods we devise to preserve our fragile northern tundra or our West Coast rain forests, all can be crucial not only to our nation's future but to the future of the world as well.
Solutions that work for industries in Canada can be applied with the necessary modifications, and with equal success, to industries in Indonesia, Brazil or Zambia, and to industries in Germany's Rhur Valley, in Rotterdam or Yokohama. Our nation-the nation that developed the first geo-stationary communications satellite and the space arm, that built the Bluenose and spanned a continent with rail lines-can meet the environmental challenge.
We would urge that the report of the Brundtland Commission be taken up by all United Nations member countries, and that the recommendations be considered as well at the national level.
Needless to say, Canada, as a long-term supporter of the United Nations, expects to play an active role in the debate of this report in the United Nations this fall. I look forward to that debate and to Canada's leadership role in it.
In the few minutes remaining, I would like to read a very short excerpt from Our Common Future, the report we are discussing this afternoon, just to emphasize the urgency of the issues that this report raises. It states:
The World Commission on Environment and Development first met in October 1984, and published its report 900 days later, in April 1987. Over those few days:
The drought-triggered, environment-development crisis in Africa peaked, putting 35 million people at risk, killing perhaps a million.
A leak from a pesticides factory in Bhopal, India, killed more than 2,000 people and blinded and injured over 200,000 more.
Liquid gas tanks exploded in Mexico City, killing 1,000 and leaving thousands more homeless.
The Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion sent nuclear fall-out across Europe, increasing the risks of future human cancers.
Agricultural chemicals, solvents, and mercury flowed into the Rhine River during a warehouse fire in Switzerland, killing millions of fish and threatening drinking water in the Federal Republic of Germany and the Netherlands.
An estimated 60 million died of diarrhoeal diseases related to unsafe drinking water and malnutrition; most of the victims were children.
At the outset of my remarks, I mentioned that I believe that Canadian technology can play a role. I also described some of the high technology that we have developed in Canada that can be applied throughout the world.

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We should not think only in terms of high-tech. We can do so much simply by funding small clean water projects in the Third World. 1 refer to the 60 million deaths in a period of less than three years from diarrhoea caused by unsafe drinking water. It seems to me that clean water is the key to economic and social development in Africa and Asia. The Government is doing a lot. In particular, I congratulate CIDA and the private sector non-governmental organizations in this country which are doing so much to try to provide clean water in Africa and Asia. I urge the Government however, to do much more. If we were just to concentrate on this one way of helping our fellow citizens in the rest of the world, it would go a long way towards achieving the objectives of this report.


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this afternoon on the motion introduced in accordance with Standing Order 82(12) of the House of Commons and sponsored today by my colleague the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia). In my view, this is an extremely important motion which gives us as parliamentarians an opportunity to consider environmental problems, and more especially the Brundtland Report which has just been made public.
I am very proud to see that my colleague, the former Minister of the Environment in the Liberal Cabinet, has brought to the attention of the House this report drafted under the auspices of the United Nations. I am very proud of his initiative because it shows to what extent an individual can, after being a Cabinet Minister, continue to be deeply interested in this issue.
In a number of cases the Environment was a first department for several Ministers and a stage in their career. I have no hesitation in saying that, of all the Ministers of the Environment I have known since the department was established, my colleague from Davenport is propably the Minister who has shown the most interest, the most conviction in his work, and the greatest desire to promote the environmental cause. This is why I hope that in the near future he will be given the opportunity to become Minister of the Environment again so as to continue the work which he began with such dedication in his department and which, unfortunately, has not been followed up as closely since he left.
There is no doubt that the ongoing discussions with the Americans are not producing the results which he would hope to see. With respect to environmental matters the American authorities should indeed act much more responsibly and take positive measures to reduce the pollution we are getting from the United States instead of being satisfied with yet more studies.
I spoke recently to Quebec farmers who described how much sugar bushes are threatened by acid rain, how much an industry that is truly close to home, truly of Quebec, truly Canadian-the maple sugar and maple syrup industry-is seriously threatened by acid rain and the inaction of numerous corporations that pollute our environment. Whether they are
Canadian or American, this is a major problem to be addressed.
There is no doubt that as we receive that report prepared by the United Nations, we must view it as a very important document. It is my conviction that the Brundtland Report is no doubt the single most important environmental document of the decade. What one finds encouraging when making a quick study of the main recommendations of this report is that here is a practical report, a report that is filled with concrete proposals. It is essential that those proposals be accepted and implemented by the most industrialized nations in the world.
The efforts to protect our environment must come first and foremost from the richer countries of this planet. Clearly, we cannot expect developing nations, the poorer nations to assume the responsibility for depolluting our environment, depolluting the world, if the richer nations, first the United States and second Canada and the other industrialized nations, do not do their share.
1 hope that the Government of Canada will review this document very closely and will respond to it. At any rate, the resolution put forward by our colleague for Davenport is very clear in that regard. It not only suggests but urges the Government to act upont it. 1 quote:
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-this House urge the Government to endorse, adopt and advocate, at home and abroad, the goals and recommendations of the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Report), "Our Common Future"; That this Report, dealing with global concerns, challenges and endeavours, be adopted as the central policy of the federal Government, its agencies and commissions;

