1988-03-21

Hon. George Hees (Minister of Veterans Affairs and Minister of State (Seniors):: Mr. Speaker, it is with both sadness and great sorrow that I learned early this morning of the death last evening of a former Member of this House and Cabinet colleague, the Honourable Richard Bell.
My personal friendship with Dick Bell was firmly established over 40 years ago and continued to grow in strength year after year.
He served with distinction in the Cabinet of the Right Hon. John Diefenbaker as Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.
As Hon. Members know, Dick Bell was a totally dedicated parliamentarian who served Canada with compassion, honesty, and indeed with a great deal of vigour.
He will be sorely missed as a friend and confidant, and on behalf of the Government of Canada and myself I extend to his wife Ruth and daughter Judith heartfelt condolences.


Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Official Opposition I would like to express words of sorrow on the passing of the Honourable Dick Bell. He had a very distinguished career, beginning as a secretary to the Minister of National Revenue in the Conservative Government of the 1930s. He continued as a private secretary to the Leader of the Opposition, also in the late 1930s and 1940s.
He went on to serve with distinction as a member of this House and as Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in the Government of the Right Hon. John Diefenbaker.
I remember him as a person of good humour and goodwill, who never let his very strong commitment to the Conservative Party interfere with his very good relationships that he had with people on all sides of the House.
He was also a very distinguished citizen of Ottawa, serving in many charitable endeavours. He will be sorely missed, not only by his friends and colleagues in the Conservative Party, but by his many friends who remember him in the House of Commons and in the city of Ottawa.
I am pleased to join with the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Minister of State for Seniors (Mr. Hees) in expressing sincere sympathy and condolences to the family of the late Mr. Bell. He will be sorely missed in this city and this country.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops-Shuswap):: Mr. Speaker, it was with sadness that this morning we learned of the death of Dick Bell. He served this House and Canadians well for many years. He was a crucial player in the development of the Conservative Party of Canada, and had a distinguished career in the House of Commons, serving the Government of Canada and Canadians for so many years.
It was with great sadness that we learned of his passing. On behalf of my colleague, the Member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Cassidy), and other colleagues in the New Democratic Party, I extend condolences to his wife and daughter.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Hon. Tom Hockin (Minister of State (Finance)):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 67(4) I have the honour to lay upon the table copies in both official languages of the Annual Report of the Bank of Canada.


WAYS AND MEANS
Thomas Hockin: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 84(2) I ask that an Order of the Day be designated for consideration of Ways and Means Motion Nos. 14, 26, 27 and 28.


PETITIONS
Hon. Doug Lewis (Minister of State and Minister of State (Treasury Board)):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order

March 21, 1988
Statements by Ministers
106(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the Government's response to petitions, Nos. 332-3781, 3323813, 332-3815, 3332-3854, 332-3855, 3323-4003, 3332-4030 and 332-4048 to 332-4052 inclusive.



GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND TRADE


Hon. Pat Carney (Minister for International Trade):: Mr. Speaker, Canada is currently involved in three disputes under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT. Two of the cases involve decisions by GATT panels against Canada. One relates to Canada's export restrictions on Pacific salmon and herring. The other deals with the practices of provincial Governments affecting the import of alcoholic beverages.
A third case involves a request which we will be making for a GATT panel on Japanese lumber tariffs. All of these cases will be addressed at the GATT Council tomorrow, March 22.
I want to take this opportunity to inform Members of the House of the Government's approach to these issues. We are all aware of how vital the GATT and international trading system are to Canada. International trade means jobs for Canadians.
More precisely, three million jobs in this country and one-third of all we produce depend on export markets. The GATT rules are the best protection for keeping channels of world trade open and protecting Canadian jobs. Without these rules, Canadian industries and Canadian workers would be exposed to indiscriminate action by trading partners. The law of the jungle would prevail in international trade. An export dependent country like Canada would be highly vulnerable.
Members of the House from all Parties recognize this reality. We all agree that the GATT system works in the interest of all Canadians and protects their employment and economic well-being. But the system is only as strong as the will of Governments to respect it. To enjoy the benefits of membership in the GATT, Canada must also be prepared to fulfil its obligations.
[DOT] (mo)
Let me turn first to the GATT panel report on salmon and herring. This emerged from an investigation under Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act. This section allows U.S. industry to file complaints about alleged unfair trading practices. What the U.S. industry alleged was unfair, in this case, was that Canadian processors were buying up substantial quantities of Alaskan salmon and herring while U.S. processors were prohibited from access to unprocessed salmon and herring from Canada. Therefore, the U.S. took the issue to GATT, where a panel made a clear finding that Canada's export restrictions violated international trade rules.
We have made it clear from the outset, including statements in the House, that we would be seeking a solution that would be consistent with the GATT and would also protect the longterm interests of the fishing industry. We have consulted closely with all interested parties, the processors, the unions, the fishermen, the B.C. Government and, as promised, we have pursued a three-pronged strategy; first, raising our concerns in the GATT; second, exploring a possible bilateral solution with the United States and, third, considering alternative measures to ensure the integrity of Canada's West Coast fisheries conservation and management regime.
In raising our concerns in the GATT, we have not received support from other members who clearly consider the panel's findings to be valid. While discussions with the U.S. have been useful in airing the issues, we have made little progress in reaching a bilateral solution. Therefore, we will now be pursuing a Canadian solution, one which reflects Canada's GATT obligations but which also addresses fisheries management and conservation needs and protects the future viability of the industry. It is the Government's intention to allow adoption of the GATT panel report and to dismantle the GATT inconsistent export restrictions by January 1, 1989.
At the same time, we intend to enact new regulations which will require that salmon and herring caught off the Pacific coast will be landed in Canada in order to ensure accurate catch reporting, inspection, grading, and quality control. While Americans will have access to unprocessed fish landed on shore at designated landing stations along the coast, they will not be allowed to buy fish directly from Canadian fishermen "over the side". Over-all, the landing requirement will improve management of the fisheries while preserving the livelihood of the coastal communities. Of course, Canadians will continue to be able to buy unprocessed American fish from Alaska.
My colleague, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. Siddon), will be consulting closely with all interested parties to develop the details of this landing requirement. It will be consistent with the GATT as well as with the Law of the Sea which specifically provides for such measures. In developing the new regime we will, of course, be examining carefully the principles and practices which the U.S. itself employs in the fisheries area through such legislation as the Magnuson Act. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is also announcing today his intent to bring forward a national plan for a landing requirement, including provisions for inspection and quality control, to be applied for all species on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
There have been calls that Canada should simply block adoption of the GATT panel report and maintain the status quo. Frankly, this is not a viable option. It would expose Canadian workers to the threat of U.S. trade retaliation which the GATT provides. This could hit East Coast fish processors, fishermen on both coasts, or any other number of Canadian industries. Of all sectors, the fisheries industry is particularly conscious of the need for fair international trading rules to be respected. More than 80 per cent of Canadian fisheries
March 21, 1988

production is dependent on export markets. If we are not prepared to play by the rules ourselves, we can hardly expect to use them to protect Canadian export interests.
I would like to point out that since the GATT began in 1947 there have been 58 panel reports submitted. Only three have not either been adopted or resolved, and two of them are the Canadian cases about which I am talking today. The third is a panel report on the U.S. trade embargo against Nicaragua. So I think you can see, Mr. Speaker, that adopting the panel report is thoroughly consistent with international practices. I repeat, the solution we have chosen on salmon and herring will respond to Canada's GATT obligations and will also safeguard the essential interests of Canada's fishing industry and the people who work in it.
Let me turn next to the panel report on liquor boards. Three years ago the European Community took Canada to the GATT alleging that Canadian liquor board practices are unfair. The measures in question here are provincial practices. The panel found that these provincial practices on pricing, listing, and distribution discriminate against imports of alcoholic beverages and are inconsistent with GATT rules. Canada has been asked to have the provinces bring their practices into line with international trade rules and to report back to the GATT before the end of this year.
Canada will not stand in the way of adoption of this report at the GATT Council meeting tomorrow. However, we recognize that the panel's recommendations, while not posing problems for the distilling industry, do cause severe difficulties for the Canadian wine industry. You may recall, Mr. Speaker, that the free trade agreement with the United States has provisions covering imports of wine from the United States which provide for a seven year phase-out of differential markups. In 1986 exports of wine from the U.S. to Canada amounted to about $10 million. By comparison, European exports to Canada are 24 times as large. They are in the order of $240 million a year. So, of course, they pose a very serious threat to the Canadian wine industry.
For this reason we attempted, in consultation with all the provinces and the industry, to negotiate a bilateral understanding with the European Community. These negotiations were unsuccessful because the Europeans set conditions which we could not accept. We will now be working with the provinces to find ways to respond to the panel's recommendations while addressing the adjustment concerns of the industry.
The Government will also be reviewing the petition submitted by the Canadian wine industry regarding European subsidy practices on grapes and wines and their impact on the Canadian market.
Our dispute with the European Community on liquor board practices has centred on wine and spirits. The European exports of beer, which account for less than .5 of 1 per cent of the Canadian market, do not figure prominently in the complaint. In view of this, and given that discussions are now under way with the provinces to address interprovincial
Statements by Ministers
barriers to trade, the Government is not prepared to implement any changes with respect to beer marketing practices in the foreseeable future.
Finally, I want to advise the House that tomorrow Canada will be requesting that the GATT Council establish a panel to consider a Canadian complaint against Japan. This relates to the Japanese tariff which discriminates against Canadian lumber in favour of lumber from the U.S.A. The tariff restricts Canadian access to a rapidly expanding market which we pioneered. This is a long-standing issue which we have raised with Japan at the highest levels for many years. Specifically our exports to Japan of spruce-pine-fir dimension lumber are assessed at 8 per cent tariff while exports of competing species, mostly from the United States, are allowed to enter duty free. We do not feel this is consistent with the GATT requirement to give the same tariff treatment to "like products".
We have tried to settle this issue on many occasions. The Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), my colleague, the Minister of State for Forestry and Mines (Mr. Merrithew), and I have all raised this issue with our Japanese counterparts. Japan has offered us limited tariff reductions but would not agree to provide Canada with the same access provided to the U.S. Therefore, we are taking this issue to the GATT.
As we have done in the past, we will be using the GATT to defend Canadian export interests and Canadian jobs. Clearly, Canada expects other countries to live by GATT rules, but we cannot do so unless we are prepared to respect these rules ourselves. The decisions I have announced today reflect this basic principle and protect Canadian jobs.


Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg-Fort Garry):: Mr. Speaker, in responding to the Minister's statement I would like to underline and reinforce the strong and important commitment that this country has to the international trading system and, in particular, to GATT, and to endorse the spirit that the development and enhancement of the international trading system are essential to our own economic and international progress.
By way of example, of the nine cases that Canada has initiated under the GATT we have been successful in gaining favourable judgments in eight of them. This shows that, generally, not only have we been a beneficiary of having an international system of settling disputes but that we also have been a close and honest adherent to that system. That was the case until the Government got its wires crossed, and began to pursue obsessively a trade strategy that ran counter to that basic support of the GATT. It tried to negotiate a special deal. It tried to gain exemptions. It tried to follow a so-called two-track theory. That is when we began to go wrong. That is when we began to find that our ability to pursue successfully negotiations through the GATT system caused us to take a wrong turn.

March 21, 1988
Statements by Ministers
Certainly no more serious mistakes have ever been made in the history of trade relations in this country than the refusal by the present Government not to pursue the softwood lumber issue in front of the GATT. Not only did we have a very clear case but we had the right to challenge a law that will come back to haunt us. It is this very principle that the Americans are now incorporating in their omnibus Trade Bill. It is something we could have challenged successfully, ensuring that it never applied to further Canadian softwood lumber exports.
However, the Government, for pure and simple political reasons, not wanting to disrupt its relationship with the United States during the time of negotiations, refused to pursue that matter. It has been seen clearly as not a major player in the GATT system in the last three or four years. It is evident that its mind, its interest and its energies have been elsewhere. We are now paying the price.
We have in front of us decisions which will have devastating effects on a number of Canadian industries. I refer in particular to the fishing industry on the West Coast. It has been seized with an incredible sense of fear because of a ruling initiated by the United States using the GATT system which, from the point of view of U.S. injury might have amounted to $2 million or $3 million, but which will impact on the West Coast industry to the tune of $150 million or more.
Why did the Government take the actions it did? Why did it sacrifice the West Coast fishing industry? How has it done that?
First, is it not strange that the Americans were able to gain from Canada a concession to grandfather the softwood lumber decision and have it written into the agreement but Canada was not able to negotiate successfully an American withdrawal of its application against the West Coast fishery? In light of the reasonably small impact that this had upon American fishing interests one would have thought that the great negotiator might have been able to succeed in having his American counterparts withdraw that application under the Canada-U.S. proposal. All the protests and promises we have heard that the Canada-U.S. agreement will protect Canadian interests fall hollow when we see the lack of success the Government has had in gaining the slightest concession from its American partners. That failure pales in comparison when one considers what the Government has surrendered.
Under the Canada-U.S. agreement we have abandoned our right to employ an export tax. The fact of the matter is that under GATT we could have taken the type of regulations which are presently applied to the processing of fish and replaced them with an export tax. That would be perfectly acceptable and allowable under GATT rules. But the Government negotiated away the right to impose an export tax in its relationship with the United States. Thus it took away one of the alternative means that could be used to protect Canadian industries successfully, in this case the fish processing industry. The Government negotiated away, gave away, conceded away,
one of the most important defensive instruments this country has that would be essential to protect the West Coast fisheries in this case.
What has the Government replaced this with? It has been replaced by a new kind of landing requirement that will now have to be applied to the East Coast fisheries as well. There goes all the protestations that we have heard from Members opposite that in no way will the East Coast fisheries be affected.
We now have the Government recognizing that by accepting this decision it will be setting a precedent. Under the free trade agreement Americans could use this precedent to go after the East Coast fishery. It is now attempting to wriggle its way out by applying a measure that will impose new standards and new restrictions upon the East Coast fishery. Not only have the West Coast fishermen been put in jeopardy but the Government has now taken a measure that will have a major impact on the East Coast fishery, in fact on the entire fishery of Canada.
Putting itself in a box in the first place as a result of the Canada-U.S. agreement the Government is now trying to find a way to work its way out. But by working its way out it is putting itself in new boxes. It is like a maze. It is like the weird garden in Alice in Wonderland where Alice kept running from the Queen of Hearts only to find herself trapped.
The Government has trapped itself not only in the West Coast fisheries but in the East Coast fisheries as well. It is an incredible state of affairs into which the Minister for International Trade (Miss Carney) has put the fishing industry of Canada. It is quite incredible that there would be such incompetence and such tomfoolery with such a vital industry. It is really quite astounding that the Government would put itself in this type of position.
Because the agreement is not yet in place the Government could be using its leverage to say, "We will use an export tax to protect the Canadian fish processing industry," and not get itself caught in the type of trap that it has put itself into in this case. It is not a matter of simply accepting a GATT ruling, it is a matter of being able to use what is available under the GATT and putting it to work for the Canadian interest. But the Government is afraid of doing so. It is scared of doing so because it does not want to jeopardize what has become the Prime Minister's (Mr. Mulroney) great salvation for Canadian interests. This is the type of salvation which continually puts Canadian industry in jeopardy.
In saying what I have just said I must now ask what happened to the brave words of the Minister of Transport (Mr. Crosbie). Last November when the Americans imposed an embargo on certain sizes of Canadian fish he said, "We are going to take them to the GATT". The Minister on behalf of the Government said that it would use bargaining power and trading power.
March 21, 1988

Has the Minister made a statement that the Government will utilize an application to GATT against U.S. actions? On November 26 the Minister of Transport who, I presume, speaks for the Government, was quoted as saying, "We are going to challenge U.S. actions in front of GATT, dealing with a new embargo on smaller sized fish".
Once again it has backed off. We know why it has backed off. It is absolutely paralyzed when it comes to taking any kind of trade action against the United States. It realizes that in terms of the type of sellout it has negotiated with the Canada-U.S. agreement it cannot defend and protect Canadian industries legitimately for fear of having that unravelled.
[DOT] (M30)
On the second issue that we have had brought forward, dealing with the protection practices of the provincial liquor boards, once again there is a curious circumstance. In its "negotiations" the Government put itself in a box. The Americans were quite happy to leave some of those things alone because they knew there was a GATT ruling being considered. Now this opens up even further access for U.S. wines and spirits than they had before, and they did not have to give anything away in the negotiations to get it. Nothing is exempt on this issue.
Once again we are putting ourselves in the position on wine and beer where, rather than taking action, the Government states that it will review the petition from the wine industry. Why does the Minister not simply accept it and go to work on it? There is a decision due tomorrow. Have the officials put their petition down? Let us get tough on bargaining for Canadians. Let us use the GATT rules the way they are supposed to be used, not in some tippy-toe, passive, piecemeal fashion, but do so under a coherent, effective, strengthening of the rules.
The fact of the matter is that once again we have put ourselves in a bind because of the Canada-U.S. agreement, which points out the fallacy of the so-called two-track theory. The tracks keep getting crossed and the train is derailed. That is the problem with this trade strategy followed by the Government. The trains keep bumping into each other because the tracks do not run parallel but cross each other.
The final issue I wish to comment on, Mr. Speaker, and I wish to give you some notice that this will not be the last comment we have to make as we look forward with interest to Question Period, is on the application against the Japanese on dimension lumber. There is no quarrel with that; it is a useful initiative. But I wish to point out the interesting contrast as to why the Government was not prepared to do the same on the softwood lumber issue with the Americans. Is it not an interesting contrast between the two?
In fact, accepting the U.S. export tax and replacing it, as is now being done in B.C., with a new tax on the wood itself, by the new stumpage fees, our own exports to Japan are increasing in cost. The stumpage fee will apply to all exports. We are
Statements by Ministers
beginning to price ourselves out of the market in any event in this respect, simply because we accepted a bad decision. If we were prepared, as we should be, to challenge Japanese rules, we had equal right to challenge American rules, except for the fact that this Government was not going to to anything to get off its knees when it came to dealing with the Americans on trade.


Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Mr. Speaker, first I wish to thank the Minister for her early circulation of the document which we are looking at this morning. Second, I would like to make the point, on behalf of our Party, that presently a GATT negotiation is taking place which is looking at the entire range of GATT issues, both questions which had to do with what is a subsidy, questions which had to do with fair trading practices, and so forth. Especially with this GATT negotiation that is taking place, with our strong support for Canada's participation in that negotiating process, we feel that the Minister is making a serious mistake by rushing into acceptance of these two panel decisions.
In many respects I think that the set of statements made by the Minister this morning reflects the approach of this Government. It pretends to take the high road, and at the same time it applies restrictions and undercuts what it is pretending to do. It attempts, in short, to have its cake and to eat it too.
In the West Coast case it adopts the report of GATT, thereby showing itself to be the good boy scout that Canada is supposed to be. At the same time it puts into effect restrictions which will have the effect of undercutting much of what that GATT panel report aims to achieve.
The same thing is true with respect to the liquor case. It accepts the report and states, "We will not stand against the adoption of this report". In that sense it pleads guilty to the points which have been made by the Europeans with respect to our practices in this industry. At the same time the Government states, with respect to the politically powerful brewing industry, and I quote from the Minister's statement, "the Government is not prepared to implement any changes in respect of beer marketing practices in the foreseeable future".
On the one hand the Government says, "Yes, we are for what GATT has said", yet it turns around and at the same time it states, "We will not implement what GATT has told us to implement". Frankly, Mr. Speaker, that seems to me to represent what this Government has far too often done in the past, refusing to be frank and open with the Canadian people. In addition we receive a little spoonful of honey to make the medicine go down. We get the announcement that is strategically timed for today to make things somehow look a little better for the Minister's West Coast constituents, that there will be action taken with respect to dimension lumber, an area which on every trip to Japan we were told the Government had solved.
I think, and we think as a Party, that Canada should have been honest, and open, and stated that we think the vote

March 21, 1988
Petitions
should be postponed with respect to each of those panel decisions. For instance, the European Community postponed vote after vote with respect to pasta subsidies. In the 1970s the United States postponed vote after vote with respect to its DISC program. Canada itself has postponed votes with respect to the cattlemen's countervail which the Government has been very anxious to put off. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, an honest, up front approach saying, "Yes, we intend to postpone this vote", is what the people of this country would much more clearly have appreciated.
First, it would have saved far more jobs in the salmon and herring industry on the West Coast. That particular case dealt with a narrow dispute with Alaska, a narrow dispute that perhaps involved a total value of $3 million to $4 million. As a consequence, a fishing industry of $150 million to $160 million has been put at risk.
In respect of the decision which the Minister has taken, she could have, if she wished, tried to wriggle out of what she said a few minutes before she accepted the panel report. She could have used an export tax. There is nothing within GATT and, contrary to what the Flon. Member for Winnipeg-Fort Garry (Mr. Axworthy) said, it is quite possible for us at this stage to take action and put an export tax into effect. The Government should have done so.
I must say that the liquor distribution issue is even more surprising. Here we have the extra complexity of the Canadian Government being faced with an application from the wine industry for moves against the Europeans in respect of their subsidies. Surely it is a perfect reason to say that we will postpone adoption of this report until such time as these issues can be sorted out as they should be sorted out together.
I think that the Minister, with her statement that the Government will not take action in respect of the beer market, has left the country open to the very retaliation about which she complains she is concerned in following GATT by adopting reports.
In conclusion, I think that honesty and jobs are the issues facing us in this case. There are 20,000 jobs which are at stake. We should have been honest and straightforward and said that we wished the vote to be postponed as we wished the vote with regard to the countervail on cattle to be postponed. If we had done that, we would have proved to people across the country that at least the Government was prepared for once to stand and protect the interests of the country, instead of giving in, and giving in, and giving in.
That kind of direct, open, and up front position taken by a Government would have permitted further negotiation and would have led to a solution to these problems instead of the cop-out the Minister has given us.


PETITIONS
Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to present a petition, pursuant to Standing Order 106, on behalf of a number of constituents who are concerned that the federal Government lacks a mandate from the people of Canada to conclude a trade deal with the United States.
They believe that the negotiated trade deal threatens the very fabric of Canadian political and economic sovereignty and therefore ask Parliament to dissolve to give the people of Canada an opportunity to accept or reject the proposed trade deal during a national general election.


Mr. Derek Blackburn (Brant):: Mr. Speaker, I rise, under the provisions of the same Standing Order, to present a petition from several persons in my riding, mainly in the city of Brantford, who are totally opposed to the Government's trade deal with the United States.
They call upon the Government to call an election immediately to have the matter settled once and for all. They fear that the trade deal will reduce and in the long term eliminate our sovereignty.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 256 and 264.


Mr. Caccia: 1.	At the present time, is the government conducting research on or about freshwater resources and, if so, under what programs and, in each case involving (a) what expenditures (ft) how many persons?
2.	In 1987, was the water resources program cancelled and, if so, (a) for what reason (ft) has it been replaced by other programs?


Mr. Jim Hawkes (Parliamentary Secretary to Deputy Prime Minister and President of the Privy Council):: I am
informed by the Departments of the Environment and Fisheries and Oceans as follows:
In so far as the Department of the Environment is concerned:
1. Yes. Research on freshwater resources is carried out under the following programs:
Canada-United States and Interjurisdictional Water Management; Water Quality Management Data; Water Quantity Management Data; Water Management Research;
March 21, 1988

Toxic Chemicals; Long Range Transport of Airborne Pollutants; and Industrial Emissions/Discharges.
The bulk of this research is carried out at three centres of research:
(a) '000$ (b) Person-Years
National Water Research Institute	18,196	262National Hydrology Research Institute	6,989	79Wastewater Technology Centre	4,058	49.5
2. No.
In so far as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is concerned:
1. Research on freshwater resources is conducted mostly in the central and Arctic region. Such research falls into four categories, plus management/support, as follows:
(a) '000$ (b) Person-Years
Resource assessment and related research
in N.W.T.	285.5	4.5Aquaculture and enhancement science	1,347.2	25.0Habitat assessment and related research	4,290.1	63.4Contaminants research	4,606.3	72.0Program management and technical	support	453.3	3.0Total	10,982.4	167.9
The above excludes work on the freshwater life stages of anadromous species. The dollar resources are expenditure ceilings for 1987/88 and include salaries (without employee benefits), operations and maintenance, and regular capital (there were no resources allocated under grants and contributions).
2. There were no water resources programs cancelled in 1987.


Mr. Henderson: In (a) 1982 (A) 1983 (c) 1984 (d) 1985 (e) 1986 (/) 1987 did the government allocate funds to the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia and, if so, through what departments and, in each case, in what amounts?


