1988-12-15

[Stage Direction]
TABLING OF APPOINTMENT Hon. Doug Lewis (Minister of State and Minister of State (Treasury Board) and Acting President of the Treasury Board): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table in both official languages an Order in Council appointment which was recently made by the Government.
While I am on my feet, I move:
That the House do now proceed to Orders of the Day.
Mr. Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.


Mr. Speaker:: All those opposed will please say nay.


Some Hon. Members:: Nay.


Mr. Speaker:: In my opinion the yeas have it.
And more than five Members having risen:


Mr. Speaker:: Call in the Members.


Mr. Speaker:: I declare the motion carried.


Mr. Nunziata:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I was unable to vote as I was not in my seat when the vote commenced. Had I been in my seat, I would have voted with my Party, as I always do.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Ms. Maheu:: Mr. Speaker, I, too, rise on a point of order. I was absent from my seat when the vote commenced. Had I been in my seat, I, too, would have voted with my Party.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Mr. Speaker:: Hon. Members will recall that yesterday afternoon I entertained extensive argument with respect to the motion standing under Government Order No. 1 for today. There were two important issues raised in that argument, and I am now ready to rule on those issues.
When Orders of the Day were called yesterday, December 14, 1988, the Hon. Minister of State (Mr. Lewis) proposed to move the motion standing on the Order Paper as Government Business No. 1. This motion, if allowed to be moved, debated and agreed to by the House, would have the effect of suspending various Standing Orders. Those Standing Orders relate to the hours and days of sitting, the adjournment proceedings, and the committee stage of public bills.
Both the Hon. Member for Windsor West (Mr. Gray) and the Hon. Member for Kamloops (Mr. Riis) rose on points of order at that stage to object to the motion being moved, arguing that it was procedurally unacceptable. They and other Hon. Members stated that the motion should not be allowed because it would contravene the recent reform to the Standing Orders by extending the hours of sitting and adding sitting days to the recently established fixed calendar. They also put forward the argument that this motion, by providing for all Bills to be dealt with in Committee of the Whole rather than in legislative committee, would also go against recent reforms and would prevent the hearing of witnesses at the committee stage.

The point was also made that because this motion related to all public Bills and could be in effect for the duration of this session, it was a potential abuse of the power of the majority.

During the discussion on these various points, the Hon. Minister of State proposed to give notice of his intention to move closure under the provisions of Standing Order No. 57 on the motion in question. Argument was then put forward by the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier), the Hon. Member for Kamloops, the Hon. Member for Churchill (Mr. Murphy), the Hon. Member for Regina-Lumsden (Mr. Benjamin), the Hon. Member for Glengarry- Prescott-Russell (Mr. Boudria), and the Hon. Member
December 15, 1988

for York South-Weston (Mr. Nunziata), that such notice was not acceptable because debate on the motion had not yet begun.

At 5.00 o'clock p.m. yesterday, I took the two questions raised, the procedural acceptability of the motion and the acceptability of the notice of closure, under advisement, and I undertook to study both questions and return to the House as quickly as possible with my ruling.

Overnight and this morning I have considered most carefully the arguments raised and have consulted various precedents and authorities, and I am now ready to rule.
Let me begin by addressing various points raised on the procedural acceptability of the motion. The Hon. Member for Windsor West, in his remarks on his point of order, referred to a ruling I made in the 33rd Parliament on June 13, 1988, which can be found in Hansard for that date at page 16376. For the benefit of those members who were not with us then and those who follow our proceedings, I hope the House will bear with me as I quote what I feel is the essence of that ruling. The main question before the Chair at that time was: Can the Government initiate a motion to suspend the provisions of the Standing Orders? What I said was as follows:
"In order to answer that question, we should initially look to the Canadian authorities.
First, the current Canadian House of Commons Standing Orders in number 56, paragraph (1), subparagraph (0) [now Standing Order 67(1 )(0)] have at least envisaged the concept of the suspension of the rules. That subparagraph declares that motions for the suspension of the Standing Orders are debatable motions. There is no specific direction as to how such motions are to be decided but such a motion is clearly subject to the provisions relating to notice, debate and amendment.
Second, Citation 21 of Beauchesne's Fifth Edition refers to the rules of procedure generally:
The most fundamental privilege of the House as a whole is to establish rules of procedure for itself and to enforce them. A few rules are laid down in the British North America Act, but the vast majority are resolutions of the House which may be added to, amended, or repealed at the discretion of the House. It follows, therefore, that the House may dispense with the application of any of these rules by unanimous consent on any occasion, or, by motion, may suspend their operation for a specified length of time.
Citation 9 of Beauchesne's Fifth Edition gives further precision by stating:
All rules are passed by the House by a simple majority and are altered, added to, or removed in the same way . ..
Beauchesne's Fourth Edition amplifies more specifically on the Standing Orders by stating in Citation 10:
House of Commons
Standing Orders may be suspended for a particular case without prejudice to their continued validity, for the House possesses the inherent power to destroy the self-imposed barriers and fetters of its own regulations. It may even pass an order prescribing a course of procedure inconsistent with the Standing Orders. A motion for such temporary suspension requires notice .... but in urgent cases the notice can be waived . . . Any alteration in the regular procedure may be made effective by force of a simple resolution. This is one of the characteristics of British procedure and it has contributed in no small degree to the elasticity of our parliamentary system.
Furthermore, there are several precedents of such occurrences in the Canadian House found in the Journals for March 16, 1883, June 1, 1898, April 8, 1948, April 24, 1961, and May 14, 1964. Clearly then both the authorities and our practices allow for our Standing Orders to be suspended or amended by motion on notice.
The Speaker was urged by many Members to rule on this matter by using Standing Order 1 and referring to traditional parliamentary practice in other jurisdictions, if applicable ... the citation on page 212 of May's Twentieth Edition is worthy of repetition: Standing Orders are not safeguarded by any special procedure against amendment, repeal or suspension, whether explicitly or by an Order contrary to their purport. Ordinary notice only is requisite for the necessary motion; and some Standing Orders have included arrangements for the suspension of their own provisions by a bare vote, without amendment or debate.
The Chair has also looked to the Australian practice as commented on by J. A. Pettifer in House of Representatives Practice. It is clear the Australian House does deal with such motions on a regular basis. Their Standing Orders specifically provide for the suspension of a Standing Order on notice. Such motions are debatable, amendable and
require only the majority of votes cast to be adopted. The Chair is reluctant to use this practice as a convincing authority because it is supported in Australia by a specific Standing Order. Reference to the Australian practice does, however, demonstrate that suspension of the Standing Orders is not foreign to other Houses in the Commonwealth."
That is the end of the extract from my earlier judgment. I should now address the two major new objections of the Hon. Member for Windsor West.
The Hon. Member is, of course, absolutely right in saying that the motion differs because it suspends Standing Order 78 which relates to legislative committees. The June 18 motion also suspended Standing Order 10, now renumbered 27(1), which denied the right of any Member to move a motion relating to extended hours. In my view, both motions did indeed suspend the calendar but they also suspended other Standing Orders.

As far as his argument that the proposal now before us is a permanent change, I must tell the Hon. Member that I cannot agree. The motion, if passed, would alter the Standing Orders for the duration of the First Session only. The duration is finite in keeping with Citation 21 of Beauchesne Fifth Edition and the motion does

December 15, 1988
House of Commons
provide for an earlier expiry on motion of a Minister of the Crown after the First Royal Assent of the Bill. [English]
The concept of studying legislation in Committee of the Whole House is certainly not foreign to our practice. Since the reform of 1968, after which most Bills were referred to standing committees, the journals abound with Bills reviewed in Committee of the Whole. Since the creation of legislative committees, the House has often waived the Standing Orders and often resorted to the Committee of the Whole for expediting business. The difference between most of those examples and today is that the House proceeded by consent rather than by motion. However, as I stated earlier, both methods for reaching such decisions are valid and stand on their own, whether achieved by unanimous consent or by a majority decision.
The Hon. Member for Kamloops did refer to and agree with my June comments that any other ruling would render the House hostage to a single Member if the House was required to proceed only by unanimous consent. He went on to claim, however, that this manoeuvre by the Government was an abuse and usurped the rights of the minority. I have some difficulty in reconciling these two positions.
On the one hand he concedes the danger of tyranny by a minority, but he does object at least in this case to the role of the majority. Both the minority and the majority have rights; however, primacy cannot be given to both.
Having carefully reviewed the arguments of the Hon. Member for Windsor West and the Hon. Member for Kamloops, as well as those of the Hon. Minister of State, I must advise the House that I am not persuaded that the motion on the Order Paper is fundamentally different from the June proposal. It is therefore in order.
I said last June that sometimes hard cases make bad law. This is another hard case. I am not pleased as your presiding officer to put this question to the House; but it would be bad law to do otherwise. I said just a few days ago that I am your servant. I cannot rewrite or reinterpret the rules at the behest of the majority or the minority. I have, however, a duty that the minority be protected and heard.
Let me now address on that note the question of the acceptability of the notice of closure. Standing Order 57 reads in part as follows:
Immediately before the Order of the Day for resuming an
adjourned debate is called ... any Minister of the Crown who,
standing in his or her place, shall have given notice at a previous
sitting of his or her intention so to do, may move that the debate
shall not be further adjourned.

From a careful reading of this Standing Order, it is clear that the closure motion may only be moved "immediately before the Order of the Day for resuming and adjourned debate is called".

In addition, this may only be done if notice of the intention to move closure has been given orally in the House by a Minister of the Crown at a previous sitting. While the Standing Orders specify when the motion can be moved, and how notice is to be given, it is silent on when notice may be given.
The Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier argued yesterday that notice could only be given after debate had begun. Standing Order 57 does not specify this. However, a search of numerous previous instances where notice of closure was given-going back to 1913 when the rule was first introduced-has failed to reveal an occurrence where notice was given prior to debate having begun.
It can be argued that merely because this has not happened previously that that does not prevent it from being allowed in this instance; that the Standing Order does not specifically prohibit this and therefore it should be allowed.
After a very careful consideration of this point, I am more persuaded by the weight of precedent and practice. Taking into consideration the gravity of the measure to be invoked and the necessity of protecting the rights of the minority, it is my feeling and decision that the intention of the Standing Order as drafted and as it has been applied is to allow a majority to impose closure only after debate on the question has begun. This is to ensure that such debate is not unfairly or prematurely curtailed. In this instance, debate on the motion had clearly not begun when the Hon. Minister served notice.
In resume therefore I find that the motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of the Hon. Minister of State is in order and may be moved and debated. However, I cannot accept the notice of closure on that motion as proposed by the same Hon. Minister yesterday. Such notice can only be given once debate on the motion has commenced.
Again, may I close by thanking all Hon. Members who assisted the Chair with this extremely difficult decision by offering me the benefits of their collective wisdom.
December 15, 1988


MOTION TO EXTEND HOURS OF SITTING
Hon. Doug Lewis (Minister of State and Minister of State (Treasury Board) and Acting President of the Treasury Board) moved:: That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or practice of the House, from the day of adoption of this motion the House will meet on the days and at the times specified in Standing Order 24, but not on December 26, 1988.
That, during such period, the Speaker shall adjourn the House on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at midnight and on Fridays at 3.00 o'clock p.m., and that the provisions of Standing Order 38 in relation to the adjournment proceedings shall be suspended.
That, during such period, the Standing Order respecting the daily mid-day interruption of business on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays shall not be suspended;
That, at 6.00 o'clock p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, or at the conclusion of Private Members' Business, the House shall proceed to "Government Orders" pursuant to Standing Order 40(1);
That, for the duration of this session or until otherwise ordered, the provisions of Standing Order 73(1) and (2) respecting committee stage of Public Bills be suspended, and all such Bills be ordered for referral to committee of the Whole; and
That immediately upon the House returning from the Senate after the first Royal Assent of this session, a Minister of the Crown may propose, without notice or debate, a motion to rescind this Order.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my remarks, if I may, by not commenting on your ruling but suggesting that with respect to the second part we appreciated there was no precedent. We took the position nothing ventured, nothing gained. I have to say that, upon reflection, I am in complete agreement with the ruling in that everybody appreciates that closure is a measure which one does not want to use all that often. For that reason I think that your ruling, Mr. Speaker, was sound and will benefit this place for years to come.
1 made my remarks with respect to this motion yesterday. While I know that my colleagues opposite will benefit from the wisdom of those remarks if I repeat them, I will not refer at too great length to them.
Let us just lay out for the House what we are doing. We have placed a motion on the Order Paper which suspends the parliamentary calendar so that we will not have the customary Christmas recess. We are going to expand the hours of debate so that my colleagues opposite will have an extra six hours a day Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to debate. We provide in the motion that the legislation will be sent to a committee of the whole House.
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Yesterday, I kept my remarks to the procedural part of the debate. I think that my colleagues opposite will benefit from some background as to why we are debating this motion at this time.
On January 1, 1988, the Government of Canada entered into an historic agreement with the United States, an agreement which will eliminate trade barriers over the next 10 years and provide a dispute settlement mechanism. That treaty was the result of two years of hard bargaining by the two countries. We feel that, on balance, we achieved a good deal for Canada. Our opponents disagree. So we set about to draft legislation.
We introduced a Bill in the last Parliament, Bill C-130. We allowed time for the Bill to be considered by the public. The Bill was fully debated in Parliament. Committee hearings were held. One should note that they were terminated before the deadline set by Parliament. The Bill passed third reading and was sent to the Senate.
At that point the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner) and his Party, who opposed the Bill from the start, said to the Liberal Senators: "Please hold up the Bill".
There were several quotes, Mr. Speaker, which were made in Hansard, in which the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition said: "Let the people decide". The key thing, Mr. Speaker, is that the people decided-absolutely decided.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: They decided.
What happened after the people decided? On November 23 the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition said that his Party will not block free trade legislation, the people have decided. "They want the deal", he said. Here is another quote: "'The people are always right', Turner told a few hundred subdued reporters". "'We will be restating our position on the matter', Turner said in Vancouver yesterday, 'but you know that we let the people decide'".


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: On a point of order, the Hon. Member for York-South Weston.


John V. Nunziata: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I know my seat has been moved, but I am down here. I am still here.

December 15, 1988
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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Well, if your colleagues would leave the room, I would be able to see you standing up. Now that I have recognized you, would you please state your point of order.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, I hope you are not commenting on my height.
I hope that the Elon. Minister will not intentionally mislead the House and Canadians by saying the people decided in favour of free trade.


Some Hon. Members:: Sit down!


John V. Nunziata: The fact is that the people-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Minister.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: I will repeat the quotation. It is from the Ottawa Citizen of November 23, 1988. "Liberal Leader John Turner said Tuesday his Party will not block free trade legislation. The people have decided". That is his quote. When can I do? It is his quote.
I want to give equal time to the Leader of the New Democratic Party because the day after the people decided, there were some quotes that should be put on the record. '"The people of Canada have taken a decision and now Mr. Mulroney has the right to continue with his free trade legislation', Broadbent said". That is from the Montreal Gazette of November 23, 1988. It gets better. The Globe and Mail: "He conceded that the anti-free trade forces had been decisively defeated". "The Canadian people have taken a decision and Mr. Mulroney certainly has the right to continue with passage of free trade".
A lot of people have forgotten the word "churlish", but not the Leader of the New Democratic Party. He said "It would be churlish and inappropriate to say something should be done about that law at this stage". Churlish. So here we are. I know we have had some procedural manoeuvring, but I suggest to my colleagues opposite that we proceed to debate this motion. I can give an undertaking, if my colleagues opposite want- and I am not suggesting closure of this debate. I know my hon. friend from Ottawa Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) is ready to pounce. But I would suggest, given that the Chair has decided the motion is in order, that if my colleagues opposite wish to curtail the debate, that if everyone does not want to debate this-I was going to say "ad nauseam"-at length, then we would be prepared to vote on this immediately. We can then get on to expedite what the Leaders of both Opposition
Parties have said they want to do. They want to let us get on with the legislation. Why do we not get on with debate on the legislation?


Mr. Gauthier:: Bad case.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Would that not make sense to my hon. friend?


Mr. Riis:: This is dictatorial, that is why.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: I suggest to the House that given all those quotes, all those deathless quotes from the Opposition about how we had the right to pass our legislation, that we get on with the debate on this motion, wrap it up as quickly as possible, and if we wrap it up before one o'clock, we can introduce the free trade legislation at three o'clock and get on with the debate. Surely, that is what we want. Surely, that is what we want to decide. Let us get on to the debate on the Bill.
In the alternative, we can debate this and eventually come to a vote. But if my hon. friends opposite want to debate the Bill rather than this motion, why not vote on it immediately?


Mr. Harvard:: I rise on a point of order. I am a freshman MP and I am just wondering whether it is fair to a new rookie like me to have to listen to this kind of drivel.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Axworthy:: It is a fair comment.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Minister.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: My hon. friend opposite has certainly picked up the natural arrogance of the Liberal Party very quickly.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: They used to be the natural governing Party. Now they are the natural arrogant Party. I do not know exactly what "drivel" he was referring to. I referred to several quotes from his Leader. Which of the quotes from his Leader did he consider to be the highest amount of drivel? Does he want me to repeat them?


Some Hon. Members:: Yes.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: I can quote from the Toronto Sun: '"We let the people decide and the people have decided', Turner told reporters". "Having stated our case, we will let the matter proceed". Is that the drivel you were referring to, Sir?
December 15, 1988


Ms. Copps:: You are not letting the matter proceed.


John Harvard: Why do you not just close Parliament down?


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: I could go on and repeat all these deathless quotes, but if my friends opposite want to get to debate on the Bill, why do we not debate the Bill? I do not think the case has to be put any more strongly. I suggest that we get on with a vote on this motion. Let us debate the Bill.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday of this week you had the honour to table our new Standing Orders, renumbered and reorganized. At our first sitting of this House, you gave us a copy of the Standing Orders, explained that there was a lot of hard work put into this reorganization and renumbering. We were happy because it does make more sense and it is easier to follow. But today we have a Government that says about those Standing Orders: "We don't think they are worth very much. We are going to make them disappear somewhere into the background. We are going to reinstate our position", which is limited debate, closure on debate, bang, whang, the Opposition doesn't count. The Government has a majority and, therefore, it has its own way. Those Members call that democracy. We call that dictatorship.

Mr. Speaker, the Tories have implemented with a certain arrogance that might even be malicious...


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Jean-Robert Gauthier: I am getting all the little Quebeckers excited! You over there know what arrogance is-you have acted that way long enough!
Mr. Speaker, the saying they go by is, "The end justifies the means." That is a proverb you certainly know and it is the principle of brute force. According to this principle, the end sought can excuse the wrong done to the one who suffers from it. The Government does not like the Standing Orders of the House. They say that they cannot work with those Standing Orders, that they cannot even understand them, that they cannot go by them. So they drop the Standing Orders and table in the House a proposal to limit time for debate.
Unable as we also said to manage the time of the House, the Government is trying with its majority to impose a provision that would have us pass within a few days what we consider to be a bad deal for the country. So Members must not be heard criticizing the Government. No! We must not criticize! The Opposition should
Extension of Sittings
not criticize! It is not right to criticize the Government. We must admit, Mr. Speaker, that they won the election, but we already know that! But even so, two Opposition parties in Canada got 57 per cent of the vote and these 57 per cent of the voters say no to the Mulroney-Reagan trade agreement, no to the deal, and it is our duty to tell this Government that with 43 per cent of the vote, it cannot continue with this mean-spirited arrogance of imposing its views, its way of seeing things, its methods, of using the Conservative bludgeon. That is what it is-a bludgeon. The Government is proposing to use it.
It is being used to lessen and cut off debate. It is used to ride roughshod over the Opposition, to undo what you would maintain, Mr. Speaker, the few powers a minority can have. The Conservative majority says that they will proceed speedily and have done with this question. But we tell them, we say again to them that we want to debate the motion. We want to debate this question and we are ready to do so. I have with me 81 colleagues who are prepared to make speeches today, tomorrow, on the weekend and next week and after Christmas to make this Government clearly understand that it is mistaken in making a proposal like this one.
This is the third time in 100 years that the Tories have put a motion to suspend the rules in order to force their way on Parliament. The first time was in 1888. A Conservative Government put a motion to suspend the rules in order to force a Bill through Parliament.
The most recent sad episode, of course, was in the spring of this year, in June, when the Government had a motion similar to the one before us today, forcing an extension of sittings into the summer and showing with great incompetence how it could not manage the time of the House.
The Government had the House sit in July and August until 10 o'clock at night. We called it legislation by exhaustion. The Government tried to exhaust us. It did not succeed. It exhausted its Members.
Now we have a proposal that seeks to accommodate those Members whom we did not see here in July or August. They were somewhere in the boondocks, sunning themselves. Here we have the same proposal to accommodate that same gang so that they can go somewhere south and sun their buns in the sun again, in

December 15, 1988
Extension of Sittings
order to accomplish what I do not think is possible, namely to fix the agenda of the House according to some timetable that some Members of the Tory Party had for holidays. I tell them to have a nice holiday but when they come back the House will be sitting again. Maybe they will have missed an important part of this debate, a democratic exercise which 1 think is very important.
We will have none of that. We will have none of that fixing of the agenda of the House of Commons to accommodate some Tory Member who wants to sun himself in the south.


Mr. Thacker:: Sheer nonsense.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Let us get back to the open-ended, sloppy motion that we have before us. I want to take some time because it is indeed a motion that needs to be explained thoroughly. It is true that it has some similarity with the motion we debated in June, but it has other things we would like to explain to Members. [Translation]
The motion can be summarized as follows: it seems to provide that the House will sit without interruption for an indefinite period.
Mr. Speaker said in his ruling that for him, the session was a definite period; therefore, the motion in question was acceptable.
Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to call your ruling into question or to reflect in any way on this judgement-I accept it. But I will remind you that a session can last as long as a parliament. We have already had parliaments that lasted only one session. We had one with the Conservative Government in 1979 that only lasted one session.
So there is nothing in this motion that says that this session will end some time, in January, February or March.
So the sesion could last as long as the present Parliament and end some time in 1992. That is what we meant, Mr. Speaker, when we said that this motion was open-ended and not time-limited.
The motion says that the House will not sit on December 26. That is the only day; obviously the day after Christmas, Sunday, December 25, is the 26th and the House would not sit then. But it would not adjourn on December 21 as provided in the Standing Orders of the House to resume its work on January 16 as the Standing Orders specify.
The motion makes it clear that the House would not adjourn at 6 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, but would continue sitting without interruption until midnight. The motion does not
indicate that the House would use these extended hours to study specifically Bill C-2 dealing with the Mul-roney-Reagan Trade Agreement. It does not state anything to that effect.
This motion which calls for the consideration of this bill is not limited in any way by the proposal. The third paragraph of the motion states that, for the duration of this session or until otherwise ordered, the provisions of Standing Order 73(1) and (2) respecting committee stage of Public Bills is suspended, and that all such Bills will be ordered for referral to a committee of the Whole.
Mr. Speaker, this would make it impossible for Members of the House to move amendments, for a committee of the Whole is not a forum where a political group represented in the House could submit a series of amendments for study. This is only possible during the clause by clause consideration by a Committee of the Whole.
Also, this motion would suspend the application of a Standing Order which requires the referral of all Bills to a specific committee that is independent from the House. It would also make it possible for the Government to go against a principle embodied in the rules of the House of Commons for the past 20 years. Over that 20-year period, the House has abandoned consideration of Bills in a Committee of the Whole. It is being done now through legislative committees, which is certainly a good thing, but the Government would like to suspend the relevant Standing Order and have the matter referred instead to a committee of the Whole.
Mr. Speaker, I should like to return to each of these provisions, because, on the one hand, whether it likes it or not, the Government cannot state that it is dealing in good faith, and on the other hand, these provisions contain some absolute nonsense. I will now deal with the latter.
At present, there is not a single committee in existence. According to our Standing Orders, within the first 10 sitting days after the commencement of each session, a striking committee must be appointed to determine exactly which Members will make up the standing committees. This has not been done. There is no possibility for ordinary Members or backbenchers to introduce Bills which would be subject to a random draw. It is the Chair, usually represented by the Deputy Speaker, that is responsible for this draw to establish the order of precedence; there can be no such draw on bills because no Standing Committee is sitting at present. I suggest therefore that paragraph 5 of this proposed motion is somewhat odd and absolutely out of order.