And finally, it is clear the Minister of Environment (Mr. McMillan) should ensure that at the next United Nations General Assembly, the promotion of the spirit and substance of that United Nations report, on behalf of Canadians and the world community, be in line with the Canadian tradition of leadership in the area of environment.
It is therefore clear that we expect concrete steps, not merely fine speeches but concrete steps from the Canadian Government when it makes decisions concerning the protection of our environment.
I represent a constituency that is located in Montreal, an island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River, one of the most beautiful rivers in the world, but also one of the most polluted unfortunately. Efforts have to be made by the federal as well as provincial authorities and by the private sector not only to control that pollution, but also to take radical steps to clean up that pollution. I do hope that in a near future, in the Montreal area, it will be possible as it used to be possible some years ago, a few decades ago, to swim in the St. Lawrence River without taking any risks and to fully enjoy this magnificent river which is one of the most majestic in the world, to enjoy the beaches
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and the waters of that river which we have unfortunately ignored too much.
In conclusion, may I suggest that it is essential that government authorities throughout the world think about these words of hope which were spoken by the chairwoman of that committee, Mrs. Brundtland, and I quote:
"Our report-is not a prediction of ever-increasing environmental decay, poverty and hardship in an ever-more polluted world among ever-decreasing resources-
"We see instead the possibility for a new era of economic growth-absolutely essential to relieve the great poverty that is deepening in much of the developing world."
The panel which she chaired and on which sat an important and well known Canadian, Mr. Maurice Strong, considered population growth, energy strategies, global warming because of atmospheric changes, man-made disasters and economic conditions that cause the destruction of tropical forests. "Poverty itself pollutes the environment," the panel said. It stated further:
"Those who are poor and hungry will often destroy their immediate environment in order to survive: they will cut down forests; their livestock will overgraze grasslands; they will overuse marginal land and in growing numbers they will crowd into congested cities.
In order to live in a better world it is absolutely important that the leaders of the world get together not only to fight pollution but, in the process of fighting pollution, to establish new programs for this era of economic growth in order to spread the growth among all the nations of the world. The rich nations of the world must help the poor nations of the world to tackle the problems with which they are confronted.

It is on this note that I wish to end my remarks, by saying that I welcome wholeheartedly the motion introduced by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia). Through his initiative, we have been given a deeper awareness of that important document published by the United Nations, and I hope the Conservative Government will not abdicate its responsibilities and will take quick action on this matter.


George Albert Proud: Mr. Speaker, because I know the Hon. Member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Tupper) wishes to say a few words, I want to be a fine gentleman. I wish to be on record as saying that I would have liked to speak in this important debate but I know that the Hon. Member has been waiting patiently all afternoon in order to participate. Thus I will not make the comments I wanted to make since there will not be time.
I wish to thank my colleague, the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia), for having brought this important matter to our attention so. soon after the publication of this very important report by an organization of the United Nations. I would have liked to speak at length about the
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United Nations and to consider the important matters at which it looks. I would have liked to point out how important the United Nations is in the role it plays as the conscience of the world. I also wanted to make comments on the eloquent speeches made by my colleagues this afternoon.
It has been an interesting day, and a totally non-partisan one. In saying that I am looking at the Parliamentary Secretary, the Hon. Member for Scarborough Centre (Mrs. Browes), and all the others who participated in the debate today. I would have liked to have participated, but such is life. We will finish the debate in a few minutes. I wish to allow my colleague, the Hon. Member for Nepean-Carleton, to have the floor.


William Tupper: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise in the closing moments of this debate to offer some comments. Today has been a great opportunity for all Hon. Members to address the problem at hand, and I note the commonality of the objective. I feel that Members from all Parties have expressed their deep concern with respect to the quality of the environment and what we must do as Canadians to put it into perspective.
The opening chapters of the Brundtland report suggest that a first step toward addressing common environmental concerns is the recognition that most of the problems of ecology and economy that, until now, have been dealt with separately, are in fact very closely linked together and require integrated action on a global scale. Our Government is particularly encouraged that the report stresses the need for more coordination between economic and environmental development. The report reaffirms that we must make the leap from preoccupation with undoing environmental damage to planning and managing our affairs so that economic development efforts are environmentally sound and sustainable in the first place.
The National Task Force on the Economy and the Environment which was set up last year is an excellent example of how we can do this. An encouraging aspect to me is the recognition that we have the technology, the know-how, the ability to address the global problems with which we are confronted. The challenge with which we are confronted is: Do we have the will to do it? That is our collective challenge as parliamentarians.
The report shows that Canadian concerns about acid rain, soil and water degradation, toxic waste, the holes in our ozone layer and ozone depletion, and sustainable use of our natural resources are environmental and economic issues of the highest order both in Canada and world-wide. We are involved with this in Canada, as much as the rest of the world is involved, in the sense that our children and our grandchildren will be dramatically affected by it as much as anyone. I recall hearing just a few days ago how a change in our mean temperature of only two degrees could precipitate another ice-age. Just think how catastrophic that would be in terms of our ability to produce food and to continue to exist on earth.

May 15, 1987
Supply
At the moment in China alone the citizens of that country are burning annually more than one cubic mile of coal. Let us think about what that is doing to our atmosphere and the possibility of the climatic change it can precipitate. Around the world annually we produce about one cubic mile of solid garbage of which we have to dispose. The problems we face are enormous.
The Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) will be discussing the report which we have been talking about today with his colleagues and with all parliamentarians. Following these discussions, and after hearing from non-governmental organizations and others, a formal and detailed governmental response to the recommendations of the commission will be
announced. Thereafter Canada has every intention to participate in the debate which will take place at the General Assembly of the United Nations this fall. When that happens I am confident that all Canadians will be proud.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


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

The House stands adjourned until Tuesday, May 19, 1987 at 11 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 3(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 5 p.m.
[Stage Direction]

Tuesday, May 19, 1987
[Stage Direction]
Prayers