1988-07-14

Mr. Jim Hawkes (Parliamentary Secretary to Deputy Prime Minister and President of the Privy Council):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 106(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the Government's response to petitions Nos. 332-4703, 332-4706, to 332-4708 inclusive, 332-4710, 332-4712, 332-4715, 332-4823, 332-4824, 332-4833 and 332-4895.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



POINT OF ORDER


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops-Shuswap):: Mr. Speaker, this is really the first opportunity I have had to raise this point of order. I do so to get today's business off on a most positive and parliamentary note. I have just had a chance to review Hansard for yesterday. At page 17511, the Hon. Member for Calgary West (Mr. Hawkes), referred to the Hon. Member for Essex-Windsor (Mr. Langdon) as lying. I just make the point that this is unparliamentary language, and I would ask the Hon. Member to do the honourable thing and withdraw that remark.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, I thought I had withdrawn any unparliamentary reference yesterday. I am pleased to be able to do so again. I would point out that the same page of Hansard shows that I did use the word "most". The Hon. Member kept insisting I used the word "all". I was correct. The statement made by the Hon. Member opposite was totally incorrect. He would not
correct it. He was wrong. If I slipped into using the term "lying", an unparliamentary term, I am sorry, but I hope he might stand later this day and apologize for misrepresenting what I said.


Mr. Speaker:: I think all Hon. Members know that there are times in this place when in the heat of debate, or what passes for debate, people say things that on quiet reflection they perhaps would not have said. I appreciate very much the Parliamentary Secretary withdrawing that remark and I appreciate the Hon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap drawing it to the Chair's attention.



COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE


Mr. Bill Tupper (Nepean-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour this morning to present the third report of the Standing Committee on Regional Industrial Expansion, in both official languages. Furthermore, in accordance with Standing Order 99(2), the committee requests a comprehensive response from the Government.
This committee report deals with a study of an industrial policy for Canada. The committee heard from a great variety of witnesses from a great variety of backgrounds and from all regions of Canada.
The report provides an historical overview of the industrial development of Canada, the policies that have been in place over the years and how they have enhanced and, at times, impeded our industrial development.
Primarily, the report recommends that our industrial initiatives in Canada be market-driven, all the while having respect for our regional needs and programs, as well as having respect for our cultural and social priorities. Further, it recommends that there be a strong linkage always between our industrial initiatives and our research and development initiatives. Finally, it recommends with equal strength that there be good government-sponsored retraining programs in Canada to help those workers who are part of sunset industries to move to emerging industries.

July 14, 1988
Petitions



GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS-PRESENTATION OF SEVENTH AND EIGHTH REPORTS OF STANDING COMMITTEE

Mr. Felix Holtmann (Selkirk-Interlake):: Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to present from the Standing Committee on Government Operations the seventh and eighth reports to the House, in both official languages.
The seventh report deals with the National Capital Commission. With respect to statues on the Hill, it recommends that the NCC also consider erecting other statues as well as those of former Prime Ministers. Our main concern was with respect to monarchs.
In the eighth report we have entertained the Prince Edward Island Truckers Association in that consideration be given to it in terms of federal government tendering in that province and that it be treated the same way federally as it is provincially.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]
knife is integral to legitimate work, such as the fishing industry, or for a religious reason as in the case of the Sikhs.



PROTECTION OF RIGHTS OF THE UNBORN

['Agreed.']
William Tupper: Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure this morning to present a petition signed by several tens of persons from eastern Canada. This petition addresses the striking down of Section 251 of the Criminal Code of Canada, which has left Canadians without any law restricting abortions.
The petition addresses the fact that nothing in the Supreme Court decision has established abortion as a right. Furthermore, it addresses the fact that human life is a continuum from the moment of conception to the moment of death and that there is no point in time between conception and the birth of an infant at which point we could say that this is not a human life.



Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure and honour to present a petition on behalf of a number of petitioners from the great City of Kamloops, British Columbia. They believe that the federal Government still lacks a mandate from the people of Canada to conclude a trade deal with the United States. They believe that in the course of the negotiations Canadian sovereignty was compromised. They also feel that this deal would deny Canada the policy freedom to determine its own economic future and would undermine Canada's ability to build a society distinct from that of the U.S.
Therefore, they call upon Parliament to dissolve now to allow the people of Canada an opportunity to accept or reject the proposed trade deal during a national general election.


Ms. Margaret Mitchell (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to rise once again to present some 14 petitions containing several hundred names concerning the whole question of the danger of knives in public places.
The many people who have signed these petitions which I have been presenting for some time now are concerned that the high incidence of crimes, including murder, robbery and sexual assault, committed with knives is on the increase. In fact, there was an incident in Ottawa yesterday.
The petitioners call once again-and I hope that the Government and the Minister of Justice (Mr. Hnatyshyn) will take note-for amendments to the federal Criminal Code to prohibit the carrying of knives by citizens in public places. The exceptions to this ban include activities in which the use of a
The petitioners call upon Parliament to pass into law legislation that will protect the life of the unborn child from conception and at all stages of development, with the exception of the extremely rare situation in which an abortion is performed in order to save the life of the mother.


Mrs. Therese Killens (Saint-Michel-Ahuntsic):: Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure and duty to table a petition signed by 214 residents of Gatineau, Hull, Maniwaki, Shawville, Campbells Bay, Cantley, and Buckingham.
The highway safety campaign continues. The petitioners hope that car manufacturers will soon incorporate their requests into the production of future cars. Since 1974 highway safety regulations have allowed the installation of air bags for drivers of passenger cars. The petitioners believe that this device would reduce the number of serious injuries on the roads.
For these reasons the petitioners humbly ask Parliament to order car manufacturers to install air bags in the front seat of cars, and to install adjustable seat-belts with shoulder straps for the rear passengers.


Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present three petitions signed by residents of the City of Winnipeg, as well as residents of Lauret, Selkirk and Tourond.
The petitioners say that the trade agreement negotiated by the Mulroney Government threatens the very fabric of Canadian political and economic sovereignty by removing the power of the Canadian Government to control effectively foreign ownership, to develop Canadian resources in the best interests of Canadians, and to equalize opportunities between regions.


July 14, 1988

Therefore they humbly pray and call upon Parliament to dissolve to allow the people of Canada the opportunity to accept or reject the proposed free trade agreement during a national general election.


Mr. Jim Jepson (London East):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 106, it is my pleasure and duty to present a petition from some 500 constituents of London. They state that many thousands of Canadian unborn children are killed by elective abortion, whereas medical science has provided ample evidence of the unborn child's membership in the human species, and whereas Canadian law does not provide sufficient protection for the unborn child. They call on the Government of Canada to take the necessary steps to ensure that unborn children are protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, I have 20 petitions to table on behalf of Canadians who are strongly opposed to the signing of the Mulroney-Reagan free-trade agreement, and who respectfully argue that the Mul-roney government has sent Canada down the river without getting anything in exchange; that Canadian industries are still not protected against American trade laws; that the United States got everything it wanted in the sectors that count, particularly agriculture, energy, the automobile industry, financial services and investments; that thousands of Canadian jobs are threatened; and that the Conservative government has not provided for any form of assistance to Canadian workers while they adjust to the new conditions.
For these reasons your petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to censure the Canadian government for having signed the Mulroney-Reagan trade ageement.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, today the following questions will be answered: 364, 376 and 381.


Mr. Angus: Order Paper Questions
Since the early retirement option of the Canada Pension Plan was enacted, have individuals in the (a) community of Thunder Bay, Ontario, (6) community of Atikokan, Ontario (c) constituency of Thunder Bay-Atikokan (d) area made up of the constituencies of Thunder Bay-Atikokan, Thunder Bay-Nipigon and Kenora-Rainy River applied for early retirement under this option and, if so, (i) in what numbers (ii) what number of these applications have been granted?


Hon. Jake Epp (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: (i) (a) Thunder Bay, 1,791; (b) Atikokan, 56; (c) Thunder Bay-Atikokan, 968; (d) Thunder Bay-Atikokan, 968, (excluding Thunder Bay, part (a) above); Thunder Bay- Nipigon, 923 (excluding Thunder Bay, part (a) above); Kenora-Rainy River, 906.
(ii) The number of granted applications is not available. Once an early retirement benefit has been granted, the CPP system does not distinguish between early and regular retirement benefits. All eligible applicants should have had their applications granted. Only ineligible applicants (for example those which had never contributed to the CPP) would be refused.


Mr. Turner (Ottawa-Carleton): 1.	Does the Department of the Environment have any plans to work, through the Canadian Parks Service (Canals), with the National Capital Commission, the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and the cities of Gloucester, Ottawa and Nepean, in a collective effort to lower pollution levels and to improve the water quality in the Rideau River?
2.	Is it possible for the Department of the Environment to allocate funds within the new national water policy in a co-operative context with the other concerned authorities, in an effort to locate and deal with sources of pollution flowing into the Rideau River?


Mrs. Pauline Browes (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of the Environment):: 1. The Canadian Parks Service works cooperatively with all levels of government to improve water quality on the Rideau and other heritage canal systems. The main responsibility for the control of water pollution and water quality along the Rideau River, however, rests with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment working in consultation with the various municipalities. It is the Canadian Parks Service's continuing role, while working with others, to improve and maintain water quality through the wise management of water levels and flows within the system of heritage canals.
2. No. There are no funds associated with the Federal Water Policy. However, under this policy, the federal Government will continue its water quality monitoring programs but in a more integrated manner with the provinces than heretofore so that the respective responsibilities of the two levels of Government are clearly delineated. The federal and Ontario Governments are continuing their negotiations towards reaching a federal-provincial agreement on water quality monitoring.


Ms. Copps: July 14, 1988
Air Canada
1.	To the knowledge of the Government, for each of Canada's ten provinces and two territories (a) what is, at present, the complete list of medical procedures and practices that are covered by provincial health insurance plans to ensure compliance with the Canada Health Act (b) what additions or deletions to the list of medical procedures and practices covered by provincial health insurance plans to ensure compliance with the Canada Health Act have been made since it became law?
2.	Does the Department of National Health and Welfare (a) have an active bureau which ensures provincial and territorial compliance with the provisions of the Canada Health Act (b) use particular procedures to ensure that provinces and territories are complying with the provisions of this Act and, if so, what are they?


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: 1. (a) Instead of a list of medical procedures and practices that are covered by provincial health insurance plans to ensure compliance with the Canada Health Act, the Act difines physician services as being insured health services. The Act goes on to define physician services as any medically required services rendered by medical practitioners, and medical practitioners as persons lawfully entitled to practise medicine in the place in which the practice is carried on by that person.
Thus, insured coverage for medical services is linked to and governed by the principle of medical necessity. In practical terms, this principle in the Act is given operational application by provincial governments and professional medical organizations which are responsible for and provide medical services.
An item by item, province by province list does not exist. The closest to such a list would be the individual province's schedule of benefits with details on specific medical services and provincial plan payments for these services. These schedules list thousands of services which are provincial benefits. The information is in minute detail and uses medical terminology throughout.
(b) Provincial health insurance plans have not had to make additions or deletions to insured medical procedures and practices to ensure compliance with the Canada Health Act. Provincial coverage has always proceeded from, and functioned on the basis of medical necessity. Provincial plan coverage that has evolved since the passage of the Canada Health Act is a combination of medically necessary and not medically necessary services.
The much publicized de-insurance of certain health services in Alberta in 1987 overlooked a fundamental fact-that the medical procedures continued to be insured in cases of medical necessity. This provincial government policy was verified by NHW officials to ensure that requirements of the Canada Health Act continued to be met. In any instance where some question exists about insured coverage of medically required health services, the matter is clarified with the province to ensure that non-compliance does not exist or occur.
2. (a) The Health Insurance Directorate of the Department of National Health and Welfare monitors and assesses provincial and territorial compliance with the provisions of the Canada Health Act.
(b) The Health Insurance Directorate monitors developments in provincial and territorial health insurance plans through a combination of sources including: provincial and territorial legislation and regulations, print and electronic media, provincial information submitted for the Canada Health Act Annual Report, and contacts with provincial officials.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The questions as enumerated by the Parliamentary Secretary have been answered.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, if Question No. 353 could be passed as an Order for Return, the return could be tabled immediately.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is it the pleasure of the House that Question No. 353 be deemed to have been made an Order for Return?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. McCurdy: Since September 4, 1984, has the Government spent money in the constituency of Windsor-Walkerville and, if so (a) in what amount (6) on what programs or initiatives?
Return tabled.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Shall the remaining questions be allowed to stand?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Wednesday, July 13, consideration of the motion of Mr. de Cotret that Bill C-129, an Act to provide for the continuance of Air Canada under the Canada Business Corporations Act and for the issuance and sale of shares thereof to the public, be read the third time and passed.

July 14, 1988
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Member for Cape Breton-The Sydneys (Mr. MacLellan) had the floor.


Mr. Russell MacLellan (Cape Breton-The Sydneys):: Mr. Speaker, when we adjourned yesterday I was speaking about the retrogressive policies that will be undertaken by Air Canada when or if this privatization takes place. The major losers of these retrogressive steps will be the Canadian public, and they are not being taken into consideration. Yesterday I was mentioning that what was likely to happen is that there will be one central reservations area in this country. This is what Air Canada has done in the United States. It has provided one reservation area and if one calls for a reservation or information, the call goes to one city in the United States. That is possible in Canada with the technology that is in place at the present time. There is no reason, technologically speaking, that this cannot be done. This is what the Government and the management of Air Canada are saying can be done.
What is not being considered are the feelings of the people of Canada having to call to a special telephone line, for example, to some person in Toronto that perhaps has never been to the area in which the caller lives, or experienced the difficulties that the caller has experienced in arranging flights from that area, or the weather conditions. These are things that were not conceivable a few years ago, but now with privatization on top of deregulation, not only is it conceivable, but it is very possible.
In the one day of committee hearings held we asked what questions we could within that one day time frame. We asked the management of Air Canada about maintenance and contracting out maintenance and flight attendants' times. The management said: "No, that was not going to be done". But what we heard from the unions that appeared before the committee was totally different. The unions stated that contracting out has very definitely been considered and discussed by the management of Air Canada. They said that they have openly considered the possibility on their flight from London to Singapore through Bombay of actually contracting out flight attendants in the portion between Bombay and Singapore, and that that is now being actively considered.
What about maintenance? Maintenance has been at a high standard in this country. We have always boarded our airplanes in Canada and felt that they were maintained as well as any airplanes in the world could be maintained. Now, what about contracting out of maintenance and doing maintenance outside Canada? This is something that most Canadians would not even consider being possible, but it is something that is and has been talked about.
The management of Air Canada has stated that it is not considering that, but in a statement before the committee by the National Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers Union of Canada they stated: "More recently, in an issue of Air Canada's in-flight magazine, EnRoute, Mr. Jeanniot sang the praises of contracting-out
Air Canada
work to other countries". They went on to state: "What is hailed by the company as global generosity is a mean-spirited attempt to find cheap labour. When a government does nothing to prevent the possibility of such business practices, it gives its consent." I think that says it as well as anyone can say it.
Obviously the Government knows that contracting out is being considered, and the Government is going along with the practices that Air Canada will be undertaking if privatization takes place. That is not only a mean-spirited attitude on the part of the Government, but it is an irresponsible attitude.
In committee we heard from the executive of Air Canada that employees of Air Canada will share in the largess that will occur as a result of privatization of this Crown corporation, and they will be able to buy shares. Nothing was said about whether some employees of Air Canada can afford more shares than other lower paid employees. Nothing was indicated about whether employees with more seniority would be offered the shares at a reduced price. There were questions along those lines, but no assurances were given.
What happens if the employees of Air Canada are successful in being able to buy the shares of Air Canada? The Government will have us believe that this would give the employees a voice in the operation of the airline. That path has been trodden many times, particularly in the United States with airlines that were in difficulty. Employees were told that the company could not afford to pay the salaries that they were asking for, and were even telling employees that they would have to take a cut in salary, but in exchange the company was going to give the employees shares in the airline. The employees were not pleased about this and did not want their salaries reduced, but the shares in the airline would at least give them an opportunity to have some say in what the airline would be doing. Well, it meant absolutely nothing. The employees had such a small number of shares that they were insignificant in comparison to the number of shares held by the rest of the private sector that the employees were not even contemplated. When their actual in depth knowledge and experience in the airline was brought up, it was not listened to. All that was considered was the bottom line. That is exactly what the situation will be with respect to Air Canada.

Mr. Speaker, Canada is a very large country. We need a service such as Air Canada currently provides, because it is a public company and only a public company can provide such a service in a country as large as Canada.
If there is no public company to provide this service, the citizens of Canada will feel the difference, because the service will be completely different. The service will be less regular, with fewer flights, less comfort and fewer in-flight services.
There is no doubt that this will happen. That is because if Air Canada is not a public company, there is no need for a service of that sort because that service costs money. It is

July 14, 1988
Air Canada
expensive! But if it is possible to provide the same service at a lower cost than Air Canada does now, Air Canada will cut its expenditures. When Air Canada cuts its expenditures, other airlines-Air Canada's competitors-will do likewise. This will not result in good service for Canadians.
[DOT] (U30)

Mr. Speaker, Air Canada has been a Crown corporation in this country for 51 years. Fifty-one years. We have a company on which all Canadians can rely. We are going to destroy it because the Government finds this offensive to its political ideology. Air Canada has not received a government subsidy in 25 years.
It is interesting to hear that one of the Conservative Members complaining is from the Northwest Territories. If anybody in Canada should know the importance of the servicing of our regions, it would be that Hon. Member. We are not going to help the employees if we privatize the airline, because whether the employees gain shares or not is insignificant. They are not going to be heard. In addition, the employees already have shares in Air Canada, as does the public of Canada right now.
Why the erratic behaviour on the part of the Government in not really coming clean and telling us why it wants this privatization? Why has the Government denied the public of Canada the right to be heard to the extent that they should have been heard? We had one day of hearings-and that was on June 22-yet a couple of weeks went by before we actually got to report stage. We could have heard many more Canadians, many more groups, without delaying this Bill one day. In fact, in testimony before the committee, the member of the Canadian Labour Congress said that when she called to find out why there was not more time allowed for witnesses, she was told that this Bill had to be passed by June 30. We knew, when she made the call, that the House was going to be sitting in the month of July. They could not use the excuse that the House was going to be closing. This is the irresponsible, clandestine, derogatory nature and atmosphere in which this Government has forced the Canadian public to consider the privatization of this very valuable asset.
Yesterday I mentioned that there will be a reduction of flights, that more communities will cease to be serviced by Air Canada. What Air Canada and the other major airlines would like is to just fly between and among the large centres of this country, the metropolises of this country, where the big volumes are. They do not want to go to Sydney, Nova Scotia, to St. John's, Newfoundland or Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, or areas like that. They may have a token presence in Halifax, but that would be all that they really would have.
We will have to serve the feeder aircraft with people coming out of hospitals having to stand and wait until each airline gets its engine started and backs away. The major airlines want to reduce service in Canada, to reduce the number of cities and
centres in this country between which they have to fly and, of course, to broaden their international activity. That is something they really want to do.
They are going to be competing against other international airlines. They feel that Canadians should be proud. This is something that is supposed to fulfil and gratify Canadians, that their former national airline is going to be playing with the big boys internationally. How can a Canadian feel proud when that same Canadian is being rejected by their own Crown corporation? The service in Canada is going to be diminished. Why should we feel proud about increasing foreign flights when our own service in Canada is being diminished? We are not going to have the same service, and Air Canada does not deny that.
I referred yesterday to Great Britain, which privatized British Airways, and then British Airways proceeded to purchase British Caledonian. There is now only one airline in Britain. It is one thing to deregulate because you are going to lose services. It is even worse if you add privatization to deregulation. Then you have Air Canada not forced to keep a certain standard, and the standard of all of the airlines is going to suffer.
If you only have one airline in Canada, it is open season on the Canadian public, not to mention the employees of Air Canada. When British Airways was getting ready for privatization, they laid off 23,000 employees. What is the value? How will the value of Air Canada be determined? We are going into the privatization for two reasons: first to satisfy the ideology of this Government; second, to provide a down payment for new planes.
How is the value of Air Canada going to be determined? We have not been told that. We have not been told how the value of this very valuable national resource is going to be determined. Are we are giving up carte blanche in this House of Commons to an underwriting syndicate decision-making on the value of Air Canada? We are giving up, without any parliamentary review, to an underwriting syndicate the right to determine the value of Air Canada. That is incredible, particularly in view of the changes that were made in 1984 to the Financial Administration Act.
Under the Financial Administration Act, Parliament should be provided the opportunity to review that very vital aspect of a privatization of our national airline. We are not being given any consideration on that. Not only that, but both the Government and Air Canada have hired separate advisers on how they are going to handle the privatization. It is difficult to arrive at a fair price. It seems that the Government and Air Canada have no idea as to how they are going to arrive at that fair price. The people who are continually going to be left in the dark and in the lurch are the public of Canada.
What consideration should the people of Canada be given? One thing that should not be happening is the public of Canada being treated with indifference in the attempt by this Government to privatize Air Canada with obscene haste. That
July 14, 1988

is exactly what is happening. The Government does not want public scrutiny of this privatization. That is the reason why it is pushing the Bill through so quickly. That is the reason why it only allowed one day of hearings, without opportunity for the people in the regions to be heard. Air Canada has not only been a service; it has been a builder of Canada. It has had a binding effect and it has been a source of bilingualism in Canada. It has been in existence for 51 years.
It was a reason and a force for bilingualism in Canada. Now bilingualism is no different from any other subject, and it is not very important to this Government.
It is incredible! But thinking about public issues, about the needs of the public, about the future of bilingualism, is not very important to this Government.

The privatization of Air Canada is giving us a tremendous insight into this Government. Along that same vein, the Government does not want Air Canada to be a window on the commercial airline practices of this country. The Government says it knows what is going on in the airline industry because it has a Crown corporation that is a player. The Government says: "Let's get rid of it and turn it over to the private sector. The people of Canada have no reason to know about what is going on in the airline industry in Canada or internationally."
What about prices, Mr. Speaker? We have been told by the Government that prices will go down with privatization. We were told that airline fares would go down with deregulation. Prices are not going down in the United States. They are going down on some select sexy routes people may want to take for winter vacations or routes between certain large cities. You see the rates advertised in the various newspapers and magazines. But if you ask people in the smaller towns and smaller cities, they tell you prices are going up because there is no regulation on what airlines can do or charge. If one company raises prices, you will certainly not get a reduction in price by another airline, Mr. Speaker. You will most probably get an increase and maybe competing airlines will hold on to the prices they had before. When one airline increases its prices, they all increase their prices. That is the way things have worked. We saw that happen at the gasoline pumps and with drug prices. There is no reason to think that this sort of thing will not happen with airline fares.
I would like to speak about some of the witnesses who came before our committee, particularly the unions who I thought gave excellent testimony. They were very sincere and pointed out an awful lot about the inside workings of Air Canada and the airline industry about which the people of Canada have a right to know. I am referring to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers who complained, as did all unions, about the way the Government was rushing this Bill through committee without adequate debate and the hearing
Air Canada
of sufficient witnesses. That was a position taken by all unions which appeared before the committee. With respect to the Canadian Union of Public Employees, CUPE, it said;
New owners can contract out the work to foreign nationals possibly creating a lay-off situation. Air Canada threatened this in 1985 but backed off under political pressure. Once privatized, they will try again.
That is the word before a committee of a very important and significant union in this country which obviously knows what Air Canada tried to do in 1985. Although we were told that contracting out is not being contemplated, the union knows that contracting out was contemplated. CUPE is concerned not only about jobs but the level of service.
Air Canada wants more international routes-


Mr. Johnson:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. At this time I would like to give the Hon. Member for Cape Breton- The Sydneys (Mr. MacLellan) an opportunity to make a correction to something he said in his speech. I heard the Hon. Member say that he had questioned as many people as possible during the committee hearing. I was a member of the committee and I am sure the Hon. Member will recall that when the Air Canada Employees Ownership Committee appeared before us the Hon. Member refused to question its witnesses. That is on the record of the committee.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: That is not a point of order.


David Orlikow: On the same point of order, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: If the Hon. Member for Winnipeg North is going to elaborate on the same statement, it will not be a point of order either. It is debate. But I will listen to the Hon. Member for Winnipeg North.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, as you have already pointed out the Member's intervention was not a point of order. The Member will remember that I did question that so-called committee and it had very few answers about its membership, its constitution-


Morrissey Johnson: Mr. Speaker, I made reference only to the Hon. Member for Cape Breton-The Sydneys.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Member for Cape Breton-The Sydneys has the floor.


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: Mr. Speaker, I do not recall having said what has been attributed to me by the Hon. Member for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception (Mr. Johnson) because we could not have possibly questioned all the witnesses, so few came before the committee on that one day that we were allowed to hear witnesses. I will certainly mention the group to which the Hon. Member referred. I have not left that out by any means. I am coming to that and I will be doing it very shortly.


David Orlikow: A group of phoneys.

July 14, 1988
Air Canada


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: I want to refer now to the National Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers Union of Canada, the CAW. I have referred to its statement about contracting out. In the statement other good points were made which I think bear mentioning. These people reminded the committee that at least three criteria were identified by the former Minister of State for Privatization, now the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mrs. McDougall), as prerequisites for a Crown corporation to be turned over to the private sector.
The first of these criteria is that the Crown corporation in question no longer serves a public policy purpose. Air Canada certainly continues to serve a public policy purpose. It is serving the needs of the public of Canada. Air Canada is serving the Canadian public and is looking after the interests of Canadians with respect to the expected level of maintenance as well as competition. If we do not have that public policy purpose, then, of course, it is the Government that is throwing away the public policy purpose. Certainly one is there if the Government is to recognize its responsibility.
The second criteria governing the sale of Crown corporations is that the corporation adds to the national debt. Air Canada does not add to the national debt. Air Canada has not been granted any funding for a great many years. Since 1973, I think, there have been only two years when Air Canada had a deficit. But the Government will ignore that. In 1986, Air Canada reported a profit of $40.4 million. In 1987, Air Canada reported a $45.7 million profit, a 13 per cent increase over the profit in 1986.
The third criteria stated by the previous Minister of State for Privatization for a change from public to private status is that the Crown corporation is unable to compete effectively. Air Canada has shown that it is perfectly able to compete effectively. The Government sets out these three criteria and has proceeded to ignore them. How many times have we seen that happen not only with respect to Air Canada but with respect to so many other things? The Government tries to set out policy, then does not like the results of the policy it set out and proceeds to ignore it. Perhaps it is because the Government has become bored trying to act in the public's interest or because it offends some of the vested interests to which this Government tries so hard to be nice.
In the same brief it is quoted by the CAW that:
Air Canada workers in Atlantic Canada, Quebec, northern Ontario,
Saskatchewan and British Columbia can look forward to a choice between
leaving their homes and communities or accepting a $6 an hour job with a
commuter carrier or being out of a job altogether.
That is a sad commentary if that is what is going on in this country. We were assured that that is exactly what is going on in this country today.
The major airlines are dropping services to many communities and some of these services are being picked up by feeder
airlines which pay their employees considerably less than the major airlines. The alternative is that service is not being provided at all.
We were told something very interesting by the executive of Air Canada. We were told that there was no surplus in the Air Canada pension plan. Yet, the presentation made to us by the CAW states:
As of December 31, 1987, according to the company's annual report, the Air
Canada pension fund had a market value of $2.35 billion (this was after the
October 1987 stock market crash), compared to liabilities of $1.87 billion, for
a surplus of $485 million. This pension piggy bank will be a very tempting
target for a private corporation.
The company told us that there was no surplus in the pension plan. I refer this very important question to the other place when it gives consideration to this Bill, as it undoubtedly will shortly.
I want to refer to the group that the Hon. Member from Newfoundland mentioned just a few minutes ago. This is a group called the Air Canada Employee Ownership Committee.


David Orlikow: Who are they?


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: Who are they indeed. That is probably one of the best kept secrets in Canada.
We have to take this in the context of the situation in which it occurred. We have to consider first that the Government only allowed one day for witnesses in committee, and the pilots were our first witnesses. Then all the other unions were lumped together in one group. Then as our third set of witnesses we heard two people from the private sector. The fifth group, the executives of Air Canada, followed in the evening, but the fourth group of witnesses was this group called Air Canada Employee Ownership Committee.
This is a group with no constitution, no executive, no standing before the law whatsoever-


David Orlikow: No membership list.


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: No membership list whatsoever. It is one of the most clandestine organizations, evidently, in Canada. This group was brought in even though public consumer groups such as Transportation 2000 were denied access to the committee. This group was brought in to refute the testimony of the unions. It was the equivalent of union busting.
The Government flatly denied that the unions had the right to speak on behalf of the workers of Air Canada so it brought forward this group comprised of employees of Air Canada. The only criteria for being a member of this committee is to send in $2.
The Hon. Member from Newfoundland is correct. I refused to question this group because I refused to be a part of what the Government was trying to do. I took this as an affront. Even if the union executive did not have any members who agreed with it, the union executive still, constitutionally, has the right to speak for its membership. The Government did not
July 14, 1988

recognize that and it agreed to let the union speak only to try to overturn its testimony by having members of the government side put the same questions to this bogus group as were put to the unions in the morning.
I have no objections to the members of this committee. They are good people. I do not want to be condescending to them, but I do not-


Mr. Blenkarn:: You wouldn't even question them. You wouldn't even talk to them.


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: That's right, because they don't have any standing. It was trumped up by the Government to override what the unions were saying.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: You're so high-handed, you wouldn't even talk to them. God, you think a lot of yourself.


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: It just goes to show the inferiority and insecurity of this Government, with 208 Members-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Order, please. This is only Thursday. I would hope that the Hon. Member would allow the Hon. Member for Cape Breton-The Sydneys to finish his speech.


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: This is another example of government Members not wanting to hear the truth. The truth stings their little eardrums. I will simply continue as if I had not been rudely interrupted by the Hon. Member.
In its presentation, the Air Canada Employee Ownership Committee said:
In the early summer of 1984 our committee started a campaign in Air Canada! to develop awareness and interest from our fellow employees. We focused this campaign on the benefits and opportunities that privatization would present. Two years later we had received donations from over 7,500 employees.
However, the committee does not have a membership list. There could be 7,500, 750, 75 or 7 members of this committee. It is obvious that the committee was set up primarily and exclusively to try to push through the privatization of Air Canada. It is incredible that it was allotted standing by the Government before a committee when so many people in Canada were denied access to the committee.
I think the whole situation is a travesty. We are privatizing a public corporation that is already owned by the people of Canada. We are telling them how great it is that they will be able to buy shares in a company they already own. However, 25 per cent of the shares they already own will be held by nonresidents. We are trying to tell Canadians that they will have lower fares when actually the experience in other countries has shown that fares have increased.
We are telling Canadians that they are going into a brave new world, probably the same brave new world that George Orwell described. The new world of deregulation and privatization is a world in which aircraft will be late, flights will be cancelled, seats will be jammed in closer to allow for more
Air Canada
passengers, food services will be worse, there will be overbooking and maintenance will be pushed way down on the priority list of the airline. Perhaps there will even be contracting out of maintenance, as the unions warned would happen.
Canada is a large country that needs a public airline. Air Canada has set the standard for airline services in Canada. If Air Canada is allowed to reduce its services, then of course the others will follow suit and all of them will make more money. That is what the Government thinks is great. It does not matter that the services to the public will be reduced and that the consumers will be inconvenienced. It is important, though, that some people make more money.
We have heard that most of the airlines in the world are now privatized. Why is this Government following like a bunch of lemmings, taking the Canadian public over the cliff with it, by privatizing this asset just because it has been done in other countries? This will be a day that Canadians will remember, along with the day this Bill gets Royal Assent, because this is the day the Government of Canada has disregarded the interests and jeopardized the safety of the Canadian public by throwing away the standard of airline services we have had in Canada for 51 years.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, members of the New Democratic Party have opposed this Bill from the day it was introduced. Everything we have seen and heard since then has convinced us more than ever that we were right.
We saw the spectacle of the Government imposing closure at second reading stage. We saw the spectacle of the Conservative majority members of the committee ramming through a motion that provided that all witnesses would be heard on one day. That meant the committee could not travel. That meant the number of witnesses that could be heard was very limited. That meant those witnesses who were heard were given a very short period of time.
I am sorry that the Parliamentary Secretary is not here because yesterday I heard him make one of the most unfair, dishonest and partisan speeches I have ever heard. He accused members of the Opposition, who wanted a longer debate on another Bill, of filibustering. He was a member of the Conservative gang who stormed the Speaker's chair, disrupted this House, kept the bells ringing for 16 days, and he has the gall to accuse Members on this side of perverting the parliamentary process and being undemocratic. He was a member of the parliamentary task force in 1980 which travelled this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific, visited almost every major city and many towns, looking into the problems of employment in the 1980s, and he has the gall to accuse Members who want the free trade committee to travel of wanting to travel so they can go fishing and have fancy meals. It takes an awful lot of gall and a big set of blinders so that he can see only what he wants to see.