December 15, 1988



I want to address every one of those paragraphs. I will number them because they need to be explained carefully. In my opinion, this motion, which strangely resembles the motion in June, was drafted hurriedly and in a sloppy fashion. Paragraph one, by accident or design states that the House will meet on the days and at the times specified in Standing Order 24. This precludes sitting on Saturdays or Sundays because the Standing Order speaks only of Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. We do not know the Government's real intentions, but it had better not try Saturday or Sunday sittings because the Standing Orders say that it cannot do so.
The Minister proposed to the House in his speech a few minutes ago that if we want to sit Saturday or Sunday, the Government is open to that kind of proposal. His own motion prevents that from happening. 1 cannot see how he can have it both ways. He cannot make a proposal for study by the House today which says we cannot sit any other day but the days called for by Standing Order 24, then make a proposal while on his feet saying that we can sit Saturday and Sunday. He will have to make up his mind on that one.
Paragraph two, and I will not read it because Hon. Members can follow it in the Order Paper, states that the Speaker shall adjourn the House at three o'clock on Fridays. This is already provided for in Standing Order 24. It is redundant, to say the least. It is another instance, therefore, of bad drafting by the Government and demonstrates the Government's inability to put its business before the House in an orderly and proper manner.


Mr. McDermid:: You are reaching, J.-R.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: No, I am not reaching, I am just trying to show how badly drafted this is. The Minister of housing, the Minister for the ill-housed, is trying to make a comment. I am not reaching, I am just making sure he understands that we have analysed this.


Mr. Allmand:: The Minister for the homeless.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: The Minister for the homeless, as he is called.


John Horton McDermid: That is a great filibuster.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: It is not a filibuster. Democratically, I have time to speak on this motion. I have listened to the Minister carefully. I have limited time. If he wants me
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to go on for an unlimited time, I can do that as well. I have all kinds of notes and tons of things to say, but if the Minister does not mind, I would rather that he keep quiet and give me a chance to put my comments.
Paragraph four of the motion refers to proceeding to Government Orders at 6 p.m. or at the conclusion of Private Members' Business. We know that there will be no Private Members' Business because there is no Private Members' Business before the House. Why was that put into the motion? I do not know, but again, it shows sloppiness and disorder in the Government's drafting of this motion.
Standing Orders 86 and 88 state that at least two weeks' notice must elapse before a Private Members' Notice of Motion or public Bill can be taken up. Hon. Members know that there are motions and Bills on the Order Paper right now. I have a few. I think I have five or six motions on the Order Paper myself because that is what we have to do. We put motions on the Order Paper so that we will have a chance of getting at least one pulled in the draw.
You know the game, Mr. Speaker. Twenty items are called, and if I want mine to be one of those called for debate at private Members' hour, I must put 20 or 25 notices on the Order Paper so that I will get a chance to have one drawn. However, there will not be a draw for two weeks. Yet the motion deals with Private Members' Business. That again is an example of bad drafting, unless the Government intends us to sit through January, February, and March, but at least for two weeks hence. If the Government intends that, it should say so openly. It should not give us this business of saying that Private Members' Business is suspended. It cannot be suspended because it does not exist. This again is a matter of simple, common logic.
We on this side must assume that this motion was put in order to expedite the passage of the Government's so-called free trade Bill through the House. Are we also to assume that the Government intends the Bill to be before the House for longer than two weeks? I suppose that is a logical conclusion since government Members are basing their arguments for the proposal that is before us on the assumption of two weeks at least. Are we also to assume that the Government intends the Bill to proceed without any Private Members' Business being dealt with in the House, or does the Government intend the motion to be extended indefinitely, for God only knows how long? However, the motion does not say that.

December 15, 1988
Extension of Sittings
Has the Government other threats or forces in store for us besides the free trade Bill? I ask what else the Government has in its little Christmas bag. Will it make us happy and give us some legislation other than Bill C-2? The Minister says, "Watch me, trust me". Well, I do not mind watching him, but I do not trust him very much.
Paragraph five of the motion suspends Standing Orders 73(1) and 73(2) respecting committee stage of Public Bills, not just the free trade Bill but all Public Bills. We had a Ways and Means Motion before the House a couple of days ago, dealing with the free trade Bill, and if this order is still in effect some weeks hence, there may also be some Private Members' Business before the House. However, the motion suspends Standings Orders 73(1) and 73(2). It is another example of some pretty sloppy drafting.
If, in two weeks hence, there is a Private Member's Bill before the House during private Members' hour, we all know that it should go to a legislative committee, but because of this order of the Government, it will not be able to. It would go to a Committee of the Whole House. That does not make any sense. We abolished that 20 years ago.
Paragraph six states that after the House returns from the Senate following the first Royal Assent of this Session, a Minister of the Crown may, and I emphasize may, propose to rescind this order. The motion reads "may", not "shall". As pointed out yesterday in debate, if a Minister does propose this, it is a motion that is debatable, amendable and votable. How do we know how those people on the Government side will vote? When they come back from their little holidays, they may want to stay here for the whole of January because it is too cold outside. They may want to stay here until February, who knows. However, nothing in the motion provides that a Minister shall rescind the order. It provides that he may. It is not very difficult to understand. It is permissive.
If the Government chooses not to have Royal Assent until some time in June or next summer or next fall, nothing will happen. The Minister would not be able to move to rescind the order, even if he thought he should move to rescind it, because we would not have had a Royal Assent.
We do not do Royal Assent for every Bill we pass in the House. We do not want to disturb the Senate too often, so we gather a few Bills together and take a little walk down there for Royal Assent when there are several Bills requiring Royal Assent. How do we know when Royal Assent will be held? No one knows that.
This motion is so poorly drafted-


John V. Nunziata: So what?


Jean-Robert Gauthier: So poorly drafted.


John V. Nunziata: I thought you called it pornographic.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Oh, no, it could be that too, but I will let you speak to that. I will stick with the facts.
I was saying that the motion is so poorly drafted that it is not possible for members of the Opposition to know what the Government intends, in what manner it intends to proceed, in what manner it would like Hon. Members of the House to proceed. It is not clear.
It being Christmas in a few days, we must presume that the motion is simply the latest example of the Government's inability to manage its business in the House. The latest example of incompetence and sloppiness was shown yesterday when government Members tried to move closure while they did not have the authority to do so. It is not for us to tell them what to do, but we would hope that some day they would get their act together and do things as they should be done.
Today is Thursday, December 15, at least three days into the session, and we are discussing a motion that would impose the will of the majority on the minority, that would settle a dispute between 160 elected government Members and some 130-odd elected Members on this side of the House who feel that-


An Hon. Member:: That is a stretch.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Well, 82 plus 43 is 125. I said 130, but we may win a couple of these judicial reviews that are being held. One never knows, our numbers may go up by a few.
I believe it would be less than charitable-


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I hereby give notice that at the next sitting of the House, immediately before the Order of the Day is called for resuming debate on the motion that is government business No. 1 on the Order Paper and on any amendments proposed thereto, I will move that the debate shall not be further adjourned.
December 15, 1988

While I am on my feet, I wish to advise Hon. Members that immediately after Question Period, the Government intends to call the free trade legislation, Bill C-2.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: There we have an example of a Notice of Motion that is in order. They are learning. I would hope that-


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: We now have it on highest authority.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: No, no, I just want to give Hon. Members an example of what happened prior to this debate starting, going back to Tuesday evening. We were told in the House by the same Minister who just sat down that a letter had been sent to our House Leader proposing certain ways and means of disposing with legislation.
I stood up and said that I did not recall seeing that letter and I did not recall my House Leader receiving a letter. I asked what the Minister was talking about and said that I would like to reserve our comments. I walked out of here and, believe it or not, we were having House negotiations by means the press-we were having as we say in French-

-"negotiation through the belly".
At that point the Government could not pretend they had sent a letter. Hardly a few minutes after coming into this House, the Minister sent a letter to this Party advising us of a proposal. He then rose in this House to suggest the letter was out. That letter had not been received, although the media, outside this place, had got the letter, Mr. Speaker. They had the letter, they had the proposal. The Minister thought he might get away with this. I went to see him and told him: Listen, this makes no sense. Where is the letter?
I then got a copy. On December 12, 1988, at 6:25 p.m., Mr. Speaker, nearly some 15 to 20 minutes after he announced it in this House.

The letter in question that we got later in the evening had already been given to the media. The Member wonders why we are kind of upset sometimes with his methods of negotiation. If you want to tell me something, Mr. Speaker, I know you will tell me directly right here and that you will do it properly. You will not tell the CBC, CTV or some other media that you have
Extension of Sittings
sent me a letter which I have not received. You would have the decency to make sure that those to whom the letter is addressed have received it. But not the Government.
The Government wonders why we are upset. That is a heck of a way to start a session having media intermediaries tell us what is going on. We do not like it. The Government should not be doing it. It is a bad way to negotiate. The letter with that notice was not done properly and the Government has indisposed many of us by doing that.
Let us finish with this motion, Mr. Speaker. [Translation]
This motion, well now we feel it is wrong, incomplete, utterly ill-drafted, we cannot support it because it is not at this point easy to understand. It is not correct at this point either, Mr. Speaker, because it refers to all kinds of things that do not hold together and that will not be able to hold together, because hopefully we will not proceed the way the Government intends to. I will leave it at this, since the Government gave notice and other Members may have something to say about it. I will therefore yield to speakers from the New Democratic Party. But I would like to say, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of this side of the House, that Liberal Members will oppose the proposal.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, if you listen carefully you can hear the muffled sound of jackboots in this place this morning.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Nelson Andrew Riis: It is the kind of sound you attach to a dictatorial government. It is the kind of sound that you expect from totalitarian regimes which do not like Parliaments, votes or listening to people with opposing views. I am very sad today as I look across the aisle in the House of Commons of Canada.
Before I begin my remarks, which are not going to be pleasant remarks regarding this Government, Mr. Speaker, I want to say that if the Government wanted to debate free trade legislation today, why did it not have the debate begin at 11 o'clock this morning? We were here. We were gathered and we were prepared to debate. The Leaders of the opposition Parties were prepared to debate. But, no, the Government pulled a little procedural trick to force votes.

December 15, 1988
Extension of Sittings
In the Standing Orders are Routine Proceedings which give some kind of order to this place so that we can run it in a business-like way, but the Government said it was going to change that and ripped out that particular page of the order book. The Government is starting to rip out other pages. Here is the section that says the Orders of the Day in terms of debate will end at 6 p.m. That page will be torn out. Then where it says we will recess during Christmas, the Government has torn out that page as well. Where does it end? If we give this band of parliamentary assassins another four years they will have every bloody page in this order book torn out and there will be no more pages. That is the kind of tyranny which this Government is pushing toward every single day.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Nelson Andrew Riis: This is almost parliamentary madness that we are experiencing. When was the last time a government did what this group of parliamentary assassins is doing today? The Government did it last summer, but then you have to go back decades to March 16, 1883. That was the last government which said it was going to throw out the Standing Orders, rip them up and suspend them. One hundred plus years have passed. We now have another band of parliamentary assassins and the Standing Orders that govern this place and enable us to do the business of this country properly in a businesslike way have now been tossed out the window.
There are still a few pages left in this book of Standing Orders, but they are disappearing by the week.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Nelson Andrew Riis: How did we get this book, Mr. Speaker? How did all of these Standing Orders which govern this place originate? It was a fine moment of Parliament when after months and months of deliberation, thoughtful caring deliberation, Members of the Conservative, the Liberal and the New Democratic Parties unanimously agreed on the way to do business and on the way the business of the House of Commons ought to be conducted. That was done after hundreds and thousands of hours of thoughtful discussion and debate. We had a unanimous decision, which does not often occur in this place, but we did and it was a very proud moment. I remember the day. A cheer went up in the House of Commons because of the tremendous amount of work that had been done by some extremely talented parliamentarians. But that was all for naught, Mr. Speaker.
The Conservatives say that they now have a slight majority which gives them the right to abuse this place.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Nelson Andrew Riis: Why are we surprised? I know that you will remember the day which was one of the darkest, dreariest, most damning days of this Parliament when the Conservatives said: "We don't like what is going on". They stormed the Chair, your chair. You are the servant of this House and they said "We don't like what is going on so we are going to disrupt Parliament". Conservatives were there shaking their hands and their fists. I am proud to say there was not a single New Democrat.


John V. Nunziata: There was not a single Liberal either.


Nelson Andrew Riis: And not a single Liberal. There was a whole band of these assassins, if you like, smashing their fists on the table and pushing their fists into your face.


John V. Nunziata: Were they wearing black boots?


Nelson Andrew Riis: No, they were not. But that is not all we can expect from this group on the other side of the House.
You can remember not long ago when they decided to close this place down. The Conservatives did not want to have a Parliament of Canada. They did not want to have a Question Period or an opportunity for debate. They were concerned because of a decision the Liberal Government had taken. They said: "We are going to fix the Parliament of Canada. We will shut it down". It was shut down for one, two, three, four, five and six days while the bells rang. This went on for seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven and twelve days, day after day. The Speaker had to sit in the chair all the time. You will remember, Sir, that that is the kind of behaviour the Conservatives have demonstrated time and time again, and here today we see it once more. When I say "Listen, one can hear the jackboots coming down the hallways", that is absolutely true, Mr. Speaker. We are getting closer and closer to a form of tyranny that the country has never seen before.
The Government states that it has an obligation to pass this legislation. There is no requirement that this legislation pass before January 1. We all know that. The Americans know that, Canadians know that, and all parliamentarians know that. The Government has this silly and arrogant attitude that it is going to show the Opposition Members, and jam this legislation through- rush it, ram it, jam it.
December 15, 1988

What type of legislation are we talking about, Mr. Speaker? Are we talking about a silly little Bill? Are we talking about a simplistic order of business? No. We are talking about legislation that will profoundly alter the structure of the economy of the country. This legislation will profoundly affect and redirect the social, cultural, and political future of this country. This is legislation that we should study carefully.
There is no question that the majority exists by the Conservative Government to pass this legislation. My Leader, the Hon. Member for Oshawa (Mr. Broadbent) has stated that the Government has the right now to introduce this legislation and proceed with it. However, there is a difference between proceeding with it in a matter of hours in some silly, nonsensical way that we are doing now rather than dealing with it in a thoughtful, positive, and caring manner. That is what parliamentarians were elected to do. They were not elected to rip up the Order Paper and toss it out, or sit here on Christmas Eve and on the day after Boxing Day late at night to 2 a.m. to attempt to debate this legislation.
When one thinks about this legislation, it will profoundly change a whole number of major statutes in our country. For example, the Bank Act, the statutes affecting agriculture, industry, regional development, broadcasting, and trust companies. One could go on and on. We are not going to have time to discuss it seriously. There will not be witnesses coming in. I challenge any single Member across the way and ask if he or she knows what this is going to do?


John Horton McDermid: What new things are you going to say?


Nelson Andrew Riis: As well as the person that is always yelling and mouthy, Mr. Speaker. Do Members across the way know what this will do to the Broadcasting Act of Canada? When I sit down in a few moments Hon. Members will have a chance to stand up and tell us. I want someone to tell us if he or she understands what this is going to do to the Bank Act.


John Horton McDermid: Yes, certainly.


Nelson Andrew Riis: I wonder.


John Horton McDermid: It's positive for Canada.


Nelson Andrew Riis: I doubt it. That is why we need the opportunity for the legislative committee to invite expert witnesses to come forward and outline what this legislation will do. Oh, no, do Members opposite want expert
Extension of Sittings
witnesses? No, they do not. However, Mr. Speaker, why should we be surprised that the Conservative Government does not want to hear anybody who understands this Bill? When the Government introduced the child care legislation, it brought in witnesses. Every single witness stated that it was stupid legislation. Did the Government Members listen to those witnesses?


William Warren Allmand: No, they rammed it through.


Nelson Andrew Riis: They rammed it through again. What type of place has this become where the Government invites whole numbers of experts in the area of child care, listens to them, and then ignores everything that they say. That is the way the Government does business. Why is it that the Government does not want to hear a single witness about the trade deal? Why does the Government not want to listen to a single witness about the enabling legislation? Because the Government knows that it will ignore their advice anyway. Therefore, the government Members say: "Forget about it. Let's just jam it through here".
In this business one should not make predictions, but I am going to. I predict that the Conservative Government will invoke the heavy, brutal hand of closure at every stage of the trade legislation. We have already seen the Government attempt to slip it in yesterday prematurely, and not knowing the rules of the House the Speaker had to rule it out of order, however the Speaker did it at the next opportunity so there is closure even on this debate. This debate is to tear up the Standing Orders, suspend them, throw them out the window, and allow this majority to do whatever it wants. Is that really in the best interests of Canada? Because the Conservative Government has a majority of Members in the House of Commons, it now believes that it can do anything that it wants, throw out the window the Standing Orders and the rules that govern this place. Is that the type of Parliament, House of Commons, and Government that Canadians want? 1 say no.
If there was a need to recall Parliament during the Christmas recess to discuss this trade deal, there is a provision in the Standing Orders that permits it. Standing Order 28(3) gives the Speaker of the House of Commons the right to recall Parliament if there is an emergency or some need. If the Government, following the traditional Standing Orders, could make a case to the Speaker who was duly elected by the Members of

December 15, 1988
Parliament to be our servant, and convince the Speaker that it is necessary and in the best interests of this country to recall Parliament to deal with the trade legislation, that could be done. The Speaker has the right to do that. Elowever, no, forget the Speaker of the House of Commons. That is what this motion does, Mr. Speaker, it states that your chair is not worth anything because your advice is not worth anything. The Government is much smarter in terms of determining the priorities than the duly elected servant of the House of Commons. The Government ignores the Speaker, ignores Standing Order 28(3), it is going to decide when the House sits and how the business is conducted.
What is the next order of business? I wonder if next week the Minister of State for the Treasury Board or the Deputy House Leader will rise and state that the Conservatives have decided to do away with Question Period. "We do not like Question Period. The questions are too tough, we look too silly during Question Period, so we are going to do away with it." Presumably that will be the next motion that we will debate. The Government is then going to say: "What is all this business about having to sit in the House of Commons all year long? We will just come for a couple of days of the year to transact some business. What about allowing Members of Parliament to speak freely in debate? We should do away with debate." The Government has the right, presumably, to do that.
One hundred years passed in this country before the Government decided to invoke this type of change of the way we do business, to set aside and suspend the rules to allow it to proceed with its partisan political agenda. If that partisan agenda now suggests that we should do away with Question Period, presumably that is what will happen. If there has ever been an example of the abuse by the majority on the minority, this is it.
I do not believe that our Prime Minister (Mr. Mul-roney) understands what parliamentary democracy is all about. I do not think the Prime Minister of Canada cares how the Parliament of Canada ought to operate. There is a role for the Official Opposition. We grant the fact that the Government of Canada was elected with a majority to govern. There are rows and rows of Opposition Members who were elected to provide thoughtful and effective opposition. That is what we are attempting to do, but we are not allowed to do it. We are not allowed to follow the usual rules.
We are disappointed that expert witnesses will not be able to come before us and explain the effect of this
enabling legislation on critical pieces of legislation. We are concerned that we are now going to have to legislate by exhaustion. For some mysterious reason the Government decides that, if it can keep us here all day and half the night day after day, this is the way to jam, ram, and bash this legislation through the House of Commons.


An Hon. Member:: Poor you.


Nelson Andrew Riis: I am prepared to sit here for the next six years to debate this. However, I cannot believe that Members opposite, without naming them, actually in their hearts believe that this is the way to conduct business. I cannot believe the Members opposite actually believe that this is the right thing to do. If Members opposite believe in the institution of Parliament, they cannot believe that this is an appropriate mechanism for the Government now to be injecting. I challenge government Members, if they are serious about the debate, why were we not debating this today at 11 o'clock.
I challenge those Members opposite at three o'clock to rise in their place and explain what this legislation will do to the Bank Act, the Trust Act-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Before I leave the chair, the Hon. Member will have seven minutes left in his debate, plus 10 minutes for questions and comments.
It being one o'clock, I do now leave the Chair until two o'clock p.m.
The House took recess at 1 p.m.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, in September the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson) addressed the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meeting, held in Berlin, at which time he committed Canada to the principle of sustainable development and to changing World Bank policies so that environmental impact studies are done before projects are approved.
December 15, 1988

The Minister of Finance will have an opportunity to back his words with action when, in January, 1989, the World Bank will decide upon an application by Brazil for a $625 million loan to build dams, which project will flood rain forests and destroy the way of life of native Indians.
How will Canada vote on that application?
If the Minister meant what he said in Berlin, Canada must vote against this project and lobby other nations to join us. Canada must not support further destruction of tropical rain forests.
In urging the Minister of Finance to live up to his commitment and have Canada vote against this loan to Brazil, we want to emphasize that his credibility, and Canada's, are on the line.
* *
*



REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT


Mr. Jean-Luc Joncas (Matapedia-Matane):: Mr. Speaker, the people in my riding have learned with enormous satisfaction that the federal Government has agreed to participate financially in the development of a regional paper mill project in Matane. As our Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) had already promised in this House, the Conservative Government did not waste 20 years before reacting positively and supporting in a concrete fashion this major project for the enhancement of this long overlooked and disadvantaged area.
The Free Trade Agreement with our American neigbours will undoubtedly make it possible to consolidate this project and continue to encourage the inflow of foreign capital, which will enable us to process our own raw material and ensure, through job creation, a better economic future for all my constituents.
May I take this opportunity to offer my best wishes for this holiday season to my constituents and express to them my gratitude for their support during the recent elections.



