1988-09-26

Mr. Jim Hawkes (Parliamentary Secretary to Deputy Prime Minister and President of the Privy Council):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 106(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the Government's response to two petitions, Nos. 332-5329 and 332-5371.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



STRIKING COMMITTEE


Mr. Scott Fennell (Ontario):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the seventy-second report of the Striking Committee.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



CRIMINAL CODE


Mr. John Nunziata (York South-Weston) moved: for leave to introduce Bill-329, an Act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of the unborn).


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


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, since the Supreme Court of Canada rendered the Criminal Code provisions relating to abortion as being contrary to the Charter of Rights, Canada has been without any federal law regulating abortion.
The Bill I am introducing today is the identical Bill introduced in the Upper Chamber, the Senate, by the Hon. Senator Stanley Haidasz on May 18 of this year. That Bill is presently being debated in that place.
The net effect of this Bill would be to afford protection to the innocent unborn from the moment of conception with one exception and that is where the life of the mother would be in danger.


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

Ms. Margaret Mitchell (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour and duty to present a petition signed by a number of constituents of Vancouver East. It concerns the high incidence of crimes, including murder, robbery, and sexual assault, which are committed with knives. This is on the increase in all major cities across Canada.
Whereas the federal Criminal Code and court decisions allow people to carry knives for self-defence, the petitioners state that this is directly responsible for knives being used in a variety of crimes. Therefore, the petitioners ask Parliament to amend the federal Criminal Code to prohibit the carrying of knives by citizens in public places with the exception of those activities where the use of a knife is integral to legitimate work or for religious reasons, such as in the case of the Sikhs.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it agreed?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.

September 26, 1988
Canada Child Care Act



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Wednesday, September 21, consideration of the motion of Mr. Epp (Provencher) that Bill C-144, an Act to authorize payments by Canada toward the provision of child care services, and to amend the Canada Assistance Plan in consequence thereof, be read the third time and passed; And on the amendment of Ms. Mitchell:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word "That" and substituting the following therefor:
"Bill C-144, an Act to authorize payments by Canada toward the provision of child care services, and to amend the Canada Assistance Plan in consequence thereof, be not now read a third time but be referred back to the legislative committee for the purpose of considering Clauses 3, 4, and 5."
Mr. Gauthier:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There have been negotiations and discussions. The Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner) would like to be recognized on debate. I understand the Hon. Member for Halifax West (Mr. Crosby) had the floor when we adjourned this debate last week. I have talked with him. He has generously and very nicely agreed to step down temporarily to give his place to the Leader of the Opposition, with the proviso that he maintain his position after this speech, that is, that he be recognized for the 18 remaining minutes of the speech which he was going to make this morning. I would like to thank him and all Members of the House. I hope there would be unanimous consent to allow the Leader of the Opposition to take the floor.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier has indicated that there is an agreement in the House. I might say to all Hon. Members and to the public that this is an example of the courtesies that are extended in this place. I want to thank the Hon. Member for Halifax West.
I take it that there is consent. Is that agreed?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Right Hon. John N. Turner (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, nothing is more important to us as Canadians than the future of our children. We want the very best for them. We want to give the next generation the very best we can give: good education, a good apprenticeship in life, opportunities for a meaningful job, a secure future. In terms of today's living, one of the most important priorities for the next generation for our children is affordable, accessible, high quality child care.
You and I know, Mr. Speaker, that society has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. Today only one in six Canadian families fits the traditional family pattern, the nuclear family: the wife at home with the children, the husband at work. Many families are headed by single parents, most of whom are young single mothers. More than half of all
women with pre-school children work outside the home, but only about one in five of these children is served by an adequate child care system.
Hon. Members know that there is a child care centre here on Parliament Hill because some time ago we recognized the needs of the people who work here and the needs of their children. The same need exists right across the country, but it is obvious from this legislation that the Government of Canada really does not have a deep understanding of this need. The legislation before Your Honour and before the House is nothing more than a cruel hoax on the children and parents of Canada.
f Translation]
Mr. Speaker, I could find at least a good dozen reasons for the importance of this debate. Today's debate will shape the future. It is a debate about justice and social balance. It concerns our children and grandchildren and the place they will have in our society.
What we are talking about today is of course not just a plan or a system to look after our children. What we are really talking about is the kind of society we want to build. Our policy will have a direct impact on social peace, family harmony, equality of opportunity, criminality and even the demographics of our country.
Families have to face very different challenges, responsibilities and objectives than our ancestors or even our parents did. By changing the family structure, the evolution of society has also changed the role and responsibilities of our governments.

We ask ourselves, Mr. Speaker, how the Conservative Government has responded to that challenge. What is the Government's approach to the future of our children? First, it must be said that the Government has dragged its feet for the last four years. We have had study after study, delay after delay, and only now, on the eve of an election, has the Government suddenly discovered the importance of child care. The three-year-old who needed child care at the time the Government was sworn in is now seven years old and no longer eligible for the programs under this legislation. The single mother looking for affordable child care still does not have it under this legislation.
Worse than that, the Government has been playing politics with our children's future. After four years of delay and double talk the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) is now trying to blame the Senate. Last week he posed on the steps just outside this House and declared to reporters that the women of Canada were not going to be denied child care by a bunch of elderly Senators. That is the kind of shallow cynicism we have come to expect from our Prime Minister. It is the kind of cynicism that I do not believe Canadians will tolerate any longer.
Let us begin with the facts. The Government hesitated,
delayed, and postponed for four years the bringing in of this
September 26, 1988

legislation. This Bill reached the floor of the House only on July 26. There were only two days of committee hearings. Before that committee there was almost unanimous condemnation of this legislation.
After four years of procrastination the Government had the arrogance to impose closure on a Bill of this magnitude and importance. When the Prime Minister blamed the Senate last week this Bill was still before the House of Commons; this Bill was still before the deliberation of Members of Parliament from all sides of the House. If the Prime Minister wants us to facilitate his timetable, his agenda for an election, he should tell us the date. He should let us know what he has on his mind.
Frankly, as a Canadian I would really like to know what the Prime Minister sincerely believes about this Bill. He slipped into the House of Commons early on the evening of August 11. He did not say much about child care. I have searched that speech and I cannot glean his views. I have no perception of what he really understands about the issue. The speech was nothing but a ritual bombast boasting about the flimsy record of the Government.
As I recall that evening, Mr. Speaker, even you were moved to accept the intervention of my colleague, the Hon. Member for Bourassa (Mr. Rossi), and point out to the Prime Minister that there are rules in this House that we have to speak to the subject, that we are bound by relevance. I suppose one really could not expect the Prime Minister to understand that, he so seldom participates in debates in this House.
In that speech the Prime Minister boasted that his program was better than that offered by Governor Dukakis or VicePresident Bush in their mutual quest for the presidency of the United States. The branch plant manager says that he is doing better than head office.
The last time 1 looked, I thought we were talking about Canadian children. I thought we were talking about improving Canadian social programs. To make a comparison with a country that has a completely different approach to social justice, to social equality, to fairness and opportunity, is both misleading and irrelevant.
When the Prime Minister spoke in the House on August 13 about trade, again his speech did not really deal with the issue. It was largely a list of citations from business people. It was a speech of paid endorsements. Surely in the speech to the House of Commons on this issue on August 11, he could have found at least one endorsement. We would have been presented with them if he had them. It is significant that he was unable to bring one shred of evidence from one recognized group in this country having any knowledge or appreciation of the problem facing the future of our children and Canadian families. There was not one citation. The reason was that he could not find any.
Canada Child Care Act
During these truncated, restricted hearings before the committee limited to two days by the Government, there was unanimous condemnation of the Bill. There were 40 witnesses, including the Canadian Teachers Federation, British Columbia Daycare Coalition, the Advisory Council on the Status of Women, the National Union of Provincial Government Employees, the Canadian Ethnocultural Council, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. They were limited to half an hour each, but unanimous in their condemnation of this legislation.
We are prompted to ask you, Mr. Speaker: Who then supports this legislation? Only a Conservative Government, only that Government.
Inadequate child care is a major barrier to providing equality for women at work. It is not just a woman's issue. It is not just an issue for parents. It is an issue for all of us. It is an issue for everyone in this country. It is an issue for parents, yes; women, certainly; Governments, of course; and employers. But fundamentally it is an issue that this country must face and with which every Canadian must come to grips.
We need a system that catches up to the demand. We also need a system that provides minimum national standards negotiated with the provinces. We need equality of treatment across the country. We need accessibility that is equally distributed across the country. The Conservative Bill does not even come close to meeting those criteria.

Mr. Speaker, there is a major flaw in the Tory system, and it is that child care should be aimed exclusively at children of pre-school age. This means leaving thousands of school children alone, without supervision, for several hours a day for a number of years.
These are the so-called latchkey children, usually wearing around their necks the key to their home or apartment. It worries me, every time I meet one of these children with a key around his neck. I am not only worried but downright apprehensive about what might happen to them.
I think it is absolutely essential to take a comprehensive approach to child care that must not be restricted to children of pre-school age. By excluding children between the ages of 6 and 13, we would certainly save money today, but we would also incur a disproportionately high social cost in the future. It is my firm belief that Canada must have a child care system that is designed to give Canadian families the widest possible range of options and, within that range, child care that is of high quality, accessible and affordable.

We also know that Canada now has approximately 240,000 accredited places either in day care centres or at home. The Conservatives want to add a maximum of 200,000 additional spaces in the next seven years. That would less than double the number of places by the year 1995.

September 26, 1988
Canada Child Care Act
Some of the evidence that was addressed in committee indicates that based on past trends and the current funding arrangements, the number of licensed places would have increased by about 300,000 over the next seven years without the Government's Bill. The Government is saying that over the next seven years we will get 200,000 additional places. That is why I said that this Bill is a hoax. If your child happens to be No. 200,001, tough luck, you are out.
Moreover, by trumpeting this totally inadequate program, the Government is trying to make Canadian parents believe that it offers a solution to the problem. The reality is that it is no solution at all. The fact is that 70 per cent of our children who require child care services will still not have access to this program after seven years. We find that totally unacceptable. Canadian parents know that. Canadian families understand that. That is why, universally, they are condemning the Government for putting forward a totally inadequate plan for child care in Canada.
Part of the Government's so-called strategy for children is to increase the tax deduction for child care expenses. Tax deductions give the highest priority to those families in the highest income brackets. Under this legislation the family that happens to be in the top tax bracket and has two pre-school children will receive a total deduction of $3,600 per year. A single mother will receive $200. That is the Prime Minister's idea of fairness.
It is the same lopsided idea of fairness that has motivated the entire tax policy of the Government during the last four years. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the total burden has been placed almost completely on the lower and middle income groups.

1 think it is shameful that the Government of Canada has taken so long to realize it has a responsibility to ensure that in the distribution of joint programs to Canadians, the basic principle of equity is observed, wherever they may happen to reside. Establishing national standards would give Parliament and Canadian families the assurance that across this country, federally-financed child care services will not fall below acceptable levels.
Our basic criticism of this Bill is that it does not contain national standards nor provide for national accessibility. There is nothing in this Bill!
The Government's Bill is also disturbing in other respects. In addition to setting a ridiculously low ceiling on development of the network, the Tory program makes no provision for transferring to subsequent years any unused budget surplus for a given fiscal period.
This means that if for some reason, a province is unable to invest all of its federal funding within the prescribed timeframe, it will not have a chance to catch up during the following year. Here again, it is Canadian families who will be deprived of a service they really and urgently need.
I clearly indicated my position at the beginning of what I had to say this morning. I firmly believe that we must provide Canadians with a child care system offering a wide range of services of the highest possible quality. After having read this Bill, it is clear that families and community groups will not receive the support they need to develop a high quality child care system in this country.
We in the Liberal Party have committed ourselves to establishing a national child care foundation. This organization will provide groups with the funds needed to create and build the facilities which would best serve their needs. These facilities would then be eligible for cost-sharing grants to cover operating costs.
We on this side of the House are convinced that child care services in our native communities must be compatible with and not in conflict with their culture and traditions. Money put aside for native child care in this Bill is not only inadequate. It is discretionary and left to the whim of the Cabinet as to how and when to spend it.
We in the Liberal Party believe that any child care system that merits our approval must be based on two principles-on sharing the burden and on providing choices. Our proposal is that parents, the private sector and Government, provincial and federal, share the costs of the program. It will be a mixed program with more facilities and help for those who do not have access to those facilities, particularly in rural areas. It will give all parents a choice.
The establishment of a national child care program is essential. We must allow everyone, particularly women, to participate in the economic, social, cultural and democratic future of our country.
We must relieve parents in Canada of the agonizing choice between the children they love and the jobs they must have. We must invest today in young Canadians who will build the future of Canada. Any system should provide adequate support for low and middle income families. A percentage of this child care support should come from the conversion of the child tax deduction into a refundable tax credit. This support should allow an average family to pay for 50 per cent of child care costs, while giving low income families freer access to child care.
We must also encourage business, our professions, and private companies to provide quality child care support for their employees. They will immediately benefit in terms of improved quality of work, in terms of improved peace of mind and, indeed, in terms of minimized absences for family reasons. To promote this type of program, I have proposed a capital cost deduction which exceeds 100 per cent over five years.
September 26, 1988

This child care legislation now before you, Mr. Speaker, and before the House is not a plan designed to protect and nurture our children. It is a plan designed to protect and nurture this Conservative Government at the end of its mandate. It is designed to deceive Canadian parents into believing that the Government was serious when it said that it would give our children an adequate child care plan. It is yet another reason in the upcoming election that Canadians are going to replace this Conservative Government with a Liberal Government.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Napier Turner: It will be a Liberal Government which will give Canadian children and Canadian families a child care system of the highest quality, a system which is accessible, which is affordable, and which is available for every family in the country.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Howard Crosby (Halifax West):: Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to continue the debate on Bill C-144, the Canada Child Care Act. I have particular reason to participate in the debate at this point, having just heard the best arguments of the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner) against Bill C-144.
I must say, and I think you will agree, Mr. Speaker, that while the Leader of the Opposition was eloquent in his remarks, he did not provide one cogent reason for delaying the passage of Bill C-144, never mind stopping its passage in this House or in the other place through his friends in the Senate. I urge him to instruct his colleagues and his friends in the New Democratic Party to get on with the business of passing this piece of legislation so we can start on the road to accomplishing some of the goals and aims that he outlined.
I have to say that the Leader of the Opposition is new to the matter of child care, and especially new to its priorities in the House of Commons. On March 20, 1987, he made it clear to The London Free Press and to the students at the University of Western Ontario that child care did not have a high priority with him or with the Liberal Party. In fact, he said that it would be done responsibly, that it had to be done within the financial capacity of the country to digest it. He said that there were greater needs in national defence, a guaranteed income plan, and tax reform, but that he had first to create a system in which business could flourish, and that that was his Party's greatest concern. The words sound a little hollow in the House of Commons today when they are compared with statements made in the past with respect to child care.
That is partly why I rose to participate in this debate. It was not because of the outlandish comments made by some of the members of the Opposition in the last day's debate wherein the Hon. Member for Cape Breton-East Richmond (Mr. Dingwall) made comments which I thought were simply not in accord with the facts relating to child care or the provisions of the legislation before this House of Commons. I also heard the
Canada Child Care Act
Hon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap (Mr. Riis) denigrate this initiative in terms that simply are not supported by the facts and the provisions of the Bill.
What is the purpose of the Bill that we have before us? This is another step along the road to an evolutionary process that has had dramatic changes over the last three decades with respect to the care of children in Canada. I think that some of us in this House are old enough to remember the history of this evolution and the beginning of it.
One only has to go back to the late fifties and early sixties to remember the orphanages that were present across the city centres of Canada, and I speak particularly of the City of Halifax where, in the 1950s, we had organizations such as St. Joseph's Orphanage wherein children were hidden away from public view because their families could not support them or, indeed, they were unable to support them due to their economic problems or for other reasons. It was only in the late sixties, 1968 and on, that there was a dramatic change in this attitude and, in fact, in the City of Halifax-and I was very much proud to be a part of this transition-St. Joseph's Orphanage was phased out and a new kind of institution was created which became known as St. Joseph's Day Care Centre and which is now called St. Joseph's Child Care Centre. For all that period of two decades it has been leading in innovative care for children in Halifax and in other parts of the Province of Nova Scotia. As 1 say, this was part of an evolutionary process which is ongoing and which is present in Bill C-144.
In dealing with day care I have specific reason to recall 1970 because in that year Nova Scotia passed what I understand at the time to be the first day care legislation in Canada. I was a party to the creation of that Bill, and I am very proud to stand here today and make reference to it. That too was a milestone in the evolutionary history of child care in Canada. I think there were people who denigrated that initiative at the time. In 1970 people said that this was not, enough, that it was going in the wrong direction, or that should try something else.
Those who lead the way always have to take risks. In being innovative, they always have to put their ideas down on paper and present them to the legislatures, to the Parliaments, and to the public and accept the criticism from those who would delay their actions and divert them from their goals.
Does the Leader of the Opposition and do opposition Members realize that in this very day in Canada the only access to federal funds for child care is through the Canada Assistance Plan? Do they not realize that that plan contains a means test, which excludes most of our married couples from assistance for day care services? Is that what they want? Is that why they would delay and stop passage of this Bill, because they do not want the very medium income families mentioned by the Leader of the Opposition to have access to high standard day care with government assistance? Are they

September 26, 1988
Canada Child Care Act
against that? They simply say that we should take no action because they do not like the action that is proposed.
We heard mention of other features of this system, and nobody is arguing that the national strategy implemented by Bill C-144 is the be-all and end-all. As I said, it is part of that evolutionary process. It is part of going down the road to an ultimate solution to day care and child care in Canada.
Let us talk about the need for day care. I think that is what the Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues are forgetting. We have in Canada at the moment a real need. Some would argue that people should be left to their own devices in order to provide for their children. Some would say that providing a system of child care is encouraging women to leave the home. While we understand and appreciate the views of all our people, I think, on balance, we recognize that women in the workforce, married women with children in the workforce, are part of our society in this day and age. I think every Member of this House and most of the public accept that.
I think it is important to note that this is in fact reflected in the statistics. We have 60 per cent of women who care for children under five years of age in the labour force today. If we were to create a situation in which those women could not remain in the labour force but had to return to the home to look after their children, we would dramatically increase the number of Canadian families below the poverty level.
I understand that with a statistic of 850,000 families below the poverty level that would increase that number of families by almost a half-million. I think that that is an argument in itself for prompting the House of Commons and the Parliament of Canada to take immediate steps to assist the situation so that we will not have that reversal and we will proceed on the road to economic equality and not reverse our process.
One thing I have always noticed in my involvement with the social services field is that it becomes, in the words of a current TV advertisement, a "pay now or pay later" situation. If we do not provide the assistance required by Canadians, particularly young Canadians and indeed children, we will simply pay for it later in other kinds of social costs.
The ultimate cost is that of keeping a person in prison. That is the ultimate failure of society in providing social assistance to our citizens. We end up paying what we refuse to pay in child care and in other social services and benefits, in the cost of maintaining the person in a prison institution. That is really why we have to continue to look at our social services programs to determine whether they are adequate to keep all Canadians and all Canadian families moving in the direction of progress.
We just had an election in Nova Scotia, and we got used to listening to the hollow complaints of opponents, people who denigrate and criticize the system and so on. We have heard in Nova Scotia from the New Democratic Party, its view of a new world and its criticism of the existing world. What happened? It won two seats, down from its current holding of
three seats. Some 30 of 52 candidates lost their deposits in the Nova Scotia election. The Leader of the New Democratic Party, that paragon of virtue, won her seat by 26 votes, and that is currently under recount.
Members of the New Democratic Party have no monopoly on virtue. They have no right to preach to the people of Canada and to tell them what to do, because the people of Canada, particularly those taxpayers who are directly involved in government expenditures, know what kind of services they can afford. They are now squawking. They have come to life and they are worried. Nationally, they are saying the same things that their counterparts in Nova Scotia said, and it was rejected. They have dropped in popular vote. Their two winning candidates only had 36 per cent of the vote, the minimum required for victory. When we hear them talk and shout, we know that very few people are listening, and thank God for that.
With that in mind, I want to review briefly in the time remaining the provisions of Bill C-144. We have all heard that Bill C-144 sets out the national strategy for child care. That national strategy is to build on the existing system, to take advantage of 20 years of accumulated experience of people involved in institutions like St. Joseph's Children's Centre in Halifax. We should not throw that out and start again because of some ideological position taken by some political pundit in the New Democratic Party or by the back-benchers of the Liberal Party. We have to add to what has become an evolutionary and sensible system.
What is the Government of Canada going to do? It is going to pay 50 per cent of the cost of child care across Canada in all its aspects, up from 35 per cent. Who could possibly oppose that? The Government is going to spend $6.4 billion over seven years, and it is going to add 200,000 new subsidized child care spaces.
The Leader of the Opposition told us: "Oh, no, they are not going to do that, because there is going to be over 300,000 subsidized child care spaces created in the normal course". If the normal course creates 300,000 new spaces, then we will have 500,000 spaces in Canada because the goal and determination of the Government is to create 200,000 new subsidized spaces. Again we hear the Opposition saying: "This won't happen. Don't pass the Bill because that won't happen".
My advice to opposition Members on behalf of the people of Canada is: "Let it pass. See if it does not happen. If there is no new subsidized child care spaces, then you can come back and complain. You will not even need to do that, because the people of Canada will know what has happened. Do not stop the progress and the measure because you fear some evil resulting from it that might adversely affect the political interest of the New Democratic Party or the Liberal Party. Let it go ahead in all its evilness, and see what difficulty transpires".
I know and I think that the members of the Opposition know-
September 26, 1988


Mr. Cassidy:: It is a lousy Bill to put into place.


Howard Edward Crosby: -that their fears will not be realized, that that is not the purport of the Bill, and I will tell you why. It could not possibly be, because the Bill provides that national strategy will provide $100 million for a child care innovative fund. That means new directions for child care and that handicapped children who cannot be accommodated in current child care facilities will have an opportunity to have financial expenditures that will allow them to be accommodated. Are the members of the Opposition against that?


Margaret Anne Mitchell: We want child care to be accessible. That is no way to make it accessible.


Howard Edward Crosby: If they are, stand up and say so. Stand up and say that you are against innovative action for handicapped children in our care system.
The other day I received a call from a woman-believe it or not-listening to the debates in the House of Commons. She explained the situation. She has three autistic children and she cannot find accommodation for them on a subsidized basis. This kind of innovation may resolve that problem.
Members of the Opposition say: "Stop the Bill. Get the Senate to stop the Bill. We do not want this". They are acting against the interests of Canadians when they say that. Then they say: "We want a national system. We want a national system right here. We in the House of Commons are going to establish a system for all Canadians, and we are not going to listen to anybody from the provinces when we do that". That is not a system of government in Canada.
We have a federal system, and each provincial Government plays a role in that system. I defy any Member to say differently. We all stood up and endorsed the Meech Lake Accord that assured each province participation beyond what they are now guaranteed in the Constitution of Canada.


Michael Morris Cassidy: What about national objectives? We have the right to do it. Do it.


Howard Edward Crosby: Now they want us to go back and say: "No, no, no. National standards. Forget about the promises". Pay no attention to them. They do not know anything about child care.
I ask the Hon. Member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Cassidy): What does the federal Government know about child care?


Michael Morris Cassidy: Nothing, according to this Bill. Nothing at all.


Howard Edward Crosby: I have not seen the federal Government under the Liberals in the last 20 years establish any day care centres. 1 have not seen them change any orphanages to new, modern institutions. That has been done by the people of Canada in the provinces, and they are represented by their Government, just as they are represented in this Parliament of Canada.
Canada Child Care Act
What we need is co-operation: co-operative federalism. Do Hon. Members want to go back to the Trudeau days? Do Hon. Members want to tell the provinces to shove it, that we are not paying any attention? That is not what national reconciliation is all about. National reconciliation is getting together, recognizing the problem, and proceeding to resolve it. That is what the national strategy on child care is.
I want to mention one other aspect of child care, which is tax reform. I did not stand up here the other day like the Leader of the Opposition did when he changed his view from March, 1987, threw out his documented views expressed in March, 1987, and took a new tack on child care. I started my campaign in 1981, and I have the Debates in the House of Commons to prove it. In 1981 I asked the House of Commons to change the tax laws relating to child care. Finally, eight years later, after four years of refusal by a Liberal Government, the Progressive Conservative Government is finally changing the laws with respect to the tax treatment of child care expenses.
We propose a child tax credit that will increase to $760 in 1989, doubling the allowance for child care expenses from $2,000 to $4,000 and removing the limit of $8,000. That is exactly what we asked for in 1981. It has taken all that time because, first, the Liberals would take no action for four years. The New Democratic Party never will be in power, so it does not make any difference what its Members say about it. Now we have a Government that will look at the problems, will study the issue, and will recognize that we have to be financially responsible in implementing these matters. The Government had a parliamentary task force look at the whole situation, responded to the task force, and came up with a piece of legislation that creates a proper balance between the needs of people in the area of child care and the limits of the nation and each province within the nation to provide that type of child care.
We have achieved that balance. It is not the end; it is not the ultimate; it is not a panacea. Canadians will still have to be careful in their expenditures. They will still have to be prudent in how they provide for their families. They will not get a bonus beyond that which they have earned. What we are getting is a balanced system and a recognition by the national Government in 1988, and never before recognized, that there is a serious obligation to provide child care in Canada. It is a serious obligation to the women of Canada who should have the full opportunity to participate in the labour force. However, more important, it is in pursuance of an obligation to the children of Canada to see that each child receives the type of care that will allow them to be nourished and to flourish in our society. If we do not, we will pay a price down the line. What we save in child care and in other social benefits, we will expend in other ways.
Let me conclude my remarks by saying that we have a goal in child care and we have a national strategy to implement

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that goal. It is a system that is responsible, respects the rights of women, respects the interests of children, and realizes that Canadians have to pay a price and that all Canadians should contribute to the payment of that price. It combines the national Government and provincial Governments, and the private and public sectors. That is what national reconciliation is all about. That is what co-operative federalism is. Jointly, as Canadians we can achieve that goal. All we need is not to be stopped or delayed en route to achievement of that goal by petty arguments in the House of Commons, by procedural delays, and by misuse of the process. Let us get on with the job.


Michael Morris Cassidy: In view of the commitment of the Conservatives to national reconciliation and the talk that we heard three or four years ago about the commitment to women, why is it that the Government has chosen to ignore the comments of the people who know best about day care?
In fact, representatives of some 40 groups came before the legislative committee on Bill C-144. All witnesses stated that the Bill was inadequate, it should not go forward, it was a bad Bill, and it represented a failure to provide an adequate base for expansion of day care services across Canada.
Why did the Hon. Member not stand up and ensure that the Government at least listened to women or to families from eastern Canada? Is the Hon. Member not concerned about the fact that not a single group from his constituency, from his province, or from his region, came before the legislative committee to comment on Bill C-144? Is the Hon. Member not concerned that only two groups came from the Province of Quebec? From all of eastern Canada, east of the Ottawa River, only two groups were able to appear before the legislative committee. Does that not suggest that the Government was acting in undue haste because of the failure to act before?
The Hon. Member suggests that it is a bad Bill but that it is the Bill that is here, so let us go forward and do it. Is that not a ridiculous manner in which to treat families across Canada who have need of adequate child care services and who will not get it with Bill C-144?


Howard Edward Crosby: If the Government of Canada did not want to listen to the people of Canada on the subject of child care, did not want to afford an opportunity to groups to make representations, why did it allow a parliamentary task force to be appointed? Why did it allow that task force to sit? Why did it allow the task force to send out invitations to all interested parties to come before the task force? Obviously, it was because the Government of Canada did want to consult with interested parties. Nobody ever made the commitment to take what was said in each case and inscribe it into a law. That would be ridiculous. That is not what the consultation process is about. It is about listening and then deciding, because it is the Government of Canada that is responsible for child care in Canada. It is not the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, although everybody wants to hear what its representatives have to say, and they said it. They said it in
spades. Hundreds of pages were reviewed. Therefore, what is the point that the Hon. Member makes?
Is the Hon. Member mad because every recommendation made to the committee was not written into the Bill? Let the Hon. Member look at the Bill. The Bill does not deal with those types of recommendations. The Bill states that the Government of Canada will agree with the provinces on a number of matters. That is the system.
If the Hon. Member wants to debate the system, I suggest that he rise under the constitutional heading and debate the system. Do not come into the House of Commons with blind nonsense and empty statements and complain about the system in relation to child care when the Hon. Member supports the system in all its other respects.