July 14, 1988
Air Canada
The facts are that we are dealing with a situation of tremendous importance to this country. I remind Hon. Members that it was the first Prime Minister of Canada who realized that the economic lines of this continent run north and south. He realized that without a railway there would be no Canada. He got the people and Government of Canada to give hundreds of millions in loans, grants and land so a railway would be built. Today that would amount to tens of billions of dollars.
It was a Liberal Government, more than 50 years ago, on the instigation of the best businessman in that Government, C. D. Howe, who realized that we needed a national airline and that the private sector was not ready to participate because they could not see a profit, and who set up a national, publicly-owned airline. That company, first called Trans-Canada Air Lines, now Air Canada, has been a major success in every way. It has provided service to the people of Canada. It has made a profit in almost every one of the 51 years it has been in operation. It already belongs to all the people of Canada, so to suggest that we privatize it in order to give the people of Canada the right to participate in ownership is, to say the least, misrepresenting the facts.
I remind Hon. Members that the current Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) said on January 15, 1985, that Air Canada was not for sale at that time. He said: "There may be some persuasive arguments in the case of Air Canada some people can make in regard to the disposition of equity. I will take a look at it. But Canada needs a national airline". Yet what we have is a proposal to sell 45 per cent of Air Canada. Not only that, when the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Mazankowski) gave notice of this he said: "The legislation will permit the transfer of all Air Canada shares to the public". In other words, this is just the first bite.
How do the people of Canada feel about this? On March 31 of this year The Toronto Star published the results of a poll taken by Angus Reid. The question was: Should the Government sell any of the following Crown corporations to the private sector? Air Canada: Not sell, 53 per cent of the people. Sell, 35 per cent of the people. On March 5, 1988, The Globe and Mail published the results of a similar poll taken by Environics. The question was: Do you think the Government should or should not sell Air Canada? Should, 31 per cent. Should not, 51 per cent.
Why is the Government doing it? There is no reason. It does not have to do it because Air Canada is not operating efficiently. It does not have to do it because the people of Canada want Air Canada sold. It is doing it because of its commitment to the idea that the private sector can do anything better than the private sector. Therefore, sell off everything that can be sold off.
This ignores the history and experience of Canada. Our experience is that Governments, federal and provincial, Conservative, Liberal, Social Credit, PQ, CCF or NDP have at various times realized that there was a need for a certain
service which the private sector was not prepared to provide. Therefore, the Government of the day, federal or provincial, set up a Crown corporation to do what was necessary.
The Liberal Member who led off this debate talked about how the committee was restricted in its hearings. Yet we heard some very potent points made by some of those who appeared. The unions pointed out that the share price which will be set for the 45 per cent of the company that will be sold would be low because it is only a minority of the shares and therefore the private sector would be loathe to buy it. Besides that, since last October the value of shares has plummeted. That view was expressed not just by the unions, it was expressed by representatives in the industry who market shares. It was shared and expressed by the head of British Airways, which is privately owned.
We are seeing a Government so determined to do what its ideology tells it to do that it is going to sell a controlling interest in the company for $300 million. Yet the company has assets worth close to $3 billion.
Let me just take a moment to talk about this so-called Air Canada employees group which came forward to argue for the privatization. This group has ostensibly been in operation for four years or more, yet when I asked them who they were, they admitted they had no officers, they had no membership lists, they had no executive, they had no constitution, and in fact had no real organization. So much for that organization.
We are told that the Government is proposing in this Bill to sell only 45 per cent of the company and 55 per cent of the shares will still belong to the people of Canada. The Government says they will be handled in a passive way. That means that the government shares will not be voted when any questions are discussed. That means that the owners of the 45 per cent of the shares will decide on issues important to Air Canada. The Government says that no one person can own more than 10 per cent of the shares. The Government is not saying that one person will own one-tenth of the shares but that one person or one group of people can own 10 per cent of the 45 per cent which will be voting on decisions the company has to make. That means that if two groups have 10 per cent each they will in fact control the company, they will make the decisions about company operations, company purchases of planes, and everything else.
We moved an amendment on the issue of foreign ownership because this Bill says that the foreign ownership of Air Canada shares will be limited to 25 per cent. We moved an amendment which, of course, was defeated, that foreign ownership be limited to 5 per cent. We did that because a 5 per cent foreign ownership restriction would prevent Air Canada from falling into foreign hands.
As I have said, the Government has indicated that 45 per cent of Air Canada shares will be sold and that the remaining 55 per cent will be voted passively. In other words, the 45 per
July 14, 1988

cent tail will wag the 55 per cent dog. The foreign-held 25 per cent could well constitute a majority of the 45 per cent total of privately held shares. Clearly the people of Canada do not want Air Canada controlled by foreign interests because Air Canada is Canada's national airline.
We should also realize that the 25 per cent limitation exists because that is the limitation the United States places on foreign ownership of its airlines. If and when the United States changes that proportion, as it is widely expected to do in the next two years, as a result of free trade Canada will be under tremendous pressure to harmonize. When that occurs partnership arrangements will be extended when, for example, American Airlines buys out Canadian Airlines as a partner in the building of the third terminal building of Toronto.
These were warnings given to the committee by Professor Fred Lazar, a transport economist at York University which, of course, the Conservative majority on the committee ignored completely.
We moved an amendment which would limit the number of shares that the Minister could sell or otherwise dispose of to 45 per cent. Nowhere in this Bill is there a limit on the amount of Air Canada shares that can be sold. The Government says it will sell only 45 per cent of the shares but Clause 8 leaves the percentage figure entirely open. It could be 1 per cent, 100 per cent, or anywhere in between.
This amendment takes the Government at its word that it wants to keep a majority share and inserts 45 per cent which would still give the Government majority control. We believe, of course, that Air Canada should be 100 per cent publicly owned and the Government, if it meant what it said, should have supported our amendment which, of course, it did not do.
Clauses in this Bill supposedly guarantee that Air Canada will maintain its maintenance and overhaul bases in Winnipeg, Montreal, and Mississauga. Very significantly, this Bill says nothing about the finance office located in Winnipeg which employs about 500. It was very clearly stated at committee that the Air Canada workforce, particularly the machinists, have no confidence in the maintenance bases being kept in the cities of Winnipeg and Montreal.
The major base and most of the major offices of Air Canada were in Winnipeg from the day the company was formed. Without the approval of the then Government the officers of the then company, step by step, moved more and more of the company's operations, including the main overhaul base, from Winnipeg to Montreal. We say, as do the unions, that there is nothing in this Bill which guarantees that the workforce in the bases in Winnipeg or Toronto will remain at the numbers which they have at the present time.
The amendment we moved extended the guarantees to those cities by adding that the workforce at each would equal those attained in the 1987-88 financial year. In this way Air Canada management will guarantee jobs in these cities. That amendment was rejected out of hand by the government Members of
Air Canada
this House. Of course, nothing has been said about the finance office.
We moved an amendment which would guarantee that flight attendants would also be considered to have permanent bases in these cities where Air Canada now has bases; Montreal, Halifax, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, and Vancouver. Air Canada now has six bases. The flight attendants' union, CUPE, wants these bases maintained for the same reasons that the machinists want bases maintained. They believe that Air Canada is a national airline and should represent the entire country, not only the largest cities. They see Air Canada heading toward only two bases; Vancouver with its international focus, and Toronto. Smaller regional centres will be squeezed out.
What this will do to the staff is simply horrendous. They will have to move, which will create tremendous problems, work for one of the feeder lines at a fraction of the wages they now get, or lose their jobs. That amendment was rejected by the Government.
We moved amendments which would require Air Canada to maintain its existing standards in respect to safety, maintenance, and customer service. That amendment would require the Commissioner of Official Languages to monitor the bilingual nature of Air Canada because we understand that Air Canada management has been lobbying to have Clause 10, which supposedly guarantees that, removed. However, we failed in all these amendments.
As I said at the beginning of my remarks, Mr. Speaker, there is no legitimate reason for this proposal by the Government. The company is efficient. It is providing service for the people of Canada. Where it has cut back on its service to smaller centres, this has been done because of deregulation and because it is cheaper for feeder lines, which do not have the same standards of wages and safety which Air Canada has, to service these areas. It has been a financial success.
We are dealing with a Bill brought forward specifically to meet the very right-wing, pro-enterprise ideology of this Conservative Government. We say that this Bill is wrong. We said that at the beginning and will continue to say it. I hope that in the not-too-distant future we will have a government which is not Conservative, a government which will reinstate Air Canada as a publicly-owned corporation.


Morrissey Johnson: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a few brief comments. When opposition Members talk about the need for the Government of Canada to have a national airline or a national railway, I believe they are forgetting that the first railway across this great country was built by private enterprise.
It was built by Canadian Pacific and is still operating and providing good service. I doubt anyone in the Opposition can deny that Canadian Airlines International is presently serving

July 14, 1988
Air Canada
more cities and towns than our national airline, Air Canada, is serving.
The Opposition talks about contracting out of services and the fear that aircraft would be serviced overseas. Certainly no one in their right mind would think that an aircraft that needs servicing would not be serviced in another country but flown back to Canada. If it requires servicing in another country overseas, I am sure no pilot would take his plane off the ground to fly it back to Canada. Pilots have the greatest respect for safety and we should be proud that all Canadian airlines operate with a good safety record. We know that there will be accidents. Some of them will be a result of mechanical problems and some will be from human error. I do not think we will ever erase that possibility.
The airline employees who appeared before the committee were received quite favourably by the Liberal Government in 1981 when it was looking at the possibility of privatizing Air Canada. That is how that group of 7,500 came about.
Members have said that they did not have a chance for questioning enough people. The Canadian Air Line Pilots Association appeared. All of the unions representing the employees appeared, and there were two from the private sector. I might add, they were on the list of witnesses which the Opposition wanted to appear.
As far as I know, the Conservative majority on the committee willingly gave approval for the appearances of witnesses that the Opposition put forward.
I do not know why they did not want to have a group of people representing some 7,500 who voluntarily contributed to that association to appear before the committee and add their views on what was being said.
Of course, Air Canada management appeared. I was somewhat taken back when the Hon. Member for Cape Breton-The Sydneys (Mr. MacLellan) refused to question the airline ownership committee witnesses. I was astonished because I thought he would have wanted to get another view from the employees.
I do not know why the opposition Members want to travel across Canada. This matter has been discussed for some time and contrary to their view that people who appeared before the committee did not have enough time to prepare briefs, I suggest that they had months to prepare their briefs. They knew what they were doing. I was somewhat surprised that they could not put up stronger arguments against privatization.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, this supposed Air Canada group that believes in privatization has been in existence, they say, for more than four years. They have no formal organization, no membership list, no officers and no constitution. They certainly did not present us with a list of the 7,500 employees who have contributed. That is why we are skeptical about them.
The Hon. Member says that the railway was built by private interests. Of course it was, but surely the Member knows that the CPR promoters were encouraged to build the railway because they were given loans and grants, which were never repaid, in the form of hundreds of millions of acres of land which were worth hundreds of millions of dollars at that time and probably worth hundreds of billions of dollars now.
The Member suggests that our airlines are safe. I remind the Member that a royal commission led by Mr. Justice Dubin looked into airline safety and procedures in northern Ontario. His report was scathing.
I remind the Member from Newfoundland that the former Leader of the NDP in Alberta, Grant Notley, was killed in the crash of a small feeder airline plane which, according to reports, should never have travelled. The pilot travelled because the company was so determined to make a profit that it told him he either fly or be fired. This was not once, but many times.
We have very legitimate reasons for being very suspicious about the downgrading of safety standards in the airline industry in this country because of deregulation and because of privatization. The Member comes from Newfoundland, which has a very small and sparse population. He should be much more interested in safety than he seemed to be in his remarks today.


Morrissey Johnson: Mr. Speaker, if the Hon. Member will take the time to read Hansard, he will recognize that I did not say that airlines in Canada never have accidents. I said that we should be proud of the fact that our airlines have such a high standard of safety as they do.
I am concerned about safety, whether it is in Newfoundland or any part of Canada. To try to put fear into the people of Canada, as some members of the Opposition are doing, to say that our standard of safety will decrease, is hypocritical, I suggest. They should not do that. They are putting fear into the minds of people that it is not safe to travel on any airline except the one owned by the people of Canada, Air Canada.
Other airlines in this country have a good safety margin. 1 am not afraid to travel on any of them. We all realize that even if you walk down the street there is a certain element of danger. When one takes into consideration the number of people driving automobiles and the number of people who travel by air, it is safer to travel on an aircraft than it is to drive a motor car. Why do they not admit that?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Does the Hon. Member for Winnipeg North wish to respond?


David Orlikow: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments are now terminated. Debate.

July 14, 1988


Mr. Roland de Corneille (Eglinton-Lawrence):: Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss if I did not stand up and express my opposition to Bill C-129 in its present unamended form.
There are problems with this Bill from the most basic point of view, which is the question of the Government's responsibilities. We are certainly aware that there are many Crown corporations which outlive their usefulness as Crown corporations. Sometimes the private sector can be more effective and efficient.
Some Crown corporations need to be reviewed and undoubtedly, where there seems to be evidence that they can be run as well or better by private enterprise, there is no need for the Government to be in that particular business. I do not think that such a review should be criticized offhand. When the Government looks at Crown corporations to see whether they deserve to be turned over to the private sector, I think it is to be commended not criticized. However, having said that, the question has more to do with the rights of the Canadian people as such. The Government is supposed to be representing the people of Canada. It is supposed to be looking after our best interests, all of us throughout the entire country. When the Government undertakes in a philosophical way to decide all Crown corporations should be privatized, that is carrying the question from one extreme to the other. It is a most regrettable philosophical approach.
Obviously, there are some things that are much in the public interest. No government has the right to turn over to the private sector, out of its hands, those instruments which are essential to public safety, public welfare. That is what this debate really turns on. The issues of the Post Office, Air Canada and Petro-Canada are issues about which we have fundamental differences of opinion with the Government. We can see that the public interest is endangered by privatizing some of these organizations which we see will be lost to the best interests of the total public. Why do I say that? I say it for the simple reason that it is obvious that the objective of any private organization is to render a profit. The more competitive the issues are, the more important it is to render that profit. The more competitive the forces against you, the more is the temptation to try to cut service and cut safety, those things which are in the best interests of the public and you will do that in order to be more competitive. That is very obvious in the area of the airlines. We have seen what has happened in the United States and in other countries.
It is quite obvious that such corridors as Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and, perhaps, Quebec City, are very lucrative. That is true for the Post Office, for Air Canada and for any corporation looking at the Canadian scene. Where we have a concentration of population, we can very well afford to utilize and exploit it for profit and operate on a relatively narrow margin. But when it comes to the wider areas of this vast nation, the Government has a responsibility to the people, to
Air Canada
the public interests, not just at the moment but in case something happens.
We do not privatize the Armed Forces in case there is an emergency. We feel it is important that the country itself govern its own safety, protection and well-being. The same thing should apply to security of supplies of fossil fuels. It is imperative that this country retain enough control of the resources of this country so that in times of crisis or in war, it is not going to be compromised in terms of its lines of supply. The same thing applies, I suggest, to the whole question of the well-being of our people in the more remote areas. When we talk about their well-being, we can give lots of lip-service, as political parties sometimes do, to the concern of making Canada more accessible in the other regions and about regional development. It is nice to give lip service to this but we should also take action.
I suggest that our actions in terms of moving to the privatization of, for example, Air Canada, will inevitably lead to questions being raised by those concerned about efficiency and profit as to whether some of the flights should be reduced because they are not profitable and because they do not carry as many people as in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridors. These corridors are profitable because they have enough people and the airlines can have full scheduling. But we can see that the private sector might be tempted to cut some of these flights in areas which are not exactly lucrative.
I suggest the Government of Canada has a responsibility to look after the remote parts of Canada where there will be in fact a loss of service, and that is true of the Post Office, Air Canada and even of the railroads. This is a responsibility we have as a nation to those who are trying to live in the more remote parts of this country. They already pay a premium. People who live in the Northwest Territories, in Newfoundland which is remote to some of the heartland of our industry, or northern British Columbia and northern Ontario must be serviced. But it will not be profitable to give these people service. That is why the Government had to encourage the transportation industry in terms of the vast area of our country.
I was absolutely stunned by comments of the Hon. Member for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception (Mr. Johnson) when he was talking about Canadian Pacific. It was, if I may be forgiven, Mr. Speaker, an ignorant statement, an ignorant comparison. We know perfectly well that in fact it was the stimulation of the Government of Canada that made CP Rail a possibility, the giving of lands and property and the Government's encouragement by way of loans. That was not an example of how private enterprise in fact brought about transportation links in this country. It was an example of how the co-operation between Government and private enterprise can work to advance such causes.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Member for Bonavista-T rinity-Conception.

July 14, 1988
Air Canada


Morrissey Johnson: First, Mr. Speaker, I want to say that I am not ignorant of the fact-


Roland de Corneille: Mr. Speaker, I protest. This is not a point of order.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I will make that decision, and 1 will listen to the Hon. Member for Bonavista- T rinity-Conception.


Morrissey Johnson: Mr. Speaker, I want to declare that I am not ignorant of the fact that the railway that was built by Canadian Pacific was financed in part through grants and loans to Canadian Pacific. Neither am I ignorant of the fact that it was a Progressive Conservative Government that made those loans.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Member will have an opportunity to put that question to the Hon. Member for Eglinton-Lawrence after his speech.


Roland de Corneille: Yes, Mr. Speaker, in listening, I noticed we were entering into a debate from the very beginning. I am sure you now notice that as well.
Continuing with my observations about the objectives of the Government in serving the people of Canada, I think we are all concerned, if we have any kind of sincerity at all, about service to people in remote areas of this country. If we are going to allow our public services to be governed by motives of profits, we are going to betray the development possibilities of the remote parts of Canada. They must be, as they were with the CPR, given some advance Government encouragement. That is what the people of Canada have always felt. That is how our country has been governed. That is why I suggest that this Bill in itself threatens the well-being of the people of Canada as a totality because when our remote areas are threatened, our future is threatened. We want to encourage people to go to the remote areas and feel they are Canadians with an equal chance. That is where the future of Canada may indeed exist.
First, I am opposed in principle to this Bill because it tends to move us from national concern in the field of air transport towards the realm of profit motives which may not necessarily be in the national interest.
The next point I wish to make is that we must examine the Bill itself. Where does the mandate come for the privatization of Air Canada? Was this the platform of the Conservative Government in the last election campaign? I do not recall hearing that and I guess I would have noticed it if it had been there. I do not remember that the people of Canada were told that if the Conservative Party was elected to become the Government of Canada that it would move to privatize Air Canada. In fact, I think there were some comments from the present Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) to the effect that Air Canada was not for sale.
I object to this because I do not believe the Government has a mandate to proceed with this Bill. Yet, with its heavy majority, it is proceeding nonetheless to put this Bill through the House at third reading. I do not believe that the public wants this. When I say that I understand that not long ago polls were conducted which asked Canadians whether they wanted to see Air Canada made a privatized institution. My understanding is that that poll indicated a rather strong opinion against privatizing Air Canada.
I understand that another poll was conducted later, a poll which asked about some of the company being privatized in order to give Canadians an opportunity to share in terms of giving capitalization to Air Canada. There were various reasons given as to why Air Canada might be privatized partially. Canadians are not conservative but careful. They thought that this proposal might be all right. They thought that to bring more capital into the situation in order to make the airline even more successful for the future was a good idea. The poll indicated that Canadians might be willing to go along with a partial and not a full privatization.
If we were to follow the wishes of the public, then we would see that this Bill does not achieve that. The Bill does not stipulate that the Government will stop at a partial sale of Air Canada. The Bill allows a large percentage of the company to be sold. While the Government may make announcements at the present time that it intends to sell 45 per cent of the shares, it might decide tomorrow that it would rather sell 90 per cent of it.
It is unfair for the Government to bring in a Bill which is as inaccurate as this Bill. It lacks in detail in that it asks the Parliament of Canada to pass a law which allows total carte blanche to Orders in Council or to decisions of a Prime Minister with respect to what he will do with something as important to the people of Canada as Air Canada.
It is tragic that in this Bill which I have in my hand one sees so little detail that protects the public, the workers and the future of the company. There is no statement about how much will be turned over finally. It is simply a press release. It is an opinion at the moment which considers how much right now the Government thinks should be sold. We have not been given proof that the sale of the shares that it does intend to sell is really going to bring about fair value to the people of Canada for what it is sold for. If 45 per cent is sold for $300 million, is it really worth it? Are not the company's goodwill and potential and present assets worth a lot more than that? Is it a good deal for the Canadian people? There are no figures, no commitments in the Bill put forward by the Government as to how much it will restrict itself to the selling off of Air Canada. Nor in this Bill are there any details relating to what the Government also promises verbally but which it refuses to put down on paper. There is nothing in the Bill about salaries.
What does the Bill say about salaries of employees in the future? What does it say about the pensions of people in Air
July 14, 1988

Canada who have devoted their lives and careers to this company and to the people of Canada, those people who chose Air Canada instead of some other carrier? What does it say in this Bill about their pensions? What does it say in the Bill about the pension fund that exists? I see nothing in the Bill about salaries, pensions or pension funds.
In the Standing Committee on Human Rights we have been studying the issue of older workers and their pensions. We have been worrying about what may be unfair to people who are older. We then find the Government turning around and not putting one word into this Bill to protect the human rights of these people. If some private group takes over and it has some power to exert its issues and views, some 22 per cent of the shareholders of the company can decide to eliminate, reduce or divert funds that belong to the workers, as we have seen in other corporations. There is nothing here in the Bill to protect them.
What is there in the Bill to consider the benefits of the workers? Where in the Bill is there a single word about their benefits? Where is there anything in the Bill about the relationship between unionized workers and the airline? Where is there protection about the agreements and understandings that usually take place between Crown corporations and their workers, the unions and their rights? Where are the human rights looked after? I also ask about employment equity. Mr. Speaker, can you find one word in this Bill which protects their rights or looks after these concerns?
I have spoken about the rights of Canadians. I am now talking about the rights of those workers who work for Air Canada. Their rights are not being protected. I suggest that efforts should be made to look at the Bill again in order to make it a decent Bill, a Bill that is worthy of being brought forward before the House of Commons. This Bill is simply in the loosest terms giving carte blanche to whomever may be sitting in power to be able to rule over the future of Air Canada on the one hand in terms of the percentage of shares or, on the other hand turning over to some unseen group of private people what has been over the decades built up as an equity by the employees in terms of the years they have worked. Not a word of protection has been put in the Bill by the Government because it is not concerned about the fate of these people.
Is this not incredible? I find it tragic that the Conservative Members do not want to protect the people. On the one hand we talk about human rights and all these fine pious ways in the committee on human rights and then turn around to see that the Government itself is not carrying out a protection of those people.
From the point of view of the people of Canada in general, or from the point of view of the people who are working for this corporation, I find this Bill to be unacceptable.
Air Canada


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Are there questions or comments? The Hon. Member for Bonavista-Trinity- Conception.


Morrissey Johnson: Mr. Speaker, with regard to the statement the Hon. Member made in regard to salary protection, I have to ask him if it is not true that in the event of an economic slowdown and a severe recession that Crown corporations in the past have used large scale lay-offs as cost-cutting measures. Is it not also true that salaries and wages in major private couriers are indeed higher than the Government's own counterparts? Is it not true that after this Bill passes that out of the 17 major airlines in the world there will be only two that will be wholly state owned, that in is Russia and in China.
With regard to protection of the employees, how come the Opposition did not have any amendments to put forward to that effect in the clause by clause debate? The Official Opposition had one amendment to make, and did not even make it. A government Member had to introduce it after the Member of the Liberal Party sitting on the committee left the room. I do not know why he left, Mr. Speaker. I do not know if he was sulky or what it was. He said it was because we had already started. The opposition Member had the same notice as government Members that the committee meeting was convening at a certain time and we were there, but members of the Opposition left without even introducing their own amendment.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: On a point of order the Hon. Member for Cape Breton-The Sydneys.


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: Such drivel, my God!


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Member for Eglinton-Lawrence.


Roland de Corneille: First, it is generally the ruling of the Speaker that comments about a person's presence or absence are regarded as being out of order. This has been a most impolite comment that has been made about whether or not the Member was present.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I do not know what happened in committee. This is the House of Commons. What happens in committee has nothing to do with the House of Commons. A committee is an arm of the House of Commons. Therefore, I hope that Hon. Members will keep their questions to what happens here. I will recognize the Hon. Member for Eglinton-Lawrence to complete his rebuttal to the Hon. Member for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception.


Roland de Corneille: I am glad you said that, Mr. Speaker, because I agree with you that it is most inappropriate to make comments about people's attendance in committee or in the House of Commons.

July 14, 1988
In terms of what was said about what other countries have, the thing that has to be said is what Canada has may be peculiar to a nation which has a very large geographical area and a very small population. What may apply to France does not apply to Canada.
Second, it is quite obvious, if there is nothing wrong then why fix it. For the reasons that I have cited one does not try to change something if there is nothing wrong with it. Over the years Air Canada has shown itself to be very competent and efficient.
I was asked about the salaries of employees and whether they would be dropped if there were some type of recession. As I pointed out, Crown corporations are less prone to start cutting because they would be cutting off routes if it were less efficient and less profitable than would be companies that do not have that mandate from the Government to perform. The whole point is that the Government of Canada has to mandate a protection of the remote parts of Canada whether or not those routes are always profitable. That is the Government's responsibility. The purpose of having a government is to look after the well being of the total population, not only those who are rich or happen to live in affluent areas.
This Government is not prepared to share the wealth with those areas that are less profitable. All this does is encourage Canadians in remote parts of the country to pour into the few cities, and that is not a direction that Canadian people want to have. That is why in this particular Bill there is another step in this direction. It is a negative direction and gives the message that the Government is not going to look after, encourage, and uphold the people in more remote parts of the country. Air Canada and Crown corporations will be less inclined to dismiss employees if their profits are threatened than companies that have to make it no matter what and have to survive because profit is their sole reason for existence.


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker, and on a point of misinformation brought forward by the Member for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception (Mr. Johnson). There was more than one amendment presented. The amendment that the Government accepted was the one that it thought it could take credit for, which is the snivelling attitude that prevailed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: That is not a point of order. I do not know what happened in committee. I would like to recognize the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister for a question or comment.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: I found the Member's opening remarks rather outstanding in identifying a basic difference between the Government and the Opposition. Yesterday I talked about the Opposition being sloths-sleeping a lot, hanging upside down, and looking at the world upside down.
The Member said that an airline company that provided bad service and a bad safety record would produce maximum profit for shareholders. As someone who flies a lot, I would like to
say to the employees of Air Canada, Canadian Airlines International, Wardair, and the other airlines that, as a customer of airlines, the better your service, the better your safety record, the more likely I am to pick you to fly on.
I suggest that it is the view of the Government that the move in the direction of privatization of Air Canada and leaving it unfettered in the competitive world of the airlines is already producing for Canadian airline travellers lower prices, better service, more frequent service, and a better safety record. In a competitive world it matters that an airline serves its customers well. That is the consequence. Profits will flow if an airline serves its customers well. Profits will not flow if it does not.
I wanted to put on the record the clarity of the two views: the Opposition states that bad service and a bad safety record produces profits. I say that it does not. Good service and a good safety record produces profits for airlines.


Roland de Corneille: Indeed that would fit the philosophy of Adam Smith. That is a nice theoretical concept which is not borne out by the facts. It is tragic that the Hon. Member is unable and unwilling to look at the fact that cutting corners in order to be more competitive is an inevitable by-product that also comes from competition. Perhaps, in some cases there is cheaper service, but there is not safer service.
Those who are wealthy are in a position to be able to buy seats on airlines that have good records and will provide the service that they want in a nice, comfortable corridor between Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Quebec. But it does not guarantee and does not provide that safety for companies that are operating on a shoe-string budget that want to provide minimum service in order to be profitable in areas that are more remote.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Comments are now terminated. Is the House ready for the question? The Hon. Member for Regina East (Mr. de Jong) will have the floor when the debate resumes.
It being one o'clock, I do now leave the chair until two o'clock this day.
At 1 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.


Roland de Corneille: Mr. Speaker, recently all Members of Parliament were sent a
July 14, 1988

spectacular poster depicting the giant Sitka spruce trees which grow in the Carmanah Valley of British Columbia. Unfortunately, the fate of these trees is very much in doubt.
MacMillan Bloedel has been granted a tree-farming licence for the area. To its credit, MacMillan Bloedel has placed a self-imposed moratorium on any logging or road-building operations. However, that moratorium will expire as of June 18.
Various conservation groups from divergent parts of Canada such as the Western Canada Wilderness Committee of Vancouver, B.C., and Nature Action of St. Bruno, Quebec, have requested assistance from Members of Parliament in their fight to save the valley and these magnificent trees. At present, consultations are going on between MacMillan Bloedel and interested groups on how many hectares of this part of Canada's ecological heritage can be saved from the loggers' chainsaws.
I would like to add my voice to the campaign to have the Carmanah Valley preserved, and I ask and invite other Members of this House to lend their support. Hopefully, the Government will see fit to step in and add the valley to the Pacific Rim National Park before it is too late.



ANNUAL SOFTBALL GAME BETWEEN MEMBERS AND PAGES

Mr. Gordon Taylor (Bow River):: Mr. Speaker, "It's one, two, three and you're out at the old ball game"! And that is the way it was at the annual softball game last night between the all-Party "Expo" MPs and the "Blue Jay" Pages, played on the front lawn through the courtesy of our Hon. Speaker, with equipment secured and loaned by our co-operating security staff.
The game featured two home runs by Expos: The Hon. Member for Pontiac-Gatineau-Labelle (Mr. Moore) and the Hon. Member for Westmorland-Kent (Mr. Robichaud), while Page Stephen Cassivi walloped the ball into the tulip patch. An outstanding pick-up by Page Suh Won Kim of a hard hit grounder brought applause from all sides as did a magnificent catch by Page Byron Horner. Every Page and every MP played magnificently.
The game featured happiness, goodwill and sportsmanship. Our esteemed Pages demonstrated that they not only perform with excellence in this Chamber but are able to carry the same expertise into all phases of their lives. Three cheers for our Pages!


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY LAY-OFFS AMONG GRAIN HANDLERS

Mr. Ernie Epp (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, seasonal lay-offs in the Seaway grain trade threaten to become long-term lay-offs this summer. Five hundred of Thunder Bay's 1,300 grain handlers are laid off at the moment. So are 200 rail workers, nearly 100 seafarers, and 35 grain commission employees. About 500 seafarers in other Seaway communities are also laid off.
There are fears that one-third of Canada's inland fleet will be tied up throughout the coming crop year. The prairie drought is reducing yields sharply and special efforts will be required to keep the Seaway grain trade functioning.
The Wheat Board has always sent most of the grain bound for Atlantic markets down the St. Lawrence Seaway. The West Coast capacity limit of 18 to 19 million tonnes requires export via Thunder Bay in any good year. It is in the interest of the farmers as well as grain handlers, seafarers, and others involved in the Seaway trade to maintain the effectiveness of this most efficient system.
I urge the Minister responsible for the grain trade and the Minister of Transport (Mr. Bouchard) to ensure that Thunder Bay and the other Seaway ports have enough grain in the coming year to keep the system in good shape.



ABORTION


James Kenneth (Jim) Jepson: Mr. Speaker, it was with a great deal of distress that I learned, through the press unfortunately, that officials in the Justice Department have asked to defer the Borowski trial indefinitely. This trial is long overdue and many Canadians are awaiting the outcome to see if the court will indeed recognize that the innocent unborn child in the mother's womb has legal status and protection under the Charter.
I urge the Minister to allow this trial to proceed and that the justice system be allowed to follow its due course. I, for one Member, do not appreciate the intervention of Justice officials, and hope that the Borowski trial will proceed this October, as scheduled.