Hon. Thomas Siddon (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: In so far as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is concerned:
Listed below are the funds allocated to the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
1982-	83	$32.9	million1983-	84	$36.6	million1984-	85	$44.7	million1985-	86	$41.0	million1986-	87	$38.9	million
Supply
For 1987-88, as a result of the Department's reorganization, funds are no longer allocated to the Bedford Institute specifically, but to the entire region of Scotia Fundy.
[ English]


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


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The questions as enumerated by the Parliamentary Secretary have been answered. Shall the remaining questions be allowed to stand?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I wish to inform the House that because of the Minister's statement, the period set aside for Government Orders will be extended for thirty-five minutes, starting at one o'clock.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
ALLOTTED DAY, S. O. 82-ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS Ms. Lynn McDonald (Broadview-Greenwood) moved:
That this House condemns the Government for its failure to act on urgent environmental issues, especially its failure to negotiate a treaty with the United States to reduce acid rain emissions; its failure to incorporate environmental matters in major economic decisions, despite endorsing the Brundtland Report and the report of the National Task Force on Environment and the Economy; and its failure to effect a clean-up of the toxic wastes contaminating the Great Lakes Basin and the St. Lawrence Seaway.
She said: Mr. Speaker, it is my unhappy duty today as the environment critic for the NDP caucus to move a motion which condemns the Government in no uncertain terms for three major failures.
There could have been others on the list. However, in the interest of focusing on what is of highest concern for Canadians, I specified acid rain, which is a problem across the country where we do not have a treaty and do not seem to be getting closer to one; the case of toxic wastes in the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway where we have agreements on water quality but in fact are not seeing any clean-up actually happening; and the case of the World Commission on Environment and Development, the Brundtland Report, where we have an excellent report with dynamic recommendations and a hopeful vision of the future. We have a Government which has endorsed it in principle but is not yet acting it out and, indeed, is violating its major premises in its own economic decision making.
As an Ontario Member I will deal particularly with eastern questions. Later today my colleagues from the West will be dealing with environmental issues in their areas. Certainly the environment is a prime consideration for all Canadians.
[Stage Direction]
March 21, 1988
Supply
[Stage Direction]
All Canadians, even in Western Canada, see acid rain as an urgent issue. To Quebecers, however, the issue of acid rain is particularly pressing. It is environmental problem number one, because of its impact: dying lakes and forests, soil acidification, and also diseases such as cancer and respiratory ailments. In the southern part of Quebec on the American border, there are maple stands where one-third of the trees have died as a result of acid rain.
The federal Government's failure to act is very sad. One must not be too cynical, but I have some doubts about the Government's good will, because while the federal Government was negotiating an agreement on acid rain with the United States, it was also negotiating a trade agreement. It could not insist too much on a strong agreement on emissions that cause acid rain because it was also anxious to sign a trade agreement. The price we pay for this trade agreement is the lack of an agreement on acid rain.
There are other costs involved with this free trade agreement, and I am thinking of jobs, our control over investment and basically, the sovereignty of this country. What is also discouraging about the free trade agreement is the fact that it will have a disastrous impact on the environment if it is implemented. According to the federal Government, the agreement is our most important economic decision in this century. However, the decision was made by the federal Government without any studies of the negative consequences for the environment, and it was taken despite the recommendations of the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. The federal Government and the provinces approved the Commission's recommendations that environmental matters be incorporated in economic decisions. However, the first economic decision made by the federal Government and supported by the provincial Government of Quebec was to pursue this trade agreement with the United States without considering possible negative effects on the environment and on our future economic potential.
Quebecers are worried about the quality of their water. In rural areas, we see a degradation of water quality by pesticides. The waters around Montreal are contaminated by runoff from chemical industries in New York state. In some cases, concentrations of toxic substances are higher in Montreal than they are further upstream in the Great Lakes. However, the federal Government refuses to contribute one cent to cleaning up the waters of the St. Lawrence River. Last year, the federal Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) stated that cleaning up the St. Lawrence was the federal Government's first environmental priority for Quebec. Since then, the problem has not diminished but the federal Government's priority no longer exists. Instead of taking action, the federal Minister is giving advice to his provincial counterparts. It is excellent advice: raise water taxes to encourage people to stop wasting water!
I agree that the Province, the City of Montreal, and other Quebec municipalities have a responsibility to waste less and to treat waste, but the federal Government also has a role to play. In fact, this is both a national and international issue. Toxic substances originate partly in the region itself, partly in Ontario and the United States.
It is unfair to exclude Quebec from the Great Lakes water quality agreements. Ontario has received $200 million from the federal Government to fight pollution. Quebec should not be left out. The urgency of this question is demonstrated by the fact that the belugas in the St. Lawrence are dying. They are dying because they eat minute organisms which absorb toxic substances, including dioxins. The death of the whales is a danger signal to us all. Some studies have shown that the rate of cancer and birth defects among the human population of the St. Lawrence North Shore is higher than the Canadian average.
Canada has made some progress in reducing the emissions that cause acid rain, particularly sulphur dioxide, and especially in Quebec and Ontario, the worst offending provinces. The federal Government has not done nearly so well with regard to nitrogen oxide, another important cause of acid rain. At meetings in Geneva attempting to get an international accord on this subject, Canada's role was absolutely shameful. Canada stalled and mimicked the Americans regarding acid rain pollution in Canada, denying the importance of the pollution, wanting more research, and not standing with other more environmentally concerned countries for tough standards and real cut-backs in emissions.
The case of toxic wastes is quite different structurally from the question of acid rain. We have not even begun to get into negotiations with the Americans. In the case of toxic wastes in the Great Lakes there are treaties already. We have had the International Joint Commission, and water quality agreements and studies have accumulated over the decades. The question is not to negotiate any kind of a treaty but a failure to get the existing agreements, which have been amended on the basis of recent research, put into practice. The Great Lakes United's Water Quality Task Force I think puts it very well in looking at this question. It reported:
We were shocked to see many blatant violations of those promises on our tour of the Lakes ... in 1986. Plumes of black contaminants still reach out into the Lakes. Large cities still dump sewage that has only received primary treatment. Industrial smoke stacks still belch contaminants into the air. Old dump sites continue to leak dioxins, PCBs and numerous other insidiously destructive chemicals into rivers and lakes. Agricultural run-off continues to release massive quantities of pesticides and phosphorus-laden fertilizers. Dredging operations still pour toxic sediments into open waters. Every day hundreds of trucks still dump contaminated fill into the lakes.
Citizens are still calling for government to be much more active. It is clear to the Great Lakes citizenry that zero discharge of persistent toxic substances is the only hope for our future.
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Great Lakes United is quite clear about the problems, and I not think any expert would doubt it. It also points out that the International Joint Commission, to which we name half the members, has all the powers it needs. We do not need new laws or treaties. We need some real force in actual enforcement.
A total of 4.5 million Canadians get their drinking water from the Great Lakes system, specifically Lake Ontario. Only one-quarter of a million Americans do. The problem has not been the priority for the Americans that it has been for us, but it is estimated that 90 per cent of the toxic substances in that water come from American sources. The Niagara River brings in contaminated material and 85 per cent of it flows into Lake Ontario. The Niagara River picks up PCBs, dioxins, metals, and carries those substances into Lake Ontario, and because it is a continuous system, they are carried into the St. Lawrence hitting Montreal and affecting Quebec as well.
Niagara Falls is the world's most spectacular toxic waste tourist attraction and it is sad that we have to look at it that way. Even the spray that greets tourists is contaminated. The contamination is thorough. The water, the sediment, the spray, the fish, the mollusks and algae are affected throughout the system. Two hundred and sixty-one artificial chemicals have been identified. Some cause birth defects and some are carcinogens. These include sewage, DDTs, pesticides, metals, PCBs, and the most deadly toxic substances yet known, dioxins.
In 1985 it was estimated by Environment Canada that nine tonnes of toxic chemicals enter the Niagara River every day. The Niagara River Toxic Committee, which has underestimated the toxic discharge in the past, reports 66 hazardous waste dump sites within three miles of the river, 61 of which are in New York State. As well there are 46 so-called inactive sites, but many of these are leaking. Hyde Park is the most dramatic example.
An estimated nine kilograms of dioxins have been detected seeping out from the Hyde Park site which get into our Great Lakes system and into the food chain. The result, Mr. Speaker? Fish consumption is restricted, obviously a necessary measure but hardly any kind of solution to the problem. This is a chemical time bomb. There are six hectares close to the Niagara River and 70,000 tonnes of chemical waste have been put into it in a 20-year period. Clearly the release of all these toxic substances is a violation of the Boundary Water Treaty.
We have an international Water Quality Agreement which should mean that we move very swiftly to zero discharge of toxic substances. These agreements to reduce discharge are not respected. Federal government action is essential for clean up. Litigation has been tried. Pollution Probe, for example, has tried litigation but it has not been successful. The Americans have a superfund but litigation manages to sidetrack it. The very pathetic progress that has been made so far is just not nearly enough.
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The United States Environmental Protection Agency reported only in January of this year on the six tons a day leaking into the Niagara River. That may yet be an underestimation of the harm that is being caused. I cannot stress that too vigorously. I would hope that the subject of toxic wastes and the necessity for clean-up would be on the agenda for the summit meeting with President Reagan in April. It is an absolutely essential item.
I want to turn to the last part of my motion dealing with the Brundtland Commission report, this absolutely vital, important, encouraging and hopeful document in which Canada took a very important part. Canadians formed a part of the public response to it. Its recommendations are superb.
The introduction of the report deals with the nature of the problem of environmental contamination and the disastrous situation we are in right now because of our developmental practices. It reads:
They may show profits on the balance sheets of our generation, but our children will inherit the losses. We borrow environmentalist capital from future generations with no intention or prospect of repaying. They may damn us for our spendthrift ways, but they can never collect on our debt to them. We act as we do because we can get away with it: future generations do not vote; they have no political or financial power; they cannot challenge our decisions.
That has been the shame of it.
While the federal Government has endorsed the Brundtland Commission recommendations, it immediately violated the most basic premise and recommendation of it in the free trade agreement, and that is to incorporate the environment into economic decision-making. With the trade agreement, we have a continental energy proposal, a requirement to continue to sell energy and other natural products to the Americans, regardless of concerns for conservation. It is a deal that will discourage conservation. It is a deal that will discourage the development of alternatives, the soft energy path. It is a deal that will discourage the development of jobs in areas other than the resource sector, and indeed the Government has bragged about how the resource sector will be more important under this deal.
We are, however, talking about non-renewable resources. The proposal is that we will depend more on resources to which, once they are gone, future generations will have no access whatsoever. The possibility of using those resources by having lower energy prices in Canada to stimulate certain industries that would create more jobs has been lost under the trade agreement.
There is the question of harmonization under the trade agreement in the case of pesticides. What does harmonization mean? The Americans take a different approach to pesticides than we do. Our approach needs improving as well, but theirs is based on a different premise. They allow for a cost benefit trade-off: "We will accept a certain number of deaths from pesticides if there are economic benefits". Our approach talks about unacceptable risks and puts health consequences as
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something not to be traded away for dollars. Yet we have abandoned that in the trade agreement.
The Government is still spending more money subsidizing the destruction of the environment than it is repairing and caring for it. In the case of the trade agreement, that trend will continue. The Government has paid lip-service, but it is simply not acting to incorporate the environment into economic decisions, to ensure that we do not simply look at the money made by our forests but at the cost of reforestation as well. When a resource disappears, we must look at the costs involved in revising it.
There is not very much time left. Let me quote briefly from the Brundtland report. It reads:
Industrialized countries must recognize that their energy consumption is
polluting the biosphere and eating into scarce fossil fuel supplies ... But the
process must be accelerated to reduce per capita consumption and encourage a
shift to non-polluting sources and technologies.
Yet the trade agreement wants more of the same. The Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Masse) would have us sell our easily accessible oil and gas in order to get money to so-called develop or extract and sell off our more inaccessible and costly oil and gas. This is a scandalous misunderstanding of the situation.
I simply want to say, as the Brundtland Commission said, that the time to act is now. I think Canadians are fundamentally fair and reasonable. They do not want to deprive future generations, the children whom they educate and look after, of their environment and the possibility of having livelihoods in the future. I think Canadians are reasonable and want to see action.
I would hope that the Government would stop being so cosmetic in its approach and start looking at the cosmos, become cosmological, not "cosmeticological". I would hope that it would stop taking the public relations approach and would genuinely respond to the public which places a very high priority on the environment.
The Brundtland report does give us cause for hope because it says that it can be done. We do not have to accept poverty along with saving the environment. We can have economic growth and development by incorporating economic decisionmaking into an environmentalist perspective. That is what we must do, but many changes would be required by the Government, including changes in its dealings with the Americans. It must have the political will to serve Canadians and to serve the interests of future generations of Canadians.
Mr. McMillan:: Mr. Speaker, in her remarks on the NDP motion today, the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood (Ms. McDonald) said that the Government of Canada has endorsed the Brundtland Commission report, the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, but has paid only lip-service to the report itself through its day-to-day actions. Yet, during a visit to the United Nations in New York
on the occasion of the big debate on the Brundtland Commission report, Madam Brundtland, the Prime Minister of Norway, who headed that international commission, singled out Canada for its world leadership in implementing the recommendations of her commission's report.
I ask the Hon. Member, who are the people of Canada to believe on this subject, the NDP or Madam Brundtland?


Ms. McDonald:: Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt that Madam Brundtland is a very diplomatic person, and it is well known that in diplomacy, one gets further by buttering up the people one is trying to get something from than by condemning them. She is being very diplomatic.
Madam Brundtland should not be treated as being quite separate from the New Democratic Party. She herself is a social democrat and is head of the Labour Party of Norway. I am pleased to see a woman, feminist, socialist and environmentalist in that high office.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I hope the Minister will explain to the Canadian people why, under the trade deal, there was not one study, not one SAGIT which looked at this matter. I quoted the Brundtland report directly where it said that we must move to different uses of energy. Yet the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, the Minister's colleague, is adamant that using fossil fuels, oil and gas, the non-renewable energy sources, is the path the Government is directed to. That is an absolute contradiction and I am surprised that the Minister cannot see that.


Mr. Caccia:: Mr. Speaker, in congratulating the Hon. Member on her fine speech, I would like to ask her if she would expand and elaborate on the question of energy and the trade agreement. She did already touch on it, but I am curious about her thoughts on what the long-term environmental implications are of the trade agreement as it affects energy export. I would like to know of other thoughts she might have on this subject.


Lynn McDonald: Mr. Speaker, I welcome that question because it is the energy aspects of the trade deal which are so attractive to the Americans. They have a desire to have access to our non-renewable energy sources, and this deal gives them that unfettered access. If we need to cut back because of some kind of crisis like an oil crisis, which has happened in the past, we will still have to continue supplying the American markets proportionately.
The American market is an enormous market. Americans are very high energy users, as are Canadians. We use 80 times the energy per capita of people in Third World countries, for example. There is no incentive in this deal for us to explore other energy options, to make better use of our energy, to get more out of less, a very, very important aspect of the Brundtland report. That is something we are trying to do in manufacturing, for example, producing more with less use of natural resources.
March 21, 1988

The continental energy approach is absolutely foolish and suicidal. It goes completely against the thrust of the Brundt-land Commission report, which is that we have obligations to future generations. In the case of non-renewable resources, there is simply no opportunity for that undertaking to be respected. The material will be gone and we will even have given up the opportunity of obtaining the spin-off jobs in manufacturing. We have documents given to Ministers which show that non-renewable energy resources are still treated as a surplus in the mistaken mentality of the Government. We have too much of a supply so we have to get access.
I did not mention uranium in my speech, but certainly that is another very important area where the Government wants to ensure Canadian access to the American market. Yet we have no means for disposal of high level radioactive wastes. We have no adequate means of disposal of low level mine tailings. The Minister's department is aware of the concerns, yet there is no action on these wastes, and the prospect is for increased mining of uranium. We are already the world's largest producer and exporter. We even export to France, which is still conducting atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs. It is absolutely unconscionable that we should be involved in that.
The Government's concern is that we have to keep selling more. It welcomes the trade agreement with the U.S. as an opportunity to ensure access to that market. It approaches this issue strictly as a market matter. Yet what will it cost to clean up? If the Government looked at the Brundtland Commission report it would not say, "We can make some money selling uranium to the Americans and French". It would look at the cost of clean-up. Who is going to pay those costs through cancer deaths and birth defects and so on? It is the young people and their children who are going to have to pay the penalty for this very mistaken policy of our present Government.


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, all too often Parliament descends to exaggerated rhetoric and intemperate partisanship. The environment is a field in which neither tone is appropriate. The stakes are simply too high given the extent to which the human race is trashing the planet's life support systems, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil that produces our food. What is at issue here for all of us is nothing less than survival. We owe our children and future generations not rhetoric or partisanship but the healthiest possible environment in which to live. Yet this NDP motion is not designed to shed light on the subject. It is designed to discredit genuine efforts to improve the environment.
Nevertheless, Sir, I welcome this occasion to detail the record of the current federal Government in the environmental field. I do so not to score cheap political points but to celebrate a genuine partnership that the federal Government is forging with the provinces, industry, environmental groups, labour, and others committed to environmental protection. Much
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remains to be done and this Government is committed to doing it in concert with our partners.
I think nothing is achieved by denying credit where credit is due. Yet that is what the NDP motion before us does as a substitute for its Party policy. Any non-partisan observer would concede that more has been done to protect the natural environment at the national level over the last three and a half years than during any previous comparable period. The record, unadorned by rhetoric and unembellished by partisanship, speaks for itself. Allow me to put the Government's achievements on the record.
When appointed Minister of the Environment in August, 1985, I said that acid rain was this country's most serious environmental problem. No one can deny that our Government has delivered on its commitment to reduce acid rain-causing emissions from Canadian sources. Last month in Halifax I signed, on behalf of the Government and people of Canada, the last of seven legally binding federal-provincial accords. Together, the accords constitute the most ambitious joint government pollution control program ever launched in Canada. By 1994, the eight-Government pact will slash industry and utility sulphur dioxide emissions by 50 per cent, a remarkable demonstration of national will. The federal Government has committed $150 million to abate acid rain emissions at source, and a further $150 million to advance the technology and research required for the task.
At the same time, we have introduced the toughest national measures in the world to control nitrogen oxide emissions from motor vehicles. Last September, allowable emissions from cars and light-duty trucks were cut by over 60 per cent. In December of this year, allowable emissions from heavy-duty vehicles will be cut by 50 per cent. We are the first country in the world to introduce such tough NOx controls. Our vehicles will now be up to six times cleaner than those of Europe.
Sir, not content to put only our house in order, we have been eager to provide world leadership on the issue. It was, after all, this Government that signed the Helsinki Agreement which committed each signatory country to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions by 30 per cent, a subject in which my friend, the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia), has such a keen interest.
Opposition Parties can rail against our Government for not yet achieving an agreement with the U.S. to cut the flow of acid rain across the borders of our two countries, but they ignore several facts. First, no previous Canadian Government was able to achieve an acid rain accord with the U.S., either. Success continues to elude acid rain control champions within the U.S. itself.
Second, no previous Canadian Government has given the issue a higher priority than we have. Unlike the Trudeau Government, we have not merely moralized about the issue. We have acted. Witness the strong domestic control program mentioned earlier.

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Third, we intend to accelerate our efforts to achieve an acid rain agreement with the U.S. Whether or not we succeed, the Government of Canada cannot be held accountable for the record of another sovereign country in this or any other area of public policy, however much our own environment may be affected. By attacking the Canadian Government on this score, the NDP's motion is as naive as it is unfair.
If acid rain is this country's top environmental problem, and I think it is, toxic chemicals vie for that distinction. Accordingly, our Government has acted to stem the flow of toxics into our environment. A major instrument for doing so is the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, now awaiting action by Parliament at the last stages of debate. The law will consolidate much of the legislative authority of the Minister of the Environment. It will provide a framework to co-ordinate federal and provincial environmental laws. It will manage toxic chemicals through their full life cycle, from research and development to production and entry into the market-place, from transport right through to final disposal as waste. It will also create mechanisms to regulate pollution from the federal Government itself.
The Bill contains the toughest sanctions against polluters ever enshrined in Canadian environmental law, including $1-million-a-day fines and jail terms for corporate offenders.
A panel of top flight environmentalists is already working on a list of priority chemicals so that the law will be ready to be acted upon and enforced immediately upon royal assent.
Toward the same goal, a tough enforcement and compliance program has been devised, and the Government has approved $37 million in new money to apply the law.
While awaiting passage of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the Government is using existing instruments to act on specific pollution problems across the country, focusing in particular on toxic chemical hot spots. A case in point is the $34 million Sydney tar ponds excavation, the biggest of its kind in the history of Canada and the second biggest ever undertaken anywhere in the world.
The clean-up of the Windermere Basin in Hamilton harbour is another example. Such pollution measures are not being taken in a vacuum, but rather in the context of the federal water policy which we released just before Christmas. The policy covers everything from large scale water exports and major water diversion projects, which we have banned, to realistic water pricing, which we have championed.
In the same context, we have updated and fortified the Canada-U.S. Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in concert with the U.S. Government. Such environmental watchdogs as Great Lakes United, referred to already in this debate, have helped ensure that the new agreement is as comprehensive as it is tough. For the first time, the agreement now covers all sources of Great Lakes pollution and establishes
accountability mechanisms to make sure that specific reduction targets and schedules are actually met.
None of our Great Lakes targets and schedules is more pressing than those written right into the landmark accord signed last year by the Government of Canada with the Governments of the United States, New York State and Ontario. It will reduce toxic loadings into the Niagara by 50 per cent by 1996, the first time the four jurisdictions have ever been able to agree on a specific pollution abatement program for a river that provides drinking water for 4.5 million Canadians.
The Government of Canada is taking the same approach to pollution that threatens the other half of the Great Lakes Basin, the St. Lawrence River. I have been negotiating with my opposite number, Clifford Lincoln, Quebec's Minister of Environment, on a plan to mobilize resources from both Governments. The plan has not yet been completed because it takes time to correct years of neglect and indifference under previous Governments.
However, the St. Lawrence River is a priority of the federal Government, a priority of mine and of my department. If it is a priority of the NDP, as the motion suggests, it is news to everyone in this House and probably to everyone else in Canada, from one coast to the other. To my knowledge, the NDP has never before raised this issue in the House. Certainly, it has never asked me a single question in Oral Question Period on the clean-up of the St. Lawrence River.
Strong as the Government's pollution control program is, I believe future generations will remember the current Government's first mandate, in the environmental sphere, for the leadership it has provided on national parks. From 1972, when the Liberals were in power, until the time we were elected in September, 1984, not a single new national park was established. It was "the dark age" as far as parks were concerned, in the words of one large national environmental group.
Since then the Government has established four new national parks, including Pacific Rim in British Columbia, which we completed only this past week by paying off the $28 million debt for forest lands owed to the Province of British Columbia by the previous Government for 17 years.
The other three new parks are South Moresby, also in British Columbia, at Ellesmere Island in the high Arctic, and at the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, the country's first ever national marine park under our recently released national marine park policy.
I hope that in the next year national parks will be created in the Saguenay in Quebec, in the prairie grasslands of Saskatchewan, and at Banks Island in the far North. I will be proposing such parks to my cabinet colleagues.
The amendments Cabinet has already approved to the National Parks Act constitute the first overhaul of that law since it was passed more than a half century ago. Those amendments will ensure that all parks, existing parks and ones
March 21, 1988

yet to be established, will be managed by standards that can better conserve rich ecological features while enhancing opportunities for people to appreciate and enjoy them.
Our stress on conservation includes the built heritage, an area almost totally neglected by previous Canadian Governments. The federal-provincial cost sharing agreement to restore historic sites and properties of national significance received a major infusion of new money. By the end of March we will have signed agreements to restore three major landmarks this year alone. They are George Brown House in Toronto, City Market in Saint John, and St. Paul's Anglican Church in Halifax. This is not to mention our cash contribution to the new Marconi Exhibition Centre in Glace Bay, to which the Italian community has also contributed generously.
To prevent the federal Government itself from destroying the country's precious built heritage, new internal mechanisms have been engineered. The approach involves a national registry and tough Treasury Board requirements.
There is another form of heritage that is vital to our country-it is wildlife. Our major priority in this area is the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, a $1.5 billion-15-year program to reverse declining populations in Canada and the United States. The combined contribution within Canada from all sources, including the federal Government, will be $250 million over the course of the program.
I was honoured to sign the plan with the United States Secretary of the Interior, Donald Hodel, in May, 1986. Mr. Hodel and I signed another important bi-national wildlife management plan last summer to protect the 180,000-head porcupine caribou herd in the Yukon-Alaska Range.
As well, this past year Canada established two new national wildlife areas, Polar Bear Pass on Bathurst Island in Northwest Territories and Last Mountain Lake in Saskatchewan.
Equally significant, 11 new RAMSAR sites were designated for wetland protection, bringing Canada's total to 17. That is more than any other country in the world.
With the World Wildlife Fund, Canada has launched two important initiatives. One is the endangered species recovery fund, to which we committed $1 million. The second is the wildlife toxicology Fund, now completing its third successful year after receiving to date $3 million of federal funding. Wildlife will also gain from the money that Cabinet has added to my Department's budget for pesticides management, $16 million over the next five years.
This Government has been among the strongest supporters of the United Nations' World Commission on Environment and Development, the Brundtland Commission, which was referred to earlier in the debate. What is more, we are practising the Brundtland ethic, the sustainable development ethic, by integrating economic and environmental decisions through both programs and funding arrangements.
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Prime Minister Brundtland herself, as I pointed out earlier in my question to the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood (Ms. McDonald), has singled out Canada as a world leader in implementing the report's recommendations. One of our key responses has been to launch a reform of the federal environment assessment and review process. In the same spirit, we hosted the international conference on ozone depletion, which produced the historic Montreal Protocol last September. That protocol, which constitutes the first-ever global treaty on the atmosphere, will reduce ozone-depleting chemicals by at least 50 per cent by 1999.
We are not simply preaching the Brundtland ethic. We are putting it into practice. We are weaving the Brundtland ethic into the very fabric of our decision-making and our funding.
We will also be hosting the most important international conference ever held on global atmospheric pollution problems at Toronto in late June. The Montreal conference on ozone depletion, and now a broader conference in Toronto at the end of June, dealing with the whole range of atmospheric pollution problems from Arctic haze to the greenhouse effect, to acid rain, to ozone depletion itself, reflect our Government's leadership towards an international law of the air.
Canada is providing leadership right around the globe, bringing nations together at major conferences, mobilizing policy-makers, experts and others, to see whether we can deal with all of these individual problems in a broader context in the form of what I have called an international law of the air, and we are making real progress towards that end.
My speaking time is running out so I cannot put on the record the many other significant accomplishments of the Government. Other government speakers throughout the debate will have to deal with such measures as our anti-leaded gasoline campaign, which will outlaw lead in gasoline by the end of December, 1992. By 1990, about 90 per cent of lead in gasoline will be removed. We have eliminated altogether the disparity in excise taxes on leaded and unleaded gasoline which favoured the more polluting form.
We have undertaken a public information and awareness campaign to sensitize people to the dangers to their own health and to the natural environment posed by misfueling and by tampering with anti-pollution devices. All of these things and others could be mentioned, such as the pivotal role the federal Government played on the National Task Force on the Environment and Economy. These are a credit to this Government and to the country as a whole in the environmental field. I know the speakers who follow me will be detailing them.
For my part, permit me to conclude on this one note. The Government, of which I am proud to be a member, has spent more money on the environment than any previous Canadian Governments. When all the Supplementary Estimates are in for the current fiscal year, those for my own Department and for other departments of the federal Government which are investing heavily in environmental areas under the direction of my Department, the record will speak for itself. But we are

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neither complacent nor finished with the job. I urge the New Democratic Party, instead of coming into the House with motions that shroud its own lack of policy, to join us, and I urge other opposition Members to join us in meeting the challenges that remain ahead.