Margaret Anne Mitchell: I would like to comment on a couple of points made by the Hon. Member. First, he does not seem to realize that the report that he held up, which is commonly called the Katie Cooke report, is not a report of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. It is a very comprehensive research document commissioned by the former Liberal Government. It recommended comprehensive child care. It is interesting that the Liberal Party has also not picked up on the recommendations contained in that report. That report recommended a comprehensive system of child care across the country that would be available to all children where there was a need and would be developed systematically over a period of time. I wish to correct the Hon. Member on that point.
I was on the special committee on child care established by the Government, and in my view the main purpose was not to deal with the Katie Cooke recommendations. In fact, we repeated a tour across Canada. Many people felt that was an unnecessary expense. We learned that most of the witnesses who spoke to us recommended the same things as Katie Cooke, and the same things as those recommended by the witnesses who appeared before the legislative committee. We must have a national program of comprehensive, quality, affordable, accessible child care. Of course, that is what this Bill is not doing. It is a capped funding. It finishes after seven years. It does not even give adjusted funding for the poorer provinces after seven years.
It is really a very restrictive program, even worse than the Canada Assistance Plan.
The Hon. Member referred to one issue with passion and I know he feels strongly about it. That is the issue of handicapped and disabled children, or special needs children as they are sometimes called. It is very costly to provide child care for that group of children. In any good quality child care program we cannot have a token federal initiative which may or may not provide a program here or a program there for a few disabled kids. Some groups who are specialists in this field said disabled children have the same right as other children to be in regular child care centres, just the same as they have the right
September 26, 1988

to be in school. We must start in the pre-school years to open up spaces for them. That means we have to have extra capital funding and extra staff. That costs more. This program does not do that. We felt that there should be at least a $2 per space per day top-up for those kinds of spaces, and the Elon. Member thinks an initiative fund, which will be gone in probably a year, is the way to deal with disabled children.


Howard Edward Crosby: Mr. Speaker, I do not know how long that speech was but it certainly went beyond the bounds of a question. I cannot even begin to take the time of the Elouse to answer it but I will try and do it this way.
I listened carefully to the Elon. Member and sometimes I think her and her colleagues in the NDP, not only in this House but right across Canada, do not want to solve these problems. They want misery. They live on it. That is how they get elected. If you eliminated poverty in Canada they would be gone. They would be dead. They would have nothing to talk about. They do not want to solve the problems of day care. If you cannot get everyone in there who wants a space, then close the day care centre. Leave them out on the street. If they are out there they are on television and the NDP have a problem to present to the House.
If that is your attitude, oppose the Bill because it does not spell things out the way you want. If you want to keep people out of day care centres, if you want to keep children from having improved benefits, stop the Bill. Criticize it. Complain about it. Worry about whether the cover on the report is yellow or orange. Point these things out. Carp and crab and stand in the way of progress if that is what you want to do, but you are going to have to stand up and be counted. In Nova Scotia people found out what you were doing and they are going to find out nationally.
You thrive on poverty. You are going to nationalize poverty to eliminate it, but you cannot do it that way. You have to go out and fight it in the streets. You have to fight it in the institutions. You have to build the system, not denigrate it, not carp about resolutions or solutions. We are trying to resolve the problem. You are trying to stop the resolution.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The period for questions and comments is now over. The Hon. Member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Cassidy) now has the floor.


Michael Morris Cassidy: Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the Hon. Member for entertaining the House with his comments and suggest that when he leaves this House, as he may well do after the election, he apply for a job at Skit Row row on Elgin Street in my constituency.
I would like to remind you that the history of this country over the last 50 years is that the New Democratic Party and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation were the Parties consistently at the cutting edge in the fight for social reforms. Whether adequate pensions, medicare, or hospital insurance, it
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was the CCF that carried the fight. It was an NDP Government in Saskatchewan that brought in hospital insurance and medicare. The Conservative Party, backed by its allies and friends in the business sector, has consistently been on the opposite side, carping, complaining, bitching, and trying to find every way possible to oppose these social progress measures. I could go back to the 19th century-


Howard Edward Crosby: That is where you are.


Michael Morris Cassidy: -when people like the Hon. Member were saying we could not have laws to prevent child labour. They were saying Great Britain could not afford that and making similar arguments here. I think it is about time we had a Government that responded to the needs of average Canadians and their families. The legislation before us, Bill C-144, fails to do that. Nothing could indicate that more clearly than the fact that every one of the some 40 groups who appeared before the legislative committee on this Bill opposed it. They told the committee in very explicit terms how inadequate and flawed this legislation was.
The Hon. Member who just spoke on behalf of the Progressive Conservative Party, and I am not sure why they call themselves Progressive Conservatives, said: "Yes, it is a bad piece of legislation. It really does not do the job very well. However, do not criticize it. Accept it, try it out, and let us see what happens. In five or ten years we can turn around and maybe do something better".
There has been time enough and advice enough that we can do better now. That is why the NDP opposes this legislation. That is why we have been so unhappy and angry with the way the Government has pursued this legislation.

The Government has been in power for four years now. It was elected with a huge majority on September 4, 1984 and it has had a lot of time to implement a plan to finance and expand the child care system in Canada. Since 1976, Madam Speaker, the proportion of mothers in the labour force with children under three has increased from 30 to 60 per cent. Madam Speaker, if one includes all mothers in the labour force who have children that do not attend school full-time, the figure is now 75 per cent. So there is a great need for child care services, which is not at all being met by the inadequate measures proposed by the Conservative Government.
Personally, Madam Speaker, I am disappointed by the way the Government presented this Bill. Since its election four years ago, instead of bringing in a social reform package to implement a national child care system, the Government has chosen to use delaying tactics and schemes. It set up a special committee on child care, which admittedly heard a great deal of testimony and traveled across the country, but the recommendations made by families and Canadian men and women were ignored to such an extent that when Bill C-144 was presented in August 1988, this Bill was already challenged by

September 26, 1988
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the 40 groups that had an opportunity to testify before the Committee in the mere two days reserved for hearings.
Madam Speaker, I wonder how a Government that prided itself on fiscal responsibility and on planning could wait until August, that is, until the 47th month of its term, to bring in a Bill to expand child care services in Canada. Madam Speaker, what did the Government do in those 47 months? The answer is that it found all sorts of ways to delay its decision.
Finally, what did it do? At last, it presented a Bill! Parliament again sat during the summer, because the Conservatives no longer know how to manage Parliament's business so that it sits 10 and not 12 months of the year.
The Elouse met, we had maybe three days of debate at the second reading stage of the Child Care Bill, and after that, a legislative committee was formed. Did the Committee give the right to travel? Did the Committee give the right to hear all representations from groups interested in this Bill? No, it did not. Madam Speaker, the schedule set by the Tory majority for this Committee provided only two days for hearing witnesses, during which we heard about forty groups. There were no groups from Newfoundland, from Nova Scotia, from New Brunswick or from Prince Edward Island to make representations on the Child Care Bill. So there was no testimony on the impact of this Bill on the four poorest provinces in Confederation. Madam Speaker, the fact that the provinces are supposed to drop their support for day-care under the Canada Assistance Plan in order to receive the assistance proposed in this Bill is certainly significant to many groups in the Maritimes, since in many parts of the Maritime provinces, financial resources are such that they cannot even pay half the cost of commercial day-care, for instance, which will be subsidized under the system proposed by the federal Government under this Bill. However, we had no testimony from these provinces.
What will happen in Quebec? Only two out of forty groups that testified came from Quebec. I think it was the FTQ and the Coalition pour les garderies de la province de Quebec. Only two groups were able to testify within the limited timeframe allowed the legislative committee by the Tory majority. Subsequently, amendments were examined in Parliament, at the report stage. This took about three or four days. After that, we got to third reading. At the third reading stage, the Government imposed closure to limit the debate to one day, which is today, which leaves us only a day or a day and a half to listen to the debate on third reading.
Madam Speaker, if the Government was truly proud of drafting legislation that had the support of Canadian families and Canadian women, would the Government have imposed closure? No. The Government would have been so sure of the Bill that it would have put the Opposition in a position where it had to support the Bill proposed by the Government. Madam Speaker, the reason we are opposed to this Bill is that we know we can defend our position before the electorate in a general election that will be called very shortly.
As you know, Madam Speaker, we will be criticized. True blue Tory Canadians will say, as did the Hon. Member for Halifax, that if the New Democrats are opposed to this Bill, they are opposed to supporting day-care. That is not the case. Canadians know our Party favoured a bill that would increase day-care services at a faster pace, by providing more spaces in less time and at a lesser cost then the Tory Government's proposal. We are proud of what was said by my hon. friend, our day-care spokesperson, the Hon. Member for Vancouver East (Ms. Mitchell) and by my Leader, the Hon. Member for Oshawa (Mr. Broadbent), on the New Democratic Party side.
I notice that in the polls, the Conservatives do not enjoy the same support among women as they do among men in Canada, and one wonders why. Could it be partly because the Tories continue to ignore the needs of Canadian families and that, although equality is now a fact, young children continue to be more the woman's than the man's responsibility, more the wife's than the husband's?
Such conditions still prevail, although we are trying to change the situation.
Canadian women know that the Conservatives' child care policy will not meet the needs of ordinary Canadian families.
Madam Speaker, what are the weaknesses of this Bill? It fails to set national objectives, and everybody came here to tell us that under the Meech Lake Accord we have the right. . . The national Government of Canada, the federal Government of Canada has the right to define in the legislation the national objectives which the provinces must fulfil if they are to benefit from the assistance proposed in a Bill on cost sharing programs.
Second, there is a lack of vision in terms of available child care options. In ever more families people seeking good jobs have or will have to choose between working the 8-to-5 shift or perhaps from midnight to 8 a.m.
Madam Speaker, what can we say to waitresses and women who work as hostesses, good work in a restaurant but more often than not they have to work evenings. Wages and tips are better in upper class restaurants, but invariably this is evening work. Are child care facilities open at night? Of course not. In addition, Madam Speaker, the jobs that are open require people to work outside normal hours.
Madam Speaker, if we want to tell women that they have just as much right as men to hold well paid jobs in nontraditional trades, if we want women to apply for work as electricians, plumbers, long distance truck drivers and similar employment, child care services will also have to be available during non-traditional hours because this kind of work is not necessarily done between 7.30 a.m. and 5 p.m. This issue has hardly been mentioned and there is no way the federal Government can force the provinces to set up child care facilities during such odd hours.
Madam Speaker, we could not help notice that child care Bill C-144 gives no special consideration to a number of groups
September 26, 1988

such as the Inuit and native people. Just one more problem ignored by the legislation! There is no guarantee that the necessary services will be offered by the governments or by child care centres.
Madam Speaker, the Government has promised the creation of 200,000 new spaces over a seven-year period, but we in the New Democratic Party believe this objective can be achieved within four years. The Government's premise is that the development of child care facilities in this country will slow down over the next seven years, and then nothing will happen after that. The funds made available for child care capital costs under this Bill will be expended at the end of seven years. After that, nothing at all!
Funds will be paid to child care agencies without any assurance that in certain cases existing child care agencies would be subsidized, something which would create new spaces under the measure proposed by the Government.
Madam Speaker, perhaps I might quote .. .
I would just like to mention as well that in deciding to give as much assistance to commercial day care centres as it is the Government is making a serious mistake. Among other things I fear that the Government may be opening the door-and the free trade deal will add to that-to for profit American day care chains establishing themselves here in Canada and to Canadians being unable to limit them-


Margaret Anne Mitchell: The Liberals agree with that.


Michael Morris Cassidy: Apparently the Liberals agree with that-and by using the clauses respecting services in the trade deal to restrain them from any limitations by a federal Government or by the provinces. I know of some commercial services which are provided by small operators, let us say, a husband and wife who provide day care. There is a hands on delivery of service. Those kinds of services can, in certain cases, work well. However, some of those services, even where there is a hands on delivery and they are commercial, can work extremely badly.
I have been quite close to the case of a day care facility in the City of Nepean in the Ottawa area where members of the staff were paid from $9,000 to $12,000 per annum, but they were forced in certain cases to work longer hours than were being recorded on their pay sheets. In other words, their wages were being driven down by tricks like that. The operator used to come in and scream at her staff, and there was no qualified director despite provincial regulations that that be the case. The turnover was enormous. Often the requirements in terms of the minimum number of staff required to meet minimum ratios were not being met because workers were walking out in anger. People were not being paid. The workers finally got so
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angry that they chose to have a union but then the operator refused to bargain in good faith in order to establish a contract.
I could go on with this particular case. This is one of the problems which will emerge with the Government's unregulated proposals that do not set out national objectives, do not ensure quality day care, and will effectively leave things in the hands of provinces without really knowing exactly what is going to come out of it. In his own speech-

Madam Speaker, in his speech on the subject, the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) stated that the Government wanted to introduce a child-care system that would be available, affordable, high quality and accessible. Unfortunately, the four objectives stated by the Prime Minister have not been met by Bill C-144.
As far as affordability is concerned, Madam Speaker, the Government will reduce instead of increase the growth of daycare spaces in Canada over the next seven years.
Affordability-if only it were affordable! Madam Speaker, in Sweden, under a Social Democratic government which has been in power for fifty years, a family with an income of about $25,000 earned by the head of the family and perhaps a joint income of $40,000 or $45,000 in Canadian dollars, pays about $200 a month for day-care services for each child. This is affordable, and this is a national service that exists across the country. People accept that. The situation is the same in France and in many other industrialized countries in Europe.
From time to time, people in Canada say we must compete with the Europeans. I agree. But I wonder why, in European countries, day-care is available for everyone, at a limited and affordable cost, while here many parents have to pay for informal services. They either have no access at all to day-care or they have to pay $800 a month, I believe, the service.
They used to say in England that if you were a member of the upper classes, as soon as your child was conceived, you had to enrol it in one of the famous public schools such as Eton or Harrow, to be sure the child would be able to go to that school once he was seven years old.
Madam Speaker, it seems we now have the same situation for day-care. When a child is conceived or even if you are only considering the possibility, if you want day-care for an infant under the age of two in Ottawa, you should consider registering it with a day-care centre because there is such a shortage of spaces.
We on this side of the House, Madam Speaker, believe that the Governement has proposed a poor way of spending taxpayers'money on children. Some people I meet on my door-to-door campaign have told me: I can't afford day-care! My answer was: You know that a lot of what the Government is saying is aimed at giving people in the middle or upper-middle class a minor tax reduction because instead of ensuring a good

September 26, 1988
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supply of day-care services, in terms of spaces, the Government is wasting a large proportion of this money just to ensure that seven years from now, only 25 per cent of the spaces required for children whose parents work outside the home will be available.
Madam Speaker, I conclude by pointing out that nearly a million children in Canada live in poverty. We have a problem of poverty in Canada. This problem is in no way solved by Bill C-144 on child care. All who are closely interested in our children's needs, in our families' needs, oppose this Bill from the Conservative Government. So I say to the Conservative Government: Withdraw your Bill. You presented it too late for it to pass before the elections. Propose something really worthwhile for all Canadian families.


Mrs. Collins:: Madam Speaker, despite all the rhetoric at the end of the Member's speech, I think he is talking to a different group of Canadian parents than the parents I have spoken to in the last few months. These are parents who are very happy and supportive of the initiative this Government has taken for the first time to make some very significant advances in the provision of child care services and to allow parents choices. Both the profit and non-profit sectors will be involved in the provision of child care.
I would really like to comment on the fact that both this Member today and his colleague, the Elon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap (Mr. Riis), spoke last week about the fact that representatives who appeared before the legislative committee oppose this Bill. To set the record straight, in the goodness of the hearts of government Members on that committee, they proposed that the witness who appeared before the committee would be chosen by the Opposition. We gave up our spots and enabled the opposition Parties to choose the witnesses. Naturally they chose witnesses who opposed the Bill.
There were 44 groups that appeared. They represented a cross-section. There were witnesses from British Columbia, from Alberta, from Ontario, and from Quebec, and they were groups which had an interest. Most of them would like to have universally available and financed child care, a goal which is just not realistic in terms of the cost to the country at this time. I was not surprised when I heard that those groups were not particularly supportive, but I do not believe they represent the broad interests of Canadian parents, Canadian parents who support this Bill and support this initiative.
I do not find it very surprising that the Hon. Member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Cassidy), the Hon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap, and other members of the New Democratic Party are asking the Government to scrap the Bill and are critical of it because they had a relatively small handful of groups and organizations from central Canada which were opposed to the initiative appear before the committee. I remind the New Democratic Party that the early committee, chaired by the now Minister of State for Transport (Mrs. Martin)
went across the country-and many of my colleagues served on that committee-and heard from hundreds of organizations. They were presented with a wide variety of viewpoints and had a lot of support for the kinds of initiatives we have now brought forward.
This legislation is a major step forward and does indeed have the support of the majority of Canadian parents who will benefit.


Michael Morris Cassidy: Madam Speaker, I want to comment on the intervention of the Hon. Member for Capilano (Mrs. Collins) who represents one of the wealthiest ridings in the country. Perhaps tax breaks assist her constituents, but I would like to point out to her that if there were groups involved with the problems of families, of women and of kids across the country that supported the day care legislation, they have had six weeks or seven weeks to speak out. If the Conservatives agreed that those groups would not appear before the committee, why have those groups not spoken out in other ways? Why have we not been reading about their interventions in The Globe and Mail or The Vancouver Sun? Why have I not had correspondence from them urging me and members of my Party to support Bill C-144? The groups that have come forward carry a great deal of weight. I notice that the Canadian Day Care Advocacy Association was opposed to Bill C-144, as were the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women and the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.
Does the Hon. Member for Capilano suggest that those groups have no credibility on this particular issue at all? Does she think that on day care we should be listening only to the Business Council on National Issues, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, or the Citizens' Coalition in London with its right wing views? Is this whom we should be listening to, or should we in fact be listening to women?
The Labour Congress, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the National Federation of Nurses' Unions, the Canadian Association of Social Workers, the Ottawa-Carleton Day Care Association, the teachers, and many other groups oppose this legislation.
The Hon. Member for Capilano speaks of the initiatives taken by her Government and suggests that those have aided families. Does she mean the deindexing of the family allowance, the deindexing of the child tax credit, the increase in taxes on average families of more than $1,000 since 1984 while taxes on rich people were reduced to aid people in her constituency? Does she mean the deindexing of the child tax credit? Are these the measures of which she is so proud? Let her defend those during the election campaign.


Mr. Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the exchange about the committee. I wonder if we could have an explanation of why, if the Conservatives wanted to bring people forward to the committee, to support their Bill, they limited the committee hearings to only two and a half days.
September 26, 1988

Surely if the Conservatives were worried that only one side of the argument was being presented they must share the blame for forcing the committee to restrict its hearings to only a few days.
Furthermore, I am given to understand that the opposition Members on the committee did not refuse to allow people who supported the Bill to come forward. If the Conservatives had people who wanted to come forward to support the Bill, they certainly could have had them on the witness list. I am sure Members will agree that the record speaks for itself. If no one came before the committee to support the Bill, that means that there was not a good word to be said about it by those who know the most about the child care field.


Michael Morris Cassidy: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member's comments are well taken. I am puzzled. As I said earlier in my speech, if the Government wanted to ensure that there was adequate time to consider this matter, of course it could have brought its legislative project forward six months or a year ago. Instead, it was so tied up with the trade deal that it did not do so. Therefore it has boxed itself in. I suspect that this initiative will not be put into law and proclaimed because the House is likely to be prorogued for the election by the end of this week. If that is the case, the blame and responsibility are solely on the Government.
I appreciate what the Hon. Member says. I do want to say though, perhaps more in sorrow than in anger, that I noted with some concern that the official Liberal policy, although not mentioned by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner) today, is that the Liberal Party stands for expanding day care as the deficit is reduced. That suggests that its commitment to child care is a little less strong than he perhaps tried to suggest in the speech today.
The Liberals have supported funding for commercial child care, and I heard the Leader of the Opposition say today that there would be a child care foundation set up which would mean, effectively, that the ability of the Government of Canada to determine national objectives for child care would to some extent be either delegated or mitigated, or perhaps weakened, by such a foundation.
I believe that in the forthcoming election we will be talking about the record, not only of the Conservatives on major issues like day care but also about the record of the Liberals. Many people whom I meet on the doorstep these days are telling me that they do not like what the Conservatives are doing but that they still cannot forget what the Liberals failed to do when they were in office.
Bear in mind, Madam Speaker, that while child care funding did come out through the Canada Assistance Program, as the number of working women increased and the number of families in which day care was a necessity increased because there was only one income earner, one parent, in the family, there was no initiative to meet that from the Liberals. There was no national child care strategy proposed. In fact, if
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anything, the Liberals were trying to cut back in a number of these areas through such means as the Established Programs Financing Act, which of course took away funding from the Canada Assistance Plan at the provincial level.
I remark on that because, while the Hon. Member's comments on what the Tories did were well taken, I would not want people to fail totally to remember some of the problems in this area which existed under the previous Liberal Government.


Mr. Rob Nicholson (Niagara Falls):: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to make a few comments on this debate. I would suggest that there is probably no Bill, certainly that I have heard of or witnessed, that has come before this Parliament on which there is so much misunderstanding and misinformation. It is clear, and the point should be made, that Bill C-144 will result in improved access to quality licensed child care in Canada. If the opponents were completely frank and open, they would acknowledge that.
I think that members of the Opposition know that by delaying it until after an election they will be breaking faith with the provincial Governments which are, at the present time, expanding their child care systems in the expectation that 75 per cent of their capital expenditures, and in the case of have-not provinces more than 50 per cent of their operating expenditures, will be reduced by the federal Government. If they do not allow this Bill to go through, they will have to answer to the provincial Governments which will not be able to get the funding upon which they are basing their present plans. As well, they will be breaking faith with the parents and children who will benefit now from an expanded child care service program.
If some of the simple facts were ever to get through to the Canadian people the opposition Members would be justly condemned as obstructionists by the parents, children, and provinces in Canada which have so much to gain by the passage of Bill C-144.
Instead of allowing this debate to go forward they want to distract the people of Canada. They put out misinformation which I think they know is incorrect in an effort to obscure the purpose of this debate. We should make very clear that this debate is about helping children in this country and that help will be delayed if the NDP and Liberals get their way in this debate.
It would be an endless task for me and every government Member to try to refute all the misinformation that has been placed before this Parliament, particularly by members of the NDP. However, I would like to touch on a couple of the different areas that I have heard discussed in this debate over the last couple of days.
We will remember some of the comments that were made by the Hon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap (Mr. Riis). Some of those comments were picked up by the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner) a little over an hour ago. I

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would like to comment on some of those arguments and point out to this House why it is misinformation.
First, there is the red herring that while there were approximately 240,000 licensed day care spaces in Canada in 1987, there were two million Canadian children who needed licensed day care and that, therefore, this Bill's goal of adding 200,000 licensed subsidized spaces over the next seven years is totally inadequate to meet the needs.
I know that you have heard that argument, Madam Speaker, on many occasions throughout this debate. That figure of two million children represents every child in Canada under the age of 14, both of whose parents or whose single parent is working for pay or is a full-time student for at least 20 hours a week. Of these children about 850,000 are under the age of six while the rest are between the ages of six and fourteen. Can one jump to the conclusion that all these children, or even the ones under the age of six, required licensed day care?
Clearly the answer is no. That is not what Canadians told a special committee on child care.
The fact that children aged 6 and over are in school is a point that seems to be lost in this debate. They are in school for more than 20 hours a week and many under the age of six are in nursery school, pre-kindergarden or forms of nonparental care that are not counted in the total of licensed day care spaces. Many others are being cared for by a neighbour or relative in their home or in the parental home.
Also, many parents are able to arrange their work schedules so that one of them is at home with children while the other is earning. These facts have been completely ignored. I have not heard them mentioned at all in this debate by members of the Opposition.
We are told by opponents to the Bill that these so-called informal arrangements are forced on the parents by the absence and lack of licensed day care spaces. That is nonsense. In February, 1981, Statistics Canada surveyed Canadian families on their child care arrangements. At that time there were 1.13 million children under the age of six receiving some form of non-parental care. Of these, just 127,000, or 11.2 per cent, were cared for in licensed day care centres.
Parents were also asked to give up to three reasons for their current child care arrangements. The parents of only 89,000 children gave as one of their reasons that it was the only arrangement available or that they were not aware of alternatives.
Parents were then asked if they wanted to change their child care arrangements. The parents of only 165,000 pre-school children answered yes. When asked to give up to three ways they would want to change their arrangements, the parents of only 48,000 children gave as one of their desired changes an arrangement in a day care centre.
I am not saying that we only require 48,000 new child care spaces in Canada. The survey to which I referred was done seven years ago. While tens of thousands of licensed day care spaces have been put in place since then, I believe that the need has increased. But the survey demonstrates that the vast majority of parents then using informal child care arrangements were satisfied with those arrangements and did not want to change to have their child cared for in a licensed day care centre.
I would like to have seen a follow-up from that 1981 study, but I do not believe that the situation has changed to justify the argument that licensed day care spaces are required for every child of earning parents.
Those listening to this debate may not have guessed that this is an area within provincial jurisdiction. Our Government, under the leadership of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), is attempting to stimulate the provinces to add at least 200,000 new licensed subsidized spaces over the next seven years. What is the response to that? I have already mentioned the House Leader of the New Democratic Party. He said: "If the Government had done nothing at all, if it had not even introduced legislation, we would actually have more child care spaces than we have under this initiative". That is ridiculous.
Unfortunately, this comment was picked up by the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition. No economist or person has studied what has actually happened in the day care field who would honestly and fairly make that kind of statement.
The NDP House Leader says as well that at the moment there are 240,000 child care spaces in Canada, and the Conservatives have said that over the next seven years they would like to add another 200,000 spaces. He said: "Over that length of time on an annual basis, that is an increase of about 10 per cent a year. We have seen a growth of about 15 per cent under the status quo".
Let me indicate what is wrong with that argument. First, the goal set by this Bill is one of adding at least 200,000 licensed subsidized spaces, not licensed spaces. Second, there are not
240,000	licensed subsidized spaces now, as suggested by the NDP House Leader. There are in fact 160,000. Our Government is proposing to increase that to at least 360,000 over the next seven years. That is the appropriate comparison and the one that should be made in the House in this debate. Of the 15 per cent annual growth in licensed spaces between 1982 and 1987 which the NDP House Leader refers to, just under 40 per cent was in commercial day care spaces. That is a form of child care which his Party would like to abolish. Obviously he did not take the time to reconcile his quotation of the facts with this fact.
Third, I believe that it is a rather elementary principle of arithmetic that growth rates tend to decline as the bases from which they are calculated increase. For instance, if one begins with 20,000 day care spaces in Canada and adds 20,000 each year, the growth rate in the first year is 100 per cent, then 50 per cent and 33 per cent the year thereafter. In short, the
September 26, 1988

growth rate falls despite the fact that we are maintaining the same level of increase. That is what is happening to the growth of licensed day care spaces in Canada. We are encountering the law of diminishing returns.
The provinces have told us that growth rates and absolute levels of growth in licensed spaces, much less in subsidized licensed spaces, would not be as sustained unless more generous cost-sharing arrangements than the Canada Assistance Plan provisions now available are provided.
Continuous growth in the number of day care spaces cannot be assumed. Between 1976 and 1978, the number of licensed care spaces available in Canada actually dropped by a total of 1,241. This occurred at a time when the female participation rate in the paid labour force increased from 56.8 per cent to 59 per cent, well above the average for the past 15 years.
Of those 160,000 licensed spaces which are subsidized either from direct operating grants or through parental subsidies, many are subsidized at very low levels, such as 38 cents a day or 50 cents a day. That is the present situation under the Canada Assistance Plan.
Under the legislation now before the Elouse, we will not count any new subsidized space toward our goal of 200,000 unless it is subsidized by the province by at least $2 a day. We will not count the spaces that are subsidized at 38 cents and 50 cents. In other words, even saying that there will be an increase from 160,000 licensed subsidized spaces to 360,000 understates the extent of the improvement because many of those 160,000 spaces are subsidized at less than the level that would be brought about under this Bill. Only members of the New Democratic Party can describe that improvement as bringing the growth rate down.
In describing the recent 15 per cent annual growth rate in licensed spaces as inadequate, the NDP Elouse Leader overlooks the fact that that is all his own Leader is proposing. He recently said that he would increase the number of licensed spaces over the next four years by 200,000. It is the same annual, inadequate growth rate of 15 per cent quoted by the NDP. The New Democratic Party states out of one side of its mouth that a 15 per cent annual rate is inadequate; then out of the other side of its mouth it trumpets its commitment to increase the number of spaces over the next four years by 15 per cent.
Finally, let us look at the growth rate record in licensed day care spaces in Manitoba from 1982 to 1987. When I was on the child care committee I could not wait to get to Manitoba. Manitoba alone would have the perfect system in Canada from all I heard about the NDP commitment. I was waiting with bated breath to find out what would happen in Manitoba.
I can tell Hon. Members, and the statistics will bear me out on this, that it is a pretty disappointing story here. I know that members of the NDP will agree with me when I say that. If
Canada Child Care Act
there were a perfect system of day care, surely it would have been created in Manitoba with all those years of socialist government.
Unfortunately, the facts are these. The annual growth rate in licensed, non-profit spaces in Manitoba between 1982 and 1987 was not, as a matter of fact, among the highest in Canada. It was not even close. In fact, the growth rate was 8 per cent per year-barely half the national average for that period of time, putting socialist Manitoba number eight in growth rate in this country behind three of the four Atlantic provinces and behind the other two prairie provinces. While members of the NDP rant about increasing the growth rate, I wish they could have said something like that to the members of their own Party and done something about it when they had the opportunity.
Getting back to the speech read by the member of the New Democratic Party from Kamloops-Shuswap, he referred to the $3.94 billion in federal money committed in this Bill over the next years. He said: "What is worse is the Government is putting a cap on it. It is saying that this is it, that it will inadequately fund child care only for the next seven years".
There are two points that should be made in response to that comment. First, while there is an over-all cap and an annual cap on federal spending over the first seven years, that cap is set at such a level that it will permit a much larger financial commitment from the federal Government than would have been spent under the Canada Assistance Plan. Members of the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party know that that is the case.
As well, I would like to make this analogy before I leave this cap of the federal Government. We have heard it a number of times. I will put it in terms I think Members opposite can understand. Let us consider a union which had been negotiating 5 per cent increases each year under a collective agreement and the employers came to members of the union and said this: "Instead of that 5 per cent agreement that you have been getting and negotiating each year we will give you 10 per cent and guarantee it every year". Would any union turn that down? Would the NDP turn that down? No. That is why the provinces will be co-operating with us in the implementation of Bill C-144.
Second, since the purpose of this Bill is to improve the availability and affordability of quality licensed child care in Canada, it proposes a seven-year boost period in which the number of licensed spaces will more than double. After that, our Government, again under the leadership of the Prime Minister, will see to it that we continue with our commitment. We will all be here to do that. Members of the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party will not be. They will have an even narrower corridor in this House. But I know the Prime Minister will continue beyond that to assess the situation and take care of the needs of all Canadian children.
I see that my time is just about up. I am very pleased to have been able to make some comments. This is a great step

September 26, 1988
forward. This is an historic document for Canada's children, and one that if the NDP and the Liberals or their friends down the hall block is one with respect to which they will have to pay the price and answer some tough questions from Canadians in the next general election.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Are there questions or comments? The Eton. Member for Vancouver East.