July 14, 1988
[ Translation]



MULTICULTURALISM


Mr. Marcel Prud'homme (Saint-Denis):: Mr. Speaker, we have talked a lot about multiculturalism this week, and so I thought that today, we would give a concrete example of what multiculturalism means, and that is why I decided to invite, from Montreal, people like Father Saitanis, Father Salatellis, Mr. Crilis and a number of youngsters who, at age 10, 12 and 14 speak excellent French and excellent English and who, above all, have the greatest respect for their culture and traditions-the culture and traditions of Greece. This is more or less the speech I wanted to make on multiculturalism, the speech I didn't have time to make. It is this concrete example we see today which is a symbol of the Canada we are building together, the Canada of tomorrow.



THE PRIME MINISTER


Mr. Guy St-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, today I would like to pay tribute to Bernard Roy, Principal Secretary of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) since 1984, who is leaving us this week to go back to Montreal. Quebecers and Canadians are aware of the fundamental role played by Mr. Roy in this Government, and we have all been able to appreciate his integrity, wisdom and strength of character, and his exemplary performance.
Mr. Speaker, we are sad to see Mr. Roy leave us, but I am sure that his wife Madeleine and his son Philippe will agree that our loss is their gain. Thank you, Bernard!



GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS


Mr. Cyril Keeper (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, when a federal government contract is announced for some region of the country, most people generally react as though the region has been given a gift, or a little bit of pork, if we want to use the vernacular, but this is not true for everybody who is at the receiving end of those contracts.
The P.E.I. Dump Truck Association was before the Government Operations Committee and pointed out to us that it is the experience of its members that they get ripped off. While money is included in the original contract bid to cover
the cost of hauling by dump truck, the wages and fees they are paid are bid downward and they work at a very marginal rate.
In response to this, the Government Operations Committee has recommended that the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Mclnnes) take action to adopt the minimum fees that provinces put in place for the same sort of work, and that a little bit of justice be extended to these small independent entrepreneurs.



VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS


Felix Holtmann: Mr. Speaker, "I pledge my head to clear thinking, my heart to greater loyalty, my hands to larger service, my health to better living, for my club, my community and my country".
With those chosen words, Mr. Speaker, tens of thousands of Canadians have become members of 4-H clubs, broadened their horizons and enhanced their lives.
The 4-H movement was founded 75 years ago by Mr. E. Ward Jones, Director of Extension Services in Agriculture at the University of Manitoba. The very first clubs were known as Boys and Girls Clubs and were formed in the towns of Roland, Starbuck, Warren, Darlingford, Manitou, Stonewall, Oak Lake, and Neepawa in the Province of Manitoba. In 1952, clubs became known as 4-H clubs.
I would ask this House to congratulate with me and acknowledge the tremendous benefit this great organization has provided for Canada's youth over the past 75 years.



ENVIRONMENT CANADA


Mr. Dave Dingwall (Cape Breton-East Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring to the attention of the House Environment Canada's plan to close up to 50 Environment Canada atmospheric environmental offices across the country.
These offices are being closed due to technological and scientific improvements in the atmospheric environmental service, according to environmental officials. I applaud any move by Environment Canada to improve our weather forecasting service. However, I would like to caution the Minister that technology and machines should only be used to help augment the human capacity, not to replace it.
The Minister will know that many farmers, fishermen and other primary producers rely heavily on their local weather stations for accurate weather reporting. To remove this service
July 14, 1988

5. O. 21 CHILD CARE
from these people would be a great disservice to their particular industries. I urge the Minister and the Government of the day to refrain from closing any of these offices at this time.



&quot;STREET KID&quot; SYNDROME-CALL FOR STUDY

Hon. J. Robert Howie (York-Sunbury):: Mr. Speaker, there is a growing phenomenon in Canada which has become known as the "street kid" syndrome. It involves an increasing number of young people who are living in a variety of unoccupied spaces near our streets. They have very limited means and are subject to all the dangers and indignities which that implies. It is a growing problem which is no longer restricted to our largest cities. For run-aways, the problem runs much deeper than simply tracing their whereabouts.
I feel the federal Government should initiate an in-depth study of this problem, identify the causative factors, and blueprint the responsibilities of all three levels of government and the private sector, and propose remedial measures. We may discover an erosion of traditional family support resources.
These kids come to the streets for many different reasons but they do have one thing in common, they all need our help.



FORESTRY


Mr. John Parry (Kenora-Rainy River):: Mr. Speaker, for more than a decade the federal Government has supported forest management activities in all provinces through federal-provincial forestry agreements. The agreements with Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are set to expire early next year.
The federal Cabinet must get its act together and direct the Minister of State for Forestry (Mr. Merrithew) to start renegotiating these agreements immediately. There is no time to delay. The federal Government's foot-dragging in this matter draws the question, is it not going to renew the agreements? This has already led to the Government of Ontario unwisely cutting back on reforestation.
The inaction of the federal PC Government and the actions of the Ontario Liberal Government could hurt the forestry sector in our province for years to come. As the forestry spokesperson for the New Democratic Party, I call upon the federal Government to move quickly to renew the agreements, and on the Government of Ontario to scrap its plans to reduce tree planting and, instead, increase its reforestation budget.



INCREASED FEDERAL FUNDING

Mr. Albert Girard (Restigouche):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to say that sincere congratulations are in order for the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Epp). With the announcement yesterday of an extra $1 billion, the total federal funding for day care will exceed $4 billion.
The objective to double the amount of day care spaces will be achieved, and I am pleased to note that my home Province of New Brunswick was the first to go on record as stating that this plan will work and we will achieve this goal.
Clearly the Progressive Conservative Government has listened to the Canadian people and has responded reasonably.
This program is the biggest infusion of public funds for child care that this country has ever known. Yet the Liberals say that it is not enough. It is easy for them to sit in opposition and criticize, but the real question is, what did they do for day care in the 20 years they were in power? We all know the answer to that question.
Again, hats off to the Hon. Minister of National Health and Welfare.



NATURAL RESOURCES


Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, earlier this week the International Association of Great Lakes Ports held its annual conference in Valleyfield, Quebec. One of the items dealt with at that conference was the diversion or possible diversion of water from the Great Lakes anywhere out of the basin.
This morning a resolution was passed which I would like to read into the record:
WHEREAS, the Great Lakes represent a precious, God-given natural resource directly serving some 90 million residents of the United States and Canada, and
WHEREAS, the Great Lakes region encompasses ports, cities, counties, states and provinces whose business, industry, recreation and ecology are in large measure dependent on the Great Lakes and their tributaries, and
WHEREAS, the Great Lakes hold 20 per cent of the fresh waster in a world whose supply of fresh water is being rapidly depleted, and
WHEREAS, maintenance of the fresh water supply in the Great Lakes is critical for the present and future well-being of the region, and
WHEREAS, every inch of available water in the Great Lakes is essential for purposes of safe navigation for the carriage of agricultural, mineral and manufactured cargo through ports served by the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway system,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the International Association of Great Lakes Ports hereby goes on record as unequivocally

July 14, 1988

opposing any proposals to divert water from the Great Lakes for any purpose
whatsoever.
I think it is time that this House pass legislation that would do the same thing.



SUPPLY AND SERVICES


Mr. Don Ravis (Saskatoon East):: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Jelinek) has recently announced a program that will improve the access of small business to federal government procurement. The program will increase the number of contracts awarded on a competitive basis and will increase the number of bidding opportunities.
As a result of these changes the most dynamic sector of the Canadian economy, which today accounts for 80 per cent of new jobs, will be able to benefit fully from government procurement. It also means that western business will have a much better chance to compete for federal contracts. In Saskatchewan, this will provide an additional source of diversification and will further stimulate small business growth.
As a small businessman I am proud to be part of a Government which is helping to make our small business community a better place in which to work and provide greater opportunities for employment.



ROAD SAFETY


Marie Thérèse Rollande Killens: Mr. Speaker, I read in the papers that 1988 Chryslers are equipped with air bags for drivers of private cars. This additional protection for the driver is now standard equipment on the 1988 Chrysler Fifth Avenue manufactured since June 1988. It was, in fact, a Chrysler Fifth Avenue that my husband was driving when we had a head-on collision in September 1985, as result of which he suffered severe lacerations to his face, requiring intensive plastic surgery.
We all survived the accident because we had buckled our seat belts. However, the two passengers in the back suffered very serious spinal injuries because the back seat was not equipped with shoulder seat belts.
Since the accident, I have tabled petitions signed by 33,168 Canadians who are asking the Government to take immediate
action and make the installation of air bags in the front and shoulder seat belts in the back of the car compulsory. I would urge all other automobile manufacturers to follow Chrysler's example and install the same safety devices.



NATIONAL DEFENCE


Mr. Brian White (Dauphin-Swan River):: Mr. Speaker, if there is one thing the NDP cannot be accused of, it is letting the facts get in the way of good propaganda. A prime example is the Government's plan to build nuclear propelled submarines. The NDP's motto is: Where there is confusion, there is concern".
Here are some facts. The program will create 55,000 person years of work for Canadians. It is not a violation of the nonproliferation treaty. Nuclear propelled subs are the only ones that can control our Arctic.
The cost is $8 billion spread over a quarter of a century. The NDP, with its usual economic logic, has promised to reallocate that money many times over. However, the NDP defence policy will cost $1.9 billion more than that of the Government. That does not even include the cost of NORAD and NATO withdrawal.
Should Canada defend itself? Should we rebuild our navy? The Government says yes. What does the NDP say?



SOCIAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Jean-Claude Malepart (Montreal-Sainte-Marie):: Mr. Speaker, we are a few weeks or a few days from an election, and I hope that Monday the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) will call a general election so that we can rid the country of the Conservatives as quickly as posible.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Jean-Claude Malépart: As the election draws near, it is important to remind everyone of this government's record with regard to families. It de-indexed family allowances and the child tax credit, and lowered the triggering income threshold, making fewer fartlilies eligible fob the child tax credit. Insofar as daycare is concerned, this government has deceived the
July 14, 1988

population because the number one problem, as my colleague the Member for Outrement (Mrs. Pepin) has said, is the number of daycare spaces, and the fact that they need to be increased.
Mr. Speaker, the Canadian people will remember this Conservative Government. Today I had the honour and the privilege of having lunch with Mrs. Solange Denis, the woman who buttonholed our very own Charlie Brown, and rest assured that she will not be voting Conservative.



NATIONAL SECURITY


Mr. Vincent Della Noce (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State and Minister Responsible for Multicultur-alism):: Mr. Speaker, allow me to share with you the content of a telegram I received yesterday from a constituent, following the passage of Bill C-77. It reads as follows:
"I write to you as leader and spokesperson for the Italian-Canadian businessmen of Quebec and as a native citizen of Canada, incarcerated and interned at Camp Petawawa, Ontario, in 1940, in the name of hundreds of family members of Italian origin and speaking also for those from the City of Toronto who were arrested and interned in the middle of the night, without arrest warrants, detained without charges being laid against them, and denied the right to consult a lawyer, and were then incarcerated for four years like common criminals and kept apart from their families. In the light of these facts, please congratulate the Right Honourable Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, and his Minister, the Honourable Perrin Beatty, and the Government for having brought in and passed Bill C-77.
This is a very positive day for Canadians whatever their origin or religion. The new law will prevent the repetition of events such as the ones that occurred in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver and other cities in Canada during the Second World War when Italians, Germans, and Japanese Canadians were interned because of their ethnic origin.
Your Government will by this gesture go down in the history of our country as an honourable defender of the rights and the respect due to individuals, as opposed to the Liberal Government of 1940 that claimed to be the protector of minorities and ethnic groups."
I will conclude by saying this: the greatest honesty will lead to the greatest safety.
Signed: A wounded Canadian, Antonio Capobianco.
Oral Questions



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD

[Stage Direction]
[ Translation]

Mrs. Lucie Pepin (Outremont):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Health and Welfare. This Minister's statement yesterday in the House is a fraud, misrepresentation and completely unacceptable. Mr. Speaker, the more one studies the statement, the closer one looks at it, the more one finds it is trickery.
With the dishonest statement he made yesterday, the Minister gave Canadian families the illusion that he was adding more day care spaces, when in fact...


Mr. Speaker:: Order! I hesitate to interrupt the Hon. Member, but such a comment is unparliamentary and I would ask the Hon. Member to withdraw the word "dishonest."


Lucie Pépin: I withdraw the word "dishonest."
What I mean is that he was giving families the illusion that he was adding day care spaces, when in fact he has decreased the number of spaces promised in 1987.
What the Minister announced in December was mediocre. What he announced yesterday is worse. Why?


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: Mr. Speaker, obviously not associating myself with any of the comments the Hon. Member makes, the Hon. Member must realize that the amount of money the Government of Canada put forward in December was based on the cost of a day care space at that time and the target of 200,000 spaces.
1 was very clear in the announcement I made yesterday. I was not trying to create an illusion of anything other than the
200.000	space target. I said that the costs of spaces, our negotiations with the provinces, and the plans that had been submitted had come to a certain amount of money about which I have been very public. After some refinement and critical analysis of those plans the announcement was made of an additional $1 billion to be put into the child care package.
I find it interesting that the Member was wrong in her analysis yesterday and is wrong in her analysis today. She is leaving the impression that there were to be more than the
200.000	spaces created. That is not what I said and that is not what the statement says. She should go back to the drawing board, not only to read what I said but to understand exactly what was said.


Lucie Pépin: Mr. Speaker, I did go back. I do not think that with $102 per child per year we can have more spaces.

July 14, 1988
Oral Questions MINISTER'S POSITION


Lucie Pépin: Mr. Speaker, will the Minister admit today in this Elouse that he is recycling child care spaces and toying with the expectations of Canadians? Will he admit that after four years of empty promises there will be no access to child care for at least one million children? What games are the Conservatives playing? Do they think that the parents of this country are so stupid that they cannot see through this?


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: Mr. Speaker, I do not believe Canadian parents are that at all, but I think the Hon. Member is just as stupid as is her question.
Let us look at the Liberal record.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: They don't want to hear. In 1982-83 the Liberal Government of the day spent $83.3 million on day care. Its share was 39 per cent of the total costs. In 1983-84 it became very generous. Its expenditure went up to $87.2 million, and its share was reduced to 36 per cent.
The plan which we have brought in puts $6.4 billion into child care. It is an expenditure plan which, for the seven-year period, provides for almost $1 billion a year. At the end of the plan there will be $800 million a year to support it, that being the federal share only.
Only a Liberal could say that the expenditure in their last year in office of $96.9 million is more than our expenditure of $800 million per year.


PRIME MINISTER'S PROMISE
Lucie Pépin: Mr. Speaker, during his election campaign in 1984 the Prime Minister promised us a daycare program and national standards which would guarantee that the parents of Canadian children in cities, suburbs and rural areas would not have to worry about the quality of services their little children would receive. However, the Prime Minister broke his promises. There are no national standards and the provinces can do whatever they want.
Why did the Prime Minister break his promise to provide child care to everyone who needs it, and why did he break his promise to provide national standards? Why is he subjecting the children of this country to a lottery when it comes to child care?


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister did not break his promise. He kept it.
The Prime Minister and my Cabinet colleagues have come forward with $6.4 billion and a comprehensive child care plan.
They may say it is not enough. The plan they want is one in which the state will have a space for everyone whether parents want it or not. The cost of it under the Katie Cook study is $ 11 billion a year. That is almost equal to the health care costs of the federal Government for running the entire health care system and the medical system.
Talk about smoke and mirrors. That is what she is doing. That is exactly the illusion she is trying to create in the House. There are $6.4 billion over seven years, 200,000 spaces, a program for native people, a program for initiatives, a program for stay-at-home mothers. The Prime Minister has kept his promise. They are the ones who have not.


CANADA-UNITED STATES FREE TRADE AGREEMENT-PROCEEDINGS IN U.S. SENATE COMMITTEE
Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. A few weeks ago the Prime Minister sent his Principal Secretary to Washington to try to get removed from the draft American bill to implement the trade deal a provision that would allow the American Government to set up a new system of investigating and monitoring Canadian imports. We have just learned that the Finance Committee of the Senate has approved a version of the bill that continues to contain this provision.
Why is the Government continuing to try to force its trade deal through Parliament when it is becoming increasingly clear that all this deal will do is expose Canada and its exports to even more trade harassment than was possible before? Why is the Government continuing with this foolish and harmful deal?


Mr. John McDermid (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister for International Trade):: Mr. Speaker, the Senate Finance Committee in the United States has just voted 11 to 0 in support of the free trade agreement.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Horton McDermid: It is fascinating to see how the opposition Members represent progress in this regard as failure.
The Hon. Member knows full well that a number of issues were discussed both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate that we felt did not belong in the free trade agreement legislation. The recommendations which, I might say, are recommendations to the administration, contain no new powers, and do not single out Canada at all. The Hon. Member is absolutely wrong in his preamble.


GOVERNMENT POSITION
Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. The Government does not seem to realize that the
July 14, 1988

United States Senate and its committees are there to serve American interests, not Canadian interests. I do not know why the Government does not have the guts to serve Canadian interests as strongly as the Senate is ready to serve American interests.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Does the Deputy Prime Minister not realize that the harmful provision that the Prime Minister sent Mr. Burney specifically to Washington to have removed is still in there, with one small change, that it will also apply to any other country foolish enough to enter into the same kind of free trade deal with the United States?
Why is the Government continuing with this deal in the face of this continued commitment of the United States to harass our exports?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, existing U.S. law allows United States industry to request of Government the investigation and monitoring of subsidy practices. That is allowed now. There are no new powers whatsoever in this suggested recommendation from the Senate. There are no new powers at all and it does not single out Canada. Nevertheless, we don't like it. We will be examining the final Bill very carefully to ensure that the free trade agreement benefits are not impaired. That is our responsibility and we will carry it out for all Canadians.


NATIONAL DEFENCE
Mr. Derek Blackburn (Brant):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. Last week Southam News in Washington broke the story of a June 1987 task force report by officials in DND, External Affairs, and International Trade, who recommended in an executive summary the elimination of national boundaries in the area of defence between Canada and the United States.
The implications of this suppressed report are far-reaching insofar as they spell total Canadian defence industrial integration into the U.S. military industrial complex, and also imply a unified continental approach to defence planning itself.
Will the Government make this document public and clarify for the Canadian people whether it is government policy, and I quote from the document, to "eliminate national boundaries" in the area of defence?
Oral Questions


Hon. Paul Dick (Associate Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, I noticed a report appeared in one of the newspapers last week. It was unfortunately inaccurate because this report summary has been known to the public for about six months. It has been released and available to people. It was well known that this committee was sitting for a period of two years to look into the defence infrastructure of this country to see whether or not we were duplicating what the Americans have, or if we were doing something differently and how we could best co-ordinate, as we have done over many, many years.


CANADIAN SECURITY AND PRIORITIES
Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether the Associate Defence Minister is prepared to name the report and those who are responsible for writing the report, or whether he would table the report as I have just requested. The perspective of this report is continentalist. Canadian sovereignty receives no mention and is in fact viewed as detrimental to the defence relationship which should not be evaluated "in terms of costs and benefits to a single state".
Does the Minister acknowledge that Canadian security interests and priorities are in fact very different from those of the United States and that these very different perspectives cannot simply be rolled into one view of North American security?


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that Canada's interests are different from the interests of United States. If the Hon. Member would read the White Paper he would find out that we want to protect Canadian sovereignty, we have suggested ways of doing that, whereas the New Democratic Party would like to give up Canadian sovereignty.


Mr. Rodriguez:: Get serious!


Paul Wyatt Dick: It wants to withdraw from certain areas.
This is an ongoing process which looks at the infrastructure in Canada so we can be sovereign and independent in this country. Rather than quoting from some newspaper, why does the Hon. Member not read the White Paper?


Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: Obviously the Associate Defence Minister is pretty desperate if he has to resort to that kind of childish rhetoric on the eve of an election.


INDUSTRIAL PLANNING-MILITARY PERSPECTIVE
Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: This report also advocates the militarization of the Canadian economy and recommends that Canada:
Incorporate a military perspective when considering industrial planning.
Is the Government going to follow the U.S. model of militarizing industry, which has undermined that country's productivity and competitiveness, and which some American economists argue very forcefully is destroying the American

July 14, 1988
Oral Questions
economy? Is that what the Canadian Government, the Conservative Government, wants to do to the Canadian economy?


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, I think all Parties in this House agreed at the time of the White Paper that we had to do something to refurbish the Canadian Armed Forces. We decided we had to buy some new equipment. Instead of buying equipment overseas and off the shelf, we are trying to make it in Canada. We are trying to spread it around within the regions of Canada to have the best industrial benefits for the various regions. That is Canadian, that is sovereignty, and that is common sense. He should try it sometime.


DISASTERS
[Stage Direction]
1985 GANDER AIR CRASH-REQUEST FOR ESTABLISHMENT OF JUDICIAL INQUIRY
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister and concerns the Gander air crash of December 12, 1985, which resulted in the unfortunate deaths of 256 people. Four members of the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, a former member of the board, several respected members of the aviation community, and Mrs. Theresa Griffin, the widow of the pilot who perished in the Gander tragedy, called earlier today for a judicial inquiry into all the circumstances surrounding the crash.
Given that the Deputy Prime Minister himself repeatedly called for such an inquiry into the 1978 crash at Cranbrook, British Columbia, which resulted in 43 deaths, and given that he himself later commissioned the Dubin inquiry, can he give his commitment here and now that he will ask for a judicial commission of inquiry into the Gander air crash?


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, the Act requires that a draft report be issued and that is exactly what we did with respect to the Gander crash in 1985. The Act also proposed that we could receive any representation by any concerned party in terms of the conclusions of the draft report. I think it would be more than irrelevant that the Minister or any government party could call any kind of inquiry without waiting for the final report.
My friend will admit that we could not reach a conclusion on a preliminary report. I think the Act is structured that way and I hope that my friend will respect an Act which was introduced by his Government.


GOVERNMENT POSITION
Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, that response is totally inadequate. The Minister knows perfectly well there has been conflicting evidence, that
there has been testimony which has been ignored, and that there has been information kept from the Canadian Aviation Safety Board. He will know that he himself sent a letter to the new chairman asking members of the board to obey the new chairman. Given that kind of interference already by this Government, is it not reasonable to expect that justice be done? Isn't the only way to do that to call for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into this accident? Otherwise justice will never be done and Canadians, Americans, and everyone else will never know the truth concerning this crash.


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, it is always the same. Any kind of regular proceeding is decided by an Act, not by me, but by an Act of this House. This Act has decided we have to provide a preliminary report, and as I said before, we did, and any concerned party, including those who appeared yesterday, have the right to make a proposal, or to criticize, and then we will have a final report. At that time the Minister will consider the recommendations.
Once again, this Act was passed by your Party and I have to work within the rules. This was decided by you and I hope that you understand that, and will respect the Act that decided that I have to play the game by those rules.


NATIONAL DEFENCE
Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister who will know that with each passing day more and more Canadians are speaking out against the Government's decision to spend billions of dollars of taxpayers' money on nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarines.


Mr. Siddon:: Look at the Gallup polls, Nelson.


Nelson Andrew Riis: One defence analyst recently stated that "if the subs are really meant to scare anyone, the threat is surely half hearted. What would one of our new subs do if it came across a Russian or American sub in our waters? Sink it? Hardly ... I believe that a fleet of icebreakers, along with super sophisticated underwater monitoring systems would do a better job of protecting our Canadian shores". Would the Deputy Prime Minister agree that this defence analyst is correct and that these submarines are in fact not only wasteful but a dangerous way to spend taxpayers' money?


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, an analysis has been done and the proposal to use nuclear-powered submarines is $1.9 billion less then the proposal of the New Democratic Party. It gives a more effective coverage in the Atlantic, in the Pacific, and in the Arctic. If the Member felt he was going to protect the lives of
July 14, 1988

sailors by having them on an icebreaker going at four knots, and maybe being stuck in the ice and perhaps getting bombed, I think he was crazy, compared to what you can do by being under the ice.


COST OF ACQUISITION
Nelson Andrew Riis: This is somewhat perplexing, Mr. Speaker. I took these quotes from a document, a copy of which I have in my hand, which was sent out by the Conservative Member of Parliament for Nanaimo-Alberni, to individuals in his own riding. The document is entitled: "The Schellenberg Report".
The Minister will also know if he read Macleans magazine that the Conservative Member of Parliament for Don Valley East commented on the nuclear submarines and stated: "The cost of these things boggles the mind". In the same article the Conservative Member of Parliament for Duvernay stated: "The problem that I have is to explain the $8 billion".
Is it not time for the Minister now to admit that not only are the people of Canada becoming disenchanted with this initiative by the Government but his own back-benchers are now starting to inform their own constituents that they too are against this expenditure?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to see how the New Democratic Party likes to propagate misinformation.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Paul Wyatt Dick: The fact is that the nuclear-powered submarines are a cheaper method of defending this country than what the New Democratic Party has suggested.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Better tell that to some of your Members, then.


Paul Wyatt Dick: The fact is that the average cost per year is $300 million, which is less than one-half of one per cent of what the social programs in this country cost on an annual basis.
The fact is that it is less than 3 per cent of the annual budget of the Department of National Defence.
If Hon. Members opposite would deal with facts they might even show that they had some common sense and knowledge, but they do not.
Oral Questions


CANADA POST CORPORATION
David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister responsible for Canada Post I direct my question to the Deputy Prime Minister. On June 17, 1988, in the House the Minister responsible said in response to a question from my colleague from Hamilton East with respect to the closure of post offices in 66 cities in Canada, including Sydney, Nova Scotia: "-post offices will be increased in number, not decreased, not closed."
Yesterday it was confirmed in the House that the post office in Sydney, Nova Scotia, which serves some 22,000 Canadians, would be closed, and some of its operations transferred to the private sector.
I would like to ask the Deputy Prime Minister why the Minister responsible for Canada Post on June 17, 1988, deliberately and wantonly left the impression with this House and those Canadians in those 66 communities, including Sydney, that there would be no closure of their post offices, nor would there be any privatizations of the facilities in those communities.


Mrs. Lise Bourgault (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, once again, with respect to the Sydney Post Office, those in charge were advised to move. So what Canada Post is doing now is to transfer the existing service to another building.
The Hon. Member is not informed if he asks such a question.


REQUEST THAT CORPORATION BE DIRECTED NOT TO CLOSE POST OFFICES
David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, we on this side of the House are very much aware of the distortion and misleading statements coming from the Government concerning Canada Post.
Will the individual responding to the question give a clear and unequivocal undertaking to the House concerning the postal facilities named in those 66 communities, particularly in Sydney, Nova Scotia, that a directive will be given pursuant to the Financial Administration Act to Canada Post that there be no closures, none whatsoever, in those communities, and no privatization of the operations in those communities? Then maybe Canadians might believe.


Lise Bourgault: Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely unbelievable to hear such a question. No, there is no closure of post offices. Again, no.

July 14, 1988
Oral Questions ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY


MOVEMENT OF GRAIN THROUGH THUNDER BAY
Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. As the Minister will know, there are over 800 workers in Thunder Bay who are involved in the grain industry lay-off, another 500 elsewhere in the Seaway system, and the suggestion by the lake carriers that up to one-third of the fleet will be tied up for more than a year. I want to ask the Minister of Transport what steps his Government will take to ensure that Thunder Bay gets it fair share of the movement of grain.


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for his question. I believe that everyone will admit that the drought that we have in western Canada is something which is extremely unfortunate.
At the present time the Canadian Wheat Board has not yet decided the levels of grain that will be transported. I believe that we are very sensitive to the issue that my friend has raised in terms of Thunder Bay. We are monitoring the situation very closely. We hope to be able, with the collaboration of the Canadian Wheat Board, to consider what the Hon. Member called a fair share of the transportation of grain.


LAID-OFF WORKERS ELIGIBILITY FOR UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is to the Acting Minister for Employment and Immigration, whoever may be responding for the Minister today.
Thunder Bay is in a situation in which, because of the variable entrance requirements, 17 work weeks are required to be eligible for unemployment insurance. In addition, these individuals who are losing their jobs because of the drought situation should be treated in the same way that the prairie producers are being treated.
Is the Government prepared to waive the normal requirements of variable entrance so that those workers who only have 10 or 12 work weeks will now be eligible for unemployment insurance?


Hon. Monique Vezina (Minister of State (Employment and Immigration)):: Mr. Speaker, I think that I can remind this House that unemployment insurance is to compensate workers who have lost their jobs; it is not a supplementary income program. We asked for a report on the situation that now exists in Thunder Bay. Our Department is studying it and I am convinced that with the Jobs Strategy and the number of programs we have in place, we can provide these workers with alternate income to help them through this difficult period of unemployment.


ABORTION
Mr. John Reimer (Kitchener):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice. I was shocked and angered to learn through the media that the Minister was intervening to defer indefinitely the Borowski case scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court in October.
Surely in light of the Morgentaler decision that left the rights of the unborn in a vacuum, and given the Minister's own words to the press that he does not want to go through trials and appeals wondering if the new abortion law Parliament might pass would be constitutional, why doesn't the Minister stop allowing his Department's bias to prejudge the case, withdraw his intervention, and allow the case to be heard?


Hon. Ray Hnatyshyn (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, I should correct the Hon. Member. There is no bias within the Department of Justice. I take full responsibility for any advice that I give to the Government. Indeed, in this particular case I am sure the Hon. Member, on reflection, will agree with me that we would want to have the case brought forward by Mr. Borowski considered in a legislative context.
The court has generally not wanted to talk in abstract terms but, rather, to have legislation or the opinion of Parliament with respect to a particular issue upon which to base its decision. Rather than being negative, I think I have taken an action which is supportive of having the Borowski case heard at an appropriate time in the future when Parliament has spoken on this very important and sensitive issue.


Mr. Belsher:: Supplementary question, Mr. Speaker.


ABORTION DEBATE-GOVERNMENT POSITION
Ross Belsher: Mr. Speaker, in today's article in which that news was reported there is also a quotation attributed to the Minister that the Government has a preferred option in the abortion debate. Will the Minister clarify if that is fact, or whether or not he is being quoted out of context?


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, I was questioned fairly extensively in the Standing Committee on Justice and Solicitor General. If the Hon. Member were to ask his colleagues, the Hon. Member for London East and the Hon. Member for Kitchener, who were there, with respect to this particular issue he will find out what I actually did say and be able to draw his own conclusions.


TIMING OF COURT HEARING-MINISTER'S POSITION
Hon. Bob Kaplan (York Centre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the same Minister. I want to challenge his
July 14, 1988

assertion that he has responsibility to stage-manage the agenda of the Supreme Court of Canada. He indicated that the Supreme Court of Canada has a preference for not hearing cases in the abstract. I remind him that the Supreme Court of Canada agreed to hear this case. His opinion about preferences is his opinion.
What right and what authority does the Minister have to ask the Supreme Court of Canada to fall into line with the Government's legislative, and election timetable, since that is a factor, too?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, this application as made will be decided by the court. We have received the factum of the appellant with respect to this issue in which he acknowledges that three of the issues before the court were not valid because the Morgentaler decision had indeed determined that Section 251 was unconstitutional.
We are not doing anything except taking our position, and we can make application to the court. We are not prejudging what the court will do. We are making an application, which 1 am entitled to do on behalf of the Government.


Mr. Nunziata:: It's politically motivated, and you know it.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: It has nothing whatsoever to do with politics. Only a Liberal would say that. You should be ashamed of yourself.


GOVERNMENT POLICY
Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, I wish to ask the Minister the following question. It is not a question about House business, it is a question about government policy.
What is the Government's policy on abortion? Six months ago the Supreme Court of Canada invalidated the law. My Leader called on the Government to act promptly to ensure that women received fair and equal treatment across Canada. The opposite has happened.
A three-headed resolution was put forward. It is on the Order Paper. It has been withdrawn, or has it been withdrawn? Where does the Government stand on abortion, and when will we have some action in the House?


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, the people of Canada want us to deal with this issue.


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Well, deal with it.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: They do not want the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party making it a partisan political issue.
Oral Questions
They want Members of Parliament to speak with their own conviction on a matter of conscience.
Our policy is quite clear. We want a free vote on the floor of the House of Commons. The Opposition has been obstructing us in every respect to bring this matter to a resolution. The Government House Leader will be moving very quickly to make sure that we do move and have a chance to debate this issue. I hope there will not be obstructionist tactics on the part of the Opposition with respect to a very complex and sensitive issue that the women of Canada and all people of Canada want resolved by us as parliamentarians.