Lynn McDonald: Mr. Speaker, I do have some questions to put to the Minister. I know he had to pad out his address today with a whole lot of subjects that were not in my motion, certainly, I welcome the agreement on the caribou herd in the Porcupine area and the historical sites and things of that sort. However, it is because the Minister did not have enough good things to say about concrete action to get rid of toxic wastes that he went on to these other subjects.
My questions very specifically are, first, this Minister in the area of acid rain is on record as saying that an acid rain agreement with the States would be the litmus test of this Government's ability to negotiate with the Americans. Would he agree that so far his Government has failed the litmus test?
The Minister referred to water policy in his remarks. It is not a statute, it is only a policy. Will he be bringing in legislation? Specifically, will he bring in federal legislation to have drinking water standards, not mere guidelines, but standards for federal lands, including Indian reserves? Is it indeed true that the federal Government does not want to do this because it knows that the quality of the drinking water on so many Indian reserves is abominable and would fail any reasonable standards?
The Minister mentioned a number of bits and pieces of a strategic plan in his own Department. Is it not true that his own Department has abandoned having a strategic plan on the environment? Something I raised in my remarks that the Minister did not address was the subject of toxic wastes. Will the serious subject of removal of toxic wastes, actual excavation and containment in the Hyde Park site, be on the agenda for the summit meeting with President Reagan, or will any of the other toxic waste sites be on the agenda?
I would really like the Minister to address the question of a very important matter in the Brundtland Commission report, that is, the greenhouse effect, the possibility of really major climate changes from many sources, but particularly from the burning of fossil fuels. Has his Department really looked seriously at this problem and does it have any idea as to what the long-term consequences will be of this continued policy of focusing on fossil fuels for our energy?


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, I have just spoken on the Hon. Member's motion for the past 20 minutes. I would probably need an hour to respond to the half a dozen questions she has put to me, any one of which would probably take longer than the time we have for the entire question period associated with my speech.
The Hon. Member says I padded my speech with references to the Government's record in areas outside her motion. Her motion reads:
That this House condemns the Government for its failure to act on urgent
environmental issues, especially its failure to-
It then cites a few issues, by way of example. Does that imply that the very items to which she referred in her question, and which she has lambasted me for including in my speech, are not priorities of the New Democratic Party? Are such things as the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, the declining populations of waterfowl, especially in western Canada, not a priority of the NDP? Does she imply that the NDP is not interested in the built heritage? I thought the Hon. Member was a spokesperson for the NDP on cultural matters a while ago. What could be more important to the culture of the country than the built environment in which we live and work, the physical expressions of the heart and soul of this country as reflected in our buildings and other cultural sites for which I, as Minister, am responsible? I think I can refer with some pride, on behalf of the Government as a whole, to the things we have done with the provinces and with heritage groups across the land, in this field.
The Hon. Member lambastes me for including a reference to national parks in my speech. I can see why the Opposition would not want a Minister of the Crown to refer to the federal Government's record in this field. It is exemplary. But we are not self-satisfied. We are not content. Over the course of many years we have managed, as a country, to complete only half of the total national park system. As I said earlier, during the 14 years prior to our coming into power, not a single new national park was established. How can Canada complete the national park system if, for a decade and a half of Liberal administration, not a single new national park was created? Someone will have to redress that imbalance. If we do not do it as a genuine Conservative Government, as a conservation Government, then no one will do it, at least not with the priority we attach to it.
The Hon. Member asks me about our water policy, the national water policy, the first-ever water policy brought down by the Government of Canada. It includes the full range of issues such as water exports, interbasin diversions, pesticides, toxic chemical controls and all such issues. She went on to ask me whether we will back it up with legislation. We already have the legislative authority. What has been lacking under previous Governments has been the will to take those legal instruments and use them. We are exercising that political will, and we are using the available instruments.
The Hon. Member refers to the excavation of the Great Lakes sites, the so-called hot spots such as Love Canal, Hyde Park, S Site, 102nd Street, and so on. Those hot spots, those industrial waste sites, are included now in the agreement itself, thanks to the broadening of the Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. We are taking an ecosystem approach. We are not concentrating only on this site, that problem or this hot spot or another. We are saying that any assault on the Great Lakes system is a candidate for action by the Government of Canada with our partners, including the Government
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of Ontario. All sources, among them the sites to which she has made reference, are now included in the agreement.
With respect to acid rain, no previous Government has attached the kind of importance that we have to solving this issue, both domestically and with the United States. In previous years, the policy of the Party of the Hon. Member and that of the Party of the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia) was simply to go down to Washington, lambaste the Americans, bang one's head on the desk, moralize, fingerpoint and all the rest of it. But we did not have the clean hands that brought to the negotiating table the kind of credibility and moral authority that made us effective. We now have those clean hands.
We are saying to the Americans, "Look, we have cleaned up our act. We are reducing by 50 per cent by 1994, based on 1980 figures, acid rain-causing emissions from industry and from utilities. We are spending half a billion dollars a year, and we will be doing so for every year up until 1994 when our progress will have been made".
In fact, by fortifying our case in that fashion we can hold our head high. We can point the finger and say to our American counterparts, "You do the same. You follow suit. Fifty per cent of our acid rain is from your country". In areas such as the Haliburton area of Ontario and Parry Sound-Muskoka, the percentage is closer to 75 per cent.
We can go to the Americans. We can point a finger. We can lecture them on their problems. We can call for a targeted and scheduled approach to acid rain because we have taken exactly that approach within our own country.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I recognize the Hon. Member for Davenport on a short question or comment.


Charles L. Caccia: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister a brief question which goes back to the exchange in the Standing Committee on Environment and Forestry within the context of the Brundtland report and the report on the economy and the environment. I asked the Minister whether on free trade he would have any study that would be launched that would be relevant to the negotiations that were taking place at that time. At that time the Minister replied stating that the free trade negotiations and environmental questions are separate and that they should not be linked.
Would the Minister like to elaborate on the answer that he gave in light of the experience he has had since November, 1986?


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, one of the myths associated with the free trade debate, perpetuated on the floor today by some of the earlier comments of opposition Members, is that Canadians will lose their environment and their capacity to take steps to protect the environment on the high altar of free trade. Nothing could be further from the truth. Implied in the myth is that American environmental standards are much lower than those in Canada and that the free trade agreement
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will harmonize the environmental regimes of the two countries in favour of the lower standard, which is American.
First, there will not be any such harmonization. We could not do it even if we wanted to, and we do not. Laws in both countries, in states and in provinces and at the national level on both sides of the border, have developed in response to particular problems on either side of the border that are indigenous to the area in which the laws are being enforced. We could not have continent-wide environmental standards any more than we could have continent-wide laws. They have to be born of the culture, the geography, the climate and the other circumstances of the jurisdiction in question.
Even if there were to be such a harmonization, and there will not be under free trade or under anything else, the fact remains that it is not true that American standards in every case, or even in most cases, are weaker than those in Canada. For example, when our Government was elected in September of 1984, NOx emissions, about which the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood waxed so eloquent, were three times more stringent in the United States than in Canada. But, because of action by this Government, the NOx emission standards for heavy-duty motor vehicles are currently the strongest in the world. That was accomplished at a time when the same Government of Canada was negotiating an acid rain agreement with the United States.
Given the federal Government's record that I have detailed on the floor of the House of Commons in the environmental field over the past three and a half years, where is the evidence that our efforts toward free trade have in any way circumvented our capacity to act on environmental matters? It has not. We have acted.


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the mover of this motion, for it is very well drafted and timely. We are also very glad to take part in this debate.
At the same time, I should like to emphasize the fact that, on behalf of our party, the Hon. Member for Saint-Jacques (Mr. Guilbault) will participate in this debate and deal quite eloquently with the environmental issues concerning the St. Lawrence River and the Province of Quebec, focusing on the situation of the St. Lawrence River.
Later this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Cochrane-Superior (Mr. Penner) will present the views of our party on the environmental vision of Western Canada.
The motion is well drafted, and as I said, I congratulate the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood (Mrs. McDonald).

The debate is very timely. It lends itself to a variety of inputs. Half an hour ago the Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) chastised the NDP for having written such a motion. He claimed that in Parliament we were descending to

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excessive rhetoric and partisanship. To my astonishment he then launched himself indulgently into an orgy of rhetoric and a very amusing display of selective memory bouts, which must be excused considering the partisan nature of this place. But they were amusing in contrast with the warnings on the part of the Minister that we should not have excesses of rhetoric in this place. I wonder if we have here an example of preaching in one way and practising in another.
I will give the House an example of this type of selective memory bout of the Minister a few moments ago. The 1985 Helsinki Protocol, of course, was signed in 1985. It was made possible by actions taken by the Government of Canada long before the Minister was appointed to Cabinet, and long before the Government was elected.
I will refer to the notion of national parks by refreshing the Minister's memory as to the fact that the vast majority of national parks in Canada were created by successive Liberal Governments. I would also refresh the Minister's memory as to the fact that NOx, on which he waxed eloquently a few moments ago, the public consultations and those measures were launched in 1984. The reality of political life being what it is, it allows the Progressive Conservative Party to reap the political benefits, and that is only fair game. It is only this indulging that is rather peculiar.
Whenever the Conservative Government brought to a conclusion Liberal initiatives that were launched before it was elected, it did reasonably well, and when it departed, it did badly. There is the classic example of abandoning Canada's global role on acid rain. The Conservative Government found enough energy to drag itself to Helsinki and sign the protocol, but in all fairness, since that time there has not been leadership given by the Government on acid rain, on S02 cuts, or on NOx. We learned from Geneva last month on the cutting of car emissions and pursuit of an international protocol that would serve Canada well that the Government is taking its cues from the United States, which is not a sign of great leadership, at least these days.
We have to move ahead in this debate and abandon an approach of exchanges of this nature, but I think it adds to the cut and thrust of the debate for the moment, and I am sure that nobody minds that. Actually, it is good to weave notions that are raised in the course of the debate rather than to start from a prepared text which has little relevance to what has been said before.
I was struck by the intervention of the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood (Ms. McDonald) and by the motion. It seems to me that it hits on the major points with which the Canadian public is presently preoccupied, and with which the Government ought to be preoccupied.
The fact of the matter is, and I wish to tackle the first item in the motion, that on acid rain, that after three summits, and three and a half years later, we have nothing to point at. The
Government made some serious tactical mistakes in embracing the envoy's report. At that time, the answer of the Government should have been to say that, if the United States wished to conduct its clean-coal technology programs, that is fine. It was announced as a $5 billion program. But we Canadians want the United States to sign an agreement. That is what we want. That message was lost. It was not registered. I know that in January, 1987, for the first time the Minister spoke of a specific negotiation identifying the 4 million tonnes of pollution that crosses the border, but he was alone in that. He was not supported by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney). The Prime Minister got lost in the summits. Three have been held, we are at the eve of a fourth, and somehow we have been sidetracked by the novelty of the clean-coal technology program. What has been spent so far under the auspices of that particular program is $50 million in 1988. That is the extent of the money that has been invested under that particular heading, which raised enormous expectations among Canadians, and which in 1986 was heralded as a substantial breakthrough.
In a few weeks there will be the fourth summit in Washington. Inevitably, the words expressed in this Chamber by President Reagan that he will consider acid rain must be followed up by the Prime Minister. On that score, I once again urge the Minister of the Environment and the Cabinet to prepare the elements for a bill for damage suffered in Canada from acid rain emissions and pollution that comes across the border. Every year this sum is a substantial one to cover damage to monuments, structures, fisheries, forestry, agriculture, and even to human health. We have now reached a point, without having to be strident, without losing our patience, when we must talk the language that is well understood in Washington, which is the language of damage.
As I have pointed out to the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark)-but not to the Minister, unfortunately, because when I asked my questions we have not been in the House at the same time, not because of neglect on his part, of course, but because of the day of the week-this matter has to be pursued in economic and monetary terms. We are being damaged. We are downwind from that damage. We have launched a program with a very important set of signatures between the Government of Canada and seven provinces, to which the Minister alluded. Again, this initiative goes back to the time long before this Government was elected. Now we are launching something that will benefit the American economy. It is only fair, if Washington does not reciprocate with a similar parallel program that will provide relief to our natural resources and to our economy, that it should compensate Canada for the yearly damage suffered as a result of transboundary pollution of sulphur dioxide.
In pursuing the question of toxic chemicals in the Great Lakes, there have been many good statements made by the Government and by the Minister, in particular, but little action. The problem is that the Government mercilessly cut the budget of the Canadian Wildlife Service with the Wilson statement of November, 1984. The Canadian Wildlife Service
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is engaged in a very delicate and important role in establishing toxic chemicals in the Great Lakes. Despite the fine statements, the Government eliminated from the plans and the programs of Ottawa the creation of a Toxicology Centre in Ontario. Those two factors alone are bad enough, but they are made worse by the performance of the Government in relation to the budget of Environment Canada. The performance of the Government in relation to that budget is, to borrow a phrase used earlier, the litmus test of the real intent of the Government in the environment.
No matter how many letters the Minister of the Environment writes to the Toronto Star outlining the $106 million that may be spent over the next eight years on South Moresby to create a park, no matter whether the Minister makes reference to the $150 million-in 1982 dollars, which should tell one when that decision was made-that will be spent over the next 10 years on acid rain abatement technology, as the Minister mentioned a moment ago in the debate, the fact remains that this year that Department is the loser in the budget allocation. It does not even keep pace with the rate of inflation.
If we total, as I have on several occasions in committee for the benefit of the Minister, the losses due to inflation year after year since 1984 when the Government came into power, we find a substantial loss of over 17 per cent or an amount in the neighbourhood of $70 million over the last 3.5 years to 4 years. This has resulted in losses in personnel to the tune of some 336 individuals, be they scientists, technicians, or support people. This 17 per cent loss has resulted in a reduction in the capacity of Environment Canada to pursue programs, to amplify its programs, to amplify its research, and to do the very things which the Government claims that it wants to do.
This is why the accusation is made, quite rightly, that there has been a lot of cosmetics. Public relations on the part of the Government have been pretty good. They have tended to create an impression of action but they have not been substantiated or supported by fact, and the budget of Environment Canada is proof of it.
For the Minister to claim the $150 million which will be spent over 10 years by the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion, or the $106 million on South Moresby, is another exercise in smoke and mirrors. Canadians will see through it, if they have not already done so, and will give a message to the Minister. They are enormously frustrated by the silence of the Government in relation to the call which has been made many times by the Canadian Federation of Municipalities, asking for help in the construction of badly needed infrastructure related mostly to water. There is a phenomenal backlog, and the Government has been saying "no" to the municipalities. At the same time as the Minister points his finger to problems in the St. Lawrence and in some cities, the federal Government disappears into a beautiful cosmetic cloud. As I said, this creates impressions.
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The Minister made a reference to CEPA, a piece of legislation that has been in the works for some time. It is a good step in the right direction. The problem with the Bill is the Minister himself. It is the classical case of the mouse that roared. An enormous smoke-screen was created, indicating that the Bill would clean up the St. Clair River and the Niagara River, that it would deliver miracles. The fact of the matter is that the content of the Bill, as approved by the Conservative majority on the committee, is weaker than originally promised. All the things the Bill would not do would be the subject of another 20-minute speech. The money allocation behind CEPA-and here we have another Achilles heel-amounts to $37 million over five years, divided by three departments. Once we analyse it we see that the allocation of funds behind the Bill is pretty weak.
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement was re-signed, and no doubt the wording was improved. However, where is the political will to implement it? Again I make reference to the fact that the Minister has not been able to command the funds needed to do the job which he promised that he wanted to do. We have not seen, up until now, an indication by the Government that it will implement the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Not one specific step has been funded since the signing of the new agreement.
The much heralded Niagara work plan is already behind schedule. One reason given is that the Government of Canada is one of the primary culprits in not providing adequate resources or the people needed to do the job. Again, action is missing, but there is much rhetoric, and the gap is becoming greater and greater.
The Quebec Government has announced a $3 billion cleanup scheme along the St. Lawrence River and has been knocking at the door of the Government for some help, for it to match that sum or at least come up with some funds. So far the answer has been "no". We have Quebec at $3 billion and the Government of Canada at zero.
In addition to the budgetary deficiencies of the Government and the losses due to inflation, other very important considerations must be made, namely, the fact-and this was proven in the exchange a few minutes ago-that the Government has completely missed the importance of the impact in the long term on the environment of the free trade negotiations and agreement.
During the negotiations we asked in the House whether or not studies were being conducted on the environmental impact of the free trade agreement, and the answers were negative. I raised the matter in committee and received the answer that I quoted in the exchange with the Minister a few minutes ago. It is astonishing that conceptually the Government would not be capable of putting two and two together. In committee on November 25, 1986-and I quote from the committee proceedings-the Minister said: "Freer trade negotiations and environmental questions are separate and they should not be linked". My goodness. Has the Minister read the chapter on

March 21, 1988
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pesticides in the free trade agreement? They are linked. Idas the Minister read the section dealing with the energy agreement? The linkage is there, and unfortunately it is massive. Therefore, the depth of commitment of the Government to the environment is shallow and superficial when we match it with the policy that it is implementing.
One must register in a debate like this one the necessity for the Government to come to its senses and see that the trade agreement will also impinge on the ability of the Government and future Governments to pass and enforce regulations protecting the environment which may be stronger than those south of the border. In future there could be Canadian industries making representations to the Canadian Government of the day asking to be relieved or asking for weaker regulations. They could claim that they need weaker legislation in order to compete with the same industries south of the border which may not be under environmental regimes at all or may be under weaker ones.
I catch your signal, Mr. Speaker, and therefore I reluctantly relinquish the floor. I thank you for your patience.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: On questions and comments I will recognize the Hon. Minister first, followed by the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood (Ms. McDonald).


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, when all is said and done, the three Parties in the House of Commons probably see eye to eye on what are the major problems in the environmental field in Canada. If the truth be known, I doubt that much separates us on how we approach the different problems on which we are agreed.
What counts is whether a Government acts when it has an opportunity to act. In my speech I detailed, with some substantial documentation, how in a very short time we have acted in the environmental field, without implying that all the problems are resolved or that there was any cause for complacency. There is not.
One of the most important issues with which the three Parties must wrestle is the call of the Brundtland Commission to integrate economic and environmental decision making.
I have a question for the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia), who was the former Minister of the Environment. How does he reconcile what seems to be an inherent contradiction in the position of his Party on the subject? On the one hand, the Member embraces the Brundtland ethic that we should integrate environmental and economic decision-making and weave such an integration into the very fabric of everything we do. You cannot just embrace an ideology or a doctrine or a theology. In government, your position has to be reflected in mechanisms and budgetary figures. On the other hand, the Member lambastes the Government because many of our environmental expenditures are in the name of the Brundtland ethic outside the Department of the Environment
but within the federal system under the leadership of the Department of the Environment. The Sydney Tar Ponds is a $37 million clean up, of which 70 per cent is from the federal Treasury through the budget of the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion. In this case the figures did get reflected in my Department's budget, but in other cases, they did not. Fifty per cent of the $106 million that will be spent by the federal Government on South Moresby does not come from my Department. It will not be reflected in my Estimates but will appear instead in the Estimates of the Minister responsible for western diversification.
The same is true of the acid rain program. There is $150 million for abatement and $150 million for clean-coal technology and for other research and development projects for acid rain. Those are environmental expenditures. They are no less so because they are recorded in the budgets of other departments. When the Member from Davenport totals what our Government has spent in the environmental field, he ignores literally tens of millions of dollars merely because they are outside the Main or Supplementary Estimates of the Department of the Environment. How does the Member reconcile that contradiction, Mr. Speaker? If we are going to integrate the economy and the environment, it has to be reflected in our budgeting. Yet when we do reflect it, the Member dismisses out of hand the importance of such expenditures. There is an inherent contradiction there. Would he rise in the House today and reconcile the irreconcilable?


Charles L. Caccia: Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that this is a desperate attempt on the part of the Minister to turn a disgrace into a virtue. He keeps trotting out the same two tired horses. One is the South Moresby $106 million expenditure over eight years, and the other one is the $150 million over 10 years, a technological item which is in another department. Beyond that the Minister is short of breath and has to rely heavily on rhetoric.
Here we have a Department that has lost 17 per cent to inflation since 1984.


Thomas Michael McMillan: That is not true.


Charles L. Caccia: We have checked it several times and I urge the Minister to use his arithmetic, which is probably as good as mine, and he will have to come to that conclusion if his Department is frank with him. Having lost 17 per cent, he has also lost, over the years, 336 employees, so-called person-years. That is quite an important loss, I submit. Unless the Minister can tell us whether these 336 technicians, scientists and support people have emerged in other departments, we have to conclude that the 336 have been lost. At the same time-and this is something on which the Minister may want to reflect- Environment Canada is receiving a budget increase of 3.6 per cent, but the average government increases have gone up across the board by 8 per cent. What about this one? The budget for National Defence is going up by 8.3 per cent. If you look at the National Defence's basic budget, an increase of 8.3 per cent means an increase of $800 million, which is more than
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the present budget of Environment Canada. The increase to one department this year entails a sum which is greater than what Environment Canada will receive this year. Maybe there are environmental measures in the Department of National Defence. I would like to hear the Minister give us some examples.
I will give him another example. The Department of Communications' budget went up by 11 per cent. Maybe there are environmental measures in there. Perhaps the Minister could let us know. What about the Department of Finance? Its budget went up by 13.5 per cent this year. Could the Minister tell us more about environmentalists in the Department of Finance who are carrying out environmental projects as a result of this increase?
The budget of the Department of Transport, even that old horse called the Department of Transport, is going up 7.5 per cent. Would the Minister tell us where the environmental initiatives and programs are that will be made possible by the increase of 7.5 per cent in the Department of Transport? Perhaps I will give the Minister a hint and thus be helpful. He should look perhaps at the Department of Agriculture. There the budget has gone up by 24 per cent. That isn't bad, is it? Maybe there are some environmental projects which the Minister can find, and I will be glad to hear from him. If the Minister is implementing the spirit of Brundtland, let the Minister make a statement in the House of Commons one of these days and tell us where in the Department of Agriculture the 24 per cent increase includes environmental measures.
I have another hint for the Minister. The budget of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has gone up by 23 per cent. Maybe there is something there to help shore up the Minister's fragile political argument today here in the House. The fact remains that until the Minister comes up with the facts, his Department is at the bottom of the list, with an increase of 3.6 per cent, which is less than the inflation rate. Every pensioner in Canada knows what happens to you when you lose ground to inflation.


Lynn McDonald: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the intervention by the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia). Certainly his correcting the record on the budget is helpful. It is important to look at cost of living increases and what is happening in other government departments as well.
I have a couple of questions for the Member. He, of course, is a former environment Minister, and the present Minister was quite within his right to point out some of the failures of the previous Liberal Government.
I would like particularly to ask the Hon. Member to address the Brundtland report in the area of energy. Would he not consider that our reliance on fossil fuels does pose some problems? Is it not time to rethink that? His own Government was pretty lax when it came to looking at soft energy alternatives, renewable energy alternatives. There was some rhetoric, but in terms of firm commitments, budgets and action, it was
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really not very good. Would he consider himself challenged by the Brundtland report, effects on climate change, the greenhouse effect, reliance on fossil fuels?
Another major energy question I would like the Member to look at is that of uranium. His Government was very much involved in the development of uranium. That is an area in which we cannot do what the Brundtland Commission says and incorporate the full environmental costs into economic decision-making because we do not know what the costs are. We know they would be horrendously high.
Would the Hon. Member look at the question of uranium? How do we have sustainable development with a non-renewable resource and with an energy use, uranium, which has such an enormously long period of disposal time which has to be costed and paid for in the future? How does he respond to the Brundtland report in those areas?


Charles L. Caccia: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood (Ms. McDonald) has a consistent habit of raising difficult questions. I do not know whether I can do justice to them in a short time.
Of course there have been failures by previous Liberal Governments. We are all capable of that, even Liberals. I would like to stress something that clearly sticks in my mind because I happened to be in the House at the time. Maybe this precedes the time of the Hon. Member. The then Minister of Energy, the Hon. Alistair Gillespie, announced in 1978 a five-year program on renewable energy incentives, stimulants and you name it, of $400 million. It was to promote all forms of what at that time was termed solar and biomass technology and it was a substantial breakthrough, or so we thought at that time. When the five years were up, it was pretty close to election time and we were looking forward to having that torch carried by the present Government.
Unfortunately, the statement of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson) of November of 1984 dashed our hopes. We have not seen any effort made on renewable energy through the NRC or other agencies ever since. As a matter of fact, two programs which were intended to conserve energy, CHIP and COSP, were eliminated in 1985.
The soft energy path and its objectives is a very relevant issue. Perhaps we should have done more, but certainly we did not neglect it. At that time, we did not know the name Brundtland. The theology had not yet emerged as clearly as it has now, but certainly anyone who links energy with environmental issues, as the Hon. Member frequently does, is putting the finger on the very core of what environmental safety for the globe is all about. That is where the major impact is made. It comes from energy, and we must watch those policies like hawks in addition to watching the policies of transport, agriculture and the like.