Margaret Anne Mitchell: Madam Speaker, I certainly listened with interest to my friend's remarks. It is a good thing that the Hon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap (Mr. Riis) made a speech, otherwise I do not think that the Hon. Member would have had anything to say today. He certainly used that speech as his background.
Since the Hon. Member was on the Special Committee on Child Care and also on the legislative committee and must have been very involved in the government planning for child care, why did the Government decide to put a seven-year limit on this program? Why are capital funds only going to be available for seven years? Why are they grandfathered at that point?
There is a great need for child care across Canada. Every indication is that that need will increase and not decrease, particularly if employment remains up-and members of the Government have been bragging about employment which means many more jobs for women. It goes without saying that the need and demand for child care will increase. I want to ask the Hon. Member this question. Why has the Government limited the amount of money that it will provide to only
200,000	spaces over seven years? That really is not very much. Why did the Government just pluck an arbitrary figure out of the sky?
If members of the Government were to look at the information from the Day Care Information Centre, which is a branch of Government, they would see that the figures that were provided show that this would not even meet 25 per cent of the need for child care in Canada. Children are not going to go away. We are going to have more and more children of working mothers, fathers, and single parents who will need child care.
When there is such a need and when that need is going to increase, I am wondering why the Government has put these two limits on-the seven-year limit and the 200,000 spaces. There is another limit in the Bill which is very subtle. The poorer provinces, the Atlantic region in particular, had no representation at committee to speak about this matter, nor did the two territories. Yet we know that they are very undeveloped as far as child care services are concerned. There are many caring people in those communities, but there exists mainly an informal type of baby-sitting arrangements. The people we heard from when we toured those areas indicated they wanted to have training programs. Some provinces do not even have a basic training program for child care workers. They certainly need to get decent wages and need to get
licensed centres and licensed family day care homes so that they will be able to have good quality, affordable care and pay decent wages.
Why also is the Government at the end of this seven-year program saying that it will reduce the top-up in the variable cost sharing for the poorer provinces and territories? Again, that seems quite unrealistic. Many of them will just get organized about half-way through this period and will not be able to have reached anywhere near meeting their needs by the end of seven years.
The questions are three. Why just seven years? Why is there this arbitrary figure of just 200,000 spaces? Why is there a reduction in cost sharing for poorer provinces at the end of seven years?


Rob Nicholson: There is a lot there, Madam Speaker, and I see I do not have much time.
Let me pick up on one of the points I would like to clarify for the House. I refer to the the Hon. Member's comments which would leave the impression that somehow people from all areas of the country were not heard on this particular subject. That is nonsense. As a member of the Special Committee on Child Care, of which she was a member, I think that committee heard more witnesses, had more briefs, and we did more research on this-


Margaret Anne Mitchell: I rise on a point of order, Madam Speaker. I think the Hon. Member should be factual. This was a legislative committee with experts who were here on this Bill. This Bill was not before us when we had the Special Committee on Child Care. There were no Members from the Atlantic regions or the North, and only one from most of the other provinces.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I realize the Hon. Member for Niagara Falls may want to continue to respond to the comments made by the Hon. Member for Vancouver East, which could be done after Question Period. There are five minutes left in the period for questions and comments.
It being 1 p.m., I do now leave the chair until 2 p.m.
At 1 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, this
weekend it was revealed that Air Canada transported 27
September 26, 1988

tonnes of PCB wastes to Great Britain on three different commercial flights. In doing so, Air Canada complied with international and federal laws and regulations.
While legal, this action raises serious questions. Should toxic wastes be transported with passengers? Are we fully aware and willing to accept, should a flight crash, the consequences of the burning of PCBs, perhaps in a densely populated area near the airports where the flight takes off and lands?
So far, the Minister of the Environment (Mr. McMillan) has not announced in his PCB policy that he would ban the export of PCB wastes from Canada. He has the power to do so, through the Environmental Protection Act.
We urge the Minister to adopt a policy whereby we manage our toxic wastes at home instead of shipping them to other nations. The Minister should use the power that he has and ban PCB exports from now on.



OLYMPIC GAMES-BEN JOHNSON, 100 METRE WINNER

Mr. Reginald Stackhouse (Scarborough West):: Mr. Speaker, some people complain that Canada is giving too much to the Third World. But often that world gives much to Canada, such as our first 1988 Olympic Gold Medal.
All Canada is bursting with pride today because of Ben Johnson, and especially so is the City of Scarborough, where he grew up. But if his mother, Gloria, had not brought Ben and her other children from Jamaica less than 20 years ago, Canada would be less proud as a nation and Scarborough less proud as a city.
When anyone says that Canada is admitting too many immigrants-and I have heard many say that-let him ask himself if he would like the number to have been one less the year that Ben Johnson came here as a young child.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-Walkerville):: Mr. Speaker, it was a difficult week for those of us who dared dissent from the professional pessimism of Canadian sports journalists. But not for Ben, who was carefully and quietly maintaining his own counsel, seemingly expending, sometimes dangerously, little of his talented reserves, and sowing deliberate doubt, mostly, though it was not noticed, among the competition.
Finally, the gun went off, and as Ben promised, the race was over. At that moment, among Canadians throughout the world a brilliant flash of ecstatic joy drowned the shadows of doubt.
There remains a euphoric glow as we remember, as we will always remember, the explosive flight from the blocks, the arm raised not only in victory but in a promise of victories yet to come, and the flag-the Canadian flag-flashing red, the colour of passion, and of passionate pride.
We salute you, Ben, and we thank you not only for a victory of historic and incomparable magnificence, but as well we thank you for a lesson in the persistent pursuit of excellence provided for our youth, for our nation.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



AGRICULTURE


Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma):: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) for the last three months has been announcing billions and billions of dollars' worth of promises to Canadians. Over a year ago the then Minister of Agriculture announced that farmers who are farming in the Interlake area of Manitoba would receive a special payment of some $1.5 million in co-operation with the provincial Government. This would be a special payment for the loss of crops in the fall of 1985 and 1986, due to the damp and wet weather during those two seasons in which they lost their crops. Over 400 farmers are still waiting for these payments promised by this Government.
I call on the new part-time Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Mazankowski) to make good on this promise by the former Minister of Agriculture, and not renege on this promise to these hard-pressed farmers, as the Prime Minister has on many of his other promises.



PIPELINES


Mary Collins: Mr. Speaker, the announcement last Thursday that the federal Government would contribute $150 million towards the construction of the Vancouver Island gas pipeline is not only the fulfilment of a project which the members of the B.C. caucus have worked towards for many years, but it will bring real, tangible benefits to thousands of British Columbians on Vancouver Island.

September 26, 1988
Often missed in the discussion are the opportunities which it will bring to residents on the Sunshine Coast, and particularly to the wonderful community of Squamish on the Howe Sound.
Now the people of Squamish will be able to look forward to a cheaper source for domestic heating, but even more important, to the possibility of attracting new industry to their community.
With an economy based on forestry, Squamish is well situated on tide water. Now, with the possibility of natural gas-a clean and efficient fuel-it is a logical location for development of new industries to add value to the forest resources and to diversify the economy.
The Vancouver Island gas pipeline is not only good news for Vancouver Island, it is very good news for Squamish.



SUSPENSION OF FINANCING FOR THIRD WORLD FOOD IRRADIATION PROJECTS

Mr. Jim Manly (Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands):: Mr. Speaker, funding of food irradiation projects in developing countries has been put on hold by the International Finance Corporation, an affiliate of the World Bank. The corporation claims that it would be inappropriate to finance food irradiation projects in developing countries until the technology gains wider consumer acceptance and commercialization in Canada and the United States.
It concluded: "Issues related to the environment, consumer acceptance and operating safety of food irradiation projects are so complex that it is unlikely that such projects in developing countries will meet our stringent standards".
Canada, a member, investor, and shareholder in the IFC, is involved in many food irradiation projects abroad. The Canadian Government has declared the technology safe, and this summer it introduced regulations that permit the widespread use of the technology on Canadian foods.
When the only way that Canada can get food irradiation technology into Third World countries is by giving it away through CIDA, we certainly question the wisdom of imposing it on the Canadian public.
Once again I call on the Government to abandon its ill-considered plans for food irradiation, both in Canada and in the developing world.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Alan Redway (York East):: Mr. Speaker, next to the housing crisis and the ever present danger of dioxin seeping into drinking water from the chemical dumps on the American side of the Niagara River, garbage disposal is the greatest problem facing the Metropolitan Toronto area.
Every Metro resident creates one kilogram-2.2 pounds-of garbage each day. Fifty per cent of all garbage comes from packaging. Individuals can help to reduce the amount of garbage by recycling and by using environment-friendly biodegradable shopping and garbage bags.
Just as the federal Government has a role to play in solving the housing crisis and in cleaning up toxic waste, it also has a role to play in reducing the amount of garbage generated by packaging. So let us get on with it.

[ Translation]



UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE


Mr. Fernand Robichaud (Westmorland-Kent):: Mr. Speaker, in New Brunswick on the weekend, I heard things that trouble me. I heard angry words from people affected by the changes to the qualifying period for unemployment insurance. In many cases in New Brunswick, it is difficult to find 16 weeks of employment when under the best conditions, it is hard enough to find 10.
The workers' anger is a result of the Government's lack of concern for the problem. Although this Government changed the unemployment insurance regulations to accommodate people in a region of Quebec, it has done nothing for the people in New Brunswick.
This injustice cannot continue any longer. The Government is provoking the workers. The Government's inaction could have unfortunate consequences. The Government cannot threaten the income security of families and expect people to take it lying down. The Government must act now. It is urgent!



THE ECONOMY


Mr. John Oostrom (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, a poll
reported by the Montreal Daily News on September 22 found
September 26, 1988

that jobs are being created at an unprecedented rate in the fourth quarter, which is traditionally a slow growth period. There were 1,500 companies polled across Canada. About 26 per cent said that they plan staff increases, and 13 per cent said that they plan to reduce staff. Job creation in the fourth quarter is the highest for any year in the 1980s.
Take construction, for example, which faces lay-offs at this time of the year. It is reported that 23 per cent will be seeking to increase their hirings.
This trend is concrete proof of our Government's economic policies which have seen the creation of 1,295,000 jobs, lower interest rates, price stability, low inflation, and an improved investment climate.



PLANNED PARENTHOOD WEEK


Mr. Marc Ferland (Portneuf):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank the Leader of the Liberal Party for having circulated to the press a list of 69 initiatives our Government took between May 30 and September 9. However, he does not seem to agree with many of those initiatives.
Am 1 to understand he is against the $110 million for cleaning up the St. Lawrence River; the $515 million for Quebec regional development; the $25 million for the establishment of a geoscience research center in Quebec; the $30 million for the upgrading of the airport in Montreal; the $600 million Mr. Masse announced in Montreal for research and development of new energy sources and energy conservation?
Am I to understand that if the Liberal Leader were elected, he would tear up those agreements?



NEED FOR EDUCATION AND COUNSELLING

Margaret Anne Mitchell: Mr. Speaker, since this week is Planned Parenthood Week I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada for its excellent work in the field of healthy sexuality.
Planned Parenthood is calling upon government to move quickly to formulate and adopt a comprehensive reproductive health policy which provides sex education in schools and homes, access to birth control information and services, as well as counselling and research.
Canadians are incurring extremely high health care costs, both social and personal, because of the lack of information and services in the field of sexuality.
We urgently need a co-ordinated approach to provide education and counselling services. At present various Departments at all levels of government deal with only parts of this problem. This completely fails to provide adequate information or reproductive health services for Canadians.
In today's world, especially with the pressure of AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, and unintended pregnancies, such a policy is desperately required.
I urge the Government to develop a comprehensive reproductive health care policy immediately in consultation with the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada.



OLYMPIC GAMES-BEN JOHNSON, 100 METRE WINNER

Hon. Bob Kaplan (York Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to Ben Johnson for his remarkable and heroic achievement which has brought so much glory and honour to his adopted country of Canada.
More than glory and honour, I can report that benefits are already abounding. On Sunday I attended a rally in the Jane-Finch area of my riding called "Say No to Drugs". Of course Ben Johnson's flying start was much admired. There were hundreds of kids around the field showing, like Ben Johnson, that people can fly, or try to fly, without the benefit of drugs.



PUBLIC SERVICE


Howard Edward Crosby: Mr. Speaker, I was shocked last week, and I am sure that some of my Nova Scotia colleagues share my concern, when we heard the Minister of State for the Treasury Board (Mr. Lewis) indicate that regional wage rates would continue to be paid with respect to members of the ship repair unit at CFB Halifax.
The reason for our concern is that we on the East and West Coasts are asked to share in other elements of the nation's economy, in particular high interest rates generated from the Province of Ontario. I was especially concerned that a Member

September 26, 1988
Oral Questions
from the Province of Ontario saw fit to raise this particular point in the House of Commons and say that he certainly did not want people on the East Coast to share in the revenues of Canada to the extent of having parity.
I am sure that westerners will agree with me that wage parity is an essential element of our parliamentary situation. We pay ourselves on an equal basis. We pay the Armed Forces on an equal basis. If we are going to pay public servants on a different basis, then we better have a very good reason for it. I would like the Minister of State for the Treasury Board to tell me very exactly what that reason is.



EMPLOYMENT


Ms. Marion Dewar (Hamilton Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, for two and a half years the Government has announced that it would have a program for older workers, and it still has not delivered. I am very concerned that there are many resourceful people in our community who cannot find work because this program will not be implemented.
The Hamilton Help Centre went around the program and found one that the Government could deliver. For two years it has been operating with an 86 per cent success rate. Now the Government is about to cancel that and not give it any other options. This is a disgrace for older workers.



CANADA-UNITED STATES FREE TRADE AGREEMENT-POSITION OF LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION

Mr. William C. Winegard (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister for International Trade):: Mr. Speaker, last weekend on a national television show the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner) spoke about the free trade agreement with the United States.
Unfortunately, rather than shedding light on the agreement he perpetuated many of the myths. For example, he insists that we cannot continue our policy of helping the various regions of Canada. We know that is simply not true. There is nothing in the agreement with respect to regional development. Nothing has changed and nothing will be changed in 1990 over what it is in 1988. The people of the West know that, the people of Quebec know that, and the people of the East know that.
Mr. Speaker, is it not time that we began to look at the specifics of the agreement rather than perpetuate the myths? We owe the people of Canada that.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Jean Lapierre (Shefford):: Mr. Speaker, further to our discussions last Friday, my question is directed to the Minister of Public Works.
Saturday, the Minister issued a press release in which he confirmed that the sole assessment made of the property in question amounted to $28,000 and that the property was being sold for $187,500.
Mr. Speaker, on Saturday the Minister informed us that according to him this property, which includes 93 houses, a community, centre, an Economat store, an electric power station and 733 acres of land on one of the ten best salmon rivers of the world, was worth $28,000.
Mr. Speaker, the Minister went even further. This year, he went so far as to send an initial payment of $50,000 to the Town of Moisie, in lieu of taxes, and the town says the total tax bill will be $113,454.51 for a municipal assessment of $6.2 million.
My question to the Minister is this: How can he send a cheque for $53,000 as an advance payment in lieu of taxes on a property whose value he assesses at $28,000? How can a ratepayer pay more in taxes than his property is worth? How is that for incompetence! Could the Minister explain this discrepancy to the House?


Hon. Stewart Mclnnes (Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, I confirm the information in my statement released during the weekend that there is only one appraisal outstanding for this property by a competent appraiser. It states that the value is $28,000.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Stewart Donald McInnes: In response to the tender call, 19 firms submitted a quotation of the value of the property; 17 of those were under $12,000, one was $50,000, and the other was $100,000. I suggest that that is the best indication of the value of that property.


LETTER SENT TO MINISTER-GOVERNMENT POSITION
Jean-C. Lapierre: Mr. Speaker, I want to direct another question to the Minister. As we know, his valuation is not reliable, because even the Prime Minister's friend says the asking price is $30,000 for one house only. Therefore, I feel the Hon. Minister should check his figures and see what is going on in Moisie, because that property is
September 26, 1988

worth much more than the $28,000 referred to by the Minister, as he himself acknowledged when he paid municipal taxes based on a $6.2-odd million valuation, unless of course the Minister is utterly incompetent.
But I would like to deal with another aspect of his press release, in which the Minister confirmed having provided the RCMP with the letter he received on August 8, 1988, from Mr. H.D. Hyland.
What he failed to say is at what point in time that letter was provided to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And I know Mr. Hyland has not yet been questioned by the RCMP. Therefore, what has the Minister been doing with that letter between August 5 and last weekend?


Stewart Donald McInnes: Mr. Speaker, I am very anxious to make a comment on the whole of this case, but unfortunately, because of the RCMP investigation, I am precluded from doing so.


Some Hon. Members:: Shame!


Mr. Speaker:: I would remind Hon. Members that, while 1 understand their interest in this case, the Hon. Minister is trying to respond to a question asked by one of their colleagues and they should extend him the courtesy of being able to do so. The Hon. Minister.


Stewart Donald McInnes: Mr. Speaker, Hon. Members cry "shame". If I did try to pre-judge this case the Hon. Member would be the very first person in this House saying that I improperly interfered with an RCMP investigation.


PUBLIC WORKS
Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, we are not asking questions having to do with the affair that the Minister tells us the RCMP is now investigating. The simple question put to him is about his conduct as a Minister. That question is: having acknowledged that he received the letter on or before August 5, when did he do something with it and what did he do with it?
It is his conduct we are questioning, not the conduct involving the sale of the land.


Stewart Donald McInnes: Mr. Speaker, I repeat, and I will continue to repeat, that while I am very anxious to comment fully on this file, of which I have and have had total knowledge, the matter is the subject of an
Oral Questions
investigation by the RCMP. They will report soon enough and then the Hon. Member can ask me any question he wishes.


BIDDING PROCEDURE-LEGAL OPINIONS
Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, I want to turn to another aspect of the matter, the bidding procedure. In the questioning last week Mr. Hylands was quoted accurately from his tape as indicating that the Department had legal opinions condemning the bidding procedure followed. 1 want to ask the Minister about those legal opinions.
Does he have them? Has he reviewed them? If the procedures did not meet government standards or the standards they should have, what is the Minister going to do about it?


Stewart Donald McInnes: Mr. Speaker, no legal opinions were ever given to me at any time during the course of this particular matter. Legal opinions have now been brought to my attention. Nevertheless, I reiterate and confirm that we must and should, in the interests of all those people who may or may not be prejudiced as a result of the investigation, and in fairness, let the RCMP continue and finish its investigation.


MOISIE AFFAIR-MINISTER'S POSITION
Michael Morris Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Public Works and concerns his conduct as a Minister of the Crown upon receipt of the letter from Mr. Hyland about August 5, which is some seven weeks ago.
Can the Minister indicate . . . The questions do not concern the conduct of the RCMP, but of the Minister before the RCMP investigation was launched. The RCMP received the letter from the Minister.
How long did the Minister take to decide to give the letter to the RCMP after he received it? Did the Minister turn over the letter right away, because of the very serious allegations made by Mr. Hyland, or did he delay for some time, perhaps until this week? If there were delays, why?


Stewart Donald McInnes: Mr. Speaker, I suppose the Hon. Member might temper his remarks if he knew what was in the letter. I have indicated that I had the letter. It is now in the hands of the RCMP. I will refrain from making further comment until they have completed their inquiry.


APPARENT DELAY IN FORWARDING LETTER TO RCMP- MINISTER'S POSITION
Michael Morris Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, we have not seen the letter, but we have heard the tape recording by Mr. Hyland that apparently contains the same allegations as

September 26, 1988
Oral Questions
were made in the letter that the Minister received in early August.
If the Minister did nothing with the letter, if the letter contains serious allegations and the Minister did nothing for six or seven weeks, we must ask the Minister to resign for failing to do his duty.
So my question is: When did the Minister submit the letter to the RCMP and why did he defer giving the letter to the RCMP once he had read it?


Stewart Donald McInnes: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member and others are making and have made many erroneous statements of fact. Some of their statements are based on conversations on a tape, some on a letter which they have not seen. People up there are making error after error. I would like to try to clarify it but I must await the report of the RCMP investigation.


CONTENTS OF LETTER
Michael Morris Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, we are talking about the conduct of the Minister prior to his passing this letter on to the RCMP and the commencement of their investigation. We are talking about whether or not the Minister acted appropriately and properly. He knows the letter will sooner or later be made public. In not indicating when he passed it to the RCMP he is indicating that he must have failed in his duty as a Minister to pass that letter on if it contained serious allegations.
Did it contain serious allegations? If it did, how long did the Minister have it and why did he not pass it on to the RCMP immediately?


Stewart Donald McInnes: Mr. Speaker, I would ask the Hon. Member to have patience.


MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY
John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister and I have been following this issue and I would like to put a question or two to him relating to the sale of the radar base in the Prime Minister's riding.
Quite apart from the issue of any criminal responsibility or any investigation by the RCMP, there is the issue of political responsibility and competence. I would have thought that the Government by now, particularly after the multimillion dollar Parker inquiry, would have understood the difference. We are talking here about ministerial responsibility and ministerial competence. I will try to stay within the facts as they have been presented to the House.
Speaking to the Prime Minister through the Deputy Prime Minister, does he think it right for a Conservative organizer to have interfered actively in the bidding process and sale of the
radar base? Was it right for the former Conservative candidate from Hull, now on the staff of the Minister of Public Works, to intervene in the process?


Mr. Speaker:: The Chair is in some difficulty. These seem to be very direct charges.


Some Hon. Members:: Exactly!


Mr. Speaker:: I have had to say in past cases like this that it is not appropriate to use a preamble to make a charge. If a charge is to be made, there are of course formal ways to do it. 1 know the right hon. gentleman would understand that.
At the same time I am repeating what I have said in the past, that on issues like this the Opposition not only has a right to ask questions, it has a duty. At the same time I have to ask Hon. Members to make sure that the preambles to the questions do not amount in effect to a charge in lieu of a charge put in a formal way.


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I will stay within the parameters you have laid down. My questions are also within the parameters of the issues discussed here Thursday, Friday, and today.
Was it competent for the Minister of National Defence to say there had been no intervention by the Prime Minister's Office when we learned there was a phone call from that office? Was it right for the Minister of Public Works to be meeting only this weekend with his staff on this issue when he received a registered letter from a senior official of his Department on August 5?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister, and President of the Privy Council and Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition is a distinguished Member of this Chamber and has served here for a long time. He is also a lawyer and I think he knows something about basic and fundamental justice. I believe he is indeed making allegations which I am not sure he can substantiate. Perhaps it is time for me to remind the Right Hon, Leader of the Opposition of the four criteria that he set out to govern the conduct of his own members in dealing with these kinds of issues.
I am reading from the Toronto Star and an article by Joe O'Donnell where the right hon. gentleman said that strict rules of conduct for MPs should be applied. Number one, unless you know the facts and really know the facts, don't say them. Number two, know when you have made your case. Number three, remember that this is not only affecting government but an institution called Parliament, and affecting us as Members of Parliament.


Mr. Rossi:: Number four, answer the question.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: The fourth one is to remember that we have unemployed out there and farmers and fishermen and other people who are in desperate difficulty. Perhaps the Right
September 26, 1988

Hon. Member might be of more value to the country in addressing those issues. I suggest he heed his own advice.


REQUEST FOR PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY
John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I will not only do my best to stay within your parameters but also within the criteria that I set for myself. Nothing is more important in this House, and the Deputy Prime Minister knows it, than political responsibility and the accountability of Ministers.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Napier Turner: Let us deal with some further facts. We are told that the Department of National Defence valued the radar base at $4.5 million but it was sold for $187,500.


Mr. Beatty:: Who told you that?


John Napier Turner: Over 700 acres in the Prime Minister's riding-that is a fact-


Henry Perrin Beatty: Who told you that?


John Napier Turner: -93 homes on that property-that is a fact-were sold by the federal Government for a total of $187,500.
We are also told, and the Hon. Member for Shefford (Mr. Lapierre) has produced the assessment list, that the municipal property taxes on that land this year were $113,000.


Thomas Scott Fennell: It is a radar station.


An Hon. Member:: A year?


John Napier Turner: A year, for which the Minister's own Department sent an interim cheque for $53,000. The property is assessed by the Town of Moisie at over $6 million. Those happen to be facts.
Wouldn't the Deputy Prime Minister feel in the circumstances that the Prime Minister ought to authorize a parliamentary inquiry relating to political responsibility here to ensure that the property sold in the Prime Minister's riding, owned by the federal Government, was sold at an unbelievably low price against all the available facts?


Stewart Donald McInnes: Mr. Speaker, I ask the Right Hon. Member how much he would pay for one slightly used radar base? The proof of the pudding is that 19 firms, people knowledgeable in that particular area, people knowledgeable in real estate, people knowledgeable about the future, made bids. Seventeen of them were under $12,000, one was $50,000 and one was $100,000. Isn't that the fairest indication of the value of this property, Mr. Speaker?
Oral Questions


REQUEST FOR PUBLIC PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY
John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, in the July 12 issue Le Nord-Est, a newspaper published in the Prime Minister's ridding, reports that Mayor Bernard Saint-Laurent has denounced the politicization of this case and the newspaper refers to political interference in the sale of this property. What did the Prime Minister do when he read this paper, a paper published in his own riding?
On August 5 the Minister of Public Works got a letter from one of his senior Quebec officials claiming there had been interference. What did the Minister do before the weekend? Absolutely nothing! Will the Prime Minister give Canadians a public parliamentary inquiry to uncover the real objectives and reasons why the property was sold at such a ridiculously low price?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Public Works has tried to answer the questions-


Some Hon. Members:: He never did.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: -within the limitations that are placed upon him as a result of the RCMP review.


Michael Morris Cassidy: Not true.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: The Hon. Member talks about facts and then he quotes from a newspaper. I am not sure whether he can substantiate them but if he wants to quote from a newspaper, maybe we should quote The Montreal Gazette for September 24, from an article by Bill Johnson which really puts this whole thing in perspective.
Referring to the Liberal Party, he wrote:
The Commons way is to smear, to rush to judgment, to condemn before hearing, to demand instant answers to complex questions and to shout "coverup" if the answers are not instantly supplied-as they cannot be.
There is no concern for people's reputations, no respect for the presumption of innocence until guilt is established, no sensitivity to fairness in the manner of raising questions and in allowing people properly to defend themselves.
Where is the fairness in this institution, Mr. Speaker?


FORWARDING OF LETTER BY MINISTER TO RCMP
Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby):: Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Minister is quite right. What we are concerned about here are facts.
I want to ask the Minister of Public Works to answer a specific question with respect to the facts surrounding this case. How long did it take him to pass on the letter that he received from Hugh Hylands to the RCMP? How much time elapsed between the time he received that letter and the time that he passed it on to the RCMP?