FISHERIES


Mrs. Mary Collins (Capilano-Howe Sound):: Mr. Speaker, if one goes to Japan and asks local residents what they associate with British Columbia, more often than not mention will be made of our fish products, with particular emphasis on the outstanding taste and quality of our British Columbia coastal salmon.
As you well know, Mr. Speaker, this is a reputation that we in British Columbia want to maintain, and that is why it is so important to have in place regulations which ensure the highest standards of quality control for all fish products.
Thus, as our Government pursues with the United States measures to replace the old fish processing regulations on the West Coast, which were found to be in violation of the GATT, we must put forward proposals which maintain controls over our fish exports, thus allowing us to ensure conservation of the resource while producing a healthy and safe product for consumers.
Only in this way can we continue to pursue new markets, confident of the quality of our British Columbia salmon.
* *
*



FORESTRY


Mr. Brian L. Gardiner (Prince George-Bulkley Valley):: Mr. Speaker, the Report of the Auditor General points out serious problems in the Canadian Forestry Service. Five provinces were studied, including Vander Zalm's British Columbia.
In its first value-for-money audit of the Service, the Auditor General's Office found that guidelines are not being followed and that the NSR is continuing to grow.
The report points out the clear mismanagement of the Forestry Service by the Progressive Conservative Government.
I call upon the Government to create a full-fledged Ministry of Forests and to provide that Department with some legislative reality.

December 15, 1988
We cannot wait until another election for a FRDA 2 agreement to be signed. We need action now to help solve the forestry problems in British Columbia and in my riding of Prince George-Bulkley Valley.



CANADA POST CORPORATION


Ms. Catherine Callbeck (Malpeque):: Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I speak in the House today on behalf of an organization that has worked diligently for the past two years for a cause which I wholeheartedly support. The organization, Rural Dignity, has concerned itself with the preservation of the rural post office.
In a rural community the post office serves as a focal point. I have spent the better part of my life living in rural Prince Edward Island and I know what a necessity the post office is to my community and its surrounding area.
Today, Rural Dignity is celebrating two years of existence, an existence which has dedicated itself to the education of government and citizens alike on the value of the post office in rural Canada. I know members of my Party join with me today as we acknowledge the second anniversary of this organization, and I invite all Members of this House to commemorate this necessary and worthy cause.



HUMAN RIGHTS


Mr. Fernand Jourdenais (La Prairie):: Mr. Speaker, as a land where freedom flourishes, Canada is an oasis where individual rights are now protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
We are proud and happy to enjoy freedom in every sense of the word. Thanks to the French regime, we are heirs to lofty principles of freedom and equality.
In this context, we will have an opportunity in a few days to commemorate the 200th Anniversary of the French Revolution. Mr. Speaker, forty years ago, French Professor Rene Cassin, who now rests in the Pantheon, drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights together with Mr. John Humphrey, a great Canadian who played a predominant role in the fight for human rights.
Today, Mr. Speaker, my colleagues and I want to pay tribute to the recipient of the United Nations Human Rights Prize for his contribution to the affirmation and development of human rights both nationally and internationally.



CANADIAN SPACE AGENCY


Ms. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, two years ago space industry representatives welcomed the news that a Canadian Space Agency would be established. A year later they were accusing Ottawa of playing politics, and dragging its heels, causing confusion, uncertainty, and investment holdbacks in space activities.
A well-established agency will create a strong international presence, keep our industry at the leading edge, and ensure every region in Canada benefits from our investment in space. The space industry is now found in all regions, from Vancouver to Halifax, supported on a foundation of research in federal Departments and agencies.
Members from Ottawa-Carleton have written the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) requesting a full briefing for all Members on this important issue of our space program. I call upon the Prime Minister to consult with industry representatives from across the country to seek their advice and to ensure that the space agency is established in the best interests of the industry and in the national interest.
December 15, 1988



CAROLINE, ALTA.-$600 MILLION GAS REFINERY AND SULPHUR PROCESSING PLANT

Mr. Doug Fee (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege for me today to share with this House my pleasure about an announcement made a few days ago concerning my riding of Red Deer.
The Caroline Area Gas Development Group, fourteen companies headed by Shell Canada, has announced a proposal to proceed with a $600 million development, including a natural gas refinery and sulphur processing plant near Caroline, Alberta.
Over 1,200 construction jobs will be created.
There will be permanent employment for 150 people locally and over $17 million a year pumped into our local economy.
There is no federal Government funding in this project. These 14 companies are confidently investing in their future because they believe they can compete.
With renewed confidence in government policy and more secure access to U.S. markets to be gained from the Free Trade Agreement, Canadians are going to see more projects like this one in Caroline.



U4I0)   REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITIES DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

Mr. Michel Champagne (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for External Relations):: Mr. Speaker, the residents of the Des Cheneaux-Mekinac region are proud and believe they can look forward to challenging social and economic development opportunities.
This is why my Government, responding to meet the aspirations of our people, has earmarked $2.3 million under the Community Futures Program.
As they carry out this project, community groups are setting up the structure and the financial mechanism which will pave the way for a more diversified local economy and, in turn, for new and permanent jobs as well as better living conditions. Mr. Speaker, this is yet more evidence that our Government believes in regional development, diversification and, above all, success
through the direct participation of responsible people who are quite prepared to face up to challenges and promote local initiatives.



INDIAN AFFAIRS


Mr. Ray Funk (Prince Albert-Churchill River):: Mr. Speaker, while visiting the 23 Indian communities in Prince Albert-Churchill River, I was often struck by the level of human misery which we permit in this rich country.
On November 25, seven-year old Colleen Fern died in a fire on the Fond Du Lac Indian Reserve in my constituency. Four days later, on November 29, three and a half-year old Jordan Sumner died in a fire on the Fairford Indian Reserve in Manitoba.
In both cases the available fire-fighting equipment and the training of the fire-fighters were far short of what was required.
This situation amounts to criminal negligence. Surely if the trustee relationship we have with the Indian people means anything it should mean that the Government of Canada will move immediately to ensure that Indian families in our country do not have to go to bed this winter with the fear that the fire-fighters in their communities do not have the tools to do the job.
Do any more children have to die before the Government acts?



FREE TRADE


Mr. Guy St-Julien (Abitibi):: On a number of occasions, Mr. Speaker, the socialist NDP leader asked that the whole question of free trade be put before the electorate. He kept saying: Let the people decide.
After the elections the socialist NDP leader stated: In keeping with our parliamentary tradition, Canadians have decided and Mr. Mulroney now has the right and the mandate to have the free trade legislation passed.

December 15, 1988
Mr. Speaker, the socialist NDP leader has known for months that January 1, 1989 is the date of implementation of the Free Trade Agreement and, last November 21, the people gave the Prime Minister of Canada (Mr. Mulroney) a clear mandate to carry it out.



UNITED STATES TARIFF ON CANADIAN SOFTWOOD LUMBER

Mr. Len Hopkins (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke):: 

HARMONY


Mr. Marcel R. Tremblay (Quebec-Est):: Mr. Speaker, the holiday season is the best time to see that people get together to express their solidarity and their desire for peace.
Mr. Speaker, I should like to commend the young musicians from my riding, Harmonie de la Polyvalente La Camaradiere directed by Mr. Jean-Marie Samson, and the Duberger choir led by Mr. Jean Robitaille, for the outstanding performance they gave us on December 11. It was a real Christmas spectacle under the direction of Master of Ceremonies Michel Ross.
Mr. Speaker, this concert was a timely reminder that traditions remain as strong as ever, and that with the participation and willingness of everybody we can show to the world that the quest for harmony is a worthy endeavour.



NEW MEMBER

Mr. Speaker:: I have the honour to inform the House that the Clerk of the House has received from the Chief Electoral Officer a certificate of the election and return of Jack Iyerak Anawak, Esquire, Member for the electoral district of Nunatsiaq.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
December 15, 1988



NEW MEMBER INTRODUCED

[Stage Direction]
Jack Iyerak Anawak, Member for the electoral district of Nunatsiaq, introduced by the Right Elon. John Turner and Ms. Ethel Blondin.


Right Hon. John N. Turner (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. In December of 1986, the Government knuckled under to pressure from the American lumber industry and signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the United States to impose a 15 per cent export tax on Canadian softwood lumber shipments into the United States. The Government has incorporated that understanding and perpetuated that 15 per cent tax by reason of Article 2009 of the proposed trade agreement with the United States.
Since January, 1987, the value of the Canadian dollar has increased by over 15 per cent as against the American dollar. This combined with the 15 per cent export tax puts every sawmill in Canada in financial jeopardy and puts at risk hundreds of thousands of Canadian jobs. It is estimated that many plants will shut down over the winter in northern Ontario and central British Columbia alone.
Will the Government table its plan to meet this growing crisis? And what does the Prime Minister intend to do about it?


Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister for International Trade):: Mr. Speaker, once again the Hon. Leader of the Opposition brings up an unfortunate occurrence that would likely not have occurred, or could have been considerable ameliorated, if we had had the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement in effect when this incident occurred.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Carnell Crosbie: One has to ask oneself, if the Leader of the Opposition is genuinely concerned about these kinds of situations, why has he
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opposed the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement as he has? Why is he obstructing the House of Commons now in our attempts to get the legislation passed before the end of the year? Why does he not co-operate if he wishes to help the softwood industry in Canada?


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, it is quite obvious the Minister has not read the agreement even now. He says this never would have happened had we had the agreement. Article 2009 re softwood lumber reads:
"The Parties agree that this Agreement does not impair or prejudice the exercise of any rights of enforcement measures arising out of the Memorandum of Understanding on Softwood Lumber of December 30, 1986."
It incorporated this understanding into the agreement. I do not know how we deal with a Minister who is not in charge and control of his own dossier. I do not know how we deal with it.


CURRENCY EXCHANGE RATES
John Napier Turner: Let me put a reasonable proposition to the Minister in the current circumstances. Will not the Government at least negotiate with the Americans to ensure that the change in the relative values of our exchange rates is somehow taken into account in the imposition of this tax? In other words, will the Government of Canada attempt to ensure that the tax of 15 per cent is indexed against the changing difference in the comparative values of our dollars so that the industry is not faced with a double penalty?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, frankly, I do not know how the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition could ever claim that he had read the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. If he had read it his campaign would not have proceeded in the last 10 weeks as it did proceed.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Carnell Crosbie: I am answering the question of a failed crusader, of course. I might point out that-


Mr. Tobin:: What about the crusade in Newfoundland, John? What about Newfoundland?


An Hon. Member:: Tell us about Atlantic Canada.


John Carnell Crosbie: There are the crusaders. They are still crusading. They have crusaded themselves right into an

December 15, 1988
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unpalatable situation in the last couple of days. They cannot accept defeat. It is time they realized that the election was won by the Government.


Mr. Speaker:: The Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition.


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I suppose that is the best the Minister can do. You have one final strike ahead of you, Mr. Minister.


GOVERNMENT POSITION
John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, the Government's attitude is absolutely unacceptable. One of Canada's largest industries is being wiped out. The facts are there; saw mills are closing down across the country, including Quebec, and Canadians are losing their jobs. But the Government does not want to do anything.
Why is the Government of Canada including this 15 per cent tax in the trade agreement with the United States? Why does it not insist on negotiating with the Americans to exclude this tax from the agreement? Why is the Government not prepared to defend workers throughout the country, especially in the lumber industry?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, one of the virtues of the Free Trade Agreement is that it will help the forest industry of Canada tremendously in the future-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Carnell Crosbie: -as testified to by the support of companies such as Abitibi Price during the recent election campaign, which made that clear in their advertising.
The FTA simply grandfathered the Memorandum of Understanding on softwood lumber which had been entered into before the FTA was concluded. The Free Trade Agreement is not retroactive, but this is a problem that can be assisted by the provinces. If there is a great problem because of the change in exchange rates, then the provinces have an opportunity with respect to their stumpage rates or other means of helping their own forest industries.


John Napier Turner: They cannot change their stumpage. You know it.


John Carnell Crosbie: The forest industries of this country, of course, are the forest resources owned by the provinces. This is a situation that could have been prevented had we had our U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement earlier.


INDUSTRY
Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, Gillette Canada has been a profitable blade and toiletries manufacturer in Canada for 85 years. It enjoys 72 per cent of the consumer market and has never missed a dividend payment. It has been a good corporate citizen until now.
Two days after the election, Gillette announced closure of its Montreal and Toronto plants, putting 600 workers directly out of work, and hundreds more indirectly because of loss of suppliers' contracts. Why did the Government not take any action to try to stop these close-downs of these two profitable plants? What message was sent to the consumers and workers of Gillette and to corporate Canada that indicates our dissatisfaction with this kind of behaviour? Is not the Government's laissez faire attitude sending a wrong message to corporate Canada?


Hon. Robert de Cotret (Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion and Minister of State for Science and Technology):: Mr. Speaker, Gillette undertook, as many reasonable and decent companies do, a thorough review of its operations. I would like to tell the Hon. Member that those operations include 61 manufacturing plants spread over 28 countries in a very competitive, global environment, an environment in which we want to be present and active through agreements like the Free Trade Agreement.
We find that Gillette, after a careful examination of those 61 plants, decided to close plants not only in Canada but in the United States, in Argentina, in Brazil, in Australia and in Great Britain. It is to make sure that the company remains a sound corporate citizen world-wide and responsive to the needs of its employees.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, I did not know that the President of the Treasury Board was a member of the Gillette board of directors and was giving us the Gillette board report. I was not asking for that and the workers
December 15, 1988

of Canada were not asking for that. They have been profitable workers for the company.


GOVERNMENT POSITION
Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, why could our Government not show the same courage as the Government of France and show its disagreement with this procedure? You lack courage!


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Sheila Finestone: Our Government issued no
ultimatum to show its disagreement with this shutdown. Tell me, do you not think that workers and consumers find your attitude unfair? My question is: Does the Government want to make Canada an outlet for American products only?


Robert René de Cotret: Mr. Speaker, I would just like to remind my hon. colleague who likes to quote facts from the past that I have not been President of the Treasury Board for more than a year and a half now. The President of the Treasury Board had very little to say in Gillette's decision; the President of the Treasury Board is not a member of Gillette's board of directors either.
We are concerned by this situation. We realize that there will be some lay-offs in Canada. We also realize that throughout Gillette's total system, more than 3,000 people will be laid off in foreign countries.
What we want to ensure is that our Canadian jobs remain in Canada in an industry that is competitive throughout the world. We want to maintain and increase the number of those jobs; it is with more technology, more rationalization, better management, better marketing systems that this can be achieved and that is what the company is doing, Mr. Speaker.


NORTHERN TELECOM-JOB CUTS
Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to put a question to the Prime Minister. In the past 20 years Northern Telecom has received at least $43 million in grants, in taxpayers' money, from the people of Canada, and hundreds of millions in low-interest-rate loans have supported its exports. Yet it is now cutting over 800 jobs. I want to ask the Prime Minister personally if he will not intervene in this case, given all this government help, and see to it that Northern Telecom is told that it owes the people of Canada and it owes these 800 workers their employment.
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Robert René de Cotret: Mr. Speaker, we are facing here again a question of rationalization. We are facing a question-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John V. Nunziata: Famous last words. Tell that to the workers, you dumbo.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Minister.


Robert René de Cotret: I would just like to elevate this debate to a question of facts. There are 650 employees in Aylmer, Quebec, and 250 employees in Belleville, who will be displaced by this rationalization move. Three hundred of them will be replaced immediately in Canada. There are investments planned by Northern Telecom of some $30 million in St. Laurent and there is another additional expenditure by Northern Telecom in this rationalization effort of $20 million for a technology lab of world class, very close by here in Nepean.
The company is doing its best, as it should, as a good corporate citizen to remain competitive and maintain its position in world markets for the direct benefits of its employees.


ANNOUNCED CLOSURE OF PLANT IN AYLMER
Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, when the $30 million investment in St. Laurent was announced back in July-and I have here the announcement-the company stated that there would be absolutely no negative consequence for the plant in Aylmer, Quebec.
How can the Minister now stand up and justify the shut-down of that plant in Aylmer on the basis of this expansion in St. Laurent when, in fact, the company in July contradicted him flat out?


Robert René de Cotret: Mr. Speaker, I would also like to add that we are quite encouraged in our ongoing conversations with the company to see the extent to which it is concerned about the dislocation of employees. The company has put aside on its own, to supplement Government programs designed directly to assist those employees, some $2.5 million, and there is its firm commitment to maintain its research and development efforts in Canada at the same level as it has over the last number of years.

December 15, 1988
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Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, the question is not whether people should be encouraged by the company's response but by the Government's response.


REQUEST THAT GOVERNMENT INTERVENE
Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, will the Government finally get tough and say to this company, which has received so much in Government money and privileges in the past, that all of that is finished, all of it will be reviewed and must be paid back if these jobs are not kept in Canada for the future? This is a test case for the free trade future of Canadian workers right across the country. Will the Government not get tough and act?


Robert René de Cotret: Mr. Speaker, the Government will make a very serious undertaking, one that it has followed throughout its years in power. Whenever we give a grant to a company anywhere in this country conditions are set. There is a control period. The purposes of the grant are monitored and we ensure that the Canadian taxpayers' money given to a company, whether the grant be for research and development, whether it be for expansion, whether it be for job creation, is spent in the way for which it was designed. We have done that in every case, and we are doing it in this case.


FUTURE OF EMPLOYEES IN BELLEVILLE
Mr. Lyle Vanclief (Prince Edward-Hastings):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister for Employment and Immigration. The events of the past week related to the announcement by the Northern Telecom closure of its electronics plant in Belleville as of March 31, 1989, have made it clear that industry is beginning its adjustment to the Free Trade Agreement. For my part, I am concerned with how my constituents, now and in the future, will be able to adapt to this environment.
What steps are being taken by the Minister's Department to ensure that the employees of the Bridge Street Northern Telecom plant in Belleville will be able to keep their jobs or will have equivalent jobs in their own community?


Hon. Barbara McDougall (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, the Northern Telecom plant as in all of the plants, as the Hon. Member knows, will be provided with training programs for their employees.
I am very pleased that the company is moving ahead with this and that the Industrial Assistance Service is there to work with the company and with the employees in terms of their future plans. We have done that in the past and we will do it in the future wherever there are lay-offs for whatever reason.


ROLE OF DEPARTMENT
Lyle Vanclief: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question. That type of answer is not satisfactory to the workers in Belleville.


Some Hon. Members:: Why?


Lyle Vanclief: Inaction is not accepted. I have had phone calls to my office as recently as this morning from a lady who, with her husband, has been at Northern Telecom for eight or nine years and both of them are losing their jobs on March 31. During the election you promised more.


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


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


Lyle Vanclief: Could the Minister tell us when the employees in Belleville will be contacted by her Department? As of this morning they have not had any contact indicating the help they deserve and to which they are entitled.


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, my Department and my officials are very aware of what has been going on at Northern Telecom both in terms of the kind of structure that it is putting in place for training and in terms of how we plan to monitor this in the future.
The IAS is standing by ready to work with the workers, with the employees and with the employers. Let me point out that the IAS has a success rate of about 85 per cent to 95 per cent in replacing workers.
December 15, 1988


HOUSING
Mr. Alan Redway (Don Valley East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of State for Housing. Prior to the last election the Minister announced the release of some 50 hectares of land at the Downsview air base in Metropolitan Toronto for badly needed housing.
The Auditor General has had some kind words for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in his report, but the people of the city of Toronto where the average cost of a house is now in excess of $250,000 believe that action speaks louder than words. When can the Minister tell us that actual housing will be built on the Downsview site and will he give us his personal undertaking that that housing will be affordable for seniors, tenants, and for young families?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Hon. Member for his question because he has been at the forefront of the housing issue in Metropolitan Toronto. Maybe the Leader of the Opposition does not agree with that, but 1 think he has been.
CMHC is currently in the planning stage on the property at Downsview. We are working with the City of North York on the zoning that has to be in effect. We are hopeful that we can relocate the military personnel in 1989, with housing to start very shortly after that.
To answer the question on affordability, we will have a minimum of 25 per cent of the housing on that land as affordable housing for the elderly, the handicapped, and so on.


THE AUDITOR GENERAL
Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Revenue and has to do with the report of the Auditor General of Canada and his Department. Paragraph 17.4 of that report shows that $600 million in tax dollars have been written off between 1984 and 1986 and, according to the
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information obtained by that Department, another $400 million will be written off next year.
Can the Minister justify those tax write-offs and tell us what kind of taxpayers do not pay their taxes in Canada?


Hon. Elmer M. MacKay (Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, in some cases these write-offs- if the Hon. Member is attributing them to the SRTC program

are not write-offs in the true sense. They are yet to be audited. Some of these so-called write-offs will be collected.
If my colleague is talking about collection procedures generally he will recognize, I am sure, being a fair person, that we are trying to bring a bit of equity into the system pursuant to the Declaration of Taxpayers' Rights and other procedures that allow us to consult with taxpayers and they, having a bit more equity, are utilizing it in terms of postponing their payments instead of paying the money up front as they used to have to do.


SIZE OF TAX WRITE-OFFS
Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is the following. Today we see that there is a write-off of $1 billion of taxes. We also learned that in 1986, 6,250 taxpayers making more than $50,000 a year did not pay any tax.
How can the Minister justify his Department charging interest on seniors' income tax on their pension incomes when there are write-offs of $1 billion?


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: Mr. Speaker, my colleague will be pleased to know that, pursuant to an adjustment recently, we have charged a bit more interest to taxpayers who have delinquent accounts, but by the same token we pay more interest to taxpayers to whom we owe money.
As the Hon. Member knows, without going back into distant history, some of the problems are attributable to some of the misjudgments made by a previous Government with respect to the greatest scam in history, the SRTC program.


John Carnell Crosbie: The Liberal scam.


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: All in all, I have to point out that the percentage of collectibles pursuant to total tax income in fact peaked three years ago. Although there is still more attention required to collect moneys outstanding, there

December 15, 1988
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has been a noticeable improvement in the percentage relative to the total tax revenue.


AIRPORTS
Mr. Les Benjamin (Regina-Lumsden):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to be able to address my question to the Minister of Transport, and I wish him well on his recovery. Perhaps the Acting Minister, or the Minister of State, or somebody, anybody, who knows something about transportation would respond.
Over the past five years the previous Liberal Government and the present Conservative one were repeatedly told and warned, inside and outside Parliament, about the chaos that would result from their ideological fixation about deregulation in the airline industry. That is not something I or many others relish being right about.
I would like to ask the Minister-


Some Hon. Members:: Go! Go!


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: I would like to ask the Minister if the Government will reinstate regulations regarding entry and exit privileges in city pairs or whole routes and immediately prohibit-


Mr. Mayer:: Send out for a pizza, it is a long question.


Some Hon. Members:: Order.


Mr. Speaker:: I am sure that if Hon. Members on the government side could constrain themselves we could speed this whole thing up. The Hon. Member for Regina-Lumsden.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Mr. Speaker, what Members on the government side do not understand is that if they do not change their ways they are going to kill somebody.
Now, will the Government immediately also prohibit any more carriers from using Pearson International Airport until the third terminal and additional runway capacity are in place, and use other modes of transportation in locations such as Montreal, Ottawa, and Hamilton in order to avoid Toronto and any other place with over-used capacity?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, I am the Acting Minister, and
I was afraid the Minister would be back before I got a chance to answer.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Carnell Crosbie: On the Government side we are prepared to send out a search party for that question.
I believe, if I understand the question properly, that the answer is no, but I am prepared to change it when I find out what the question was.