REFUGEES
David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Immigration I would like to direct my question to the Deputy Prime Minister. There are now more than 200 refugees from Poland, all of Ukrainian origin, in Vienna. They have applied for permission to come to Canada as refugees. They have been receiving support from the Department of External Affairs, but there seems to be some difficulties with the Department of Immigration.
Would the Deputy Prime Minister use his influence to speed up approval of those applications?


Monique Vézina: Mr. Speaker, if you allow me, I will take as notice the question that has just been asked and I will ask my colleague to pursue the matter with the Hon. Member.


REQUEST FOR EARLY APPROVAL OF APPLICATIONS
David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, these applications have the support of the Ukrainian-Canadian Committee, and of the Ukrainian-Canadian Immigrant Aid Society. I have been told that the Department has a quota for refugees from eastern Europe of 3,400 per year. Virtually no Ukrainians have come in under this quota.
1 would ask the Minister to ask the Minister of Immigration to use that quota to approve these applications as soon as possible.


Monique Vézina: Mr. Speaker, we have a level of immigration that we accept every year and of course, as a Government, we respect it. As I just said, with respect to this particular case that was just mentioned, I will ask my colleague to follow up.

July 14, 1988
Oral Questions


REGIONAL ECONOMIC EXPANSION
Jean-Claude Malépart: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion or to the Minister responsible for Science and Technology. It concerns the awarding of research and development contracts to Quebec. As months go by, it becomes increasingly clear that Quebec is the federal Government's poor relation. We get the leftovers!


Some Hon. Members:: Question!


Jean-Claude Malépart: If we consider the figures for April, only $190,000 out of $13 million; in May, $788,000 out of $14 million. The Quebec Government and even the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Parizeau, have said that Quebec was not being treated fairly by the federal Government. And we are still waiting for a decision on the space agency.
My question for the two Ministers is this: Is the Government waiting to announce that the space agency will go to Quebec until all contracts have been awarded, which would mean the space agency would only administer contracts being carried out outside Quebec, or is the Government simply waiting for an election to be called so it can put this to political advantage?


Hon. Frank Oberle (Minister of State (Science and Technology)):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member is simply repeating what he has done in the past, and that is to quote selectively the performance of one Department, that is, the Department of Supply and Services. I can tell the Hon. Member that, in terms of contracts for the Province of Quebec, in the term that we have been in power Quebec has received in the grants area 49 per cent of the total national performance.
It is true that on the contract side it is somewhat less, but the average was 34 per cent. I can tell the Hon. Member that in one month the Department of Supply and Services issued 47 per cent of its total allocations for science and technology to the Province of Quebec. It is quite true that in other months the performance has not been as high, but Quebec has been treated very well by the federal Government in terms of science and technology.


REQUEST THAT MONTREAL BE CHOSEN AS SPACE AGENCY SITE
Jean-Claude Malépart: Mr. Speaker, Quebec wants to know who is telling the truth. The Minister has certainly put himself in an awkward situation. Yesterday, the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources said at a press conference in Quebec that it was true Quebec was not getting its fair share. And the Hon. Minister just told us we were getting more than we deserve. Quebecers would like to know who is telling the truth. I am convinced that Parizeau,
Bourassa, the Mayor of Montreal and the Official Opposition are all telling the truth-that Quebec is not getting its fair share. Why don't you announce right now that the space agency will go to Montreal, with contracts?


Hon. Robert de Cotret (Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion and Minister of State for Science and Technology):: Mr. Speaker, there are certainly a lot of people who are telling the truth, especially the Government. However, sometimes I have my doubts about the Opposition.
If we look at the published statistics, my colleague was quite right. Monthly figures on contributions and contracts for research and development in science and technology across the country vary enormously. I think the Hon. Member will have to admit that according to statistics published in recent years, percentages have varied from very low in certain months to as high as nearly 50 per cent.
If we look at the average federal contributions for research and development to industry, we see that in 1986-87, and the latest figures we have are for that year, Quebec received 34.3 per cent of federal contributions, while Ontario received 28.8 per cent, the Atlantic provinces 8 per cent and the rest 14.3 per cent. For the benefit of the Hon. Member for Montreal- Sainte-Marie, I would like to say that these statistics were provided by Statistics Canada in a report called: Federal Government Science Expenditures by Region 81-82 to 86-87. So I think that the distribution is fair and equitable, and that using monthly statistics only distorts the picture for Canadians.


HOUSING
Mr. Reginald Stackhouse (Scarborough West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Acting Minister of Public Works. Public Works Canada is about to transfer 100 acres of land to the municipality of Vaughan just north of Metro Toronto.
In view of the critical shortage of affordable housing in the entire Metro region, I ask the Minister if the Government will reconsider this matter to see if a town of 57,000 people needs 100 acres for its institutions, and if the Government can arrange that a majority of this land will be devoted to affordable housing?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and President of the Privy Council):: Mr. Speaker, I am advised that the land to which the Hon. Member has referred has not yet been sold. As a condition of any sale Public Works is seeking a commitment from the Town of Vaughan that part of
July 14, 1988

Oral Questions


ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE
[Stage Direction]
those lands will be used for affordable and conventional housing, and an answer is expected from the municipal authority very soon.

Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Mr. Speaker, in the
absence of the Solicitor General I would like to ask my question of the Acting Prime Minister.
n


PATENTS
John Edmund Parry: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Hon. Minister of State for Science and Technology. It concerns the patent for the de Long process which has been owned by Canadian Patents and Developments Limited for some seven years now. It has the potential to revolutionize pulp and paper making by making possible, through the process of breaking down cellular fibres, the use of the hardwood so-called weed species.
Since Canadian Patents and Development Limited has held this patent for some seven years, could the Minister explain why no licences have ever been granted to commercialize it?


Frank Oberle: Mr. Speaker, I am familiar with this dossier and I am also familiar with the fact that the inventor has had a licence to commercialize the technology for some time. However, there were some unfulfilled obligations which the inventor had to CPDL which put certain encumbrances upon the transfer of the technology to the private sector.
In any case, we are very much concerned that this technology should be utilized particularly in Canada, since it appears to be revolutionary and beneficial. CPDL, I am informed, has engaged a consultant to give it the advice it needs to bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion. The consultant's report has now been received and CPDL will act accordingly on the advice.
A year and a half ago the Liberal Party asked the Government to convene an independent inquiry into allegations of sexual harassment in the RCMP. The Government refused and we now see the results of that refusal.
Reports today confirm that almost one year after a female RCMP officer was the subject of a pornographic and an obscene video while she slept, the so-called punishment meted out at this point to her colleagues involved only "a fine and/or counselling". There was not a single day of work lost, nor a single suspension. Does the Government feel that that is an appropriate reaction and response for the activities of sexual harassment existing in the RCMP?


Mr. Murray Cardiff (Parliamentary Secretary to Solicitor General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member knows full well a thorough and full investigation was completed by the Commissioner of the RCMP. It was decided that charges were not warranted at this time and the matter, we feel, has been cleared up.


REQUEST FOR INDEPENDENT ASSESSMENT OF SITUATION
Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, we have a situation where the female officer involved has been forced to transfer out of the Musical Ride. Obviously if she were in that kind of a situation she would not feel too comfortable staying there. Her colleagues haven't had a fine and haven't had a single day lost at work. They have not been suspended.


USE OF TECHNOLOGY
John Edmund Parry: Mr. Speaker, since this country has a deficit in pulp and paper machinery and processes, and since we have had expressions of interest in this technology from the U.S.S.R., Italy, and China, will the Minister assure this House that everything will be done to clear away the administrative obstructions to enable the marketing of this technology by Canadians for the benefit of Canadians?


Frank Oberle: Mr. Speaker, I can assure the Hon. Member that whatever we are able to do, that is the Government particularly in the sense of dealing with CPDL, will be done. However, should the case have to be resolved in the courts we would encourage the Crown agency to proceed in that fashion as well.
I want to ask the Government once again whether it feels the response to the obscene video that was prepared by officers in the RCMP, which is basically a fine or counselling, is an appropriate response. If not, will the Government do what the Liberal Party suggested a year and a half ago, and that is to have an independent assessment of the situation of sexual harassment which has been ongoing in the RCMP?


Murray Cardiff: Mr. Speaker, as I indicated previously, an investigation has been completed. There is still the possibility of disciplinary action being taken against the individuals involved. That will be taken care of.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Windsor-Walkerville, a single question.

July 14, 1988
Business of the House THE ECONOMY


EXCHANGE VALUE OF DOLLAR-INTEREST RATE LEVELS
Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-Walkerville):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Finance.
Yesterday in Windsor the Commissioner of Development indicated that several auto parts firms are seriously considering moving to the United States because of the appreciation of the value of the Canadian dollar, presaging the kind of thing that can happen particularly under free trade arrangements.
When will the Minister of Finance take action to do something about the interests rates which are elevating the value of the dollar, disadvantaging Canadian manufacturers in continuing their operations in Canada, and encouraging them to move to the United States at the cost of Canadian jobs?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, I think that if the Hon. Member would look at the level of interest rates today relative to the United States and compare that interest rate spread to any time during the past eight or nine years, he will find that that is not out of line. My understanding is that the average for that period was about 1.40 per cent. The spread now is between 1.50 per cent and 1.60 per cent for the last number of months. We are in the same sort of ballpark as we have been.
I think that if people are looking at moving out of the country, there are other reasons. I would also caution the Hon. Member that, in the discussions that I have had with a number of manufacturers, they feel that they can be quite competitive at this level of the Canadian dollar because there are number of other considerations in the competitive position besides simply the level of the Canadian dollar.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Why should they have to?


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, I wish to ask the House Leader for a statement of the business he intends to call for the coming week.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, as the Order Paper as of today has outlined, we will again be proceeding this afternoon with Bill C-129, the Air Canada Act, followed by Bill C-121, the reorganization and divestiture of Eldorado Nuclear and certain Acts in consequence thereof; followed by Bill C-110, third reading of the Canadian International Trade Tribunal; followed by Bill C-103, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency; followed by Bill C-126, consideration of report stage of the Bretton Woods Bill; followed by Bill C-82, the lobbyists Bill; followed by Bill C-30, report stage of the
National Parks Act and Bill C-73, an Act to provide for the implementation of an agreement respecting Indian lands in Ontario.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, I note the Government said nothing about whether it intends to deal with the question of abortion either through the motion it has on the Order Paper or otherwise. I ask this not in any confrontational way but to seek clarification in terms of the operation of the House and because of the great interest in the how the Government will deal with this subject on the part of the public.
As the Government House Leader will recall, the Deputy Government House Leader said last week when I asked this question that he intended to call the Government's motion on abortion on Monday with a view to enabling any procedural issues to be argued and ruled on by the Speaker. Then it was well known and understood that the Government would call a motion for formal debate, if I am not mistaken Thursday of this week, today. Then on Monday morning I, and I presume my NDP counterpart, received a telephone message hours before the House was to open saying that the Government was not going to call the motion. The Deputy Government House Leader later said to the press and to myself that, in effect, the matter was going back to the government caucus.
I go through this because I want to provide an explanation as to why I am asking the question and also to make clear that contrary to what was said by the Minister of Justice (Mr. Hnatyshyn) in Question Period, there was no obstruction on the part of the Official Opposition preventing the Government from calling this matter for debate or bringing this matter for debate. In fact, we do not have the authority or ability to obstruct even if we wanted to because the Government controls absolutely the use of government time and designates what measures will be discussed.
I repeat, I am not raising this in a confrontational way. I think, however, that I should try to clear the air on this subject so as to give the Government a chance to clear the air because of the perplexity on the part of many people over what has happened on this subject this week as well as the interest of the public at large in having some clarification.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to respond.
Clearly it had been our intention, and it still is our intention, to bring forth the resolution to have the abortion issue debated. One of the reasons there was reluctance to proceed was that clearly both opposition Parties served notice that they would fight this issue on procedural grounds. That is a fact because in a preliminary way they clearly served notice that this would be fought on procedural grounds.
Having regard to that fact, the Deputy Government House Leader is in the process of organizing a meeting with House
July 14, 1988

Leaders. He is out of Ottawa today, but he will be around tomorrow. He hopes to meet with House Leaders to talk about this issue in more detail, to see if once again we can get some consensus and some understanding as to how we might proceed so that we do not have to get involved in a procedural wrangle. Quite frankly, we have always tried to approach important issues of this nature on a consensus point of view, particularly if there has to be some modification of the Standing Orders. We would hope that we could illicit that same kind of cooperation from both opposition Parties. That is the spirit in which the Deputy House Leader will be approaching, once again, the House Leaders of the two opposition Parties.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Mazankowski) that when the motion was first put on the Order Paper, it was very clearly a highly irregular motion. I think it is the first time in history that it has ever been put on the Order Paper in that form.
Naturally, all Parliamentarians want to ensure that it would be procedurally acceptable. In our humble evaluation, since it had no precedent, since it went against the Standing Orders in so many different ways, we felt that this was an inappropriate way for the Government to deal with this issue. If the Government wants to deal with the issue in the form of a motion, I suggest that motions can be put that are procedurally acceptable, or legislation can be introduced that is also procedurally acceptable.
I want to make it very clear that the Opposition does not control the business in the House of Commons. The Government introduces Bills or motions and proceeds, and we respond. I want to make that point, because the Minister of Justice (Mr. Hnatyshyn) is trying to give the impression that we are somehow stopping this advance.
While I am on my feet, I want to ask the Deputy Prime Minister this. Earlier in the week the Deputy House Leader indicated that tax reform was now being considered for debate prior to the summer recess. I noticed that the Deputy Prime Minister did not mention that in his outline presented today. Can he either confirm that that is on the agenda or indicate whether that is off the list of legislation that the Government wishes passed prior to the summer recess?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, to respond to the first part of the NDP House Leader's remarks, if I could take his remarks as an invitation to once again seek a consensus as to how we might proceed with an abortion resolution, I would be very pleased about that. I am sure the Deputy Government House Leader will want to explore that with him and with the opposition House Leader of the Liberal Party.
Second, with regards to the tax reform measures, I have simply outlined what I consider to be the order of business until next Thursday. I understand that there have been some discussions between the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson) and/or his representatives, and representatives of the critics of
Business of the House
the other two Parties, about the prospect of moving the tax reform legislation ahead. Hopefully, if we could arrive at some parameters of time to move it into committee so that the committee study could be proceeded with, that would be in the best interests of all Members of this House. Naturally, we will be exploring that, and I suspect that the Deputy Government House Leader will be exploring that with his counterparts when they meet, hopefully tomorrow.


Mr. Jacques Guilbault (Saint-Jacques):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw to the attention of the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Mazankowski) what has been a surprise to many, and that is the disappearance from the Order Paper of Bill C-79. I am talking about amendments to the Elections Act. There is an understanding between Parties that we want to plug the loopholes that allow one to drive a truckload of unreported election expenses-


An Hon. Member:: All expenses have to be reported.


Jacques Guilbault: I thought there was an agreement. There is already a proposal that has been arrived at by an ad hoc committee of the three Parties. There is a letter that has been sent by the Hon. Member for Thunder Bay-Atikokan (Mr. Angus) to which this Party also subscribes. Can we have the assurance that these loopholes in the Elections Act will be plugged before we go into a national election? We would like to know what is happening with Bill C-79.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I am glad that the Hon. Member has raised that. On May 3 I wrote to both House Leaders of the two opposition Parties and I set out a proposal, including a new definition of election expenses which would be incorporated consistent with the recommendations of the Chief Electoral Officer. This proposition was turned down by the other two Parties. We are still prepared. I outlined eight different conditions, and I refer the Hon. Member to the letter.


An Hon. Member:: Make it public.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Because there was no agreement with regard to the definition of election expenses, I said fine, let us withdraw that for the time being but let us move on the other items with which we agree and then we can deal with the election expenses at that particular time.


Mr. Cassidy:: Do you want to leave a loophole for the election?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: That is totally incorrect, and you should not say that. The Hon. Member from Ottawa Centre (Mr. Cassidy) takes great pride in speaking from his seat without any knowledge of the facts. The facts are here. I am prepared to table the letter, which clearly outlines our willingness to deal with the new definition of election expenses which would clarify the loophole to which the Hon. Member refers. If the Hon. Member is suggesting that we should open up the election expenses to include office equipment, rental expenses,

July 14, 1988
Privilege-Mrs. Mailly
after the close of polls, and advertising taking place after the closing of the polls and transfers between registered Parties, candidates and local associations, and expenses incurred by candidates seeking nomination, which would have the effect of driving up election expenses and thereby asking the public Treasury to fund more of the election expenses, if he wants to create more of a boondoggle and a haven for people seeking office at the expense of the taxpayer, we are not going to accept that. We are prepared to debate it in committee and we are prepared to debate it on the floor of the House.


Jacques Guilbault: Mr. Speaker, 1 would like to come back to the letter of eight points that the Deputy Prime Minister has just referred to, and remind him that a subsequent letter by the Hon. Deputy House Leader for the Government asked us to pass Bill C-79 and offered only seven conditions this time. It was seven concessions and not eight, which is a new definition of election expenses. Why do we not deal with a new definition of election expenses, or have the Government clearly admit that it wants to be able to overspend as it wants in the coming election?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Because you were not prepared to deal with it.


Mr. Speaker:: 1 will hear the Hon. Deputy Prime Minister in a moment. I do want to say to Hon. Members that this exchange, which has followed the usual Thursday afternoon question concerning the Government's intentions for the next few days, is getting far beyond that usual point of order. I will hear the Hon. Deputy Prime Minister, but I am not going to hear Hon. Members debate endlessly on matters which have really nothing to do with the appropriate question that was put to the Government and to the reply of the Government. The Hon. Deputy Prime Minister.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I want to clarify only two points, and that is clearly that the letter of May 3 included a proposal to incorporate a new definition of election expenses pursuant to the recommendations of the Chief Electoral Officer. Because there was disagreement with regard to that, I again sought the co-operation of both opposition Parties to see if there could be a consideration given with regard to moving on all of those elements which we agreed on, with the exception of the election expenses.
It was only in an attempt to move it ahead. There was no agreement with regard to the proposal on election expenses. We are prepared to move in either direction and I am prepared to put in the legislation, either in the form of amendment or in the form of a new Bill, a new definition for election expenses, which I hope would be supported by all Parties.


Mr. Speaker:: I am inviting Hon. Members to meet in the lobby to carry on this discussion. There are other Hon. Members with important matters. I would recognize the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue (Mrs. Mailly) on a question of privilege.


Michael Morris Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, 1 rise on a point of order.


Mr. Speaker:: I would prefer to hear this question of privilege. I have delayed it for some time.


PRIVILEGE
Ms. Claudy Mailly (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Revenue):: The text continues, and I now come to the purpose of my intervention:
"Ms. Mailly is a Federal Conservative Member in the National Capital Region who has not supported the teachers." The text then states that the language teachers will be holding their demonstration on July 6, on the eve, then, of the day this press release was delivered to me-at 2 o'clock pm, at 300 Notre-Dame Street, Gatineau, at Claudy Mailly's riding office, and there follows a phone number where additional information could be obtained.
So I would like to submit this document. First, not only do I find it an act of intimidation directed at me, but they want me to intervene, Mr. Speaker, in a collective agreement and to take sides with one of the parties.
Second, Mr. Speaker, what is even more serious is that it is false. Not only did I support the teachers when they called me during this demonstration, but CHOT Television filmed and broadcast it. I supported the teachers then, not as an interven-or in the collective agreement, because I know that it is my duty not to intervene in such matters, but as a Member of Parliament, by telling them that I was going to speak on their behalf to the President of the Treasury Board (Miss Carney) regarding their demands for preparation time and language of negotiations.
We were told that the negotiations were held entirely in English. So I interceded with the President of the Treasury Board. The Alliance was aware of this because I told the Alliance representative who was in my office. Television and radio reported these facts, but the weekly newspaper Le Dimanche Outaouais, of which I will table a copy, published a photo under which it says, "Demonstration at Claudy Mailly's Office: About thirty teachers of French as a second language working for the federal Government demonstrated in front of MP Claudy Mailly's office last Wednesday. Ms. Mailly is the only Member of Parliament who has not supported this group of 700 teachers who have been without a collective agreement for two years. The demonstrators gave 1,200 post cards of support from the people of Gatineau to Ms. Mailly's executive assistant in her absence." It does not mention at all that I spoke to them . . . Furthermore, I was away, Mr. Speaker, because I was in the House to vote on Bill C-72, which was really my duty as I saw it.
They took advantage of it, knowing very well that I fully supported Bill C-72, and that I would earn a reputation as a defender of French language rights. They chose that time to demonstrate in front of my office, without warning me. But despite that, I took the trouble to telephone the representative. They still distributed the erroneous communique and left it at my office.
Business of the House
I later wrote, Mr. Speaker, to the Public Service Alliance, to tell them that if they did not publicly apologize in a press release, because they knew they were wrong and admitted it, I would have to raise a question of privilege because I find it terrible that one would want to intimidate a Member of Parliament in the exercise of her duties in that way.
So I submit the case to you, Mr. Speaker, because I know that election fever is in the air and I would not want irresponsible journalists who do not check their sources to use what the Public Service Alliance has said with other unions, that they have blacklisted me to defeat me in my riding and that they have already begun to work at it. I find that is intimidation against me and besides, Mr. Speaker, if anyone defends francophones well, I do!


Vincent Della Noce: Mr. Speaker, during Question Period, the House Leader of the NDP-


Mr. Speaker:: Is it another point of order?


Vincent Della Noce: Yes.


Mr. Speaker:: Later. I listened with interest to the Hon. Member's statement and of course I will consider all comments and reserve my decision until perhaps next week.


Claudy Mailly: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Michael Morris Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, I confess myself a bit frustrated. I had hoped as a private Member to be able to raise a question about a private Member's Bill, Bill C-273, during the course of the House business question which took place a few minutes ago. I was on my feet on two or three occasions and was unable to raise the question.
I did send a note to the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Mazankowski) who is handling the House business question today. Unless he is in the government lobby, it will be a bit difficult to put the question to him. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary who is here can respond.
Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary could say what is now the Government's intention with respect to the request which has been made jointly by the Hon. Member for Ottawa West (Mr. Daubney) as the sponsor of the Bill, the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) and myself and which was communicated to the House Leader and Deputy Prime

July 14, 1988
Business of the House
Minister last week by letter offering co-operation so that this Bill could be brought forward as a Government Order or so that some other means be found in order to ensure that it would be debated and pass third reading before the possibility of an adjournment leading to a summer or fall election.
Is it now the Government's intention to expedite the Bill so that action on political rights, which the Conservative Party promised in 1984, as well as my Party and I think the Liberals, will be taken and the Bill will be passed on third reading and into the Senate prior to the adjournment which may take place at almost any time?


Mr. Speaker:: Just before I call on the Parliamentary Secretary, I want to say to the Hon. Member for Ottawa Centre that I apologize for not having seen him earlier. My concern was that the exchange that was taking place was going well beyond its normal purpose and I do ask the Hon. Member to accept my apologies.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, this is a subject dear to my heart. I served on the committee that dealt with the Private Members' Bill and I have great confidence that the committee worked well in a non-partisan fashion and came up with a piece of legislation that has a lot to commend itself to this House and to the nation.
I think the Government has made its position quite clear historically and perhaps I could repeat it. The Government is reluctant to intrude on the privileges of the House and of Members. There have been some very substantial advances in the handling of Private Members' Business which came about as a consequence of parliamentary reform in 1984-85. The Government would not want to be seen as dictating to the House in any fashion what the House should do about an initiative from a Member through Private Members' Hour. I think that has been explained before and the best I can do with respect to this particular intervention is to repeat it.
If the Hon. Member wants me to seek further clarification from the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Mazankowski), I would be glad to do that. However, the House must remain master of its own destiny and procedures, in particular when it comes to Private Members' Hour.


Michael Morris Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, I will be brief. I find that a little bit frustrating as well given that the Government chose not to present its own legislation over the course of the last three or four years and then let it be known it felt it was fulfilling its commitment through the Private Members' Bill which, as the Parliamentary Secretary said, was dealt with in a very responsible and co-operative way by all three Parties.
Could I have an assurance from the Parliamentary Secretary, speaking on behalf of the Government, that the Government, that is the Ministry and the Parliamentary Secretaries,
will not deny unanimous consent if the Hon. Member for Ottawa West (Mr. Daubney) or some other Member were to seek unanimous consent for this matter to come forward through whatever procedural device is required so that it can be debated and pass third reading next week? Can that assurance be given so we will not have a situation where, in its anxiety to respect Private Members' Business, the Government winds up frustrating an initiative which is important to a lot of people and which is just on the brink of being adopted by this House, being threatened only by the clock.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, I thought the Hon. Member went a little outside the line of questioning when he referred to the Government not bringing forward a Bill of its own. I would like to put that in context.
The country was in a great deal of trouble in September, 1984. This Government brought forward more legislation and dealt with it more efficiently than any Parliament in the history of this country. In June, 1988, alone we faced 19 dilatory motions which resulted in the wasting of the House's time with votes and so on. Those motions were put by his Party. With a little more co-operation we might have been able to deal with even more legislation.
I just wanted that on the record. To blame the Government for not solving all the nation's problems in four years is a bit much. With a little more co-operation and fewer dilatory motions and filibusters, we could have solved a few more. However, we will go to the people and see who gets to solve them for the next four years.
On the specific comment concerning this Bill and the Government's intentions, I repeat: The Government has not interfered with Private Members' Business in this Parliament, that is, the notion of Private Members' Business. To ask whether the Government will refuse unanimous consent is to imply something that simply does not need dealing with. The Government does not intend to interfere with Private Members' Business. The nature of this House, the precedents, and principles related to Private Members' Business are very important.


Michael Morris Cassidy: And you are killing the Bill.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: The Member says "You are killing the Bill". The Government will not interfere with Private Members' Business.


Mr. David Daubney (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, it might be helpful if I were to advise the House of some developments relating to this Bill which stands in my name since the matter was raised, I guess, a week ago today.
As I understand it, there have been discussions in the caucuses of all three Parties and it would appear there might very well be unanimous consent to have this matter dealt with as if it were a Government order. However, I have also had discussions today with the Government House Leader, and understanding that this is a somewhat unprecedented request,
July 14, 1988

at least under parliamentary reform, and also understanding that he would like a period of time to discuss it with his Cabinet colleagues, I would like to take this opportunity of indicating in a friendly and informal way, give notice really, that I intend, perhaps on Monday of next week, to seek unanimous consent, after the Ministry has had an opportunity to examine my Bill and determine whether or not it would be in the public interest, to have it adopted as a government item.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Don Valley East on a point of order.


POINTS OF ORDER
Mr. Bill Attewell (Don Valley East):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap (Mr. Riis) attributed a comment to me in this week's Maclean's magazine. He said it as though I had said the cost of the submarines would boggle the mind. I want to put the record straight. That is not a quote of what I said. I did say that some of my constituents have some genuine concerns about the cost. I did say that some of my constituents have some concerns about whether or not these submarines might be armed some day. I also went on to say that what we really need as a government is better education and more information for the public. I would use a word of caution at this stage about this program as well, and I am supportive of it, but that we do proceed but not too quickly. The public needs to be well informed on this as we proceed.


ALLEGED INCOMPLETE QUOTE IN MACLEAN'S MAGAZINE
Vincent Della Noce: Mr. Speaker, my point is almost the same point as my hon. colleague. The NDP House Leader quoted me as saying in Maclean's magazine of July 18 something that I would have a hard time to explain. As usual, the NDP does not always read the whole article. However, I must confess this time that even if he had read it, it is not exactly what I said. Maclean's magazine did not report everything I said. What I said was: "No matter, $8 billion is a lot of cash. It is very hard to explain, but once you have the explanation that it is over a 25-year period and it is only $300 million a year, I have no problem at all. It is still a lot of cash but I have no problem at all to solve that. To update the fleet will cost more than that". I also said that at least 65 per cent of the project will be Canadian built and will create 55,000 person-years of work.
I just want to make it clear that the NDP did not quote me correctly and that Maclean's magazine did not quote the whole line. I have no problem in defending that. It is very easy to explain. It is too bad that my hon. colleague did not at least read the full line.
Air Canada


Mr. Benjamin:: Mr. Speaker, I have a point of order.


Mr. Speaker:: I will recognize the Hon. Member for Regina West on a point of order. I hope the Hon. Member for Regina West is not going to continue this afternoon's debate on defence.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Far be it from me to do that. I only want to quote the bard. Me thinks the last two speakers doth protest too much.


Mr. Speaker:: On that note perhaps we could move to Orders of the Day.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. de Cotret that Bill C-129, an Act to provide for the continuance of Air Canada under the Canada Business Corporations Act and for the issuance and sale of shares thereof to the public, be read the third time and passed.
Mr. Speaker:: When the House rose at one o'clock the Hon. Member for Regina East (Mr. de Jong) had been recognized. Since he is not in the House I will recognize the Hon. Member for Regina West (Mr. Benjamin).


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Mr. Speaker, east or west, in the case of Regina the twain shall meet.
I am delighted to have an opportunity to attempt to persuade the Government to change its mind on legislation, the whole foundation of which is based on the worst kind of mythology. I want to deal with some of the specific points of the Government and those outside of Parliament who have attempted to justify the privatization of one of the best airlines in the world on grounds of business management. The five-year business plan of Air Canada itself shows why the legislation is unjustified, unnecessary, and a waste of taxpayers' money, the money of Canadian investors, and money which otherwise could have gone to Air Canada.
I will deal first with Air Canada's five-year business plan which takes it up to 1991 inclusive. Air Canada's business plan specifically excludes any privatization or the selling of shares to the general public. Air Canada specifically states that its five-year plan does not taken into account privatization. Air Canada's business plan says:
Profitability improves throughout the plan as does the debt/equity ratio because existing debt is retired and additional debt is not required. By 1990 the return on equity achieves the Corporate objective. Retained earnings grow steadily throughout the planning period.
That is without this Bill, Mr. Speaker. Air Canada has not changed its five-year plan since this Bill was brought in. Air

July 14, 1988
Air Canada
Canada is still operating on the basis of its five year business plan, which is without any privatization.
It has been stated repeatedly by the present Minister of Transport (Mr. Bouchard) and the two previous Ministers that the purpose of privatization is to give Air Canada capital to buy new planes. That may be a valid position except that Air Canada, in its five-year plan, says:
-Air Canada will proceed with fleet renewal to take advantage of operating efficiencies available through new aircraft. The funds required for this multi-billion dollar investment will come largely from internally generated funds and borrowing. The airline's current drive to substantially increase earnings will therefore be maintained to generate the corporate share of the funds needed.
There is not a single word in Air Canada's own business plan about funds from the sale of shares.
It has been alleged by spokesmen from the government side, from outside this House, and from competing airlines, that Air Canada has the backing of the national Government, has access to government borrowings, et cetera.
My colleagues and good friends opposite forget that Air Canada itself says that it has received no equity infusion from the Government since 1977. That is 11 years ago. It says that it has received no government subsidies since 1962.
How does the Government explain its case that it is necessary to sell shares to the public in a company it already owns? That is another Barnum and Bailey con game if I ever saw one. As evidenced by Air Canada's own words, it does not need a nickel, has not received a nickel from the Government in equity since 1977, and has not received a nickel of subsidies since 1962.


Mr. Malone:: Why do they want to be privatized?


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: My hon. friend asks why they want to be privatized. Mr. Jeanniot and Mr. Taylor of Air Canada are exactly the same as Mr. Lawless, the Chief Executive Officer of Canadian National who told the Transport Committee; "We'll take the capital money any way we can get it". I will explain to my hon. friend in a moment how Air Canada can and should be getting it. I will be happy to elucidate for my hon. friend.
The other reasons given for the legitimacy of privatizing Air Canada are better management, flexibility in management, and corporate decision making overnight without having to go to the Cabinet, Government, or Parliament of Canada. I raised this matter in the Transport Committee with officials of the Government, the Minister, and officials of Air Canada.
I asked whether Air Canada felt any restrictions on flexibility or management decisions in their daily and monthly operations. Air Canada said no. In fact, the Hon. Member for Dartmouth-Halifax East (Mr. Forrestall), who I believe was a member of the Transport Committee at the time, will know that the Liberal Government in 1977 decided that Air Canada
should operate in a business-like fashion. According to the previous Government and the present Government, operating in a business-like fashion means one has to make a buck and not ask the Government for money. Air Canada has not asked for money, nor has it received any money.
When I asked that question in committee, the answer was no. It has not operated any differently than any other airline in this country. In fact, when Air Canada hears that Canadian Airlines International or Wardair holds a seat sale, Air Canada management has all the flexibility to announce the same fare or even a lower one overnight. When Air Canada announces a discount fare or seat sale, the other airlines can act overnight. There is absolutely no difference between any of the airlines in this country in terms of flexibility and management decisions. None of them conduct their affairs any differently, whether they are privately or publicly owned.
Therefore, the Government's argument for better management and flexibility is sheer nonsense. That argument falls on its face in front of the actual experience of Air Canada.
Air Canada has received international awards and gold medals as one of the best managed airlines in the world, but the Tories cannot stand that because it has the words "Crown corporation" in front of it. I would be quite happy to amend the Air Canada Act to eliminate the words "Crown corporation" if they would like. The point is, however, that it is a public utility that is owned and controlled by Canadians through its Parliament and its Government. That is the way it should be.
The Government and others in the private sector, particularly stockbrokers, have suggested that the public and employees can buy shares as a good investment in Air Canada. If it is a good investment, which it is, why would we not want the Government of Canada, on behalf of the taxpayers, to increase its investment?