September 26, 1988
Oral Questions


Stewart Donald McInnes: As
soon as I knew there was an investigation into this matter, I immediately gave the letter to the RCMP, Mr. Speaker.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


QUERY WHY MR. HYLAND'S LETTER WAS NOT FORWARDED IMMEDIATELY TO RCMP
Svend Johannes Robinson: Mr. Speaker, for the first time, the Minister has admitted that he handed over Mr. Hyland's letter to the RCMP six or seven weeks after he received it. The people of Canada are fed up with a government which spends public money on gifts to Conservative friends.
My question is very straightforward, Mr. Speaker. Why did the Minister wait some six or seven weeks before handing over to the RCMP such an important and incriminating letter? Why didn't he hand it over immediately?


Stewart Donald McInnes: Mr. Speaker, the basis of that question, the basis of all the reports is that there are some facts of which they have knowledge which were not indicated in the letter.
I have indicated to the RCMP they can have all the material. I have given them all the material germane to this particular issue. If the Hon. Member has knowledge of some particular fact or correspondence, he should give it to the RCMP. The Hon. Member assumes there are incriminating facts in the letter.


Svend Johannes Robinson: You have the correspondence.


Stewart Donald McInnes: Let the RCMP make that decision.


ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg-Fort Garry):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to raise a question concerning the integrity, veracity and credibility of the Minister of the Environment.
We have put questions in this House previously about the resignation from his staff of Miss Elizabeth May, senior policy adviser, in which she alleged there had been a political deal by which the Minister of the Environment would sign off a licence for the Souris Rafferty Dam project on the Souris River in exchange for the Grasslands Park project in Saskatchewan without undertaking any environmental impact studies or reviews on how it would impact upon the Province of Manitoba. These allegations have been said by the Minister to have no foundation.
We now have a secret briefing paper prepared by officials of the Department of the Environment given to the Minister before his meetings with the Premier and Deputy Premier of Saskatchewan in May in which it clearly states:
The Deputy Premier might offer a compromise linking an agreement on the creation of the Park to the early issuance of the IRIA license for the Rafferty/Alameda Dam.
This is a clear and direct refutation of the statements made by the Minister in this House and made by the Premier and Deputy Premier of Saskatchewan, and supports the allegations made by Miss May.
In light of this kind of evidence, is the Minister prepared to retract his previous statements and try to explain to the people of Manitoba why he went ahead and sold away their environmental concerns and responsibilities, to say nothing of his own responsibilities, for the sake of the kind of political deal that his Prime Minister wanted him to sign?


Hon. Tom McMillan (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member says that he has in his hands some leaked secret briefing notes to the Minister of the Environment documenting that the Minister of the Environment traded a park for a dam or a dam for a park. I invite the Member to read those briefing notes.
Prior to my meeting in May with the Deputy Premier of Saskatchewan, a meeting was scheduled between myself and him for December 16. Those are the briefing notes he has and the meeting never occurred. It was impossible for the two of us to mesh our respective schedules and arrangements. The briefing notes have no import. What is more, they were prepared by my officials in light of some conjecture, some speculation, by environmental groups in the west that the Province of Saskatchewan might-I stress might-link the Rafferty Dam with the formation of a Grasslands National Park. In light of that conjecture, the officials rightly advised me that the matter might be raised by the Province of Saskatchewan and in the unlikely event that it were, that the Minister of the Environment might respond accordingly.
The meeting never took place, Sir. Second, Saskatchewan never raised the issue. Third, I would not have acquiesced even if it had.


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I just simply point out to the House that the real answer to the question now is that the licence was issued without an impact study, and a deal was made on the Grasslands Park.
What better evidence do you need that this Minister is implicated in the most scurrilous sell-out of Manitoba environmental interests in the history of this country?


ADVICE OFFERED BY DEPARTMENTAL OFFICIALS
Lloyd Axworthy: I will ask
the Minister another question about documents. In this House
September 26, 1988

the Minister said again that his officials had advised him to issue the licence, that it was the best move. Documents prepared by the departmental officials said that there were two options, either issue the licence or don't issue the licence, and the officials would recommend: "That it would be desirable to resolve the apportionment in the Manitoba matter before the licence is issued".
Considering that it was the advice of the officials of the Department of the Environment that the licence not be issued until the matters with Manitoba had been resolved, why did the Minister issue the licence without having those matters resolved? Is it not simply once again because he was party to a deal?


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member has just made one of the great classic fallacies in logic. Because something happens after something else, ergo, it happens as a result of it. I think nothing would be further from the truth. In any event, the officials advised me to issue the permit only after Manitoba's interests were fully taken into account. I acquiesced in that advice, first, by weaving into the fabric of the permit 13 environmental conditions among which the conditions stipulated that Saskatchewan would have to honour all relevant international obligations with respect to the effect of the Souris River on Manitoba, second, that the boundary waters agreement signed in 1909, which protects Manitoba, would apply to the Rafferty Dam.


Lloyd Axworthy: After it is all finished.


Thomas Michael McMillan: Third, that the 1959 apportionment agreement that protects Manitoba's quantity of water from the Souris River through North Dakota would apply. So every single relevant provision apropos of Manitoba, and the effect of that dam on Manitoba, applied in spades.


Lloyd Axworthy: After it's done.


Thomas Michael McMillan: And only after I was assured by my officials, the top hydrologists in the country, that those conditions attached to the permit would protect Manitoba did I agree to it, and I did.


AIR CANADA
Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Transport who, 1 assume, still has some responsibilities for Air Canada. We learned on Friday that 8,000 person-hours of maintenance work for Air Canada are being subcontracted to a company in England. Could the Minister explain to the House and to the
Oral Questions
workers at Air Canada why maintenance work is being done not in Canada where it should be done, but in Great Britain?


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I was indeed informed, if I have understood my hon. colleague's question, that such a transfer was made by Air Canada. I would like him to repeat his question because I have not quite grasped its meaning.


EFFECT ON JOBS
Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, Air Canada on Friday sent Aircraft No. 512, a Lockheed 1011, to Marshalls of Cambridge in England for approximately 8,000 person-hours of work over a one-month period. According to the documents provided to the union, the IAM, the nature and volume of the work is such that undesirable fluctuations in employment would automatically result. Obviously, there would be an increase in employment for a short period of time here in Canada, yet they decided to take those jobs over to Great Britain instead of putting Canadians to work here. Could the Minister explain why Air Canada is allowed to do that, or is it all because of privatization?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I will try to answer the question of my friend. As long as he is talking about privatization, I think it has nothing to do with that, but in terms of the operations of Air Canada I think he would agree with me that I should have more information from the company because this is the first time this question is raised in front of me.


Iain Francis Angus: The Prime Minister got a telegram on Friday.


Benoît Bouchard: I listened to your question. You could listen to my answer. As soon as I have a good explanation, or any explanation, I will give it to my friend.


ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of the Environment. In view of the fact that by transporting some 27 tonnes of PCBs on commercial flights, Air Canada put at risk the passengers and residents near airports where Air Canada takes off and lands-understanding, of course, this was done within existing regulations-and in view of the fact that the Port of Montreal is still being used for the export of PCBs, I would like to ask the Minister whether he would use the power he now has under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and immediately ban the export of PCBs from Canada.

September 26, 1988
Oral Questions


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, I think the representation made by the Hon. Member for Davenport is not an unreasonable one. The priority of the Government of Canada is, of course, first, to ensure the safe storage of PCBs everywhere in the country under federal jurisdiction and provincial jurisdiction alike and, second, to ensure their expeditious incineration or destruction, for which purpose the Member knows I have announced a major funding project and also a set of regulations that will apply across the land. Obviously, if we can get PCBs out of use and destroyed, the need for the kind of transport of PCBs to which he makes reference will be mitigated.
In the meantime we do have the problem at hand and I think the suggestion the Member has made is both reasonable and a recommendation that the Government should take seriously, and it will.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Davenport on a short supplemental.


REQUEST THAT EXPORT OF PCBS BE OUTLAWED
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, the Minister will realize that this is an important element missing in his Government's recently announced PCB policy. Therefore, in the light of his answer I would like to ask when the Minister thinks he will be in a position to announce that the export of PCBs will be effectively made illegal out of Canada. What date, approximately?


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, I think the Hon. Member for Davenport will appreciate that it is a very complex issue. This is the first time,
I think, he has himself or his Party made the recommendation he now has put on record. In any event, if it were done through the normal course, through regulation, it would probably take several months to take effect. It is possible it could be accomplished under Section 35 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act through an interim order which would, to some extent, short-circuit the process in favour of the environment.
I will consult with my officials and scientists to see if that would be a commendable course. If it is, the Member can be assured it will be done with some dispatch. Again, it is an issue about which I have to consult my colleagues, the Minister of Transport, and my federal colleagues, generally.

[ Translation]


STATUS OF WOMEN
Marion Dewar: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. The Department
responsible for the status of women is preparing an interdepartmental report on immigrant women. This document is certainly intended as a tool for developing policies on immigrant women and visible minorities.
Can the Minister tell us if he is presently consulting with immigrant women's groups and associations to ensure that the report benefits from their expertise and experience?


Hon. Jake Epp (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, I cannot reply specifically to that question. I will take it on notice for the particular Minister. I just want to remind the Hon. Member that a number of proposals and programs especially for immigrant women, for their health and second language education, have been in place, but the specifics of the question I will take back to the Minister.


REQUEST FOR CONSULTATIONS
Marion Dewar: Mr. Speaker, this is an interdepartmental report that has been commissioned. We know in the past this Government has not consulted with immigrant women and visible minorities. I would like to ask the Minister of National Health and Welfare if he could assure this House that immigrant women and visible minority women would be consulted before the report is sent to the printers.


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: Mr. Speaker, what the Hon. Member has said is simply not the fact.


Marion Dewar: It is.


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: It is not the fact. I have met with them on various issues. I know that the Minister of Multicul-turalism has met with them as has the Minister of Employment and Immigration.
I will take the specifics of the exact question back to the Minister, but the Member should not make a blanket statement saying we have not consulted when in fact that has been the case. She would have more credibility if she stuck with the facts rather than using the kind of preamble that she did.


PUBLIC WORKS
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also directed to the Minister of Public Works whose office has refused to give information on the Moisie land deal to my office since July of this year. I remind him that I wrote to him at that time.
September 26, 1988

The sub judice rule which he invoked earlier today in the House does not apply, according to Beauchesne's, until trial stage. Given that this is the case, will the Minister here and now stand-


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I know the Hon. Member would want the Chair to make the rulings on procedure. It may well be that the question is out of order once a criminal prosecution has begun. The Hon. Member quotes Beauchesne's. It is, nonetheless, always within the prerogative of a Minister not to answer a question. If the Minister responds and says that in the opinion of the Crown, the Minister, or the Government, because of an investigation it would be inappropriate to answer, one can argue as to whether the Minister is right or wrong, but that is the position that the Minister has taken and I cannot force the Minister to answer that question no matter what citations may exist in Beauchesne's.
I only say this because, in view of the subject matter and the vigorous questioning, all Hon. Members, and the public who are watching, should understand the procedural laws of which I have to remind Members from time to time.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I want to ask a very specific question of the Minister of Public Works. The letter was sent to him on August 5, 1988. When did he receive the letter? Was it that date, was it shortly thereafter? What did he do with the letter? Did it give it to the RCMP at that time or did he wait until last weekend to give it after it was raised in this House and it became a public issue?
Did the Government act to do what was proper or did it only act once it got to the attention of the media? Is that what the Minister waited for?


Stewart Donald McInnes: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member indicated that he wrote to me on July 4. The records of my Department indicate that we have never received such a letter.
Further, when I did-


Don Boudria: Harvie, you should consider that an insult.


Stewart Donald McInnes: Would the Hon. Member like an answer to his question?
When I received the letter some time in August I immediately reviewed it. There was nothing in there that indicated to me that it should be turned over to the RCMP. Subsequently other oral statements by people have suggested that it would be appropriate to send it to the RCMP. There is nothing in the letter indicating that I should have put it to the RCMP or anything of that kind.


REQUEST THAT MINISTER TABLE LETTER
Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, the Minister has partially answered by telling us that he originally did not give the letter to the RCMP. He has now told us that he did not do it at that time.
Oral Questions
Is he prepared to do two things; one, tell us the exact date on which he chose to give it to the RCMP-we now know it was not at the beginning-and, second, will he undertake to ask for the consent of the House immediately after Question Period to table the letter here today?


Stewart Donald McInnes: Mr. Speaker, perhaps the Hon. Member was absent for the first part of Question Period. I indicated that because there was an ongoing inquiry by the RCMP, and that this was part of the record, it was difficult for me to comment.


CONSUMER AFFAIRS
Reginald Francis Stackhouse: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. Many consumers are concerned by rising prescription costs which seem to be due to dramatic increases, not in the costs of drugs but in the dispensing fees.
For example, one constituent in Scarborough West reports that the prescription cost was so divided that the drugs represented only 22 per cent of the total cost while 78 per cent was for the fee alone.
In view of so many consumers being of limited means but having no choice but to purchase prescriptions, what action can be taken to protect consumers against these impossible fees for service?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, there is not very much action available to us at the federal level in that prescription fees and the cost of dispensing, indeed the retail sale of drugs, are totally within provincial government jurisdiction. My advice to this Member and other Members is to refer this matter to the appropriate provincial Government.
The wholesale manufactured cost of patent drugs is now under the purview of the Drug Prices Review Board and, as indicated, those prices will be kept at less than the cost of living unless there are other circumstances which dictate a higher price in a specific case. We can control or examine the manufacture price of drugs although retail price is under provincial jurisdiction.


PUBLIC WORKS
Mr.   John. R. Rodriguez@Nickel Belt: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Public Works and has to do with

September 26, 1988
Oral Questions
this latest Tory scandal at the Canadian Forces radar base in Moisie, Quebec.


Mr. Speaker:: Order. I have said repeatedly that it is the duty of the Chair not only to make sure that the Opposition has the right to ask questions but that, in the general interests of decorum in this place and in fairness to others, those questions must be asked carefully.
At the moment there are vigorous questions being asked about something and I am asking Eton. Members not to use words in the preamble that take the questions way beyond at least what we have heard so far in the Chamber, and attribute a lot of conclusions, to what we have heard. The Hon. Member will ask his question. I ask him to be careful.


Mr. Rodriguez:: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I will take your admonition very seriously and I will rephrase my question.
My question is directed to the Minister of Public Works and has to do with certain alleged land sales raised previously today in this House.
The Minister of Public Works said that he received the letter from Mr. Hylands sometime in August. He also said that there was nothing in the letter that would lead him to consider turning it over to the RCMP. Is the Minister now prepared to make this letter public, if it is so innocuous, so that all Members of Parliament and the Canadian public can judge whether or not he made the right decision?


Stewart Donald McInnes: Mr. Speaker, that Member and other Members are alleging that there is fraud, that there is scam, that there is incriminating evidence. It seems to me that they cannot have it both ways. If there are those things then they are the subject of an RCMP investigation and we should let the investigation proceed and conclude. I will then be happy to answer all the Hon. Member's questions.


REQUEST THAT MINISTER TABLE LETTER
John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, far be it from me to make a suggestion to this Conservative Cabinet Minister as to how he could slay the Opposition in one fell swoop. He could put all of this to rest by simply tabling the letter.
Will the Minister do what is right, will he do what is fair, will he do what is demanded to clear up the so-called rumours and innuendoes of the Opposition? Will he table the letter in this House so that we can decide whether he made the right decision or not?


Stewart Donald McInnes: Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that I have done a little better than turning it over to the House. I have turned it over to the RCMP. Let them complete their investigation.


TRANSPORT
Mr. Russell MacLellan (Cape Breton-The Sydneys):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Transport. On September 12, Route Canada ceased operations. Yet in July of this year its revenues were $10,747,729. In August of this year, just days before it ceased operations, its revenues were $6,961,012, yet it stopped operations. During that period of time it did not pay its bills yet it was able to get gas. It was able to get gas because, as the invoices of Ten Wheels Truck Plaza in Kingston, Ontario, show, the gas bills were sent to CN.
Will the Minister confirm that Canadian National paid for the gasoline of Transport Route Canada during the period it was making millions of dollars but not paying its bills? Why would CN pay the gas of a company it sold two years ago, which was going to buy an American trucking company, put the Canadian trucking company out of business and lay off over 2,500 employees?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I stated repeatedly last week that the Minister of Transport does not have the power to look into the operations of Route Canada as a private company. My hon. friend brings forward some information today about the payment of gas bills by Canadian National. It may or may not be true. It is the first time I have heard it. I hope that he will give me the time to check with Canadian National to see if it was done, and, if so, if there is any good reason for it. I will come back to him with more information as soon as I have it.


COMPANY'S REVENUES-REQUEST FOR PUBLIC INVESTIGATION
Russell Gregoire MacLellan: Mr. Speaker, in July and August, Transport Route Canada made millions of dollars. Where did that money go?
Will the Minister table all of the agreements between CN and the Government of Canada on the one hand, and Transport Route Canada on the other? Will the Minister initiate a public investigation into this company? Millions of dollars were taken in, yet no bills were paid. Thousands of workers are laid off and are owed thousands of dollars. Will the Minister initiate an investigation?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I repeat what I said last week. I met the truckers myself. The Department of Labour and the Department of Finance have worked on their side in terms of all the operations of the company. But it is not yet in bankruptcy or even receivership. I repeat for the tenth or fifteenth time that, as long as there is no official declaration of that kind, we cannot get into the operations of the company.
The Hon. Member says that it does not pay its people but
makes profits. Again, it is a private sector operation. If there is
September 26, 1988

any reference to bankruptcy and so on, I said last week and told the truckers that I will make all the investigations I can. Again, this is a private sector operation. I will not do that and cannot do that at the present time.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Lewis:: Mr. Speaker, there have been some discussions among the Parties and, notwithstanding any Standing Order, I think you will find unanimous consent to defer the recorded division at 4.45 p.m., presuming that one will be called for on third reading of Bill C-144, until 6 p.m. this evening. At that time we will have the vote on the report stage amendments to the Broadcasting Act. It makes more sense to call the Members together to vote at one time. We would then suspend the sitting from 4.45 p.m. until 5 p.m., and commence Private Members' Hour at that time.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I hope that will be made an order of the House. In the interest of having more Members speak, could we not agree to debate Bill C-144 until five o'clock, then proceed to Private Members' Hour as agreed? Members could then vote on Bills C-144 and C-136.


Philip Derek Lewis: Certainly, Mr. Speaker. In fact, in my remarks during debate on time allocation, I offered to sit through lunch today. When that was not taken up, I naturally did not think my hon. friend wanted the 15 minutes from 4.45 p.m. until 5 p.m. However, before he rises again, let me say that we naturally agree to go until five o'clock. Any recorded division requested at that time would be taken at 6 p.m.


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, we are in agreement to the changes in the proceedings today. Also with respect to the House business question-


Philip Derek Lewis: There is no House business question.


Iain Francis Angus: -could I ask the Hon. Minister if there will be any response to our request for proceeding with the Election Expenses Act.


Mr. Speaker:: I think I must respond to the Hon. Member for Thunder Bay-Atikokan and indicate that there does not seem to be any response, at least at this moment.
I am obliged to give precedence to a question of privilege. The Hon. Member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell.
____________________________________19625
Canada Child Care Act PRIVILEGE


CADIN-PINETREE SITE DISPOSALS
Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. The Minister of Public Works (Mr. Mclnnes) is still in the House and I would like to raise this point while he is still here. The Minister responded to a question I asked concerning a letter that was sent by my office on July 7, 1988, regarding the cases of all CADIN-Pinetree site disposals.
I remind the Minister that not only did he receive my letter of July 7, 1988, the letter was even answered by the Department of Public Works. I have a copy of the reply of August 23, 1988, which I would be willing to table. The Minister seemingly answered a letter that he did not receive.


Mr. Speaker:: I do not know whether it is a question of privilege, but it is an assertion of fact. I think we will take it as a representation and leave it there. It is not a question of privilege.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Epp (Provencher) that Bill C-144, and Act to authorize payments by Canada toward the provision of child care services, and to amend the Canada Assistance Plan in consequence thereof, be read the third time and passed; and on the amendment of Ms. Mitchell (p. 19454).
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: When the House rose at one o'clock, there were five minutes remaining in the question and comment period following the speech by the Hon. Member for Niagara Falls (Mr. Nicholson). The Hon. Member had the floor.


Rob Nicholson: Madam Speaker, I want to comment on the subject of witnesses before the legislative committee on Bill C-144. The New Democratic Party cannot have it both ways on this issue. During the hearings of the special committee on child care, a committee which visited 31 cities and received representations from over
1,000	individuals, the NDP said the same thing at every city we visited and at every meeting here in Ottawa. They said that there had been enough talk on this subject. They said there had been enough discussion and enough study. The NDP said: "We want to cut this out. We want to see legislation".
The Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Epp) responded to the recommendations of the special committee on child care and came forward with legislation. Immediately the

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NDP said that this should be taken across the country because it needs more discussion, more study and more witnesses.
The people of this country are too smart for that kind of thinking. The NDP cannot say one thing in the House of Commons and something else in the cities across Canada.
As well, I want to comment on the suggestion and the implications that I think arise from the comments of the Hon. Member for Vancouver East (Ms. Mitchell), and the Hon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap (Mr. Riis), that somehow there is no funding available after the seven year period. That is absolutely incorrect.
There is a clause in the Bill which lays out minimum guarantees to the provinces of the level of funding which they will receive in year eight, which amounts to at least $800 million per year. I recommend that the Members of the Opposition Parties read Clause 4(3) of the Bill which says, among other things, that an agreement will not be less than the contribution payable to the province in respect of the year ending March 31, 1995, the difference being adjusted to the national rate of inflation. There is provision beyond the seven-year period of time.
With respect to the 200,000 spaces, you will note in the preamble to Bill C-144, Madam Speaker, that it refers to at least "200,000 spaces". We have 160,000 subsidized day care spaces now in Canada.
Looking at the development in this particular area and assessing the need as we have found it across the country, as outlined in our own studies, it seems to me that 200,000 spaces is reasonable, but it is the minimum. We have said at least that. If the provinces can create more, we would of course support that. But we think it is a good start for developing in an orderly way a child care system that will meet the needs of Canadian families. I think that is a good thing.
I hope that the members of the NDP and the Liberal Party, instead of spreading improper misrepresentations with respect to this Bill, will get behind it. Canadians are going to be watching. They will be watching to see how they will vote on this important historic document, this historic piece of legislation brought forward by the Minister of Health in cooperation with the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) and all the Members on this side of the House. 1 will be interested to see which way they will vote when it comes up for a vote later on today.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Madam Speaker, Canadians certainly want and need a national program for the effective delivery of affordable and universally accessible quality child care. Unfortunately, the Conservative Government's Bill C-144 does not do that. It fails to recognize the changing realities in our society. It fails to address the fundamental issues connected with the needs for child care of Canadians and their families.
The rhetoric of the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Epp) and the rhetoric of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) have been aimed at cultivating a pre-election impression that the Conservative child care strategy will meet the needs of parents and children across the country as soon as it is passed. The Government's public relations campaign conducted over the past two months both inside and outside this House, however, can do no more than generate false hopes, to be followed by dashed expectations on the part of Canadians.
Contrary to what the Prime Minister said a few days ago, Bill C-144, if and when it ever becomes law, will not add one more child care space to the quantity existing in the country at the very point in time at which it is passed. For the Bill to have any effect there must first be the negotiation and the signature of agreements with the provinces pursuant to the Bill, likely a lengthy process. In any event, it would appear, and I will say something about this in a few minutes, the Bill will provide fewer child care spaces than would have been the case under the existing Canada Assistance Plan.
The Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, the Government's own advisory body, concluded in its brief which it presented to the legislative committee studying this Bill with the reasoned judgment that, and I quote: "Bill C-144 raises but does not resolve the essential questions of child care. Its most important features are left for clarification by regulation are open to conjecture. It is a legislative shell".
The child care needs of Canadian parents and their children will not be met by the passage of a hollow legislative shell rammed through the House of Commons by time allocation, another form of closure, because the Conservatives want to try to put something over on Canadians during a general election, something I say, Madam Speaker, they will not accomplish.
Let me refer, Madam Speaker, to the legislative committee which studied Bill C-144. It is very significant that not only the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women but also not one of the 40 groups that appeared before that committee as witnesses could support the passage of Bill C-144. We are talking about the most knowledgeable, the most informed, the most representative child care advocacy groups in the country.
Currently there are almost one million women in the workforce with pre-school children who require all-day care. There are two million women in the workforce with children under 16 years of age, many of whom require some form of care just before or for a few hours after the school day is over-the latchkey children.
In 1986 when this Conservative Government was dithering on this matter and doing nothing, when 52 per cent of Canadian women with children under the age of three were working outside the home and nearly two million children under 13 likely needed full-time care, there were fewer than
200,000	spaces. In fact, there were only some 172,000 spaces provided for quality day care. Presently it is estimated that
September 26, 1988

licensed care in family homes or centres is available for less than 10 per cent of the children under 13 whose parents work or study more than 20 hours per week. This Conservative Bill covers only pre-school children. It ignores completely the problem of the latchkey children, the children who are left alone with nothing more than the key to their home or apartment on a string or chain around their necks waiting for their parent or parents to complete their work, work they have to do to maintain their standard of living.
This so-called national child care strategy announced by the Conservative Government consists of two parts. The first part set out in the February, 1988 Budget purported to assist parents through an increase in the tax deduction for child care expenses and an increase in the refundable child tax credit, something that would involve a tax expenditure of $2.4 billion. The second part of the Conservative approach to be implemented by this Bill involves cost-sharing agreements for child care funding with the provinces.
This Bill, as the Advisory Council on the Status of Women said, leaves a lot of important questions unanswered. For example, it is not yet known how the child care services eligible for cost sharing will be defined, or how exactly profit making child care agencies will be distinguished from non-profit agencies. No regulations have been drafted. One would think that with a piece of legislation like this the draft regulations would have been available, they would have been made public, they would have been presented to the legislative committee so we could have in mind and assess what they say about the Government's real intentions in carrying out this legislation which, as the Advisory Council on the Status of Women said, is nothing more than a hollow shell.
With questions like the ones I mentioned left dangling, the Government has said that its approach will cost $6.4 billion over the next seven years, of which $2.3 billion are the tax provisions for parents in the 1988 Budget I have mentioned. These tax expenditures for parents over the next seven years have a special ring of absurdity about them when it is recalled that the cumulative impacts of the Conservative Government's first three Budgets over the four years of its mandate means that the personal income tax portion of Government revenues has increased by $28 billion, such that parents with two children earning $15,000 annually have been hit with a tax increase of 53 per cent, and that parents earning $30,000 have been hit with a tax increase of at least 18 per cent.
If we set aside this grand scale fiscal absurdity and unfairness for just a moment and consider the possible impact of the $2.3 billion tax expenditure in the 1988 Budget in the narrower terms of the Conservative child care strategy, we see that the increased child care tax deduction will provide real financial benefit only for the higher income earners who likely already have and can pay for unsubsidized licensed child care or paid domestic help. This deduction will not be of any real help to lower income families. But what about the increase in the child tax credit? Increasing the child tax credit by $100 in 1988 and by $200 in each subsequent year will not provide an
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adequate amount of urgently needed help for those families who cannot get receipts for their child care expenses, or whose incomes are too low to qualify for the much greater tax deduction. Two hundred dollars per child per year goes nowhere in the real world, where the present cost of licensed care for one child averages from $3,000 to $4,000 per year across the country, and in some cities licensed infant care can run as high as $10,000 per child.
It is painfully obvious that these tax measures will not stimulate the construction of new spaces, the renovation and improvement of existing child care centres, and the upgrading of salaries and training for child care workers.
The Government claims that under its strategy Bill C-144 will set aside some $3.94 billion for cost-sharing child care services. Under the current Canada Assistance Plan arrangements, the Government would have spent approximately $2.6 billion over the next seven years. In reality, the new money provided through March, 1995, is $1.3 billion or $200 million a year.
It is clear from the Bill that it will create only 200,000 new spaces over the next seven years, for a total of approximately 400,000. Surely this will not serve the needs of the approximately 1.8 million children in need of child care facilities. Over 70 per cent of the children who need child care spaces will not get them under this Conservative approach to child care.
What is even more disturbing about this legislation is the fact that existing tax measures and arrangements for federal-provincial cost sharing under the Canada Assistance Plan-a plan, by the way, created by past Liberal Governments-could provide more new child care spaces than the fixed target of
200,000	adopted by this Conservative Government over the next seven years. This is confirmed by research carried out by the Canadian Day Care Advocacy Association. This research shows that we can have an increase of 293,903 spaces at the end of 1995 simply by continuing the present and previously existing Canada Assistance Plan program.
The Conservative Government's estimate of 200,000 new spaces to be created by its child care strategy falls 93,903 spaces short of what we could likely have by sticking with the status quo, based on the very lowest annual increase that we have had over the past five years.
I am not saying, by the way, that the status quo is enough. Obviously it is not enough and more has to be done, but what we need is not going to be provided by this inadequate Conservative approach to child care as set out in Bill C-144.
The preamble of this Bill refers, and I quote, to the need to "improve the availability, the affordability, the quality, and the accessibility of child care services". At the same time, it commits the Government to limit federal payments under the

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cost sharing program to payments not exceeding $4 billion during the life of the program.
This Government's actual promise to Canadians, through Bill C-144, is to refuse to spend more money, even if its ineffectual target of 200,000 new spaces is not met within the next seven years. The Bill in effect runs out after seven years.
Furthermore, the legislation says that the federal Government, as I understand it, will not be responsible, necessarily, for sharing the capital expenditures or operating costs of child care after the seven-year period ends on March 31, 1995. This Bill will bring about an uneven checker board regime of child care. I say this because the legislation contains no national standards or objectives to establish criteria for quality child care providing a minimum, a basis for quality child care for children in every part of our country, in every province.
The Conservative Government has had four all-too-long years to work with the provinces on national standards and objectives, but in spite of this, Bill C-144 is silent on what should be contained in national standards and objectives; issues like the ratios between children and child care workers in child care centres, the size of child care groups, the training of care givers, the mechanisms for parental and community input, health, safety and nutritional conditions, and employee wages and working conditions.
I believe that Canadians expect child care to be a shared responsibility, one involving parents, their Governments and, yes, their employers. I believe that Canadians expect the federal Government to provide the leadership required to put in place basic national standards with the greatest emphasis on developing a licensed system to meet present and future needs, and directing its resources toward services for low and moderate income families. The emphasis should surely be on using an educational child development model rather than a commercial model of child care delivery in the developing of our Canadian system of child care.
I believe that there must be an emphasis on and a priority for non-profit and public care, recognizing the models that we have developed in our well established programs of health care and education in Canada. I also say that there should be increased parental leave provisions under our unemployment insurance system within the scope of child care legislation. Furthermore, there should be stronger incentives in our tax system for employers to establish employer subsidized child care services.
We have reached the final stage of debate on Bill C-144. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that we have been forced to conclude the debate by the heavy-handed approach of the Conservatives in shutting it off through time allocation after only a handful of days of debate in this House and in committee hearings outside this House.
We have reached the final stage of the Conservative Government's mandate. It has failed to produce the program that it promised to Canadians, who so urgently need and want
it, for the effective delivery of affordable and universally accessible quality child care. We are confronted only with this piece of legislation that may well provide fewer new spaces for child care than could be established under the existing programs. We are confronted with a piece of legislation that is devoid of national standards and objectives.
A national child care program was promised as a high priority item on its agenda by the Conservative Party during the 1984 election campaign, and yet it took nearly four years for the Government to get around to introducing this flawed and regressive Bill.
It is obvious that Canadians are not receiving the child care program promised by the Conservatives during the last election, and it is just as obvious that this Conservative Government is trying to concoct a soothing script for an election masquerade.
In spite of the efforts of the Government to limit debate and shut off criticism of Bill C-144, I believe that Canadians will see through the fundamental inadequacies of the Bill and reject this masquerade.
I hope that very soon the Prime Minister will summon his courage to call a general election and allow Canadians an overdue opportunity to exercise their good judgment, not only on Bill C-144, but on the overall conduct of the Government. Bill C-144 is another example of the incompetence of the Government and its lack of credibility. I believe, in this election, in exercising their judgment, the Canadian people will get rid of the Conservative Government so that a new Government, one, I believe, that will be a Liberal Government, will be able to put in place a truly effective national program for accessible, affordable, and quality child care.
Our children are this country's greatest treasure and its future. They deserve no less. They are not getting what they deserve from the Conservative Government. We want Canadians to have a chance to exercise their judgment to give Canadians, their families, and the children now and in the future what they need and deserve for our country's future.