An Hon. Member:: Get serious, Crosbie.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Mr. Speaker, if you will give me a second supplementary I will repeat it.


Mr. Beatty:: No, Mr. Speaker, no.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member has the floor.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: I hope so.


TRAINING OF AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS
Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Mr. Speaker, with the short-sighted and blind hysteria about the deficit and decreasing expenditures, throwing the air transportation industry into the whims of the market forces and profit-taking, I would like to ask if the Government will make some radical changes before somebody gets killed.
Will the Minister tell us, since we are short 500 air traffic controllers who will be needed over the next two to three years to replace 275 air traffic controllers who are presently over the age of 50, and 200 positions that we are presently short, is the training of more controllers receiving top priority and sufficient funding to correct a situation that the Government created?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member is asking a question about a very serious problem.
I would like to remind Hon. Members that the March, 1985, Auditor General's Report for the previous year was very critical of the Department of Transport for its considerable surplus of air traffic controllers and the costs associated with the large surplus. The Department acted in accordance with that report, unfortunately, as it turns out, because as the result of the booming economy of the last three or four years, and as a result of the deregulation policy of the Government, the air industry in this country is booming, more people are travelling than ever before at lower rates, and we now have a problem in getting sufficient air traffic controllers.
December 15, 1988

We now have a special recruitment and training program that began in the fall of 1987. We are trying to obtain experienced controllers from the United States. There are 168 students now beginning their training program.


AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS-DECREASE IN NUMBERS
Mr. George Baker (Gander-Grand Falls):: Mr. Speaker, there are today 400 fewer air traffic controllers in Canada than there were four years ago. There are today 20 per cent fewer air traffic controllers in Toronto than there were four years ago. The same applies to Gander, Moncton, Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Vancouver where there are more than 20 per cent fewer controllers today than there were four years ago.
I ask the President of the Treasury Board to admit to the House that the principal reason for the drastic reduction in air traffic controllers is the system of cash lump sum bonuses brought in by the Government, bonuses not unlike the productivity bonuses introduced in the House two years ago which paid public service managers lump sums of money at the end of the year based upon budget and staff reduction targets achieved.
In fact, I ask the President of the Treasury Board to admit that one such manager received the other day over $18,000 in one lump sum payment, over and above his regular salary.
That individual is going to be flying high this Christmas. Let us hope that he stops in at Pearson International Airport.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, at the outset I want to congratulate the Hon. Member for Gander-Grand Falls on his re-election. Had he not been re-elected, we would be faced with a lack of proper questioning from the Liberal side of the House.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Carnell Crosbie: I congratulate him on his re-election. I hope he continues to fly high and that some day we will have to look up when he asks a question.
In answer to the Hon. Member's question, there has been, and continues to be, a problem in respect of the hiring of air traffic controllers. Certainly they are a
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highly qualified group of people and are very much to be admired.
The shortage of air traffic controllers is due, in part, to the increased economic activity in southern Ontario, leading to increased business travel, as well as to an over-all increase in travel on the part of the general public.


An Hon. Member:: Why the reduction, then?


John Carnell Crosbie: The Government listened to the recommendations of the Auditor General.
For all of those reasons, we are now experiencing a shortage in air traffic controllers.
I can tell the House that there will be 216 starts in 1989-90, and every year thereafter until 1995. Our plans should result in a yield of 100 qualified air traffic controllers a year. But there will be a period when we will be playing catch-up in this area, and bonus programs will be necessary.


HIRING OF AMERICAN AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS
George Baker: Mr. Speaker, I am aware of one young man from Gander, Newfoundland, who passed his entrance examination for air traffic control two years ago and who is yet to hear from the Department of Transport. The answer he received was that the quota had been filled.
Just this past year two young women from Newfoundland passed all of the necessary examinations, only to be told that the quotas had been filled. Once again, they have not heard back from the air traffic control authority.
There are hundreds of young Canadians who want to become air traffic controllers, and that is what they come up against.
Given the interest on the part of these young Canadians to become air traffic controllers, I ask the Minister why the Government of Canada turned around and offered jobs to more than 40 retired American air traffic controllers, offering those individuals higher salaries than those received by Canadian air traffic controllers, and I put that question particularly in light of the fact that it takes almost as long to train American air traffic controllers on Canadian air traffic regulations as it would to train young Canadians to do the job.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member is right in

December 15, 1988
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saying that we have had a problem in finding sufficiently trained air traffic controllers over the last few months.


An Hon. Member:: It is your own fault.


John Carnell Crosbie: If the Hon. Member knows of available air traffic controllers, or young people who would be suitable for that purpose, or who are having any difficulty in becoming air traffic controllers and being accepted for training, I would ask him to give me the particulars, and I will certainly do my best to see that any bottleneck in that regard is broken.


PRESENCE OF LEAD IN SCHOOLS' DRINKING WATER
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Health and Welfare.
As he is no doubt aware, two weeks ago the CBC program Marketplace revealed that, in schools across Canada, lead is present in the drinking water at levels 10 times currently allowed levels.
What does the Minister intend to do in order to remove this threat to the health of Canadian children?


Hon. Jake Epp (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member is correct in his statement. I remind him that this Government has taken steps to remove the main source of lead contamination for Canadians in general and children in particular, namely, that which is contained in gasoline.
As the Hon. Member has correctly stated, lead levels in our drinking water supplies are unacceptably high, and that is particularly true of the drinking water supplies in our schools.
As I understand it, the schools in the city of Winnipeg were shown to have the highest drinking water lead content in the country.
In so far as our drinking water supplies are concerned, I understand that there is now in place a policy of flushing those systems. Additionally, there are some provinces which have moved toward instituting a program of lead-free solder for plumbing works, and certainly the Government of Canada supports a move in that direction.


REDUCTION OF PERMISSIBLE LEAD LEVEL IN DRINKING WATER-GOVERNMENT POSITION
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister. Is the Government and the Minister willing to reduce to 10 parts per billion the
quantity of lead allowed in water, as other Western countries have done?


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: Mr. Speaker, that is under active consideration. As well, as I think the Hon. Member will be aware, we are working on legislation in respect of water standards.
While the Hon. Member's question relates to our water supply, the Hon. Member should be made aware that there is another source of lead poisoning that my Department is looking at, along with other relevant Departments, that being the use of lead solder in canned food containers, and particularly in respect of such containers containing food for infants.


REFUGEES
Mr. Dan Heap (Trinity-Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration.
As the Minister is aware, the backlog of 70,000 to 80,000 refugee claimants in Canada includes many thousands who would suffer undue violence or hardship were they forced to return to a situation of racial strife, civil war, or persecution, as well as many thousands who are becoming established here, often with the help of their families, and who could become contributing citizens were they allowed to work.
Will she, on humanitarian grounds, institute an administrative review to select, under relaxed criteria, those in the backlog who are either capable of establishing themselves in Canada or who would run serious risk of physical harm were they forced to return to their country of origin?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, as I have said in the House on previous occasions, we are considering several options in terms of dealing with the backlog, and once we have reached a decision on which option or options to pursue, I shall be pleased to report our solution to this very important human problem to the House.
December 15, 1988


An Hon. Member:: In this century?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Let me say, as well, Mr. Speaker, that one of the things I have said repeatedly from the very beginning is that, whatever method we choose to resolve the problem of the backlog, we will ensure that no genuine refugee will be asked to leave Canada; that no one who would be in fear of persecution will be asked to leave Canada.


REQUEST FOR MINISTERIAL ACTION
Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, the question of only genuine refugees, as the Minister knows, is a very limited approach to Canada's humanitarian obligations. If the Minister refuses to act on humanitarian grounds, I would ask her to act so as to relieve the considerable log-jam that is now in place, especially in the Toronto region-a log-jam that is breaking down even the regular immigration processes there.
I would also ask her to act to avoid the huge expense, legal hassle and further delay that would be caused were she to try to deport many thousands of people, particularly in view of the fact that the present and future laws have been found to be wanting by those experienced in constitutional law.


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


Mr. Speaker:: I would ask the Hon. Minister to respond.


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, we will be dealing with those in the refugee backlog in a humanitarian way. Whatever method we choose, we will take into account the sensitive situations with which we are confronted. That is a point I have made previously. It is not new.
Of course there are problems in the transition from an old system to a new system. Had we been in a position to have our legislation in operation much sooner, as opposed to the lengthy delays we experienced in getting that legislation through the House, this problem would have been solved a long time ago.
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CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
We are all familiar with the CBC radio program Cross Country Check-up.
As some Hon. Members may know, the program host, Dale Goldhawk, agreed to remove himself from the program during the last election campaign.
Mr. Goldhawk came under pressure from the CBC after it was revealed that he had written an article against the trade agreement in his capacity as President of ACTRA, the radio and television performers union.
After the election, the CBC gave Mr. Goldhawk an ultimatum: quit the presidency of ACTRA, or lose his job-


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


An Hon. Member:: Another after-dinner speech!


John Harvard: Mr. Goldhawk chose to quit his job.


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, former colleagues of mine at the CBC are wondering whether this is the beginning of a witch-hunt-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


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


Henry Perrin Beatty: The Liberals want us to interfere with the CBC.


John Harvard: As the Minister responsible for the CBC is not a Member of this House, I would ask the Prime Minister whether he agrees with this CBC policy of telling its employees what they can do in their private capacity as union officials?


Hon. Lucien Bouchard (Secretary of State for Canada and Acting Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, this is the first time I have heard about those allegations and I will look into it. I take it as notice.

December 15, 1988
House of Commons JOURNALISTIC INDEPENDENCE


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James, a short supplementary.


John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, I do not think that is going to make CBC employees very happy.
The Government promised in Bill C-136 that there would be journalistic independence for the CBC. Will the Government-


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


John Harvard: I am getting to it.


Henry Perrin Beatty: You want us to interfere with it.


Mr. Speaker:: Hon. Members will have noted that the Hon. Member's supplementary contained a very short preamble and he has now commenced his question. I ask for the usual courtesies.


John Harvard: My question is very simple. Will the Government ensure journalistic independence from management in the same way it promised to ensure CBC's independence from government?


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, we are all committed to the principle of independence concerning the activities of the CBC. As for the specific facts here, I will look into them.


Mr. Speaker:: I want to remind Hon. Members that, because of the introduction of a new Member, Question Period was extended for a couple of minutes. However, it is now concluded.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS

['It being 6.27 p.m., pursuant to agreement reached earlier this day, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).']
Mr. Speaker:: Mr. Crosbie, seconded by Mr. Mazan-kowski, moves that Bill C-2, an act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States of America-

-be now read the second time and referred to a legislative committee.



Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, there is presently before the House a House order which the Chair has ruled to be in order and which would send this particular Bill to a Committee of the Whole House. It would seem that since this motion has been accepted as being procedurally correct that the House would be best to have the Bill read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: No way.


Mr. Gray (Windsor West):: That is anticipating.


John Napier Turner: Wait until the debate is over on second reading.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: In the event that the Chair wishes time to reserve on that particular suggestion, I would suggest that we can entertain other business, but I am in the hands of the Chair.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, it is bad enough that the Government want to force through a motion suspending the ordinary rules of the House. Now it wants to put it in place without even having the debate completed and the motion voted upon. This is going too far.
I say that the Deputy Government House Leader's (Mr. Lewis) proposal is not only unacceptable, it is out of order and I say let him make that proposal only if and when his motion is accepted by this House.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, it is perfectly clear that the Deputy House Leader is well aware of the Standing Orders which indicate clearly that if we proceed now, as is his wish, the Bill has to be referred to a legislative committee. I would like to think just for once the Deputy House Leader would follow the Standing Orders of the House of Commons.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, if I may, I think it would be very evident that the motion is in order to move second reading of the Bill in question and that we can entertain that debate once the House order is completed. If it passes successfully, it would seem that the House order would supersede the motion which has been made on the floor.
December 15, 1988


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, the rules of the House are clear. I know the Hon. Member and his Party do not like the rules. They do not want to live within them. They would like to get rid of them and terminate debate in this House completely. We have not got to that point yet and it is your duty to support and enforce-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: -the rules.


Some Hon. Members:: Let the people decide.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Minister has moved second reading of the Bill and the usual course is, unless there was some motion that changed the rules or suspended them, that it would go to a legislative committee. As a consequence I have followed the usual form and that is what 1 have proposed to the House.
There is now a discussion as to the procedural acceptability of what the Minister is doing. That is a procedural matter and I am sure all Hon. Members would want the Chair to have an opportunity to hear argument.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, it is clear that you are very willing and anxious to carry out your traditional role as protector of the rights of this House and the minority of Members of this House. In view of the clear direction of this Standing Order I ask you to reject this quite unacceptable and out of order proposal by the Deputy Government House Leader (Mr. Lewis).


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I would like to suggest that the proposal being made by the Deputy Government House Leader (Mr. Lewis) has no precedence. If we are now going to proceed with second reading debate of this particular Bill, obviously at the completion of that it would be referred to the legislative committee. That is the tradition. That is the Standing Order. That is the practice. There is absolutely no precedent on record of any departure from that particular course.
Therefore, I would ask you to rule this request to be totally and completely out of order.


Mr. Speaker:: I have explained to the House and the watching public the situation we are in. I know the Hon. Minister wants to proceed with the Bill at this time. He has said, of course, that another matter of business could be called.
It would seem to me quite clear that until the previous motion, which if and when passed would permit this, is in fact passed, which it is not at the moment, it is only being debated, the Minister is moving prematurely.
Point of Order-Mr. Lewis
Therefore I feel that I am bound not to accept the motion at this time.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, under those circumstances the Government wishes to advise that we will revert to debate on the motion to extend the sitting through the parliamentary calendar.


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I think it has been the will of people on this side of the House to deal with the substance of this matter. We have been extending every bit of goodwill to try to get down-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Oshawa (Mr. Broadbent) and I have been ready to deal with the substance of the trade Bill since Tuesday. I am going to say to the Deputy House Leader (Mr. Lewis) and to his leader, the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Mazankowski), if any more games are played like this Santa Claus is going to come down the Peace Tower before he gets this thing through.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: I may be able to assist Hon. Members by making certain that my comments were completely understood.
The Minister has moved a motion, and I responded in the usual way. The usual way is that it would go to a legislative committee.
If that is the motion the Minister is moving, that motion is of course in order. But when I said that I could not accept the Minister's motion, I took it to be that the Minister wanted the matter to go to Committee of the Whole. That is my point.
If that is the position of the Minister, I have to remain in the position that I indicated a moment or two ago, that that is out of order. In the meantime, the Minister has of course every right to stand and to bring about another order of business.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, unless I have not understood properly the question before the House when you called Government Orders, it was Bill C-2. You read the motion, put the motion to the House. As far as I am concerned, that Bill was before the House.

December 15, 1988
Point of Order-Mr. Lewis
I would refer you, Mr. Speaker, to the "blues". I would refer you to the video, or whatever you want, Mr. Speaker. But f submit to you that that Bill, Bill C-2, is before this House, until adjourned. If the Government is telling us now that it wants to adjourn that debate and proceed to something else, that is another ball game.
I am telling you, Mr. Speaker, Standing Order 73(1) and (2) make it clear that that committee, a legislative committee, is at this time where the Bill will be referred. I cannot see the Minister having it both ways in the same day.
Members opposite have to understand. They call the Bill, you read the order. The order is before us. As far as I am concerned, that order has either to be adjourned by the Government, and another order called, or that order is to be proceeded with.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Hon. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa):: Mr. Speaker, 1 have just come to the Chamber. I came prepared to enter into the debate. I just want to get clear from the Government what it has in mind.
As I understood the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner) just now, he has come to the House prepared to debate one of the most important pieces of legislation to come before the Parliament of Canada, so described at one point by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) himself. I thought the Minster responsible for trade was prepared to debate that. We on this side are prepared to debate that. That is the sole subject of the Throne Speech.
I say to the Minister in charge here, for God's sake let us come to our senses and have the debate that the people of Canada anticipated would take place after the Throne Speech. Let us get on with it.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, after ringing the bells in an effort to prevent the person moving the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne from speaking, after ringing the bells to introduce the Bill, after ringing the bells for second reading, my hon. friends are finally ready to debate the Bill. That is terrific.
I submit that the motion was never fully put to the House because when that wording came into question the Speaker stopped and that motion was never put
before the House in the the form in which the Speaker had it in his hands.
I submit, Mr. Speaker, that we have the opportunity to change the order of business and that we are now prepared to debate the motion to extend the sittings.


Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Mr. Speaker, it is very evident what has happened is that the Deputy Government House Leader (Mr. Lewis) has lost complete control of this House.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Rodney Edward Murphy: On Tuesday we came here to debate the Throne Speech, and the leaders were ready. The Government would not debate the Throne Speech. Yesterday, he tried to move a closure motion on an item which was not even before the House. This morning the Speaker had to rule against him. So he changed the order for the afternoon. We were supposed to come back here to debate free trade.
This afternoon, he again tries a procedural trick, and again the Speaker rules against him. At this time he is now reverting to a different piece of business. Mr. Speaker, if you continue to rule against the Deputy House Leader (Mr. Lewis), we will be here until the new year.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the Members of the House and the Canadian people would like to know why the Deputy Government House Leader is filibustering against its own trade legislation.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: I am sure the Members of the House and the people of this country would like to know why the Government does not want to get on to debate the legislation to implement its trade deal. Is it finally coming to realize what a bad deal it is?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Has the Government finally realized that it is even worse than 57 per cent of the Canadian people in the last election said it is? If the Government is serious about this legislation, either it should get on with the debate today or withdraw the legislation and admit that its trade deal is bad for this country now and in the future.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
December 15, 1988


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I think it is time that saner heads prevail. This is obviously a moment of some confusion, but let me make a suggestion.
The Leader of the Official Opposition (Mr. Turner) is here, having been called to debate the trade deal. The Elon. Member for Oshawa (Mr. Broadbent), the Leader of the New Democratic Party, is here prepared to debate the trade deal. The Minister is here prepared to debate the trade deal. Let us get on and begin the process.


Mr. Speaker:: I appreciate Hon. Members' patience. However, the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition was seeking the floor a moment ago and I would of course hear him.


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I am not seeking the floor on a point of order. I am seeking the floor to begin debate on second reading of this Bill.


John Edward Broadbent: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I will try to put it in the most unpolemical way that I can. 1 say this to the Government. Let us forget, if we can, the acts of guerrilla warfare that have taken place from time to time in the past few days on both sides of the House, in appropriate parliamentary context in a democracy. Let me put it that way. I want to simply appeal to the Government on the basis of the Government's own Throne Speech. It had one item that it believes the Government of Canada, the Parliament of Canada, should now be dealing with. The Minister responsible is here ready for that debate. The Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner) is here. I am here. I ask the Minister in charge, or the House Leader for the Government, let us just forget, if we can, on both sides, what has gone on for the past couple of days, and I appeal to you to consider your own agenda, and call the Bill that you believe is so important.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Andre:: Will you agree to pass it before Christmas? That is the question.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Mazankowski).


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: I know there are a lot of procedural experts here discussing the matter among themselves, but the Hon. Deputy Prime Minister seeks the floor and I will hear him.
Point of Order-Mr. Lewis


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Privy Council and Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, the last day or so we have been considering the special motion which would provide a mechanism and a formula for facilitating the debate the Hon. Leader of the New Democratic Party (Mr. Broadbent) talks about. We had tried in the best interests of parliamentary democracy to work out an agreement-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Well, Mr. Speaker, these things are normally discussed at the House Leaders' level. What I find rather strange is we know very well that the House Leaders have been trying to work out some kind of agreement where this Bill hopefully could be moved along and proceeded with. Unfortunately, they have not had the support of their caucuses in arriving at such an agreement.


John Edward Broadbent: Is that so?


Nelson Andrew Riis: That is garbage.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: So it is the obligation of the Government to-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Donald Frank Mazankowski: -try to put before the House a mechanism, a way in which the Bill could be dealt with.
The proposed motion that you found in order this morning, Mr. Speaker, is very germane to the further proceeding of this issue. If there is any doubt about the acceptability of proceeding with Bill C-2 prior to the adoption of the proposed motion, then simply, as the Deputy House Leader suggested, fine, we will proceed with the motion and then we will proceed with Bill C-2 in a normal fashion under the aegis of the adoption of Bill C-2. That is what I recommend that we do, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: I have listened carefully to Hon. Members. I want, first of all, to deal with the matter that the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) raised, that this motion has been put to the House. I have some doubts about that. Yesterday, Hon. Members will remember with that particular motion, I began to read it. There was a clear indication from Members of the Opposition that they wanted to argue the admissibility of it, or argue about it and they rose, and the Speaker stopped reading. In this case this afternoon, as soon as the Minister heard the words Comite legislatif he immediately protested. That was quite obvious.

December 15, 1988
Point of Order-Mr. Lewis
Hon. Members may note that I did not go on. I stopped at that point. I did not go on to say: "Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?" Now, it seems to me under the circumstances, the better view is that the motion has not been completely put to the House. That seems to me consistent with not only logic when one takes a look at the form the Speaker is asked to read, but also it is consistent, I think, with what happened yesterday, and on that particular occasion, of course, that was done in the way it was done as a courtesy to Hon. Members of the Opposition who clearly wished to question the propriety of the motion.
That seems to me is the situation we are faced with here. So it is up to the Hon. Minister to decide whether he wishes to proceed with this motion, and I have already ruled that if he proceeds with this motion, it would go to a legislative committee, and he has every right to do that, but he cannot, and I want to make it very clear, he cannot under the rules at the moment make a motion that would move this to a Committee of the Whole because the other motion which we argued about yesterday and which we decided upon today, which purports to give the Government that particular power, has not yet been passed.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, in my original intervention, I asked for guidance from the Chair as to whether or not if the procedural motion vis-a-vis the calendar were passed prior to the motion which the Hon. Minister would move, that is to a legislative committee, if the procedural motion were passed prior to the motion being put on second reading, would that procedural motion not then dictate that that particular Bill, Bill C-2, would then go to a Committee of the Whole House rather than a legislative committee?


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I think we are getting along here and we could possibly find an acceptable solution to the impasse the Government got itself into. I do think one should read Standing Order 73(1),(2) and (3), and I refer you to the Standing Orders which are still with us and are still in effect the Orders of the Day. Standing Order 73(1) reads:
"Every public Bill shall be read twice and referred to a committee before any amendment may be made thereto."
"Unless otherwise ordered, in giving a Bill second reading, the same shall be referred to a legislative committee, except as provided in section (3) of this Standing Order. A motion to refer a Bill to a committee shall be decided without amendment or
debate."
And 73(3), and this is the part I think is interesting, reads:
"Any Bill based on a Supply motion-"
And this one is.
"-shall, after second reading, stand referred to a Committee of the Whole."
So the Minister can amend on his feet now with the Speaker the motion before the House and make it that that committee, a Committee of the Whole, will be the route we will follow. I do not see any difficulty with that.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: I welcome my hon. friend's suggestion, but I would ask, Mr. Speaker, if you could rule on my first question and, depending on that, we can perhaps follow my hon. friend's suggestion.