Arnold John Malone: It does not pay a dividend.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Exactly! My hon. friend has made my argument. In the last 11 years Air Canada showed net profits of $102.5 million, with $45 million last year and $40 million the year before. What did the shareholders in Canada get by way of a dividend? Not a nickel. The record speaks for itself. It has not paid any dividends. Surely the taxpayers of this country, as investors, are just as much entitled to an opportunity for a return on their investment as anyone who buys a share on the Toronto stockmarket or anywhere else that these gamblers operate. That is another nonsensical argument put forward by the Government as justification for selling to Canadians shares in something they already own.
The Government obviously intends to turn its social and economic responsibility for a national airline over to private interests so that it can continue to say, as the former Minister of Transport said, it will not interfere with the day-to-day operations and management decisions of the CNR or Air Canada. They want to place that responsibility with those in
July 14, 1988

the private sector so that the federal Government can avoid the responsibility for a national airline.
What are the costs of this privatization? I have been reading the figures about the brokerage fees and commissions when the British Government privatized several companies in that country. While I do not have anything to do with shares or the stockmarket, from what little I have been able to find out from some of those in the business, if 45 per cent of the shares of Air Canada are sold for $300 million the brokerage fees and commissions would come from that amount which Air Canada will receive. If the brokerage fees and commissions amount to $30 million on $300 million in share sales, Air Canada will get $270 million. That is somewhat short of what the Government claims it needs to buy new airplanes. In fact, Air Canada has said that it does not need that money to buy new airplanes.
Any net revenue taken in on the sale of shares will not be used to buy aircraft, it will be used to reduce the $2.3 billion debt of Air Canada, with assets in excess of that, in order to make it more attractive to sell off the rest of the company. This charade has gone on long enough. This is a corporation built and payed for by the taxpayers of Canada. They are entitled to a return on their investment but they are not getting it. The Government has put up nothing else but the wrong reasons for privatization. It is not to buy planes. It is to reduce debt. It is to reduce pressure on the Government.
The law already provides that the authorized capital for Air Canada is $750 million. The people of Canada in fact have less than half of that, $329 million, and the Government already has the authority to purchase additional share capital for Air Canada even to reduce debt or buy planes. It is already there.
This Bill is totally unnecessary. Its foundation is mythology. It is terrible when a democratic socialist has to teach Conservatives something about sound business practices. I hope the Government will have second thoughts and withdraw this Bill and not deal with it any further.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments? Debate.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I thank all Hon. Members opposite who have stayed in the Chamber to hear my remarks with respect to this particular Bill. I particularly want to thank those Members from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island who obviously have a great interest in the subject matter and want to hear a viewpoint which is probably shared by them. Unfortunately, they have not found the courage nor, indeed, the conviction to stand up in the House of Commons and condemn what is best known in Atlantic Canada as a sell-off of a very important ingredient to the economy of Atlantic Canada.
The events surrounding Bill C-129 in coming to the House of Commons are indeed disturbing, not only to Members of
Air Canada
Parliament but to the general public and various interest groups across this country. The legislative committee on this particular Bill spent approximately one day contemplating its advantages and disadvantages.
My colleague, the Hon. Member for Cape Breton-The Sydneys (Mr. MacLellan), the official spokesperson for our Party, has demonstrated very clearly the position of our Party and why we are opposing this Bill. He has received numerous complaints from Canadians across this country who wanted that particular committee to review the Bill in detail and to hear their views on the importance of a nationally owned airline. Notwithstanding the substance contained in the McGrath report on parliamentary reform, the Government, which promised democracy, openness and fairness, has decided to say no to the commitments it made some time ago and to push through this Bill in a very quick fashion.
In addition to allowing only one day for the legislative committee, the Government refused Canadians in those regions of the country an opportunity to express their views in their own region. The committee did not travel to Atlantic Canada, western Canada, Ontario, Quebec or British Columbia. In fact to no part of this country did the committee travel.
Transport 2000 expressed it best when it said: "By selecting witnesses from exclusive airline management, organized labour and academic circles, the legislative committee overlooked Air Canada's most important constituency, the travelling public". How true that is. An airline conceived and implemented by a national government to service all the country is now in the hands of a Government which does not wish to hear the views of ordinary Canadians nor, indeed, those Canadians who use the airline the most. This is another example of a Government which is wedded to a concept of privatization notwithstanding the consequences. It is a blind and ill-conceived attitude on the Government's part.
Hon. Members opposite do not understand, nor do they appreciate, some of the institutions that a national government must put in place in order to sustain and enhance national unity and opportunities throughout the country. Partial privatization of this Crown corporation, I believe, will have negative effects on the various regions of this country. We have all heard Members opposite, as well as those on this side, speak glowingly and with a great deal of passion and concern in terms of trying to provide additional economic opportunities in their regions. We now have a Government which is backing off the very important clause contained in the Constitution, equality of opportunity. This legislation will, in the short run as well as in the long run, decrease the type of service we have in our regions. I speak primarily of my own region in Atlantic Canada. It will have an immediate as well as a long-term impact.
It is one thing for the Government to suggest that by selling 45 per cent of the shares, which value is yet to be determined, I am told, but taking the hypothetical figure of $300 million, it

July 14, 1988
Air Canada
is certainly not going to be sufficient to embark upon the purchase of new aircraft, which we are told may cost to the tune of $2 billion to $3 billion.
Air Canada will only want to have those routes which are exceptionally profitable. For example, flights from Halifax to Toronto are normally full to capacity. As a result, those flights, and those flights directly to Montreal, take place on a daily basis. They enable Air Canada as a Crown corporation to have a profitable margin on those flights so much so as to enable it to extend out into the hinterlands of the country to service such places as Corner Brook, Stephenville, Newfoundland, Yarmouth, Summerside, Charlottetown, Fredericton, Moncton and communities of that nature. Not all of the runs of Air Canada are lucrative enough to sustain its operations, so its most profitable operations such as the Halifax-Toronto run or the Halifax-Montreal run generate the needed revenues to provide the necessary, and I underline "necessary", service to the regions of this country.
One does not have to be a schoolteacher, a Philadelphia lawyer or a graduate of a business school to understand that those of us in the regions of the country, such as the region of Atlantic Canada, require the services of a national airline operating in our communities. Not only does a national airline provide service but it provides the necessary infrastructure which business, investment and the ordinary economic spinoffs need.
But what has the Government said to the regions of the country? It has said: "We are going to privatize Air Canada". Thereafter what will happen? You will see, Mr. Speaker, that the jet service into places such as Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Moncton, Fredericton and Sydney, which is in my own constituency, will be terminated. That will have an impact on economic developments in those communities. For what? The concept of privatization, a concept being espoused and expounded by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson), by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), and by the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Mazankowski).
What is even more alarming is what the Prime Minister said on January 14, 1985. I do not want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, what my constituents think of this particular statement or the person who made it. The Prime Minister said: "Air Canada is not for sale. Canada needs a national airline. There is a possibility that shares in Air Canada will be sold to the public, but the Government would certainly retain a majority interest". I am not going to repeat, because I think it would be very unparliamentary, what my constituents were saying when I was in my constituency on the weekend. The language that they used is not, shall we say, very supportive. It is not very favourable to the Prime Minister or to the image of the Prime Minister and his Government.
On April 12, 1987, the Deputy Prime Minister, when he made a statement in the House of Commons, stated that the
legislation would permit the transfer of all Air Canada shares to the public, which is essentially the first phase. Once again, as we have seen from time to time in this Chamber, the Government says one thing and then does exactly the opposite. This is an affront to those regions of the country which do not share in the bounty and the wealth that the country has. The results will affect us and affect us negatively.
My colleague, our spokesperson, quite succinctly pointed out all the difficulties that we will have with regard to the privatization of Air Canada.
I just wish to underline for those Members who are in the Chamber and, indeed, for those Canadians who may be viewing this particular debate, that we said that, when it comes to regional economic development and when it comes to maximizing the opportunities for those of us who live in noneconomically viable communities, the erosion of Air Canada as we now know it will will result in the eventual lessening of service to those communities. It will happen sure as next year will be 1989. Governments are very much aware of that because they will cherry pick, the poor ones will be sold off to some other form of airline, which may or may not for a period of time use those runs for their purposes, and thereafter services will be terminated in their entirety to those various communities.
Air Canada was a symbol of national unity. It enhanced the feelings that we are one country, one nation, linked by our railroads, something which has since been terminated, and linked by an airline which the Government is trying to get away from. There are not only economic reasons why we in the Opposition are opposed to this measure, but there are other fundamental reasons as well.
There will be a reduction in the number of jobs as a result of this partial privatization. Earlier my colleague talked about the centralization of the reservations system. In fact, Air Canada's system in the United States is already centralized in New York. The day will come, and I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that it is not very far away-perhaps within the next fiscal year-when there will be nothing more than a centralization of reservations in the country, perhaps in Toronto or in Montreal.
What will happen to the rest of the country? There will be lay-offs in Moncton, which has already sustained more than its fair share of lay-offs with regard to the CN shops. There will be the lay-off of individuals at facilities such as those in Sydney and in Yarmouth. There will be lay-offs in Summer-side and in Charlottetown. There will be lay-offs as well in Newfoundland, in parts of Corner Brook and Stephenville. This privatization will certainly result in the loss of jobs as a result of the centralization of reservations.
Airline stewards may have to leave their families in order to locate in one central area, otherwise they may have to give up their high-paying jobs. Employees on feeder lines will no longer be unionized. Their wages could fall from $14 to less than $8 an hour. Fet us talk about that for a moment. That is
July 14, 1988

a very sizeable decrease in the wages that are paid to union members.
Those opposite ought to realize that it is the working person who is really the backbone of the Canadian economy. The more money one can pay an individual on an hourly rate, the more he or she can make a significant contribution. It is those people who have the surplus moneys to buy the durable goods, something that makes the economy go around. It is better to give to those producers and those workers than to lay it on in terms of corporate profits to Canadian banks or multinational pharmaceutical companies. That is where Canadians should be placing their dollars, which gives a true picture of a Canadian investing in his own country because of additional dollars.
Work will be contracted out. No longer will the services of many employees be needed. No assurances are coming forward with respect to how many employees will be retained in Winnipeg, although the legislation states that the maintenance base will not be closed. One would think that if one can give a commitment to keep the base open, then one can certainly give a commitment in terms of the number of employees who will be employed there. But, again, that identifies the hidden agenda of the Government.
We have heard many times before in this Chamber the Deputy Prime Minister say that there would be no lay-offs in Moncton when it came to CN. The Minister for International Trade (Mr. Crosbie), previously the Minister of Transport, stated to the communities of Glace Bay and Port Hawkesbury that there would be no closure of their water plants, only to find that within a short period of time that was changed. There is no assurance that 500 employees at the financial branch located in Winnipeg will continue to be located there. The Government cannot give the community, the municipality, and the residents a clear legislative undertaking that that particular branch will remain in operation in Winnipeg. The Government is saying one thing, and on the other hand it does something that is entirely the opposite.
There will also be downgrading of services to less profitable routes, for example, Halifax to Sydney, frequency of flights versus the quality of the service, jets carrying disabled people, express freight, and industrial machinery.
There are a number of serious issues in those smaller runs. I mentioned the economics, but a great number of individuals travel from Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Halifax in order to attend the Victoria General Hospital for proper medical care. Now they have to get on what we call little puddle-jumpers. This is inconvenient, difficult, and requires them to wait at wickets where there is no seating, if they are disabled, particularly in Halifax airport. Perhaps some Members are saying that that is not a major problem. It is a major problem when a substantial number of individuals and patients must go from one area of the province to another on a regular basis. By downgrading and doing away with the jet service once again we are hurting
Air Canada
those individuals who need the assistance of a Government, and of a caring Government.
There has been no opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny of the public share offering. The decision with respect to the value of Air Canada is being given carte blanche to investment dealers. Is it not nice that the investment dealers will get a bonanza of a return for their efforts? If it is $300 million, they will probably pick up $30 million. That is not a bad days pay for some of those investment brokers. Canadians have not had the opportunity to go forward and state their views as to what they believe to be the appropriate amount.
In conclusion, the privatization of Air Canada and the method the Government has chosen will be difficult for those of us who live in Atlantic Canada. The difficulties are compounded, because it will directly interfere with provincial, federal, and municipal Governments in their attempts to maximize and enhance economic opportunities. There will be a lessening of service to those communities that I have mentioned such as Sydney. There will be a major inconvenience to those in the travelling public, whether they are patients going to the Victoria General Hospital, or small business people who must travel to the capital city for a variety of reasons.
I hope that the Government in its conclusions and in reviewing what it has done will come to its senses and recognize the suggestions that have been made by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Cape Breton-The Sydneys (Mr. MacLel-lan), who has been our official spokesperson and who has made numerous suggestions on how to enhance a situation which we believe could have a very serious and negative economic impact on our entire region.


Iain Francis Angus: I listened with interest to the Member in his participation in this debate, and I would like to raise a question that government Members have been putting as their reaction to speeches by the Opposition, and that is, the comment and the reality that Air Canada has not been the airline flying into the smaller communities, but that it has been one of the private sector airlines. Therefore, in the twisted logic of the Conservatives, they think that by privatizing Air Canada that will change.
From his experience in Atlantic Canada, could the Hon. Member indicate why Air Canada was not in there and aggressively providing that service? Was it because of the mandate of the Government of the day? Was it because there were private sector services there? How does the Hon. Member see that being affected by the change in Air Canada? Will we see Air Canada all of a sudden expand into those smaller communities, or will we see a situation where nothing changes?


Mr. McMillan:: What a loaded question.


David Charles Dingwall: It is becoming more and more apparent that questions of that nature, which are to the point and rather forthright in terms of their substance, have to be addressed by all Members. In communities in Atlantic Canada Air Canada

July 14, 1988
Air Canada
has provided the service. It has led the way and taken the initiative to provide service to those communities, both in terms of passenger and cargo service. Transportation and air transportation must be first and foremost a major part of any economic model. Because the Government of the day is urging Air Canada to get out of those smaller runs which do not generate the same profit as the big runs, for example, from Halifax to Toronto, or Halifax to Montreal, it is being given out to new airlines to pick up those routes.
A very good example of that has happened. A new company called Air Bras-d'Or, funded by the Government of Canada, opened its doors and advertised that it was going to transfer people from Sydney to Halifax to Port Hawkesbury. What happened to Air Bras-d'Or? There is no longer an Air Bras-d'Or company servicing that particular area, because it could not generate sustainable profits over a period of time to stay in existence. However, with a national airline reaping the profits from the major routes, it then had the ability and cash flow to service smaller communities.
I guess that the Government is only concerned with that corridor of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver. I would have thought that representatives from Charlottetown would have been so concerned that they would have stood up for the people of Charlottetown after a Liberal Government put in place one of the nicest airports in all of Atlantic Canada. We will find within the next fiscal year that there will be lay-offs of employees at the Charlottetown airport, and we will find that the service will decrease substantially. We will also find that the economic benefits and opportunities will decrease accordingly because the Government has failed to keep a national airline serving all of Canada, not only the plush corridors of this country.


Thomas Michael McMillan: Charlottetown is a plush corridor.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: I am motivated to make a few comments. This debate is deja vu. This is the thirteenth privatization of this Government, and I hear the same predictions about lay-offs from the same speakers. I hear the same predictions about drop in service from the same speakers. I challenge the Hon. Member to stand in his place and name one of our privatizations that has produced lay-offs rather than increased jobs, increased service, and increased customers. That is the characteristic of each and every privatization undertaken by the Government.
The same thing will happen with the privatization of Air Canada. The deregulation which this Government has accomplished has produced association between feeder airlines and the larger companies. Employees are better paid, more satisfied. There are more services to more communities through more flights. The safety record is outstanding.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: The reason is really quite simple. No company makes a profit without customers who pay the bills. In the airline business it is service, schedules, equipment that attract customers. The airplanes are better. It is people happy in their jobs, who satisfy customers when they come in. In the airline business it is the safety record.
Some Canadians are still afraid to fly. The safety record is an important aspect in attracting those customers and producing those thoughts. This privatization will serve consumers and employees well and customers very well, indeed.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, responding briefly to the challenge of the Hon. Member-and I take the challenge seriously-he has asked what Crown corporation or what agency of the Government of Canada has been privatized where job loss has occurred. The Hon. Member must be living in a dream world. The fact of the matter is, CN Route was privatized to become Route Canada. It has closed its terminal in many communities across this country, in particular in Sydney, Nova Scotia. It has closed its entire operation, throwing 22 people out of employment. That is what it has done. So do not tell me that these privatization matters that you people are engaged with, along with the Air Canada privatization, will not result in job loss. We have ample evidence to suggest, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that that will occur.
The Hon. Member is smirking over there, but he knows only too well that places like Charlottetown, Sydney, Moncton, Fredericton, Stephenville and Corner Brook will have major lay-offs within the next fiscal year. If he does not have the guts to stand up in the House of Commons to-


Mr. Turner (Ottawa-Carleton):: And de Havilland fired hundreds of people.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments are now terminated. Resuming debate with the Hon. Member for Thunder Bay-Atikokan (Mr. Angus).


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, I want to participate in the third reading debate on Bill C-129, an Act to sell out Air Canada.
I want to deal with a couple of matters, some of which my colleague who spoke just before me has touched on, in particular, the interrelationship between the privatization plans of this Government and its deregulation plans. It is acting in concert, and one is the natural extension of the other. We started with the Liberals before the last election floating the concept of deregulation in the air industry. Changes were put in place to ease the restrictions to allow carriers to get in and out of the business much more readily and to get in and out of routes much more readily, in and out in the sense of providing services to it.
When we speak of the evolving hub-and-spoke system that has been developed in Canada, much as it did in the United
July 14, 1988

States and much as we predicted, we are finding less competition, not more, as a result of deregulation.
We now have the two major airlines, Air Canada and Canadian Airlines, owning, directly or indirectly, small feeder services that will service the hub airports of Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, Thunder Bay, Winnipeg and what have you, and then transferring on to the major carriers.
My colleague made reference to the problems in his area about individuals who have to fly in order to obtain medical services. One of the things that we found during our hearings into deregulation, particularly when we talked to people in the smaller communities or in the communities that were in such a geographical location that they had to fly to hospital, was that you could not get the same kind of service on an Air Canada DC-9 as you could on a Canadian partner that seats 19 people. You are unable to get a wheelchair or a stretcher in to transport an ill individual to those communities.
Although it is not directly related to the privatization of Air Canada, it certainly is part and parcel of the approach and the end result of the privatization deregulation push in this Government.
Let me deal with the Act itself.


An Hon. Member:: How come Canadian Airlines would prefer to take smoking off their flights?


Iain Francis Angus: They saw the writing on the wall. This Government did not have the guts at that point in time to send a directive to Air Canada saying that that is what they would like them to do.


John Barry Turner: Don't be silly.


Iain Francis Angus: It took a New Democratic Member of Parliament, who had the courage for years to plant the seeds about that issue and was able to get legislation passed in this House, and in the other House, to ban smoking on domestic flights. That is what it took. It was not the Government that moved; it was a New Democratic Member that moved.


John Barry Turner: Don't be silly.


Iain Francis Angus: Now that I have their attention, let me go into the suggestions that my colleagues have put forward in terms of changes to the Bill, suggestions which unfortunately were not accepted by this House, by this Government in particular, which would have made what we think is a very bad Bill, a very flawed Bill, a little bit better, at least in providing some protection to the taxpayers.
The one that I was most interested in was the limiting of foreign ownership in Air Canada. The Bill currently follows international trends or conditions that maximize by 25 per cent the ownership of any airline in Canada. That is similar to a provision in the United States.
Air Canada
I gather that during committee hearings the committee was warned that the American Government is now moving to increase the allowable percentage and, because of the trade deal, which calls for harmonization between our two countries, that in fact Canada would have to follow suit. So if the Americans go to 40 per cent ownership allowable for foreigners, Canada would have to do the same thing. It would apply directly to Air Canada.
We tried to change that. We were worried that we might have a situation where one of our two airlines, whether it is Canadian or Air Canada, becomes acquired in large part by an American carrier and we develop into a hub and spoke system that is based not in our Canadian cities, where the hubs are, but in some of the major U.S. cities, and we find Canadians having to travel south to Minneapolis or Washington or New York before they could move back into Canada to another point. This is something that Sir John A. Macdonald made sure would not happen to the rail system when he arranged for the financing and development of the CPR to keep this country together. He was concerned about the north-south movement when what he really wanted was an east-west movement to keep this country whole. I would encourage his descendants in the Tory Party to rethink perhaps what they are doing in that regard.
The other amendment was to try to put into fact what the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Mazankowski), in tabling the Bill, suggested was there, and that is to limit the actual share offering. As we know, the legislation is open-ended. It could allow-and in fact the Minister has stated that at some point it will allow-100 per cent of Air Canada's shares to be sold to the private sector, to private individuals.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Iain Francis Angus: I hear "hear, hear". I am not surprised that some of the Conservative government Members want to see the whole airline sold. Given the way the legislation has been written and the directive given by the Government to Air Canada to vote its majority 55 per cent share with whatever the wishes of that minority group are, maybe it is just as well that they went the whole route. It is a half-baked pie that we have here. We tried to put in the legislation the restriction that only 45 per cent of the shares be offered to the public.
Let me deal with the philosophical aspect of this matter. Why do New Democrats oppose the sale of this Crown corporation? Is it because we like to own things as governments? Some people think that that is how we operate. Or is it because there is a need in a country like Canada to give the elected representatives of the people a chance to influence trade and travel patterns within the country? Yes, we have regulations that provide some level of control on transportation companies, airlines, railway and trucking companies. But if you give up the other element in the equation that government policy initiatives be directed through a Crown corporation to

July 14, 1988
Air Canada
provide services to the far North or to ensure there is a cross subsidization between the very lucrative Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto triangle and some of the smaller outlying region, there is a need to say to the Board of Directors of Air Canada that the bottom line cannot be their only consideration. Service has to be there not only to the major centres, to which many business people travel, but also to the Thunder Bays, the Sault Ste. Maries, the Sudburys of Ontario and elsewhere. The test of public convenience and necessity, which was there prior to deregulation, required an airline by regulation to provide a certain level of service. Perhaps it is a service beyond the economic capabilities of the community. We have seen in northwestern Ontario Dryden which has lost its jet service, a service it had for a number of years, a service very important to the economy of that part of northwestern Ontario.


David Orlikow: Brandon too.


Iain Francis Angus: It was a symbol of being part of the mainstream. It is down to NorOntAir, Air Ontario and a Canadian partner, the very small lines. Dryden does not feel the same kind of attachment it had before. My colleague reminds me that Brandon used to be on a route connecting through Thunder Bay which provided jet service which has been taken away.
There are some economic impacts that go beyond whether or not a company makes a profit. While obviously we do not want to see government corporations losing money, we think it makes sense to force them to make it their mandate to provide those kinds of services. Through deregulation and privatization we have lost the tools we once had to ensure there is that kind of service.
There is another area we were concerned about. Under a policy direction, Air Canada has certain responsibilities with respect to the Official Languages Act to ensure the appropriate mix of our two official languages across the country. There is concern that as a private sector company there would not be the same pressure or controls. We want to ensure that the Commissioner of Official Languages is able to continue the monitoring process and what is still our national airline will provide service in both languages that we have come to accept as appropriate.
My Party and those we represent are concerned about privatization. We see it being done not for sound economic reasons, but more to satisfy a certain philosophical approach that is represented by the Conservative Party.


John Barry Turner: Which is sound.


Iain Francis Angus: We have seen Air Canada allowed to operate more and more as a private sector company without the benefit of legislation. We have not as taxpayers had to provide any money to Air Canada for many, many years. It has been selfsufficient, which is the goal of any Crown corporation, as long as it continued to provide services. We know from the documents available that the share assets of Air Canada provided by the Government of Canada have not been drawn upon.
Money is available allowing Air Canada to refurbish its fleet. There are all sorts of exciting and innovative ways of acquiring equipment that are not capital intensive and could have been utilized to ensure that Air Canada was able to grow appropriately. Yes, it would have cost money, but it would have cost a lot less than eight or ten nuclear submarines.
It is important as a symbol that we have an airline that is ours, not some small group or an individual or two. Air Canada belongs to all of us, every taxpayer today, and those yet to be born. We are the owners. This great movement to privatize Air Canada is not giving it or selling it to the people, it is selling Air Canada to a select few, taking it out of the control of the many through their elected representatives and giving it to a small section of our population and to people outside of our country. I do not think that is right, Mr. Speaker. I do not think that is an appropriate policy direction for the Government of Canada to take. That is why I and my colleagues will be voting against this Bill as we did at second reading.
We attempted to make the changes in committee and at report stage to make the Bill a little better. None of the amendments were accepted, even though I think they were appropriate safeguards that even the government Members should have considered more seriously. I think, because changes were coming from the NDP, Tory Members say, "Whatever the NDP wants is wrong and we will ram the Bill through in any case". That is not the appropriate way to do things.
There are no guarantees for the workers, no collective agreement job security clause. The guarantee for maintenance bases is weak, and other employees such as ticket agents and aircrew are not included. Flight attendants, who traditionally have had a number of bases in Canada from which to work, are not protected. Air Canada is being privatized with an eye on the bottom line. Air Canada could easily say to those people who live in western and Atlantic Canada, "Sorry we are not making as much money this year as we would like to. We will have to centralize and you will have to locate in Toronto and Montreal. You will have to leave your home in Winnipeg or Vancouver because it is more cost efficient to have you coming out of the major hub". Then there is the possibility of greater and greater foreign control. You have a situation developing of a privately operated airport terminal in Toronto. What happens if the company involved in that becomes attached to one of the American companies? What are the ramifications?
It would be nice if the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) would phone us and tell us he has been elsewhere in his community, has spoken to the Governor General and will call an election so we can kill this Bill as well as the trade Bill. Then we can get rid of the Government that should not have been elected in the first place.


John Barry Turner: You are history.
July 14, 1988


Iain Francis Angus: I am not history. I am here for a long time. I want to thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, in listening to my comments. I am sure there will be some interesting questions or comments from my colleagues across the way.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, the doom and gloom, the spreading of fear, the attempt to make Canadians nervous about unreal situations is incredible. It goes on and on and it has no basis in knowledge and no basis in honesty.
The Hon. Member should know that to get an airline licence in Canada, a company must be Canadian-controlled. He is saying that all these foreigners will take over our airline. If he had read the Bill itself, the subject matter of this debate, he would know that those who are non-Canadians who own shares can never, no matter how many shares they own, control more than 25 per cent of Air Canada at any meeting and for any purpose. All of their shares have to be prorated in terms of voting power so that collectively they do not exceed 25 per cent. Seventy-five per cent of the votes, in perpetuity, remain in Canadian hands. That is what the Bill says.
How can the Hon. Member bring that bogyman out in this Chamber if he has read the Bill? I challenged the previous speaker to name a privatization that had led to job losses, and he came back with something called CN Route. I did not have time to respond.
CN Route was a subsidiary of a Crown corporation. The board of directors had to make a difficult decision: should it wind the company down and throw 3,000 people out on the street, or should it seek a buyer who can make it viable, who can provide work opportunities, instead of throwing 3,000 people out of work. That is what that was all about, it was about protecting Canadian jobs by finding a viable ownership to keep the company alive and healthy and to make it work.
Does this Hon. Member have any evidence of previous privatizations of this Government and this Parliament that have not led to better working conditions for employees and more employees, even hundreds more employees in the case of de Havilland, more customers, better service, better products and better situations for the free trade environment? That environment will produce hundreds of thousands of jobs for Canadians, and members of his Party keep filibustering it.
Every reputable economist in Canada, not the lackeys of a few labour union bosses, tells us that it is time to join the modern age. It is time to be productive. Canadians can and will compete, and given the opportunity of a market, there will be more jobs, there will be better jobs and there will be a higher standard of living for Canadians.
Canadians have watched this filibuster. They have seen the 19 dilatory motions occur in the month of June, 1988, and they
Air Canada
know about the half a million dollars a day it costs to operate this Chamber, which is going down the drain on the basis of this filibuster. The Opposition's popularity is dropping like a rock because they do not represent the aspirations of the Canadian people. They listen to half a dozen labour leaders, not labour union membership, of a few rich unions. Those labour union leaders drive Cadillacs and have a different view of the world.
It is time to get back to the grassroots and listen to the people on the street. They want a healthy Air Canada. They see an opportunity to participate in ownership. They see a healthier company down the road, and regarding this filibuster on this Bill, the nation would be better served if the debate would end and we could get on to other government business.


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, filibuster? Give me a break. We have had three speakers on this very important Bill. I would not call that a filibuster. Certainly I do not have the impression that we dragged out report stage last week. We certainly did not drag out second reading debate.
Let us face it. It was the Government that did a one-day wonder in committee. Is that consultation with the Canadian public to find out whether the Canadian public is in support of or against this legislation? Transport 2000 was not given an opportunity to appear, nor were other groups.
The Government knows that it cannot sell this to the Canadian people, so it wants to ram it through. It has forgotten about the tradition of this place that provides that matters of major consequence should have public and parliamentary review.
The Hon. Member talked about de Havilland. That was a company which the Government of Canada had to take over years ago. It had to pour millions into it, and as soon as it started to make a profit, the Tory logic told the Government to sell it so that someone else could get the gravy. That is incredible.
The Hon. Member goes on about the trade deal and all of these reputable economists who say how great we will do. Let me remind the Hon. Member that those studies were based on a 75-cent dollar. Where is that dollar now? Where are those jobs now? How can we turn over our country to an economic situation which has already been changed and over which we have no further control? Once again, the Government is not prepared to take the necessary steps to ensure that Canada can compete properly.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I believe there is a point of order on the part of the Hon. Member for Leeds- Grenville (Mrs. Cossitt) to table a committee report, and I think there is unanimous consent to allow the Hon. Member for Leeds-Grenville to do so.

July 14, 1988
Committee Reports


HERITAGE RAILWAY STATION PROTECTION ACT
Mrs. Jennifer Cossitt (Leeds-Grenville):: Mr. Speaker, as Chairman of the legislative committee on Bill C-205, an Act to protect heritage railway stations, I have the honour to present Bill C-205 to the House with amendments. We had an opportunity to hear from all witnesses concerned who made a valid contribution to this Bill. Those interested were, of course, Heritage Canada, VIA Rail Canada, Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Mr. Speaker, on the same matter, I would like to tell the House that, on behalf of my Party, we are prepared to give unanimous consent tomorrow at any time for the conclusion of report stage and third reading of this very important piece of legislation which all Parties support.


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


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: Mr. Speaker, we are certainly agreed to the tabling of the report.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It is tabled, and that is the extent of it right now.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being five o'clock p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.


PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS-MOTIONS   NATIONAL DEFENCE SUGGESTED DELAY IN ACQUISITION OF NUCLEAR POWERED SUBMARINES
Ms. Pauline Jewett (New Westminster-Coquitlam) moved:: That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider delaying its decision to purchase a fleet of nuclear powered attack submarines until the Canadian people have judged the proposal in the forthcoming election.
She said: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to introduce my motion calling on the Government to delay its misguided decision to purchase a fleet of nuclear powered attack submarines until the Canadian people have debated and judged the proposal in the forthcoming election. The Government, I suggest, has no mandate to proceed with what it boasts is the single most expensive military expenditure in Canadian post-war history. Just like the Mulroney-Reagan trade deal, this foolhardy proposal was not even raised during the last election campaign.
Furthermore, most Canadians want to express their profound opposition to it at the ballot box. A recent public opinion poll commissioned by the Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament found that by a margin of two to one Canadians disapprove of the Government's plan. Any Government, even a Conservative Government that claims to be sensitive to the needs and wants of Canadians must acknowledge one simple and telling fact: Canadians do not want these submarines.
I want to explore the many reasons underlying Canadians' opposition to this proposal because, fundamentally, this plan raises questions about how Canadians see the world, how we see Canada in the world, what kind of threats we feel, and how best to respond to those threats. I want to begin with what is perhaps the most critical question arising under the proposal, namely its implications for Canada's maritime strategy and Canadian sovereignty.
The Government claims these nuclear submarines are needed to defend our sovereignty in the Arctic. That argument is patently bogus. So much so that even the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Beatty) is using it less and less these days. In fact, the Minister recently revised the subs' main mission to "patrolling on Canada's east and west coasts".


Mr. Crofton:: That is what it has always been.


Pauline Jewett: However, the Minister, only last Sunday evening on The Nation's Business, returned to his original premise, namely that they were to protect Arctic sovereignty.
Naval analysts on both sides of the Atlantic have exposed the ludicrousness of the Government's bravado in saying these subs are intended to assert and defend Canadian sovereignty in the North. The Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament, for example, recently declared:
To assert Arctic sovereignty with submarines that will seldom be in the Arctic is like being represented diplomatically by the invisible man.
Veterans Against Nuclear Arms added that:
Canadian submarines are not going to be wheeling around under ice like police cars picking up vagrants.
Invisible men in police cars roaming under the Arctic ice picking up vagrants, is that the Government's concept of asserting sovereignty in the North? Like many Canadians, Ross Campbell, a former Canadian ambassador to NATO and former Chairman of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, is not deluded by the Government's claim that the submarines are designed to defend Canadian sovereignty:
It is not at all clear why nuclear powered submarines are needed to do a surveillance job equally well done by a combination of fixed sensors and conventional subs.
Canadians are demanding to know why the Government is planning to spend billions and billions of dollars to monitor the presence of foreign submarines in or near our Arctic waters when other means of protection, as alluded to by Mr. Campbell, would better serve our sovereignty needs. Tom Pullen, a
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Canadian authority on Arctic navigation, rightly points out that ice-breakers, which are visible, would be more effective than nuclear subs in asserting our sovereignty by making our presence known.
The real irony is that Canadian submarines would have to communicate with DND headquarters through a communications network which includes the U.S. and other Allied navies because only very low frequency signals can reach a submerged submarine, and the Canadian Navy lacks this capacity. It is difficult to understand how a fleet linked so closely to U.S. communications networks and operationally coordinated with other NATO navies can expect to assert our sovereignty in the Arctic unless our claims to those waters have already been recognized by other nations.
In other words, nuclear powered attack submarines will not solve our outstanding territorial dispute with the U.S. if diplomatic efforts do not. For that reason, the Government's proposal has been dismissed by Donald Kerr of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in England and British naval analyst Anthony Preston as not a military program at all, but simply political posturing, and very expensive posturing to boot.
Canadians are also very concerned that the decision to Buy nuclear-powered submarines will fundamentally alter Canada's traditional defensive maritime strategy. As The Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson aptly put it:
Make no mistake: the possession of these subs would represent a quantum change in Canada's strategic posture.
The Canadian Government has not given sufficient attention to the strategic implications of this plan, specifically as to how the fleet will be co-ordinated and, undoubtedly, integrated with the U.S. maritime strategy. Writing in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Ronald O'Rouke describes the U.S. maritime strategy as being characterized by "forward operation". According to Mr. O'Rouke, this involves:
-bottling up the Soviet Navy in its home waters-using one's forces offensively-particularly one's nuclear powered attack submarines.
He goes on to suggest that:
Only by operating in forward positions can the U.S. SSNs simultaneously perform these missions: help bottle up Soviet forces, threaten Soviet nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines and pose a tomahawk land-attack cruise missile threat.
Vice-Admiral John Anderson of the Canadian Armed Forces told members of the Standing Committee on National Defence on February 3 that in periods of tension, Canadian nuclear submarines could be sent to attack Soviet strategic subs. This admission confirmed the fears of many Canadians that these subs would be participating in the U.S. forward maritime strategy, including bottling up Soviet naval forces in their own waters. The acquisition of nuclear powered submarines will mean that Canada's maritime forces will be more, not less, subordinate to U.S. authority.


Patrick Dermott Crofton: False.
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Pauline Jewett: Admiral Robert Falls, ex-Chief of Defence Staff, has warned that any Canadian participation in the U.S. forward maritime strategy would be destabilizing inasmuch as it threatens Soviet missile carrying submarines directly and creates an incentive, as it were, for the missiles to be released before they are lost. Furthermore, it is important to remember that all of this would be taking place in waters far from Canada since no Soviet subs have actually been observed operating in or near Canadian waters.


Patrick Dermott Crofton: False.


Pauline Jewett: I am deliberately quoting reputable experts and authorities in order to have my friends in the Conservative Party understand what they have been saying. Deputy Chief of Defence Staff, Vice-Admiral Brodeur, acknowledged this recently, namely that no Soviet subs have actually been observed operating in or near Canadian waters, when he said:
At the current time we do not have evidence that Soviet submarines are entering into the Canadian Arctic.
Given that there is no evidence of Soviet incursions, no proof that Soviet long-range cruise deployments are contemplated, and minimal probability of a pre-emptive attack, a nuclear submarine fleet seems an irresponsible and wholly unnecessary proposal.
Some of the best wisdom on this subject comes from an unlikely source, the Conservative Member for Nanaimo- Alberni (Mr. Schellenberg). In a letter to his constituents last year, the Hon. Member wrote, and I quote:
But if the subs are really meant to scare anyone, the threat is surely halfhearted. What would one of our new subs do if they came across a Russian or American sub in our waters? We are not going to risk confrontation with a superpower over an incident like that... Canada is not a superpower. The use of submarines as a policy instrument for the attainment of sovereignty simply commits us to playing the game by superpower rules ... and that may be the worst of both worlds. For we certainly don't have the muscle to make foreign policy with a big stick, and if we try to do so, we may well lose our influential voice as a moderate and sensible member of the international community.
Most Canadians, including some Conservative MPs, do not want membership in the nuclear submarine club. They do not want to see this country drawn into a provocative and hostile maritime strategy which membership in this exclusive club represents.
The Canadian people never gave the Government a mandate to adopt such a military posture so at variance with Canadian traditions, a posture which would serve only to deepen tension and suspicion between nations at a time when the world has witnessed a welcome thaw in East-West relations. Canadians do want to give an emphatic no to this proposal, and that is what this motion, when passed by this House, will enable them to do.
The Canadian Centre for Arms Control also points out that in every one of the three traditional tasks of Canadian maritime command, including sovereignty protection and the

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defence of North America, other options, quite apart from nuclear submarines, would be better suited to these specific needs.
The much touted under-ice capacity of nuclear submarines is unnecessary in peacetime since detection and reporting of incursions can be done at far less cost. It is unnecessary in wartime when the enemy threat would not come in the Arctic, as we all know, but in passages to the Atlantic which would be monitored at so-called "choke points".
Perhaps retired naval officer Douglas Maginley passed the definitive judgment on nuclear subs when he wrote in Policy Options earlier this year:
The nuclear-powered attack submarine has limited uses. It is, in fact, the mechanical equivalent of the great white shark. Its only function is to kill; to sink ships and other submarines. It cannot make use of the sea, only deny its use to others.
Canadians are also profoundly concerned about the threat these subs pose to our good international reputation and how their acquisition will undermine the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
Canada plans to declare that weapons-grade enriched uranium will be used for military purposes for these subs and then returned to civilian use. However, Canada would bar UN inspectors on the grounds that classified information might be obtained by Eastern bloc inspectors. Each submarine reactor will need between 150 and 200 kilograms of weapons-grade enriched uranium. This is a lot of material which is effectively being removed from international scrutiny.
While Canada is within its legal rights, as a signatory of the NPT, to take advantage of a loophole in the treaty, no other country in Canada's category has ever tried to exempt atomic fuels from international safeguards so as to use them for military purposes. In other words, Canada is the first nonnuclear weapons power to consider the use of nuclear materials for military purposes. In the eyes of many observers this would set a very disturbing precedent.
David Fischer, a councillor at the International Atomic Energy Agency, has said that Canada is imperiling its international reputation as a champion of non-proliferation by taking advantage of a loophole in the treaty.
It would also undermine the International Atomic Energy Agency's ability to reassure other countries that no uranium is being diverted which has, until now, been the foundation of the global strategy for curbing the spread of nuclear weapons.
Other signatories to the NPT could cite Canada as a precedent and also withdraw stockpiles of enriched uranium from public scrutiny. Perhaps more ominously, non-signatories to the treaty, on whom diplomatic pressure is continually brought to adhere to the treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency's verification regime, including Brazil, India, Pakistan, and South Africa, could point to Canada as itself undermining both the treaty and the verification regime.
The Canadian Centre for Arms Control has condemned this aspect of the submarine purchase as a "major departure for Canadian policy and practice" which is "gutting an important arms control treaty".
The cost of compromising Canada's 40-year commitment to the peaceful use of nuclear materials could be immeasurable both in terms of our international reputation and global efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons.
Canadians are also profoundly concerned about the risks these nuclear subs pose to our delicate and precious environment. It is curious that the Department of National Defence, in answer to a written question of mine a few days ago, has just now initiated an environmental impact assessment on the proposed purchase. Who has been contracted to undertake the initial environment screening? Why, it is Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. I know a lot of environmentalists from across the country who would question the objectivity of an agency whose business is, in part, to promote atomic energy.
Canadians have reason to be concerned about the safety record of nuclear submarines. First, it is doubtful that Canada's claim to meet its exemplary standard for civilian reactor safety in the submarine project is even possible with the stingy budget proposed by National Defence to meet safety standards. More important, the past record of American and Soviet nuclear powered submarines is not a reassuring one, despite American claims that no accidents have been related to the power plant.
In fact, the loss of a U.S. submarine in 1963 was reactor-related according to the chief of the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Ships. Nuclear propelled submarines have run aground, sunk, and collided with warships, tankers, other subs, and even whales. A 1986 survey done by the Centre for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco revealed 99 incidents, 46 of which involved the nuclear power plant. At present, two U.S. and four Soviet subs lie abandoned on the ocean floor complete with nuclear reactors, certainly not very reassuring to all of us.
Also, the Department of National Defence has failed to outline procedures for decommissioning these nuclear submarines, particularly with regard to retrieval and disposal of all radioactive material and waste.
Perhaps it is appropriate to give the last word on safety to the father of the U.S. nuclear navy, Admiral Rickover. Late in life the Admiral became a vocal critic of both nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Before a U.S. congressional committee in 1982 he said:
I do not believe nuclear power is worth it if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me what I would do with these nuclear-powered ships-I would sink them all.
Finally I want to address briefly the incredible and still undetermined cost of this proposal. The Minister of National Defence says that Canadians can afford to foot the bill for this batch of nuclear subs. However, what he will not tell them is the precise cost of these subs. The Minister of Finance (Mr. July 14, 1988

Wilson) recently said that although the Government has some "general parameters" as to costs-whatever that means-it will likely be two years before an exact figure is available. What is clear, however, from all naval experts is that the basic cost of buying just the subs will far exceed the $8 billion figure the Government offers up as gospel.
The Canadian Business Council on National Issues has said $12 billion, Captain John Moore of Jane's Fighting Ships says $11.25 billion plus 50 per cent over 10 years for refitting, refueling and training, and the Canadian Centre for Arms Control says $14.8 billion.
A Conservative Member from Toronto is quoted in Maclean s as saying that "the cost of these things boggles the mind". Another Conservative Member from Quebec said in Maclean's this week that he is having a great deal of trouble explaining to his constituents why the Government is planning to spend all these billions of dollars on useless, provocative, unnecessary nuclear subs when the money could be spent elsewhere, as we all well know.
Surely Canadian taxpayers have a right to know the exact cost of this program before any decision is made to purchase this fleet. Finally, surely all Canadians have the right to debate and judge this proposal in the forthcoming election.


Patrick Dermott Crofton: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to make some comments on the motion of the Member for New Westminster-Coquitlam (Ms. Jewett) who proposes that we should defer action on the acquisition of nuclear powered submarines until after an election-type referendum. She is a little late. This decision was taken last year.
In the 1984 election, my Party made a particular issue of the sorry state of our military forces' equipment and our resolve, when elected, to implement corrective action. The unprecedented mandate we received in the 1984 election was, in part, an expression of approval for these military proposals. The people have already spoken.
Why nuclear powered attack submarines? The NDP is scandalized because these SSN's are attack submarines. There are no other kinds of submarines. Our Oberon submarines, those aging diesel electric boats, are categorized as SSKs, conventional attack submarines. There are no other kinds of submarines.
The NDP would appear to be oblivious that we have destroyers in our fleet and fighters in our air force. No doubt we will soon get an NDP motion to erase those naughty words from our vocabulary.


Pauline Jewett: Why do you not talk about the U.S. forward maritime strategy?
Nuclear Powered Submarines


Patrick Dermott Crofton: Why submarines at all? I think it is worth spending a few moments reflecting on Canada's circumstances and Canada's needs.
The Hon. Member talks about the United States naval forward plan. We have no connection with that. It is not NATO policy. We belong to NATO, not the United States Navy.
We are a major trading nation. We depend heavily on the safe and timely delivery, by ship, of much of our trade. Our economic well-being, and consequently our social well-being depends on this secure sea trade. We front on three major oceans. We have the longest seacoast of any nation. Thus we have a vested interest, indeed vital interest in the safe and unimpeded use of the oceans, especially those that lap at our shores.
How do we achieve this? One way is in friendly and cooperative participation with other like-minded nations who share our views. Hence, we belong to various U.N. agencies and to NATO. We have a commitment, an obligation to those with whom we have made these commitments.
We have another obligation. That is an obligation to the nation of Canada and her people, our constituents. That obligation is to maintain those facilities and those forces necessary to patrol, protect, and exercise appropriate authority over these areas of land, air and water we call our own. No amount of weaseling around excuses any government for neglecting these basic obligations of office.
It would be very nice if we could declare the world burglar-free. Unhappily it is not. My own neighbourhood back home is not burglar-free. We find it necessary to maintain a police force and to encourage other organizations such as Neighbourhood Watch. Our oceans also have a variety of challenges awaiting us, from bogus refugees, to fish thieves, to drug runners, to potentially unfriendly naval forces camped on our doorstep.
We need in our inventory the capacity to deal effectively with all of these potential problems.
The NDP and Liberal defence critics have both publicly acknowledged that we require a Navy. So far, so good. They also agree with us that the Navy should be a mix of vehicles which include submarines. They also publicly acknowledge that nuclear powered submarines are the most useful and most cost-effective submarines we could have.
Having come this far on fact, evidence and logic, both opposition Parties now depart into the Land of Oz with all sorts of convolutions, contortions and distortions about cost, need and safety.
No doubt my Government colleagues will address the cost and safety issues. I limit my remarks to the need factor.
The NDP defence critic has suggested that the NDP, instead of building SSN's, would buy additional patrol frigates

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Nuclear Powered Submarines
and up to 12 conventional submarines at a price some $2 billion more than our proposed expenditures.
Acquisition of conventional submarines would be a colossal waste of money. Even worse, it would be a dangerous and fraudulent waste of money. Such expenditure would try to delude the Canadian people that our defence needs are satisfied, and even worse would expose our submariners to a disastrously uneven contest in any conflict.
Given the military capacity of our potential adversary, we would be emulating the unhappy Polish cavalry who tried to halt the German Panzer divisions with horses and swords in 1939. That is the reality of the utility of conventional submarines.
The Canadian taxpayer, and certainly our long-suffering sailors, deserve capable equipment. The issue really is not should we or should we not have nuclear powered submarines. The real question is: Do we still need a Navy? The answer clearly is a resounding yes. Even the opposition defence critics agree.
We cannot afford quantity, even though our huge ocean expanses, our lengthy seashore, and our heavy dependence on ocean trade suggests we do indeed need quantity. The obvious route, the only sensible route, is to seek cost-effectiveness for what we do acquire. That means the SSN's.
The acquisition program upon which we have embarked calls for delivery of boat No. 1 in 1996, boat No. 2 in 1998, and one boat every 18 months thereafter until program completion in about the year 2010, which is 22 years from now.
There is an urgency to get on with the contract process because of the lengthy lead times required. We already face the prospect of a gap between the time when our three conventional submarines are scrapped for safety reasons and the time when the new boats come into service.
Thus we must get on with the task of replacement. The pending decision of country of source is still to be made, and we will need another two years of contract definition and contract allocation before commencing construction. We have lots of time between now and 1996 to change, amend, even cancel the program. What we do not have is time now to procrastinate. It may be the NDP's favourite policy on most subjects, but not ours. We see action as essential.
I look for an early decision and early action on this vital question of which submarine to buy. Whether to buy is long since decided.


Mr. Stan Darling (Parry Sound-Muskoka):: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to participate in this debate brought forward by the New Democratic Party. The Canadian Government's intention to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, commonly known as SSN's, is entirely consistent with Canada's longstanding renunciation of both nuclear weapons for Canada and nuclear roles for the Canadian Armed Forces. These vessels
utilize nuclear power for the purposes of propulsion only. They will not carry nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices of any sort.
The principle of using nuclear power for propulsion is much the same as using nuclear power to generate hydro-electricity energy which is a common practice throughout Canada and the industrialized world. It is fully compatible with our commitment not to acquire nuclear weapons.
Because of its size, Canada has some unique problems and some unique responsibilities. We must keep certain vital sea lanes open in our three-ocean perspective. We must accept our role in defending sea lanes which are vital to western Europe and no one can deny the importance the Pacific Rim will play in the near future to our way of life. Even the New Democratic Party accepts the concept of the three-ocean perspective.
The submarines will not only be used in the Arctic, they will serve our entire territory, the Arctic, the Pacific and the Atlantic. During the previous Government, our entire Armed Forces were allowed to deteriorate to a level never seen. After World War II, we had the third largest Navy and proud officers and sailors serving our country. This Government has been able to give back some of the needed improvements.
The nuclear powered submarines will be the cornerstone of the new Navy. The SSN has unlimited underwater endurance when compared to the conventional submarine, which must spend at least 15 per cent of its time recharging on the surface. That alone should prove the necessity of the nuclear submarine. If one of our submarines was going from Halifax to Vancouver using the North West Passage, which is normally a two-week trip, an intruder would have to assume that he could come in contact with a Canadian submarine anywhere in our territory. One week a submarine could be in the Atlantic and two weeks later, having travelled under our Arctic water, could find itself on our Pacific coast. As for showing the flag, once in port, like any other submarine, they surface but once they leave port they again become invisible.
We have heard so much about the need to protect our own territory instead of letting other countries do so. I am quite sure that everyone is aware that Canada has the longest coastline in the world. I believe it is estimated at some 37,000 miles, so we can see the great advantage of the nuclear powered submarines. We must be able to control our waters in the three oceans, and the nuclear-powered submarine will do this.
Another benefit of the nuclear-powered submarine is that it will be less polluting. The cost of owning these submarines, as has been pointed out, is $300 million a year spread over 27 years. Its all very well to have a sign put up in the North West Passage saying, "Keep out. Canadian territory", but it is even better to have a big watchdog on a leash. There was an interesting letter published in the Citizen yesterday with respect to nuclear subs. It reads:
July 14, 1988

In today's navy, where speed, endurance and reliability are of the utmost importance, a diesel-electric boat does not meet the needs of our navy. They are slow, have low underwater endurance, cannot proceed through the North West Passage in summer even under ideal conditions and their diesels pollute the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, adding to the global warming.
Moreover, should an accident occur, the batteries containing in excess of 13,000 litres of sulphuric acid could spill into the sea, adding to the pollution already in our oceans. The salt water, when mixed with sulphuric acid, will produce the deadly phosegene gas which could kill the ship's crew.
Conversely, a nuclear submarine can operate in all three of our oceans and, for the first time, exercise our sovereignty anywhere along our lengthy coastline without limitations, with speed and efficiency, this would be done without the pollution of our seas or air above.
The U.S.S.R. has 400 submarines and commissions one every five weeks.
Canada does require nuclear boats. To quote commander of the Marine Command, Vice-Admiral Charles Thomas, "The issue is not the cost of owning nuclear submarines-it's the cost of owning a navy."


Mr. Ray Skelly (Comox-Powell River):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have an opportunity to speak on this issue today and I congratulate my colleague, the Hon. Member for New Westminster-Coquitlam (Ms. Jewett), for raising this issue in the House. It is certainly important that the House of Commons have an opportunity to debate this issue prior to an adjournment and possibly an election.
When the issue of nuclear submarines was first raised, it was raised in the context of protecting our Arctic sovereignty. I think most Canadians now have enough information to believe that that is not going to happen. Even Conservative Members of Parliament are beginning to address their constituents and the media by saying they cannot justify those costs. The Hon. Member for Nanaimo-Alberni (Mr. Schellenberg), in his direct mail correspondence to his constituents said he could not justify that use, that it did not make sense to use it in the Arctic, that the costs were just beyond the comprehension of most Canadians and even himself. Today in the House two other Members claimed they were misquoted by the media and not fully quoted by others, but this opportunity to suck and blow by two other Members of this House is not what is happening. What in truth is happening is that government Members are falling quickly on this issue because it is so irrational.
There is no doubt, I think, in a lot of people's minds that this issue will be dropped.


Claudy Mailly: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The Hon. Member for Gatineau (Mrs. Mailly), on a point of order.


Claudy Mailly: Mr. Speaker, I protest. The Hon. Member just mentioned a question of privilege raised earlier in the House today. I don't think it is appropriate for the Hon. Member to make these references in his speech, especially when the Speaker has yet to rule on my question of privilege.
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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: This is debate, and I would hope the Hon. Member would carry on with his speech, but I would bring to his attention that there is a ruling coming down from the Speaker, so I hope he will keep that in mind when he does mention anyone in this Maclean s article.


Raymond John Skelly: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think what I was commenting on more than anything else was the difficulty people are having explaining to their elected constituents the enormous costs and the changing use of this particular instrument. It is now recognized by many individuals who are experts in this field that we will not be able to enhance our Arctic sovereignty with nuclear-powered submarines. In all likelihood, as my colleague, the Hon. Member for New Westminster-Coquitlam, mentioned these submarines will in fact be used in the Greenland-Iceland-Norway Gap along with other NATO forces to contain the Soviet fleet in the North and will also be used by the U.S. in the Northwest Pacific in its forward maritime strategy. It is a strategy designed to destabilize the balance of power and it is a strategy that is going to create an additional incentive or momentum in the arms race. It goes absolutely counter to the peace initiatives that have come about lately and to the traditional approach of Canada. The costs of this program are enormous and Canada would be well advised to stay far, far away from it by ending this program.
The cost of the submarines are enormous in terms of destabilizing the balance of power, undermining the arms and peace negotiations going on and undermining the nonproliferation treaty. One of the other interesting things we do not hear about from the other side of the House is the skewing of the national defence budget. There are many, many other branches in the Armed Forces which serve this country well, which have earned an international reputation, and over the next 25 years they are going to find their budgets very short. They are not going to wind up with the promotions, the additional staff and resources.
If I were involved in search and rescue and wanted an adequate number of flying hours, new equipment, new techniques and additional personnel to serve the people of this country, I would be very worried that my entire budget was going to be skewed by the submarine program. The peacekeeping forces, the anti-submarine warfare programs already in place, have been proven and tested over a period of time. This budget is going to harm the personnel in the Armed Forces, their families and the programs wherein they work hard to serve the people of Canada. Mark my words, the cost of this will cause an enormous amount of problems for those people.
In addition, it will erode Canadian sovereignty. The participation is clear. We are not going to attack the Americans under the Arctic ice in which their presence is clearly known. According to Armed Forces NDHQ, there is no

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information that there are Soviet submarines operating under there.
We do not have a communications system to communicate with those submarines. We will have to use the American very low frequency communications system. That speaks in an interesting way for a national armed forces whose primary problem with sovereignty in the Arctic is the American's attitude toward the Arctic archipelago.
With respect to the fuel supply, the Americans are uncertain that they will give a long-term enriched uranium fuel supply. We are now dependent for that fleet on the United States. There is no agreement in place for that to happen. We will either have to buy our fuel supply from the United States or manufacture our own, which will cost several hundreds of millions of dollars.
Not only will we be dependent upon the United States for the fuel to operate our ships, we will be dependent upon it to use its communications system to maintain contact with it. We will likely be operating in a subordinate position in its forward maritime strategy.
The political costs to the Conservatives are interesting. There is a clear understanding in the minds of Canadians that this program is irrational. The two issues which are likely to loom largest in the next election are nuclear submarines and free trade. I admit that free trade is grey for some people. They are not sure about the conflicting stories that they are hearing. However, when they are asked about the nuclear submarines, they are absolutely clear that it is a crazy undertaking. They know that there will be an erosion of other programs. Not just the National Defence budget will be skewed. The people in the Armed Forces today will be harmed by it. They know that programs such as old age pensions and health care as well as others will be competing with funds that are already earmarked for the submarine program.
There is talk of this program exceeding a cost of $16 billion, and that that $16 billion represents an enormous cost in lost opportunities in the country. It represents things that we could do.
This is a very unfortunate program. It is ill-conceived by a Government which has not done its homework. It is gradually coming to the realization, as statements by a number of Members of Parliament in written form to their constituents now acknowledge, that the Government cannot justify those costs. It cannot justify the program. It is not related to Arctic sovereignty.
There are many other ways to address the question of Arctic sovereignty, and addressing them more effectively and cost-effectively than by using nuclear submarines.
It is interesting to note that we cannot assess where those costs will come from. One individual, the Commander of Canada's Army, Lieutenant-General James Fox, delivered through members of his staff a curious comment of the Department's plans to acquire the 12 nuclear-powered
submarines at a cost of $8 billion. The General's staff argued, first, that the submarine acquisition will not have any effect on other defence expenditures. Then in a conflicting statement it was argued that Canada will be able to afford the subs because $6 billion of the $8 billion have already been identified in existing defence expenditures.
I ask you, Mr. Speaker, whose salary will be cut? Whose promotions will not take place? Whose resources will be cut? I am surprised that my colleague from the Esquimalt-Saanich area can stand in this House as a former member of the Armed Forces and watch his brothers and sisters in the rest of the Armed Forces be cut to the bone financially. I am convinced that the Government will be forced by the people to see the light and that it will drop this crazy program before the next election, or certainly suffer defeat.


Mr. Dave Nickerson (Western Arctic):: Mr. Speaker, before I get into my presentation I want to convey some intelligence from the Hon. Member for Scarborough West (Mr. Stackhouse) in respect to the Maclean's magazine article which was referred to before. He tells me, Sir, that he was interviewed by the magazine and his point of view was, like mine and that of most Members on this side of the House, very positive. We believe that the Government is doing what is right in this acquisition program. But, for some reason or other, anything in a positive light, a positive vein, was neglected to be printed in the Maclean's article. Perhaps that gives Hon. Members some idea of the objectivity of that particular publication.
The motion before us today asks that the Government delay its submarine acquisition program until after the next election. It is my view that this matter was decided at the previous election. I remember standing on the shores of the Arctic Ocean in 1984 handing out leaflets which provided a description of the PC defence policy. The fact that I was elected, along with 210 of my colleagues on this side of the House, would seem to indicate to me that the PC defence policy found favour with the electorate of Canada.
At that time we promised to guard Canadian sovereignty on the land, in Canadian waters and in Canadian air space. We wanted to give our military the tools with which to do that job. We wanted to defend the northern parts of Canada which hitherto had been neglected. There was overwhelming support for this policy.
The NDP ideas of getting out of NATO and NORAD were rejected. The Liberal policy of allowing our military forces and military equipment to decay were rejected by the people of Canada. Not only at the time of the election but also about a year ago, at the time of the publication of the White Paper on national defence, that overwhelming support was again there.
If we ask ourselves the question, do we need a Navy, and answer that question in the affirmative, as just about everyone here would, then the next question becomes this: what should become the make-up of that Navy? What can do the best job for the money available?
July 14, 1988

The Liberals allowed over a period of years for our Navy to deteriorate. Virtually what we have left is a bunch of rust buckets. Really what we are doing is starting from scratch. We are in the process of acquiring a number of new vessels. We did not have one minesweeper in Canada. We are in the process of acquiring 12 new frigates. I guess, to give the Liberals credit, that acquisition program started under them. It is our proposal to buy some 10 to 12 nuclear propelled-not nuclear armed but nuclear propelled-submarines over about a 25-year period.
The Liberal plans, when we came in to office, although they had not been put into the process of implementation, were to acquire some 18 frigates, about six more than we are going to get. These things cost about half a billion dollars apiece. Frigates do not come cheap. They do not come in boxes of corn flakes.
The Liberals were also going to acquire a fleet of conventional submarines. The price-tag over the 25-year period would have been about $2 billion in excess of what we plan to spend. It would not have done anywhere near as good a job.
The former Liberal Defence Minister, the Hon. J. J. Blais, as quoted in a newspaper article yesterday, admitted that he was a supporter of the Conservative acquisition program, that nuclear-powered submarines were three times as effective as a destroyer, or three times as effective as a conventional diesel electric submarine.
The Oberon submarines that we have are old. They have to be replaced. They are dangerous and we cannot use them any more. We have to buy a new model.
Who in their right mind would go out in 1988 and buy a brand new Model T automobile? One would not do it. If one is going to buy a new automobile, then one is going to go and buy the latest model available, the most fuel efficient, et cetera. Diesel electric submarines when submerged have to use batteries. We have had described to us the environmental hazards of diesel electric and battery-operated submarines. They can only go for two hours at maximum speed while submerged. What chance is there of a diesel electric submarine catching a nuclear submarine or getting away from a nuclear submarine? There is no chance at all. We would be submitting submariners to inappropriate and great risks by putting them out to sea in times of potential hazards in Model-T submarines.
The nuclear-powered submarine's range under water, under the ice, is virtually unlimited. These days no other country buys diesel electric submarines. The United States has several hundred submarines and it has three diesel electrics left. They use them for target practice because the Soviet Union still has a few diesel electric submarines.
The U.S.S.R. has a much more ambitious nuclear submarine acquisition program than ourselves. One of the Members
Nuclear Powered Submarines
earlier pointed out that it is acquiring submarines at a rate of one every five weeks.
If we buy these submarines, as the Government proposes to do, we can have a three-ocean Navy instead of a two-ocean Navy. For most of the year our Arctic Ocean is covered with ice, and conventional submarines cannot be used under the ice. A conventional submarine has to surface to recharge its batteries.
Furthermore, we would be unable to move submarines from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean without going through the Panama Canal. "Please, Mr. Noriega, can we use the canal? We want to get a submarine from Halifax to Vancouver". Whereas, nuclear powered submarines can be moved through the North West Passage in our own territorial waters without having to ask any one's permission.
In the Arctic the nuclear-powered submarine is the only one capable of operating there. That is my backyard. My constituents as Canadian citizens want to be as well defended as Canadians who happen to live in Vancouver or Halifax on the Pacific or the Atlantic. I feel that they have a right to be properly defended. The first responsibility of Government is to provide for the collective defence. I cannot accept any policy where the first response to any invasion would be to abandon northern Canadians to the enemy.
If we do not have submarines, we will not stop nuclear submarines from being present in the Arctic. There will be nuclear submarines there. The question we have to ask ourselves is, do we only want American ones there, do we only want Soviet ones there, or do we also want Canadian submarines in the Arctic?
If we do not have them we are abandoning our defence. We are abandoning our sovereignty to the Americans. That is the policy of the NDP and the Liberals. They want to abandon the defence of northern Canada to the Americans and let them do what they want, and let us have no say in how that defence is to be conducted. That is not our position. Our position is that we are quite prepared to take on the responsibility that goes with an Arctic power of some measure.
The proposed acquisition program of the Government makes eminent sense to me. With it we will be able to protect Canadian sovereignty. We will be pulling our own weight in the defence of North America. The acquisitions will be cost effective. On an annual basis they will amount to 2 or 3 per cent of the defence budget. It will not disrupt in any way other military programs, as the NDP have stated. These vessels are the most effective available. The acquisition is in keeping with the wish of the Canadian public as expressed in the last election, and as I am sure will be confirmed at the next election.