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I do not want to say something that the Hon. Member knows already, but she may not know about the $400 million that was approved for the soft energy path in 1978 by the then Minister of Energy.
The other big question the Hon. Member raised on uranium as a source of energy and sustainable development is one that we have not been able to finalize in our thinking. We know that our dependence on nuclear electricity is actually increasing. We are faced here with an interesting dilemma because we know that in the short term electricity produced by nuclear energy is non-S02 polluting. It does not contribute to acid rain.
It is actually a source of dismay to us when we learn that a nuclear station must be shut down for repairs and a coal-powered station must be activated in its place. We all know that that means additional S02 pollution, at least in Ontario, by Ontario Hydro, as we have learned in recent weeks. But we know also that in the long term the uncertainty and the cost of disposal involved with uranium waste are enormous and are not properly taken into account by long-term decision-makers.
On that issue, we are ambivalent, or at least ambiguous. I do not have a final answer for that question because of this dichotomy and the conflict between the short and the long term. I would hope that we could accelerate as an alternative our research on fusion and come up sooner than predicted with the production of alternative energy that may be environmentally friendly though not nuclear for the benefit of generations to come.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I am sure Hon. Members would give the choice to the Hon. Member to either begin his speech now or to begin it after Question Period. It is up to the Hon. Member for Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands (Mr. Manly) to decide.


Mr. Manly:: Mr. Speaker, I would prefer to begin after Question Period.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent, therefore, to call it 1.25?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: It being 1.25 p.m., I do now leave the chair until 2 p.m. this day.
At 1.25 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, the people of the west side of Windsor, Ontario, are very concerned about a proposal by a company called BTI to move hazardous goods by trucks, some 30 an hour, through their community, over ordinary city streets, near their homes, apartments, schools and businesses, to a site on federal harbour land on the shore of the Detroit River where the trucks will be carried by barge to Detroit, Michigan.
The people of the west side of Windsor strongly oppose the proposal, as do I, because of the risks to their health and safety and the quality of life in their neighbourhood. Some 3,000 of them have signed a petition addressed to the Minister of Transport (Mr. Crosbie) opposing this proposal. Unfortunately, this petition cannot be tabled in the House because it does not meet technical requirements. I am therefore informing the House about this petition and presenting it directly to the Minister.
I urge the Government to respond to this petition within 45 days, as though it had been formally tabled here, and further, I urge that in its response the Government accept and agree with the well founded concern of the people of my community about this unfortunate truck-barge proposal.



THE LATE HONOURABLE RICHARD A. BELL, P.C., Q.C.

Mr. David Daubney (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, I rise in sadness to record the passing over the weekend of a distinguished former Member of Parliament for Ottawa West, the Hon. Richard A. Bell, P.C., Q.C. Dick Bell gave over 50 years of devoted service to the Conservative Party and to Canada, beginning as Assistant Private Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue in the R. B. Bennett Government in June of 1934. He was for many years National Director of our Party, and perhaps as much as any one individual was responsible for keeping the party organization together during many years in opposition.
First elected to the House of Commons in 1957 in the old riding of Carleton, he became Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in the Diefenbaker Government.
A Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada and longtime member of the Ontario Law Reform Commission, Mr. Bell practised law in Ottawa, until his death, with the firm of Bell, Baker. The Baker in that firm was another outstanding member of this place, the late Walter Baker, former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada.
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My condolences go to Mr. Bell's widow, Ruth, a distinguished Canadian in her own right, and to his daughter, Madam Justice Judith Oyen of the Supreme Court of Ontario.



FISHERIES


James Douglas Manly: Mr. Speaker, the fish processing industry must deplore the Conservative Government's decision meekly to accept the GATT panel ruling against Canadian regulations on the export of unprocessed fish. Even though the Government promised new regulations requiring that fish be landed and graded in Canada, this will not protect thousands of jobs in canning, freezing or salting the fish. At most, the Government has made it a little more difficult for Americans to take over our industry.
Why has it set January 1, 1989, as the date it will dismantle the present regulations? Why the rush when it does not yet have the alternative regulations in place? Before putting them in place there must be full consultation with the industry to minimize the damage.
For Canadian consumers an important and negative side effect of the regulations could be to prohibit direct sales from the fishing boat to the consumer. The companies will be more in control than ever. Working people and consumers will suffer.



SOFTWOOD LUMBER EXPORTS-PAYMENT OF TAX BY SECONDARY MANUFACTURERS

Right Hon. John N. Turner (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, federal cabinet Ministers from British Columbia, for reasons known only to themselves, continue to take actions which harm the interests of that province. On Friday I pointed out how the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. Siddon), who is from British Columbia, mistreated the B.C. sports fishing industry. Today I want to describe how the Minister for International Trade (Miss Carney), also from British Columbia, has harmed secondary softwood lumber manufacturers.
We all remember the foolish decision of the Minister to impose a 15 per cent tax on softwood lumber exported to the United States instead of fighting the decision through GATT or before the U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission. That 15



S. 0. 21

[Stage Direction]
per cent tax has now been incorporated as a permanent part of the Canada-U.S. Trade Agreement.
As if that were not bad enough, the Minister has forced 25 independent secondary softwood lumber manufacturers to pay the tax, while 20 other producers do not because they were certified for exemption. This blatant economic discrimination provoked by the Minister has cost those 25 Canadian firms millions of dollars. After more than a year of negotiations with the federal Government, those producers, known as the Coalition of Secondary Softwood Lumber Manufacturers, have been forced to take their own Government to the Federal Court of Canada.
If the Minister has any sense of fairness at all she will settle this case out of court and award compensation to those 25 Canadian producers who have been unfairly discriminated against as a result of the Minister's sheer incompetence.

Mr. Bill Tupper (Nepean-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Richard Albert Bell, Privy Councillor, Queen's Counsel, Bachelor of Arts, LLD, quietly passed away at his home on Sunday.
He was first elected to the House of Commons in 1957 as the Member for Carleton, and re-elected in 1958, 1962 and 1965.
He was appointed Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Finance on August 20, 1957, and Parliamentary Secretary to the same Minister on November 19, 1959. He was sworn to the Privy Council and appointed Minister of Citizenship and Immigration on August 9, 1962.
During his lifetime Mr. Bell was a Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada, President of the County of Carleton Law Association, member of the Ontario Law Reform Commission, member of the Board of Governors of Carleton University, trustee of Queensway-Carleton Hospital, National Campaign Chairman of the Canadian Cancer Society, member of the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation, and a member of the law firm of Bell, Baker, Oyen and Webber.
Richard Bell was a warm and generous person, a great lawyer, a great parliamentarian, a great Canadian, and a personal friend of Mrs. Tupper and myself. He reached out and touched many people during his life. He is survived by his wife Ruth and daughter Judith. I ask all parliamentarians to join with me this afternoon in extending our sympathy to Mrs. Bell and Judy. Canada has lost a great Canadian.

March 21, 1988



INDIAN AFFAIRS


Mr. John Parry (Kenora-Rainy River):: Mr. Speaker, for the past year the Minister of National Elealth and Welfare (Mr. Epp) has been boasting about his so-called new initiatives on family violence, child sexual abuse and, recently, alcohol and drug research. He also released a report on suicides in Canada which identifies native people as a high risk group. Behind the glossy cover, however, he is refusing continued funding for crisis intervention programs delivered by four Indian bands in my riding. Two of these communities, Grassy Narrows and Whitedog Falls, were devastated socially, economically and spiritually following mercury pollution of the English-Wabigoon River system.
The communities of Grassy Narrows, Whitedog, Whitefish Bay and Osnaburgh House have been told that the Department cannot afford to fund this award winning program which has dramatically reduced violent deaths and suicide on these reserves. Instead, they are being forced to accept the elimination of proven social programs so they can become eligible for a native alcohol treatment facility.
The Minister of National Health and Welfare must fulfil his responsibility to Canada's native people. I urge that he and the Conservative Government immediately identify the necessary resources for treating suicide, violent death, and alcohol abuse in those reserve communities that so desperately require these services.



SENIOR CITIZENS


Mr. Dave Nickerson (Western Arctic):: Mr. Speaker, as the Canadian population ages, the relative importance of issues of special importance to the elderly will be heightened. Housing is one of these, and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is to be complimented on its timely publication Housing Choices for Older Canadians.
Many older people have as their major asset a paid-for home. Rather than live poor to die rich, CMHC points out the several types of home equity conversion plans which are becoming available. I would encourage our financial institutions to develop this new product line fully and our regulators to develop a workable set of rules to govern same.



CITIZENSHIP


Hon. Bob Kaplan (York Centre):: Mr. Speaker, this year is the 40th anniversary of Canadian citizenship and the Government has organized an impressive celebration of that event to increase Canadians' understanding of and pride in their citizenship.
It is interesting to remember that the Conservative Party was violently opposed to Canadian citizenship 40 years ago when it was introduced. It conducted an extensive lobby across the country to try to defeat the Liberal suggestion that Canada deserved to have a citizenship of its own. It is a wonderful thing to see conversion of a political Party from a strong position of opposition to a true appreciation of Canadian citizenship. At the time Conservatives felt this would lead to our integration with the U.S.
Issues recur and one hopes, given time, the Conservative Party will begin to see the lack of wisdom in some of the policies it is promoting today which really can lead to integration with the U.S.



IMMIGRATION


Mr. John Oostrom (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, law and order are the cornerstones of all democratic societies. However, once again Canadians are witnessing another instance of individuals abusing Canada's immigration system. What is ironic is that the Turkish nationals lied about their refugee status in order to enter Canada, availed themselves of the full protection of Canada's laws, and are now indicating that they will defy the order to leave.
If these individuals are allowed to stay, Canada will send out the message that Canadian laws are made to be circumvented and that, if you lie and cheat, you will be accepted.
O)
The Minister has passed good legislation to prevent abuse of our immigration system. However, the other House, by dithering and playing cheap partisan politics and delaying the implementation of Bill C-55 and Bill C-84, is responsible for creating chaos and uncertainty in our immigration system. Let us pass Bill C-84 and Bill C-55.

March 21, 1988



APARTHEID


Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-Walkerville):: Mr. Speaker, today marks the 28th anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa.
In March, 1960, the Pan Afrikanist Congress launched a peaceful campaign to demonstrate against a law requiring blacks to carry passbooks.
A group of several thousand gathered on March 21 in Sharpeville to stage a peaceful protest. Without warning, the South African police opened fire on the crowd, killing 69 and wounding 200. Among them were men, women, and children.
The brutality of this event sent a shockwave through the international community, catapulting the South African question onto the international stage and drawing the world's attention to the racist practices in that country.
The South African Government responded to the criticism, not with reform, but with further suppression. A state of emergency was declared and the African National Congress and the Pan Afrikanist Congress were banned.
Twenty-eight years have passed, but, sadly, not much has changed.



BANKS AND BANKING


Mr. Reginald Stackhouse (Scarborough West):: Mr. Speaker, people used to believe an old saying: "As good as money in the bank". However, that can mean today no money at all because it is possible for a bank to confiscate an inactive account if it is below a certain balance and after a certain period of time.
That is not all. An inactive account can suffer deductions due to service charges even though an inactive account seems to receive no obvious service whatsoever.
My purpose in making this statement is to give the advice that anyone with a small account that has not had much activity lately should check to see if he has anything in the bank at all. He may have less than what he started with.



SPECIAL CANADIAN GRAINS PROGRAM


Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma):: Mr. Speaker, the Special Canadian Grains Program of the Department of Agriculture is
designed to compensate Canadian farmers for losses they have suffered as a result of the U.S. Farm Bill which has had a devastating impact on Canadian farmers' income.
Eastern Canadian farmers who grow corn and soybeans are especially upset that this year the program is being run on a basis where cheques that are mailed to western farmers during February are not being sent to farmers in eastern Canada until the end of April.
For example, I heard about one farmer who was expecting a cheque for over $17,000 in February but will not receive it until the end of April. This has a special hardship on corn and soybean producers who will have to miss special discounts that are available during the month of March for such things as cash purchases of seed and fertilizers.
I call on the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Wise) to end this discrimination and make arrangements to have all farmers receive these benefits from this program on a fair and equitable basis.



SPRING HAS SPRUNG


Mr. Ted Schellenberg (Nanaimo-Alberni):: Mr. Speaker, the first day of spring has arrived. Once again, CKNW Radio in Vancouver is providing daffodils to Members of Parliament today.
As we all know, spring arrived many weeks ago in supernatural British Columbia, and these daffodils symbolize the reason why so many Canadians prefer to live on our evergreen West Coast.
It is sunny and 15 degrees above in lotus land today. Here in Ottawa it is minus 15 degrees, with a windchill factor to minus 25 degrees, and more snow on the way.
As we celebrate the vernal equinox today, we put our ear to the West and hear the sound of lawnmowers, bicycles, and beach parties. And we wonder why, oh why, Queen Victoria didn't place our nation's capital a few thousand kilometres to the west!



PESTICIDES


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, for the benefit of the Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) and others who have not had time to read the trade agreement, I suggest they look at Schedule 7 which refers to pesticides.

March 21, 1988
Oral Questions
This schedule tells us that the two countries will work toward the same standards and test methods, the same residue monitoring programs, the same technical regulations, standards or certifications, and the same risk-benefit assessments and cancer policies.
The question is: Do we really want to harmonize ourselves with a system that uses more than one billion pounds of pesticides each year, 60 per cent of which leave residues on food that cannot be detected? Do we want to go with a system that samples less than two-tenths of one per cent of domestic foods for pesticide contamination?
The Minister of the Environment is mistaken in believing that free trade has nothing to do with the environment. Harmonization of pesticide laws and regulations is but one example.



ABORIGINAL RIGHTS


Mr. Alan Redway (York East):: Mr. Speaker, this past weekend six Progressive Conservative Members of Parliament, including myself, visited the Yukon to provide Yukoners with the facts in connection with the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, and, at the same time, to learn their problems and their concerns. We visited 14 communities in all. I personally visited Whitehorse, Watson Lake, and Teslin.
Above all else I found the major concern of both native and non-native Yukoners with whom I met to be native land claim settlements. Clearly there is a pressing need for the Government to deal with this issue in a speedy but at the same time fair and equitable way.
The cloud created by the uncertainty of land claims is holding up badly needed housing construction, delaying hydroelectric projects which will reduce energy costs, restricting business and job creation, and depriving natives of the opportunity to share fully in the economic development of the Yukon.
Let us get on with a fair and equitable Yukon land claims settlement.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, First I want to extend warm birthday greetings to the
Member for Oshawa, and belated greetings to the Prime Minister who celebrated his birthday yesterday.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Napier Turner: I say to both of them that it is likely the last nice thing I will have to say about either of them for some time.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Napier Turner: My question is directed to the Minister for International Trade who acknowledged this morning that the British Columbia fish processing industry was indeed part of the price Canada has paid in its trade agreement with the United States, in that it leaves us open to U.S. trade action, open to negative rulings from the GATT, and leaves us powerless to use the remedies we once had under the GATT to respond.
In her response to tomorrow's decision by GATT to rule against the B.C. fish processing industry in favour of American petitioners, the Minister ran up the white flag of surrender. Is the Minister now prepared to admit that in giving up our rights to impose export taxes under our trade agreement with the United States we have in effect been left powerless to respond to American action under the procedures that were hitherto available to us under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, I can assure the House that I said no such thing today in terms of the Right Hon. Member's preamble. He is inventing excuses to attack a decision which meets our international obligations.
The Opposition suggest that we should impose export taxes.
I can point out that they do not understand the whole basis of the free trade agreement and of the need for export taxes. Export taxes are usually applied only where tariffs are escalating. They are applied when tariffs are low on unprocessed materials and higher on processed materials. Under the free trade agreement, we are eliminating tariffs with the U.S. over 10 years. Therefore it is not appropriate to use export taxes.


REQUEST THAT CANADA-UNITED STATES AGREEMENT BE SCRAPPED
John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, we are supporting the GATT process. We are complaining about throwing away the rights we had under the GATT, rights which were conceded to the United States under the trade agreement that would have allowed us to protect the British Columbia fish processing industry. That is why we on this side of the House oppose the trade deal. There is nothing "free" about it. We are continuing to pay the price every day for the Minister's actions.
March 21, 1988

Why does the Minister not just admit that unless this deal with the United States is scrapped, Canada is handcuffed and unable to exercise its legitimate remedies-which it had before under the GATT-to protect the British Columbia fish processing industry?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, as I have pointed out to you on many occasions in this House, the free trade agreement with the United States, in Part I, Chapter 1, Article 101 reads:
The Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of
America, consistent with Article XXIV of the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade, hereby establish a free-trade area.
I keep pointing out in this House, but the Opposition does not hear me, that the free trade agreement is negotiated under the umbrella of the GATT and is consistent with the GATT. Therefore, the Opposition's continuous insistence that with the free trade agreement we have somehow abandoned the GATT is simply false. I would like the Opposition to state where it is on this issue.
We are bringing in landing requirements that will increase the management and the conservation of the fisheries. We are going to be doing it on a national basis. This will safeguard jobs and it will allow Canadian processors access to American fish in Alaska, as they now enjoy. If the Opposition is against that position, I want to hear it say so.


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I want to draw to the attention of the Minister that under Article 408 of the proposed trade agreement between Canada and the United States, she has surrendered our rights, available formerly under the GATT, to respond to the American initiative against our fish processing industry on the West Coast.


NEW REGULATIONS ON FISH LANDINGS-NATIONAL POLICY
John Napier Turner: In
the absence of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans I would like to direct a further question to the Minister for International Trade. She said this morning that Canada will deal with the GATT ruling on British Columbia fish by imposing new regulations requiring fish on the B.C. and Atlantic coasts to be landed first before export into the American market. Is the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans announcing a national landing policy today because that Minister knows, as well as this Minister, that the Atlantic fishery is now vulnerable under the GATT as a result of the success of the Americans on the West Coast?


Pat Carney: No,
Mr. Speaker. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans will be announcing a national policy of bringing in landing requirements to increase the conservation and improve the management of our fisheries resource. He will be doing that because the Fisheries Ministers of the provinces have asked for it and
Oral Questions
the First Ministers have endorsed it. That is why he is bringing it in.


GOVERNMENT POSITION
Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, what the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the Minister of International Trade are also announcing is the acceptance of a precedent that will now apply not only to the West Coast fisheries in terms of devastating its markets, but to the East Coast fisheries as well, and will have enormous impact on that major fishery market for Canada.
Considering that the fishing industry, the wine industry, the beer industry and the spirits industry have all specifically requested the Minister to postpone a decision in order to continue finding points of leverage and bargaining before final acceptance, why did the Government announce today that it was adopting those measures without responding to those kinds of concerns? Why are we surrendering before the battle is over?
Why are we not going ahead and using a petition against European wine subsidies? Why are we not using the leverage of an export tax against the American incursion? Why have we abandoned the instruments we have and surrendered the battle? Why are the Minister and the Government undertaking that kind of cavalier abandonment of Canadian interests?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that the only thing devastating about today's announcement is the devastating ignorance of the Official Opposition about the West Coast fishery.
May I point out that not only do Fisheries Ministers and First Ministers endorse the landing requirements, but the Fisheries Council of British Columbia, with whom we have been working on this issue, is positive about the announcement we made today. So I can assure the Hon. Member that the measures we have taken today will be improving the fishery and will be safeguarding the jobs in the fishery.


UNITED STATES BAN ON CERTAIN SIZES OF FISH
Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, just as a supplementary in terms of the devastating ignorance about which the Minister talks, I would ask her a question about the position taken by the Minister of Transport on behalf of the Government last November. He stated publicly that the Government of Canada was going to initiate a challenge to the GATT on the U.S. embargo on East Coast fisheries of certain sizes and qualities. The Minister today announced certain measures that were taken to the GATT, but somehow forgot that bold and courageous statement made by the Minister of Transport.
Why has the Government forgotten that statement? Why is it not pursuing the actions promised by the Minister of Transport to protect the East Coast fisheries further in this

March 21, 1988
Oral Questions
matter? Is that not an example of how the Government has just abandoned the entire fishing industry of this country?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, I think the House will acknowledge that all statements made by the Minister of Transport are bold and courageous.
May I respond to the issue the Hon. Member raises about postponing our reply to the GATT and remind him of what he should already know, that on the fisheries issues we have already postponed it in the past two meetings of the council? May I remind him that with respect to the liquor board practices, that dispute, which is a rancorous dispute, has already lasted for three years? May I point out to the Hon. Member that there is nothing to be gained by being a spoilsport and deciding that we will only accept those cases where we win and will reject those cases where we lose? That is the position of the opposition Parties.


MAINTENANCE OF STATUS QUO-VOTE POSTPONEMENT QUERY
Hon. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa):: Mr. Speaker, my question is is also directed to the Minister and I will tell her that the people involved in the fishing industry, both on the east and west coasts, will be interested to hear the spoilsport of a Minister's answer on this serious matter.
Since the Minister has just indicated that the fishing industry is supporting her initiative, will the Minister concede that it vastly prefers maintaining the present arrangement it now has, and that it is under the gun from the Minister, and that is why it has given some kind of token support to what the Government is doing, as being better than nothing?
Since clearly the East Coast and West Coast fisheries are now going to be seriously affected, why in heaven's name did the Government not request a postponement of the decision at the GATT, a course of action taken in the past by the United States, and a course of action taken in the past by the European Economic Community? If it was good enough for them to protect jobs, why is it not good enough for Canada to protect its jobs now?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, may I point out that the fishing industry is not under the gun from the Minister, it is under the gun from the GATT. The fishing industry in British Columbia wants to preserve access to American unprocessed fish. It does not want a situation where the Prince Rupert Co-op and the north coast plants cannot access American fish. It is the abysmal ignorance of the Hon. Member's knowledge of the British Columbia industry that leads him to make these pathetic statements.
In terms of the East Coast and the West Coast, a national landing requirement is good conservation and good management and is supported by the provinces, as it is supported by the First Ministers. In terms of postponing, what is the point of
postponing yet again? This decision will enhance the fisheries, safeguard the jobs, and improve the coastal communities.


REQUEST THAT GOVERNMENT SEEK POSTPONEMENT OF DECISION
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, the Minister knows full well the kind of new proposals about which she is talking do not guarantee jobs at all. All they do is make provisions for the fish to pass through Canadian ports, which is quite a different thing. She also knows that the Canadian fishing industry is not insisting on keeping guaranteed access to American fish if it means that they have to get access to ours. She knows that very well.
Will the Minister answer this serious question? Since the European Economic Community has put off, as requested, indefinite postponement over a number of years, decisions it thought were disadvantageous to it, and the Americans did it for many years in the DISC programs on decisions that were disadvantageous to the United States, why in heaven's name does the Government of Canada not stand up for the Canadian fishing industry and do the same thing here at home?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, I think the position of the Hon. Member is strange, to say the least. We are meeting our international obligations. That is what we have done in the past and that is what we are doing now. May I point out that in the 58 decisions in the GATT, there are only three that have been unresolved. There are only three which have not either been adopted or bilaterally negotiated. Those three are the two Canadian issues that we dealt with today. The third is the U.S. embargo on trade with Nicaragua.
We see where the Opposition would rather be on this issue, following that kind of a tactic, rather than meeting our obligations.


MINISTER'S POSITION
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, the Minister is just super. She still has not answered the question. Of course, there are a few unresolved issues. Many have been resolved. They have been resolved through negotiations, often prolonged negotiations spread over a number of years, with the European Economic Community and with the United States, until something was worked out to the satisfaction of the states involved. It is only this Government that is prepared to capitulate Canadian interests in order to get compliance.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: Since it is clear in all aspects of the decisions that she is talking about today that Canadian interests would be furthered by requesting a postponement rather than by capitulating, why has the Minister capitulated? That is the issue.
March 21, 1988


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that the Hon. Member argues that Canada has capitulated by accepting the ruling of the international trading system. Apparently the Hon. Member is in that category, along with others in the NDP, of liking to be winners only but not wanting to meet one's obligations when one loses a panel decision.
I point out that the measures that we have announced today with respect to the export of salmon and herring have the preliminary approval of the Fisheries Council of British Columbia. They are very much in the interests of the shore workers and the fishermen of B.C. who have suffered because of NDP attempts up and down the coast the last few weeks to terrify them by suggesting that they would lose their jobs if we comply with the international trading system. That is what members of the NDP have been doing. We have answered that today with a responsible system that will include the fishery.


ANNOUNCEMENT OF NATIONAL LANDING POLICY FOR FISH
Mr. Brian Tobin (Humber-Port au Port-St. Barbe):: Mr. Speaker, the only thing terrifying the fishermen of British Columbia and, indeed, the fishermen of Atlantic Canada is the lack of this Minister's grip on reality. She has lost a major battle on the GATT which has devastating implications for British Columbia and potentially devastating implications for Atlantic Canada. She has the audacity to try to celebrate it as a victory in the House-


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps the Hon. Member would put his preamble in terms of what is necessary for the question, and then put his question.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, I ask the Minister a simple question. Why is the Minister of Fisheries today announcing a national landing policy for fish, both in British Columbia and Atlantic Canada? Why today, if not because the Government recognizes what it cares not to admit so far this day, that is that the reality of the B.C. GATT ruling is that Atlantic Canada can no longer count on any exemption from American trade action with respect to unprocessed fish? Is that not the reality? Has she not the courage to admit it? We are tired of insults. We want answers.


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, the Minister of Fisheries is announcing today that he intends to bring in a national landing requirement because it has been requested by the provinces concerned and because it has been endorsed by First Ministers as a great step toward the improvement of the fishery and the conservation of the fishery.
I want the Hon. Member to answer this question. Is he against a landing requirement for Atlantic Canada which will ensure that fish are landed in Canadian ports, and inspected and graded for quality control before export? If he is against this measure he should say so.
Oral Questions PROCESSING OF LANDED FISH


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, the Minister's simplemindedness about the fishery is incredible. She would not know a sculpin from a flat-fish. She would not know landing from processing.
The reality is-


Mr. Speaker:: I would ask the Hon. Member to put a preamble that is necessary for the question.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, would the Minister for International Trade, a self-proclaimed fish expert, answer the following question. Is she suggesting to the people of British Columbia and to the fishermen of Atlantic Canada that just because a fish is landed on the coastline it can no longer be exported to the United States? Is the commitment she has given the House today to the effect that any fish landed in British Columbia or in Atlantic Canada automatically can never be exported unprocessed to the United States? Is that her commitment?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, it is clear I know a lot more about the British Columbia fishery than does the Hon. Member.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Answer the question.