Mr. Speaker:: The Speaker is always reluctant in a complicated matter to rule too quickly. I understand perfectly the point the Hon. Minister is making. The Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier), who has some considerable skill in the rules of this place and customs of this place, has made a suggestion that might be useful.


SITTING SUSPENDED
Mr. Speaker:: I am going to ask the House to stand down for ten minutes and I think it might be appropriate for the House Leaders to have a discussion.
The sitting of the House was suspended at 3.29 p.m.


SITTING RESUMED The House resumed at 4.52 p.m.
Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps we could come to order. I think it would be appropriate to hear first from the Hon. Minister.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among the House Leaders, very helpful discussions I would add, and I want to pay tribute to the Hon. Member for Windsor West (Mr. Gray) for his suggestion.
Standing order 73(2) reads:
December 15, 1988

I believe we have reached an agreement on how we can accomplish what we are trying to do and make it more definite. I would also thank my hon. friend, the House Leader for the New Democratic Party (Mr. Broadbent), for his participation in these discussions.
When item No. 1 under Government Business which can be referred to as the motion to suspend the calendar is next called by the Government, we will be proposing an amendment to the paragraph which starts: "That, for the duration of this session".
You will remember, Mr. Speaker, that when I argued the procedural acceptability of the motion in the first place I indicated that we had not been specific vis-a-vis the free trade legislation because at the time the item was placed on the Order Paper there was no Bill, there was no Bill C-2. For that reason we felt it would be anticipatory to place a motion on the Order Paper using wording which could not be substantiated because the Bill had not been introduced.
In any event, we would propose the next time this motion is called to delete the words "all such Bills" in the fourth line of the paragraph to which I referred and which starts: "That, for the duration of the session" and to insert the words: "that Bill C-2". The amended paragraph would then read:
"That, for the duration of this session or until otherwise ordered, the provisions of Standing Order 73(1) and (2) respecting committee stage of Public Bills be suspended, and that Bill C-2 be ordered for referral to committee of the Whole; and"
That amendment will be moved the next time the motion is brought forward for debate. The motion in question will be passed before second reading is completed on Bill C-2. That is the way the Government intends to proceed.
We also had discussions among the House Leaders with respect to the debate today which we intend to propose, namely, debate on Bill C-2. It has been agreed that the House will hear three speakers this afternoon- the Hon. Minister for International Trade (Mr. Crosbie), the Right Hon. Leader of the Official Opposition (Mr. Turner), and the Leader of the New Democratic Party, the Hon. Member for Oshawa (Mr. Broadbent). The Leader of the New Democratic Party shall have sufficient time to complete his remarks in the tradition of the previous Parliament wherein that courtesy was extended. Upon completion of the remarks
Point of Order-Mr. Lewis
of the Leader of the New Democratic Party the House will stand adjourned until tomorrow.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, what the Government House Leader has said represents the substance of our discussions and, in particular, the proposal I made to help the Government get out of its difficulty.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: I cannot refrain from commenting that I was hoping the Hon. Member for Windsor West would make such a proposal.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, I want to make clear the reason I say that is to assure my own caucus that it is not my practice to do things like this.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: But I have done so in order to facilitate the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner), and for that matter the Leader of the New Democratic Party (Mr. Broadbent), in their desire to put views on the record and to get to the substance of the matter of the Bill to implement the trade deal.
I want to say also that this amendment, when offered and proposed, will do what the motion should have done in the first place-and I do not agree with the motion- that is, limit its application to Bill C-2.
I want to say finally that I would like to have an undertaking from the Government on behalf of all of its Members that if and when Bill C-2 gets Royal Assent- and it may not-the motion to rescind the motion we are discussing will be made immediately and the support of the Government will not attempt in any way to vote against it. Do I have that undertaking?


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, in working out the wording of the motion there were several suggestions on how we might do it. We had thought of putting that particular comment in the introduction to the motion. We then decided that that might be dangerous and not acceptable. Therefore, we put in the wording that is used in the motion and it is, as my hon. friend has commented:
"That immediately upon the House returning from the Senate
after the first Royal Assent of this session, a Minister of the Crown
may propose, without notice or debate, a motion to rescind this
Order."

December 15, 1988
Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement
I am pleased to give my hon. friend the undertaking of the Government that such a motion will be moved immediately upon that particular Royal Assent being given.


Nelson Andrew Riis: I simply want to say how much we appreciate the generosity shown by all Members of the House to enable the Leader of the New Democratic Party (Mr. Broadbent) an opportunity to complete his remarks this afternoon.


Mr. Speaker:: I think that I should say to Hon. Members, and also to the public watching and listening, that we have just seen an example of how, given an opportunity, Members who may have very strong views about the issue being debated can find a way to accommodate the necessities of the rules of debate in the House.
I thank the Hon. Minister, the Hon. Member for Kamloops (Mr. Riis), and the Hon Member for Windsor West (Mr. Gray). Of course, I include other Hon. Members, but I do not think anybody will think 1 am going too far by including the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) who I know has been considerably helpful.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: Proceeding with debate, the Hon. Minister.


CANADA-UNITED STATES FREE TRADE AGREEMENT IMPLEMENTATION ACT MEASURE TO ENACT
John Carnell Crosbie: that Bill C-2, an Act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States of America, be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure of speaking to this Bill at second reading once more. As I said yesterday, it is almost with a feeling of deja vu that I proceed.
First, I would like to make reference to my predecessor, the Hon. James Kelleher, who unfortunately is not with us in this session of Parliament. He was the International Trade Minister when the negotiations started between Canada and the United States in
connection with the Free Trade Agreement, or the preparations for it in any event.
Also, my predecessor, the Hon. Pat Carney who did not run in the last election because of certain medical problems, will certainly be missed by her colleagues and by Members of the House. I want to, of course, refer to the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) and to the fine leadership he has given in accomplishing the agreement that is now before the House. I should also mention our two chief negotiators who are no longer with the Government and who have gone into the private sector in the persons of Mr. Simon Reisman and Mr. Gordon Ritchie who had so much to do with the negotiation of the agreement we will be discussing in what I hope will be a healthy and reasonably short debate.
The Government has sought to build on the system of international trade rules in a way that will create new opportunities for increased prosperity in all regions of Canada. In so doing, as the House well knows, we have been pursuing a two track policy in trade negotiations. First, we are seeking improved multilateral rules for global trade under the GATT, and we were pursuing that track last week at the mid-term meeting in Montreal. Members will know from the press reports what the results were. In addition, we sought and achieved a Free Trade Agreement to liberalize trade bilaterally with our largest trading partner, the United States of America.
Members will remember that free trade with the United States was recommended to Canadians by the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee in 1978. I need not remind the House that the majority of members of that committee were Liberal Senators. There is still a Liberal majority in the Senate, as we all realized again last fall.
Again, in 1982, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee recommended free trade with the United States to Canada and the Canadian people. The then Liberal Government appointed the Macdonald royal commission. A former Minister of Finance in the Liberal Government of Canada, Mr. Donald Macdonald, headed the royal commission. It sat for some three years and reported in 1985. After three years of study, that commission recommended a free trade agreement with the United States, one might say after exhaustive and extensive study.
Therefore, we are taking a step, if the House passes this legislation, that has been highly recommended by a large number of members of the Liberal Party of Canada both inside the Senate and outside the Senate.
December 15, 1988

Up until the last few months the Liberal Party of Canada has always been a supporter of a free trade arrangement with the United States, but under the direction of its present leadership it has become diverted from that path on to a crusade, and we all know how the crusade ended.
Given the advice of these various bodies, and seeing an opportunity to achieve major economic benefits for Canada-and we are only proposing this legislation and this agreement because they are going to lead to major economic benefits for Canada-the Government entered free trade negotiations with the United States in June, 1986, and reached an agreement in October, 1987, which was officially signed in January, 1988. We have been discussing and debating this agreement and free trade with the United States now for the period of 14 months. The negotiations involved the most extensive consultations with private sector representatives and with provincial governments for an international trade negotiation ever undertaken in our history. As a matter of fact, the Prime Minister met with the premiers on 10 different occasions in connection with the U.S.-Canada negotiation.
I want to point out to the House what is already well known. The Free Trade Agreement itself received the support of eight of our ten provincial governments, two led by liberal premiers, Premier Bourassa of Quebec, and Premier McKenna of New Brunswick.
One of the funny things when one hears someone say that 43 per cent voted for the Government and 57 per cent voted for other Parties is keeping in mind the position of the New Brunswick Premier. He supported the Liberal Party of Canada in its national campaign, but he was also an avid supporter of the Free Trade Agreement which he confirmed again on November 10 was in the best interests of his province.
In New Brunswick tens of thousands of voters voted Liberal who are also supporters of the Free Trade Agreement, including Premier McKenna himself and all of the members of his Cabinet and Legislative Assembly. How anyone could argue that the 57 per cent of the populace who voted who did not vote PC were all against free trade in the face of that one particular fact makes an absurdity of the argument, in addition to the fact that the argument itself trashes our whole system of parliamentary democracy.
In addition to eight premiers and provincial governments, the agreement now before the House has received
Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement
the support of the vast majority of organizations representing Canadian industry and exporters. All former friends and associates of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner), just about all of them support this agreement.
It has been the subject of numerous independent studies that have indicated significant economic benefits to all regions of Canada. I will only refer to several-the book by Professor Crispo, the book by Professor Lipsey, and a number of other books written by economists and persons of repute in the field of trade and economics. I will not mention some of the books written in opposition, Mr. Speaker, because I do not want to send you out to the remainder men looking for those volumes.
After one of the most protracted and intensive public debates in Canadian history, the recent election was fought with the Free Trade Agreement as a central campaign issue. There has never been a matter come before this House that has been debated in so much detail and so often as the matters dealt with by this present legislation.
I have spoken many times before in the House in support of free trade. I have outlined to the House on more than one occasion the case for the Free Trade Agreement and why it will yield viable benefits for Canadians superior to any of the alternatives proposed. Yesterday at a press conference, after the Bill received first reading, these documents were made public to remind the people, for example, Benefits of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, A Summary, 14 pages showing the benefits to every province in Canada, the macro-economic benefits, the benefits regionally, and the benefits in various of the important economic sectors of our country. This is why we proposed the Bill, because of the tremendous benefits for Canada and for Canadians. We are hardly likely to be suggesting legislation before the House that is not beneficial for the people of Canada.
I do not want to repeat these detailed arguments, Mr. Speaker. The question of "yes" or "no" to the Free Trade Agreement was settled at the ballot box on November 21, last. That question is settled.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


John Carnell Crosbie: It is over; it is decided. It was: "Let the people decide", and the people rose up and they decided, sending 170 Progressive Conservative Members to this House.

December 15, 1988
Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement
I do not wish to bore the House today, Mr. Speaker, with all of the arguments in favour of the Free Trade Agreement. It is an agreement that has been accepted by the Canadian people, despite the many thousands of attempts to derail it along the way, including the request of the Senate by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner) to block the legislation until such time as a general election was called.
The real issue before the House today relates to the reasons given by the Opposition for its stand against the timely approval of the legislation to implement the Free Trade Agreement. The only argument now relevant has to do with why the Opposition continues to try to prevent the agreement from going into effect in a timely manner.
I wish to explain why Parliament should approve the implementing legislation without amendment so that the Free Trade Agreement will go into effect on January 1, 1989.
On July 20 last, when the Leader of the Opposition announced that he would use the Liberal majority in the Senate to block the implementing legislation until an election was called, he was asked what would happen in the event that the Government were returned with a majority, and he replied:
"We would agree to a speedy passage-"
Speedy: s-p-e-e-d-y. He continued:
"-speedy passage, recognizing the verdict of the Canadian people, and so would our Senate colleagues, that is quite clear... (We would) accept whatever that decision is on an expeditious basis, I think that's a democratic procedure ... Let Canadians decide."
That is what the Leader of the Opposition said then. Well, what has happened to the "speedy passage" that he then promised the Canadian people? What has happened to the "expeditious basis", Mr. Speaker, that he then spoke of?


John Napier Turner: You are tied up in your own procedural knots. That is the problem.


John Carnell Crosbie: The Leader of the Opposition was equally clear on November 22 last. The events of November 21 had clarified his mind wonderfully. On November 22 last, he said this:
"You know we let the people decide. The people have decided, so
that having stated our case, well then, let matters proceed."
Well, why is it that since this House came into session, he has done everything he can to stop matters from proceeding? What is the logic in that?


Some Hon. Members:: Nonsense!


John Carnell Crosbie: Is the Leader of the Opposition afraid of some of the visages that we see in the benches opposite, Mr. Speaker? Have they barracked him in the caucus and made him change his position from that which he put forth on July 20, and November 22, respectively? Is the Leader of the Opposition in control of his caucus, or is he not? Does he lead and do they follow? Or, does he not lead and do they not follow?
Those are the questions that this conundrum poses.
What does the Opposition Leader say now? He says that the Government has the right to introduce the legislation but no right to expect speedy passage. But on July 20 last, that is exactly what he said he would do: Give speedy passage if we were returned with a majority-
Well, we were returned with a majority. What has happened?
There has been no explanation, adequate or otherwise, for the Leader of the Opposition reversing his position.
In any event, Mr. Speaker, in the end, that isn't what really matters; what matters is our responsibility as a Government, and that responsibility points to early passage of the implementing legislation, for two reasons: We are the Government that has been elected and, as such, we have a responsibility to see that the legislation in question is passed and to see that it is passed by January 1, 1989.
In the Free Trade Agreement, Canada committed itself to the date of January 1, 1989, in terms of the agreement entering into force and effect.
We must adhere to our treaty obligations if we are to expect others to adhere to theirs. Canada agreed, 14 months ago, that January 1, 1989, would be the date for the entering into force of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. A period of 14 months presented us with sufficient time to see that that was done. The Americans have met their obligation in that regard. We have had to have an election to ensure that we could carry out our obligation. We have had that election. We have convinced the Canadian public. Now we have to adhere to our treaty obligations and see that the agreement comes into force on January 1, 1989.
I am not aware of any instance, Mr. Speaker, where a Government of this country entered into a solemn international obligation and was later prevented by an obstructionist Parliament or by an unelected Senate from carrying out that obligation.
December 15, 1988

The second reason that this legislation ought to be in effect by January 1, 1989, relates to the conduct of business.
Canadians who are planning their business activities to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the Free Trade Agreement should be able to proceed with confidence in making new investments and thus creating new jobs-and there are hundreds of Canadian companies doing that right now. Having had to await the outcome of the election, with all of the uncertainty involved in that process, they now have the right to be able to go forward and take advantage of this agreement as of January 1, 1989.
If we are thinking of ordinary Canadians, of the Canadian business community and those who work for Canadian businesses, the ordinary men and women of Canada, we will see that the agreement is in force by January 1, 1989, regardless of whether we consider it to be a good move for Canada. That question has been decided by the electorate. It is now our duty to see that it gets a fair chance. It will only be in two, three, four or five years time that we will know how good this agreement will be for Canada, or whether any of the fears that have been voiced are justified. It is the duty of Hon. Members opposite to see that the Free Trade Agreement gets a fair chance, regardless of how they themselves feel about it.
I would not be making these comments, Mr. Speaker, had there not been ample opportunity for debate in Parliament and for discussion of the free trade deal nationally. There has been just such a debate and discussion.
The Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade reported on the Free Trade Agreement a year ago. That committee heard from 158 witnesses over the course of 24 days of hearings. As well, six opposition days were devoted to debate of the free trade issue at the end of 1987 and early 1988.
The implementing legislation was introduced on May 24, 1988, and was debated in this House and in the legislative committee for a total of almost 160 hours over a span of 39 days.
Do you really think, Mr. Speaker, that there is going to be one new argument put forward by Hon. Members opposite? There will not be. There will be a tiresome and boring repetition of all of the arguments that we have been hearing against the Free Trade Agreement
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over the last year, including a lot of the fallacious and specious arguments that we heard during the election campaign. The ranting and roaring will go on until midnight over the course of the sitting days next week.
We are allowing lots of time for Hon. Members opposite to listen to themselves rant and roar, if that is what they want to do. If that is how they feel they can best enjoy the Christmas season, let them sit here and do that. Why should we stop them?
But we are going to hear nothing new. There is nothing new to be said in this debate. We have the obligation to get on with implementing the agreement.
The earlier implementing legislation was held up for three weeks as a result of specious procedural objections raised by the Liberals and the NDP, each trying to be more macho than the other. Who is the most macho of these two Parties? That is the question. Who can have the most obstructive movements during any one particular day? Are the movements of the NDP more obstructive than the movements of the Liberal Party? Who can beat his chest with the most resonance: the Hon. Herb Gray or the Hon. Nelson Riis?
Well, Nelson is not "honourable" yet. Perhaps someday, Mr. Speaker. But, that is what we are watching in the House.


Lloyd Axworthy: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Member for Winnipeg South Centre, on a point of order.


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I think the Hon. Minister has been in the House long enough to know that he has just broken the rules of the House, and I would ask for a retraction.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Minister knows that he should be referring to Hon. Members by their constituencies.


John Carnell Crosbie: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As well as the three-week delay on procedural questions, debate on the legislation was held up by recorded votes and the first reading of Private Members' Bills presented by members of the NDP, with such purposes as naming hockey as Canada's national sport or marking the anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta. That is the kind of tactic that has been used.

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There has been ample opportunity for debate, Mr. Speaker. And then we come to the opening of this Parliament last Monday-if that is when it was. It seems like it was three months ago, but it was in fact only on Monday last.
Since the opening of this Parliament, Mr. Speaker, we have had the same specious procedural objections raised and again we have the unnecessary calling of recorded votes.
The Free Trade Agreement has been the subject of a national debate for 14 months. It has been the central element in an election campaign. It has been debated in Parliament. We have had a general election and Canadians have decided. Now we have to carry out our responsibility and decide about this legislation.
Let me turn to the Leader of the NDP. On November 22, he said: "The Canadian people have made a decision and now Mr. Mulroney certainly has a right to proceed with his legislation for free trade. I think the process has been gone through now. All the chances for amendments have been exhausted. It would be churlish and inappropriate to say that something more should be done".


John Horton McDermid: Who said that?


John Carnell Crosbie: That was the Leader of the NDP the day after the election when his mind was wonderfully clarified as well. He said that it would be churlish and inappropriate to say something more should be done. Why, since November 22, has the Leader of the NDP (Mr. Broadbent)-


John Edward Broadbent: Stick around, John, and I will tell you.


John Carnell Crosbie: -become churlish and inappropriate? Well, I know that Bob is jerking his string.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Carnell Crosbie: What has happened since November 22?


John Edward Broadbent: You got it wrong. He said I do not listen.


John Carnell Crosbie: Bob White has shown a great deal of petulance about the NDP's behaviour during the election. Shirley Carr has gone positively puce. She is quite upset. The leaders of the steelworkers' union are definitely irritated as well. As a result, the hon. gentleman has become churlish and is now attempting to stop us from going forward with this legislation.
We realize the hon. gentleman's trouble in his Party. Our Party is unified, disciplined, and we stand behind our Leader.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: It is a good thing it is Christmas, John.


John Carnell Crosbie: What is the Leader of the NDP saying now? He says that amendments must be made to protect social programs, the environment, and regional development. What has happened? He has not given any adequate explanation for reversing his position. Yet in the end that does not really matter either. What matters is our responsibility as a Government.
Let me set out once more for the House and the country how it is that social programs, the environment, and regional development have been and will continue to be protected under free trade. I hope hon. gentlemen and ladies opposite are convinced of this by now.
At no time during the free trade negotiations were social programs on the table. The Government gave its negotiator no mandate to discuss social programs, and none of the provisions of the agreement affects social programs. Moreover, it is recognized by all trading countries through GATT and their own trade laws that social programs are a legitimate government activity and do not distort trade. That is why, for example, the U.S. Government rejected a claim by its fishing industry that unemployment insurance for fishermen was a countervailable subsidy. Hon. Members opposite know that, and I am ashamed that some of them went around the country pretending that somehow UI would be affected by the Free Trade Agreement when they knew of this 1985 U.S. decision.
Social programs will not be an issue for discussion during the forthcoming bilateral negotiations on subsidies and trade remedy laws with the U.S. The U.S. has not asked for them to be. If they do, we will say no, n-o. That is the position.
The concern has been raised that although the Free Trade Agreement does not deal with social programs, and this is another specious argument, competitive pressures under more open trade with the U.S. would somehow force Canada to level down its social support. Our experience and that of other countries is entirely to the contrary. For the last 40 years, as Canadian and foreign trade barriers have been reduced through GATT, our social programs have expanded and improved. That is no coincidence. Economic growth, promoted by trade liberalization, is the only sound basis for continuing expansion and improvement of social programs. That is the only way you can have improved social programs. You create more wealth so you can improve your social programs.


December 15, 1988

Like social programs, the Canadian health care system is not covered by the Free Trade Agreement. The "Services" chapter of the agreement does not cover the delivery of health care services. Why anyone would want to go around the country trying to pretend otherwise is beyond me.
This means that federal and provincial Governments are completely free to do what they wish with respect to their health care system, whether it is publicly operated, privately operated, or a combination of the two. It is up to the federal and provincial Governments. Only management services such as personnel, bookkeeping, cafeteria or cleaning which provide support to the health care delivery system are involved in the agreement. They in no way involve providing actual medical care.
As a matter of fact, this is a great plus for us because all of our management consulting firms can go down to the United States where it is open sesame. They do not have government operated hospitals and health care systems there. This means tremendous opportunity for us down there. There is very little opportunity for them up here because we have, by and large, government-owned and controlled health care systems. We are going to have a good export market in the U.S. for Canadian firms providing these support services. However, from a Canadian point of view, we are under no obligation to contract for such services with American companies. That is a procurement issue which is not covered by the agreement.
Let me tell the people of Canada again that there is no basis for any concern that American style bottom line management of health care is going to be forced on Canada by the Free Trade Agreement and thereby the quality of patient care or the publicly funded health care system could be undermined. No way is that the case under this agreement. Under this agreement, if it is the success we think it will be, the money will be there for improvements to our health care system in our own way. That is the virtue or value of the Free Trade Agreement.
Now, what about the environment? The Free Trade Agreement specifically exempts from its operations measures to protect the environment. It does so by
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incorporating in Article 1201 an existing GATT exemption-do you want to listen or do you want to do something else?


Mr. Simmons:: We want to hear something sensible.


John Carnell Crosbie: You are in the wrong Party for that.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Carnell Crosbie: Article 1201 contains an existing GATT exemption for "measures necessary to protect human, animal, or plant life or health". As well, Article 603 of the Free Trade Agreement permits the setting of environmental standards even if such standards have the effect of inhibiting trade flows. These are sections in GATT and in the agreement, yet some people still want to go across the country pretending that somehow the agreement prevents us from setting our own environmental standards.