Marcel Prud'homme: Mr. Speaker, my special thanks to the Hon. Member for New Westminster- Coquitlam (Ms. Jewett) who raised the point. To me, it is so

July 14, 1988
Air Canada
obvious that a decision of this kind which involves enormous costs and is probably one of the biggest Government expenditures ever ... and then all of a sudden, they tell us: That's our decision. It's based on the White Paper on National Defence and that is our policy. I can't deny that the Hon. Member for Western Arctic (Mr. Nickerson) gave us some excellent arguments.

My esteemed colleague, the Hon. Member for Parry Sound-Muskoka (Mr. Darling) who has sat on the Committee of National Defence with me, and the Hon. Member who introduced the motion, made some points, but so did the member of the New Democratic Party.

The important thing is, and it must be said here in the House, that we cannot go on believing that a country like Canada, whose mission in the world is to set an example .. . Does joining the big nuclear club set an example to the rest of the world, considering Canada's well-established reputation? We have a right to think about it. We have a right to consider very carefully and very attentively all the points made by the Hon. Member from Vancouver. What I fail to understand is the rush to make a decision on a matter of such vital importance, a matter that can make or break Canada's reputation. She said, as others have said in the past and will say in the future, that we are entitled to ask ourselves whether it is Canada's mission to do this.
Is it good for Canada to believe that we should spend between eight and sixteen billion dollars on what many in the United States see as a great adventure? A retired admiral of the U.S. fleet-I am not quoting pacifists-said that as far as he was concerned, he would sink them all if he had the impression that, and so forth. You can read what he said. Personally, I think Canada is on the wrong track. We are just as sincere as the Hon. Members who spoke earlier, but we fail to understand why a decision of this magnitude should not be debated at length in the House of Commons and put before the Canadian people when the Prime Minister, in his wisdom, decides to call the next election. This is an important decision. It is a decision that is vital to the future of Canada's youth. Does it always have to be bigger and better? That is what I keep wondering about national defence.
In concluding, I want to say that my Party is clearly committed to NATO. We believe in that institution, which does not prevent us from wondering how we could improve it. My Party believes in our membership in NORAD, which does not prevent us from thinking about it, just as my Party believed in the cruise missiles, and after thinking about it, we decided that enough was enough, and that is why we are now against the cruise missiles. Mr. Speaker-this will be my last comment, and I want to thank you for your patience- embarking on this great adventure would make Canada a different country from what it is now. Canada has a reputation that is known throughout the world. We know that is not how
Canada is perceived. Canadian men and women have a right to ask themselves whether that is the kind of national defence they want. Make no mistake: We firmly believe that we need the army, we firmly believe that we need the navy, but we don't believe ... I think we are at least as honest as all these people who would have us rush almost blindly into a decision of this magnitude.
Finally, I would like to thank the Hon. Member who raised the subject for this debate, because it is probably the only debate we will have.
It is probably the only time Parliament at the end of a term of government has had the chance to say: "Be careful. Is it really what you want?"
I conclude by thanking you for your patience, Speaker. If it is impossible to delay and if the House continues to sit, I wonder if my colleague and I should look into the possibility of having an urgent debate on this matter, so that more Members could participate and we can obtain more information from the Minister. The Minister is very confused. He was talking about security and sovereignty; now he is talking about the Atlantic and the Pacific. The sovereignty issue seems to be flying away and I think we should discuss it intelligently.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I would like to listen to the Hon. Member, but we have given him an extra three or four minutes.
[ Translation]
The time provided for consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired. Pursuant to Standing Order 42(1), the order is dropped from the Order Paper.




[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. de Cotret that Bill C-129, an Act to provide for the continuance of Air Canada under the Canada Business Corporations Act and for the issuance and sale of shares thereof to the public, be read the third time and passed.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: There were two or three minutes left for questions and comments on the speech of the Hon. Member for Thunder Bay-Atikokan. I will allow the Hon. Member for Winnipeg North to ask one question and a rebuttal.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, I have heard from the government Members on a number of occasions that as a result of
July 14, 1988

Air Canada getting rid of many of its feeder routes-and the planes are not jets but prop planes-smaller communities obtain more frequent and better service.
Is it not a fact that Air Canada could have made those changes if they were really better? The real reason for getting rid of those routes and creating the smaller companies is that they operate without unions and, certainly even with unions, they do not pay the same kind of wages or benefits as Canadian Airlines does?


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for the question. What happens in this kind of an environment is that other companies are set up, and companies that tend to pay less have no unions involved in the workplace. We saw a situation this past winter where Air Ontario, which was formed out of Austin Airways and Air Ontario, had one group of pilots with a collective agreement and another group that was going for its first collective agreement, and where there were very severe problems of morale and imbalance in the treatment of employees.
We must remember what has been happening in the whole area of deregulation. In effect major companies have been allowed to buy up the small competition and to create a situation wherein we have a duopoly. There are really only two owners in the country, and at the very least one of those owners should remain in the public sector so that we could have a window on the operation to ensure that public policies are adhered to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments are now terminated. Is the House ready the question?


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: All those opposed will please say nay.


Some Hon. Members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: In my opinion the yeas have it.
And more than five Members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Call in the Members.
And the division bells having rung:
Eldorado Nuclear Limited


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Pursuant to Standing Order 13(4)(a), I have been requested by the Chief Government Whip to defer the division until a later time.
Accordingly, pursuant to Standing Order 13(5), the division on the question now before the House stands deferred until Monday at 6 p.m., at which time the bells to call in the Members will be sounded for not more than 15 minutes.


ELDORADO NUCLEAR LIMITED REORGANIZATION AND DIVESTITURE ACT
Donald Frank Mazankowski: that Bill C-121, an Act to authorize the reorganization and divestiture of Eldorado Nuclear Limited and to amend certain Acts in consequence thereof, be read the third time and passed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is the House ready for the question?


An Hon. Member:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Perhaps Hon. Members could take their seats. I would like to know who is seeking the floor. The Hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise on this third reading debate and to follow up on the committee hearings in which I played a part. I do so in the name of the Hon. Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Mazankowski), the Hon. Member for Vegreville, Alberta. This Bill primarily affects Ontario and Saskatchewan, so it has a central Canadian element to it and a western Canadian element to it.
After third reading the Bill will give the federal Government the authority it requires to proceed with the agreement made with the Province of Saskatchewan and announced on the February 22 of this year. It really has two parts. The first part allows the assets of Eldorado Nuclear Limited and a provincial Crown corporation, Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation, to be merged. The second part of the Bill deals with the privatization of the merged company over a period of seven years.
Bill C-121 provides for the transfer of the assets of Eldorado Nuclear Limited to a new company in return for securities. The articles of the new company, which will be incorporated under the Canada Business Corporations Act, will specify certain conditions the new company will be required to honour.
'jf'C '

July 14, 1988
Eldorado Nuclear Limited

First of all, certain provisions will be included to allow a large number of investors to purchase shares, while ensuring that the new company will remain in Canadian hands and under Canadian control.
Thus, non-resident shareholders or affiliated groups may not own more than 5 per cent of voting shares. At any meeting of shareholders, votes cast by non-residents may not exceed 20 per cent of voting rights. Similarly, no Canadian may own more than 25 per cent of the shares issued. Furthermore, the new company may not issue non-voting shares.
The articles of the new company will provide that the head office shall be located in Saskatoon. We feel it is important for senior management of the company to be close to the primary mining facilities.
The proceeds of the sale of the securities of the new company will be used by Eldorado to discharge its obligations, including the debt which is an obligation of the Government of Canada. It makes a contribution to reducing the debt load borne by the Government of Canada. The two-stage plan, the merger and the privatization of Eldorado and SMDC, was recommended by Eldorado's parent organization, the Canada Development Investment Corporation, as the best privatization opportunity for Eldorado. This recommendation followed three years of detailed and complex negotiations and preparations.
Those of us who served on the committee heard a lot of testimony about the various efforts made to sell the company and privatize it. On the basis of testimony before the committee clearly this was the preferred option in terms of Canadian taxpayers. Both CDIC and its financial advisers, Burns Fry Limited, have stated that the transaction was equitable and provided fair value for Eldorado's assets. Having listened to that testimony, Mr. Speaker, it was clear that it was not an easy situation to assess, and I think they deserve some credit for a job well done.
The best guarantee of jobs and job security for any company is for it to be a healthy, viable operation with financial stability, competitive advantages, and a secure market for its products. All these conditions apply with regard to this merger and privatization effort. There will be positive benefits in terms of better and more secure jobs similar to those which followed other privatization initiatives of this Government.
I bring to the attention of the House the success of de Havilland where hundreds more Canadians have jobs because we were able to sell the company to a much larger entity with a better marketing system. Our capacity to manufacture the Canadian product, the airplane itself, has produced increased market opportunities and increased opportunities for Canadians.
One issue that all Members accept as a serious and important responsibility is that the employees of any privatized corporation and the public at large be protected adequately. In April, the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Masse) announced new uranium mining regulations. These new regulations reflect this Government's commitment to the health and safety of workers and to the protection of the environment. In testimony before the legislative committee, the Atomic Energy Control Board made clear that the privatization of Eldorado would not affect the board's authority under the Atomic Energy Control Act. The new company will be subject to the same regulations concerning the health and safety of workers and the protection of the environment as any other private or public corporation. That is true of all privatization initiatives. They apply before the privatization and after the privatization.
It is clear that the transaction we are proposing through this legislation will not affect the regulatory framework that oversees the uranium industry. Exports of uranium and nuclear materials will continue to be controlled and monitored by the AECB and the Department of External Affairs in accordance with Canada's nuclear non-proliferation policy. Other Acts and regulations such as the Canada Labour Code will also continue to apply to the new company.
[ Translation]
The new company will operate existing dump sites under the statutory supervision of the Atomic Energy Control Board.
The federal Government remains committed to developing and contributing to a solution to the problem of management of existing waste. To this end, the declaration of intent provides for a shared-cost formula. Management and the full cost of management of new waste will be the responsibility of the new company, within the existing regulatory framework.
Furthermore, the Government will ensure that Eldorado, in addition to all its commitments to local communities, will meet its other obligations as well.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I hope other Members will speak briefly to this legislation which opens up new opportunities for Eldorado. The merger with SMDC will create a significantly stronger company with the resources, technology, and personnel to compete effectively in the global market. The free trade agreement with the United States opens markets to us. Increased efficiency and productivity will take us into global markets with more effectiveness. History tells us that every nation since the Second World War which has entered into agreements, small nations with large nations, has broken the dependency upon the larger nation. Through increased markets we will get increased productivity, increased competitiveness, and a better sense of being able to compete in global markets.
The wide distribution of shares and restrictions on the ownership of shares will give Canadians and employees of the



July 14, 1988

company a real and direct interest in the future of the company. That too follows through with previous privatizations. Employees are among the first and the fastest to take a share ownership position because they have believed in a company and had faith in it. I am sure it will be the same in this case as well.
These safeguards will also ensure that control will always remain firmly in Canadian hands. At the same time the operation of the current regulatory regimes will ensure that vital public interests such as health, safety, and environmental protection will continue unabated.
This agreement will benefit Canada and it will benefit Saskatchewan. It adds strength to Canada's uranium industry in a manner that will enable it to contribute more to the national economy and to Saskatchewan's economy and to maintain its world leadership in uranium production and technology. As with all the privatization efforts which the Government has undertaken since 1984, this legislation encompasses a pragmatic and sensitive approach to the public interest as well as the continuing interest of employees and the communities concerned.
I hope the House will move expeditiously this evening to complete third reading debate so that we can proceed to other important legislation.


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: Mr. Speaker, we do not want to move too expeditiously to other legislation because this one is important as well. We have to spend a little time on it, but I can appreciate the sentiment of my friend, the Parliamentary Secretary. Certainly we are going to move very quickly on this Bill.
I appreciate having this opportunity to speak at third reading on the reorganization of Eldorado Nuclear Limited. While I find there are some problems with this privatization and the amalgamation with the Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation, we feel that generally the Bill should be approved. In light of that, I would like to outline a few of my concerns, that I have and I hope the Government will be addressing them.
On reviewing this Bill the legislative committee was very fortunate to hear witnesses who highlighted concerns on Eldorado's activities in the past and the possible consequences of this proposed merger with Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation.
We also discussed problems which could occur as a result of the privatization of these two companies. This will not necessarily be a smooth merger, but if both parties act in the best interests of their intentions, then I think it can work.
While the Liberals continue to support Bill C-121, I would like to comment on specific problems incurred in the production and marketing of uranium. That is where the basic problems lie. While they have been allowed to fester for some
Eldorado Nuclear Limited
time, there seems to be an acknowledgement by all parties to the merger that these problems exist. It seems that it has at least been stated that there is a willingness to deal with these problems.
My argument is that if privatization is to be the solution for the debt problems incurred by Eldorado, then Canadians must be assured of several things. First, they must be assured that there is an adequate regulatory framework to monitor this unique commodity, uranium. Second, they must be assured that there is a vigorous environmental assessment of any new projects undertaken by this merged company. Third, they must have the assurance that we have in place a time frame, financing, and competent management which will be accountable to the federal Government so that it will clean up disposal sites. Fourth, they must be assured that no municipalities will be left in limbo as a result of the termination of ongoing grants in lieu of taxes by this merger. While we want to help the uranium industry and these two companies, we have to be sure that we are not leaving problems with municipalities as a result of this merger and privatization. I will explain further what I mean by that later in my remarks.
I would like to elaborate on each of the four issues I have mentioned. With respect to the regulatory framework, it is the Atomic Energy Control Board which has been and will be responsible for ensuring that the activities of the new company are undertaken in a manner consistent with public safety, particularly with respect to protecting the environment from the release of radioactive material into the atmosphere.
Testimony of Dr. Terrence Downey, who did his Ph.D. dissertation on the uranium industry in Canada, emphasized by historical evidence the safety, environmental, health, and social problems which resulted from inadequate government supervision during the war years when Canada virtually lost control of its supply of uranium as a result of contracts with the United States. Furthermore, supplies of this radioactive material were bootlegged out of the company confines. The long-term ramifications of this activity is still evident today in the Malvern subdivision of Scarborough, Ontario. Soil in this area is still suffering from radioactive contamination. We have before us a precedent of what inattentiveness, bad business practices, and no consideration for the environment can mean. Even 40 years later, the City of Scarborough is still suffering from these ramifications.
It was not until full government ownership of Eldorado was in place that discipline was imposed on the production and marketing of uranium. Even so, the committee was informed of a whole host of environmental problems resulting from uranium mining and refining. In Port Hope, Ontario, the cost of cleaning up the low-level radioactive site was estimated to be from $265 million up to $735 million. That is a tremendous amount of money to clean up a site which has been like that for a considerable period of time, much to the chagrin of the people living in the immediate area. Yet it is still there, though it has not been there for as long as the polluted site in Scarborough, Ontario.

July 14, 1988
Eldorado Nuclear Limited
There is an alarming aspect to the obvious need for supervision and monitoring of a company which deals with this resource. In testimony from two sources, officials of the Atomic Energy Control Board and Dr. Elare who headed a thorough study of nuclear safety in Ontario, concern was expressed about the capability of this regulatory agency to carry out its responsibilities. The Atomic Energy Control Board is responsible for the regulation of atomic energy in Canada. Yet, we heard from Dr. Hare who headed a study on nuclear safety in Ontario and from the agency itself that there were doubts about this very agency's ability to carry out its responsibilities. To me, that is tremendously alarming, and I think it is alarming to all Canadians who know about this very grave problem.
In discussing the need for a 50 per cent increase in resources, the President of the Atomic Energy Control Board noted in testimony before the Standing Committee on Energy, Mines and Resources on May 11 of this year the following:
I have a feeling we are crippled. It takes longer to do the work, but we also cannot do it as much in depth as we would like to do it.
The President of the Atomic Energy Control Board is saying that his own organization is crippled by a lack of funds. He is saying that it takes much longer to do the work and that when they do the work, they cannot do it adequately because they are not properly financed. This is the agency that is supervising, monitoring, and controlling the nuclear industry in Canada. To hear a statement like that from its President is alarming, to say the least.
In testimony to the same committee, Dr. Hare responded to the suggestion of increasing the size of the board by saying:
Yes. I think perhaps my most crucial feeling about regulation in this whole business is that the Atomic Energy Control Board is too small. When I compare it with the regulatory bodies in other countries, I am amazed with what they do, but at the same time I do not think this can continue.
In addition to the testimony of the President of the Atomic Energy Control Board, the chairman of a committee investigating the nuclear industry in Ontario is saying that the Atomic Energy Control Board is too small and that he is amazed that it is doing as well as it is. These are two tremendous sources of information, both condemning the inattention to and ineffectiveness of this board because of the Government's lack of action and support.
Dr. Hare went on to tell committee members that out of five board members, two were ex officio. What is relevant to this debate on privatizing a uranium company was his suggestion that the Atomic Energy Control Board did not have the scope to make proper decisions.
This board which oversees our industry, in addition to everything else, does not have the scope to make proper decisions. Dr. Hare stated:
It is quite clear to me that in making its decisions the board ought to take into account far more broadly than it can do at the present time socioeconomic, radiological and environmental questions for which the board members themselves have very little skill. So in my report I recommend that
the size of the board be increased so as to make such broader representation possible.
That is a very valid recommendation. If the Government is trying to cut costs, then the Atomic Energy Control Board which supervises our very vital and controversial nuclear industry is not one of the areas in which the Government should be cutting costs.
Doctor Hare also noted that the Board should remain a technical regulator. He said:
What I am saying is that those technical regulations should have been made by a board that is competent around the table to consider more deeply the socio-economic, health and environmental questions which are the real stuff of this business. The technical questions are not usually in doubt; it is the non-technical matters that really have to be discussed in depth, and they have been inhibited from doing this. Moreover, it has been their policy to avoid this.
That is alarming. We have placed our complete confidence and faith in the Atomic Energy Control Board. It has been a very good agency, but it is under financed and does not have enough members. The members it has cannot deal with a lot of the questions with which they should be dealing. They are only dealing with technical matters and not with socio-economic, health and environmental questions as they should be, and as Dr. Hare's study stated.
We need some definite attention to these matters. While we are agreeing to the passage of this Bill, we want to set out that we are doing so mainly as a business framework. We agree that the AECB can have as much jurisdiction over a private company as we can, but we must point out that the AECB has not had control over the public company. With government support it has to zero in more on the concerns of the citizens of Canada with respect to nuclear energy.
With respect to some of the environmental matters, representatives from Newcastle, Ontario, gave us a very enlightening presentation on the problems which occur when a regulatory agency does not or cannot adequately control the disposal of low-level radioactive waste from a uranium mine. They told us, because they are in the Port Hope area, about the problems they have with the waste site in their area.
Eldorado Nuclear placed its waste management facility near Newcastle on a site of approximately 30 acres of land adjacent to Lake Ontario. In this area, which includes not only Newcastle, but Port Granby, Port Hope, and Welcome, Ontario, there is a total of 880,000 cubic metres of low-level radioactive waste.
As I mentioned earlier, the cost of cleaning up this dump site is estimated at up to $735 million. One cannot help but question why the AECB has not been successful in stabilizing and decommissioning this environmentally sensitive dump site. Why has this been allowed to continue on the banks of Lake Ontario? Of course that waste is going to spread. If erosion takes place on the banks of Lake Ontario, as it very well could, seepage and leeching into Lake Ontario is going to occur that
July 14, 1988

much sooner. It is expensive to correct, but the problem exists and the price is not too great when we consider the safety of citizens of this country, in particular those in the Province of Ontario.
Bill C-121 establishes financing for cleaning up existing waste. The first $2 million will be provided by the new company. The next $98 million will be split, with the new company providing twenty-three ninety-eighths and the Government of Canada providing the other seventy-five ninety-eights. Canada will pay any amount over $100 million. Use of the waste disposal site at Port Granby has been terminated as of June 30. Fortunately the AECB and the Government got the message, got together and decided that they were not going to use at least this dump site any more. That is long overdue.
What is alarming about all this is the fact that the Government has condoned this situation for four years. It has not recognized the seriousness of having a dump site like this one in a residential area so close to Lake Ontario.
With respect to this merger, while the financing agreement is in place, I am concerned that there is no time frame in place to complete the decommissioning of this low-level radioactive waste site. The Government is saying that it is going to leave it in a state of limbo, that it is not cleaning it up, and that it is not helping the residents of the area. We want action from the Government. It has to tell us when it is going to start decommissioning this site. Furthermore, responsibility for cleaning up the site will be in the hands of the federal Government. Speculating on the estimated cost of $75 million for stabilizing the dump site, the President of the AECB raised a serious problem. Once again I want to quote from his testimony in the legislative committee:
According to the agreement, Eldorado would have to pay 25 per cent of that $75 million up to a maximum of $25 million, with the remainder to be paid by the federal Government. According to the Atomic Energy Control Act, we can tell Eldorado to make changes or stabilize a site, but we cannot force the federal Government to pay its share.
That is the difficulty. The federal Government is delaying the cleaning up of this dump site, but it has to decide. It has to act now to clean up and decommission the site. He went on to say that he wondered whether this might not lead to outright refusal. Obviously the agency is very concerned about whether the Government is acting in good faith with respect to this dump site. The President of AECB went on to say:
From a legal standpoint, I do not think we have any problem with the company; I think that the problem would be between the company and the federal Government. That is one of the questions we are asking ourselves. Will there be problems of this nature every time we want to impose measures that might be very costly?
It is in the open and the Government has to respond. It has to lead the way, take the initiative, and clean up the dump site. Yet it has been silent, even in the face of testimony from its own agency.
Eldorado Nuclear Limited
We heard similar concerns about the delay in the clean-up process expressed by representatives of Newcastle and Port Granby. I urge the Government to give the Atomic Energy Control Board a specific time frame in which to stabilize and decommission this site. Furthermore, I would hope that there will be vigorous environmental assessments of future projects by the new company. It may also be necessary to have a field office with Atomic Energy Control Board staff located in Saskatchewan where a substantial amount of the uranium mining will be undertaken.
With respect to the previous obligations between Eldorado Nuclear and Blind River, Ontario, one of the communities which I said I hoped would not be jeopardized or left in an indefinite position as a result of the privatization, it is my understanding that the new company will honour the commitments made by Eldorado.
The Town of Blind River will be assured of the continuation of the $85,000 a year grant that Eldorado made in lieu of school taxes with which Blind River is paying off a mortgage on a community centre. In addition, there will be a continuation of the town's right to lease the golf course for $1 a year from Eldorado. The new company will also agree to assume responsibility for the erosion of the river which runs through the Eldorado property and affects the golf course.
I want to say how pleased I am that the Town of Blind River has been given these assurances. I would like to thank my colleague, the Hon. Member for Algoma (Mr. Foster), who worked very hard on behalf of his constituents in Blind River to attain this assurance. He sat with me on the legislative committee and questioned the witnesses. I believe that the success which has been achieved was largely through the Member for Algoma. I think he deserves congratulations for his work. Without this Member's persistence and true loyalty to his constituents, the new company may not have assumed the previous contractual obligations of Eldorado Nuclear.
The new company will be made up mainly of Canadian shareholders. The Act says that non-Canadian shareholders can own a maximum of 20 per cent of the shares. However, I read something very alarming in the Saskatoon Star Pheonix on July 8. It reported the statements of the new chairman of the new company. The article read:
A 20 per cent restriction on foreign ownership could be lifted if there is too much difficulty in selling enough shares to Canadians in what will be the world's largest uranium producer, says the newly-appointed chairman.
If that is starting already, Mr. Speaker, the Government's legislation will not mean anything. Many of us are giving our approval to this legislation on the basis that non-resident ownership in the new company dealing with our uranium resource, which is of tremendous concern to Canadians not only from an economic point of view but from a safety point of view, will be limited to 20 per cent and absolutely no more. The Bill is not yet even passed, and the chairman is saying that

July 14, 1988
Eldorado Nuclear Limited
non-resident ownership may increase beyond 20 per cent if they cannot sell enough shares to Canadians. That is terrible.
I know the chairman and find him to be a very serious and capable individual. I do not think he would say this unless he has spoken to the Government about this possibility. If the Government is playing games with this issue-and I have no reason to believe it is other than that from what I am reading-it is acting in bad faith. I hope the Government is not acting in bad faith and is not seriously considering increasing the level of non-resident ownership in this company.
To emphasize this, the chairman said:
This restriction can always be changed, and those levels will be looked at as we go into the future... careful consideration would be given to increasing the 20 per cent restriction currently in place on foreign investment.
I think it is awful for that even to be mentioned at this particular time. Through you, Mr. Speaker, and through this House I want to serve the Government with warning that if it or any Government attempts to increase the percentage of nonownership above 20 per cent in this new company, our Party will fight it as hard as we possibly can with every means at our disposal.
In the interim, there are problems yet to be solved with respect to low-level radioactive nuclear waste. There are uncertainties about what the actual financing picture was. I doubt very much whether the values placed on Eldorado Nuclear and the Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation are accurate. I think this was a political compromise between two Governments. However, that is for the future to tell us. I honestly do not think the figures were accurate but, on the other hand, at least the head office will be in Saskatoon. I wish the people of Saskatchewan well and I hope that this company will be successful.
I ask the Government to maintain all due diligence in monitoring this opposition and to strengthen the Atomic Energy Control Board, not only for the sake of this new company but for the whole of the nuclear industry in Canada.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, members of the New Democratic Party opposed this Bill to privatize Eldorado Nuclear when it was brought forward in the House; we opposed it in the House. We attended the committee meetings, listened to the witnesses, and questioned the witnesses. Everything we heard from them confirmed for us even more clearly than when we first opposed the Bill how correct we were in opposing it.
I will deal briefly with some of the reasons for our opposition, beginning with the financial ones. Atomic Energy Control Board officials told us that as a result of the operations of this company there are, in the area of the Towns of Newcastle and Port Hope, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of low- level radioactive waste very near Lake Ontario. Unless major steps are taken to contain the waste and eventually remove it, it will
gradually move into Lake Ontario and pollute the water which is used by millions of people.
This happened when Eldorado was a Crown corporation owned by the people of Canada. We are now turning it over to private investors whose main purpose, quite understandably, will be to make a profit. We are turning it over to them without adequate control of their future operations, and the Government of Canada has committed the people of Canada to undertake almost entirely the cost of cleaning up that waste.
Let us look at the record of Denison Mines, a privately owned company in the nuclear business, owned by Stephen Roman. I recommend an interesting excerpt from a book being written about Stephen Roman and Denison Mines. It shows how that company deliberately and consistently breached the most elementary rules for protecting the environment and the workers in order to make greater profits.
Those are the kinds of concerns we have about privatizing this company. First, we believe that it is financially a bad deal for the people of Canada and a good deal for the new owners, particularly because of the environmental aspect.
The Hon. Member for Cape Breton-The Sydneys (Mr. MacLellan) related the concerns expressed by the head of the Atomic Energy Control Board. I want to summarize the concerns of people living in the Towns of Newcastle and Port Hope and surrounding areas. They have not been reassured by this Bill. They have been expressing their concerns for years, which were essentially ignored by the former Government and the present Government.
They came to the committee with some specific requests, none of which were dealt with. They want a clean-up of the Port Granby dump and the continued presence of the federal Government in the disposition of the surrounding 650 acres where this low-level radio-active waste exists. They want an indication that a clean-up will proceed and that there will be sufficient funds to undertake it. Is there anything in the Bill that would give them that assurance? No.
Given the cost of between $250 million and $650 million to clean up this mess, there is nothing in the Bill nor in anything said by any government spokesperson to indicate that there are the resources or the will needed to finance the clean-up from the sale of shares, while the new company escapes with a very limited burden of some $25 million.
There is still no clean-up set for the Port Granby dump and other low-level radiation sites. This is not for good. This area has been campaigning locally on this issue at least since 1970. In 1984, when the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) was Leader of the Opposition he promised a great deal more. Let me quote from the letter which the Prime Minister, then Leader of the Opposition, wrote to Mr. James Sculthorpe of Port Hope, Ontario, on August 21, 1984. He said, referring to the
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activities of the Hon. Member for Durham-Northumberland (Mr. Lawrence):
As Mr. Lawrence stated recently, there is ample evidence that neither of the current proposals by Eldorado Nuclear Limited for establishing a permanent radioactive waste disposal dump either near Port Granby or near Wesleyville are acceptable to the people of those communities or to their elected representatives. All such waste should be removed from major population areas and kept well away from any major water resource such as Lake Ontario.
While this would involve greater expense, the federal government, as owner of the Eldorado Nuclear Limited, must accept at least partial responsibility and provide the leadership.
For several years federal authorities have been exploring where and how to store permanently Canada's growing accumulation of nuclear and radio active waste. The waste from Eldorado Nuclear Limited must be considered part of that problem and its solution.
That was stated when the Prime Minister was Leader of the Opposition. All that was forgotten when he became Prime Minister. What we see is privatization, with no guarantees at all that the Government will do very much about the waste.
Let me deal with another concern expressed by the employees through their union. It is the question of pensions, which have become an issue in almost every privatization we have seen, including Teleglobe, Canadian Arsenals, and now Eldorado.
The Eldorado situation is supposed to be a very happy one, with a surplus of over $54 million in the pension fund. Many promises were made by the former Minister responsible for privatization, the present Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mrs. McDougall), and the President of Eldorado Nuclear, George Currie, that the surplus would be used to improve indexing and distribute other benefits to plan members. There was a statement by the then Minister in which she said that existing pension and benefit plans would be adopted by the new company. She went on to say: "I can confirm that pensions are protected by this agreement".
The President of Eldorado Nuclear gave the same assurances. Now we see that the Eldorado pension plan will be changed from a defined benefit to a money purchase plan and that such disbursements as indexing will be dropped. The current defined benefit plan, which could easily accommodate post retirement inflation protection for both current and future retirees will be dropped. Under the new money purchase plan, post retirement inflation protection for future retirees cannot be provided.
The surplus may be distributed by a contribution holiday which will reduce the surplus from $54 million to $12 million. Clearly United Steelworkers of America, representing the union members, was upset by this development as was made clear by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Churchill (Mr. Murphy), in a statement which he made on July 7, 1988. He said, as reported at page 17236 of Hansard:
When the Government announced that it would be privatizing Eldorado Nuclear the Minister then in charge of privatization said in a press release that "existing pension and benefit plans will be adopted by the new company''. In a statement and a letter sent to employees she repeated that
Eldorado Nuclear Limited
promise. The company itself repeated that promise before a committee of the House of Commons.
Now in a proposal made public to the workers yesterday it becomes apparent for existing workers who continue to work for this firm that they will lose the protection of their present pension plans. The protection will only exist for those people who have already retired.
We see what the promises of the Conservative Government and the officials of the company mean.
Let me deal with another matter of tremendous importance. It is the question of job guarantees. We moved an amendment which was rejected by government Members, of course. It dealt with job guarantees due to the fears that the merger between Eldorado and the Saskatchewan Mining and Development Corporation would mean that jobs in the upgrading plants at Port Hope and Blind River would be in jeopardy. They are especially in jeopardy because of the free trade agreement which, according to Annex 902.5, exempts the U.S. from the Canadian uranium upgrading policy of 1985. Let me put that section of the agreement on record:
Export Measures
2.	Canada shall exempt the United States of America from the Canadian Uranium Upgrading Policy as announced by the Minister of State for Mines on October 18, 1985.
3.	The United States of America shall exempt Canada from the prohibition on the exportation of Alaskan oil under section 7(d) of the Export Administration Act of 1979, as amended, up to a maximum volume of 50,000 barrels per day on an average basis, subject to the condition that such oil be transported to Canada from a suitable location within the lower 48 states.
There you have, Mr. Speaker, another illustration of the serious adverse effects Canada will experience as a result of this free trade agreement. The testimony heard by the committee indicated just how the free trade agreement was part of a reshaping of the uranium market in North American which gives the United States access to our low-cost, high-grade uranium in northern Saskatchewan without the uranium having to be upgraded in Canada. This was confirmed by Professor Douglas McArthur, Professor of Economics at the University of Saskatchewan. He was questioned by the Hon. Member for Algoma (Mr. Foster) about this matter and he said:
I think we are seeing an integration of particularly North American markets taking place, with free trade and other developments, the removal or virtual withdrawal from the further processing policy and so on. I am not very hopeful or optimistic for fuel processing in Canada under those conditions. Others will perhaps come back and tell you they are optimistic. I would challenge them to provide substantial evidence of this.
The Hon. Member for Algoma then asked:
Do you see the trade-off with the Americans and the free trade, where we are giving up our further processing, and they are doing away with the limitation on enrichment of Canadian uranium? It seems to me the administration has been fighting this, day in and year out, in the courts, and so on, to make sure they can buy $17-a-pound uranium from Saskatchewan anyway. If there were no free trade deal, are they not just going to pass a law that they can get access to this cheap uranium anyway? Did they just give us the sleeves out of their vest?