Pat Carney: Thank God for that, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: I would urge the Minister, as I urged the Member for Humber-Port au Port-St. Barbe, to stick to a proper preamble. I urge the Minister to answer the question.


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, I am waiting for the question.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Essex-Windsor.


BEER MARKETING PRACTICES-GATT RULING
Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister about some of the contradictions in her position. This morning she stated in her statement to the House that the Government is not prepared to implement any changes in respect of beer marketing practices in the foreseeable future. At her press conference she turned around and said that beer will be discussed with the provinces over the next nine months.
What is the Minister actually planning to do? Has she accepted the GATT ruling or has she in fact picked and chosen and in the process made herself a laughing-stock as far as guaranteeing us a future for those 19,000 workers in the beer industry across Canada?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, I have already made it very clear that we have accepted the GATT ruling. That is what I announced today. That is what is consistent with our practices.

March 21, 1988
Oral Questions
In the statement I made today I announced that beer was a very small part of the complaint with the Europeans. It has been under discussion with the provinces in terms of breaking down interprovincial barriers. We will not be dealing with that in the foreseeable future. That is as clear as I can be.


IMPORTATION OF AMERICAN BEER
Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, will the Minister not admit, as her officials admitted in the news conference, that anything which is applied to the European Community such as accepting that we have to permit their beer to come freely into the country will apply automatically to the United States and that that threatens thousands of jobs of beer workers right across the country?


Pat Carney: Mr. Speaker, I admitted no such thing. I told the news conference and I told the Hon. Member that in discussions with the European community beer is very small beer, if I could put it that way, and that the people who would benefit the most from our acceptance of that ruling at this time would be the Americans. We did not see any reason to give the Americans a free ride on this issue at this time.


IMMIGRATION
Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration. It concerns the issue of Turkish refugee claimants who have been asked to leave the country.
I want the Minister to know that I am not requesting or advocating that they be given and provided with refugee status. Since it appears that they are not Convention refugees, to do so would only undermine and hurt the integrity of the refugee system. I have no inclination to do that.
Given that last year the Minister provided 16,000 ministerial permits and landed another 27,000 individuals under the Government's humanitarian program, will the Minister today at the very least undertake to consider these Turkish claimants under the criteria of the Government's humanitarian program as a possible measure that would address and hopefully resolve the Catch-22 and human dilemma that these people find themselves in?


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, I suggest that the question reflects an extremely serious problem and I accept the argument put forward by my honourable colleague.
The problem with the Turks who are now in Montreal, however, is that these poeple went through the whole refugee
determination process, contrary to those you referred to and on whom we are making decisions in a very particular way.
When these people arrived last year, Mr. Speaker, they were advised at each of the four stages of the process, that they would probably have to return to Turkey. Each time, we took into account the assessment system, including the Immigration Appeal Board where the various cases were considered on compassionate grounds. Their applications were turned down, especially in the case of the man who received notification, and there is no way the legislation could not be applied in their case, and that is essential, I think, if we grant these people a special status.
In other words, if, in spite of their failure every step of the way, we still grant them immigrant status-we could not grant them refugee status, because they do not meet the requirements-I ask my honourable friend this: Does he feel that we should grant the same consideration to the 45,000 other people whose decisions are pending?


REQUEST THAT HUMANITARIAN PROGRAM CRITERIA BE APPLIED
Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, my question is again directed to the Minister of Employment and Immigration who also has to take into account that unscrupulous travel agents and legal counsels, operating in Turkey, have triggered off this latest Turkish immigration influx.
Here is my question to the Minister: Since these people have been encouraged by racketeers like those operating in Portugal and in Brazil and against whom the Government did nothing, and since these people managed to settle in this country, why could not the Minister at least consider, not guarantee, but consider applying the standards of the humanitarian program which have been applied 25,000 times last year to resolve this tragic and very emotional human problem?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I would like to tell my friends that among the 45,000 people who at the present time requested the status of refugees, in other words all those who are in the backlog, 30,000 on average have to be considered likely not to be refugees. All those people arrive with false documents or no documents. Among those, it is likely that almost all of those people were misled, and all those people were brought into Canada by different ways. My friend knows this very well, every time we discuss this, all those people were almost in the same situation as are the Turks in Montreal today.
I call for the Hon. Member's understanding for all those immigrants-and this is the bottom line-who come to Canada by the regular way, all those who are waiting for years and years to bring their relatives into this country, all those people will see those queue jumping-
March 21, 1988


An Hon. Member:: What about the Turks?


Benoît Bouchard: Please, may I say what I wish to say? It is very serious, Sir. I wish to explain to Canadians-


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for York West has asked the Hon. Minister to give consideration, on humanitarian grounds, to what I think Hon. Members will agree is a very difficult matter. The Hon. Minister is trying to explain a difficult but nonetheless very serious question that has been asked. I think the Hon. Minister should be given a few more seconds to complete his answer.


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I was saying that all those people would not understand that we could allow not 40 Turks in Montreal, but many thousands of people in Quebec, and 30,000 across the country, to stay here without being refugees. Even the lawyer admitted that they are not refugees.
How can I give permission to 40 people when 20,000 will ask me, "Why those people and not ourselves?" That is the answer.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg-Birds Hill):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Right Hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs, and it has to do with the deployment of U.S. troops in Honduras, which the Minister is well aware of, as are we all.
Does the Minister today stand by the oft repeated policy of both himself and the Prime Minister with respect to nonintervention by the superpowers in Central American, or was the Minister for International Trade on Friday speaking for the Government when she appeared to argue that the United States could do what it wanted in Central America, as long as it alleged it was doing it pursuant to a bilateral treaty, in this case the Rio Treaty between the United States and Honduras? What is the government policy?


Right Hon. Joe Clark (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I was not in Question Period, but I had the opportunity to see it on television on Friday. That is not what the Minister for International Trade said. What the Minister for International Trade indicated was what the Prime Minister had indicated in the speech that the Hon. Member quotes. That is the policy of this Government.


THREAT TO PEACE PROCESS
William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: The fact remains, Mr. Speaker, that on Friday the Minister for International Trade did mention the Rio Treaty, and did talk about the
Oral Questions
United States acting in the context of the bilateral arrangement. We all know, anyone who has been an observer of events, that it is often those types of bilateral treaties that are used to justify superpower intervention. The Soviets were allegedly invited into Afghanistan, the Americans into South Vietnam, and now the Americans into Honduras. This is the type of excuse that all right thinking Governments should criticize whenever any superpower uses it to justify intervention.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: There are Americans, for example, former President Jimmy Carter and others, and a great many people criticizing American action-


An Hon. Member:: Question.


Mr. Speaker:: I would ask the Hon. Member to put his question.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: When is the Canadian Government going to have the guts to speak up and criticize something which obviously threatens the peace process in Central America?
Right Hon. Joe Clark (Secretary of State for External
Affairs): Mr. Speaker, it would do Canadian students of Central American and other politics in this country a great deal of good to review the question that was put by the Hon. Member. He talked about what the Minister had appeared to have said. He talked about what is often the case. In so doing he is misrepresenting both the position taken by my colleague and the position of the Government.
Surely what is at issue here is that there have been developments in Central America on the border between Nicaragua and Honduras that all of us regret. Whether it was the Nicaraguan offensive, whether it was the American response, we believe neither was helpful. That was made clear by my colleague, and that has been made clear here. What is important is that there has now been some calm brought back to the situation. The United Nations-


John Edward Broadbent: With 3,000 U.S. troops there?


Charles Joseph Clark: The Leader of the New Democratic Party is ridiculing this process toward peace in Central America.
There is a choice, Mr. Speaker. If you are interested in peace in Central America, we can work towards peace. If you are interested in simply attacking the United States on every opportunity, you can do that too, but that will not move peace forward.

March 21, 1988
Oral Questions


IMMIGRATION
Mr. David Berger (Laurier):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to get back to the Minister of Employment and Immigration concerning the matter of Turkish nationals. The Minister is talking about a backlog of 45,000 cases. I would remind him that American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that statute books are not mathematical reference handbooks. I do not have a mathematical formula to respond to his questions, but I stress the fact that each of these 45,000 individuals is entitled to a fair and equitable hearing.


Mr. Speaker:: The question, please.


David Berger: Here is my question, Mr. Speaker. We are not asking that they all be accepted as a whole, but will he allow the Turkish nationals to apply for immigrant status here in Canada? He is empowered to do so under Immigration Act Section 115(2). For reasons well known to the public, will he allow these Turkish nationals to apply here in Canada?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, this is the same question I answered earlier. First of all, I am surprised the Hon. Member for Laurier says that laws are not necessarily there to be applied. Glad to hear it! Delighted!
Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, and I answered this question earlier, if we let Turkish nationals apply for immigrant status in Canada, we are automatically giving the same right, and I don't see how we could do otherwise, to everybody else who wants to do the same, and in that case we no longer have a workable system for determining refugee status.


TURKISH NATIONALS-MINISTER'S RESPONSIBILITY
David Berger: Mr. Speaker, the application of laws should be fair and universal, and that is what we want. The Minister knows perfectly well that these people were victims. They were acting in good faith. The Minister also knows he did nothing in the fall of 1986 to protect them. In fact, he let 2,000 of these people come to Canada over a period of five months before taking any action. My question therefore is this: Doesn't he admit he has some responsibility, maybe even personally but at least as a member of the Government or as Minister, for the nightmare these people are going through today?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, speaking of responsibility, we have a political party that for eight months-I said it before and I say it again-has been obstructing a Bill, and as a result, 10,000 more people have been able to enter this country- again, I am referring to people who may be phony refugees- and meanwhile, Mr. Speaker, they continue to obstruct the Bill that is before the Senate.


NATIONAL PAROLE BOARD
Alan Redway: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Solicitor General. He is well aware of the growing rift between police departments and the National Parole Board as a result of the early release of prisoners who are connected with organized crime.
Will the Solicitor General assure the House that he intends to take immediate action to resolve this rift? Will he spell out specifically what he intends to do in order to help restore public confidence in our parole system?


Hon. James Kelleher (Solicitor General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, as the Hon. Member is aware, I made public the recommendations contained in the Pepino Report. Recommendations 26 and 27 of that report which I have accepted recommend closer co-operation among the Correctional Services, the National Parole Board, and the police of every major community. They urge the setting up of a common parole unit so that there can be a proper exchange of information among them. This is presently being done.


BANK OF CANADA
Mr. Mike Cassidy (Ottawa Centre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. Over the past year the Governor of the Bank of Canada has repeatedly made reference to his objective of bringing Canada's inflation rate to zero.
Could the Minister explain why there is no reference to a zero inflation rate in the annual report of the Bank of Canada which the Governor submitted to Parliament today? Does this mean that the Governor now expects that his policy of zero inflation was unrealistic and, if so, when will Canadians see action by the Government to reduce interest rates from their current unduly high levels?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, I presume the Governor will be appearing before the Finance Committee at some time to talk on his annual report. However, if the Hon. Member looks at the report itself I think he will see that the Governor makes reference to his concerns about price pressures and the importance of dealing with price pressures early in the cycle, rather than allowing them to build up a head of steam and thereby run into the same problems which we ran into in the early 1970s prior to the oil price shocks and the final blow offs of these in the early 1980s.
March 21, 1988

I think the Governor has stated his position quite clearly, and I think that it is a very realistic position.


Michael Morris Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, the Governor's decision ignores the fact that in vast regions of our country, the unemployment rate is still excessive and people are living in recession conditions, despite the situation in Southern Ontario.


REQUEST THAT BANK OF CANADA GOVERNOR ACT TO REDUCE INTEREST RATES
Michael Morris Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, Canadian interest rates have increased, and our bank rate is now 2.7 per cent higher than in the United States, despite the fact that the inflation rate in both countries is comparable. Since high interest rates are responsible for the rise in the Canadian dollar and have had a negative impact on Canada's exports and jobs, could the Minister give the House the assurance that the Governor of the Bank of Canada will follow this apparent change in policy and take steps to reduce interest rates in Canada?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I do not know where the Governor of the Bank of Canada has indicated any "apparent change in policy", to use the words of the Hon. Member.
The Hon. Member should understand that it is inflation which leads to higher interest rates and that expectations of inflation will lead to high interest rates.
We saw a very good example of that in the first nine months of last year when we saw a significant increase in long-term interest rates in both Canada and the United States. This was a clear reflection of the concerns of investors in both countries about what might happen to the levels of inflation.
This is what causes high interest rates. It causes high interest rates on a permanent basis. What the Governor is trying to do, in monetary policy in Canada, is head off these problems earlier rather than later.


FISHERIES
Mr. Russell MacLellan (Cape Breton-The Sydneys):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. The Lobster Advisory Board of the Minister of Fisheries in southwestern Nova Scotia last year advised the Minister of Fisheries not to proceed with offshore lobster licences. Yet last December the Minister of Fisheries did just that, and the Advisory Board now feels betrayed. It has called for his resignation, and 14 out of 15 of its members have resigned.
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The wrong people have resigned. It should be the Minister of Fisheries.
When will the Government cancel these harmful licences, and when will the Government replace the present Minister of Fisheries with a Minister who has the confidence of fishermen in the fishing industry?


Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, the present Minister of Fisheries is one of the greatest incumbents of that office, certainly of this century if not including the 19th century.
It is regrettable if the inshore lobster advisory committee or some of its members resigned. However, it is an advisory committee. It is the Minister of Fisheries who has the responsibility for fisheries policy in Canada.
He made a decision to issue new licences with a view to opening up new grounds for underutilized lobster and red crab resources in NAFO Division 4W. To protect the resource there was no increase in the total allowable catch of 720 tonnes in the existing offshore lobster fishery.
Therefore, this is a decision made in the best interest of the fishery and of fishermen. Perhaps everybody does not agree. I am afraid it is very difficult in Canada to get 100 per cent agreement on any particular fishery policy.


POSITION OF FISHERMEN
Russell Gregoire MacLellan: Mr. Speaker, the Government is thumbing its nose at inshore fishermen in Atlantic Canada. They have to fight the weather, the quotas, and the declining stocks. Why do they now have to fight their own federal Government?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman would be up protesting if nobody got a licence, and he gets up and protests when somebody gets a licence. There isn't any way of satisfying the hon. gentleman opposite in fishery matters or in any other matter. What constructive suggestion has any member of the Opposition made in this session of Parliament?


FINANCE
Mr. Simon de Jong (Regina East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. He might be aware that government figures released last week to my office indicate that over 100,000 corporations owe some $1.1 billion to the Government in undisputed taxes. A major deficit reduction could occur if the Government would only collect those taxes.

March 21, 1988
Oral Questions
Therefore, my question to the Minister is a very simple one. What is the Government doing to collect the taxes which are owed to it?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, that question is more properly put to my colleague, the Minister of National Revenue, but in his absence I will respond to the question.
We have done things. We have increased the interest cost for people who delay paying their taxes. These taxes are due and owing to the Government and we want to get those taxes in. I believe the Minister has asked his officials to improve the collection efforts on behalf of the Government to ensure that those taxes do come in. I would certainly encourage some support from the New Democratic Party in that direction.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Regina East, a short supplementary.


COLLECTION OF TAXES-REQUEST FOR NEW MEASURES
Simon Leendert de Jong: I have a very short question, Mr. Speaker. I just wish to point out that the amount of taxes owing has increased this year over last year. Therefore, the measures the Government has taken certainly have not worked. In fact, they have done the opposite.
Very simply, is the Government prepared to look at the measures it has undertaken, which have not worked, to make certain that new measures are introduced so that the $3.3 billion in undisputed taxes can be collected and we can see either new programs or the deficit reduced?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member relates the amount which the uncollected tax has gone up but he will see that that is partly a function of the fact that over-all corporate tax revenues have gone up as a result of two things, one, the improvement in the health of the economy; second, the changes in tax policy that have resulted in a number of the corporate tax loopholes being closed so that companies are paying more tax.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Gander-Twillingate on a single question to be followed by the Hon. Member for Nanaimo-Alberni, and that will close off Question Period.


PUBLIC SERVICE
Mr. George Baker (Gander-Twillingate):: Mr. Speaker, demonstrations took place today throughout Newfoundland and the Maritimes by public servants who are protesting the unwillingness of the Government to negotiate collective agreements with 31 bargaining units. Under this Government
a public servant has about as much job security as a Tory Cabinet Minister.
Will the President of the Treasury Board order Treasury Board to resume negotiations with these 31 bargaining units to reduce the number of bargaining tables from 31 to 7 as the union has requested, and to stop playing musical chairs with the public servants of this country?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Privy Council and President of the Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member is usually well informed but I have to advise him in this particular case his information is incorrect. Treasury Board has now scheduled with the Public Service Alliance the bargaining process for some 23 groups. That is contrary to the assertion the Member made.
The Hon. Member is aware, I am sure, that my predecessor established a two-tier bargaining system. The first tier involved the non-monetary issues which were settled by binding conciliation. The second tier, which was negotiated at 31 tables, was to be negotiated and would involve items such as rates of pay, vacation, holiday time, et cetera. Those particular issues were subject to a strike. The Public Service Alliance has chosen to eliminate this master agreement of the binding conciliation approach, and wants to go back to bargaining at 7 different tables with the right to strike right across the board. That is something Treasury Board has refused to acknowledge. Notwithstanding that, as I said in my original response, the schedule has now been set for some 23 units to proceed with bargaining, and we are prepared to sit down and go through that process.


PIPELINES
Ted William Schellenberg: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources.
Recently the Province of British Columbia selected a new route for the natural gas pipeline to Vancouver Island. It presented a request to our Government for partial funding of the project in the amount of some $150 million. In view of the fact that a previous federal Government was quick to provide hundreds of millions of dollars for a similar pipeline project in Quebec earlier this decade, is our Government prepared to consider this request from the Province of B.C. seriously?


Hon. Marcel Masse (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, the Government of British Columbia, through its Energy Minister, advised us of its interest in this energy project.
March 21, 1988

Subsequently, the federal Department of Energy, Mines and Resources and its officials had discussions with their British Columbia counterparts, and I shall be meeting with my provincial colleague in a matter of weeks.
We are very interested in this project, and I can assure the Minister that the Government's decision will be made in the interests of the people of British Columbia and Canada.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Ms. McDonald:
That this House condemns the Government for its failure to act on urgent environmental issues, especially its failure to negotiate a treaty with the United States to reduce acid rain emissions; its failure to incorporate environmental matters in major economic decisions, despite endorsing the Brundtland Report and the Report of the National Task Force on Environment and the Economy; and its failure to effect a clean-up of toxic wastes contaminating the Great Lakes Basin and the St. Lawrence Seaway.
James Douglas Manly: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak in this very important debate and want to thank my colleague, the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood (Ms. McDonald) for bringing it forward.
The debate today has to go beyond simply condemning the Government for its inaction in the area of the environment. While we can condemn the Government for its failures, and those failures are real and serious, we need to move beyond that and look at the entire system. Twenty years from now people who read this debate will probably remark on how timid on all sides of the issue we were, how slow we were to state the truth about what is happening in our environment and how blind we were to the reality of the environment. In many ways we, on all sides of the House, are children of our times. Operating within this present system we can have better or worse governments. The record of this present Government we have to admit is abominable.
We can begin back in 1984 when the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) appointed his first Minister of the Environment, a Minister who admitted she knew nothing about the environment and her attitude showed that she could not care less. The fact that she was appointed indicates very clearly that the Prime Minister himself knew little about the environment and cared less. Since that time we have had a series of cut-backs. We now have 336 fewer employees in the Department of the Environment than we had in 1984 and $71 million less is available to the Department of the Environment, important as that is supposed to be in Canadian policy. We can admit though that the present Minister is both knowledgeable about the environment and committed to it, but he is playing catch-
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up. He is behind the ball all the time. He is not getting the kind of support from his cabinet colleagues that he should get.
Perhaps the most obvious example has been illustrated here by previous speakers, namely, the failure of the Prime Minister to stand up for Canadian interests on acid rain. Instead he is trying to reach some cosy arrangement with President Reagan, something to satisfy the President and to reinforce the buddy-buddy system which the Prime Minister has with the American President. This is not satisfactory as far as Canadian interests in the whole area of acid rain are concerned.
What about our fisheries policy? Here the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. Siddon) has brought in a policy of trading off one part of the environment for enhancement in another. He calls it "the no net loss policy" "or the enhancement policy". It involves selling off part of our environment with the idea that it can be compensated for by enhancement in some other part. It is a fallacious policy. We have seen the slow response of the Minister of Fisheries and of the Minister of Environment (Mr. McMillan) to the presence of dioxins near pulp mill outflows.
We had the use of an experimental driftnet fishery, which was only stopped by the Minister last year after there had been a continued loud outcry because of the very clear evidence that driftnets were responsible for the death of whales and other sea mammals. Right now the Government has before it the question of whether or not there will be drilling for oil off Georges Bank, a very important area in fisheries resource. What is going to take precedence, oil drilling or fish? We want to wait and see what happens.
In 1984, the Senate committee brought out a report called Soil at Risk. Let me quote as follows from its fourth conclusion:
Canada risks permanently losing a large portion of its agricultural capability
if a major commitment to conserving the soil is not made immediately by all
levels of Government and by all Canadians.
That was a very important study which just seems to have disappeared. Absolutely nothing has happened to it.
The complexity of the issue of soil is shown by a letter I received, a copy of which the Hon. Minister received last fall. It is from a young Vancouver Island woman who is involved in organic gardening. She has tried to maintain a complete cycle by using organic manure and the like to ensure that the food she produces is healthy and wholesome. What she did not realize was that the manure she was using, which she got from a nearby farm, was mixed with bedding which was made from wood shavings, and the wood shavings contained PCPs and TCPs. She took her food to be tested and found that the food she thought was being grown in an organic way, food that would be pure and wholesome, was itself toxic.
We live in a society and economy in which environmental degradation is often linked with short-term prosperity and with the demand for jobs. When there are still large areas of

March 21, 1988
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Canada with unacceptably high rates of unemployment, the pressure to accept environmentally unacceptable procedures is very great.
In British Columbia particularly, we have seen unacceptable logging methods and unacceptable mining methods. There are a number of controversies in British Columbia. Environmentalists and aboriginal people concerned with protecting their historic heritage are in conflict with resource users and resource abusers, in many cases. For example, the Lyton and Mount Currie people are involved in an attempt to protect their historic interest in the Stein River Valley. This is one of the last unspoiled areas of British Columbia.
In April of 1987 at the New Democratic Party provincial convention in British Columbia, we passed the resolution that no logging be allowed in the Stein Valley and that an immediate moratorium be called regarding the area until we have resolved the problems with the native Indians concerned. Since that time, our leader in British Columbia, Mike Harcourt, and our environmental critic, Joan Smallwood, have convened meetings in an attempt to find a rational solution to this, but unfortunately, in British Columbia there is a Government that does not know what a rational solution is. Its approach is confrontation, confrontation.
There is a similar situation with Strathcona Park, British Columbia's oldest park. Elere a mining company is moving into a park. This is the new Vander Zalm approach to parks: call them recreational areas, which means that they can be mined or logged. The tailings from these operations threaten water supplies and the aesthetic value of the parks. Yet that is the policy of the provincial Government.
We have concerns about the Khutzematteen Valley in northern British Columbia, one of the last refuges of the grizzly bear in British Columbia. The logging value of the valley is negative because it will cost more to log it than the logs are worth. Unless something is done to preserve the valley, we will be pushing grizzly bears that much closer to extinction, certainly in British Columbia.
The provincial and federal Governments have failed to insist on air and water-pollution controls for mills and factories. There is a problem with dioxins, the most dangerous substances known to humanity. In the last several months, there has been increased evidence of dioxin presence near pulpmill outflows. Greenpeace has been working very hard on this issue, trying to get some provincial and federal government action on it.
Greenpeace points out that there are three major methods used in Sweden, West Germany and Japan to reduce dioxin contamination by some 80 per cent. First, oxygen rather than chlorine is used in the first stage of the bleaching process. Second, there is prolonged cooking of the pulp which separates the fibre from the lignin. This means that less bleaching is required. Third, chlorine gas is replaced with chlorine dioxide. The use of these three methods together means that the presence of dioxins can be cut by 80 per cent.
Greenpeace is calling on the pulp and paper industry to reduce its chlorinated emissions by 80 per cent within the next few years. It is also calling on the federal and provincial Governments to introduce new legislation that effectively regulates the discharge of chlorinated compounds, and is calling on the Canadian pulp and paper industry to supply the market with paper products that have not been bleached with any chlorine gas at all. Such paper will be slightly less bright than conventionally bleached paper, but tissue, writing pads and letterheads can fully serve their purposes without being fully bleached. Greenpeace is calling on the consumer to buy this new paper as soon as it becomes available. Further, as much paper as possible should be recycled and reused. It seems as though the paper from which I am reading from Greenpeace has been fairly highly bleached. This shows how involved all of us, even Greenpeace, are in the contradictions of this situation.
The logging, mining and mills policies are very shortsighted. When the resource is depleted, the industries move. Companies go elsewhere in North America or in the Third World, and all that is left is pollution, poverty and poor people.
In Canada today, there is the tragedy of a great many single-industry towns falling victim to poor resource management. Poor resource management and environmental degradation go hand in hand. They are the same thing.
The author M. T. Kelly has written a book that just won the Governor General's Award called A Dream Like Mine. The book tells of the kidnapping and mutilation of the manager of a pulp mill in northern Ontario. At the end of the story, which is very easy to read, the manager is promoted, the Indian who was involved in the kidnapping commits suicide, the person who tells the story, a reporter with one of Canada's national papers, is fired from his job, and there is a cash settlement for the pollution that has taken place in the river system of the Indian people living in northern Ontario. They receive a cash settlement but the pollution continues. In other words, nothing has really changed. There are similar problems on a larger scale in the developing world.
Smokey Bruyere, the leader of the Native Council of Canada, appeared before the Brundtland Commission when it was holding hearings in Canada and said:
'Indigenous peoples are the base of what I guess could be called the environmental security system. We are the gate-keepers of success or failure to husband our resources. For many of us, however, the last few centuries have meant a major loss of control over our lands and waters. We are still the first to know about changes in the environment, but we are now the last to be asked or consulted.
We are the first to detect when the forests are being threatened, as they are under the slash and grab economics of this country. And we are the last to be asked about the future of our forests. We are the first to feel the pollution of our waters, as the Ojibway peoples of my own homelands in northern Ontario will attest. And, of course, we are the last to be consulted about how, when, and where developments should take place in order to assure continuing harmony for the seventh generation.
The most we have learned to expect is to be compensated, always too late and too little. We are seldom asked to help avoid the need for compensation by lending our expertise and our consent to development.'
March 21, 1988