Mrs. Tardif (Charlesbourg):: Madam Speaker, I was astonished to hear what the Hon. Member said in his speech. Decades of Liberal Government never gave us child care. After four years of Conservative Government, we have child care.
The Hon. Member referred earlier to the regulations, expressing disappointment that the regulations had not yet been published. I may remind the Hon. Member that the Conservative Government has also introduced improvements in this respect.
Before this Government came to power, regulations were not published until they came into effect. However, the Conservative Government requested publication of the regulations six months in advance, to let interested groups and Members of
September 26, 1988

the House of Commons know exactly what was coming. I am surprised to see the Hon. Member did not do his homework.
I would also like to refer to the title of the legislation before the House today. The title of the Act, and I will read it, Madam Speaker, in case the Hon. Member forgot to do so: An Act to authorize payments by Canada toward the provision of child care services, and to amend the Canada Assistance Plan in consequence thereof.
Madam Speaker, amendments to our tax legislation concerning child care were approved by the House and the Senate and they are now in effect. We are talking here about legislation enabling the federal Government to transfer money to the provinces.
I wonder whether the Hon. Member can read, because I would refer him to Section 3. Perhaps I may read the section, Madam Speaker, because I think the Hon. Member is not aware of what Section 3 contains.
3. (1) The Minister and the Minister of Finance may, with the approval of the Governor in Council, enter into an agreement with any province to provide for the payment of contributions by Canada, subject to the provisions of this Act, toward the cost to the province and municipalities in the province.
And this is followed by the program's two components:
(a)	of the provision of child care services in respect of a period beginning on April 1, 1988 or on April 1 of a subsequent year and ending on March 31, 1995 and of capital assets that were first used for the provision of child care services during that period; or
(b)	of the provision of child care services in respect of any period of years beginning after March 31, 1995.
I would like to ask the Hon. Member where he got his information on the Canada Child Care Act.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Madam Speaker, I would ask the Hon. Member to read the preamble of the Bill which says, and I will quote it in English:

AND WHEREAS for such purposes the Parliament of Canada is prepared to make payments in an amount not exceeding four billion dollars over the said seven-year period;

And in French:
for such purposes, it is prepared to pay up to four billion dollars over this period,
So, Madam Speaker, what is the purpose of this statement that seems to authorize agreements after March 31, 1995, if it is impossible under this Bill to spend more than the allowable sum of money, except for the seven-year period beginning with the passage of this Bill.
The Preamble is authoritative and as I see it, this preamble says the federal Government has no power to enter into agreements with the provinces after 1995.
And I conclude by saying also, Madam Speaker, that the Hon. Member said that there was no plan or legislation to help provide day care for the population before Bill C-144, but
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obviously we had the Canada Assistance Plan, which created some child care spaces. I do not claim that these spaces are adequate, but it is a beginning. We also set up the commission chaired by Katie Cooke before the last elections. This was a starting point, but the Conservative Government did not use it. It just set up another Parliamentary Committee and the Government waited until the last minute, until the end of July, to table its Bill.
So the Government wasted at least two years, maybe three, by resisting these fairly recent changes that families in the country have undergone.


Rob Nicholson: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I want to bring to the attention of the House that we have not been receiving any translation from French. I hope that is now corrected. I believe it is important for all Members to be able to listen to the debate in both official languages.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I thank the Hon. Member for bringing this to my attention. I am sure that the necessary arrangements will be made. I believe it is now working. As I was not using the translation myself, I was not aware. I thank the Hon. Member for bringing it to my attention.
There are two minutes left in the question and answer period.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Madam Speaker, I am sorry that there was no simultaneous translation. Perhaps I can repeat some of what I said.

I was saying that I very much doubt the value of the clause that states the Government can enter into agreements with the provinces on child care after 1995. The preamble very clearly states that this law permits the expenditure of only $4 billion over the seven-year period ending March 31, 1995.
I also was saying that I believe the Hon. Member was incorrect in saying that before this Bill there was nothing on the books at the federal level to help create child care spaces. There was the Canada Assistance Plan. I am not suggesting that the Canada Assistance Plan has done everything that we need. In recent years there has certainly been a major change in the composition of the Canadian family. Certainly, it was a start.
Recognizing the dramatic changes in the Canadian family in recent years, as I was attempting to say in French, the previous Liberal Government created the Dr. Katie Cooke commission which reported after the election. Instead of using that report as a starting point to deal with the needs for child care, the Government threw it aside and set up a parliamentary committee that travelled around the country. It presented a report, which certainly was not publicly approved, however the

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Government did not act immediately on the report of the parliamentary committee even though it was dominated by its own members. It waited until the last minute in a fit of deathbed repentance and tabled the Bill we are debating now, after wasting two or three years when it could have acted on this matter.
1 am sorry that the translation was not working. I wanted to be of assistance to my colleagues and to give a summary of what I was attempting to say in the other official language.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The time allowed for questions and comments has now expired. Resuming debate. The Hon. Member for Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands (Mr. Manley) has the floor.


James Douglas Manly: Madam Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to make a few comments on Bill C-144. First, in response to the Liberals who referred to a Dr. Katie Cooke and her report, it is true that while they commissioned that report, they have not used it as the basis for their own policy. In fact, they talk about a comprehensive policy only after the deficit has been brought down. They are also in favour of commercial child care.
I would like to begin by paying tribute to the work of the Hon. Member for Vancouver East (Ms. Mitchell) over the last four years. She has been the outstanding spokesperson for child care in this House over those four years. She travelled with the earlier committee, raised questions in the House of Commons, and acted as advocate, pushing, trying to get the Government to act on this issue. Then, when it brought in this travesty of a Bill, she led the fight to criticize its shortcomings.
I think all Canadians interested in a real child care program owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Margaret Mitchell and the kind of work she has done over the last four years.
The importance of this subject matter cannot be underestimated because we are talking about the future of our children, and therefore the future of our country. It is on that basis that I regret the Government's move to limit debate on this important subject. The first social program of any note brought in by a government since medicare, and we are rushing it through the House without adequate debate. First reading was given on July 25.
It is a shoddy Bill, and I think most Members know the meaning of that word. It comes from the old textile trade. Shoddy is a kind of cloth in which inferior goods are used and it will not stand up. When you put shoddy into the wash, it falls apart. It is flimsy and you cannot hold it up to the light because you see through it. You cannot hold this shoddy Bill up to the light because the people will see through it, and that is why the Government is insisting on closure. It does not want the people of Canada to investigate the Bill. It figures this is
not really going to go into the wash until after the next election and the people will not realize how they have been hoaxed.
When it comes right down to it, Bill C-144 is a $4 billion buy-out program which the federal Government is using over the next seven years to divest itself of further responsibility in the field of child care. There will be a limited amount of money available over that time to provide up to 75 per cent capital cost sharing for new non-profit child care spaces, but after seven years there will be nothing. The Government is once again reneging on promises it made during the last campaign. It is astute enough to recognize the public need for child care. It is clever enough to recognize that there is a growing public demand for child care, a groundswell of support equivalent to that for medicare in the early 1960s. However, it is not really answering the need. Instead, it is offering a palliative.
Most of us who are or have been parents recall that when we had very young children we would sometimes give them what you call the plug. When they were crying to be fed, instead of giving them a bottle or the breast you would take a dummy and plug that in its mouth and hope the child would quit crying. That is what we have in this Bill, a plug being given to the Canadian public in the hope they will not be crying for action for a little while. However, it fails to satisfy. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: If your child asks for bread, will you give him a stone? That is what we have here in Bill C-144, a stone.
There is still an ideological argument over day care. It has not surfaced very much in the House, but there is still that ideological strata in the Conservative Party that believes real mothers stay at home and make muffins and look after the children 24 hours a day while daddy is away at work. They neglect the social reality of Canada in the last part of the 20th century.
I believe children from the most privileged of nuclear families can benefit from quality early childhood care. The experiences of socialization, of developing motor skills and creativity in company with other children, are invaluable in the life of any child. It is something that Canada needs to develop on a comprehensive basis from one end of the country to another, but we are not doing it.
At the same time we in our Party, and I am sure all Members, recognize that bad child care is a disaster. You get a number of children who are in essence baby-sat for a number of hours during the day. They are regimented, sat down to watch television, because that is the easiest thing that can be done for them. They do not develop socially. They do not develop physically. Their creativity is killed. Bad child care is a disaster for our children and it is a disaster for the future of Canada.
Good child care is something from which every child from
however privileged a home can benefit.
September 26, 1988

Given the abominable wages for child care workers, it is a surprise that there are even as good child care centres in Canada as there are. I recall a few years ago, when my wife, a qualified child care worker, was interested in some part-time work at one of the better day care institutions in Ottawa. She made inquiries and found out she would be paid less than what our daughter, just out of high school, was receiving as a parttime clerk at the liquor store. It says something about our priorities as a nation when child care workers are relegated to the very bottom of the wage scale. This is not an argument against decent wages for clerks. It is an argument for recognizing the importance of someone with responsibility for child care.
The Minister recognized there was a problem last spring when he said he kind of miscalculated and there was going to be an extra $1 billion in the pot. He said this was going to be used to improve wages for child care workers. Yet there is absolutely nothing in this legislation that sets any standards for wages. There is nothing that sets any objectives for anything whatever dealing with child care across the country.
We have some 1.8 million children whose parents are in the labour force and who do not have access to quality child care. We need to recognize that many of those who need child care are single parents or two-parent families where the one partner has a comparatively low wage job and they are unable to gain any kind of real toehold in the labour market. So they remain marginalized. The lack of adequate child care means that a great many parents, families and children are, therefore, condemned to poverty. There is a direct relationship. By not having a decent child care program in place, the Government is continuing to condemn a large number of Canadian children to poverty who would not be in poverty if we had a decent program.
The Tory policy will create fewer child care spaces over the next seven years than the present system, inadequate as that present system is. Today, there are approximately 240,000 child care spaces. The Tories plan to add 200,000 spaces by the year 1995. Under the present situation, inadequate as it is as I have said, the number of spaces doubles every five years, so we would have reached that doubling by the year 1993. The Tories have planned to add an extra 200,000 spaces by the year 1995. This Bill puts a ceiling on the number of new spaces which the federal Government is prepared to support. It makes funding available to the provinces but with no national objectives to ensure that money is used to provide quality accessible care.
There has been some debate today about the question of witnesses coming before the committee. We say that the whole committee process taking only 2.5 days to hear witnesses neglected whole areas of Canada. Nobody was heard from the Atlantic provinces. There were only two witnesses from east of the Ottawa River. That is a travesty of what our committee process is supposed to be about. The Hon. Member for
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Niagara Falls (Mr. Nicholson) said that the New Democratic Party is trying to have it both ways, that the New Democrats had been demanding action following the earlier task force. He is quite right. We have been demanding action. Then he said that we wanted to study the Bill after it was tabled. Of course, when such an inadequate Bill was tabled, it was important that witnesses should appear who could point out the inadequacies with the hope the Government would listen.
Unfortunately, the Government did not choose to listen but regarded the committee process as simply a stage that had to be gone through. Instead of having credible witnesses on the Government side, if the Government had any who would have been prepared to reason with the committee-the committee process is to hear witnesses and to try to reach some balance as to what is needed-the Government simply said: "We are not even interested in talking with Opposition Members about what our position is. You can call a few witnesses of your own. We will not listen to them nor will we change anything. We will ram this legislation through because we want it in place for the election". That is a travesty. In committee there is supposed to be an opportunity for both sides to be heard and for committee members to be able to weigh and reason among themselves.
Over the last eight years of good committees in this House of Commons, both under the present Government and under the previous Liberal Government, it has been my experience that that is what committees have done. But when you have a Government that says it does not matter what witnesses say, that it will simply follow its own legislation and ideological bent, telling the Opposition to call witnesses and that the Government will call none, that is a travesty, Madam Speaker.
When New Democrats look at child care needs across Canada, we see seven key principles which have to be established. First, a program for child care should be comprehensive. It should include a broad range of services to serve infants, pre-schoolers, school-age children and those with special needs. Second, quality should be established. Services should be licensed and regulated and should incorporate the best current information about early childhood development. This is an area where scholars are working and developing their knowledge all the time. We need people who have been trained in this area rather than simply saying that so-and-so has always liked children, and why shouldn't he or she have the opportunity to have some kind of day care facility. We need people who have been trained in what early childhood development is all about.
Third, the program should be affordable. Cost should not be a barrier to access. Over a period of time, parental fees should diminish until they are ultimately phased out. There is absolutely nothing in Bill C-144 to make that possible. Fourth, day care facilities should be accessible. Services should be universally accessible to all families seeking care regardless of income, employment status and geographic location. Fifth, day

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care programs should be flexible. Needs have to be accommodated for those who require care on a variety of schedules. People have strange schedules of work today.
Part-time, full-time, seasonal, shift or on a drop-in basis. Sixth-this is most important and something which the Government does not recognize-services should be non-profit to ensure the maximum, optimum use of public funds. Services should not be devoted to the profit-seeking motive. We should not be seeking to make fast bucks out of the needs of our children. As a Government, the Conservatives have the responsibility to get the optimal value for the taxpayer's dollar. We are not doing that when we fund day care centres that are oriented to profit. Finally, these services should be accountable. There should be regular monitoring and financial accountability provided to parents and to Government.
The witnesses who appeared before the committee were universal in their condemnation of Bill C-144 as failing to meet the real needs of Canada's children and the parents of those children. They were not just negative. They came before the committee and tried to make reasonable suggestions which they hoped the Government would adopt. A number of groups pointed out that more than 200,000 spaces should be targeted by the program which the Bill creates, for instance, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Daycare Advocacy Association, the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the National Federation of Nurses' Unions, the Canadian Association of Social Workers, the Ottawa-Carleton Daycare Association, the Manitoba Federation of Labour, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.
As I looked through their comments and the comments made by other groups which appeared before the committee, I noticed a lot of the people coming before the committee were from unions. There were day care advocacy groups and a lot of union people appeared, which made a lot of sense to me. These are the people who need child care. Naturally the unions were trying to represent their members' interests. Unfortunately, the Conservative Government was not interested in hearing this.
The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees talked about the principle of national objectives for day care and the need to incorporate the necessary provisions to enforce national standards. The Canadian Jewish Congress on the same subject said that for such a vital program as child care, the Government must establish national programs which set the parameters for provincial programs so that families may be assured of finding services of reasonably comparable quality no matter where they live. This is consistent with the tradition of other national cost shared programs.
The National Anti Poverty Organization recommends the establishment of national objectives at least and some federal standards if possible. We do not have that in Bill C-144. The Alberta Federation of Labour points out that Bill C-144
provides no national goals nor objectives. It says that provincial Governments such as Alberta-and they could speak just as well of the British Columbia Government or a number of regressive Governments across Canada-must clearly understand the obligations of participation in the program. The National Union of Provincial Government Employees said the welfare of children must supersede the jurisdictional sensitivities of provincial Governments.
The witnesses who appeared before the committee had a lot of concern with this Bill. As I said at the beginning, it is shoddy. It is the sort of thing that will not stand up to the light. It is the sort of thing that when it is put in the wash, it is going to fall apart. It is flimsy and not something that we in this Party, caring as we do about Canada's children and the future of Canada, can support.


Margaret Anne Mitchell: Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague the same question, really, that I asked the Conservative Member who spoke this morning. Why does the Member think the Conservative Government and the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), who promised major action on behalf of Canada's children, and certainly this as a response to Canadian women as well, waited four years? And why did they give such high priority, first of all, to bringing in tax measures which are regressive and which give double the amount of reduction for higher-income families and do nothing for lower-income families? There was very little delay in that part of the strategy. Why does the Member think the Conservative Government is putting a seven-year cap on everything?
The Member tells us his wife has been very active in child care. I am sure he knows it often takes two or three years to get a new child care centre going. In many provinces which are underdeveloped, it will take quite a while before they begin to use this program. At the end of seven years there will be no more capital funds, there will be reduced variable cost sharing for the poorer provinces and the program in effect will be finished. We know that during those seven years, if we are lucky, we will only see 25 per cent of the need met. That is quite a generous estimate at that. It is not nearly the amount of child care that most bodies, including the Day Care Information Centre, says is needed. I would like to ask the Member to comment on the very restrictive type of policy the Conservatives introduced.


James Douglas Manly: I would like to begin, Madam Speaker, by telling a story about another country far away from Canada. A Cabinet Minister was visiting an area in his riding in this foreign country. He went into a pre-school situation and he could see it was very inadequate. There were no facilities. They did not have furniture. The children were not properly looked after. The Cabinet Minister regarded the situation for a while and realized it was a bad situation, so he promised $100 would be made available to help that day care centre. A little later he toured a prison and saw that the facilities were not great, but were not bad as prisons go. The Cabinet Minister looked
September 26, 1988

around and decided that the prison needed a new gymnasium, a new television room and new facilities for visiting. So he ordered there should be S3 million made available to help that new prison. His assistant was with him and he did not understand this. He said to the Cabinet Minister: "We just finished visiting a day care centre which was really in need and you gave them $100. We visit a prison and you give $3 million. Why the discrepancy?" The Cabinet Minister shrugged and said: "Well, I am not likely to end up in a day care centre".
The Conservatives promised there would be a day care program put in place, but they promised under the pressure of an election campaign. I do not think the Prime Minister's heart was really in that program. It was one of those things he felt compelled to do, the same as he felt compelled to say there was not going to be any patronage. Do you remember that, Madam Speaker? He said there was not going to be any patronage under the Conservative Government, that it was going to be a different kind of situation. In the same way he promised there was going to be an adequate child care package brought in, but the Government has not really had its heart in it. There is still that ideological strata in the Conservative Party that regards child care as being somehow second rate, that what we really should have are parents who will stay home 24 hours a day and look after their children. Somehow child care is not really what the Government wants for Canada's children, so I think the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), regardless of what he might think, has some difficulty with his own caucus.
I also think there was a desire not to bring this legislation forward too quickly because the Conservatives did not want it to see the light of day. They did not want it exposed. They knew it would not stand up to criticism. So they delayed, delayed and delayed to the last possible moment and they are now trying to rush it through in the waning days of Babylon, hoping they can get it in the public eye and be able to say they fulfilled their promise. They hope that the people will not realize what a shoddy piece of work it is until after the election.
I do not think the people of Canada are going to be deceived by this shoddy Bill. All the witnesses who appeared before the committee pointed to its inadequacies, pointed out ways in which it should be improved. The Canadian public will also look at this legislation and, as The Ottawa Citizen reported on Saturday, they will reject it as being completely inadequate, in some places wasteful, in other places, mean, and in fact nothing more than an attempted election bribe.


Mr. Young:: Madam Speaker, on the last point raised by my colleague, whether or not people would be fooled by this piece of legislation, I have received several letters from constituents over the last several days. They talk about the present crisis in day care. They certainly are not fooled. They have analysed what this Government has had to say and have concluded that at the end of the seven-year period, there will be no additional day care spaces. In fact, there will probably be less day care
Canada Child Care Act
spaces available than what there would otherwise be under the present arrangement. I want to ask the Hon. Member if he sees it in exactly the same way as my constituents.


James Douglas Manly: Absolutely, Madam Speaker. We pointed out time and again, and I think the message is getting through to everyone except the Conservatives-although perhaps they understand it and just do not want to act on it-that at the end of this seven year period under this new Act, Bill C-144, there will be fewer child care spaces in Canada than if we had left the present situation in place, inadequate as it is. We know that action needs to be taken. There are hundreds of thousands of Canadian children who could benefit from child care. We see it as a need. The Conservative Government seems to see it as a burden. It sees only the cost. It does not see the investment. Individual parents are concerned that the Government invest something in the future of their children. The Government is not doing it. As a Parliament we should be concerned about the Government not only investing in individual children but investing in the future of Canada's children as a whole. We are not doing it. We are failing. The Government has failed.


Monique Bernatchez Tardif: Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I take part in the third reading debate on Bill C-144. Allow me first, Madam Speaker, to go back to the reply I was given earlier by my colleague the Hon. Member for Windsor West (Mr. Gray) about the federal contribution toward the maintenance of child care services after 1995. I referred my colleague to clause 3 of the Bill and he referred me to its preamble. I would like to put on record, Madam Speaker, that the first paragraph of the preamble says that after 1995 the Government will contribute to the maintenance of the expanded child care system. It should be obvious to anyone who can read and understand legislation that that is not only included in the preamble but also in clause 3, and it has always been agreed that after 1995 the federal Government will continue to contribute 50 per cent of the maintenance cost of child care services.
My colleague also mentioned what the former Liberal Government did for child care services. I wish to remind him that in 1984 the Canada Assistance Plan provided $25 million for all Canadian children who needed care services. It is estimated that under the Bill introduced, according to our objectives of doubling the number of day care spaces in the next seven years, by then, in 1995, the federal Government should be contributing $800 million per year for child care services.
I also had, Madam Speaker, the opportunity to hear the leader of the official Opposition this morning and I would like to express my astonishment. Where was he this summer? What does he know of the day care Bill? How can his speech-writers tackle issues they know nothing about? Why haven't

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Canada Child Care Act
they at least consulted with the Hon. Member for Outremont (Mrs. Pepin) who was one of those sitting on the legislative committee this summer? I am convinced that my colleague from Outremont could have told them a few things, including the date of the Bill's first reading in the House. But I would particularly like to emphasize certain aspects of this issue. I I am thinking of a change suggested by the Hon. Member for Outremont during the legislative committee to clarify whether the 200 000 extra spaces were meant as a minimum or a maximum. At her request, the two little words "at least" were added before the number 200 000 in the preamble. Not only is this what we wanted but it is in fact something which we have added to the Bill at his request to make sure that Members opposite understood that it was certainly not a maximum but rather a minimum.
There were also other changes made, Madam Speaker, at the committee stage, which were totally ignored by the leader of the official Opposition this morning. I would like to stress among others the issue of children. What is a child? He spoke to us about a child under six. Section 2 of the Bill, a definitional section, describes a child as a person under 15 of age. So there is no problem and this is something everyone can understand; according to the child care legislation, a child is under 15. That seems simple enough. It is there in the legislation. The issue of rolling over expenses from one year to the next was also raised, Madam Speaker. Yes, there was a change in committee in that case as well to ensure that part of the monies not spent as forecasted by the provinces could be rolled over to the subsequent year.
Yes, that is a change which was made in the legislative committee.
Madam Speaker, there was also an amendment dealing with linguistic minorities. There was an amendment moved by the Hon. Member for Outremont which was accepted. There was another amendment dealing with the needs of low income families which was added to the legislation.
I suggest that we have carried out a fair examination of the issue, that we have listened to the legitimate representations, even from the Opposition, and we have been able to incoporate them in the legislation, so that I feel we have an excellent Bill, Madam Speaker.
I should like to emphasize something which I noticed this morning, Madam Speaker. As I was listening to the Leader of the Official Opposition, I was absolutetly flabbergasted to realize that not a single woman supported what he was saying. Having heard what he had to say, I suggest I would have done the same thing and I feel that on an issue as important as this one for the women, families and children in Canada, we have to thoroughly examine the Bill before us.
Madam Speaker, last Wednesday, the Leader of the NDP made a number of statements in the House. I had the opportunity to read them and I should like to address especially his comments dealing with issues of national objectives and
standards, as well as the availability of Federal funds for daycare services under this legislation.
As a result of this debate, I have come to the realization that several Members of the Opposition sitting in the House know nothing about the sharing of powers between the Federal and Provincial Governments in Canada, nor about the Federal assistance made available through Federal programs in such areas of Provincial jurisdiction as health services, postsecondary education, social assistance and services. They do not seem to understand the difference between cost sharing programs under which the Federal Government reimburse the provinces part of the expenses incurred under Federaly sponsored programs and global financing, and where the Federal Government's contribution is determined by a formula and is not directly tied to Provincial expenditures.
In an unfair attack against the Premier and the Government of his province, the NDP House Leader said this last Wednesday: "The Government of Canada gives British Columbia money for post-secondary education . .. The British Columbia Government does not match any of it. It does not spend any money on post-secondary education, and I am saying it will do the same for child care."
Madam Speaker, this is a cost sharing Bill. Any province seeking federal funding under the provisions of this legislation will first have to contribute money to increase the number of spaces in its qualified child care centres and provide regular financial assistance with respect to new and existing spaces by paying direct grants or subsidizing the expenses of low and middle income families. The provinces must contribute money for child care and spend that money for nothing else before we will pay back some of these expenditures. It is not a matter of payments which must be matched by the provinces. They must contribute first and then apply to the federal Government for partial repayment of their expenses.
By contrast, federal contributions for post-secondary education are figured out every year on the basis of a formula which has nothing to do with provincial expenditures. The provinces are not expected to match the federal contribution nor to add a preset amount.
Madam Speaker, allow me to say a few words about the issue of national standards and objectives. Apparently a number of Opposition Members believe that there are national standards concerning new programs and that these standards are the same in all sectors where the federal Government contributes money. Since the federal Government shares the cost connected with social assistance, the Members in question assume that social welfare rates are the same in each province. Since a federal contribution is paid for insured health services, these Members assume that the number of doctors per capita in New Brunswick is the same as in Ontario and that since there are hospitals in Toronto, there should be hospitals in every little fishing village in Newfoundland. Since the federal Government provides funding for post-secondary education, these Members assume that the professor/student ratio at
September 26, 1988