John Napier Turner: All 90 independent environmental organizations.


John Carnell Crosbie: I do not care what they call themselves. They have not read this agreement or they are deliberately misinterpreting it.


John Napier Turner: Every independent environmental association in the country.


John Carnell Crosbie: We know the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner) has been on a great crusade, just like Richard the Conqueror. He has come out of it just as well as Richard did, he got a few dents in his helmet.


John Napier Turner: You have a helmet for a head, John.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, I simply am not going to get mad at the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition. It is Christmas time.
The alleviation of regional disparities is a longstanding objective in Canada and is now enshrined in the Constitution.


Roger Simmons: You will put the blocks to it.


John Carnell Crosbie: We put the blocks to you, not to the regions. Oh, you are the one we put the blocks to, brother.

December 15, 1988
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We were not successful in the agreement in defining trade distorting subsidies. The 96 countries that belong to GATT have not been successful in defining trade distorting subsidies. That matter has been discussed in the Gatt Uruguay Round and will be discussed again bilaterally with the U.S. We are firm in our commitment of ensuring that Canadian governments have the capacity to promote regional development. We are not going to change that. Despite the fact that the agreement does not deal with the question of subsidies, the concern was raised that our regional development programs will be at risk. Do you think for one minute, Mr. Speaker, that I am going to support a free trade agreement


Some Hon. Members:: Yes!


John Carnell Crosbie: -that would put at risk-


Some Hon. Members:: Yes!


John Carnell Crosbie: There are 25,000 people in St. John's West who do not agree with Hon. Members opposite. The NDP got 2,000 votes down there. I got 25,000. Apparently they believe me.
This equates a willingness to discuss disciplines on trade distorting subsidies, with some inevitable compromising of regional development. That conclusion is unfounded. No government in Canada-not a Liberal government, not an NDP government, and certainly not this Government-is prepared to give up its ability to promote regional development in order to reach an agreement on subsidies.
In the absence of such an agreement with the U.S., Canada will still have the benefit of binding dispute settlement in subsidy countervail cases to ensure that politically motivated provisions are overturned. That is a tremendous step forward compared to the situation the last Government left behind. There was no binding dispute settlement regime. There is none today. There will not be until January 1, 1989.
On January 1, 1989, when we have a dispute, which we will have, we will have this binding dispute settlement process in place. The disputes will be settled by Americans and Canadians with a neutral chairman.


Roger Simmons: And by American law.


John Carnell Crosbie: In Canada they will be settled under Canadian law. In the United States they will be settled
under the United States trade law. They are not going to give up their law. We are not going to give up our law. We will have two people sitting on boards with a neutral chairman in the United States to ensure fair decisions there. When there is a dispute here in Canada the same will occur here.
This is not a one-sided agreement.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Roger Simmons: And snow is green.


John Carnell Crosbie: If I were in full form today, I would eliminate the noise over there, I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, but my voice does not permit it.
Let me deal with another objection that was raised to the passage of this legislation.


Roger Simmons: Bring him another Duracell.


John Carnell Crosbie: Duracell should listen to this for a moment. It was suggested that we lack a mandate to proceed with the implementing legislation because we did not receive a majority of the votes cast in the recent election. You will recall that, Mr. Speaker. This ignores, of course, the conventions of our parliamentary democracy upon which we choose governments and give them a mandate to govern. It also shows an ignorance of the reality of Canadian elections, since the advent of third parties. These are the people who cause all the trouble- third parties.
There were only going to be two Parties. The Leader of the NDP said that there would be only two. I thought that this would be a tremendous improvement. He said that the Liberal Party would disappear. I look across the aisle to see that there are 83 of them. They have not disappeared at all-another false promise.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Carnell Crosbie: Since 1921, the Liberal Party has received a majority of the votes cast only once. That was in 1940. It took a war for that to happen. On the other 12 occasions when the Liberals have formed the government they did so with less than 50 per cent of the vote.
In 1980, Prime Minister Trudeau was returned to power. I have all the figures in front of me here. He was returned to power with just about the same share of the popular vote as we received in the 1988 election.


Roger Simmons: And he did not sell out the country either.
December 15, 1988


John Carnell Crosbie: He did not sell out the country; he sold everything else.
The Liberal Party had 43.9 per cent of the vote at that time. On November 21, we had 43.3 per cent of the vote. What did the Liberal Party do under Mr. Trudeau? It brought in revolutionary policies in the energy field. It sold out the oil and gas industry right from under the people of Alberta. It brought in a new Constitution. It got Senator Machiavelli to help them bring in a new Constitution. It did not go around suggesting that it had no right to do it because 56 per cent of the people had not voted for it. Did the members of his Government now sitting in opposition say to Mr. Trudeau: "You do not have a mandate. You only have 43 per cent of the vote"? No, of course they did not. They know the system.
On November 30, 1972, Mr. Trudeau had 38.5 per cent of the vote. Did that stop the Liberals from governing? You better believe it did not, Mr. Speaker.
On November 8, 1965, the Liberals had 40.2 per cent, and so on. I could go on to give figures.
Of course the New Democratic Party has never got that high. It now appears that it never will. As the Leader of the New Democratic Party said, we will end up with two parties in this country-the leftists, or the Liberal Party, and the rightists are supposed to be us. The NDP is vanished. That is what the whole furore is. This is why Bob White and Shirley Carr are so aggravated, as one can well understand.
The Government has not only a right but we have a responsibility to proceed in what we believe to be the national interest. That is what we were elected to do. That is what we are responsible to Parliament and the electorate for doing. Those are the reasons we are bringing forward this legislation which we call upon Parliament to approve by January 1. That is why there are no substantive reasons for the Opposition's intended amendments.
I will not go into all the benefits that are listed in these documents. There is no point in repeating them. Our next step will be to implement the legislation. On January 1, when it goes into effect, our job will be to start to implement this legislation in all its-


John Napier Turner: Glory?


John Carnell Crosbie: Someone supplied me with a word there. I was lost for words.
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In one of these documents, Mr. Speaker, you will see listed for you what will happen. Lor example, tariffs will be completely removed on about 15 per cent of the dutiable bilateral trade on January 1, including on items such as fresh frozen fish, animal feed, skis and skates, whisky, furs and fur garments if they are of Canadian or U.S. origin. The cross-border temporary entry procedures will go into effect. There will be new rules in effect for wines and spirits. New rules of origin will go into effect. New service and investment provisions will go into effect. The new binational dispute settlement rules will go into effect. Our relationship with the GATT will continue.


Roger Simmons: How about statehood?


John Carnell Crosbie: I do not know what anybody says about the state of the Hon. Member's hood. I can tell the Hon. Member that it does not look to be in too good shape.


John Napier Turner: I would hate to look under yours, John.


John Carnell Crosbie: The Leader of the Opposition has made a remark on recovering from his election, the condition he was in on election day. I want to congratulate him on his resilience.
Before closing I want briefly to deal with adjustment, which brings me to the Leader of the Opposition. He is adjusting to the fact that he is Leader of the Opposition again.
My colleagues, the Minister responsible for science and technology and the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mrs. McDougall), will speak more fully about adjustment later in the debate.
Study after independent study indicates that free trade will lead to growth in exports and investments, higher real incomes, and increased international competitiveness. There will be more-and not what we hear every day in Question Period-better and secure jobs for Canadians because of the Tree Trade Agreement.
Those studies also indicate that the number of workers likely to be affected adversely by free trade will be low. It will be a very small fraction of the millions of Canadians who change jobs annually. I would ask you to remember, Mr. Speaker, that in the last four years there has been an increase in job creation of more than 1.3 million jobs. We hear examples picked out in Question Period concerning someone who is restructuring his company.

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We never hear the Opposition mention the dozens of companies which are expanding such as Dupont which has announced that it will invest another $160 million in the next three years, creating more jobs here in Canada because of the Free Trade Agreement. We never hear them mention National Sea Products which will be expanding in Nova Scotia and creating more jobs as a result of the Free Trade Agreement. I could go on and on with the many other companies which are doing the same.
With respect to those who will be affected over the 10-year period while the agreement comes into effect, we offer a wide range of training, job search and relocation programs primarily under the Canadian Jobs Strategy to workers displaced for any reason. The Government will ensure that these services are available to all Canadians who need them.
To ensure that we are doing all that needs to be done and that there is anything genuinely further needed, we appointed the Advisory Council on Adjustment chaired by Jean de Grandpre to assist with respect to whether any further measures may be needed, and if so what they should be.
That is our commitment to Canadian workers. It is a reasoned and responsible commitment. It is fair to Canadian workers. If the de Grandpre committee or any other source is able to show or does show that more is needed to be done, then that more will be done.
Beyond any of the specifics, the controversy surrounding free trade has centred in many ways on questions of confidence. Are Canadians able to compete against Americans? That is one question. On this side of the House we say "yes" emphatically. On the other side of the House neither Party seems to think that Canadians can compete against Americans or compete against anyone else.
Another question is this: Is our sense of nationhood or identity secure enough to choose consciously to trade more freely with the U.S.? Do we have an adequate sense of nationhood or identity? We say that Canadians do. The Opposition, apparently, says that Canadians do not. Those Members think our identity is going to be threatened if we trade more freely with the U.S. Let them defend that point of view if they wish.
Another question is: Will we grow stronger as a people if we open up these new opportunities and face
these new challenges? We say "yes". We are going to grow stronger as a people when we open up opportunities and face challenges. Opposition Members are afraid of the future. They are the believers in a small Canada. They do not believe in an expanding Canada. They do not have confidence in Canadians. That is their basic problem.
Let me conclude with one of the best statements on this subject I have heard recently, a statement by Robert Fulford who said:
"In this long and painful but perhaps finally healthy debate, I sympathize with all those people who fear we'll abandon our own identity. But 1 believe firmly that they are wrong.
I believe-"
Said Mr. Fulton.


Some Hon. Members:: Fulford.


John Carnell Crosbie: Fulford, not the Hon. Fulton who is in the House. Mr. Fulford continued:
"I believe we are now deeply committed to follow our own path in Canada and that we won't stray from that path just because it displeases our trading partners-
Many of the things we like best about Canada are costly and only a prosperous society can afford them. My belief is that over the next 10 years or so the free trade agreement will contribute not only to the prosperity of Canada but to its independence and distinctiveness as well."
That is a statement by a literary figure in Ontario, a Torontorian. I suppose you might call him a member of the Toronto literary elite. It is a signal, of course, of why we did so well in Ontario during the election, because so many people from Ontario took the same intelligent view as Mr. Fulford.
I believe Mr. Fulford is right. I believe his predictions are going to be found to be true. Free trade will make Canada a stronger and more united country. That is why I am proud to move second reading of this Bill today.
That in the end, Mr. Speaker, is why it is time now for parliamentarians to act, to implement the Free Trade Agreement. As was said in a great poem by the English poet about Ulysses:
"O Come my friends tis not too late to seek a newer world."
We invite Hon. Members opposite to stop their timorous, fearful approach to the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. It continued:
"O come my friends tis not too late to seek a newer world."
December 15, 1988

The New Democratic Party surely ought to believe that.
"Cast off and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows For our purpose holds,-"
You will remember the poem, Mr. Speaker, you are a very literate man.
"For our purpose holds, to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars until we die. Tho much is taken, much abides, and tho we are not now that which in older days moved earth and heaven
"That which we are, we are:
An equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate
But strong in will-"
And you have to be strong in will in this Elouse, Mr. Speaker.
"To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield."
Having moved second reading of this Bill, I would invite members of the Opposition to make clear that they are satisfied, to put their points in the next four or five days of debate, and to approve this legislation in time for our Christmas break. We would give the Senate the chance to come back and meet its commitments to put this legislation through so that Canada would meet its commitment on January 1, to have it in effect. The Government does not propose to start a new relationship with the United States by asking it to do us a favour, simply because our Opposition was not prepared to accept the verdict of the people of Canada in the election of November 21.


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to address a most important subject. At this stage may I thank the people of Vancouver Quadra for once again having the confidence to put their faith in me as their Member of Parliament. I am very proud to have the privilege of representing this very representative riding in Vancouver and of sharing an unguarded border with you, Mr. Speaker, along 41st Avenue. I congratulate you once again on your election by your peers to the speakership of this great House. I would like to say, coincidentally, that we apologize for delaying what should be a happy birthday celebration this evening. We wish you well, along with your family.
Yes, the election is over. The people have spoken and the people are always right. I want to say to Your Honour as Speaker of this House that to your right is a parliamentary majority and to your left is the popular majority representing people who voted against this agreement.
There is no doubt constitutionally that the Government has a right to proceed. There is also no doubt that
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we have a right, reinforced by the mandate of those who elected us, to oppose and to provide constructive amendments reflecting the concerns about this agreement expressed by millions of people during the election. We intend to do that to the fullest measure of our responsibility in this House of Commons.
The trade deal we are being asked to pass, in my opinion and in the opinion of millions of Canadians, will change fundamentally the values which built this nation. These changes will not occur immediately after the deal is implemented. There will not be some huge thunderclap and suddenly everything will be different. We never said that. What will happen will be more insidious, more deadly. It will not happen following the weeks of headlines in the papers and days of lengthy reports in the television news. Every event will not be covered by the media. It will be a plant closing here, a regional development grant disallowed there, a regulation amended in this country to conform with U.S. practice here and a government program cancelled there.
To the extent that it is humanly possible, the Liberal Party will be there and here to protect the interests of Canadians. The Government opposite has abandoned that role and that responsibility. We will keep monitoring this deal and, in particular, the question of adjustment programs, the closing of Canadian manufacturing plants, the negotiation on the definition of subsidy, and the continuing use of the American countervail duties and quotas allowed under this agreement.
Nobody-not the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), nor the senior corporate officials who endorsed this agreement, nor the groups of Conservative thinkers who defied logic to rationalize their support-nobody can give Canadians the assurance that this agreement is anything more than a gamble, an act of faith. In fact, nothing more concrete than hope. First, hope that our trade balance with the United States will grow, therefore that our companies will expand, and third, the most significant consideration, that such growth and prosperity will automatically benefit our country in terms of new jobs and higher profits.
Those are the assumptions upon which the agreement rests. I do not agree with that approach. But one thing is certain, and that is that the Government could not have swung this agreement without selling off some of the levers which are essential to the development of our

December 15, 1988
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nation, in addition to endangering a number of others. It has dropped our ability to control our own economic policies, our own social policies, our own regional development policies, our own cultural policies and, most of all, our ability to control our own future.
This trade agreement is a short-term answer to a long-term problem. It is an attempt to take a shortcut towards prosperity. However, the Government forgot that prosperity cannot be authentic and real unless everyone stands to gain, not only the select few who now have an opportunity to find themselves in a position of strength and influence to benefit from the new market forces on which this whole question is based.
Market forces alone do not account for the way this country was built up. Mr. Speaker, we have managed to build this country by resisting the natural attraction of the north-south trade axis. We built from east to west and towards the north. We built a railroad, an airline, a radio and TV network, but the Prime Minister of Canada changed that east-west movement and turned it into a north-south axis simply by signing on the dotted line. Gone are more than 120 years of unrelenting struggles to achieve better regional equality! Gone are more than 120 years of authentic social and cultural policies! Gone are more than 120 years of loyalty to a distinct and unique Canadian identity! All it took was a simple signature.

Our goal was not to be isolationist or neutralist or protectionist. We are faithful to our friends and our allies. We have worked to lessen international tensions over the years and to open up around the world an international trading system.
We believe and have always promoted an open and free country. We have always been in favour of more and better trade, not only with the United States but with all our trading partners. The proof is in the fact that since the Second World War successive Liberal Governments have lowered tariffs from an average of 40 per cent to 4 per cent. Today, without this agreement, 80 per cent of everything we trade with the United States goes across the border duty-free. We did that without sacrificing sovereignty and without giving up our ability to do things our own way.
We did it by negotiating internationally through the GATT and other international bodies, not because we did not want to talk to the Americans, far from it. We favoured the international route because we could do better for ourselves through global negotiations rather than through direct negotiations with the United States.
We have always, whether in defence matters, monetary matters, exchange matters, banking matters, or trading matters, done better with the United States in a global, multilateral framework than in direct negotiations. We have always had better leverage with the United States by negotiating multilaterally.
In global negotiations in such bodies as the GATT, the focus is solely on trade and trade related issues. While from time to time we may not like certain decisions of the GATT, and whereas Montreal demonstrated that the GATT may sometimes move slowly, the nations of the GATT do not dictate domestic Canadian policy as this agreement with the United States will do. Under the GATT we have the right to challenge American law. Under this agreement we have no such right to challenge American law.
The Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) entered this House as a new Member a few years ago philosophically against a free trade deal with the United States. When he was running for the leadership of his own Party against the now Minister for International Trade (Mr. Crosbie), the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson), and the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark), only the Minister for International Trade has remained consistent. Only he was for a free trade agreement with the United States, and he must take certain satisfaction from that.
However in an open televised debate with the Minister, the present Prime Minister of Canada said: "Free trade, it affects our sovereignty and we will have nothing of it". He was right then and he should be right today and should never have introduced this agreement.
We are entitled to inquire what changed his mind. He said there was a growing protectionist sentiment in the United States, but this had been a fact for several years. What really changed was that his Government had no positive economic strategy to present before Canadians and opted for the illusion of security by tying our economy even closer to that of the United States. It was because of the bankruptcy of the economic strategy of the Government that it tried symbolically to hitch its wagon to a stronger partner, even yielding control over the reins of that wagon.
We were told countless times that the whole point of entering into a free trade agreement with the United States was to get secure access to U.S. markets and thereby to immunize ourselves from United States protectionism. But, as we on this side of the House have
December 15, 1988

pointed out countless times, gaining secure access to the American market meant gaining specific exemption from American trade law: the United States trade law of 1930, the U.S. trade law of 1974, and particularly the recent omnibus Bill just signed by the President of the United States.
In addition to that exemption we needed something to enforce that exemption by way of a binding, mutually acceptable dispute settlement mechanism. This is the one topic that the Conservative Government, led by the Prime Minister, never discussed during the election campaign. The point is clear. The very purpose of the agreement was never achieved, and the Americans are still free under this agreement to use the same protectionist remedies they have historically used against us. After the deal is signed there is no improvement. The deal can be passed but the same American remedies apply.
We can talk endlessly about the merits of free trade, but that is not what this deal is about. The pure, simple and unadulterated fact is that we did not get an exemption from American trade action, and we thereby do not have a free trade deal.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Horton McDermid: Would you exempt them from Canadian law? Would you exempt them from Canadian law?


Mr. Prud'homme:: Ask him to be silent.


William Warren Allmand: Minister of the homeless.


John Napier Turner: The Minister of Housing who we called the minister of homelessness during the campaign because his first suggestion as Minister was to suggest to the people of Toronto that they sleep on the streets at night.


John Horton McDermid: That is a lie.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Roger Simmons: Retract.


Mr. Speaker:: I am sure the Hon. Minister means that he does not agree with what the right hon. gentleman said.


Some Hon. Members:: Apologize.


Mr. Boudria:: Withdraw.


Mr. Speaker:: I would ask the Minister-


Some Hon. Members:: Withdraw.


John Horton McDermid: I withdraw those remarks.


John Napier Turner: I invite all Hon. Members to refer to Article 1902 and Article 1904 of
Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement
the deal. The same laws that the Americans have used to hit us on softwood lumber, as we talked about this afternoon, on potash, steel, fish, and other products are still in place. These laws still apply to our exports. Our Government's support programs will still be judged by the Americans using the same criteria they used before-the same laws, following American precedents and practice, and based on American judicial precedent.
It is true that we now have a new dispute settlement mechanism.


John Carnell Crosbie: Right.


John Napier Turner: What is the jurisdiction of that mechanism? The tribunal cannot challenge American trade law. It can only interpret that law according to American precedent, statutes, and regulations as that law may be amended from time to time.
We are bound under this agreement, not only by today's American law but by any amendment that the Congress of the United States may make. We are as wide open as we have ever been, and the fundamental purpose of this agreement was not achieved. That is what the agreement says.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Napier Turner: I am glad to get more reaction from the other side than the Minister did, and I can understand it. This is a speech dealing with the merits of the case.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Napier Turner: Despite the fact that the Government of Canada did not obtain the essential purpose of the agreement which the Government said we would get, namely, secure access to the American market, what is truly astounding is that after it became clear that that was not obtainable we learned something else. The Hon. Member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. Axworthy), myself, the Hon. Member for Windsor West (Mr. Gray), and others met with leading United States Senators from both sides of the aisle, led by Senator Lloyd Bentsen when he was up here and leading members of the House of Representatives from both sides of the aisle. They made it quite clear to us that in no event, under no eventuality, would the Congress of the United States ever yield its jurisdiction over American trade law.

December 15, 1988
Canada- U.S. Free Trade Agreement
The purpose of the agreement was not obtained and was not obtainable. Despite that, the Government signed this agreement, and as an additional measure of selfhumiliation for Canadians, yielded economic levers, control over which is essential to the future of this country: our energy, agriculture, investment policy, and capital markets. This was the most astounding cession of sovereignty in the history of a free nation, and Canadians will live to regret it. That, Mr. Speaker-


John Horton McDermid: Do you want to talk about the election campaign?


John Napier Turner: I will accept that invitation. We will deal with the campaign in a minute. Right now, our side is interested in this. It may bore the other side, but I am dealing with the substance of the agreement.
That result was inevitable in any bilateral negotiation with someone or some enterprise 10 times stronger than we are, with 10 times the market, 10 times the population, 10 times the economic strength. It is inevitable that to get any perceptible entry into that market, Canadians would have to grant 10 times the concessions, and we did. This is the reason historically that we have always negotiated under the auspices of international organizations. In that style of negotiation, we can argue together as demandeur under international negotiations and cut side deals with the United States.
Look what we gave away. What about energy? The Americans have wanted secure access to our resources since the Payley report of 1956, ordered under the jurisdiction of the late President Eisenhower. The Payley Commission wanted it; it now has it.
Under this deal, we must ensure that any tax or other measure we take with respect to energy-and I am citing Article 1904-does not impose a higher price for exports of an energy good to the other party than the price charged for such energy good when consumed domestically. This means that we can no longer give any advantage to our own consumers over our own industry in competition with American interests. The National Energy Board will be turned into nothing more than a monitoring agency.
Canada also guaranteed that in times of shortages, energy shipments to the United States would only be
reduced in proportion to the total supply on a prorated basis of what was shipped in the previous three years. This same proportional access regime will apply not only to energy but to all our resources. The articles of the agreement make it clear that it applies to all our resources, renewable and non-renewable, including water which is included in this deal despite the claims made by the Government.
During the election campaign, the Prime Minister said that that was not important because we had done exactly the same thing when we agreed to the energy and emergency sharing system of the International Energy Agency in 1974. That agreement, as the Prime Minister should know but neglected to mention, related only to oil and only in certain well defined emergency situations. Contrast Article 904 of the trade deal which commits Canada to sharing all types of energy, not just oil, on an ongoing basis, and Article 409 which commits us to the same regime for all other resources as well.
I think the Prime Minister owes Canadians both an explanation and an apology for what he said on this issue during the election campaign because he was totally inaccurate. We have become an energy reservoir for the United States. What is theirs is theirs and what is ours has now become theirs too.
Let us turn to agriculture. Seasonal tariffs on fruits, vegetables, and other horticultural products are to be removed progressively. That protection will be progressively eliminated. Hon. Members just have to look outside the House today to know that our climate is not the same as that of California, Florida, or Georgia. Our farmers have a harsher climate, a shorter growing season, and higher costs.