The kinds of problems we find in Canada are found in a magnified way in the developing world where, in the attempt to pay their debts and meet the requirements of the international monetary system, they are forced into a plantation economy. To make way for agro-industry the poor are forced off their subsistence plots of land into marginal areas. This puts ever greater pressure on the environment.
When poor people look at this situation and understand what is happening, they demand a bigger slice of the pie. There are a number of different responses to that. First, there can be a better division of the pie to reflect fairness. Most of us, when we were kids, if we grew up in a family with more than one or two children, were aware of how you have to be very careful when dividing a pie. We used to have a method where one person would divide and the other person would get first choice. We do not do that in the international system, we divide and we get first choice.
However, if we did have fairer shares, then the problem, a lot of people say, is that no one would have enough. With five billion people in our world it would simply mean that everyone would have a standard of poverty. As a result, for a long time people have been talking about a bigger pie. The idea is that we will both get more pie, but my share will always be bigger than your share even if I cannot eat all of my share. The problem with that, of course, is that if we keep making bigger and bigger pies we will very soon run out of ingredients. The side effect of my keeping a larger and larger share for myself is that I will soon have so much uneaten pie kicking around that it is going to start going bad, attracting flies and rats, and we will be buried under the pollution of our share of affluence, which is now happening to a large extent in North American and western Europe.
The third alternative is that we can have a different kind of pie and with that we could have fairer shares and we could also have a larger pie as well. Basically it is that different kind of pie with different ingredients and processes that the Brundt-land report is talking about. It uses the concept of sustainable development. The problem here is, do we have the wisdom and the commitment to make the needed changes? Certainly we have heard a lot in this debate today about sustainable development. It has become the latest buzz-word. There is a tendency and a danger that the words "sustainable development" will become a rhetorical overlay. Everything will continue as before but we will call it sustainable development.
There is a need instead to integrate environmental concerns into every decision taken by Government. Perhaps we could use financial decisions as an analogy. Whenever a project is going to be approved by Government there has to be a financial costing. It has to be approved on that basis, and then it goes to Treasury Board for a final decision. The Auditor General looks at the whole question of how our Government spends money. Our yearly Estimates are studied by committee. We need the kind of revolution in our thinking which would
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demand that environmental considerations be just as important as financial considerations. We need the kind of revolution in our thinking where the Minister of the Environment would be seen to be as important in the councils of Government as the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson). We need a new way of auditing that will take account of environmental concerns. There have to be similar kinds of costing for private enterprise projects.
We can look at overseas development assistance because when we talk about the environment we have to realize that we do not live in a fortress North America. We live in one world. What happens in Africa, what happens in South America, what happens in Southeast Asia affects our lives and will affect even more of the lives and environments of our children and our grandchildren.
I am pleased to see that some progress is being made in this area by CIDA. Environmental assessment is being written into government programs. We are making progress in recognizing the problem. We are moving away from large infrastructural projects to human resource development, to emphasis on education and primary health care, but we are far behind. Even there it is too often just a rhetorical recognition, sometimes not even that.
Last October the Minister responsible for CIDA spoke to the Canadian Exporters Association about new strategies for development assistance, but she did not mention the environment. We all know that the official development assistance of the Government is very small in comparison to the total problem of debt and commodity prices which push the Third World into the wrong kinds of development. For example, we have the loss of rain forest. Every year an area of forest the size of Newfoundland disappears through logging, overgrazing, firewood use, and slash and burn agriculture. Because of that we are losing genetic diversity in our world. We will lose some three-quarters of a million species by the year 2000. In the next century we will lose perhaps one species in three. The effect that all this has on climate is frightening.
Many World Bank projects are involved in this kind of exploitation. Many of us in the House of Commons, certainly in our Party right now, are involved in an attempt to make the World Bank more sensitive to the environment and to ensure that sustainable development is one of the criteria for loans. We want Canadian votes on World Bank projects to take that into account.
We need changes in our thinking much more quickly, however. At the turn of the century Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a poem in which he talked about how people degrade the environment, but then, he said, for all this nature is never spent. "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things".
I see my time is coming to an end. I just want to say that what Hopkins recognized at the turn of the century, that there lived the dearest freshness deep down things, is true only to a limited extent. When we have nuclear waste, when we have dioxins poisoning the environment, when we have the stripping

March 21, 1988
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of forests and the desertification of huge areas, perhaps we will reach a point where nature will not have the ability to regenerate itself. We need a change in our thinking, and we condemn this Government for its specific failure to deal with the environment. Even more than that, we need to change the system. Unless we do, I think we need to recognize that our democracy is in crisis.


Reginald Francis Stackhouse: Mr. Speaker, I have sat in this Elouse on both sides and come to the conclusion that Opposition Days are an opportunity to rise to the heights of hyperbole, regardless of which side you are on. One side condemns the Government, the other side praises the Government. One side says we are facing a crisis, the other side says we do not have a problem at all. One side says you have done nothing, the other side says we have done everything. We have certainly had enough of that today. Elowever, I hope that over the rest of the day we may reason together, we may focus on, not simply the problem, not simply the facile solution, but try to see the possibilities before us in the foreseeable future.
I commend the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood (Ms. McDonald) who has brought this motion to the floor. It is right that this House and this country focus its attention on the challenge to our environment and focus its attention on the imperative need for a solution. I welcome this debate and hope that there may come out of it not something as silly as condemning the Government or as facile as to say there is nothing wrong, but that we can think together both for today and the future about the possibilities we have as Members of Parliament.
First, we must recognize that we are not only the victims, but part of the problem as a human race. As the Brundtland report makes abundantly clear, one of the fundamental causes for the environmental crisis facing humanity is simply the growth of the human race at such a rapid rate in the past few years and the urbanization of the vast majority of humanity, particularly in developed areas. For instance, three out of every four persons live in an urban community which is no longer rightly described in the term "city".
I grew up in the City of Toronto when it was a city of some
700,000	people, with clearly defined borders. One could leave it very quickly to get into the rural countryside. Today, the City of Toronto is surrounded by cities such as my own Scarborough, Mississauga, and other cities in their own right which stretch for 100 miles, from Oshawa around the west end of Lake Ontario to Niagara Falls. It stretches up into Cambridge, Kitchener and ultimately to the City of London.
This is a Canadian example of a world-wide phenomenon, namely the replacement of the city by conurbation, which is the congregating of urban municipalities which often stretch for hundreds of miles. An example of this would be the area from north of Boston to south of Washington or, in the
instance of the Great Lakes, from west and north of Chicago to the east end of Lake Ontario. The result of that all over the world is a threat to the purity of the environment and the survivability of the atmosphere.
The first lesson we should learn from this is that it is not a local or regional problem, the fault for which can be linked to this person, that party or that group. It is not an ideological problem. When we consider the world situation, we find that this prevalence of conurbations and the accompaniment of pollution exists regardless of whether it is a private enterprise system, a socialist system, democracy or communism. It exists regardless of the factors to which we often look for reasons.
The fact is that there are two reasons for these conurbations. One is the rapid growth of humanity in the past 40 years and the second is the equally rapid escalation of technology as a way of meeting the human needs of the world's growing population, without which the human race cannot survive.
One does not hear quarrels about development in Third World countries. They want the development and will make every effort to achieve it because they know it is absolutely essential to their survival. The cost in terms of the threat of that development to the environment is not always taken into account.
It would seem that the human race is prepared to go through three stages. Hopefully we may be at the third stage. The first stage is predevelopment, which was enough to maintain a small, slowly growing population. The second, to which I have referred, is the escalation of development along with the escalation of pollution. The third stage is one to which reference has been made by other Members, and which is found not only in the Brundtland report but in the report of the National Task Force on the Environment and the Economy. It is sustained economic development, a way in which we will attempt to balance development and environmental concerns. We will attempt to balance technology and all that it provides for the human race along with safeguards against the threat which technology proposes for the human race. That is sustained economic development.
We cannot look to any simple panacea in order to provide the solution. For example, in the report of the National Task Force on the Environment and the Economy, the writers include among their recommendations this paragraph:
More research is needed on the concept of sustainable economic development and the linkages between economic development and the environment so
that we can better understand those linkages and apply data and information
to make better decisions.
I quote that paragraph for one simple reason. It shows how counterproductive it is for any of us to stand in this House and treat this problem as a simple one which could be solved simply by changing government from one party to another, changing from one ideology to another, changing from one agenda to another.
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We have before us a crisis that has been years, decades and generations in the making. It is the result not of the simplification but of the complexity of modern society. It is a problem that will not flee from us simply by saying we should go back to the good old days, that we should establish more bureaucracies to monitor what is happening.
I believe we must work out the crisis step by step. I believe that to be the intent of the Government, with the support of the majority of Members in the Elouse. I illustrate that by particular reference to the Great Lakes region, one that should be of concern to all Canadians and certainly of concern to everyone in this House who represents a constituency within its orbit.
Almost one out of every three Canadians live in the Great Lakes Basin. Nearly 50 per cent of Canadian industrial activity and 25 per cent of agriculture production is located in the basin. If we are to do something about the environment in Canada, we have to focus on this region.
If we are to have an adequate future as a country, it must be by addressing the problems that confront us in the Great Lakes region. Indeed, the enormity of this region is limited not only to Canadian considerations. Approximately 18 per cent of the fresh surface water on earth is to be found in the basin of the Great Lakes. Surrounding those great bodies of water are millions and millions of Canadians and Americans, living in this extraordinary, dynamic, affluent conurbation that has been formed on both sides of the border because of the technology that has brought them there and the productivity that has enabled them not only to develop a life for themselves but to provide a life for others throughout the continent and overseas.
But at what price? We are informed that there is in the Great Lakes a plethora of man-made substances. About
60,000	chemicals are produced or used in the United States and Canada, and many of those substances are deposited in the Great Lakes themselves. The result of the increased commercial production and widespread use of synthetic and organic chemicals and metals since the 1940s has been the polluting of the Great Lakes.
What is the solution? It is certainly not a magic wand solution, any more than it would be an attempt to be indifferent to the threat to all of us. I submit that it must be a progressive, steadfast, reasonable, consistent development of solutions, agreements, experiments and achievements toward finding a cure for one problem and a solution for another to build up over the years a greater cleansing of the Great Lakes and the atmosphere above and around them.
The kind of thing to which I refer includes such agreements and actions as provisions to deal with contaminated sediments which research over the past five years has shown to be a continuing source of pollution to overlying waters. Second,
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initiatives on airborne pollutants involving research, monitoring and control measures on pollutants reaching the lakes via the atmosphere. Third, provisions to designate severely polluted areas around the lakes as an area of concern and stipulate the development and implementation of remedial action plans for each area.
At present there are 42 such areas identified around the lakes, 12 of which are wholly within Canada, and five are interconnecting channels between the lakes which are shared with the United States. Lourth , specification of necessary research which underpins the identification of specific pollution problems around the lakes and the development and implementation of remedies. Lifth, provisions for the control of non-point sources of pollution, calling for specific plans to abate pollution from a variety of urban and rural land-drainage areas. Sixth, new measures for the identification and control of sources of contaminated ground water to the lakes.
We should take a moment to focus on the great problem in the Niagara River itself, a great and thundering body of water which is shared by two countries. The Niagara River Toxics Committee, which was established to examine at least a dimension of this problem, has established a list of 261 manmade chemicals present in the river, its tributaries and the western end of Lake Ontario. Of these it determined that 57 chemicals require immediate attention. That is the kind of crisis, the kind of threat, which the people of Ontario, New York State and other communities face. Lake Ontario is generally acknowledged as the most contaminated of the Great Lakes in terms of diversity and levels of toxic substance. Initiatives to meet that crisis have been taken. Progress has been made.
A draft Lake Ontario toxics management plan has been prepared. At this point it is going through public consultation before the agencies intention to finalize it by July of this year. That will not be a magic wand but it is an example of positive and constructive action which built on previous initiatives, laying the ground work for future projects, which will lead us to a time when we can foresee the cleaning up of Lake Ontario and making it the place that it once was.
Toxic chemical problems have also been evident in other Great Lakes interconnecting channels consisting of the St. Mary's River, the St. Clair River and the Detroit River. Since 1984, scientists from Ontario, Canada, and Michigan in the United States have been conducting field investigations under what is called the Upper Great Lakes Connecting Channel Study. The purpose of this study is to determine the present environmental status, the sources of contaminates, the fate and effects of these contaminates, existing control programs and their adequacy and to make recommendations for remedial actions.
It is clear from such examples as I have drawn that there is no easy one-shot solution anymore than this problem came about overnight. It is equally clear that action is taking place, one initiative building upon another. We have to recognize that

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the building of those initiatives, one upon the other, faces certain difficulties which should not give us an excuse to slow down, but rather should stimulate us to speed up with a determination which I find in this Government and which I find throughout this House. First, we face this kind of difficulty given the Constitution of Canada and the Constitution of the United States. Neither is a unitary country. Each involves two levels of Government, each with its own jurisdiction and authority. For almost every action that is open to us, there is a provincial authority with which we must have discussions. There are municipalities which are involved which must be consulted. So the process cannot be accelerated as much as the Government or the Opposition might wish.
The process in Canada cannot avoid the kind of protracted discussions and negotiations that are demanded. It is similar in the United States. Just about two years ago I had a meeting with a United States Congressmen during which we discussed the kind of concern we are discussing today. I chided him on the slowness of the United States Congress in recognizing this problem and co-operating with Canada in bringing about its solution. He said to me: "You may think we have done very little but where I live in the soft coal producing congressional district, the recent agreement seems like light years of action". Sometimes we have to be reminded of that.
In the United States Congress there is representation by 110 members of all the soft coal producing states in the north and the east of that country. They cannot be ignored. Political realism should tell us that. So when we are chided as a Government because we have not forced the United States to do this or do that, and when we are rebuked because we have not done it with the speed of the snap of one's fingers, let us recognize the realities that face not just this Government, but any government that would purport to lead this country.
We are confronted by the need for agreements within our own borders, by the need for agreement with other sovereignties, which cannot easily be achieved. We have to work at it with determination and with steadfastness.
In the last few minutes remaining, may I point out the obvious, namely, if we have a problem which is enormous and gargantuan in its measurements, we have it because of the simple fact that the population growth has speeded up and with it the development of industry and commerce have speeded up and we are, as it were, barreling down the road. We cannot just jump in front of it and stop it all. How does one provide a livelihood for the millions who call North America their home unless we maintain enough technological development to satisfy the needs of those people?
I submit this point to you, Mr. Speaker, which I hope will appeal to the reason of the House. Yes, it is good to prod governments and say, get on with the job. Getting on with the job is so important and crucial to the future of humanity that we must not slow down. Equally, it is vital that we in this House, and in the Parliaments that follow after us, show the divine gift of common sense that if we can achieve something
this year, we will achieve more next year and more the year after that, and more a decade hence, and when we have put it all together, once more we will have a Canada and a North America our forefathers knew and which we will prize when we hold it again.


Mr. Keith Penner (Cochrane-Superior):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in this debate. The motion is in the name of the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood (Ms. McDonald). In the motion which is before the House the Hon. Member has drawn attention, and quite correctly in my view, to the fact that in Canada major economic decisions continue to be taken without incorporating into them the necessary and vital environmental safeguards that are required.
As well, the motion reminds us that the so-called Brundt-land Report, to which Canada supposedly subscribes, urges the very opposite, urges otherwise. The World Commission on Environment and Development which produced the Brundt-land report bears the official title Our Common Future. Incidentally, the Brundtland report is named after the commission's chairperson, Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway. Interestingly enough, this report did not in any way predict ever-increasing environmental decay, poverty and hardship in an ever-polluted world among ever-decreasing resources. Not at all.
The commission does not see the world situation regarding development and the environment as being hopeless at all. That is to say it is not hopeless if there is decisive political action now, action to begin managing environmental resources to ensure both sustainable human progress on the one hand and human survival on the other.
Rather than pointing to a dark and gloomy future the commission, on the contrary, is really rather hopeful in its tone. It sees the possibility for a new era of economic growth. However, it is one that must be based on policies that, first, sustain and, second, expand the environmental resource base.
Thus I point out to the House that the Brundtland report is not at all anti-development, not at all. Rather, it believes that growth in the world economy is absolutely essential in order to relieve the great amount of poverty that is deepening in much of the developing world, sometimes referred to as the Third World.
One of the themes of the Brundtland report which is of particular or special interest to me has to do with the process of development and its effect upon indigenous or aboriginal peoples for whom the preservation of a traditional way of life in close harmony with the natural environment is essential. Brundtland points out that the gradual advance of organized development into the more remote and isolated regions of the world where many aboriginal peoples live, regions which are often rich in valuable natural resources, has the effect of
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disrupting the local environment and endangering the traditional ways of life of these people.
A case in point, one rather close at hand, one that has been referred to frequently in the House of Commons, is that of the Lubicon Indian Band in the Peace River district of northern Alberta. Once a self-sufficient and proud people living in an undisturbed traditional economy they now, because of extensive resource development of oil and gas, and latterly pulp development, have been pushed aside. They have been generally excluded from any of the benefits of resource development. Consequently, they have had destroyed for them the basis of their traditional pursuits: fishing, hunting and trapping.
As a result, the Lubicon people have been reduced to a state of abject poverty. They have become welfare recipients, shack dwellers and sick. They have been stricken by an epidemic of tuberculosis which is almost unheard of anywhere else in Canada. They are depressed and hopeless.
Brundtland speaks of the increasing vulnerability of such groups left out of the processes of economic development. I quote briefly from the Commission's report which states:
Social discrimination, cultural barriers, and the exclusion of these people from national political processes makes these groups [indigenous and aboriginal people] vulnerable and subject to exploitation. Many groups become dispossessed and marginalized and their traditional practices disappear. They become the victims of what could be described as cultural extinction.
The commission goes on to describe the situation as being one of great pity, a tragedy. It is a great pity and a tragedy because these indigenous or aboriginal peoples and communities are the repositories of traditional knowledge and experience that links our humanity with its ancient origins. That is not something to which most developers ever give a passing thought. After all, resource development is a procedure engaged in primarily for profit. But Brundtland reminds us that in pursuing economic development and destroying these people there is a loss that is suffered by all of us.
Again, I quote:
Their disappearance is a loss for the larger society which could learn a great deal from their traditional skills in sustainably managing very complex ecological systems.
If we could learn that, would that not be a great step forward for humanity?
What sort of an approach or policy is needed in a nation to prevent these disasters to aboriginal and indigenous peoples from occurring? These are disasters which are directly related to the processes of resource development which no one wants to stop. I repeat again, Brundtland is not antidevelopment in its major over-all themes. What the Brundtland report calls for, interestingly enough, is a policy of self-government or selfdetermination for aboriginal peoples. Again, I quote from the report which states:
The starting point-is the recognition and protection of their traditional rights to land and other resources that sustain their way of life.
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These groups [must have] their own institutions to regulate rights and obligations that are crucial for maintaining the harmony with nature and the environmental awareness characteristic of the traditional way of life.
Hence, the report goes on to say, that the "recognition of traditional rights must go hand in hand with measures to protect the local institutions that enforce responsibility in resource use. This recognition must also give local communities a decisive voice in (all matters related to) resource in the area". That is exactly, precisely what the Lubicon people in northern Alberta are asking for; it is exactly what the Nishga people in British Columbia are demanding, and there are many other instances of that kind.
By way of illustration, let me refer to the Nishga people of the northwest part of British Columbia. These people have, since time immemorial, responsibly defended, governed, managed and shared the land and the resources of the Nass River watershed.
In July, 1983, a pamphlet was published by the Nishga Tribal Council. The question was asked: "Are the Nishga people opposed to development?" They give the following answer, which I quote from the pamphlet:
We are for development. We have always seen the development of our resources as a way of enhancing our culture and traditional values. Like most concerned Canadians, we do not support the kind of development which imposes tremendous negative impacts while offering few benefits. We are for orderly, rational development which is in tune with our culture, economic interests, and long-term survival.
A period of time before this pamphlet was written the same Nishga Tribal Council did a study within the Nass River Valley on forest resources. Remember, Mr. Speaker, that we are talking now about their traditional lands, lands to which they make a very legitimate claim, lands to which they state that they have aboriginal title. This study that they undertook carefully looked at current management resources. Here is what they found.
Up to 36,000 acres of the area logged and said to be reforested is not satisfactorily reforested; 73 per cent of the best quality logged area is choked with brush; 25 per cent of the soil in logged areas has been severely damaged; high-grading has occurred, that is, the accelerated removal of the best forests; requirements for reforestation, timber utilization, forest management, planning, and protection of the environment, all of those requirements have, in many instances, been relaxed.
The answer to this type of problem, this situation, is clear. The answer is in keeping with the ethics of the Brundtland Commission, that is, a recognition of the aboriginal rights of those people, and the aboriginal title of the Nishga people. This recognition by Canada and by the Government of British Columbia ought to lead to negotiation and a satisfactory settlement of this outstanding claim.
Finally, Brundtland suggests that earnings from traditional activities can be increased through the introduction of

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marketing arrangements that ensure there is a fair price for the produce from aboriginal communities. Apropos to this point, I believe a few comments would be in order concerning Canada's oldest industry, that of fur trapping. For many native people today trapping remains an essential part of life. This traditional pursuit is consistently conducted with a clear eye to conservation. Yet, trapping is coming under increasing attack from the animal rights movement which is opposed to any kind of animal use.
In the 1970s the seal industry was challenged and it was all but destroyed. The result of that was to deprive many northern Inuit communities of the main basis of their livelihood. Now the fur industry faces exactly the same threat. Recently, the British Minister of Trade indicated to the United Kingdom House of Commons that he was preparing a measure to force retailers to label some wild fur products indicating that they are derived from trapped animals. The Grand Council of the Cree said to the British Government, regarding this proposed legislation, that unlike the seal ban, not only the Inuit communities are targeted now, but aboriginal people throughout and across Canada.
Georges Erasmus, the Canadian Co-chairman of Indigenous Survival International, recently stated before a parliamentary committee that studied the fur issue that aboriginal peoples have always seen that it is possible to play a responsible productive role in nature, and it is possible for human societies to be a part of the balanced ecosystem. The animal rights group cannot accept that as a premise.
I conclude by referring again to a very important point made by the Brundtland Commission, namely, that larger societies can learn a great deal from those who practise traditional skills in sustainably managing very complex ecological systems.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in the debate on the consideration of an opposition motion moved by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood (Ms. McDonald):
That this House condemns the Government for its failure to act on urgent environmental issues, especially its failure to negotiate a treaty with the United States to reduce acid rain emissions; its failure to incorporate environmental matters in major economic decisions, despite endorsing the Brundtland Report and the report of the National Task Force on Environment and the Economy; and its failure to effect a clean-up of the toxic wastes contaminating the Great Lakes Basin and the St. Lawrence Seaway.
That is the motion we are debating, Mr. Speaker, and there are a great many things that could be said, beginning with acid rain. I see that the Hon. Member for Parry Sound-Muskoka (Mr. Darling) is present. He and I had the opportunity to serve together for some three years on the Special Committee on Acid Rain which he chaired, and as far as I know he stills chairs. It was a matter of great concern to the committee then, as I am sure it is now, that there has been no treaty on acid rain with the United States.
After all is said and done, after the summits and the Envoy's reports, and the mention of the possible negotiation of a treaty by President Reagan when he was here last year, at the end of the day we are really no further ahead with respect to actual reductions in American emissions that affect the Canadian environment.
In fact, some of us would argue that we are actually worse off because of some of the actions taken by the Conservative Government. Why are we worse off? One of the things that became clear to all committee members, whether or not they are willing to admit it, is that the Canadian Government, and particularly the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), by accepting the clean-coal technology approach of President Reagan, accepted a view of the acid rain problem which played into the hands of those on the American side who do not wish to see immediate action on acid rain.
I believe it was last June that the special committee on acid rain went to Washington. The following points were made to us over and over again by people who were our friends and allies in the States, that is to say, the people who were trying to get legislation that would actually mandate specific reductions. They said that our Prime Minister wittingly or unwittingly- that is not the point-had actually played into the hands of the very people they were fighting against, that is, the coal lobby in the United States; that it was the coal lobby that was behind the kind of approach to which the Prime Minister and the President agreed; and that we were actually making life more difficult, not less, for those whom we perceived as our allies in Congress and elsewhere in various environmental groups in the United States.
I think that is as true today as it was in June, 1987 when we were there. Nothing has come of President Reagan's last minute add-on to his speech in the House of Commons in respect of an acid rain treaty. We all know-those of us who know anything at all-that it was added as kind of a facesaving gesture so that the Prime Minister would have something to point to. I suppose that is understandable in the larger world of political images and whatnot.
However, the fact remains that if our bottom line concern, to use a phrase which I do not actually like, is whether or not there is any less acid rain falling down on Canada as a result of the policies of the Government, the conclusion must be that that is simply not the case. Maple trees continue to die in Quebec. Lakes in Ontario continue to get worse, many thousands of them to the point of being dead lakes. I would say in respect of acid rain that government policy has been a perfect failure.
As some Hon. Members will know, I was the NDP environment critic for three years. Now I am the external affairs critic and deal with things such as arms control, disarmament, regional conflicts in the Middle East and Central America, and all kinds of such things. Despite the obvious difficulty and
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threat to human life and to peace in the world that these situations present, they produce much less despair in one than trying to deal with environmental issues. One thing overtook me in three years as one of the people responsible in this place for trying to bring about and to keep environmental issues on the environmental agenda when they were there. It was the fact that most of the problems about which we are talking are incremental, cumulative, and keep on doing damage to the environment every minute of every day of every week of every month that we sit here and concern ourselves with other things that I would contend are often much less important than the fact that we are persistently poisoning ourselves and the environment and putting at risk the future health of creation and of future generations. It just keeps happening. It makes one want to cry out: "Why, why can't we muster the same kind of concern about these things as can be mustered around other issues?"
A good example, as far as I am concerned, is the one on which I spoke in the House the other day in the context of a Private Member's Bill, the question of the ozone layer. We know that when styrofoam breaks down it produces or releases chlorofluorocarbons that eventually gather at a certain level in the atmosphere and break down the ozone layer. This increases the possibility of skin cancer and does other damage to the environment. Yet in one's daily life one is constantly confronted with the use of these substances, not for essential purposes. It is not as if we are talking about having to use this substance for purposes for which no other substitute can be found.
Just this morning on my way here on an Air Canada flight from Winnipeg, I noticed that all the place-mats on the plane were styrofoam. Here in the lobby of the House of Commons all the coffee cups are styrofoam. It is not just the case with Air Canada and the House of Commons. If one goes to almost any church in the country, one will be served a cup of coffee in a styrofoam cup. We are not talking about something that is essential. We are talking about something that could be easily done with something else. I flew on aircraft from Winnipeg to Ottawa for seven years without styrofoam place-mats. I never knew I missed them. There are so many things like that. We cannot even muster the collective moral will to eliminate the very small ways in which we contribute to a serious environmental problem like the erosion of the ozone layer. It seems to me that that is cause for wailing, lamenting, and gnashing of teeth. If we cannot even do those small things, how will we ever do the big things that are required and will be required whether or not we like it? It is only a question of whether we are going to wait until we are up to our necks in garbage before we do something or whether we will decide to do something today, yesterday preferably.
There was a program last night on television-and in fact there was one a couple of weeks ago-about the problem of land fill. We are running out of places to put all this stuff. It is not as if no one was saying these things 10,15, or 20 years ago. People who complained at that time about the fact that we would have to find alternatives to constantly producing non-
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recyclable materials and things that go straight into the garbage were considered to be just a bunch of counter-cultural hippie nuts to which nobody should pay any attention; they were against progress. I know because I was one of those counter-cultural hippie guys who were against so-called progress. The fact remains that we were right. If many of the problems to which we pointed then had been dealt with, it would have been a whole lot easier than dealing with them now when we are at the point when we must deal with things in an emergency situation.
The City of Toronto is sitting there, not knowing what it will do next year with its garbage. It is not a very good situation. Certainly it is something that could have been prevented had there been the political will and, for that matter, the political intelligence to do so. The fact remains that there are all kinds of things that are packaged for no reason other than marketing strategies. For the sake of marketing strategies we have polluted the planet. It is because these things sell better when they are individually packaged and have a plastic this and a plastic that.
I am talking about a lot of unnecessary things that we do. It does not involve any moral dilemma; it is just the question of one generation, our generation, placing our personal, economic, material convenience higher than the well-being of future generations and higher than the well-being of creation itself.
The story the other night dealt with plastic in the oceans, with fish, marine mammals and birds literally choking to death on all the plastic that we have dumped in the oceans because it would cost too much to do something about it. Individual companies and governments, be they socialist or capitalist, it does not matter, have been guilty because they could not be bothered. It is short term efficiency. But this kind of short term efficiency has dragged us down into what will turn out to be the most inefficient thing that we ever did as a human community. Literally, in the name of these short term efficiencies, we will wipe out, if we do not smarten up, the very things which sustain us environmentally and economically. It is impossible to talk about a healthy economy without talking and acting at the same time about having a sustainable environment. That was one of the points made over and over again by the Brundtland report.
Over the years we have externalized environmental costs or they have not been paid at all, they have just been lying there waiting to be paid. Things like clean air, clean water, fertile soil and naturally occurring forests and everything else have not been figured into the cost of doing business, into the cost of our economic way of life. So whoever happened to get there first, whoever happened to get to the clean air, the clean water or the naturally occurring forest first and got the rights from the Crown or whatever the case may be would do just whatever liked. That may have worked for 50, 60 or 70 years, the very short time that we have just done what we pleased with