Laval University should be identical to that at the University of British Columbia and that admission criteria, competence of staff and student assistance programs should be the same at both institutions.
Madam Speaker, these assumptions are of course false. Like many others, the Hon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap (Mr. Riis) said indignantly in his speech last Wednesday that we would have a very uneven system because different provinces would have different standards of child care. In an area that falls purely under provincial jurisdiction, there may be variations from province to province to reflect the different needs that exist across the country.
Today, we have this divergence in health care because certain services which are fully insured in some provinces are only partially insured in other provinces or not at all. We have the same kind of situation in social assistance, because different provinces provide different rates of assistance to different categories of recipients. The same applies to postsecondary education, where admission criteria and student assistance programs vary from province to province and from university to university.
In fact, even if that may surprise the Hon. Member and others who share his views, there is no standard for establishing these programs. None are recommended for this Bill, any more than standards exist in legislation authorizing federal financial assistance to programs that fall under provincial jurisdiction.
Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, when witnesses for the FTQ informed the New Democratic spokesperson for the Bill at the hearings of the legislative committee that standards should be left entirely up to the provinces, she approved that position, stating that the NDP only wanted the Bill to set national objectives.
Madam Speaker, I may add that the next day, the Hon. Member for Vancouver East (Ms. Mitchell ) did a clause-byclause analysis, proposing a series of amendments regarding so-called national objectives, most of which were just program standards, under a different name. Nevertheless, she at least recognized in principle that those who claim that imposing uniform minimum standards regarding child/staff ratios, program contents and personnel qualifications on every province is not a violation of provincial jurisdiction are dreaming!
Far from giving up our responsibility to encourage the provinces to improve their minimum standards for accredited child care facilities, this legislation goes further than any comparable previous Bill, because it asks the provinces to set program standards in seven specific areas, to make these standards public and to enforce them.
Canada Child Care Act
There is no such requirement in the Canada Health Act, in the Canada Assistance Plan or in the legislation governing contributions for post-secondary education.
The Hon. Member for Vancouver East asked about national standards in the Canada Health Act.
Since most provinces approve of the Meech Lake Agreement, which explicitly authorizes the federal Government to set national standards for new cost-sharing programs that the provinces must respect in order to receive federal funds if they opt out of such programs, would such objectives have been legitimate in the Bill?
There are two answers to this question, Madam Speaker? First, these national objectives are in the Bill. They are stated in part in the preamble and in the requirements to set, make public and enforce program standards in some areas with which the provinces must comply to be entitled to the costsharing provided for in this Bill.
Second, what the NDP suggested in committee and at the report stage as national objectives were, in fact, disguised attempts at imposing detailed program implementation standards. For exemple, the Canada Health Act mentions accessibility as a national objective, meaning that fees cannot be charged for insured services. As the NDP recognizes that fees for child care centres should continue for an unspecified period, even according to its suggestions, it would be ridiculous to establish such an objective and to bind the financing provided in the legislation to that kind of objective. That is what the NDP is suggesting we do in its definition of affordability, among other national objectives. As well, its definition of accessibility seems to demand that provinces establish a child care center in all communities so that parents never have to wait for a space.
A similar objective in the Canada Health Act would mean that a province should provide hospitals, doctors and nurses in all communities and suppress waiting lists for surgery. The NDP definition of quality would demand that provinces provide services equivalent to those provided in most other provinces and conform to the most recent child care standards. Detailed implementation standards would be dictated under the guise of national objectives.
All I can say, Madam Speaker, is that those propositions are dishonest or that those who make them are completely ignorant of their impact. That is most annoying. Even if there was no constitutional aspect involved, would it be logical to have, for example, a standardized ratio of three children per care giver when we know that this standard could be easily met in Quebec City or in Toronto but would prevent the creation of a licensed day care facility in a small village or in an unorganized rural community? That is only one of the realities we are faced with when we think of national standards.
Madam Speaker, I would like to conclude my remarks by saying that, in the rhetoric he served us last Wednesday, the NDP House Leader referred to a strictly federal program, the

September 26, 1988
Canada Child Care Act
family allowance program, and asked what would happen if each Canadian province had its own family allowance program. It would be nonsense.
Madam Speaker, what I have to say may be of interest to the Liberals who want uniform national standards, like the Hon. Member for Cape Breton-East Richmond (Mr. Dingwall). In 1974, the present Leader of the Opposition introduced a bill allowing each province to vary the amount of family allowance payments according to the number of children in the family and their age. Two provinces, Alberta and Quebec, are exercising this right now, and Prince Edward Island has done so in the past. So this "nonsense" has been a reality for nearly 14 years.
Madam Speaker, this is a case where the question of diversity and the question of meeting local needs have been taken into account in a strictly federal program, without compromising the effectiveness of the program.
To sum up, the federal Government is showing leadership in this legislation. It asks provinces to devote funds to child care according to our own criteria in order to be entitled to cost sharing. For the first time it asks that provinces devise, make public and enforce standards of establishment of programs under a plan providing for provincial jurisdiction and it has set everywhere in the legislation national objectives which are significant and realistic in the context of the service provided and its present level of development.
We have not ignored the provincial jurisdictions, the diversity of this country and the levels of service the provinces could ensure realistically during the period provided for in the legislation. If we have been criticized on that, we present no excuses, for we prefer to bring about improvements rather than guarantee impossible things.


Mr. Caccia:: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mrs. Tardif). She underlined the definition of a "child" contained in this Bill as "a person under fifteen years of age". The question I want to ask her is this: Does this Bill recognize well enough the particular problem of the "latchkey kids"? And what will the Government's policy be regarding the problem of latchkey kids under 15?


Monique Bernatchez Tardif: Madam Speaker, that is a question that was extensively debated at the legislative committee, where it was clearly determined that under this Bill, a "child" is any person under 15 years of age. We also discussed after school hours day care facilities and facilities for students under 15.
It is obvious that the Child Care Act addresses all of the provinces and, under the enabling legislation, each one of them will be responsible for signing with the federal government an agreement providing for instance for after hours day care services for school age children, where the development,
maintenance and supervision of these spaces will be subjected to the same authorities as other types of day care. We would not want, Madam Speaker, to create day care spaces not subjected to any control and where quality would be nonexistent.
Our goal through this Bill is not only to increase the number of spaces but also to ensure that these would be quality spaces. And in order to have acceptable quality, the same provincial jurisdiction that will establish standards to meet our expectations, that will decide where new spaces are required, that will decide where they are to be built or operated, also should check for quality. One agency in each province will be responsible for child care quality. Thus, there will be no problem. There could be for instance child care services in a school, but they should then be under the authority of that agency. Referring to Quebec, it would be the Office de garde that should be responsible for those child care spaces.


Charles L. Caccia: My second question, Madam Speaker, is related to payments under the Canada Assistance Plan. I would like to ask the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary whether she can assure this House that provinces that wish to opt out of this legislation, Bill C-144, could still use the Canada Assistance Plan in the future?


Monique Bernatchez Tardif: Madam Speaker, I would like to refer to what I think is Clause 12 of the legislation. No, it is not that clause. I have difficulty finding the exact reference, but anyway it is already provided in the Bill that any province that did not sign an agreement would remain under the Canada Assistance Plan. So this is provided for, it is part of the agreement. Any province that has no agreement with the Canadian Government would continue claiming its costs under the Canada Assistance Plan. That is provided under the legislation.


Charles L. Caccia: I would like to know whether they would be able to do so in the future without any time limitation?


Monique Bernatchez Tardif: The only time limit provided in the legislation is for registering. A province for instance that entered into a federal-provincial agreement before 1990 would be able to claim its capital costs under the Child Care Act. It could do so retroactively. There is no other limitation. So any difference in status between two provinces would be whether they entered into a federal-provincial agreement.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Questions,
comments? Debate. The Hon. Member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia).


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: In intervening at this stage of the debate, Madam Speaker, there are a number of points that I would like to make, having carefully listened to the Parliamentary Secretary, in the hope that I clearly understood her rebuttal, which was certainly a very incisive one and relevant to the matter before us today. Nevertheless,
September 26, 1988

there are problems with this piece of legislation that existed at the time of second reading that have plagued us throughout the committee hearings and the listening to witnesses. In some cases witnesses reinforced those sentiments relating to complexities and problems which are still with us at third reading.
The fact of the matter is that in launching this Bill and this measure, the Government is badly underestimating the number of mothers, fathers and children who will require the care that this Bill intends to offer. There are many more women in training, many more women at university, many more women entering the employment force than the 200,000 spaces would imply, in the case that they have children over the next seven years. It is an established fact that in cities such as Metro Toronto today the waiting lists are such that they will make the relevance and the significance of this program outdated. In other words, the figures that have been produced at the committee stage and the forecasts indicate that the need out there in order to be met would require a program that is seven times as large as the one that we are debating through this particular legislative measure.
The forecasts are for some 1.4 million children who will require assistance over the next seven years. We are therefore dealing with a limited number of spaces and with waiting lists that are not going to be addressed or assisted by this measure alone.
In other words, the federal Government is not going to cope with the extent of the problem that we have before us no matter how many reassurances the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Epp) may give in this Chamber. Bypassing this legislation we will have dealt with the surface of the problem. We will have dealt so to speak with the tip of the iceberg, but we will not have dealt with the substance of the issue that must be resolved if we are to meet the requirements of a generation that in increasing numbers requires the services of child care.
We see every morning on the subway in Metro Toronto young mothers in particular board trains as early as 6.30 in the morning to take their children to the other end of the city because that is the only place they may have found for leaving their child in care, sometimes 40, 45 and even 60 minutes distance, a place that may be private or public but which consumes an enormous amount of time twice a day, particularly at the end of the day when both mother and child re-enter home after a long day. In other words, the situation is unacceptable in a modern society with the resources that we have in Canada and with the fine record that we had up to 1984 in meeting the social needs of Canadians across the nation.
When the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) spoke in this House on this Bill, he indicated that this Bill can only go so far to placate feelings. He made a reference to the deficit as being
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a time bomb. I thought that that intervention was inappropriate and extremely out of place in such a discussion.
We have to keep in mind that the deficit is a time bomb when it comes to an important social measure like this, but we do not have to worry about the deficit as a time bomb when it comes to the development of tarsands in mega projects in certain parts of Canada which are going to absorb billions of dollars. We are not to worry about the deficit being a time bomb when it comes to the defence equipment and Budgets over the next 10 or 15 or 20 years, but we are to worry about the deficit as a time bomb when it comes to child care in Canada. That makes me wonder about the values and the priorities of the Progressive Conservative Government. How can it worry about a deficit being a time bomb in relation to certain social measures, but not worry about the deficit being a time bomb when it comes to measures other than social? That, for the life of me, I cannot understand. The Government is to be condemned for these upside down priorities and values. I will come to that, at the end of my intervention, with specific figures, because they really trouble me.
Third, the point also needs to be made that there is an increasing dependence on the part of Canadians on adequate child care services, because Canadians need to have two incomes in order to build a family. Keep in mind that in the last four years the tax imposed on a person earning $25,000 a year has gone up by 22 per cent. That is a considerable burden. Add to that the fact that we have seen the deindexation of family allowances during the past four years introduced and implemented by this Government.
In addition, we have had the deindexation of the child tax credit. As a result, three measures will hit at the same time the person in the process of raising a young family.
Then there is the point which I made earlier, that the Bill and the expenditures that will go with it will only be able to meet the requirements of one-seventh of the child population that is predicted for over the next seven years.
In the case of Ontario, the province I come from, the adoption of this measure will mean that a ceiling will be imposed in Ontario to the extent that it will result in 12,000 less child care spaces than if it were to continue under the present regime. That is a matter of profound concern with the provincial authorities and Government.
There are certain incentives to enter into this agreement, but there are also certain penalties that will result in signing this agreement on child care. Probably the major disincentive and penalty is that by entering this agreement and abandoning the Canada Assistance Plan, which has served us well over the last 20 years, Ontario and, I suppose, other provinces will lose a substantial number of spaces, which, in the case of Ontario, has been estimated at 12,000.
I ask why the Canada Assistance Plan has to be abandoned. The Parliamentary Secretary dealt with that in her answers

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Canada Child Care Act
earlier, and I will take her word for that. The Canada Assistance Plan has served Canadians well. It has permitted the provinces to submit a bill, so to speak, to the federal Government for any social measures they undertake, and to be refunded 50 per cent for every dollar spent in social services and programs.
This is why at the present time we have child care services in existence throughout Canada which are made possible under the Canada Assistance Plan. We have $1.9 billion for child care systems-a substantial sum-that is spent annually.
This Bill and the speeches made in this House by the Government tend to create an impression that we are launching a totally new program and a totally new expenditure which has not existed until now. That is not so. That program of child care has existed under the Canada Assistance Plan, and will continue to exist, as the Parliamentary Secretary clarified earlier, if provinces decide not to enter into an agreement under Bill C-144 with Ottawa.
This policy was indicated quite lucidly by Marjorie Nichols in a column a month and a half ago. She wrote that the Government would be spending, assuming an inflation factor of 5 per cent a year, some $17 billion over the next seven years without this new program.
By adopting this program, the Government will be spending-and you have to include the inflation factor-some $22 billion over the next seven years. That is perhaps one way of putting into perspective the comparison with the program that exists right now under the Canada Assistance Plan, and it puts Bill C-144 in perspective as well. The increase is in essence 4 per cent more per year than would have been spent without this new program.
The matter of national standards is one that has been bounced back and forth across the floor in debates, in second reading today and particularly in the reply by the Parliamentary Secretary. Her analysis was quite interesting, and I recognize that. The fact remains that we want to ensure in Canada some basic minimum standards across the board, regardless of where the child attends the child care system. The standards have usually been a prerogative, and the leadership, up until now, has been given by the federal Government.
In this Bill, we do not find any reference to a pattern that has been established through other social security programs and systems. This is why the criticism has come from this side of the House. If we have missed a reference to national standards in Bill C-144, I will be glad to hear from the Parliamentary Secretary when I sit down. Perhaps she will be in a position to refer me to that clause in the Bill that establishes national standards. I will be glad to be corrected.
Another shortcoming of this particular measure and approach is that it does not set priorities for families in need. It
is our understanding, from the hearings in committee, and after having listened to submission after submission, that families in need will face a more difficult situation than they have up until now.
In the question and answer period we dealt briefly with the question of the latchkey kids. The Parliamentary Secretary has referred the matter to the provincial authorities and this would be in their domain to designate and to take care of. We hope the contract, the negotiations, and the agreements that will be signed will give latchkey kids the just recognition as a phenomenon in society that has to be dealt with.
In this debate there has been very little reference, except for a couple of times, to the salaries paid to day care workers. They will continue to be the lowest paid in society, unless the federal Government gives some leadership on this matter, and unless it speaks openly and gives a clear indication as to what it thinks should be the appropriate and adequate payment to be given to those key individuals in our society.
On the question of priorities, to which I made a brief reference earlier, we should begin to examine the reference of the Prime Minister to the question of the time bomb of a deficit, and the manner in which the Government commits itself in defence equipment budgeting-although it is true that it is over more than seven years. In some cases it is five years. For some items and equipment it is seven years, in some cases it is ten years, and some cases it is over ten years. Nevertheless, when one looks at the totality of the defence equipment budget, one finds this astonishing $25 billion commitment which the Prime Minister does not find it necessary to worry about in terms of a deficit. Then one compares the $25 billion to the $4 billion, because in essence we are talking of a $4 billion expenditure on child care, that is the real amount, without including the tax credits. One asks, what on earth are the priorities of this Government? One wonders deeply and profoundly about what are the driving set of values that the Government is adopting when those priorities are compared. On the one hand we have $25 billion versus $4 billion.
We are looking forward to the debates not only here, but also on the hustings to stress and underline to Canadians the type of priorities that the Government has when it comes to the question of the care of children over the next seven years. It does not make sense to go into this type of funding when it is not looked at in isolation any longer, because it cannot and should not be, but when one looks at the type of funding in relation to competitive, parallel, and concurrent fundings of this Government, then the whole program becomes a shameless exercise in the pornography of power. It is a bad scene that emerges. In other words, if we can find the money for defence equipment, we better find the money for the proper care of the present young generation.
In Toronto the waiting list is 4,700. The other day, a young woman named Roberta Wilson, aged 19, went into the office of the chairman of the Metro Toronto government, Mr. Flynn, and had a sit-in for two hours until she was given a day care
September 26, 1988

space for her son. She had to resort to this type of technique in order to get attention. I ask you, Madam Speaker, is that the way that mothers today and in the future will have to operate in order to get the attention of local, provincial, and federal governments? Obviously, this is not the way to resolve a problem with day care. Obviously, one does not want to have waiting lists of 4,700 in a metropolitan population. In fact, one would not want to have large waiting lists. There will always be some. However, this is insane, and it does not make sense.
I hear your signal, Madam Speaker, and I will conclude by simply referring to the fact that we have here a policy which looked reasonably good when it was introduced in the House some time ago. The more we studied it, the more we explored the situation out there in the real world in terms of waiting lists, in terms of taxation on medium and low-income families, in terms of the projections into the next seven years, and compared that with what this Bill is offering, we could only conclude that this measure is inadequate. When the measure is compared to other priorities of the Government, then the scene is really very distressing.


Monique Bernatchez Tardif: Madam Speaker, 1 listened a moment ago to my hon. colleague talking about national expenditures. If I look at present expenditures under the Canada Assistance Plan for child care services, which total 160 million dollars a year, if I look at the Bill's preamble which provides for payments of four billion dollars over the next seven years, I have trouble understanding why he does not believe that this Bill will allow us to put more and more money into this field to meet the needs of Canadian families. This is a government priority, a priority backed by the present $ 160-million budget and by forecast expenditures of $4 billion over the next seven year period for child care services.
I would also like to go back to the matter of what is required from provinces under the agreements they will sign. He referred a moment ago to certain points which apparently would not be covered, on which the federal government presumably has not assumed its leadership role. I would like to refer him to sub-paragraph 4(1 )(b) of the Bill which states that provinces must accord special priority to meeting the needs of children from low to modest income families.
Concerning the answer I just gave to a question from my hon. colleague concerning the withdrawal of the Canada Assistance Plan, I would like to remind him that I was not able to find the exact reference. Clause 13 of the Bill states that paragraph 10(1), which concerns the Canada Assistance Plan and its amendments, shall come into force on a day to be fixed by order of the Governor in Council, which day shall not be earlier than April 1 of the first year in respect of which all provinces have entered into agreements under the Act. Therefore, the Canada Assistance Plan will be able to reject the expenditures of provinces until such time as all provinces are covered by the new agreement.
Business of the House


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: It being five o'clock, pursuant to an order made earlier this day, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings for the purpose of putting forwith every question necessary to dispose of third reading of the Bill presently before the House.
The question is on the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: All those in favour of the amendment, will please say yea.


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: All those opposed will please say nay.


Some Hon. Members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five Members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Pursuant to an order made earlier this day, the recorded division on the proposed amendment stands deferred until six o'clock later this day.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Before proceeding with the debate, I would like to inform the House that the Chair has received a written notice from the Hon. Member for Outremont (Mrs. Pepin) advising the House that she will be unable to present her motion during the Private Members' Hour, on Tuesday, September the 27, 1988.

It has not been possible to arrange an exchange of positions in the order of precedence pursuant to Standing Order 39. Accordingly, 1 am directing the Table Officers to drop this item of business from the order of precedence.

Since the notice will be cancelled, the Private Member's Hour will be suspended and, pursuant to Standing Order 39,

September 26, 1988
Food and Drugs Act
the House will revert to the business before it prior to the Private Member's Hour.

It being five o'clock p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.


PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS-BILLS   FOOD AND DRUGS ACT MEASURE TO AMEND
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Friday, August 19, consideration of the motion of Ms. Copps that Bill C-289, an Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (list of ingredients), be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee.
Mr. Bill Gottselig (Moose Jaw):: Madam Speaker, the Bill before us today clearly and simply proposes the full labelling of all restaurant meals. This sounds relatively uncomplicated as proposed in this Bill, but as so often happens, plans that look simple on paper are not always practical in the real world. Let us consider for a few moments the effect such a labelling requirement could have on the restaurant industry.
Most restaurant owners are proud of their establishment and try to serve the best food possible at the most reasonable price possible, while still ensuring some profit. Accordingly, they deal with a number of suppliers and buy from the source with the best product at the best price. This would, of course, be no problem if all products of a similar nature were identical. However, we are talking about the real world. For example, let us examine the potential problems with something as simple as flour.
Under Canadian food and drug regulations there are nine food additives permitted in flour for use as bleaching, naturing and dough conditioning agents. Of course, not all of those food additives would be used in a particular flour at the same time, but they provide the manufacturer with optional ingredients any one of which can be selected based on availability, price and technical requirements. The use of flour from one source with a certain combination of ingredients and food additives is no problem for the restauranteur.
When his supply runs low, however, he must either order more flour with the same composition from the same supplier, which limits his ability to shop around and get the best price available, or order flour with perhaps slightly different components from somewhere else. In the latter case, he is faced with having to change the ingredient and food additive information on every dish in which flour is used in his restaurant. The cost of changing this information would no doubt result in higher prices in the restaurant. If he decides not to change suppliers, he becomes tied to one supplier and as a
result may very well wind up paying a higher price for the same flour. That again would require raising the prices in his establishment.
This is only one ingredient out of hundreds that a restaurant would use in the course of its business. The very same factors would apply to a majority, if not all, of foods and would create the need for tremendous record keeping efforts by both the restauranteur and the wholesaler.
In another situation, it is conceivable that the chef could run out of one ingredient such as a spice mixture while preparing a meal. Under this Bill he would not be able to substitute another mixture without changing the ingredient listing and, subsequently the preparation of the meal could be delayed or the food wasted and the service time for the consumer prolonged considerably.
There could also be considerably less creativity by chefs if complete ingredient labelling were required. Can you imagine the indignation of a master chef who has just finished creating a new gourmet meal when he is told that his masterpiece cannot be served to the public until the new ingredient listings are printed and ready for distribution? In fact, there may be great reluctance on the part of great chefs to reveal all the ingredients in their sauces and other foods.
Let us reflect for a moment on the dimension of the problem addressed here today. This is important if a practical solution is to be found. It needs to be recognized that not all ingredients are associated with severe adverse reactions. In fact, of the multitude of foods and food ingredients, only a small number have been associated with frequent or severe adverse reactions in susceptible individuals.
If this Bill before us today is passed it will create severe problems in the food industry as well as tremendous difficulties for the individual restauranteur. It is quite possible that it would produce so much labelling information that the sensitive consumer may not be able to comprehend all of it. That is not to say, however, that some measures are not required to provide to the consumer more information on the presence of potential allergens in foods.
To this end, officials of the Health Protection Branch of the Department of National Health and Welfare, in conjunction with representatives from the Canadian Restaurant and Food Services Association and the Allergy Information Association, have developed a proposal to address this situation. A list of the allergens responsible for the most severe or most frequent adverse reactions has been prepared and is presently being reviewed by the medical profession. As a first step, it is planned that a chart be made available to the consumer with information on the presence of these selected allergens in the foods served in fast service food establishments.
This proposal is far more practical and beneficial to all parties than the Bill before us today. Furthermore, the Allergy Information Association, having broad experience and contact with Canadians who suffer from adverse reactions to foods,
September 26, 1988

drugs, et cetera, as well as the Canadian Diabetics Association, many of whose members manage institutional and commercial food services, have indicated support for this step-wise approach. Therefore, if this Bill were to pass it would seriously damage the productive negotiations between the Health Protection Branch and the food service industry to address this problem.


Mr. Gilles Bernier (Beauce):: Madam Speaker, the first comprehensive regulations governing the labelling of food products were introduced in the early 60's under the Food and Drugs Act.
The Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs is responsible for enforcing the provisions relating to labelling, packaging and advertising of food products, under the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, the Food and Drugs Act and the regulations made therunder.
The Health Protection Branch of the Department of National Health and Welfare advises the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affaires on labelling and advertising matters relating to health. In 1973, the Departement of Consumer and Corporate Affairs published draft regulations on the packaging and labelling of consumer products as well as proposed amendments to the Food and Drugs regulations substantially changing food labelling requirements.
Madam Speaker, the new regulations were promulgated in 1974 and manufacturers of foods products were given a period of two years in order to implement them. These regulations gave rise to a comprehensive set of rules and guidelines relating to labelling and advertising.
Prepackaged foods must now bear a label with the following information, which is important: common name of the food, net contents, name and address of the person responsible for the product, a list of ingredients, durable life date and, if required, instructions for proper storage.
All the information required must be in English and French, except the name and address of the manufacturer which can be in either language.
Regarding more particularly the list of ingredients, these must be mentioned on most prepackaged foods in decreasing order of quantity or percentage of the prepackaged product. However, there are some exceptions, namely the following:
First, products that are prepackaged on retail premises; second, prepackaged individual portions of food that are served by a restaurant or other commercial enterprise with meals or snacks; third, prepackaged individual servings of food that are prepared by a commissary and sold by automatic vending machines or mobile canteens; four, meat and meat by-products that are barbecued, roasted or broiled on the retail premises; also, standardised alcoholic beverages and vinegars.
Some ingredients may be shown at the end of the list in any order. Those ingredients, Madam Speaker, can be spices,
Food and Drugs Act
seasonings, herbs, except table salt, natural or artificial flavours, flavour enhancers, additives, vitamins, salts or derivatives of vitamins, mineral nutrients and salts of mineral nutrients.
Ingredients must generally be shown by their common names. Some of them, however, such as vegetable oils, flavours, seasonings, milk products may be identified by the name of the food category they represent.
Meat, poultry, fish or their by-products must be identified by their individual names, and in the case of vegetable protein based products, the source of the protein must be specifically identified on the label.
In the case of optional ingredients, or those that can be substituted to others in the preparation of a product, the label may list all ingredients that could be included in the product during the year. However, it must be clearly indicated those ingredients may not necessarily be present in a given package of that food.
Besides, when an ingredient has several components, the complete list of those components must appear on the label unless otherwise excepted by Food and Drug Regulations. Among ingredients for which a list of components is not mandatory we could mention butter, flour and cheese. Apart from the information processors must provide on the label, they can choose to list a certain number of additional information about their products. To protect consumers against any possibility of misleading information, guidelines were developed for the categories of statements that may legitimately appear on labels.
As pointed out, Madam Speaker, none of those labelling provisions apply to food served in restaurants, hotels or other food service outlets. And a close look at conditions in restaurants shows how impractical it would be to put them under such vast regulations. Some restaurants for instance serve a whole range of foods and sometimes change from day to day their menus and even their individual recipes. What would happen to small roadside snackbars and take-out restaurants with limited resources? How could they obey such labelling provisions? Further, trying to impose regulations without at the same time educating the food service industry, including for instance suppliers, and an adequate enforcing mechanism? This might expose sensitive consumers to a higher risk situation than now prevails. Also, if we were to force restaurateurs to label their foods, this would have to be done in a way that would not entertain a feeling of false security among people with food allergies. For the time being, it is therefore imperative that people with those kinds of allergies do not hesitate to inquire with the restaurateur about the ingredients of the foods before eating them.
Where the specific substance responsible for the allergic reaction is present in the food, or where the restaurateur does not seem to be quite sure of the exact ingredients, the consumer should not hesitate for a moment to stay away from both that food and that restaurant. People with food allergies

September 26, 1988
Food and Drugs Act
should understand it is their responsibility to do everything in their power to avoid the substance to which they are allergic. This however does not relieve food service operations from the responsibility to better inform their customers to the best of their knowledge as to the ingredients of the foods they serve, when asked to do so.
Indeed, officials from the Health Protection Branch in the Department of National Health and Welfare are actively discussing with representatives of the restaurant and food services industry, the Allergy Information Association and the medical profession to exactly determine what information should be easily accessible to consumers as well as the best ways to make it available. Let me suggest, Madam Speaker, that we should simply let those people go about their work, without government interference.