John Horton McDermid: How about Minnesota? How about the farmers of Minnesota?


John Napier Turner: They bray over there, but only a Conservative Government would sign a deal which completely overlooks the Canadian climate.
Add to that the fact that our whole agricultural supply-management system has been negotiated away. Our support systems will be brought into line with theirs.
December 15, 1988

Look at some of the programs listed which will be up for negotiation over the five to seven years. They are in the annex to this agreement. We have the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act, the Agricultural and Rural Development Act, the Economic and Rural Development Agreements, the Agricultural Stabilization Act, the Western Grain Stabilization Act, and so on. Virtually the entire support system sustaining our western grain economy is to be negotiated now with the Americans.

And since the United States, because of its size and its market, massively dominates the agricultural industry, the level of support that we will be able to give our farmers will be determined not here in Ottawa, but in Washington. The food processing industry will move to the United States where products are cheaper. Some companies in this sector like McCain's have already indicated that this is the only choice they have left. Our fishermen will also suffer. We have given up our rights within GATT to protect Atlantic and Pacific fishermen.
The Government boasts that it managed to exempt some legislation concerning Atlantic fishermen from the Agreement. But in his statement to Congress, the President of the United States clearly indicated that although the grandfather clause applies, it does not mean much because if we ever invoke this clause to protect our processing industries, the Americans will retaliate.
The same threat applies even more clearly to our West Coast fishermen. Indeed, Section 304E of the American legislation implementing this agreement requires the President of the United States to initiate proceedings within 30 days if we ever invoke the grandfather clause to protect our fishermen.
This is but one example among many others of the way we have sold out this industry in this venture, this deal, which in this case involves an exemption for our fishermen when in fact none exists; like so many other aspects of this Agreement, it is just an illusion, a dream.

Nothing has changed. Nothing will change in the American approach to Canadian exporters. They retain the same remedies, they retain the same rights on countervail, on quotas, on anti-dumping, the same remedies as they had before the deal was signed.
Look what happened in lumber. The Government pleaded guilty before the trial. It agreed to impose a 15 per cent export tax on softwood lumber into the United States in perpetuity. Why did it do it? It did not want to
Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement
rock the over-all trade talks with the United States. Lumber mills are closing down. People are being thrown out of work.
The then Minister, Pat Carney, told us that when an agreement was signed, then the lumber industry would be protected, but what happened?
Quite the contrary happened. Under Article 2009 of this agreement, that Memorandum of Understanding imposing a 15 per cent export tax on our lumber into the American market, is now incorporated into and made part on a permanent basis of the trading relationship between Canada and the United States. They incorporated the lumber agreement into the trade deal, and rather than protect our lumber industry from further harassment, they protected a lumber agreement that guaranteed that our lumber industry would be harassed to the tune of a 15 per cent export tax as long as this trade deal is in effect. Some free trade deal when a whole sector is at a 15 per cent disadvantage. I have said to the people of Prince George, the people of northern Ontario, the people of Quebec-


Mr. Oberle:: You did not get to Prince George.


John Napier Turner: The Minister is here. He is quite right. I had to go on an open-line show to make my apologies. Weather and his hot air held me up. The Minister knows that I have been in Prince George four times in the last four years. I always regretted not seeing him there, and I always left my best wishes.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Napier Turner: I do not argue with the people's decision in Prince George. I have the highest regard for the Minister, but he knows as that American housing market drops, as the exchange rate floats dangerously higher perhaps as an implicit part of that agreement, and as that 15 per cent tax begins to bite-and it is higher than the profit margin of any independent sawmill in the Minister's riding or any independent sawmill in northern Ontario-that that 15 per cent tax and the 15 per cent increase in the exchange rate as compared to the American dollar since the Memorandum of Understanding was signed jeopardize every sawmill in northern and central British Columbia as they do right across this country. I say to the Minister that he should count on his good fortune to have been re-elected before the industry really comes to terms with what has happened.

December 15, 1988
Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement
We have also given up on our ability to control foreign investment. Any Canadian company worth up to $150 million can be taken over and we cannot say a thing about it. There will no longer be any limit for review of indirect acquisitions. It was not enough that the Government sacrificed all its bargaining power before going to the table. It threw away its cards on the National Energy Program, whatever one may think about it. It threw away the cards on the Foreign Investment Review Act. It was the stupidest bargaining posture for a major trading nation to get into, namely, to throw away the cards before ever getting to the table. They agreed to open season on Canadian owned companies. Our capital markets are now wide open. I see the Minister of State for Finance (Mr. Hockin) here. He knows that our banking industry, our insurance industry, and our investments are now open to American takeovers.


Mr. Hockin:: Be precise.


John Napier Turner: He also knows that because of the jurisdiction under American law and because of the Glass-Steagall Act we do not have reciprocal rights into the American market. He knows that.


Thomas Hockin: We have more.


John Napier Turner: The Minister ought to read the agreement. That was probably the palpable inequality in that agreement. We threw our capital markets wide open to the Americans. They shrewdly know that the jurisdiction over banking and most of the financial institutions is the 50 states and that because of the Glass-Steagall Act our banks cannot go further into American banking. He got outmanoeuvred. We got euchred, and we really look stupid on that whole deal.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Napier Turner: We are granting American industry what is called under the agreement national treatment-national treatment in Canada for American institutions and American citizens, national treatment in goods and services and investments. That means our industry in either of those domains which represents about 95 per cent of our economy can have no tax advantages, no fiscal advantages, no subventional advantages or grants, and no regional development advantages over American competitors. That means Americans will be treated the same as Canadians when those Americans operate in Canada.
Our border will virtually disappear in most service sectors. When the border is open between a country of
26 million and a country of 260 million people, the trickle sent by the smaller nation will be overwhelmed by the flood from the larger nation. For example, let us take a company here in the Ottawa Valley, in Kanata. Two or three younger people with a new idea get some financing but are unable to get any further fiscal grants, incentives, or tax advantages which are not open to an American competitor because they are against the spirit of this agreement. At any rate they get a new idea off the ground and they do well on the Canadian market. They get a penetration into the American market, but when that penetration becomes visible, any American competitor can examine the advantages given our company here in Kanata and, if any tax incentives, grants, or encouragement is given under our system which is not available to an American company, the Americans can countervail.
If that does not work, then they can come over and buy because the limit is $150 million. What happens to some of our Canadian citizens, our bright ones, instant millionaires? We have a couple of millionaires and we have 150 people out of work. Under the terms of the agreement the company in Kanata, which is now in American hands, can bring over personnel from Chicago, Los Angeles, or Detroit and run it, because that is what the agreement says they can do in terms of moving personnel across the border.
No other country as a member of the GATT has ever negotiated free trade in services. No wonder the President of the United States and the U.S. trade representative held this up as Exhibit A at the GATT meeting in Montreal. We are the first suckers. Who is next? The United States is using Exhibit A as a drill for every other country. The Mexicans were invited into the same kind of deal, but by God, they were smarter than we were. They stayed out. We have given away leadership in our own economy.
What lies ahead, Mr. Speaker? Under the terms of this deal, over the next five to seven years there is to be negotiation over what is an allowable subsidy. Real negotiations are now going to get under way. This was a subject on which there was no agreement reached before the deal was signed. In a statement to the Congress President Reagan said that there was "no higher priority than the elimination of Canadian subsidies." The Government signed the deal obligating us to enter the negotiations over the definition of subsidy without first agreeing to some parameters over that definition.
December 15, 1988

The Americans have a clear agenda. They know what they want. They come out in the open with what they want. They have said categorically, from the President to the United States trade representative to the senior Senator in the finance committee of the United States, that they want to eliminate any other programs which their companies consider unfair subsidies. That is what they have said, in black and white.
In the past they have claimed under their legislation-and it is perpetuated under the agreement-of 1930 and 1974, and the overwhelmingly broad definitions in the omnibus Bill just passed by the Congress that dozens of our regional development programs and social programs constituted unfair subsidies. Are we so naive to think that the Americans will change their minds?

Let us not kid ourselves, the next round of negotiations will be even more difficult than what we have experienced so far. Discussions over a five-to-seven year period will have to do with the definition of a subsidy. What is or is not a subsidy? This has now become the number one question. I do not believe the Government is fully aware of what is at stake. And quite frankly, although I already had very serious reservations about the ability of our Prime Minister to stand his ground before American pressure, I must confess that I am now ten times more worried. My concern has grown ever deeper as the days go by, for clearly the Government has not yet managed to stand up once to the Americans. This Government has kept on yielding to American pressure, totally and without any scruple whatever. Whether we are talking about lumber, foreign investment, prescription drugs, acid rain, our sovereignty in the Arctic, the President or Congress say "Jump!" and this Government slavishly asks "Where do you want me to jump?" That is the sad story we have lived through over the past four years, and I have every reason to believe that it is also the sad story we can expect to live through over the next four years.
In the course of the election campaign the Government solemnly promised that our social programs and our regional development programs will never be on the negotiation table. But the Government never did tell us what is negotiable, what are the parameters of negotiations concerning subsidies. Yes or no, are our social programs, our cultural programs, and our regional development programs open for negotiations?
Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement
This, Mr. Speaker, is a bad contract. It is an unbalanced agreement. It gives Americans control over our economic levers. And when a nation has lost control over its economic levers, the political levers cannot be far behind. History has proved that a number of times. That is why we in this Party will continue our fight.
Most Canadian men and women fully realize that this is a bad agreement, which explains their massive vote against the agreement and against the Government. As a matter of fact, 57 per cent of Canadians did not vote for this Government nor for the Free Trade Agreement with the United States.
I have said that the Government won a majority of the seats. The Government has the right to govern. The Government has the right to proceed with its legislative agenda. But we on this side of the House have the right, and indeed the duty, to show how the deal will hurt Canadians. That is the essence of the Canadian parliamentary system.
Last summer I asked Liberal Senators to delay consideration of the trade legislation until the people had the opportunity to consider it in an election. As I said on July 20, 1988-and the Minister has quoted only part of that declaration-if a majority of MPs in a new Parliament want the trade agreement to become law, after debate the Senate should pass the Bill quickly. 1 stand by what I said, and that will happen.
What has happened during this week has not been the fault of the Opposition and cannot be laid at the hands of this side of the House. We have seen the most heavyhanded, ham-handed manipulation or attempted manipulation of the House, and the mismanagement of the House.
Our House Leader and Whip had to suggest to the House Leader on the government side how to bail himself out of an impasse. We were ready to debate this on Tuesday morning, Mr. Speaker, and you know it. We are ready to debate it at any time. We will not waste the time of the House. We will put our arguments, we will put our amendments, and we will allow these votes to be taken. But we are damned if we are going to be manoeuvred by a majority that thinks it is a game, a tyranny, and has not recognized the deep lack of consensus in this country, and the concern of millions of Canadians that their jobs and their futures are at risk under this agreement.

December 15, 1988
Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Napier Turner: I was invited by the Minister to talk about the election campaign, and I will yield to that temptation for a moment. The main theme of the election and the main theme of this session is the trade Bill. The election revolved around the arguments pro and con, and through the efforts of this Party in forcing an election on this issue, we managed to focus the attention of Canadians on the most important issue of our lifetime.
Yes, it is true, we did not win a majority of the seats. However, I believe that we won the hearts and minds of Canadians on this issue. We won on the merits of the case against the deal. We discussed the deal in detail, as I have attempted to do, basing myself on the document. We discussed the details of the deal and how it would affect Canada.
Members of the Conservative Party attempted to obscure the details, and one cannot blame them because the Minister in charge had not even read the deal. What happened is that we won that debate for the minds and hearts of Canadians. We were winning the election, and then two things happened. I believe that all Canadians and the House had better come to grips with it. There was the unprecedented intervention of big business with millions of dollars in an advertising campaigning in support of the deal, an advertising campaign whose spending is outside the bounds of the Election Expenses Act, an advertising campaign contributed to by individual companies across Canada which will appear on most tax returns as a deductible business expense.
In other words, the Canadian people will pay for half of that campaign. We intend to push for changes to the Election Expenses Act to put limits on third party advertising once and for all because it was abused immensely during this election campaign.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Napier Turner: There were also major corporations sending letters to their shareholders and letters to their employees with their paycheques in support of the deal in a campaign of fear. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, and I believe Canadians ought to ask themselves, how much was spent? I believe that we need some good investigative reporting to dig out the total figure of what was spent on this issue on the government side in terms of taxpayers' money, in terms of Tory Party money, and in terms of big business money to win this election.
While I am on the topic of the media, I think it would also be a good idea for the media to take a look at its own role during this campaign. The fact that this Party
had to go to court to persuade the two major English speaking national networks to allow us to use material from the public debates in our own advertising spots is another subject that would make a very interesting topic for investigation.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Napier Turner: I think there were a lot of games being played, and I think that the Canadian public has the right to know who paid for what, and what debts this Government will be forced to repay over the life of its mandate.
The great strategists of the Tory Party are now trying to take credit for what they call "turning the election around". I read all those think pieces. But how did they really do it? Did they do it by responding to the message? Did they do it by engaging us in debate on the issue? Did they do it by arguing the merits of the case? Did they do it by debating the subject rationally across this country?


Some Hon. Members:: No.


John Napier Turner: They could not attack the message because the message was winning, so they attacked the messenger. That is exactly what they did. As Allan Gregg of Decima put it, in an unusually frank interview: "We saw the bridge between the message and the messenger, and we had to blow up the bridge. We had to destroy the messenger's credibility", so they mounted an unprecedented personal attack on my character, on my sincerity, and on my competence. This negative advertising was imported for the first time into Canada from the Government's Republican friends in the United States. It was nothing short of the Americanization of Canadian politics, as the Government wants to Americanize everything else in this country.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Napier Turner: It was the most vicious campaign in Canadian history. I do not for a minute mourn my own personal loss. I have perspective in the history of this country. In political life, you win some and you lose some, and you have to accept the results whatever they may be. I fully accept the results of this election. I have always said that this issue was more important than any individual. I have always said that the cause was more important than anybody arguing it one way or the other. I am satisfied that the position that I advanced on behalf of our Party will be proven by history to be correct and that we are on the right side of history on that issue.
December 15, 1988


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Napier Turner: At the same time I know that the process itself has been damaged in this campaign by the tactics used by the Government. That is something that every Canadian will regret for some time to come. In this campaign through the tactics of the Government, we saw democracy stripped of its majesty. It was a cynical manipulation of public opinion. A power hungry reach for the lower side of human nature. The Government was playing to fear and not to the pride of a nation. I say to the Prime Minister that you have a tarnished mandate, a sullied victory. You bought an election and you sold out the country.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Napier Turner: Canadians will follow the course of future negotiations with a sense of foreboding, with a sense of unease and distaste. Canadians feel helpless as we are now about to be absorbed remorselessly into the American orbit. Canadians will mourn the loss of our sovereignty. What a mark of history for the Prime Minister. Two successive majorities, its true; two successive steps on the road to American statehood.
We in this Party do not intend to sit quietly while this country is being sold out. We in this Party have a mandate, and it is a mandate that is very clear. Millions of Canadians gave us their support because they wanted us to fight this deal, and we will not renege on that commitment. We will continue to lead the forces opposed to this deal. We have a mandate to push for, and insist upon, changes to the legislation, and we intend to pursue that mandate.

Mr. Speaker, we shall propose amendments to ensure that adjustment programs are in place before the agreement is adopted and not after, because after, it will be too late. As the Government knows, or should know, reports Nos. 331 and 334 of the Economic Council of Canada identified no less than 23,963 factories throughout Canada that are now endangered by the trade agreement with the United States. They are threatened because their productivity is considered to be "submaximal", to use the Council's term.
Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement
Just a few days after the election, announcements of plant shutdowns started to come in: Gillette in Montreal and Toronto, 590 jobs; Ortho Diagnostic in North York, 16 jobs; British Footwear in Lachine, 50 jobs; Northern Telecom in Aylmer and Belleville, 870 jobs; Canada Packers in Winnipeg, 90 jobs. And rumours of other closures are pouring in from everywhere.
During the election campaign, the Prime Minister promised time and again to set up labour adjustment programs. He told us that the de Grandpre Commission was working on this question. But this Commission will not present its report for many months! We have certainly seen this Government make the same kind of commitment in the past, always with its hand on its heart, so to speak. We have also seen what happened. Frankly, we do not believe that they are too serious. Therefore, this time, we want commitments from the Prime Minister in writing, directly in the legislation, in the law and nothing less! Admittedly, how often have we heard the Prime Minister and other say that our social programs and regional development programs are not affected by this Agreement. We want to see that in the legislation, on paper, in black and white. We do not want to wait four or ten years to see where these negotiations will take us. We want assurances in the legislation itself, from the beginning, right now.

We will also propose amendments to ensure that our agricultural programs are clearly protected, that our cultural initiatives are not subject to the trade deal, that our environmental protection programs are not compromised, and that Canadians are represented on any committees, panels or commissions that the Governments may create to oversee the operation of the agreement.
We shall also insist that there be comprehensive parliamentary monitoring of the agreement, and a full parliamentary review of the operation of the agreement after three years.
We do not agree with the negotiation process in respect of the definition of a subsidy. We want to ensure that the process is fully public and that Canadians are kept completely informed and aware of the issues being discussed.

December 15, 1988
Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement
We do not want a continuation of what we have had for the last three years, that being secret negotiations behind closed doors.
The only way I and my colleague from Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. Axworthy), and our other colleagues, yet have been able to get any information about this deal at all is not from our Government, not from our Public Service, but from our friends in Washington. The Americans have been open and frank about this deal. We want information with respect to the negotiations on subsidies published here in Canada and made public here on the floor of the House of Commons. In that way we and Canadians generally will be aware of what is going on.
We will continue the Liberal Caucus Task Force on trade to monitor the impact of the agreement as it is implemented and to further define alternatives.
We have received the November 1988 report of the U.S. Trade Representative to Congress, Clayton Yeutter, which report makes it very clear that the Americans understand that the deal goes well beyond simple changes in law and legislation. I quote the words of Mr. Yeutter's report, as follows:
"In many instances, conformity with the FTA will require no modification of the law, but rather a modification of the regulation, policy, or administrative practice implementing the law."
In other words, the Americans are claiming now the right to tell us, not only whether or not a particular piece of legislation is in order, but whether we are administering it properly. Perhaps they will even want to comment on how we are proceeding in this House and whether or not we have the right to propose amendments to the deal.
If the Government opposite had any spine at all, it would serve notice immediately on the U.S. Government that we have no intention of allowing the American Government to dictate our administrative processes and procedures, and the scope of our own administrative practices.
Mr. Yeutter's report also serves to support a contention raised in this House a couple of days ago by the Hon. Member for Winnipeg South Centre, that being that it has been obvious from the beginning that the Americans have known exactly where they were going. They have known all along what they wanted from Canada, and they are not afraid to make it public in the report to Congress. They are absolutely frank about their objectives, about their intentions.
Where is our report? How do we respond? What are our intentions? Where is the Canadian list of U.S. practices and U.S. administrative procedures that we demand be changed? Is this going to be a public document? Will we get to see it? Or will we, as is usual with this Government, have to ask repeated questions in this House and get repeated evasive answers and stonewalling?
We should know now what the strategy of the Canadian Government is. Or does the Government intend to keep it a secret, as it has kept the whole negotiation process to date a secret?
Where is the analysis of the impact that this deal will have over time on our trading partners? Where is that report? Where is that government study?
We in the Liberal Party believe that we have always done better by negotiating trade matters internationally through the GATT and other international bodies.
As I mentioned a few moments ago, that is the process by which, historically, we have achieved the greatest success.
I favour the continuation and expansion of that international approach. I set forth our alternative five-point trade strategy in this House on August 30 last, during debate on the motion for the third reading of the predecessor Bill to Bill C-2. I proposed action in the fields of the GATT, the world economy, Canada-U.S. trade, export expansion and enhancement, and global competitiveness.
Under the chairmanship of the Hon. Member for Winnipeg South Centre, we presented a minority report, ably seconded by the Hon. Member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace (Mr. Allmand).
We have set out an alternative trade policy for this country and one which historically is valid and which, historically, has been successful for Canada.
Our approach would permit us to trade with the world, including with the United States, without sacrificing our sovereignty and our independence as a nation.
There is a wider world out there. We have tremendous opportunities world-wide, particularly in the Pacific Rim and Europe. By concentrating all of our energies on the American market, we are in danger of losing, and are losing, opportunities in the new and growing markets in those countries.
December 15, 1988

We will become a part of fortress North America, in competition with other large trading blocs around the world. And, as nothing more than the junior partner in that enterprise, our role as a voice for reducing trade barriers around the world will be severely weakened and curtailed.
1 believe that the Canada-U.S. free trade deal now before this House, Mr. Speaker, will prove to be an historic mistake for Canada. It will fundamentally change Canada as no other action in our history has changed Canada. It reduces our choices, and it reduces our ability to make those choices for ourselves as Canadians in our own way as a nation.
I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that we in the Liberal Party will abide by the rules of this House; that we will be responsible in our conduct in this House. We will state our case, and nothing more than our case.
I want to say to you, Mr. Speaker-and, through you, to all Canadians-that the fight over this deal is not finished. It is far from over. A new battle has just begun. We in the Liberal Party will continue to lead the fight for Canadian sovereignty. We continue to speak for the millions of Canadians, the majority of Canadians, who voted against this Government and against this deal. We continue to speak for Canada.
With that in mind, Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the Hon. Member for Winnipeg South Centre:
"That the motion be amended by deleting all of the words after
the word "That" and by substituting the following:
That this House opposes in principle and therefore declines to proceed with Bill C-2, an Act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States of America, because that agreement, which was negotiated in a secretive and irresponsible manner and has been rejected by 57 per cent of the Canadian people, will undermine the economic, social and political institutions of Canada, because it will fail to provide guaranteed and secure access to U.S. and other world trade markets, because it will create severe adverse effects on many industries and communities and because it will endanger the economic and social fabric and political independence of Canada."


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: Before proceeding with debate on the amendment, and I will be recognizing the Hon. Member for Oshawa (Mr. Broadbent) in just a moment, the Hon. Minister has a point of order.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, the normal business question was not asked today by my hon. friend, the House Leader for the Liberal Party. Therefore, I wish to advise the House that tomorrow the Government will call Item
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No. 1 on the Order Paper, that is, the motion to provide for extended sittings. I want to offer once again on behalf of the Government an opportunity to the House to extend the sittings over the weekend. I am sure that if there is a disposition among the opposition Parties to consider that suggestion, they can get back to me.
As well, I give notice that at the next sitting of the House, before the Order is called for resuming debate on the motion for second reading and reference to committee of Bill C-2, an Act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States, I shall move that the debate shall not be further adjourned.