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our air, soil, water and forests. It will turn out to be historically a very short period of time but a very historically significant time if we do not change our ways. The people of the future will look back and say: "Would you believe those guys in the 20th century?" Would you believe what they did between 1910 and 1990?" Or whatever the period may be. "Would you believe the incredible lack of foresight or the incredible moral responsibility of what they did in a period of 80 to 90 years to that which took thousands and thousands of years to build up?" Woe I say to the generation that is able to be accused of that. Yet that is exactly the kind of accusation which can be made against the people of the 20th century. We can only hope that in the latter days of this century we will smarten up and do everything that is in our power to do in order to rectify the very terrible situation in which we have got ourselves.
There have been a few victories, I suppose, Mr. Speaker. They should not go unmentioned. The resolution of the problem with respect to South Moresby is the one little victory and a significant one that comes to mind. But people are still camped out at Strathcona Park on Vancouver Island trying to protect one of the oldest provincial parks in British Columbia from the kind of mining exploration which the provincial Government has decided to permit. The battle goes on.
The Hon. Member for Cochrane-Superior (Mr. Penner) mentioned something on which I hope I still have some time to comment, namely, the whole question of the fur lobby and that in the past a very successful campaign was waged against the seal hunt. That campaign has now been extended by animal rights groups and others to all fur products, and the appropriate cabinet Minister in the British Government is considering some kind of action which would discourage people from purchasing Canadian fur products.
I want to put on the record my opposition to this kind of action by the animal rights groups and by the British Government, if it chooses to take this kind of action.
To the extent that the environmental movement has been involved in this, although some groups like Greenpeace appear to be pulling back from their activity and participation in the anti-fur lobby, they have participated in something which has undermined the economic viability and the traditional lifestyles of people who are their natural allies. It seems to me that the native people and environmentalists are in many ways natural allies. I have always regretted the extent to which some in the environmental community have participated in the antifur lobby. I am glad to see that many in the environmental movement are coming to perceive that this is an inappropriate course of action for them. One of the things I think is important to the over-all sustainability of the environment is the sustainability of native lifestyles and native communities.
I notice, Mr. Speaker, you were signalling that I have little time left, and the Minister of Transport (Mr. Crosbie) is nodding in agreement. With that, I will bring my remarks to a close.


David Berger: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie) for his contribution to this debate. In particular I paid attention to the part where he referred to his plane trip this morning and the styrofoam cups that we use here in the House. I decided to make a quick inquiry about his comment on the cups to see whether the Member was right, but I do not know the answer. This is the kind of problem consumers have. Members of Parliament are supposed to be particularly well informed about issues of this nature. As I said, I made some quick inquiries and was told that styrofoam cups are okay, that CFCs are not used as an agent for blowing in making these cups. Instead they use hydrocarbons such as propane or butane. While I asked my interlocutor how can one identify what cups have CFCs and which do not, I was told that cups which break up into little chunks and bubbles when you pick away at them are okay, that CFCs are not involved in them. Apparently the ones that use CFCs are smooth. I have part of a cup here that we use in the lobby. I started to rip it apart. If they rip like paper, apparently they are supposed to contain CFCs. I suppose you can guess, Mr. Speaker, that I am somewhat confused in that it is difficult to determine what kind of cups contain CFCs and what kind of cups do not.
This reminds me of a point I made when speaking in a debate on the environment several weeks ago. I said that one of the things the Government could do, even if it did not want to ban outright the use of CFCs, would be to require that products containing CFCs be labelled as such, allowing consumers to make intelligent decisions about whether they want to purchase such products or not. It is a point I felt that I would like to raise in this debate, and I invite the Hon. Member to respond if he would care to.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, there are kinds of foam that do not contain CFCs, and part of the problem, as the Hon. Member has said so well, is that one is not always aware what foam is which. The idea of labelling is certainly a good half measure but the best thing would be not to permit these products to be made in the first place, particularly if there are alternatives, and there are. However, even if hydrocarbon or something else is used as a blowing agent rather than CFCs, there is still the secondary environmental problem which is that these are non-biodegradable substances. In fairness, though, that is not what I was talking about when I was speaking.
The Hon. Member made a good point. Just recently in my home province, the Government announced an aid package for a company that was making styrofoam egg cartons. If those styrofoam egg cartons are being made with the kind of foam that contains CFCs, then this is hardly an instance of integrating environmental and economic decisions. I cannot say for sure exactly what process will be used-


Lynn McDonald: They're going to use the good stuff.
March 21, 1988


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: I am told by the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood (Ms. McDonald) that it was the good stuff, not the stuff with CFCs.


Lynn McDonald: But it wasn't cardboard either.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: In any event, at least it was not CFCs. Had it been, that would have been a classic example of economic and environmental decisions being at odds with each other. The fact that the process does not use CFCs is certainly something I am glad to hear. I see that the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood checked that out.


Mr. Barry Turner (Ottawa-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to add some input into what I think is an extremely timely and very important motion which is before the House today. The Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood (Ms. McDonald) and members of her Party have been constantly supporting issues that relate to the environment.
Someone said to me the other weekend that we should start treating Canada as if we planned to stay here for a while. Indeed, we do. As the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie) just mentioned, those who come after us will look back and ask why we did this, why we did that and why we were so concerned about resource exploitation. They will ask why the Government of the day was not focusing more aggressively on issues of immediate impact on the environment.
The environment knows no partisan politics. I invite all Hon. Members to bone up on environmental issues because I think it will be a major point of confrontation during the next election campaign. If Members or candidates are not conscious of the environment in their own neighbourhoods, provinces and country, they will be facing pretty tough questions from their constituents or their potential constituents.
I want to speak briefly today on securing sustainable development in Canada with the following points of view. I want to talk about the Government's record on implementing the principles of sustaining development as described in the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development and Canada's national task force on environment and the economy.
Almost a year ago, the world commission, commonly known as the Brundtland Commission, released its landmark document entitled Our Common Future. Canada called for this commission and Canada generously supported and funded it throughout all of its work. We commend those who produced the final report.
In the broad sense, the Brundtland report is not one of despair. Rather, it is a message of hope. Simply stated, the commission argued that every nation must integrate environmental considerations into economic decisions. Our Common Future envisions a new era of growth through sustainable development.
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In his speech to the United Nations last fall, our Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) said the following to the assembly:
The environment and economy cannot be addressed as two separate global problems; only by viewing the two as one can either be resolved.
The federal Minister of the Environment went on to say at the assembly in his recommendations that the concept of sustainable development should be supported and that UN agencies and affiliates should ensure that their programs reflect that concept.
Canada worked very hard within the assembly to ensure unanimous support for a resolution passed last December calling upon all Governments, the United Nations and multilateral and development institutions to review and ensure that their policies and programs contribute directly to sustainable development. Canada has already been successful in having the food and agricultural organization and the UN industrial development organization adopt a resolution on the concept of sustainable development.
As Hon. Members know, at the Commonwealth heads of Government meeting in Vancouver last year, the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), along with all of the other Commonwealth leaders, agreed that the goal of environmentally sustainable development should be central to national and international economic policy. As we have seen recently, an announcement was made a few weeks ago indicating that CIDA, our Canadian aid program, will try to do everything it can to concentrate aid on projects that would ensure that sustainable development is realized in countries throughout the world to which we give assistance.
Hon. Members might recall that years ago, I lived and worked in eastern, central and southern Africa in the areas of national parks, wildlife and tourism. Aside from having a remarkable learning experience, I was impressed by the fact that the Tanzanians, Kenyans, Zimbabweans and Malawians recognize that within the context of their own environmental development, their wildlife resources and national parks play a very important part in sustaining the future of their countries.
I recently returned there, just three months ago, after being away for 11 years. Although these countries face great hardships, their leaders, Ministers and Members of Parliament with whom I met continue to underline the value of the land and the value of their natural resources to the sustainable growth within their own countries. Let us recall that these are very, very poor countries. It would be easy for them to just brush that aside and develop the land, cut down all the trees and kill all the wildlife. These people live from day to day and from week to week, but they have recognized the importance of maintaining sustainable growth in their own countries.
Last September, Canada hosted a diplomatic conference at which 22 countries signed what is now called the Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer. Canada s effort will continue to focus on the management of the global commons in the atmospheric sector, mainly through support

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for the development of a law of the air. Canadians are also deeply concerned about global climate change, and Canada will host an international conference in June in Toronto that will address the issue among other atmospheric issues. The conference is called "The Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security" and is another example of Canada's commitment to the Brundtland Commission's call for prudent management of the global commons.
I want to talk a bit about something that has been very important to the over-all context of the environment and important to me and to the people of Ottawa-Carleton. The international co-operation to secure an abundance of wildlife as recommended by the Brundtland Commission is already evident through co-operation between Canada and its neighbour, the United States. In 1986, Canada and the U.S. signed a $ 1.5-billion North American waterfowl management plan to restore and enhance waterfowl populations.
The plan, which is a milestone in multilevel government and private-sector co-operation, aims principally at conserving habitat beneficial to both wildlife and agricultural interests. I underline that it is of benefit to both wildlife and agricultural interests. It will be of extreme importance in western Canada, the breeding grounds of the North American waterfowl. Once this plan is fully implemented, enhanced water-fowl populations will make a valuable economic contribution to all regions of North America.
We have heard reference to acid rain here today. We all know how serious that problem is. The Hon. Member for Parry Sound-Muskoka (Mr. Darling) has been leading the charge for many years to get not only his Government and our country to recognize the importance of this transboundary problem, but to get the Americans to recognize its importance as well. Last year at a conference in Quebec City a report was released by a man named Paul Hansen from the Izaak Walton League of America. It is called Acid Rain and Water-Fowl: The Case for Concern in North America. In the forward to the report he refers to this devastating problem and I quote:
Now comes this report from Paul W. Hansen of the Izaak Walton League of America, pointing to the involvement of acid rain in the welfare of breeding ducks. Based upon preliminary research by Canadian and U.S. biologists, this report presents sobering information on the adverse effects of acid rain on Black Duck and other duck populations.
In North America, particularly eastern North America, since 1955 the Black Duck population has declined by 60 per cent. This beautiful bird used to be called the Crown Prince of the Atlantic Flyway. It has been conclusively proven by these researchers that acid rain is having a very negative impact on the breeding habits and habitats of the Black Duck. That is a barometer which says we have to act and act quickly. When you see that kind of a reduction in the number of water-fowl, you know we have a serious environmental problem.
World Wildlife Fund Canada has been working aggressively in co-operation with the federal Government, provincial
Governments and the private sector in many important areas of wildlife habitat and restoration. In fact, they are working on what is called the Canadian Endangered Species Program. Last year the federal Government announced a new program within the context of the Endangered Species Recovery Fund involving $1 million over the next four years. Let me just quote a word or two from the last annual report of the fund concerning this work:
In 1986, a rather sad Canadian milestone was reached. The national list compiled by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada officially exceeded 100 species.
That should not be happening. For whatever reason, 86 per cent of all Canadians have expressed the view that saving endangered species is important to them. The federal Government made a commitment to spend $1 million to assist with these programs. Whether it be the Bald Eagle, the bison in Wood Buffalo National Park, or other endangered species, many projects are being pursued and we are going to continue to co-operate in an effort to enhance the potential of our wildlife resources throughout the country.
The World Wildlife Fund Canada is also involved in administering the Wildlife Toxicology Fund which is fully funded by the federal Government. They submitted a report to the Minister of the Environment last April. Monte Hummel, the Executive Co-ordinator of the fund, concludes, based on this federal support, and I quote again:
The first 19 months of operation of the Wildlife Toxicology Fund have been immensely successful by any measurement. The quality and diversity of work supported is second to none, and we have achieved the desired leverage effect of using Environment Canada funding to secure financial support from others.
An excellent example of co-operation between federal funds and the private sector administered through a third party organization, the very well-known and successful World Wildlife Fund for Canada. I congratulate Mr. Hummel and all of his colleagues for their efforts and we look forward to expanding those efforts.
The Canadian Council of Resource and Environment Ministers put together a national task force on the environment in the economy. The Prime Minister and all provincial Premiers discussed and endorsed the report of that task force at the conference of First Ministers last November. The Prime Minister stated that we must encourage economic growth in harmony with our environment. That addresses very clearly and concisely the concerns brought forward by the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood in her motion which we are now debating.
As was recently referred to by the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill we had a significant achievement last year with the magnificent archipelago off the West Coast of British Columbia known as South Moresby. The islands contain some of the last virgin rain forest in Canada. It contains many unique plant and animal species. These islands are also home of the Haida Nation, a nation rich in cultural heritage. The economic value of the timber contained in the rain forest on the islands created for Governments and the
March 21, 1988

forest industry a difficult trade-off between short-term and long-term interests, and between regional and national values.
Through co-operative efforts of Government, industry and the people of South Moresby, environmental and economic goals were finally reconciled and a national park will soon be created there as part of a multimillion dollar economic development strategy for the area. This is based on the sustainable development concept which ties directly into the discussion we are having today in reference to the Brundtland Commission report. The Haida's role in the strategy will be central. Canada will be working to develop similar demonstrations of how environmental and economic considerations can be successfully integrated through this kind of partnership and co-operation.
Reference has also been made to energy and how it relates to not only Canada's use, needs, future and present, but also within the context of the free trade agreement. The Hon. Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Masse) should be congratulated for his success in applying the Brundtland message in his area of responsibility. The department has an impressive action plan to integrate environment and economy which addresses the inclusion of environmental considerations in cabinet documents and the rigorous application of environmental assessment. This approach can be considered as a progressive model for government departments at all levels. Indeed, the federal agenda calls for the integration of environmental considerations into the policies of all federal departments.
Within the context of sustainable development, to meet this challenge as well in the agriculture sector, for example, federal and provincial Governments have collaborated in developing a national agriculture strategy. This strategy acknowledges that soil and water resources must be protected and improved through conservation and development programs, thereby guaranteeing agricultural productivity for future generations.
We have also seen a national policy for managing fish habitat instituted pursuant to the federal Fisheries Act. Its long-term objective is an over-all net increase in the productive capacity of fish habitat, to be achieved through conservation, restoration, and the development of habitat for aquatic plants, fish, shellfish, crustaceans, and marine animals in general.
Recently, the federal Government announced a new national water policy. I am pleased that it has done so, as I am sure you are, Mr. Speaker, The water in the Hamilton area is not exactly drinkable.
Witnesses recently appeared before the legislative committee studying the environmental protection legislation. They were extremely concerned about the pollutants, chemicals, waste and toxins that are not only killing the Niagara River but the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence. Canada used to be
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known as a country with beautiful lakes, rivers and wildlife. These are finite resources and can only withstand a certain amount of punishment. They have been punished for decades.
We must recognize that in order to achieve sustainable economic growth there must be an environmental component to every project we undertake, whether it is a housing project, a mining project, a forestry project, the creation of a national park or the utilization of our rivers for hydroelectricity.
We must never lose sight of the importance of the environment. The national water policy is very timely. The Rideau River flows through the City of Ottawa and empties into the Ottawa River. When I was young, I used to swim in the Rideau River at an area known as Mooney's Bay.
Today, at best there are 40 days during the summer when one can go in the water. I will be asking the federal Government to work closely with the Province of Ontario, the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton and the Cities of Ottawa and Nepean to clean up Mooney's Bay under its national water policy. They will spend a lot of money this year through Parks Canada, the National Capital Commission and the Regional Municipality of Ottawa Carleton to develop a marina at Mooney's Bay which is sorely needed. Today, anyone who falls into Mooney's Bay may have to be rushed to the Riverside Hospital for a tetanus shot. We need to enhance the tertiary treatment to our storm sewage drainage system. In that context the Brundtland Report even touches the Rideau River.
The Member for Parry Sound-Muskoka is well aware of the importance of the tourism industry in his riding. It is absolutely essential. Tourism is vital in all of Canada. It is the second largest employer in the National Capital Region.
If we do not enhance the quality of our lakes and rivers, we will face serious consequences in the future. Last spring I had the privilege of visiting for the first time a northern part of Canada. I spent a week at Tuktoyaktuk and had an opportunity to visit Holman and Victoria Islands. Although the North is magnificent and quite beautiful, where I experienced 24 hours of daylight for the first time, what I saw were barrels, drums, oil spills, garbage, boards, piles of steel and used fencing lying everywhere. That was not my vision of the North.
I spoke to the Minister responsible for natural resources in the North and talked to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Mr. McKnight), and to the Minister of the Environment. I said it is necessary to work together because places like Tuktoyaktuk will not sustain themselves if we do not protect the fragile environment.
This is a very important motion before the House today and all Members should take heed. If our environment dies, we will die with it.

March 21, 1988
Adjournment Debate


PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURN MOTION
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kempling):: It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 66, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia)- Environmental Affairs-Acid Rain-United States President's Announcement/Request for Signing of Canada-United States Agreement; the Hon. Member for Trinity (Miss Nicholson)-Financial Institutions-International Banking Centres-Minister's Position; Toronto City Council Resolution; the Hon. Member for Capilano (Mrs. Collins)- Unemployment Insurance-Maternity Benefits-Request for Amendments-Retention of Babies in Hospitals.




[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Ms. McDonald:
That this House condemns the Government for its failure to act on urgent environmental issues, especially its failure to negotiate a treaty with the United States to reduce acid rain emissions; its failure to incorporate environmental matters in major economic decisions, despite endorsing the Brundtland Report and the Report of the National Task Force on Environment and the Economy; and its failure to effect a clean-up of toxic wastes contaminating the Great Lakes Basin and the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Mr. Jacques Guilbault (Saint-Jacques):: Mr. Speaker, I shall, if I may, take a few moments to speak in this debate on the environment, the subject raised in an Opposition motion presented here in the House.
It is perfectly true that the people of my province, that Quebecers are very concerned about the quality of the environment, and I would say that concern is increasing.
I realize that Canadians on the whole are becoming increasingly concerned about the environment, but last month, the results of a public opinion poll conducted by the firm Leger et Leger in Quebec, showed that Quebecers are even more concerned about the environment then we thought. I will mention some of the facts discovered by this well-known polling firm which published the results of the survey in the Journal de Montreal of February 10. People are now very much concerned about the quality of the environment in Quebec, as much as 83 per cent. We can say this has now become a major political issue.
People were asked: Generally speaking, what kind of pollution do you think is most harmful? Of the persons
surveyed, 33 per cent mentioned acid rain; 28.8 per cent thought all forms of pollution were harmful, and I think they are right; 19.5 per cent thought air pollution was most harmful, while 13 per cent mentioned water pollution. When people were asked what they thought was mainly responsible for pollution, 70 per cent put industry first. One of the most important and surprising discoveries was how people answered the following question: Would you be in favour of separating your garbage into waste paper, plastic and glass, for recycling purposes? Seventy-seven per cent of respondents said yes.
This demonstrates that people are not only concerned about the environment but are also prepared to make an effort to clean up their surroundings. They are prepared to go even further, as we see in the answer to the following question: Would you be willing to pay a special anti-pollution tax to improve the quality of the environment? Usually when taxpayers are asked whether they want to pay an additional tax, the answer is no. In this case, 59.3 per cent said yes, they were willing to pay a special tax to fight pollution.
Finally, I think the House would also be interested in the answer to another question. People were asked: Do you think environmental regulations in Quebec are strict enough or not strict enough? Not strict enough, said 83 per cent.
That is how important the quality of the environment and cleaning up the environment has become to our Quebec constituents. It is not surprising, because the headlines in the media are increasingly bringing major problems to our attention. For instance, here is one headline, and I have several that go back one or two years.
In La Presse of February 26, 1987: Le Quebec est devenu la fosse septique des Grands Lacs (Quebec, the Great Lakes' Septic Tank). No wonder people were getting concerned when more recently, in November 1987, Le Devoir mentioned the renewal of the Great Lakes water quality agreement between Canada and the United States, it pointed out that the St. Lawrence was not included. The St. Lawrence was not included as part of the Great Lakes system, although all environmental experts had recommended this long ago.
Here is a headline from March 5, 1987. That was a year ago, but I will get back to this one because "a year later, we still have the same situation". Here we have a headline showing a photograph of the Minister of Environment (Mr. McMillan), who said on the subject of cleaning up Quebec's waterways that: "Ottawa won't spend a cent".
According to one study, Quebec is the province most severely threatened by acid rain. No wonder Quebecers are becoming increasingly concerned about environmental issues. This study was released and discussed at the end of an international forum on acid rain held in Montreal. This was in February, which means last month. "The federal Minister of the Environment", said the article, "refused to take part in this seminar organized by I'Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA). Officially, the Minister had declined", the article read, "because he had to accept an award from the Governor
March 21, 1988