Svend Johannes Robinson: I will be very brief in my comments, Mr. Speaker. I hope this Bill will be passed this afternoon and then go on to committee where it can be studied in greater detail. Witnesses can appear and discuss the important aspects of the legislation.
I strongly support the thrust of this legislation. Indeed, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the Hon. Member for Hamilton East (Ms. Copps) who brought the Bill before the House and I believe as well the Hon. Member for Burlington (Mr. Kempling) who has also spoken out on this issue in the past, as has my colleague the Hon. Member for Vancouver East (Ms. Mitchell), the Hon. Member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mr. Waddell) and a number of colleagues from the New Democratic Party.
I myself have received letters from a number of constituents on the subject matter of this Bill. A Mrs. Gail Takeshita of Sussex Avenue in Burnaby wrote a letter as follows:
Dear Mr. Robinson:
As a parent of a child with very severe food allergies, I was pleased to receive a letter.. . informing me of.. . Bill C-289 in an effort to achieve legislation requiring disclosure of ingredients in restaurant foods.
My daughter has "anaphylaxis" which can also be called "allergic shock" or "general allergic reaction". This is a life-threatening reaction to foods. Incorrect information given by a waiter or waitress, or improper or inadequate ingredient listing on a package could someday cost my daughter her life.
Mrs. Takeshita strongly supports this legislation, and understandably so because the life of her child is at risk.
As well, I received a letter from a Rev. Sam Smith, an elderly gentleman who lives in South Burnaby. He writes to me about a situation facing his family particularly with respect to monosodium glutamate. He points out:
Monosodium glutamate is the most dangerous. Causing allergic reactions in
about 50 per cent of Canadians, to a more or less degree.
I believe my colleague from Vancouver East has indicated she is one of the Canadians who responds in a negative way to
MSG. Rev. Smith points out that his wife can go into convulsions if she gets the amount of MSG considered normal in prepared foods. The worst foods are those in which the makers consider MSG to be only a flavour enhancer and therefore do not even list it as an ingredient.
The purpose of this legislation is straightforward. The Member for Hamilton East noted that she was certainly prepared to accept that there were some difficulties in the drafting of the Bill, but that in principle the legislation should go forward to committee. The key point is that now if one goes into a grocery store to purchase food, one is entitled by law to a listing of the ingredients in that food. However, if one goes into a fast food restaurant, a McDonalds, an Arby's, a Wendy's, there is no similar requirement. I would hope this House at this very late stage in this Parliament, perhaps the last week in which this Parliament is sitting, could in fact move in an non-partisan spirit together to pass this important piece of legislation.
I would hope as well that it would be recognized that it has the support of the Consumers' Association of Canada, the Ontario Medical Association and a number of other medical associations and, I believe, the Canadian Council on Children and Youth has examined this question. I would hope this Bill could be moved forward, the committee could examine it with care this week and it could be adopted before the House rises at the end of this week.
I support the legislation. I believe it is legislation that will be of benefit to literally millions of Canadians. I would hope the House would adopt the Bill in principle this afternoon.


Reginald Francis Stackhouse: Madam Speaker, I follow the previous speaker not only in time but in general concurrence, although I am not as sure as he is that the House is going to rise on Friday. I feel he is right but we have been wrong so many other Fridays over the past months, I do not quite have his confidence. However, I think the Bill should be put to a vote shortly. I hope a committee could deal with the very real problems more effectively than we can in debate in the House, and that we can bring some relief, comfort and assurance to people who are living under desperate anxieties.
I have been impressed by certain statistics that are available to us from the Good Housekeeping Institute. The report is from a survey taken by that body with respect to concern over reaction to chemicals used in food, snacks and soft drinks. It was ranked second by consumers as being a matter of great concern and danger. In a 1988 survey by a national food association, the Grocery Products Manufacturers of Canada, 93 per cent of respondents believed that food additives should be regulated. Clearly, there is not only a concern on the part of people across North America, but it is a concern that is substantiated by the serious threat to health, indeed, to life,
September 26, 1988

from the failure to have available the kind of information which this Bill wishes to put before the public.
We have to appreciate that if one suffers from this or that allergy, eating the wrong food can inflict not only discomfort but actual illness or possibly even death, so that a person who knows he or she has these allergies lives under the constant threat of taking the wrong food at a reception, a party, in a restaurant or wherever. There is no way that any individual given those circumstances is going to be wholly safe. We should take whatever steps we can take to bring to those people as much safety as we can. That is really the intention, as I understand it, of the legislation before us.
I commend the Hon. Member for Hamilton East who has brought it to the House. It shows the great value of Private Member's Bills. We private Members can focus the attention of Parliament on something that otherwise would be ignored. We can use this greatest forum of the land to be sure that the nation as a whole is aware that a problem is being taken seriously, that a solution is being examined responsibly.
Debate has already illustrated some of the difficulties of implementing such a Bill as we are considering. One difficulty is the fact that there are widely varying estimates about the number of people who suffer allergies. Some say there are three million in the United States alone. Some say there are 20 million in the United States alone. Whatever the number may be, we know there is a vast array of people who live under constant threat that at least their health is threatened and possibly their life by eating the wrong food.
We do not have precise statistics, but do we need them? Are we not aware that this is a commonly felt problem? Are there any of us who do not know someone who suffers from this or that allergy? They may be allergic to an element in food or to something in the atmosphere. I think all of us are aware of people, sometimes very close to us, who suffer from allergies and need this kind of protection. I can think of one time in the life of my oldest child when she was very, very young. It seemed that almost in a matter of minutes her life was threatened because she was allergic to an element she had taken into her body. If we had not been able to rush her to a hospital and have her receive treatment, she would not have lived another hour. The memory of that traumatic afternoon when the seemingly unbelievable was real before our eyes has certainly made me sensitive to the subject before us.
A little girl was playing as any other little girl might be, and then suddenly she was not able to breathe and had to be rushed to a hospital, we wondered for what reason, and then we were told what the reason was. Fortunately, treatment was a hand. But it has certainly made me sensitive to the critical nature of what we are debating.
When we focus attention, as we are right to do, on the difficulties in implementing this legislation, I hope we will give at least equal attention to the difficulty of living without it. Let us ask about the security of people if they do not have this kind of protection. We are now living in a time when it is needed
Food and Drugs Act
more than ever. We now live in a time when so many people eat so many meals out. As a boy, I remember that going out for a meal out was an event. It is now commonplace. There are fast food restaurants, gourmet restaurants, and all the eating places in between. The fact is that many people are taking a large number of their meals out, some are taking most of their meals out and some, perhaps, all of them. More than ever throughout the western world we are subject to the possibility of being allergic to food in a meal the elements of which are unknown to us. If a person is unfortunate enough to have those allergies that can threaten health or even life, then this is a matter of great crisis.
In general, I support the intention of this legislation. I would like briefly to conclude by citing three steps I think we must take to cope with the problem. The first step is education. We are doing some of that right now. I look upon the House of Commons as a place of education as well as of legislation. It is a forum in which the representatives of the people of Canada debate with one another and put before the people of Canada the great issues of their time. This is such an issue when it affects the lives of people. We need more education to arouse awareness, to strengthen consciousness, so that everyone connected with providing a food to the public will see the serious nature of what we are talking about.
Second, this Bill is about communication, about the most effective way of communicating to people the knowledge necessary for health and life.
Finally, I want to take a moment to dwell on the need for regulation. We need law because we are humans. We do not always respond to good advice, to good counsel, to good information. We should but we do not. So many of us need the law to prod, to force, and so we move from education, which is always the best, the first and, I hope, long step.
We move to the step of regulation. The intent of this Bill, as I understand it, is to provide that measure of regulation which will provide a measure of security, which is surely the right of every Canadian if it can be provided.
I look upon this Bill as an effort at legitimate regulation. I do not quarrel with having traffic police that tell us to drive this way and sometimes to drive that way, to slow down, to speed up. We need that kind of regulating on the roads. We need regulating when it comes to putting up buildings.
I have just had an experience within the past month or so of dealing with municipal authorities over building regulations. They are quite right. For the protection of all, for the public good, we need processes through which we are required to go. Here we have another example of the same thing, a need for regulation in the public domain, regulation in the places to which men, women, and children are required to go day by day, namely, where they can find food and sustenance for life itself.

September 26, 1988
Food and Drugs Act
It has been said that man is what he eats. If that is the case, legislation dealing with the regulating of food is certainly among the basic legislation that can be put before this Parliament. I believe that we have a serious intent of that. This Bill certainly deserves to go to committee and I hope that detailed study will return to this House a Bill that is workable and that will improve the lot of our fellow Canadians.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Madam Speaker, I would like to comment very briefly on Bill C-289 which I supported during the debate on June 9 this year, when the Hon. Member for Hamilton East (Ms. Copps) introduced this Bill.
The purpose of the Bill is to compel restaurants to make available for public consultation a list, in English or in French, of all the ingredients in any food sold by them. I will continue to read from the Explanatory Notes to the Bill:
This Bill will also compel each branch restaurant to affix on the packaging
of any packaged food sold by it a list, in English and in French, of the
ingredients in such food.
Madam Speaker, this proposal was introduced by the Hon. Member for Hamilton East, and I think it is an excellent idea. Personally, I know people who are allergic to nuts and sea food or who, like me, are allergic to the hair of animals like cats, dogs, and all that sort of thing. I get asthma, so I know how I react and what I should avoid.
In this case, we are talking mostly about young people who eat outside the home and occasionally eat a hasty meal in a fast food establishment such as McDonald's, Harvey's and so forth. These young people must have access to a list of the ingredients they ingest. This may be extremely important, because as anyone who is allergic to something will understand, it is not always obvious that the cake or bread or food a person is served contains a specific ingredient, added during the cooking or preparation of the food, that acts as an irritant to that person and may cause a very strong allergic reaction.
I remember a very awkward situation when one of my friends who was allergic to nuts ordered a piece of cake. He specifically asked the waitress whether there were any nuts in the cake, and the waitress said no, there were none. He ate a piece and in fact, there was a dusting of ground nuts on the cake, and I have seldom seen such a violent reaction. He sort of choked and said, "There are nuts in it. Something's wrong." So something had to be done right away. He had to be taken to the hospital and given emergency treatment.
I am very impressed by these people who suffer from allergies and who sometimes have to deal with very difficult situations because of this lack of information. It seems quite right and straightforward to me that the House pass this Bill on second reading and send it to a committee in order to be able to really deal with the challenge raised by requiring fast food outlets and restaurants that are becoming increasingly popular with young people to describe on the box or container what is inside. I think that McDonald's, for example, has
agreed to do so voluntarily. I am told that other chains will do so as a matter of good public relations and probably out of concern for the public welfare, but I think that this subject is important enough to justify sending the Bill for a thorough analysis of the consequences and to really see whether the Minister is right in saying that it would be onerous, difficult and sometimes impossible for food chains to list the ingredients on the container of the products they sell. I am not too satisfied with the Minister's answer that it is too onerous when we see one of the major chains, McDonald's, offer to do what the Bill proposes, i.e. describe on the container or warn the consumer what he or she is about to consume.
Madam Speaker, this Bill can be justified for all sorts of reasons, and not the least is the Canadian statistics showing that one Canadian a month dies of an allergic reaction to certain foods. So, it is a mattter of concern for me and I think that it is important for us to give it serious consideration and to refer this Bill immediately to the committee who may see fit to hear experts and representatives from the food chains concerned explain to us why and how we could implement a system which would enable us to meet the requirements of the law and which would inform Canadians by giving them a list of the ingredients of the products they are about to eat, whether out of a box or in restaurants. I for one will give support to that Bill and I hope that my colleagues in this House will do the same.


Mr. Patrick Crofton (Esquimalt-Saanich):: Madam
Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I take this opportunity to offer a few comments on Private Member's Bill C-289 which, as you know, is an Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act concerning the listing of ingredients contained in restaurant food. It would compel every restaurant to make available to the public a list, in English or in French, of all the ingredients in any food it sells.
This is certainly a very sensitive issue. It has received a great deal of attention from health professionals, food regulators, the media, and the public at large. This attention is very well justified. Tragic deaths have resulted from allergic reactions to restaurant food, particularly in the so-called fast food restaurants.
According to various news reports, some 25,000 Canadians are at risk every day because of their food allegies. Some 24 people in Canada have died over the past two years, one a month, because of allergic reactions to food eaten in restaurants.
I am one of those unfortunate Canadians who suffers from a food allergy. I am sure that my colleagues on all sides of the House will be happy to know that my allergy is not life threatening. However, that is not quite so with one of my daughters who, over time, has developed an allergy to just one element that we have been able to determine, peanut and peanut oil, which can appear without warning as an ingredient. In her case, her sensitivity has developed to a degree where it
September 26, 1988

requires only the most minute amount for her to have a very serious allergic reaction. Of course this is of great concern to me and the rest of our family and to any other Canadian who might have that kind of allergy.
Therefore, I welcome this initiative to try to deal with this matter so that Canadians do not unnecessarily expose themselves to risk.
It is not possible to indemnify a Canadian at all times from such risks if he or she has had the misfortune of developing a reaction. But certainly we as parliamentarians can go as far as reasonably possible to assist them in staying healthy.
It is very heartening to note that the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Epp) is well aware of the problem of the allergic reaction to restaurant food and has already issued instructions to his Department to determine how much, if any, of an increase in food sensitivity reactions there has been, whether a perceived increase might be due to the availability of better instrumentation and diagnosis, and whether the population as a whole is becoming more sensitive for one reason or another. These are important scientific facts that must be determined in examining a reasonable solution.
In addition, the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Health and Welfare has held hearings on the feasibility of mandatory labelling for food products sold in restaurants and fast food outlets. Our Government is determined to find the best possible solution to the problem. It is likely that a large proportion of food sensitivity reactions are linked to relatively few foods or food components. On the other hand, almost any food has the potential to trigger a serious allergic reaction in an occasionally sensitive individual.
This problem is quite complex, and it is vital to solicit input from all parties concerned. Officials from Health and Welfare Canada and the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs have consulted with both the Canadian Food and Restaurant Association and the Allergy Information Association. Consensus has been reached that a chart identifying foods served in an establishment and an indication as to whether or not they contain substances for listing on a so-called priority list was perhaps the most suitable mechanism for providing the information required.
In this context it is appropriate to quote from a letter from Mr. Douglas Needham, Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Restaurant and Food Services Association. Mr. Needham writes that his association supports the consumer's right to know the ingredients used in restaurant meals, and that his association continues to work with all concerned groups to identify and implement measures that will decrease the likelihood of more tragic deaths.
I want to applaud Mr. Needham and his association on this stand. In fact, according to a recent report by the Canadian Press, the Canadian Restaurant and Food Services Association
Food and Drugs Act
is strongly encouraging a voluntary program among its 6,800 members. Industry spokespeople such as Mr. Needham have said that restaurant menus should warn consumers of ingredients that could lead to allergic reactions before they order a meal. The association has suggested a system of warning charts that could be introduced in quick service restaurant chains, because these establishments have a highly centralized control over ingredients.
The consistency of the menus in chain restaurants, combined with the limited choices available, make the charts a manageable idea. According to the same report by the Canadian Press, the association has talked with 24 quick service restaurant chains, and 22 of them have agreed to take part.
This is good news. It shows that the food industry is well aware of the problem and is more than willing to take steps to resolve it. It further shows that the idea of an ingredients list, if it can be fine-tuned and made manageable and practical is indeed a good one.
It is quite possible that the best way to protect Canadians with food allergies as they dine out is through the use of these ingredient lists. If this is the case, then every effort must be made to adopt the very best listing system possible. In this light, it seems quite probable that Bill C-289, effective as it has been in focusing attention on the problem, can be improved.
It is essential that consumers get the information they need to protect themselves in the marketplace, and to make intelligent choices. This applies as much to allergy sufferers who dine in restaurants as to anyone else.
The Government is determined to bring about an effective solution to this issue. If that solution is found to centre upon ingredient disclosure lists, then the House can be assured that the listing requirements will be applied in a manner that is effective, fair and as cost-efficient as possible.
Fast food and quick service restaurants are popular among Canadians, as we all know, and in large measure because quality control is strict. Consumers know what they are getting with a great deal of certainty, and prices are reasonable and affordable. We want to make sure that this continues.
We must adopt a system that affords the best possible protection to the Canadian consumer, and at the same time allows greater freedom and safety for those who suffer from food allergies. This is a very worth-while Bill. I certainly hope it gets to committee and is passed into law.


Marc Ferland: Madam Speaker, I regard Bill C-289 as a positive step to solve a very serious problem. I am happy to see that we, in Canada, already have legislation in that area. It gives us hope for a definite solution in the foreseeable future to the problem of allergic Canadians who, when they eat in a restaurant, run a risk of having violent or fatal reactions.

September 26, 1988
Food and Drugs Act
Under the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act and Regulations and the Food and Drugs Act and Regulations, food companies must provide, in both official languages, comprehensive information on the foods they sell and on the ingredients in those foods. This is required for imported as well as Canadian products.
The Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act was passed in 1972 and it has had a tremendous effect. In general, suppliers know their obligations very well and put on their labels in both official languages the clear and precise information required by law. And we can say that, with some rare exceptions, offences are quickly dealt with.
That is fine for food products that Canadians buy in stores and put in their refrigerators. On the label of the canned ham or cereal box that he or she just bought, the consumer will find the product's generic name, the net quantity, the name and address of the company, the list of ingredients, the product's durability, as well as the method of preservation.
That is fine, Madam Speaker, and I am sure that such requirements have strongly contributed towards maintaining and improving the health of Canadians. But up until now the law has not protected people who go to restaurants and nothing imposes on restaurant owners to say what ingredients have gone into their foods. This is the basic purpose of the Bill now before you.
But to ensure that solutions are satisfactory and efficient, we must take into account the diversity and the breaking up of the Canadian restaurant industry. Let us not lose track of the fact that 78 per cent of the sales volume in the restaurant business goes to small private firms, often family businesses with a long tradition or, in some cases, ill-conceived and short-lived ventures. This last aspect complicates things even further for the legislator.
Restaurant services in Canada rely on some 72 000 commercial locations all across the country. Food products are served in a variety of settings and places: traditional restaurants, fast food outlets, banquet halls in hotels, catering services, cafeterias, schools, clubs, hospitals, planes, trains, boats and push-carts.
Restaurants use and interchange a staggering number of ingredients of all kinds and from all countries. Even restaurants with limited menus and fast-food restaurants can use up to a thousand ingredients. In the vast majority of cases, restaurants are at the mercy of their suppliers who can change certain ingredients without telling them. This further complicates the whole matter.
Meals served in restaurants cannot be compared to foodstuff bought at the grocery store. In large grocery stores, the consumer can pick up a package, read the label and put it back on the shelf if he is not satisfied with the product. In a restaurant, the customer does not know what ingredients are used in the dishes he orders.
Foods prepared in restaurants are quite different from those which are packaged for retail sale. Therefore, information on the ingredients used in them must be provided in a different way, although as adequately and efficiently as in the case of store-bought foods.
The information provided by restaurants must conform to certain basic criteria including timeliness: the restaurant must provide information on the ingredients used in making the dishes presently listed on its menu; accuracy: emphasis must be placed on ingredients which are known to provoke allergic reactions; precision: precise information must be provided to avoid any risk to the customer.
A few major restaurant chains have put out allergen tables and others will soon follow. This would seem to be a fair response to the rights of clients generally, and especially those who suffer from food allergies. This is an important step which deserves encouragement, and such initiatives are highly commendable.
However, Madam Speaker, we all know that conditions are altogether different in ordinary restaurants. Where the daily menu includes soup, dessert as well as vegetables and fruit in season, the chef changes menus and ingredients every day. We would be asking too much if that kind of establishment were expected to post a list prepared in advance, and we certainly do not want smaller restaurants to go under in the more or less distant future. That simply is not the objective of the Bill.
Madam Speaker, I also know that everything must be done to help a restaurant owner maintain and preserve the essential element of creativity on which rest the success and good name of his establishment. The same goes for restaurants featuring exotic dishes, and there is no need for me to stress the importance of Asian, Italian, Greek and other such restaurants. In the case of some other restaurants a menu might not be adequate and perhaps they would have to produce a 12- or 18-inch-thick recipe book. These establishments would be faced with an extremely complicated chore if they had to produce printed lists of ingredients.
In any case, allergy-prone clients looking over a list of ingredients might be lulled into a false sense of security. A simple distraction might cause an error and an extra ingredient can be added to a dish and lead to a feeling of sickness. No substitution nor any minor change would be allowed-utopian expectations if we consider the very nature of most restaurants.
Nor should we look only at restaurants in our quest for solutions to food allergy problems, Madam Speaker, for medical science might provide some of the answers even though experts are sometimes rather bewildered by the complexity of allergies in this sector where knowledge evolves so rapidly. There is such a wide variety of allergies that singling them out and identifying them to find antidotes is a gargantuan undertaking. If on top of that you consider that no two individuals will have the same allergic reaction to a given ingredient and that medical treatment cannot be identical, you are faced with an undescribable puzzle.
September 26, 1988

This is a multi-facetted problem, and we will eventually find adequate solutions only if all interested Parties keep on seeking them. The medical profession is already involved and we know that a number of other organizations, including the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, have officially indicated their interest in this vital matter. Finally, we know that Flealth and Welfare Canada as well as Consumer and Corporate Affairs Canada officials continue to investigate all possible means of properly informing Canadians and helping people with allergies go to restaurants without fearing for their health.
I am convinced that Bill C-289 is another step towards better solutions to this kind of consumer problem.


Rob Nicholson: Madam Speaker, I would like to make a few comments on Bill C-289, an Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act. Bill C-289 is concerned with the problems of those Canadians who unknowingly consume restaurant foods that contain ingredients to which they are allergic. This is of concern to me, of course, and it is of concern to my constituents.
The Bill before the House would require all restaurants to make available to the public a list of all ingredients used in the food sold. This Bill seeks to deal with a problem that has become acute in Canada. Many people suffer allergic reactions to food, food products or ingredients. Tragically, some even die from severe allergic reactions to foods they eat. The CBC has reported that approximately 24 Canadians have died from allergic reactions to food eaten in restaurants in the past two years. Thus this Bill identifies a very real problem for Canadian society.
Canadians who are at risk because of food allergies number in the tens of thousands. My wife Arlene is allergic to seafood. One might think that that is something easily identified. Sometimes it becomes very complex and difficult to determine when one is out and eating various salads and that type of thing. Two of my constituents wrote me, and 1 later spoke with them. They told me that when they took their child to a fast food outlet they thought that they knew all the ingredients. They found out that a substitute ingredient had been used in one of the orders that they had, something which could have had very serious consequences for the health of the child. 1 think people like that should be able to be reasonably secure when they go out. When they are at home of course they can rely on the labelling of products they buy in supermarkets. But I think people should have that same type of security as well when they dine out.
Many of today's foods undergo complex preparation or are made from recipes containing a multitude of ingredients.
Food and Drugs Act
Often additives and preservatives are used and these may cause allergic reactions in some people. In fact, public opinion frequently holds that food sensitivities are related to substances used in additives and preservatives. However, this is not necessarily the case. For example, many Canadians are allergic-


Svend Johannes Robinson: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have just consulted with the Table Officers and I understand that if the debate on this Bill continues until 6 p.m. it will then drop again to the bottom of the order of precedence. I wonder if I might appeal to the Hon. Member from the Conservative Party not to talk the Bill out so that the Bill might in fact go to committee. I hope that we in the House could agree to do that.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The Hon. Member made that point previously during his intervention. The Chair is in no position to intervene in any way on the matter.


Rob Nicholson: Madam Speaker, the very complexity of the process of allergic reactions and realities of food preparation point out, I would suggest, several weak points in Bill C-289, or at least some grey areas which the Bill fails to address. I think those should be addressed.
For instance, the Bill would require restaurants to post ingredient lists. However, the Bill raises questions about ingredient lists which it does not answer. For example, would a restaurant be required to list the ingredients in the ingredients of the food? What about the ingredients that went into the butter that is in the cake which is the final product, or the ingredients in margarine, stock and sauce bases? How far down the food chain would the Bill apply?
Most would agree that the list should be very extensive so that consumers are protected when they dine out. What about materials used in the preparation but not consumed in their own right? Would every place that sells deep-fried food be required to list the type of oil they use? I think most people would suggest that that sort of thing should be in the Bill. The breadth and scope of our food service industry presents, I think, some very real challenges, challenges that should be addressed and which Bill C-289 fails to take into account. It is not specific enough-


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I do apologize. I must interrupt the Hon. Member.

The hour provided for the consideration fo Private Members' Business has now expired. Pursuant to Standing Order 36(2), the order shall be dropped to the bottom of the order of precedents on the Order Paper.

September 26, 1988
Canada Child Care Act




[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Wednesday, September 21, consideration of the motion of Mr. Epp (Provencher) that Bill C-144, an Act to authorize payments by Canada toward the provision of child care services, and to amend the Canada Assistance Plan in consequence thereof, be read the third time and passed.
And on the amendment of Ms. Mitchell:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word "That" and substituting the following therefor:
"Bill C-144, an Act to authorize payments by Canada toward the provision of child care services, and to amend the Canada Assistance Plan in consequence thereof, be not now read a third time but be referred back to the Legislative Committee for the purpose of considering Clauses 3, 4, and 5."
@Acting Speaker: It being now 6 p.m., pursuant to the order adopted earlier today, the House will now proceed to the recorded vote on the amendment to the third reading motion on Bill C-144, an Act to authorize payments by Canada toward the provision of child care services, and to amend the Canada Assistance Plan in consequences thereof.
Call in the Members.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the amendment lost.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. To avoid another recorded vote, I think you will find there is unanimous consent that the division taken on the amendment be applied in reverse to the main motion. Although we came close to winning, Madam Speaker, we did not this time, but we will some day.


Iain Francis Angus: Madam
Speaker, I just wish to indicate we agree with that process.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Therefore, the question is on the main motion.
++YEAS


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion carried.
Bill read the third time and passed.


BROADCASTING ACT
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Friday, September 23, consideration of Bill C-136, an Act respecting broadcasting and to amend certain Acts in relation thereto and in relation to radiocommunication, as reported (with amendments) from a legislative committee.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred divisions on the motions at report stage of Bill C-136.
The first question is on Motion No. 1. The vote on this motion will also apply to Motions Nos. 1A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9 and 12.


Neil Young: Motion No. 1
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 2 by striking out line 12 at page 2 and substituting the following therefor:
""distribution undertaking" means any commercial under-".
The House divided on the motion, which was negatived on
the following division:
Broadcasting Act (Division No. 581)
Allmand	YEAS Members Gray	RedwayAngus	(Windsor West)	RobichaudAxworthy	Isabelle	RobinsonBenjamin	Kaplan	RodriguezBlackburn	Keeper	Rossi(Brant)	Lapierre	SkellyBoudria	MacLellan	TobinCaccia	Manly	TurnerCassidy	McCurdy	(Vancouver Quadra)Dewar	Mitchell	WaddellFinestone	Nicholson	Young-36Foster	(Trinity)	Garneau	Nunziata	Gauthier	Ouellet	Andre	Pepin
NAYS Members Guilbault	McKnightBeatty	(Drummond)	MinakerBernier	Hamilton	NicholsonBlais	Hardey	(Niagara Falls)Bouchard	Hawkes	Oberle(Roberval)	Hockin	OostromBourgault	James	PriceBrisco	Johnson	ReidChartrand	(Bonavista-Trinity-	SchellenbergCollins	Conception)	(Nanaimo-Alberni)Crofton	Kelleher	ScottCrosby	Kempling	(Victoria-Haliburton)(Halifax West)	Kilgour	Scottde Cotret	Kindy	(Hamilton-Wentworth)Desjardins	King	SparrowDomm	Ladouceur	StackhouseEpp	Lewis	Taylor(Provencher)	MacDonald	TupperFennell	(Kingston and	WilsonFerland	the Islands)	(Swift CurrentGirard	Mailly	-Maple Creek)Gormley	Malone	Winegard-55Gottselig	Martin	Mazankowski


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The next vote is on Motion No. 7. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Motion No. 7
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 2 by striking out lines 35 to 38 at page 2 and substituting the following therefor:
"entertain".
The House divided on the Motion (Mrs. Finestone) which
was negatived on the following division:

September 26, 1988
Broadcasting Act
(.Division No. 582)


Iain Francis Angus: Madam Speaker, we agree with the suggestion made by the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier). However, members of my Party are to be recorded as having voted against Motions Nos. 33 and 47.
	Members	
Allmand	Gray	PepinAngus	(Windsor West)	RobichaudAxworthy	Isabelle	RobinsonBenjamin	Kaplan	RodriguezBlackburn	Keeper	Rossi(Brant)	Lapierre	SkellyBoudria	MacLellan	TobinCaccia	Manly	TurnerCassidy	McCurdy	(Vancouver Quadra)Dewar	Mitchell	WaddellFinestone	Nicholson	Young-35Foster	(Trinity)	Garneau	Nunziata	Gauthier	Ouellet	NAYS	Members	Andre	Hamilton	NicholsonBeatty	Hardey	(Niagara Falls)Bernier	Hawkes	OberleBlais	Hockin	OostromBouchard	James	Price(Roberval)	Johnson	RedwayBourgault	(Bonavista-T rinity-	ReidBrisco	Conception)	SchellenbergChartrand	Kelleher	(Nanaimo-Alberni)Collins	Kempling	ScottCrofton	Kilgour	(Victoria-Haliburton)Crosby	Kindy	Scott(Halifax West)	King	(Hamilton-Wentworth)de Cotret	Ladouceur	SparrowDesjardins	Lewis	StackhouseDomm	MacDonald	TaylorEpp	(Kingston and	Tupper(Provencher)	the Islands)	WilsonFennell	Mailly	(Swift CurrentFerland	Malone	-Maple Creek)Girard	Martin	Winegard-56Gormley	Mazankowski	Gottselig	McKnight	Guilbault	Minaker	(Drummond)


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: With the help of very kind people, I think the Chair has this well in hand. Does the House agree that the division just taken be recorded as applying to all the remaining motions with the exceptions outlined by the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier and the Hon. Member for Thunder Bay-Atikokan (Mr. Angus)?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The next vote is on Motion No. 8. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Motion No. 8
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 2 by adding immediately after line 8 at page 3 the following:
"(3) For greater certainty, subsection 2(2) of this Act applies to closed-circuit transmissions carried on a distribution undertaking."