Mr. Speaker:: I should say to all Hon. Members that debate will continue on the amendment. There is of course agreement and the usual courtesies for the Hon. Member for Oshawa, Leader of the NDP, and we will not see the clock until he is finished his address.


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise on behalf of my colleagues in this House to participate in this historic debate. The motion we have before us, as Members on all sides recognize, has been appropriately described-and I do not normally agree with the Prime Minister of Canada (Mr. Mulroney) on most matters of political significance in this country-as perhaps the most important measure the Parliament of Canada has debated since World War II.
What is at stake in the Bill that the Government has before the Parliament of Canada is the very future of this country, and it is precisely for this reason that before the election, during the election, and in the present Parliament of Canada the New Democratic Party, in all of its sections, in every province, in every council, including the federal caucus, the New Democratic Party opposes this measure.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, perhaps the most useful way of understanding Canadian history is to see it as a continuing tension between those of whatever generation in the history of our land who have thought it desirable to ensure that all the instruments of power, political, social and economic, remained within Canada so that Canadians themselves would be in a position to determine their own future, and those who, on the other hand, hold a competing view, which has lasted throughout the history of our country, that of the powerful continental lure of the United States.

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Our predecessors in this Parliament, our predecessors in the provincial legislatures, have fought and fought successfully to maintain political independence. However, the struggle, without any ill will necessarily being assumed on the part of the United States of America, has been a real and constant one and will go on in the future.
This struggle has changed as the nature of our country has changed, as the world has evolved. On the one hand we have the view that has dominated the 20th century in the United States, that market principles should predominate not simply in the economy, but that they should predominate in all the principal relationships in society. That view has been argued at length and is broadly accepted in the United States. However, I say, as one North American, I am glad that there is still a minor tradition against that view in the U.S. However, that view has been and is the predominant one in the 20th century.
On the other hand, the modern Canadian tradition is something quite different. Our view, especially as it has evolved since World War II, is that in social policy, in regional development policy, and in cultural concerns, community and other non-commercial values should prevail. That is the Canadian way now, and that is what we intend to struggle to make sure exists in the future of this country of ours.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, my Party and I strenuously opposed a comprehensive trade arrangement with the United States when the Prime Minister first raised the idea with the U.S. President during the Shamrock shuffle of 1985. We did so precisely for the reason that I have just indicated. We fought as a Party in the past in this country, and we fight now and will continue to fight in the future, to ensure that the modern Canadian tradition, not the American tradition, will prevail in the major decisions that are reached within our own country. That is what is at stake in this issue.
In 1985, I said that the Government had no mandate to proceed even with negotiations on such a deal because there was not the slightest bit of discussion of such a comprehensive arrangement that goes well beyond, as Members who have studied and thought seriously about this matter know, the principles of trade. The Government in 1985, I said then and repeat now, had no mandate to proceed. Indeed, the only discussion of such
a comprehensive deal by members of the Government that was formed in 1984, as we have said many times in this House, the only views that had been expressed prior to the 1984 election on the subject matter by the Prime Minister, by the Secretary of State for External Affairs, by the Minister of Finance, by the Secretary of State as he became in the Prime Minister's Government, were that such a deal would be completely contrary to the interests of our country.
So there was no mandate. The Government tried to do what it did in the Parliament of Canada prior to the recent election. Following the recent election I said, and the Minister quoted part of what I had to say, that in our parliamentary system having waged a serious, tough election from one part of Canada to the other-and Canadians of good will have been on on both sides-the Conservatives having obtained a majority Government, they do now indeed have a mandate to proceed with legislation, to have it introduced, debated, and at some point to have a vote taken in the House of Commons. That indeed is what parliamentary democracy in this country and in other countries has been all about.
At the same time I say that if the Government of the day-the Government now holding the reins of power in our Parliament-has that mandate then, as it knows, the substantial majority of Canadians voted for Parties in opposition to this deal. If the Government has obtained a mandate to proceed, then we have our responsibilities in the same parliamentary tradition to raise objections that we believe are serious, to point out criticisms, to talk about alternatives, and to use all the rules and procedures that are democratically available to us to give voice to all those people who voted against this deal. We intend to do so. Nothing I said in the Minister's selective quotation following the election contradicted what I say now.
Beyond that I want to speak on one matter of important procedure here in this democracy of ours. I have had other occasions to say it. In my view, on balance, if we consider the rights of the Government and the rights of the Opposition in the Canadian Parliament, we are somewhat ahead of the other parliamentary systems in the rigour of our democracy and in the particular form of our institutions.
December 15, 1988

But I say in that context that I was shocked that immediately following the election, when the Government was given a very good mandate in our democratic system, and the Prime Minister spoke of reconciliation, that the first act of the Government should be in fact to tear up the rule book of Parliament. That is totally unacceptable. The people of Canada did not vote this Government in to do that.

Mr. Speaker, we believe that this Agreement will change the very foundation of our country and we are prepared to defend this foundation. Our opposition will always be firm during this session of Parliament and after. We believe that this agreement threatens our future and the future of our children. We believe that this agreement threatens our fundamental values and there are thousands of Canadians who agree with us completely. They are concerned about the possible impact on our social programs. They believe that our environment will be threatened. They believe that our commitment to develop the outlying regions will be threatened. They want measures to protect the workers who will be laid off.
Mr. Speaker, we intend to ensure that their voice is heard here in the House of Commons.

The election illustrated that whether or not Canadians support the trade deal they do care deeply about preserving and enhancing our Canadian social policy tradition from medicare to pensions. They want to maintain the possibility of industrial development in all regions of our country, not just in those regions where the market mechanism happens to be working very well. They want to be certain that Government subsidies can be used to protect our environment and not simply used to develop energy for export to the United States at the same price as Canadians will be paying.
1 want to call to the attention, particularly of Members on the other side of the House, what is particularly new and important in this phase of the debate-and I am not going to go over many of the old arguments that have been made and were made prior to the election. It is that there was a new aspect to the debate that occurred during the campaign itself. It was that these messages of concern about social policy, regional development policy and environmental concerns, which will be one of the great ongoing concerns not only in this country but throughout the planet in the next two decades, were raised not simply by Canadians who voted
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for opposition Parties but also by Canadians who voted for the Government, even if they supported the principles involved. It is possible that their knowledge of the details was shaky, and perhaps it was not. But they differed in judgment. They had concerns about these matters as well.
The Government had an obligation when it came back to the Parliament of Canada not simply to pick up where it left off before the election but to respond in the Throne Speech and in a Bill that it brought before Parliament by indicating that it actually listened to the people of Canada. It did not do so.
Immediately following the election I wrote to the Prime Minister urging that he make his election night call for national reconciliation concrete by reaching out to millions of Canadians who expressed concerns about our future, including both those who voted for and against the Government. They wanted assurances that the trade deal would never be used as a vehicle to compromise these programs that I have said come to constitute the modern Canadian tradition.
I asked for action to ensure that our social policies would be protected. Steps could have been taken before Parliament was called back in terms of reaching a formal agreement and undertaking with the United States to have achieved that goal. I asked for legislation to protect those who would be losing their jobs, and I will return to that in just a few minutes.
I drew attention to the five to seven year period ahead of us as a country when the crucial question of the definition of a subsidy must be determined. I asked for a special parliamentary committee to monitor all aspects of the deal. There is already the equivalent of such a committee established in the United States. I did this because the people of Canada and I want to obtain assurances that over the next few years the activities of the Government, whatever the government of the day, will be monitored by an independent committee made up of government and opposition Members in the House of Commons.
Instead of responding in order to reconcile and to reassure, the Prime Minister ignored the appeal. Instead of listening to Canadians in his hour of victory, he callously dismissed their concerns. Instead of referring to new and relevant resolutions and Bills in an imaginative Throne Speech, the Prime Minister produced simply a rehash of what we dealt with in the previous Parliament.

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The Government does nothing and plans simply an extended vacation-and we all need a break. However, I want to put my remarks in the context of this Bill.
What is taking place in our country right now, while the Government is planning to get this measure through Parliament as quickly as it can, is that Canadian men and women in many parts of our land, in the hundreds- indeed in the thousands-are experiencing lay-offs. I wish to digress for a minute. I am quite prepared to accept what was alluded to in the House of Commons the other day. Yes, there are some new investments coming into the country, in some parts. Yes, some of them might be attributed to the trade deal. But I am speaking right now of the other side of the equation as we sit here debating this measure. There are men and women who have been told that their jobs will not be in existence within a matter of weeks. A Parliament that is now debating trade legislation ought simultaneously to be undertaking measures to ensure that those workers, their families, and their communities which will be affected are going to be responsibly responded to by the Parliament of Canada. We should be doing that.
Mr. Speaker, ever since the free trade negotiations got under way the New Democrats have argued that pressures to harmonize as well as the very details of the agreement would lead to Canadian plant shutdowns and that the multinationals would transfer jobs south of the border. This is what the Prime Minister himself said in 1983: "What will happen with this kind of concept is that companies throughout the United States will increase production and close their operations in Canada."
Since the elections, our predictions, and those of the Prime Minister, are coming true. Let us look over the list of shutdowns since November 21. Gillette Canada was established in this country in 1906. On November 23, the president of Gillette Canada announced the closing of its plants in Montreal and in Toronto. The result being that 590 men and women lost their jobs.
Pittsburgh Paint announced they would close the plant they had been operating since World War II, and this took place although the plant was a profitable operation. In the future the company will supply the Canadian market through its American plants. Management claim they are closing their Canadian plant because it is not big enough to install the new equipment needed to make new products. Well, we believe the real
reason behind their decision to leave is that they did not want to follow Canada's environment protection standards, which happen to be stricter than those of the Americans.
As we said on a number of occasions during the campaign, the trade agreement is the source of this kind of confrontation between jobs and environmetal considerations. There is ample evidence to show that our ability to impose our environmental protection standards is compromised by the trade agreement. And who are the victims of such compromises? Certainly not the big companies! The victims are workers, men and women alike, and Canadians who want a healthy environment. Perhaps the Conservatives are prepared to accept that, but certainly we New Democrats are not.

The list of lay-offs continues. Ortho Diagnostic Systems, a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson, announced a transfer of its laboratory test production to New Jersey. Those were not unskilled but sophisticated, important jobs that we thought were durable and long-range jobs. They are moving out.
Allergan, a pharmaceutical company that is a subsidiary of Allergan California, announced on December 2 that it would close its plant in Pointe Claire on January 1. Last week Northern Telecom shut down plants in Aylmer, Quebec and Belleville, Ontario, throwing 870 workers on to the unemployment lines.
I say bluntly that I was astounded at the Government's reaction to this shut-down. This is a Canadian company whose plants that were shut down are profitable. One has received millions of dollars in assistance in different forms from the taxpayers of Canada through the federal Government. It is a company that has a quasi-monopoly in terms of access to the markets in Canada. The Government of Canada, instead of responding in a determined and tough-minded way on behalf of the workers, stood idly by. A Government that cares would not have done that. A Government that cares would have intervened directly to ensure those jobs are kept here in Canada.
Also this past week the President of the United States, in what I frankly regard as a hypocritical act, kept in place an unfair tariff on shakes and shingles. This tariff, when it was imposed long before the recent election, was condemned by the Prime Minister himself, who correctly pointed out that this was totally inconsistent with everything that Ronald Reagan had said as
December 15, 1988

President in terms of the deal he was allegedly negotiating between Canada and the United States. It was totally inconsistent with that. It is a matter that the President, in terms of his executive power in the American system of government, could have done something about this past week.
Instead of removing an iniquitous, unfair tariff that was imposed when Canadians were winning the competition, the President of the United States reimposed it. That is not only unfair and unacceptable to the people of Canada, particularly to the workers affected and the Province of British Columbia, it also reminds us that in this deal something which the Minister for International Trade (Mr. Crosbie), his predecessor, and the Prime Minister told us was not obtained in the final settlement-guaranteed access to the U.S. markets.
What this decision demonstrates, but which the Government quickly sloughed over, is that whenever Canadians win the competition whether in lumber products, steel, plastics, or any sector of the Canadian economy, the United States has the same powers to take unfair action to stop our exports. What President Reagan demonstrated last week is what we will see in the future. Under this deal we can win the competition but the Americans can stop Canadian exports. That is not fairness. That is an unfair deal.
I say to members on the Government side that these recent lay-offs in one sense were hypothetical possibilities when we debated the deal before the election. But all of these announcements I have referred to were made since the election. They are real. They are concrete. Many of those affected are no doubt neighbours of a number of Members of the House of Commons.
While the Government believes that on balance the over-all impact will be positive and will lead to more pluses than negatives-something with which we do not agree-a caring government would have come back to this Parliament and introduced at the same time as this Bill, a Bill similar to that which was brought in with the Canada-United States Auto Agreement in the 1960s. The last time there was such significant dislocation for thousands of families, legislation was brought in to cushion the impact both on workers and communities affected by that arrangement. We should have similar legislation before Parliament at least to cushion the effect on all those men and women who will be losing their jobs over the Christmas period.
We believe that such legislation requires not only provisions that allow for human compensation to working people affected in their communities. We also need a body of experts on the commission who would
Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement
determine rapidly which industries and which lay-offs were the effect of free trade.
Presently we in the House of Commons make our judgment. We do not say that they are totally conclusive. We do not say that our judgment of the plants that I just announced is infallible. However, we say that in these cases there are good reasons to believe the decisions were connected with the expectation of a free trade deal coming into effect January 1, or shortly thereafter. If the Government were sensitive it would not need to take our word for it. It ought to establish a body right now that could make a quick decision about whether any particular lay-off is related to the trade deal, if it is to make sure that compensatory action is taken.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: That, I repeat, is a new and important aspect of this debate. Whatever side of the issue one was on during the election campaign, it seems to me that this Parliament of ours should now be dealing with that matter.
Another issue that concerns us is the next phase, assuming that this legislation is passed as it will be at some point, and we all know that. It will be passed, and when it goes into effect, as we all know, during the next five to seven years, there will be a discussion period, a period of negotiation between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States to sort out the definition of a subsidy.
This for all of us will be a very important process. We are concerned about it, not simply abstractly concerned, or, to take one absurd argument, not because Canadians, whether members of my Party or of any other Party, are inherently anti-American. That is just nonsense. We are concerned about the previous direction taken by American policymakers within the United States on this kind of issue in terms of negotiations not only with Canada but with other countries. We are concerned, in short, about their ideological framework and about the prevailing value system that exists in the United States when it comes to be applied to such important questions as what constitutes a legitimate subsidy.
There should be no illusions about the priority that the Americans attach to the next phase. Some experts on both sides of the border have said that the most important part of the deal for the Americans was Phase 2, if I could put it that way, the five to seven-year period in which subsidies would be discussed and definitions established. Ronald Reagan himself said to Congress on July 25:

December 15, 1988
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"The administration has no higher priority than the elimination of Canadian subsidies which adversely affect U.S. industries."
If the stated intention of Ronald Reagan is ominous, given what his definition and the definition of people like those in his administration is likely to be, past experience, regardless of the administration in the United States, is equally ominous.
To date every major Canadian regional development program, from stumpage rates for lumber, to unemployment insurance for fishermen, to regional industrial and community development grants, to agriculture and grain transportation agreements, has been cited by U.S. industry as constituting an unfair subsidy.
Simon Reisman, that distinguished Canadian, has said-I exaggerate. He is the former friend of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Turner). Mr. Reisman said, concerning the U.S. proposals in this domain, that they were "so onerous that they would have made it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to pursue Canadian industrial development programs and particularly regional development programs". Those are not the words of members of the New Democratic Party or of the Liberal Party or of other people opposed to the deal. This is a description of the American attitude coming from someone who is one of the strongest defenders of the deal for the obvious reason that he was the principal negotiator. He said that if the American view had been accepted at the time of negotiations, in effect it would have been devastating for regional development-


John Horton McDermid: That is the difference.


John Edward Broadbent: I ask the Minister to wait for the rest of the argument. That was their attitude going into the negotiations, that it would have been devastating if it had been accepted in this deal. I thought the Minister might agree with that.


John Napier Turner: So far so good.


John Edward Broadbent: So far so good. That was the attitude going in.
Before I come to the consequences of the deal and where we are going in the next phase, I add the words of the then Deputy Minister of Finance, according to the papers the next Chief of Staff for the Prime Minister's Office, who said just after the deal was signed that as a consequence of the deal-and these are his words and not mine-we would have to change our regional development policies.
While the Prime Minister said during the election debate, and I quote the Prime Minister with pleasure in this context, that Mr. Reisman was instructed not to "accept restrictions on our ability to provide regional subsidies", signing a deal which gave away everythingand I will come to that in a minute-while at the same time leaving the definition of subsidies to further negotiations is no protection whatsoever for Canadians.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, Mr. J. G. Godsoe is the executive director of the Macdonald Commission. As the Government was wont to say very often during the election campaign, this commission advocated a trade deal.


John Napier Turner: But not this deal.


John Edward Broadbent: But not this deal, quite correct. But this executive director of that commission actually opposed this deal. He wrote a very interesting article in The Globe and Mail, not a well-known social democratic newspaper, analysing the potential consequences for Canada of the next phase of the deal. He talked about the real problem of a negotiating team from Canada, and I use the term "negotiating team" loosely, meaning our salesmen who went down there and gave the ship away, having made all the concessions to get a signature on a deal of any kind, now being confronted with the United States, a country somewhat more populous than Canada, somewhat more powerful economically, and now having to make a case to get them to accept our definition of what a subsidy consists of.
I watched the process unfolding, as did Members of Parliament who were here at the time, of these negotiations leading up to the deal. I have no confidence at all in how we will end up with definitions of subsidies and the implications of that for regional development programs, social policy, and environmental concerns, because I saw this Government do the following. It gave the Americans what they wanted in energy. It sacrificed our pharmaceutical industry. It caved in on films. It in fact gave carte blanche to foreign companies to operate here. It in fact gave the ship away already, and I do not trust it to negotiate in the days ahead.
The Minister is obviously somewhat biased toward the other side. He thinks they got something wonderful. I profoundly believe-and a majority of Canadians profoundly believe it-that the Canadian negotiators gave away twice as much as they got in return. There is not much doubt about that. I simply want to say to the Minister: let us set that behind us and consider the future. Whose definition does the Minister really think will be accepted? Even if it is done democratically, I say that the Americans who are 10 times stronger numerically-
December 15, 1988


John Horton McDermid: Oh, get out.


John Edward Broadbent: He does not like this argument.


John Horton McDermid: Just because they are 10 times bigger, we cannot compete?


John Edward Broadbent: Why should an American citizen living in California or Maine or Georgia, someone who has a very different belief system than we have in Canada, ever democratically accept Canadian rules?


John Horton McDermid: You have no faith in Canadians.


John Edward Broadbent: I can tell the Minister, if I were an American, if I had that typical belief system and I knew that we outnumbered Canadians 10 to 1, I would never accept Canada's definition of what constitutes a subsidy, and 1 say to the Government: you should never have gotten us into this position.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: I say to the Minister and to other Members in the House, New Democrats-


John Napier Turner: Where is the Minister? Where is he?


John Edward Broadbent: Well, in fairness to this particular Minister, he explained to me why he is not here, and in fairness to him, there was a legitimate reason. That may not be the case for the Prime Minister who almost never turned up for serious debate in the previous Parliament. He is showing a remarkable consistency by not turning up for this important debate.
New Democrats will never give up the fight to keep our regional development programs secure, because we believe fundamentally as a matter of principle that regional equality is essential to our vision of Canada. As someone has already alluded in this discussion, we finally have that entrenched in the Constitution. We will not accept the possibility of an American definition overturning our regional development programs because we believe and believe with passion that a young person growing up in Cape Breton or in the interior of British Columbia, as I have said many times, ought to have the same opportunities for development as a kid growing up in Dalhousie.
I say also that New Democrats who first fought for pensions and first established medicare will never stop fighting to preserve our social policy tradition of contemporary Canada. New Democrats who have led the fight for a healthy environment in recent years will continue to fight for the definition of a subsidy that will
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continue to provide, if we want, governmental intervention in the economy to ensure that the environment is protected.
For all of these reasons, Mr. Speaker, a New Democratic Party government, if it had been elected this time, would have given the six-month notice and got us right out of that deal. In the meantime, we are now dealing with a Government that has a mandate and will get this legislation passed at some time.
I have already talked about the important human need for legislation to protect workers affected in certain other concerns, but we have also said that what we have to get established is an independent committee here in the House with members from all Parties to act as our watch-dog in the years ahead, and it should not be a subcommittee of the External Affairs and International Trade Committee.
I saw the wording which the Minister of Trade used. He suggested that perhaps the Government would consider the hypothetical possibility of establishing a subcommittee of the External Affairs Committee which could obtain reports from the Government and then provide reports to the House of Commons.
We want, on such an important matter, something that will go to the root of what this country is all about. As Ronald Reagan well understood, we do not want a committee that is directly responsible to the government of the day. We want to see established a monitoring committee, an independent committee of this House, to monitor what will go on over the next five to seven years and to make regular reports to the Parliament of Canada so that we can see what is going on.
In conclusion I want to say the following: we in this country of ours have created a unique nation on the northern half of this continent with quite distinct Canadian values and traditions. Canadians have a commitment not simply to individual rights. We have that, but we also have a solid commitment to the idea of community rights. We as a nation believe in a mixed economy. We believe in a healthy viable private sector, but we also believe in entities in the economy like Petro-Canada, CN, and Air Canada. We believe not simply as a matter of second choice or the worst of all options after everything else fails should you move into the public sector; but we believe-and a majority of Canadians have come to believe it-that there is a legitimate role for the private sector and a legitimate role for the public sector in the Canadian economy.

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Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: That is different from the United States. We are a nation where pensions and health care are not regarded as simply marketable items that you can get if you can afford to get it or that you have to accept charity if you cannot afford to buy it. We in this country have come to understand that pensions and health care go and ought to go to every citizen in Canada as a human right.
We are a nation with a constitutionally enshrined commitment to regional equality. We are a nation where culture creativity is encouraged actively by government. We are a nation of two official languages and many cultures. We are a nation profoundly different and profoundly better in so many aspects of human existence than the United States, and we intend to keep it that way.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: Thus, Mr. Speaker, members of my caucus intend to speak against this legislation and will
continue to fight against a deal that in our view would be seriously injurious to the future of our country. We will not let down those Canadians who have made this great country of ours what it is. We cherish our distinctiveness for ourselves, for our children, and for our children's children. We intend to retain the freedom for each new generation of Canadians to discover and decide for themselves what will be their path to building a better nation. We continue, in short, to plan on fighting the good fight that our predecessors have waged and that our successors will continue long after we are gone.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being 6.27 p.m., pursuant to agreement reached earlier this day, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.27 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Friday, December 16, 1988