General in Toronto. However, it was rumoured in UPA circles that the Union's opposition to free trade had caused a breakdown in relations between the UPA and the Minister of the Environment". The result was, of course, that the Minister failed to participate in an important conference on acid rain.
Meanwhile, the Quebec Minister of the Environment was doing his best to go it alone.
Here we read: "Lincoln will set up an action committee to clean up the St. Lawrence". Lincoln was of course prepared to spend a lot of money, but he expected the federal Government to do its share. A year ago in June 1987, we read: "Lincoln is sure Quebec will get $ 100 million from Ottawa to clean up the St. Lawrence River."
In a few minutes I will tell you what Lincoln said on a television broadcast exactly six days ago. He was still negotiating to get his $100 million.
I have here a cartoon that appeared in Le Devoir on February 19, 1988. We are not supposed to show pictures here in the House so I will describe it. It shows a huge grey cloud drawn to represent the American flag, with stars and stripes in dark and light grey. We see drops falling on a forest which are actually miniature missiles, piercing maple leaves. This picture reflects the message Quebec's farmers, through their union, I'Union des producteurs agricoles, have tried to get through to the federal Government several times. In January 1987, the UPA wrote to the Hon. Member for Brandon-Souris (Mr. Clark) at the House of Commons, commenting on the report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Forestry.
Quoting statistics, the UPA said that if we compared the number of maple taps in 1986 to the number of taps in the eight, previous years, already 2 million taps had been lost during that time, largely due to acid rain. This is important when we realize that, in Quebec, usually 14 million trees are tapped annually. This means one-seventh has already been lost.
The UPA, very direct in its strategy unlike any other movement in this country, presented the federal Government with a bill for the loss in revenue suffered by farmers. It did so because the federal Government had so far failed to do enough, especially in the area of research. If we compare the work done in this area to what the federal Government has done, says the UPA, the Government's efforts are not only insufficient but laughable, unless we consider that a total of $30,000 spent in 1986 on research on the impact of acid rain on maple trees is worth mentioning.
According to the UPA, the Government of Quebec was practically bearing the total cost of research on the decline of maple stands and deciduous forests, a forecast $1 million for that year.
It was then the UPA decided to take the unusual step of sending a bill to the federal Government. However, six months later the Minister of the Environment said before a Committee of the House that he never heard about it. At this point I
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would like to quote from a letter that Bernard Duval, first vice-president of the UPA, wrote to the Minister of the Environment, in which he said: "We were astonished at what you said". In answer to a question from Mr. Penner, a Liberal Member who was on the Committee during the hearings of the Special Committee on Acid Rain, the Minister said on December 2: "Mr. Chairman, I must confess I am not aware of any overture made by the industry directly to the Government for assistance. I am unaware of the application from the industry for assistance from the federal Government to compensate, or to make up for the decrease of productivity." However, six months before, in a letter to the Prime Minister and to Mr. Merrithew (Minister of State (Forestry and Mines)), the UPA wrote, and I quote: "-sent a bill for $87 million, for losses incurred by maple producers." This goes to show what the UPA is up against when it tries to deal with the very serious problems they are facing in Quebec.
Nevertheless, I must give the Minister of the Environment some credit on acid rain. Granted, the Minister was unable to make the United States realize that we must be prepared to spend money on fighting acid rain, but he may have been able to make the U.S. acknowledge the fact that acid rain can cause damage. The Minister has managed to conclude agreements between the federal Government and the provinces under which, here in Canada, we are committed to reducing S02 by 50 per cent between now and 1994. However, the Minister is having trouble convincing the Americans to set similar standards for emission reduction. If the Minister is to be credited for concluding certain agreements with the provinces, I think we should also give credit to the previous Minister, the Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia), who started negotiations with the provinces in 1984 before the present Government came to power.
I am willing, therefore, to give some credit to the current Minister, but I suggest I should also give some credit to the previous Minister who had initiated the process of nitrogen oxyde reductions by adopting regulations which were finally implemented in late 1984. These regulations make it compulsory to use catalytic converters to reduce the level of nitrogen oxydes in the atmosphere. These devices are standard equipment on all 1988 new car models sold in Canada.
In 1983, the Hon. Member for Davenport was already doing his share by starting the progressive removal of leaded gas. This type of gas is still sold, but less and less, and modern vehicules now use unleaded gas, which is advantageous.
I would like to remind the House that the last two provinces-New Brunswick and Nova Scotia-have just signed these emission limitation agreements.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to return to the cleaning of the St. Lawrence river, a river which is very important not only for navigation, but also because a very large portion of the Quebec population lives on its shores. Metropolitan Montreal, with nearly one third of the Quebec population, is surrounded by the St. Lawrence River. I remember with melancoly the time

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when, as a young boy, I used to swim in the St. Lawrence when it was still possible to do so. Needless to say, Montrealers have been deprived of this pleasure for many years, but we hope, because of the efforts made by the Hon. Clifford Lincoln, our own Quebec Minister of the Environment, to see the day when it will be possible again to go for a swim in the St. Lawrence River.
Minister Lincoln has announced a $3 billion investment project over a 10 year period which could clean up the St. Lawrence river by 80 per cent. At the same time, it is seeking from Ottawa a meagre contribution of $100 million over the next five years which he has not been able to obtain so far, unless, unknown to me, he obtained it in an agreement signed last night.
I have here a written transcript of the Mid-day program of March 15, 1988-six days ago

during which the Hon. Cliff Lincoln explained his $3 billion clean-up and investment project. He was asked:

"How much are you getting from Ottawa?" Was is the question. The answer was, "Well, we are not yet getting money. We are just talking to Ottawa right now. We are talking to Ottawa for a $100 million contribution over five years".

So that is what Minister Lincoln was doing or had begun doing a year ago. There is no reason to say that the Minister of the Environment has been overzealous when it comes to cleaning up the St. Lawrence River.
And what most irks Montrealers, Mr. Speaker, is that when this Minister of the Environment comes to Montreal he does so to brag about his accomplishments. I recall that during one such visit about a year ago he practically insulted Montrealers by telling them that, as he saw it, the St. Lawrence River was so polluted that it looked like an open sewer. I agree with the Minister that the St. Lawrewnce is like an open sewer in the Montreal region. But as Montrealers, what is the percentage in listening to the Minister telling us that our river is dirty if he has to be coaxed to make a much smaller contribution than the amount the Government of Quebec is prepared to put up. In fact, if the Quebec Government is ready to put up $3 billion over ten years, this works out to $300 milion a year. They are asking Ottawa for $ 100 million over five years, or $20 million a year.
That is much less, like fifteen times less. So I would suggest to the Minister of the Environment that if he should come back to Montreal he might indeed make resounding pronouncements if he is so inclined, but I wish he would also bring his wallet and tell us how much money he is prepared to spend to clean up our river-the wish of all Montrealers-instead of always cutting the funds earmarked for the environment, down 17 per cent as they are now when compared with what was available in 1984 when the Conservatives took over.


Mr. Les Benjamin (Regina West):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to take part in this debate because it is a subject about which I have always felt very strongly. I grew up in the Prairies of western Canada and spent a great deal of time in British Columbia and Central Canada. I have watched and was one like all the rest of us who was guilty of the ruining of our environment, the polluting of our air and water, and the degradation of our lands and forests.
I am not rising to point a finger of blame at any one person, any one Party or any one Government concerning the state of our environment and our ecology. I point a finger of blame at all Governments at all levels for failing to act. That includes Governments of all Parties. I point a finger of blame at these Governments for failing to act sufficiently.
"By their deeds shall you know them". The deeds of us all as individuals, of Governments at all levels as well as corporations, farm organizations and unions are all guilty of failure. The point is that from this day on what will we do about it?
It will cost money. It will cost a great deal of money. It will cost profits. It will cost a great deal of profits. However, if we really mean what we say, and I have listened to Members from all sides of the House today, then we must be prepared to pay those costs.
I said that I would not point fingers. I do not cite the following figures just at the Conservative Government of today. I cite them only as an example of what previous Governments have done in Ottawa, as well as what previous Governments have done in the provinces. They are only meant as an example. I hope the Government and all other Governments of all other Parties at all other levels have learned some lessons from these figures.
I believe that all political Parties have made excellent policy statements on the environment. I believe that they mean what they say in those statements. Let us learn a lesson from what the Government did by, let us say, inadvertence, because the concern over the deficit took priority over the concern of the welfare and the priorities of the environment.
In the fall of 1984 when the ink was hardly dry on the ballots, $33.6 million was cut from the Department of the Environment, which wiped out 416 positions. Many of those positions were held by internationally known and recognized researchers. The Canadian Wildlife Service was cut by 23 per cent. A research program monitoring toxic pollution of the Great Lakes, which led to the initial identification of dioxin contamination, was eliminated. I have listened to several speakers today complain about the toxin levels in the Great Lakes. The darn program was eliminated in the fall of 1984.
The Wildlife Interpretation Centres were closed. National park expansion and improvement programs were slashed by just about $20 million. Support for the Toxicology Research Centre in Ontario was withdrawn. In a related move, the environmental secretariat at the National Research Council
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was closed. The centre employed 17 scientists and support staff. It was conducting important studies, including the effect of lead poisoning on young children. If something is going to be done about lead poisoning, there must be research. Well, Mr. Speaker, it was closed.
I started off by saying that this is going to cost money. Anyone who does not recognize that fact does not intend to do anything about it. It is going to cost money even if it means an increase in the deficit. It is the type of increase that is not an expense but an investment in the future of this nation and in the future of our environment.
I put the question to my colleagues in this House, I put it to every citizen in Canada of this present generation, my generation, the generation of my colleague, the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie) who is a generation after me, and to the generation of my hon. friend from Bow River, who is the generation ahead of me-actually he looks younger than I am. There are three generations of Members in this Chamber and I put the question to all of us: Who do we think we are? We have no right, not even a privilege to leave the type of mess that our children will inherit a lot of already, and our grandchildren and great grandchildren will inherit. We have no right to leave that. We have no right to pass on all of those costs of cleaning up our environment to those generations. We must put hundreds of millions of dollars a year starting this year, now, into cleaning up the mess that we have left.
It seems to me that Governments of all political stripes have been influenced too much by what I call the industrial and economic development syndrome which, if there is a buck to be made, that takes priority. The evidence is there for anyone to peruse; "anything to make a buck". It means misusing our forests, our water, and our air, but if we can get another plant, another industry, some more jobs, we will do it. Any one of us can throw out facts and figures in the House of Commons about how many more jobs have been created without looking at what has been done to our air, our water, our land, and our forests in the meantime.
It seems to me that those who would put development ahead of anything else are the ones, in my opinion, who would dig a mine over their mother's grave, if they thought they could make a buck. They are the ones who would deplete our forests, ruin our air or ruin our water if it made for a good bottom line on the annual report and the dividends to the shareholders, no matter what harm they had caused for succeeding generations and the costs that succeeding generations would have to pay.
In my opinion, the person who is operating a mine, or operating a forest industry, should be required by law to put as much or more back into the environment as they took out. They have to be required to do so by law, otherwise they should not be allowed to operate. There are a number of countries in western Europe where that has been done for
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years, and they are of various political stripes. I know that that flies in the face of the U.S.A. version of what North America should be, that it should be wide open for the entrepreneur, and the bottom line profit syndrome. But I do not think, in fact I am convinced, that the overwhelming majority of Canadians do not want that type of attitude in this country. Of course, it is an international problem. That is no excuse for us not doing what we should and can do in cleaning up our own mess within the territorial boundaries of Canada.
What about our water, for example all the very modest programs that we used to have on sewage treatment, and for the last number of years it has been impossible to receive any type of federal assistance for the treatment of sewage. Yet, there are still metropolitan areas in Canada that pour raw sewage into the rivers. Under the Constitution that is a violation of what is in the best interest of the nation as a whole. Ottawa could say to the municipalities, the metropolitan areas, and the provinces that are allowing this to happen, "If you do not stop it, we will step in and stop it for you and you will pay your share". That has to do with what I believe the Constitution calls the good order and the good works for the benefit of Canada. What is done that is deleterious and deteriorating to the people along the St. Lawrence River or the Great Lakes harms not only those people, but harms the whole nation.
I would say to those who are harvesting our forests that it must be treated like a harvest and in no other way. For every tree they cut, they must plant two or three more, because some of them will not survive. That has to be a cost of their doing business. It should not be necessary to give them some kind of a tax benefit for reforestation. If they cut the tree down, they must plant at least two in its place. If they are not prepared to do that, they should then be asked to leave and we will let someone in who will do that. No one should have to receive a tax benefit for leaving the environment the way they found it, no matter what enterprise they are involved in.
I would say the same thing about land use on the Prairies, where I come from. We keep misusing land and farming land that should never have been farmed. Some of it should be returned to grass and prairie. Some of it should be replanted to trees that were cut down by our fathers and grandfathers.
We should be required to use good tillage practices so that the top few inches of prairie soil is not turned into something that looks like flour which, when the wind blows and it does not rain, moves about in the air and drifts into the ditches.
A moment ago I talked about water. Technology has been in place for years, a tertiary sewage treatment system, whereby we can convert common, ordinary sewage into water which is almost drinkable. I see my good friend opposite smiling, but he knows that I am right; it is almost drinkable. However, we can return it to the environment at a point where it will not cause any further harm to the waters which receive that treated sewage. Technology is also in place to use semi-treated sewage

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as a fertilizer or left where it is. I know that that does not make fertilizer or chemical companies very happy, but that is too bad.
I do not think there is any point in the Government continuing to consider the Department of the Environment as a minor or junior department. The fact of the matter is that it is a major department which needs to be treated as such. It needs the funding which it deserves. Whether the Conservatives, the Liberals, or the New Democrats are in power, any one of the three Parties that does not do so deserves the condemnation of the entire population of Canada. We need the political will to do it.
I close by repeating what I said earlier. Who do we think we are that we can leave the kind of mess that the present generation is creating to future generations to pay for? We caused it. We should pay for it. We should clean it up.


Mr. Stan Darling (Parry Sound-Muskoka):: Mr. Speaker, I am more than pleased to enter into the debate today. I commend the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood (Ms. McDonald) for bringing this matter forth on an opposition day.
Needless to say, I feel that the Government has achieved a great deal. However, I am also well aware that there is more we can achieve and more we must do.
Let me begin by agreeing that indeed acid rain is a very serious threat to the environment, especially to the economy of the country including the economy of Ontario, the industrial heartland. Quite literally the facts speak for themselves.
More than 350,000 lakes in eastern Canada are vulnerable. Tens of thousands of them have lost 60 per cent to 80 per cent of their neutralizing capacity. Approximately 150,000 lakes have a PH level of less than 6.0, the acidity level at which detrimental effects begin to occur. Some 14,000 lakes have already been acidified. This means that they have a PH level of less than 5.0 and are essentially devoid of normal aquatic life.
I am well aware that the figures are pretty large when it comes to lakes. However, Ontario and Quebec are indeed very fortunate. It is estimated that Ontario has 800,000 lakes, more or less, and that Quebec has in excess of one million. More than 50 per cent of eastern Canada's forests grow in areas where rainfall is acidic. More than 80 per cent of all Canadians live in areas where acidic deposits exceed acceptable levels.
As if this litany of environmental concerns were not enough, economically acid rain is endangering the natural resource base in an area of eastern Canada which measures about 2.6 million square kilometres. This resource base sustains approximately 8 per cent of Canada's Gross National Product and some 255,000 jobs.
I am proud to remind the House that the Government has tackled this threat to the Canadian environment and economy head on. In March, 1985, the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) announced the implementation of a comprehensive national
acid rain abatement program which will slash Canadian sulphur dioxide emissions by 50 per cent of 1980 allowable levels by 1994 at the latest.
Essentially the Canadian abatement program was designed to address three objectives. First, Canadian emission reductions will reduce the damage we are causing to ourselves. Second, the Prime Minister recognized that Canada must have clean hands if we expect the United States to take action. Third, Canada has a responsibility to reduce the damage to which it is contributing in the northeastern United States.
The federal Government has set a clear and straightforward yardstick against which to measure progress on the acid rain issue. We have determined that acid fall-out must be reduced to less than 20 kilograms per hectare in all vulnerable areas. Our scientists have found that damage occurs when acid rain fall-out is above this amount. I am pleased to say that they have also found evidence that when acid fall-out drops below this threshold number, recovery of the environment starts to take place.
Calculations have been done which tell us how many tonnes and where sulphur dioxide emissions must be cut to achieve the 20 kilograms per hectare per year objective. We have concluded that total annual sulphur dioxide emissions from the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border eastward must be reduced to 2.3 million tonnes, and that the transboundary flow of sulphur dioxide into eastern Canada must be reduced to about 2 million tonnes.
The federal Government has shown great leadership in developing Canada's part of the bargain. As a measure of the Government's ability to work constructively with provincial counterparts, all seven federal-provincial agreements required to implement the Canadian acid rain abatement program have been signed.
The Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) is certainly to be commended in this regard. Some of them had to be hauled in, almost kicking and screaming, before we got their signatures on the line. All these agreements specified that the required reductions will be achieved by 1994 at the latest.
Current sulphur dioxide emissions in eastern Canada are about 2.8 million tonnes, 35 per cent less than they were in 1980. This illustrates that Canada is well on its way to achieving the necessary reductions in its sulphur dioxide emissions. We can all be proud of our abatement program. We will all benefit from the results.
The federal Government has also put into place strong nitrogen oxide emission controls. Cars and trucks account for about 40 per cent of total Canadian NOx emissions. As of September 1, 1987, all new cars and light trucks sold in Canada were required to meet the most stringent emission standards, requiring the use of the state of the art control technology. The standards for heavy duty trucks take effect
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December 1, 1988 which is, in fact, nine months sooner than in the United States. These will reduce NOx emissions from mobile sources in Canada by up to 45 per cent by the year 2000. I will admit, Mr. Speaker, that I was one of those who was pushing the Government very hard in 1985 to see if at all possible those controls could be applied on the 1987 model cars, but I was not successful. However, in 1988 we will. As the Minister remarked in his comments this morning, leaded gasoline will be outlawed by 1992. That will also certainly help the NOx emissions.
Once fully implemented, the Canadian Acid Rain Abatement Program is estimated to cost the private sector and provincial utilities about $500 million annually. This comes on top of our comprehensive local ambient air quality program. I believe a similar figure for the United States is about $5 billion a year. As my hon. friend, the Hon. Member for Regina West (Mr. Benjamin), said pollution control is pretty expensive. It certainly does not come easy. Canada will achieve its clean air objective in ways that are appropriate to the Canadian situation and way of doing business. Some of our detractors in the United States say that we have not done it in the American way and question our good faith. To them and to all Members I say, look at the bottom line. Look at the results. Canada has achieved clean air with respect to sulphur dioxide. Now we are taking the action necessary to clean up acid rain.
The transboundary aspects of the acid rain problem can only be solved through the negotiation of a bilateral accord. However, to be effective, to be useful, the accord must call for more than further problem definition and further study. I think most of us are aware that the acid rain problem has been studied to death in the United States. Now is the time for action and control legislation.
The nature, the cause and the solutions to the acid rain problem are already abundantly clear. Unless Canada and the United States can talk about emission control targets and schedules, then we are not talking about a solution, only that the problem exists. One need only open the history books on transboundary environmental issues to see the utility of pollution control targets and schedules. The first Canada-U.S. Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement signed in 1972 contained targets and schedules to reduce phosphorous loading in the lakes. These important waters are healthier today than they were 15 years ago, and improvements continue to be made because of additional targets and schedules in subsequent agreements.
To be acceptable to Canada, a Canada-U.S. acid rain accord must have definite targets and schedules for acid rain reduction. Specifically, the flow of U.S. sulphur dioxide to eastern Canada must be reduced to 2 million tonnes by 1994, a time frame compatible with our own program. I believe that would be about a 50 per cent reduction.
Canada's objective is based on sound scientific information and existing principles and obligations under international law which both Canada and the United States support. Under
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international law, states must ensure that activities within their jurisdictions do not cause damage to the environment of other states. This principle was applied in the development of Canada's abatement program, which will reduce the amount of sulphur dioxide that Canada exports to the United States from about 1.5 million tonnes, the 1980 level, to about 800,000 tonnes by 1994.
The United States currently dumps about 3.2 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide on eastern Canada every year, less than the 1980 level of four million tonnes. At least the level is down a bit. As a result of actions taken in the United States, principally to control local air quality, it is already 40 per cent along the course Canada wants it to travel. The federal Government acknowledges that how the United States goes about reducing its transboundary pollution flow to 2 million tonnes is its own business. Canada's interest is in the extent to which transboundary pollution flows are and will be reduced. The federal Government will judge all U.S. initiatives against this yardstick.
The federal Government also acknowledges the realities of the U.S. situation on acid rain. Its regional divisiveness, its potential impact on the high sulphur coal industry, just to mention a couple. We also know that the power to take the necessary action is divided between the executive and the legislative and that these two branches do not always see eye to eye. Indeed, even factions within either branch may not see eye to eye. However, it is up to the United States. It is its obligation to solve them, not Canada's, and to bring the reductions in by 1994.
As a Canadian Member of Parliament with some experience on the acid rain issue, I am forever impressed with the Americans' ability to generate misinformation. The U.S. National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program, commonly known as NAPAP, interim assessment on the causes and effects of acidic deposition is a classic example.
The federal Government has soundly criticized the conclusions of the NAPAP report which can only be described as bizarre in the face of a wealth of conclusive and compelling evidence that has been accumulated on the nature, causes and solutions to the acid rain problem. The executive summary portrays the problem of acid rain as neither serious nor in need of any intervention. It minimizes what is known about the matter, over-complicates what is uncertain and describes a market driven future in unreasonably optimistic terms.
The Minister of the Environment on several occasions has pointed out the flawed, misleading and incomplete nature of the NAPAP report to its U.S. counterpart, to other members of the U.S. administration, the members of the U.S. Congress and to the American people. The Minister has told American decision-makers that scientific information can only assist in public policy making. Science cannot and should not be the sole determinant of public policy. To think so is to put scientific investigation in a role for which it is neither designed nor equipped to do.

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The international protocol on the stratospheric ozone depletion, signed in Montreal last September, is an excellent example of the role of science in public policy making. Science gave us the evidence that we had a serious problem with the ozone layer and indications of what is causing the problem, namely, releases of CFCs, chlorofluorocarbons, into the atmosphere. To say we know far more about the science of acid rain than we do about the science of stratospheric ozone depletion is an understatement. Yet the international community, including the United States, was able to band together to slash world-wide releases of CFCs, and Canada played a leadership role in this example of international co-operation to protect the environment.
U.S. decision-makers supported actions to protect the ozone layer. I assure Hon. Members that the Government will continue to make every possible effort to get our American neighbours to accept the need for similar action on acid rain.
The federal Government has a reasoned and reasonable three-pronged strategy for getting U.S. action on acid rain. First, it will continue to work with the U.S. administration. Some Members opposite might ask why we should continue to do so when, despite our best efforts, we have not been very successful to date. The reason is simple and straightforward. If we cannot negotiate with the U.S. Congress, with the American public or with any other American institution, what are we to do?
Second, we will continue to ensure that Congress is fully apprised of the Canadian position. Full and accurate information will be crucial to congressional action on any eventual agreement we conclude with the administration. Members of Congress should have the benefit of our knowledge, research and experience. They should know where we stand and know how important their efforts to reduce U.S. pollution are to the quality of our air and to the acid rain problem.
Third, the federal and provincial Governments and private individuals alike must work with interested Americans in an effort to broadcast the understanding in the United States that acid rain is a serious international problem which must be addressed now. The key to action against acid rain in the United States and in Canada is public opinion.
The Minister of the Environment has personally made contact on more than 45 occasions with Americans to press Canada's case on acid rain, and he plans to do more. Our special committee on acid rain went to Washington last year. We hope to make a further trip this year, and we will certainly be trying to get the message across.
As most Hon. Members know, the Prime Minister and, I assume, the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark), are going to Washington on April 27. I would hope that the acid rain problem would be very high on their agenda.
I know that free trade is important, but in my view, acid rain is certainly very important.
I might as well tell Hon. Members that I wrote a personal letter to the Prime Minister and to the Secretary of State for External Affairs emphasizing the importance of the acid rain problem. I wrote that we have been nice guys long enough, we must lay it on the line and say that something must be done.
On April 6 of last year, I believe, in this very Chamber, the President of the United States made some comments and gave a half promise that something would be done on acid rain controls. Nothing has been done as yet. Therefore, as I pointed out in my letter to the Prime Minister, on this problem he is on the side of the angels and I would hope that he will certainly lay it on the line.
As I mentioned, the committee will be going there in June, we hope. Arrangements are being made with the embassy. We hope to get the message across so that something will be done.
I understand that there is only a 25 per cent chance, according to experts in Washington, that there will be acid rain legislation this year. I had hoped that the President would go out on a high note by trying to bring in some meaningful legislation on acid rain.


Mr. Harris:: Mr. Speaker, I would like to tell the Hon. Member that I was recently in the Province of Nova Scotia in the vicinity of a thermal-generating station owned by the province which is producing electricity from high sulphur content coal, contributing in our own country to acid rain. It is all very well to say that we all want to see something done on acid rain, but when will the Government take decisive and definitive action, not only to prevent our own industries from contributing to acid rain but to insist that our American counterparts also do their share?
We have put up with an awful lot of nonsense and we have cut back our own commitments. There are no scrubbers on some of our own machinery. When will the Government insist that this be done?


Stan Darling: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question of the Hon. Member. I am well aware that Nova Scotia produces a great deal of its energy through coal-fired utilities, and I am also well aware that high sulphur content coal is used.
As the Hon. Member may be aware, Nova Scotia was the last province to sign the agreement on pollution. The Hon. Member is also well aware that pollution controls to be put on industry, and this one happens to be a Crown-owned industry, falls under the jurisdiction of the provincial Government. Therefore, it is up to the Province of Nova Scotia to do something. We now have a commitment from the Nova Scotia Government that it will reduce emissions across the board in order to conform and so that Canada will have its emission levels down to 50 per cent of the 1980 level by 1994.
I appreciate what the Hon. Member is saying. There is no question about it, I would like to see that particular utility install scrubbers. I have been a member of acid rain committees for the past seven or eight years, and this fact was thrown
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in our faces when we went to Washington. We were told: "What are you doing preaching to us when we have scrubbers installed on many of our utilities and you do not have one, and your automobile-emission levels are three times more lenient?"
Now we have rectified that. I am aware that there are no scrubbers and that the only one that may be coming on stream, I believe, is in Ontario. The problem in Canada has been not with our utilities so much as with our smelters. They have been the real cause of the pollution.
A great many of the provinces, Ontario in particular, are moving toward nuclear power which is pollution free, even though it may have certain other dangers. That was one of the reasons why Ontario did not go along with installing scrubbers, even though it had half promised to do so a few years ago.
In Nova Scotia, certainly the great majority of power is produced by means of coal, and I would hope that something will be done on that. The Nova Scotia Government must have some plans since it signed the agreement to make these reductions.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. James):: It being 6 p.m., it is my duty to inform the House that pursuant to Standing Order 82(12), proceedings on the motion have expired.