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe there is an understanding and we have had consultations about the remaining 35 different motions. I think you will find an agreement among Members of the House to apply the vote just taken to the remaining motions, with the exception that the members of the Liberal Party are to be recorded as having voted against Motion Nos. 18, 40, 43 and 75A. As well, the division be recorded as applying to the report stage concurrence motion, that is in reverse to the votes taken prior to that. I hope that is clear.
Andre	Epp	JohnsonBeatty	(Provencher)	(Bonavista-Bernier	Fennell	Conception)Blais	Ferland	KelleherBouchard	Girard	Kempling(Roberval)	Gormley	KilgourBourgault	Gottselig	KindyBrisco	Guilbault	KingChartrand	(Drummond)	LadouceurCollins	Hamilton	LewisCrofton	Hardey	MacDonaldCrosby	Hawkes	(Kingston an(Halifax West)	Hockin	the Islands)de Cotret	James	MaillyDesjardins	MaloneDomm	Martin
September 26, 1988

Broadcasting Act
Mazankowski McKnight Minaker Nicholson (Niagara Falls) Oberle Oostrom Price
Redway
Reid
Schellenberg
(Nanaimo-Alberni) Scott
(Victoria-Haliburton) Scott
(Hamilton-Wentworth)
Sparrow
Stackhouse
Taylor
Tupper
Wilson
(Swift Current -Maple Creek) Winegard-56


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next question is on Motion No. 17. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Scott	T upper
(Hamilton-Wentworth)
Sparrow
Stackhouse
Taylor
Wilson
(Swift Current -Maple Creek) Winegard-56


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next question is on Motion No. 18. Mr. Waddell moved:
Motion No. 18
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by striking out lines 11 to 18 at page 4 and substituting the following therefor:
Motion No. 17
"and presentation of programming;".
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by striking out lines 8 and 9 at page 4 and substituting the following therefor:
"provide programming that is predominantly Canadian, using predominantly Canadian crea-".


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next question is on Motion No. 23. Mr. Waddell moved:
Motion No. 23


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next question is on Motion No. 20. Mr. Waddell moved:
Motion No. 20
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by striking out line 21 at page 4 and substituting the following therefor:
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by adding immediately after line 45 at page 4 the following:
"(j) that broadcasting services reflecting the aboriginal cultures of Canada shall be provided where numbers warrant and as resources become available for the purpose;".
The House divided on the motion (Mr. Waddell), which was
negatived on the following division:
September 26, 1988

Broadcasting Act (Division No. 589)
(Division No. 588)
	YEAS	
	Members	
Allmand	Gray	PepinAngus	(Windsor West)	RobichaudAxworthy	Isabelle	RobinsonBenjamin	Kaplan	RodriguezBlackburn	Keeper	Rossi(Brant)	Lapierre	SkellyBoudria	MacLellan	TobinCaccia	Manly	TurnerCassidy	McCurdy	(Vancouver Quadra)Dewar	Mitchell	WaddellFinestone	Nicholson	Young-35Foster	(Trinity)	Garneau	Nunziata	Gauthier	Ouellet	Andre	NAYS Members Hamilton	NicholsonBeatty	Hardey	(Niagara Falls)Bernier	Hawkes	OberleBlais	Hockin	OostromBouchard	James	Price(Roberval)	Johnson	RedwayBourgault	(Bonavista-T rinity-	ReidBrisco	Conception)	SchellenbergChartrand	Kelleher	(Nanaimo-Alberni)Collins	Kempling	ScottCrofton	Kilgour	(Victoria-Haliburton)Crosby	Kindy	Scott(Halifax West)	King	(Hamilton-Wentworth)de Cotret	Ladouceur	SparrowDesjardins	Lewis	StackhouseDomm	MacDonald	TaylorEpp	(Kingston and	Tupper(Provencher)	the Islands)	WilsonFennell	Mailly	(Swift CurrentFerland	Malone	-Maple Creek)Girard	Martin	Winegard-56Gormley	Mazankowski	Gottselig	McKnight	Guilbault	Minaker	(Drummond) The Acting	Speaker (Mrs. Champagne): I declare the	motion lost.	
The next vote is on Motion No. 25. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Motion No. 25
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by adding immediately after line 22 at page 5 the following:
"(vi) include a significant contribution from the Canadian independent production sector; and".
The House divided on the motion (Mrs. Finestone), which
was negatived on the following division:
	YEAS	
	Members	
Allmand	Gray	PepinAngus	(Windsor West)	RobichaudAxworthy	Isabelle	RobinsonBenjamin	Kaplan	RodriguezBlackburn	Keeper	Rossi(Brant)	Lapierre	SkellyBoudria	MacLellan	TobinCaccia	Manly	TurnerCassidy	McCurdy	(Vancouver Quadra)Dewar	Mitchell	WaddellFinestone	Nicholson	Young-35Foster	(Trinity)	Garneau	Nunziata	Gauthier	Ouellet	NAYS	Members	Andre	Hamilton	~ NicholsonBeatty	Hardey	(Niagara Falls)Bernier	Hawkes	OberleBlais	Hockin	OostromBouchard	James	Price(Roberval)	Johnson	RedwayBourgault	(Bonavista-Trinity-	ReidBrisco	Conception)	SchellenbergChartrand	Kelleher	(Nanaimo-Alberni)Collins	Kempling	ScottCrofton	Kilgour	(Victoria-Haliburton)Crosby	Kindy	Scott(Halifax West)	King	(Hamilton-Wentworth)de Cotret	Ladouceur	SparrowDesjardins	Lewis	StackhouseDomm	MacDonald	TaylorEpp	(Kingston and	Tupper(Provencher)	the Islands)	WilsonFennell	Mailly	(Swift CurrentFerland	Malone	-Maple Creek)Girard	Martin	Winegard-56Gormley	Mazankowski	Gottselig	McKnight	Guilbault	Minaker	(Drummond)


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 30. Mr. Waddell moved:
Motion No. 30
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by adding immediately after line 37 at page 5 the following:
"(m) educational broadcasters reflecting Canada's provinces are key elements in the Canadian broadcasting system;".
The House divided on the motion (Mr. Waddell), which was
negatived on the following division:

September 26, 1988
Broadcasting Act
(Division No. 590)	(Division No. 591)
	YEAS	
	Members	
Allmand	Gray	PepinAngus	(Windsor West)	RobichaudAxworthy	Isabelle	RobinsonBenjamin	Kaplan	RodriguezBlackburn	Keeper	Rossi(Brant)	Lapierre	SkellyBoudria	MacLellan	TobinCaccia	Manly	TurnerCassidy	McCurdy	(Vancouver Quadra)Dewar	Mitchell	WaddellFinestone	Nicholson	Young-35Foster	(Trinity)	Garneau	Nunziata	Gauthier	Ouellet	Andre	NAYS Members Hamilton	NicholsonBeatty	Hardey	(Niagara Falls)Bernier	Hawkes	OberleBlais	Hockin	OostromBouchard	James	Price(Roberval)	Johnson	RedwayBourgault	(Bonavista-T rinity-	ReidBrisco	Conception)	SchellenbergChartrand	Kelleher	(Nanaimo-Alberni)Collins	Kempling	ScottCrofton	Kilgour	(Victoria-Haliburton)Crosby	Kindy	Scott(Halifax West)	King	(Hamilton-Wentworth)de Cotret	Ladouceur	SparrowDesjardins	Lewis	StackhouseDomm	MacDonald	TaylorEpp	(Kingston and	Tupper(Provencher)	the Islands)	WilsonFennell	Mailly	(Swift CurrentFerland	Malone	-Maple Creek)Girard	Martin	Winegard-56Gormley	Mazankowski	Gottselig	McKnight	Guilbault	Minaker	(Drummond)


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 31. Mr. Redway moved:
Motion No. 31
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by adding immediately after line 37 at page 5 the following:
"(m) programming that reflects the multicultural and multilingual nature of Canada should be provided within the broadcasting system as resources become available for the purpose;".
The House divided on the motion (Mr. Redway), which was
negatived on the following division:
	YEAS	
	Members	
Allmand	Gray	PepinAngus	(Windsor West)	RobichaudAxworthy	Isabelle	RobinsonBenjamin	Kaplan	RodriguezBlackburn	Keeper	Rossi(Brant)	Lapierre	SkellyBoudria	MacLellan	TobinCaccia	Manly	TurnerCassidy	McCurdy	(Vancouver Quadra)Dewar	Mitchell	WaddellFinestone	Nicholson	Young-35Foster	(Trinity)	Garneau	Nunziata	Gauthier	Ouellet	Andre	NAYS Members Hamilton	NicholsonBeatty	Hardey	(Niagara Falls)Bernier	Hawkes	OberleBlais	Hockin	OostromBouchard	James	Price(Roberval)	Johnson	RedwayBourgault	(Bonavista-T rinity-	ReidBrisco	Conception)	SchellenbergChartrand	Kelleher	(Nanaimo-Alberni)Collins	Kempling	ScottCrofton	Kilgour	(Victoria-Haliburton)Crosby	Kindy	Scott(Halifax West)	King	(Hamilton-Wentworth)de Cotret	Ladouceur	SparrowDesjardins	Lewis	StackhouseDomm	MacDonald	TaylorEpp	(Kingston and	Tupper(Provencher)	the Islands)	WilsonFennell	Mailly	(Swift CurrentFerland	Malone	-Maple Creek)Girard	Martin	Winegard-56Gormley	Mazankowski	Gottselig	McKnight	Guilbault	Minaker	(Drummond)


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 32. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Motion No. 32
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by striking out line 39 at page 5 and substituting the following therefor:
"aboriginal cultures and representative native languages should be".
The House divided on the motion (Mrs. Finestone), which
was negatived on the following division:
September 26, 1988

Broadcasting Act
(Division No. 592)
++YEAS
Members
Allmand	Gray	PepinAngus	(Windsor West)	RobichaudAxworthy	Isabelle	RobinsonBenjamin	Kaplan	RodriguezBlackburn	Keeper	Rossi(Brant)	Lapierre	SkellyBoudria	MacLellan	TobinCaccia	Manly	TurnerCassidy	McCurdy	(Vancouver Quadra)Dewar	Mitchell	WaddellFinestone	Nicholson	Young-35Foster	(Trinity)	Garneau	Nunziata	Gauthier	Ouellet
NAYS Members	Andre	Hamilton	NicholsonBeatty	Hardey	(Niagara Falls)Bernier	Hawkes	OberleBlais	Hockin	OostromBouchard	James	Price(Roberval)	Johnson	RedwayBourgault	(Bonavista-Trinity-	ReidBrisco	Conception)	SchellenbergChartrand	Kelleher	(Nanaimo-Alberni)Collins	Kempling	ScottCrofton	Kilgour	(Victoria-Haliburton)Crosby	Kindy	Scott(Halifax West)	King	(Hamilton-Wentworth)de Cotret	Ladouceur	SparrowDesjardins	Lewis	StackhouseDomm	MacDonald	TaylorEpp	(Kingston and	Tupper(Provencher)	the Islands)	WilsonFennell	Mailly	(Swift CurrentFerland	Malone	-Maple Creek)Girard	Martin	Winegard-56Gormley	Mazankowski	Gottselig	McKnight	Guilbault	Minaker	(Drummond)


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the	
motion lost.		
The next vote is on Motion No. 33. Mrs. Finestone moved:		
Motion No. 33		
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by striking out lines 9 to 25 at		
page 6.		
The House divided on the motion (Mrs. Finestone), which		
was negatived	on the following division: {Division No. 593)
 YEAS Members	
Allmand	Finestone	GauthierAxworthy	Foster	GrayBoudria	Garneau	(Windsor West)
Caccia
Isabelle	Nunziata	TurnerKaplan	Ouellet	(Vancouver Quadra)-21Lapierre	Pepin	MacLellan	Robichaud	Nicholson	Rossi	(Trinity)	Tobin
NAYS Members	Andre	Guilbault	NicholsonAngus	(Drummond)	(Niagara Falls)Beatty	Hamilton	OberleBenjamin	Hardey	OostromBernier	Hawkes	PriceBlackburn	Hockin	Redway(Brant)	James	ReidBlais	Johnson	RobinsonBouchard	(Bonavista-T rinity-	Rodriguez(Roberval)	Conception)	SchellenbergBourgault	Keeper	(Nanaimo-Alberni)Brisco	Kelleher	ScottCassidy	Kempling	(Victoria-Haliburton)Chartrand	Kilgour	ScottCollins	Kindy	(Hamilton-Wentworth)Crofton	King	SkellyCrosby	Ladouceur	Sparrow(Halifax West)	Lewis	Stackhousede Cotret	MacDonald	TaylorDesjardins	(Kingston and	TupperDewar	the Islands)	WaddellDomm	Mailly	WilsonEpp	Malone	(Swift Current(Provencher)	Manly	-Maple Creek)Fennell	Martin	WinegardFerland	Mazankowski	Young-70Girard	McCurdy	Gormley	McKnight	Gottselig	Minaker Mitchell


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 35. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Motion No. 35
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by striking out lines 27 to 34 at page 6 and substituting the following therefor:
"undertakings shall provide programming that is predominantly Canadian, using predominantly Canadian creative and other resources in the creation and presentation of programming, unless the nature of the service provided by the undertaking, such as specialized content or format or use of languages other than French or English, renders that use impracticable, in which case the undertaking shall make the greatest practicable use of those resources; and".


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 34. Mr. Waddell moved:
Motion No. 34
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by striking out lines 27 to 34 at page 6 and substituting the following therefor:
"undertakings should contribute significantly to the creation of programming that is distinctively Canadian in content and character; and".


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 36. Mr. Waddell moved:
Motion No. 36
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by adding immediately after line 35 at page 6 the following:
"(i) should deliver only duly licensed services,".


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 37. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Motion No. 37
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by striking out lines 36 to 38 at page 6 and substituting the following therefor:
"(i) should accord priority to the carriage of Canadian programming services, in French and English, both public and private, with priority given to the Canadian public element programming services,
(ii)	may carry foreign originated programming services only where the programming they provide is substantially different from that already offered by a licensed Canadian broadcasting undertaking or where those foreign programming services were already carried by distribution undertakings,
(iii)	should be regulated in a manner that reflects a reasonable recognition of exclusive rights acquired by Canadian broadcasting undertakings,".


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the	
motion lost.		
The next vote is on Motion No. 38. Mr. Waddell moved:		
Motion No. 38		
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by striking out line 38 at page 6		
and substituting the following therefor:		
"vices and	in particular accord priority to	the carriage of radio and
television services of the Corporation and		other public broadcasting
undertakings,".		
The House divided on the motion (Mr. Waddell), which was		
negatived on the following division:		
Allmand	(Division No. 598)
 YEAS Members Gray	Pepin
Angus	(Windsor West)	RobichaudAxworthy	Isabelle	RobinsonBenjamin	Kaplan	RodriguezBlackburn	Keeper	Rossi(Brant)	Lapierre	SkellyBoudria	MacLellan	TobinCaccia	Manly	TurnerCassidy	McCurdy	(Vancouver Quadra)Dewar	Mitchell	WaddellFinestone	Nicholson	Young-35Foster	(Trinity)	Garneau	Nunziata	Gauthier	Ouellet	
September 26, 1988
Broadcasting Act
++NAYS
Members
Andre
Beatty
Bernier
Blais
Bouchard
(Roberval)
Bourgault
Brisco
Chartrand
Collins
Crofton
Crosby
(Halifax West) de Cotret Desjardins Domm Epp
(Provencher)
Fennell
Ferland
Girard
Gormley
Gottselig
Guilbault
(Drummond)
Hamilton
Hardey
Hawkes
Hockin
James
Johnson
(Bonavista-T rinity- Conception)
Kelleher
Kempling
Kilgour
Kindy
King
Ladouceur
Lewis
MacDonald (Kingston and the Islands)
Mailly
Malone
Martin
Mazankowski
McKnight
Minaker
Nicholson (Niagara Falls)
Oberle
Oostrom
Price
Redway
Reid
Schellenberg (Nanaimo-Alberni) Scott
(Victoria-Haliburton) Scott
(Hamilton-Wentworth) Sparrow Stackhouse Taylor Tupper Wilson
(Swift Current -Maple Creek) Winegard-56


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 39. Mr. Waddell moved:
Motion No. 39
++NAYS
Members
Andre
Beatty
Bernier
Blais
Bouchard
(Roberval)
Bourgault
Brisco
Chartrand
Collins
Crofton
Crosby
(Halifax West) de Cotret Desjardins Domm Epp
(Provencher)
Fennell
Ferland
Girard
Gormley
Gottselig
Guilbault
(Drummond)
Hamilton
Hardey
Hawkes
Hockin
James
Johnson
(Bonavista-T rinity- Conception)
Kelleher
Kempling
Kilgour
Kindy
King
Ladouceur
Lewis
MacDonald (Kingston and the Islands)
Mailly
Malone
Martin
Mazankowski
McKnight
Minaker
Nicholson (Niagara Falls)
Oberle
Oostrom
Price
Redway
Reid
Schellenberg (Nanaimo-Alberni) Scott
(Victoria-Haliburton) Scott
(Hamilton-Wentworth) Sparrow Stackhouse Taylor Tupper Wilson
(Swift Current -Maple Creek) Winegard-56


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 41. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Motion No. 41
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by striking out line 4 at page 7 and substituting the following therefor:
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by adding immediately after line 38 at page 6 the following:
"programming that is complementary to existing licensed programming services, including local program-".
"(ii) should ensure that foreign services, with the exception of conventional off-air broadcasters, are complimentary to Canadian services,".


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 40. Mr. Waddell moved:
Motion No. 40
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by striking out lines 3 to 8 at page 7 and substituting the following therefor:
"(iv) may, where appropriate, originate a community channel as defined by the Commission, under terms and conditions set out by the Commission."


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 43. Mr. Waddell moved:
Motion No. 43
That Bill C-36 be amended in Clause 3 by adding immediately after line 8 at page 7 the following:
"(v) shall not be permitted to have an ownership interest in, or be in common ownership with, a pay television, specialty or any other network programming service as defined by the Commission."


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 44. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Motion No. 44
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 3 by adding immediately after line 8 at page 7 the following:
"(s) subject to priority being given to the other objectives of this subsection	in the	event of	any	conflict	therewith, the	Canadianbroadcasting system should	be	regulated	and	supervised in	a	flexible
manner that
(i)	in respect to non-program services, does not inhibit the development of Canadian information technologies or the delivery of Canadian information services to Canadians, and
(ii)	is sensitive to the administrative burden that may be imposed on persons carrying on broadcasting undertakings."


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 45. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Motion No. 45
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 4 by adding immediately after line 8 at page 8 the following:
"(5) For the purposes of 4(2), "carried on in whole or in part within Canada" includes the transmission of a broadcasting service, wherever it may be originated, to a member of the public in Canada directly or indirectly, where such transmission involves a contractual relationship with a member of the public or with a distribution undertaking serving a member of the public."


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: 1 declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 46. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Motion No. 46
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 5 in the English version by striking out line 18 at page 8 and substituting the following therefor:
"sion of the system."


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
Broadcasting Act
The next vote is on Motion No. 47. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Motion No. 47
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 5 by striking out lines 19 to 40 at page 8 and lines 1 to 10 at page 9.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Broadcasting Act
(Division No. 610)
(Division No. 609)
++YEAS
Members
Allmand	Gray	PepinAngus	(Windsor West)	RobichaudAxworthy	Isabelle	RobinsonBenjamin	Kaplan	RodriguezBlackburn	Keeper	Rossi(Brant)	Lapierre	SkellyBoudria	MacLellan	TobinCaccia	Manly	TurnerCassidy	McCurdy	(Vancouver Quadra)Dewar	Mitchell	WaddellFinestone	Nicholson	Young-35Foster	(Trinity)	Garneau	Nunziata	Gauthier	Ouellet	NAYS	Members	Andre	Hamilton	NicholsonBeatty	Hardey	(Niagara Falls)Bernier	Hawkes	OberleBlais	Hockin	OostromBouchard	James	Price(Roberval)	Johnson	RedwayBourgault	(Bonavista-Trinity-	ReidBrisco	Conception)	SchellenbergChartrand	Kelleher	(Nanaimo-Alberni)Collins	Kempling	ScottCrofton	Kilgour	(Victoria-Haliburton)Crosby	Kindy	Scott(Halifax West)	King	(Hamilton-Wentworth)de Cotret	Ladouceur	SparrowDesjardins	Lewis	StackhouseDomm	MacDonald	TaylorEpp	(Kingston and	T upper(Provencher)	the Islands)	WilsonFennell	Mailly	(Swift CurrentFerland	Malone	-Maple Creek)Girard	Martin	Winegard-56Gormley	Mazankowski	Gottselig	McKnight	Guilbault	Minaker	
(Drummond)


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: 1 declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 54A. Mr. Waddell moved:
Motion No. 54A
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 9 by adding immediately after line 34 at page 11 the following:
"(i) determine whether the rates charged by distribution undertakings are at all times just and reasonable, and if they are not, may revise them accordingly."


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 55. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Motion No. 55
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 10 by striking out line 10 at page 12 and substituting the following therefor:
"3(1);".
The House divided on the motion (Mrs. Finestone), which
was negatived on the following division:

September 26, 1988
Broadcasting Act
(.Division No. 611)	(Division No. 612)
++YEAS
++YEAS
	Members	
Allmand	Gray	PepinAngus	(Windsor West)	RobichaudAxworthy	Isabelle	RobinsonBenjamin	Kaplan	RodriguezBlackburn	Keeper	Rossi(Brant)	Lapierre	SkellyBoudria	MacLellan	TobinCaccia	Manly	TurnerCassidy	McCurdy	(Vancouver Quadra)Dewar	Mitchell	WaddellFinestone	Nicholson	Young-35Foster	(Trinity)	Garneau	Nunziata	Gauthier	Ouellet	NAYS	Members	Allmand	Gray	PepinAngus	(Windsor West)	RobichaudAxworthy	Isabelle	RobinsonBenjamin	Kaplan	RodriguezBlackburn	Keeper	Rossi(Brant)	Lapierre	SkellyBoudria	MacLellan	TobinCaccia	Manly	TurnerCassidy	McCurdy	(Vancouver Quadra)Dewar	Mitchell	WaddellFinestone	Nicholson	Young-35Foster	(Trinity)	Garneau	Nunziata	Gauthier	Ouellet	NAYS	
Andre
Beatty
Bernier
Blais
Bouchard
(Roberval)
Bourgault
Brisco
Chartrand
Collins
Crofton
Crosby
(Halifax West) de Cotret Desjardins Domm Epp
(Provencher)
Fennell
Ferland
Girard
Gormley
Gottselig
Guilbault
(Drummond)
Hamilton
Hardey
Hawkes
Hockin
James
Johnson
(Bonavista-T rinity- Conception)
Kelleher
Kempling
Kilgour
Kindy
King
Ladouceur
Lewis
MacDonald (Kingston and the Islands)
Mailly
Malone
Martin
Mazankowski
McKnight
Minaker
Nicholson
(Niagara Falls)
Oberle
Oostrom
Price
Redway
Reid
Schellenberg
(Nanaimo- Albemi) Scott
(Victoria-Haliburton) Scott
(Hamilton-Wentworth) Sparrow Stackhouse Taylor Tupper Wilson
(Swift Current -Maple Creek) Winegard-56


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 57. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Andre
Beatty
Bernier
Blais
Bouchard
(Roberval)
Bourgault
Brisco
Chartrand
Collins
Crofton
Crosby
(Halifax West) de Cotret Desjardins Domm Epp
(Provencher)
Fennell
Ferland
Girard
Gormley
Gottselig
Guilbault
(Drummond)
Hamilton
Hardey
Hawkes
Hockin
James
Johnson
(Bonavista-T rinity- Conception)
Kelleher
Kempling
Kilgour
Kindy
King
Ladouceur
Lewis
MacDonald (Kingston and the Islands)
Mailly
Malone
Martin
Mazankowski
McKnight
Minaker
Nicholson
(Niagara Falls)
Oberle
Oostrom
Price
Redway
Reid
Schellenberg (Nanaimo-Alberni) Scott
(Victoria-Haliburton) Scott
(Hamilton-Wentworth) Sparrow Stackhouse Taylor Tupper Wilson
(Swift Current -Maple Creek) Winegard-56


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
Motion No. 57
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 10 by striking out line 4 at page 13 and substituting the following therefor:
"of one or more classes, or to any persons or class of persons who are exempted from the requirement to hold a licence by subsection 9(2) or section 25."
The next vote is on Motion No. 61. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Motion No. 61
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 17 by adding immediately after line 20 at page 16 the following:
"(d) the making of an order under subsection 9(2)".


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 64. Mrs. Finestone moved:
	NAYS	
	Members	
Andre	Hamilton	NicholsonBeatty	Hardey	(Niagara Falls)Bernier	Hawkes	OberleBlais	Hockin	OostromBouchard	James	Price(Roberval)	Johnson	RedwayBourgault	(Bonavista-Trinity-	ReidBrisco	Conception)	SchellenbergChartrand	Kelleher	(Nanaimo-Alberni)Collins	Kempling	ScottCrofton	Kilgour	(Victoria-Haliburton)Crosby	Kindy	Scott(Halifax West)	King	(Hamilton-Wentworth)de Cotret	Ladouceur	SparrowDesjardins	Lewis	StackhouseDomm	MacDonald	TaylorEpp	(Kingston and	Tupper(Provencher)	the Islands)	WilsonFennell	Mailly	(Swift CurrentFerland	Malone	-Maple Creek)Girard	Martin	Winegard-56Gormley	Mazankowski	Gottselig	McKnight	Guilbault	Minaker	(Drummond)


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.
The next vote is on Motion No. 71. Mrs. Finestone moved:
Motion No. 71
That Bill C-136 be amended in Clause 34 by adding immediately after line 29 at page 24 the following:
"(3) The Minister shall consult with the Chairman before the Governor in Council makes an appointment to the Board."


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Johnson	Martin	Scott(Bonavista-T rinity-	Mazankowski	(Hamilton-Wentworth)Conception)	McKnight	SparrowKelleher	Minaker	StackhouseKempling	Nicholson	TaylorKilgour	(Niagara Falls)	TupperKindy	Oberle	WilsonKing	Oostrom	(Swift CurrentLadouceur	Price	-Maple Creek)Lewis	Redway	Winegard-56MacDonald	Reid	(Kingston and	Schellenberg	the Islands)	(Nanaimo-Alberni)	Mailly	Scott	Malone	(Victoria-Haliburton)


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion lost.


Hon. Flora MacDonald (Minister of Communications) moved: that the Bill, as amended, be concurred in.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Does the House agree that the division just taken be applied in reverse to the motion of concurrence in the Bill?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion agreed to.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Before you adjourn, Madam Speaker, I wonder if the Deputy House Leader could tell us what we are going to be doing tomorrow?
Andre	Epp	JohnsonBeatty	(Provencher)	(Bonavista-Bernier	Fennell	Conception)Blais	Ferland	KelleherBouchard	Girard	Kempling(Roberval)	Gormley	KilgourBourgault	Gottselig	KindyBrisco	Guilbault	KingChartrand	(Drummond)	LadouceurCollins	Hamilton	LewisCrofton	Hardey	MacDonaldCrosby	Hawkes	(Kingston an(Halifax West)	Hockin	the Islands)de Cotret	James	MaillyDesjardins	MaloneDomm	Martin


Philip Derek Lewis: Madam Speaker, tomorrow at eleven o'clock we will commence debate on third reading of the Broadcasting Act. We hope that by the end of the day, since Private Members' hour is cancelled, we would also be able to send to the Senate the variable entrance requirement Bill. We will have our people here ready to debate that at the same time.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: It being 6.43 p.m., the House stands adjourned until 11 a.m. tomorrow, pursuant to Standing Order 3(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.43 p.m.
[Stage Direction]

Tuesday, September 27, 1988
[Stage Direction]
Prayers