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Eldorado Nuclear Limited
Professor McArthur answered:
I do not think there is a lot in that arrangement that is going to advance the interests of the Canadian uranium industry, I think it is going to have the result of making the various stages more competitive, which at one level is attractive. But it raises some serious questions, as I said, about the the future of Blind River and Port Hope. These are some of the consequences of moving into arrangements of this sort that one has to be aware of. This strikes me as being one place where we can expect to see some implications in terms of industry and cities and towns and people and workers in our country.
Those views expressed by Professor McArthur were never answered. They were ignored completely because, again, the Conservative Party has this blind belief that the private sector can do anything better than the public sector.
I would like to raise one other matter about which Professor McArthur spoke. He talked about how the Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation, a Crown corporation, made it a major tenet, a major reason for having a Crown corporation, that that corporation make every effort to provide employment for the people of northern Saskatchewan who are, in the main, native people. I do not have to tell Members of this House how disadvantaged, how poor and how sick native people are in many parts of Canada because there have been no jobs. The then New Democratic Government of Saskatchewan determined it would try to change that in northern Saskatchewan by using its Crown mining corporations to do everything they could to provide jobs for native people. They succeeded in that, and now what we see through the privatization of Eldorado and the privatization of Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation, is a private corporation which will naturally have as its major objective, the making of profits. You can be certain, Mr. Speaker, that if it will be cheaper to employ people from southern parts of Canada, who are not native, then that is precisely what will happen. For these and other reasons with which I think my colleague, the Member from Regina, will deal, we intend to continue to oppose this Bill as we have from the day it was brought forward.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments? Debate.


Mr. Simon de Jong (Regina East):: Mr. Speaker, I too wish to join in the debate on Bill C-121, a Bill the Government has placed before us which creates a new corporation by combining the assets of Eldorado Nuclear with the Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation. When future historians look back at this particular period in the evolution of our society, I think they will view the action taken by the Government with Bill C-121 as one of the great and unfortunate mistakes of this particular period.
In the evolution of social societies, certain laws, which I cannot quite figure out yet, prevail and it becomes necessary at certain times to have right wing governments to correct mistakes from a previous period of evolution. The mistakes that right wing government makes in turn leads to its own defeat, and then society moves onward. Some people compare
it to the swing of a pendulum. It swings to the left and it swings to the right and somehow this produces social change and progress.
Bill C-121, I believe, will historically prove to be a tremendous excess of right wing philosophy. It is, as many Members have pointed out, an ideology defeating common sense. I would like to deal with this topic in terms of some of the sub topics. I would like to talk about the environmental impacts, the effects on the whole nuclear industry, and I would like to discuss some of the history of Eldorado. I would also like to discuss the business reasons behind this.
Let me take the last point first. Even from a business point of view, what the Government is doing today does not make business sense. It continues to astound me how a right wing Government that espouses business philosophy does at times make very stupid decisions. To put the assets of Eldorado Nuclear and the Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation on the market now just does not make any sense. The industry is in a slump. There is a surplus of uranium that has been stockpiled. It is not a good time now from a business point of view to dispose of the assets. It makes no sense whatsoever. Of course, the really dumb people are the Tories in Saskatchewan, the Government of Saskatchewan, because the Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation, from a business point of view, has indeed been a very successful corporation, bringing in revenues and royalties to the coffers of the Province of Saskatchewan on a very consistent basis.
I would like to quote from the paper presented to the committee by Professor Douglas McArthur of the University of Regina. He stated that over the four-year period since the company commenced production, and he was referring to the Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation, it has returned close to 50 per cent of the province equity excluding taxes and royalties. In its most recent year, 1987, the return on equity was 20 per cent, placing it well ahead of similar firms in the mining industry. Even though there is a slump in the uranium industry on a world-wide basis, the Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation was able to show a return of 20 per cent on equity. That is certainly not the case when it comes to Eldorado. Eldorado had total cumulative losses by the end of 1986 of $155.9 million. Its cumulative return on shareholder equity over the period amounted to a negative 50 per cent.
Eldorado has some major and serious obligations, many of which in fact appear that with this legislation the Government will retain. For example, Professor McArthur in the paper he presented to the committee stated:
A second matter of concern has to deal with the handling of wastes and other potential liabilities contracted by the companies up to the time of the formation of the new firm.
The Government of Canada has indicated that there will be an effort to transfer to government (i.e. socialize) a considerable part of the responsibility for these to some degree unspecified liabilities. This suggests a curious ambivalence about the principle of privatization. Private ownership
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generally implies obtaining the rights to the benefits of an undertaking, while at the same taking the responsibility for associated business obligations. In this case, the government intends to transfer the benefits to a select group of people with the ability to pay for shares, while imposing the burden of a major part of the obligations onto taxpayers in general. This is without doubt being done to enhance the marketability of the shares. But legislator and the public should be aware of the degree to which this compromises the principle of privatization, and the extent to which taxpayers are potentially burdened in order to meet a purely political, need with significant potential benefits for a select group of shareholders. Some have called this practice socialism for the few, which is a fairly apt description.
We see that this means does not make much business sense. I suggest that in Bill C-121 the Government shows that it is made up of lousy business people when it comes to conducting business for the public interest.
Let me reiterate. It is not a good time to put these assets on the market. There is a slump in the uranium industry. The Saskatchewan Government is made up of a bunch of damn fools for taking a very profitable operation and selling it off. It appears as though from a public point of view it is the public and the taxpayers of Canada who will be inheriting many of the liabilities from Eldorado. The new owners, the new shareholders, will not be acquiring those liabilities, which means the clean-up of soil that contains uranium wastes.
I would like to go back into the history of Eldorado to see why it was created in the first place as a public company. First, it was not due to a great amount of zeal for socialism by C. D. Howe that Eldorado was created as a public company. It became obvious that in the early 1940s during the war years the British Government was anxious to secure a reliable supply of uranium for its own joint effort with Canada to produce nuclear weapons. So, very quietly the federal Government of the day, a Liberal Government, started to acquire interests in this uranium mining company, Eldorado.
It thought that it had control over Eldorado. What it did is that it left the management of the company with a group that was initially there, a private group. By the end of 1943 the Government had acquired a controlling interest in the company, yet not a majority interest. However, in the spring of 1943 the British Government discovered to its dismay that Eldorado had contracted to sell to the United States all the uranium it could produce over the next two years. Despite the fact that the intention of the Canadian Government was to obtain a controlling interest in Eldorado so that it could meet its obligations to Great Britain, it left the management of the company in private hands.
These private managers did what good private managers do all over the world, managers who are mainly motivated by profit. They took the best bidder. The best bidder was the United States. All at once Canada was not able to fulfil its obligations to Great Britain.
When Eldorado was totally nationalized Mr. Grant Glasgow, a member of the firm of Clarkson Gordon, did a thorough review of Eldorado and its practices under private
Eldorado Nuclear Limited
management. It was found that, first, some of the top managers in Eldorado had sold uranium secretly. Second, it was discovered that there was some $2.6 million in cash and materials that had been extracted from the company. Third, it was discovered as well that practices that were detrimental both to the environment and to the health and safety of the workers were being undertaken. Those are the reasons why Eldorado became a public corporation.
Uranium is not just something that is dealt with like a commodity that can be bought at a cornerstore. What we are talking about is a substance whose negative effects will be felt for thousands and thousands of years. The effects of radiation, low-level radiation or high-level radiation, will be with us for generations to come. If you think, Mr. Speaker, of the time between now and the time of the construction of the pyramids, that time span is but just a twinkle in the time that the negative effects of radiation will be felt.
There are no social organizations, whether public or private, that I feel are responsible enough to deal with a substance whose effects will be felt for generations and generations to come. If I had my way, only a group of monks and nuns totally dedicated to the welfare and the well-being of the human race would be responsible for the uranium industry if we are going to have one at all. To hand it over into private hands is the ultimate of follies, the ultimate of stupidities, the ultimate of where ideology is master over the concern and the well-being of generations to come.
That is why at the beginning of my remarks I stated that Bill C-121, historically, will show to be the most stupid and inept act of this particular Government and the right-wing swing.
Let me put it on record that if I ever have in my power and am in a position of influence when this Government will be chucked out, as it will one day, then I suggest to all those who have invested in this new company that there will be many of us who will insist that this company be expropriated and brought back under public control without the type of compensation that they might otherwise expect. The uranium industry should not ever be in the hands of private industry. It is not an industry that works in a normal way. The effects are too long-term. It requires a sense of social responsibility to present and future generations that I suspect even publicly-owned corporations have a great difficulty demonstrating. To put it in the hands of the private sector that must show a profit on a yearly basis, and which is driven by market forces, is to invite disaster. It is irresponsible. The Government should be thoroughly ashamed of itself.
The Government states that there is nothing to worry about, and that it is going to put in place some regulations. In fact, it does not state that it will put into place some regulations. It states that the existing regulations will take care of the

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Eldorado Nuclear Limited
environmental concerns, and the concerns for the health and safety of the workers.
First, let us recognize that the present regulatory regime was brought down under the assumption that there was a public Crown corporation in the uranium industry. I would suggest that the regulations need changing and updating to reflect this new reality.
This was definitely presented by Dr. Terrence J. Downey, Chairman, Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo, in a letter he wrote to the Clerk of the Legislative Committee on Bill C-121. He noted that the Hon. Member for Burlington (Mr. Kempling) had invited him to send some of his observations to the committee dealing with the regulatory regime under privatization. In part, Dr. Downey's letter states:
In view of these considerations, I suggest that an enhanced regulatory regime must be put in place to correct current weaknesses and, of utmost importance, to bridge the major supervisory gap which will be created by a privatization which removes a key element of the regulatory framework.
In his letter Dr. Downey states that he has serious reservations that the existing regulatory regime is sufficient to ensure that this new corporation will be prevented from doing environmental damage and injury to the health of its workers.
Some very important work has been done on the effects of low-level radiation. We know from statistics that there was a tremendous increase in deaths from leukaemia throughout the world in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a result of the nuclear testing that the superpowers had been doing above ground. In fact, the statistics became so alarming that one of the first agreements on nuclear weaponry between the Soviet Union and the United States was to continue the testing underground because of the effect that low-level radiation was having on a global scale.
Some of the work now being done on low levels of radiation has shown a marked increase in deaths of those people born in the late 1940s and early 1950s in a period of time when there were high levels of low level radiation throughout the globe, and that there has been a marked increase in death and illness among that group of the population in the period of the Chernobyl disaster. The statistics now show that those people who were placed at risk because they were born in a time when there was a large amount of low-level radiation on a global scale were much more susceptible when the globe was in another period of massive low-level radiation because of the Chernobyl disaster. We see the effects of something that occurred 20 or 30 years ago later on down the road.
When we deal with uranium we must surely deal with it with a tremendous sense of responsibility and awe. By privatizing our uranium industry, I am afraid that we take a step away from responsibility. We allow it to be in the hands of people who are purely and totally motivated by market forces.
It is understandable when people invest in something that they expect a profit. They do not expect it in 10 or 20 years from now, they expect it at the end of the year. There is no doubt that decisions will be made that are primarily based on
the need to satisfy investors. That puts at risk the health and safety not only of the workers, but also of the environment, and generations to come. It puts at risk the health and wellbeing of the globe, the planet, and the children yet to be born, all in the name of some idiotic ideology of the Government and its insistence on privatizing, and that before the election it must have a good record of privatization. That is its motivation. Indeed, it is the height of irresponsibility. It shows and proves my contention that, at present, human institutions, whether they are government or private institutions, do not have the maturity and the responsibility of dealing with substances whose effects will be felt generations into the future.
Therefore, I must be opposed to this motion.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: I thank my colleague from the other half of our Queen city for his remarks. I fully agree with and support what he said. By way of comment I wish to say that, as far as I am concerned, and I have some confidence as far as hundreds of thousands of people in this country are concerned, it is time now to serve notice on those who would be inclined to buy shares privately in the uranium industry that as and when the Government is defeated those shareholders should be happy to just get their money back. There is no time or place for private ownership for profit in the nuclear industry in this modern world. That is my comment, and that is my view.
I want to ask my colleague if he would care to comment on that view, and whether he agrees or disagrees. I welcome his opinion, and I also welcome his comments as to the feelings of most Canadians on this issue.


Simon Leendert de Jong: I share the views of the Hon. Member, as I also mentioned in my remarks. When the Government changes, whichever future Government replaces it, one of the things that that Government will have to do is to correct the excesses of this particular Government, and on top of that list will be correcting the tremendous mistake that Bill C-121 is committing. It is a terrible mistake and a terrible blunder that must be corrected, not only for business reasons, but for environmental and health reasons, and for the safety of Canadian citizens yet to come.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: I want to thank Members opposite for their co-operation on this Bill. It is my understanding that there is a predisposition to move it through the House, and I very much appreciate that, as does the House.
It is interesting that we can have such differences of opinion, and I believe that those differences of opinion are healthy. One of the things that speeches of Members opposite have triggered in me is a thought pattern that I have felt for quite a while. There is a considerable danger when a group of people set the rules, and a group of people control the policemen, and the same group of people are the owners. I recognize the genuine concern for health and safety, but the nation might experience less conflict of interest, and it might be a safer world, if elected people set the rules and were responsible for policing the rules
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and did not complicate the situation through ownership. There is a normal, natural tendency among things that are closely interrelated to be influenced by other parts of that relationship.
I put this out generally as a difference of opinion, but I think that Government should restrict itself to setting down what the rules should be, making sure that there are adequate ways of policing the rules, and not complicating that any more than necessary with ownership, because the desire to please the ownership part of it might indeed complicate and make the world a little less safe.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, I have some trouble with that argument, particularly coming from this Conservative Member. We have heard from the Government over and over again that we must get government off its back and that we must rid of all these regulations. The mining industry hates government regulations. It is always at war with government because of mining regulations.
Now we hear a government Member justifying privatization of this industry. He obviously recognizes the need for a tremendous amount of social responsibility when dealing with nuclear substances and uranium substances. He says: "Oh, well, regulations will take care of that". I can see what will happen: "We will privatize it. We will have the regulations three or four years down the road. Well, there is another slump in the market. We will have to lay off workers. There are a few short cuts that we can make", and there go the regulations. We are getting government off its back, all right; I do not buy that argument!
I think he makes a valid point when he says that quite often public ownership and the regulators begin to come too close to each other. Yes, that is a danger and that is why we must have Parliament being ever vigilant to make certain that that does not occur. That is why we must always make certain that the representatives of the people-Parliament-has indeed the final say and that the wishes of Crown corporation become subservient to the wishes of Parliament.
To correct the possible danger of the regulators being too close to the Crown corporation, the solution is not to privatize. The solution is to make certain that the Ministry and Parliament are on top of the situation and ensure that that close relationship does not exist.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments are now terminated. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.
Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: All those opposed will please say nay.


Some Hon. Members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: In my opinion the yeas have it.
And more than five Members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Call in the Members.
And the division bells having rung:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Pursuant to Standing Order 13(4)(a), I have been requested by the assistant to the Chief Government Whip to defer the division until a later time.
Accordingly, pursuant to Standing Order 13(5), the division on the question now before the House stands deferred until Monday at 6 p.m., at which time the bells to call in the Members will be sounded for not more than 15 minutes.


CANADIAN INTERNATIONAL TRADE TRIBUNAL ACT
Hon. Tom Hockin (Minister of State (Finance)) moved: that Bill C-l 10, an Act to establish the Canadian International Trade Tribunal and to amend or repeal other Acts in consequence thereof, be read the third time and passed.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Members of the House for the interest they have shown in the Bill over time. It is an important Bill. It will streamline and rationalize the activities of the Canadian import institutions. In addition, it extends the right of direct access for safeguard inquiries to all Canadian industries.
Members will know that this particular Bill has undergone a great deal of scrutiny, as evidenced by a number of amendments proposed both in committee and later in the House. Some of them have been adopted. They were good ideas. Most notable was the one changing the majority requirement for initiation to a major proportion requirement and eliminating a clause which was alleged to cause a conflict of interest situation for members of existing tribunals.
Clearly after this process the Bill is a fair and balanced one, and its passage is eagerly awaited by a broad spectrum of Canadian industry. Jobs indeed will be enhanced, jobs indeed will result. I hope that the Senate will deal with Bill C-l 10 in an expeditious manner in order that this new tribunal can begin functioning as soon as possible.

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Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act
I would point out that as of this morning the Senate had 15 Bills before it. If we complete our work as scheduled this evening, they are likely to have 19 Bills before it. It would be very helpful to the nation and to the House if it were to move expeditiously on most if not all the matters before it.
I thank Hon. Members for their attention. I hope that the particular Bill will receive a minimum of debate and relatively swift passage at third reading stage. I am optimistic in that regard.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, I intend to be very brief in taking part in this debate. Our critic, our spokesperson for this Bill, the Hon. Member for Trinity (Miss Nicholson) has done an excellent job in putting forward the point of view of Liberals on this Bill and in putting forward possible amendments to improve the Bill. I cannot say that all our ideas were accepted, but I think one should recognize the excellent work done by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Trinity, in the study of this Bill.
Certainly there is a point to be made for Bill C-l 10, since it rationalizes and combines three separate pieces of trade legislation into one. The rationalization and improvement of Canadian trade legislation is a central component of Liberal trade policy. This policy has been set out in the reports that we have put forward to the public. For example, the Liberal report entitled Reaching Out.
More precisely, we have said that in order to communicate effectively and to deliver federal trade policy it is necessary to have transparent omnibus trade legislation which addresses all possible trade issues.
I did want to put on record some problems that we see with the Government's approach. The Government has gone ahead and negotiated a trade deal with the United States. We have told the House and Canadian people how in our view the trade deal undermines Canadian sovereignty, puts at risk hundreds of thousands of Canadian jobs, and limits the ability of present and future Canadian Governments, federal and provincial, to make decisions which Canadian people may consider in their interest and in the interest of their country in future years. I am talking about limiting the ability to make decisions in areas like energy, investment, financial institutions, agriculture, and cultural industries.
We now have a situation where the Government is trying to put us in a position where we will have two sets of trade legislation or rules. One set for our dealings with the United States and one set for everybody else. Ultimately I do not think that it will help Canadians or those who want to deal with Canadians, who want to understand and make the best use of Canadian trade legislation.
We have already made many comments about the flaws in the Government's trade deal with the United States when it comes to the rules set out in that deal on our trading relationship with that country. We pointed out that although the Government has set as its primary objective in a trade deal
with the United States the freeing of Canada from any possibility of harassment by American trade through penalty legislation.
It is very clear that we have not been freed from the threat of American trade legislation. Even if the trade deal becomes law, we will continue as before. The only difference will be that added to it will be another stage of bureaucracy, the so-called machinery which the Government says it has negotiated with the United States for a dispute settlement. However, this dispute settlement mechanism will do nothing other than decide whether or not the American law has been applied correctly according to its own terms. Also, there will be a very complicated set of rules arising out of the trade deal, if it ever becomes law, for determining whether goods can flow on a duty-free basis between Canada and the United States. Many Canadians had hoped that a comprehensive trade deal with the United States would mean that they could go to the U.S., buy anything they wanted and bring it back here duty-free. They are in for a big surprise, Mr. Speaker, if this deal goes through.
The rules provided in the Government's trade deal with the United States indicate that people who purchase goods in that country will still have to pay Canadian federal-provincial sales taxes. They will be able to bring in products duty-free, only if they can prove that those goods are essentially of an American origin. We know today that many of the things we want to buy when we go to a country such as the United States do not come from there at all but from countries like Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. If that is the case, those purchases will be subject to duty as before. If the deal with the United States goes through, we will have one set of rules no less cumbersome than the rules that may exist at present dealing with our relations in trading matters with the United States, and another set of rules and a tribunal to examine the rules which will be set up under this Bill in respect of trade with all other parts of the world.
There is a second concern that I have to express about Bill C-l 10. It could well be argued that Bill C-l 10 does not cover a very essential area. The kind of trade legislation proposed by Liberals in the trade policy we have put forward would specify how complaints are to be processed and administered. However, this legislation will make it possible to deal with the issue of whether there should be federal assistance available to help Canadian industry that would be affected by any ruling of the tribunal to adjust to import competition. If so, what type and amount of assistance should be put into effect to bring about this kind of adjustment?
Bill C-l 10 does not do this. It basically prescribes how complaints and investigations are to be handled. An essential corollary of any ruling being made by the tribunal proposed under Bill C-l 10 is what effect it will have. If there are effects that will be evident because of a ruling, even though that ruling is said by the tribunal to be in the over-all Canadian
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public interest, more attention has to be paid to the fact that this Bill is ready to allow the tribunal to help the affected industry adopt the machinery and technology to meet increased import competition effectively, or to enable the affected industry to move into other lines of production. It should also help the workers involved to get the skills and training which will enable them to keep their jobs in an industry which may be a very different kind of industry as a result of a ruling of the tribunal, or in some cases to help them go on to work in a totally different industry.
This key aspect of dealing with import competition has been virtually ignored by the Government's proposal. I hope that we will have the opportunity, and I predict another Liberal Government will have that opportunity, to do a better job than this Conservative Government has done until now, especially through Bill C-l 10 in addressing the vital issue of adjustment.
By way of conclusion I want to say that although I have brought forth some concerns about the Bill-and these concerns and others I have not mentioned have been expressed with a great deal of eloquence and insight by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Trinity-I do want to say that our general position is that there is much desirable about Bill C-l 10 in so far as it rationalizes three separate pieces of trade legislation into one piece of trade legislation. As I have said, this kind of rationalization and the over-all improvement of our Canadian trade legislation are essential components of our Liberal trade policy.
I am glad to have put on record some comments on Bill C-110. I think we have reached the stage where this debate can be concluded, and for that reason I am happy to conclude my own remarks.
Mir. Ernie Epp (Thunder Bay-Nipigon): Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak for a few moments in the debate on Bill C-l 10, an Act to establish the Canadian International Trade Tribunal. I am tempted to say at the outset that this debate, brief as it will be, is a nice demonstration of why the House should not be sitting into July as it is doing now. This evening we are having a very brief third reading debate on a Bill that may be of enormous importance to Canadian industry, the manufacturing industry generally. It deserves to be treated with all the seriousness which that involves. Quite simply we have had persons from the Government, the Official Opposition, and my caucus speaking to the Bill who are not directly involved with it. The Minister of State for Finance (Mr. Hockin) is not here. I do not mean to violate the rules or cast any reflections at all, because his Parliamentary Secretary is standing in for him, but the Liberal House Leader and myself are here doing yeoman service for persons who know the Bill intimately, who are aware of its strengths and its weaknesses, and who would want, I am sure, to say more about it on third reading.
As the Liberal House Leader has done, I want to recognize the hard work of my colleague and friend, the Hon. Member for Essex-Windsor (Mr. Langdon), who worked very hard in
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the House and in the legislative committee on Bill C-l 10. In fact, he had the satisfaction at report stage of having the Minister of State for Finance recognize the close attention that he had paid to this Bill and the work he had done trying to ensure that the Bill to establish the Canadian International Trade Tribunal would be an effective piece of legislation. May I say on his behalf, Mr. Speaker, in focusing my comments more particularly on the Bill, that in principle the proposal to roll together three different tribunals into one can be seen as a good thing. The Hon. Member for Essex-Windsor would want to give his support in principle to putting these several bodies-The Tariff Board, the Textile and Clothing Board, and the Special Import Tribunal-together, to reorganizing them as the new Canadian International Trade Tribunal. That ought to be a good thing, but the question is whether in fact the Bill as it stands is a good thing, and whether the kinds of powers that have been assigned to this new tribunal, the composition of the tribunal, and the procedures that it is expected to follow in their individuality and totality would make an effective board. On behalf of my colleague and our caucus I want to say that we do not think it will be effective. We have very serious concerns about several aspects of the Bill and about the tribunal that it will create, if the Bill is finally passed, given Royal Assent, and proclaimed.
In my own observation one concern raised is the matter of easy access. The tribunal dealing with the textile and clothing board has been noted for its easy access. The textile and clothing board has existed to ensure that agreements dating back to the early 1960s in the clothing trade, which take the form these days of multi-fibre agreements with various Third World producing countries, and their impact on Canadian manufacturers are properly administered and that those industries are safe. The ease of access to the board has been one of its most important features.
Both textiles and apparel producers of Canada and the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, which speaks for far more of Canada's manufacturers, have expressed concern that the new tribunal will not provide this ease of access. One can see on the very face of it that with three tribunals and 15 members, even now the procedures are all too slow. If we move to a new structure with only nine members with far more responsibilities than the three different boards now existing have, there will be grave concerns about whether the new International Trade Tribunal will be able to work effectively and to respond to the concerns of industry as surely we would want that tribunal to do.
What makes this particularly ironic is that the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) himself, in a press release in Sherbrooke, Eastern Townships, the heart of some of Canada's most important textile and clothing producing areas, promised a greater role to the industry in shaping textile and apparel policy. Yet the legislation, Bill C-l 10, does away with a board which has played such an important part in studying the

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Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act
situation and making recommendations to government in the past.
Another serious problem that gives us cause to criticize and oppose the Bill is the matter of the discretionary power to conduct inquiries which the Textile and Clothing Board in particular has under Article 9 of the Textile and Clothing Board Act. That discretionary power is done away with in Bill C-110. In addition, the new reality is that the International Trade Tribunal will be prevented from making recommendations and reports on injury inquiries which would follow from the concerns of various industries affected by trade.
Given the particular fact that under the Act only producers who produce the majority of specified goods can petition for an injury inquiry, we feel grave concern for the small producers who are in a certain marginal position in an industry and who may manage in some industries, given the kind of price leadership which some are able to execute, to have a reasonably good life. Others may find themselves in boom time doing reasonably well, but when business is slow, they may find it very difficult to survive. In those circumstances particularly, will the small and marginal producers have any kind of recourse at all, given the way in which the International Trade Tribunal will be constituted under Bill C-l 10?
There is a third concern which relates to the question of an arm's length relationship which the tribunal is supposed to have with the Government. This is actually thrown into question by the fact that it cannot initiate its own inquiries. Does the fact that the large producers producing the majority of the products will have access to this tribunal make up for the fact that the tribunal is not able to initiate inquiries? The legislation is not very clear on this matter, but we can certainly imagine a situation in which the new tribunal will have a very close relationship with government and with large producers. What then is the situation of the smaller producers to whom I have already referred?
Since the purpose of this new International Trade Tribunal is supposed to be to deal with international trade and economic issues, it should surely have a much larger and more independent role in considering what is happening in the various industries, in initiating inquiries, and in recommending the kinds of adjustment assistance measures that may be necessary.
We are concerned that this Bill is surely part of the reorganization of Canada's trading system which this Conservative Government is carrying out. This is just one more example of the kind of bending over backward to U.S. interests which has characterized the Conservative Government in negotiating the trade deal that is being pursued these days in the legislative committee on Bill C-l30, and in other areas as well.
This is a Ministry which all too often has been ready to sell out to American interests, to forget what American industries do to Canadian industries, particularly through the use of American trade tribunals. In northwestern Ontario we have had to live for months with that 15 per cent export tax which
was imposed on Canadian softwood producers and continues to be imposed on Ontario softwood producers because this Government buckled under to American pressure. It was so stricken with fear that it would not be able to win before the American trade tribunal that it accepted an export tax on our lumber, though we in Ontario are convinced that there has never been any subsidization of the industry through stumpage prices for our timber.
If the Socred Government in British Columbia did not have the strength and courage to charge the proper amount for stumpage, then let British Columbia Governments go ahead and deal with the matter properly. We do not need American Governments under U.S. industry pressure forcing the B.C. Government to do the right thing. However, that should not be imposed on the people of Ontario, the workers in the forest and sawmills of Ontario, as it has been to the detriment of the industry and the loss of hundreds of jobs in northern Ontario already. In the context of what U.S. law allows and what U.S. tribunals make possible for U.S. industry, we see in this Bill just one more example of an inability of the Conservative Government to defend Canadian interests.
I note in glancing over the material my colleague, the Hon. Member for Essex-Windsor, has provided that he focused at report stage on a number of amendments which were designed to take care of some of these shortcomings in the Bill. Having read the record of that debate, I note that the Minister of State for Finance argued time after time that this would be some sort of a violation of our GATT obligations. He provided all kinds of assurances that all was well in the Bill.
We are not convinced of that. We are not impressed that this Bill will do things right. Because the amendments we put forward to try to make the Bill what it should be were not accepted, I state clearly now that the New Democratic caucus does not support Bill C-110, and when you put the question in a moment, Mr. Speaker, of course we will follow through on the statement I have just made.


Cyril Keeper: Mr. Speaker, I have a few concerns about this legislation that I want to put on the record. I know that most Hon. Members would rather be at home than here this evening, so I will not take too long to say what I have to say.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Cyril Keeper: I am sure that my remarks will be welcomed in the same enthusiastic fashion.
When it comes to the textile industry, there are theories of international trade, theories of free trade, and theories of prosperity coming as a result of greater liberalization of trade. When I put the theories of the economists on the one hand and the reality of the workers in the textile industry on the other hand, I find that my heart is with those in the textile industry. My heart is with those in the textile industry. I say that before we open our doors to greater competition in the textile industry, we ought to take care to see that the people presently
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working in that industry will still have their jobs after these changes in legislation.
It is fine for a Prime Minister seeking an issue to run on in an election to hype free trade. It is well and good for economists who live in university ivory towers to promote the theory of free trade. However, when it comes down to the bread and butter issues for the people who work in the textile industry, they would like an orderly transition. They want their interests taken into account before legislation is changed.
We are afraid this legislation will weaken the instruments in the hands of the textile industry which ensure its survival. We in this Party have pointed out weaknesses in the legislation which ought to be corrected before it is passed. My colleague from Windsor introduced specific amendments because we want the people who work in the industry to feel secure and know that tomorrow morning, when they get up, their jobs will be there and that they will not be guinea pigs for some academic theory of free trade. Let us plan where we are going in an orderly fashion. Let us proceed with some care and caution. I urge the Government to accept the amendments we put forward so that the dangers contained in the legislation for the textile industry are not there when the legislation is passed.
It is well known that there are countries that produce textile products with labour which is paid at a much lower rate than is possible in Canada, even though the people who work in the industry in Canada earn low wages by our standards. Therefore, if we just throw open the doors to international competition, then we put the jobs of those presently in the industry at risk. If we are marching down the road to more liberalized trade, if we are going to bring down trade barriers, let us do it cautiously. Let us amend the legislation before it passes so the people in the industry will know that we have taken their interests into account and that we are not just following the theory of some academic economist or some political leader seeking an issue for a general election.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is the House ready for the question?


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: All those opposed will please say nay.
Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act


Some Hon. Members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: In my opinion the yeas have it.
And more than five members having risen'.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Call in the Members.
And the division bells having rung:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Pursuant to Standing Order 13(4)(a), I have been requested by the assistant to the Chief Government Whip to defer the division until a later time.
Accordingly, pursuant to Standing Order 13(5), the division on the question now before the House stands deferred until Monday at 6 p.m., at which time the bells to call in the Members will be sounded for not more than 15 minutes.


BRETTON WOODS AND RELATED AGREEMENTS ACT
[Stage Direction]
The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-126, an Act to amend the Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act, as reported (without amendments) from a legislative committee.
Hon.   Gerald. S. Merrithew@for the Minister of State (Finance: that the Bill be concurred in.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Mr. Merrithew (for the Minister of State (Finance)) moved: that the Bill be read the third time and passed.


Mr. Jim Manly (Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I see that I have unlimited time. This is the first and may be the last time I will have that opportunity.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Gerald Stairs Merrithew: We are adjourning at ten o'clock.


James Douglas Manly: Well, I can carry on tomorrow and Monday.
Seriously, this is not the routine Bill that its treatment by the House would appear to indicate. It deals with Canada's relationship with the debt-ridden, poverty-stricken nations and peoples of the Third World. The Bill gives the Government authority to provide funds to the International Monetary Fund, through loans and grants, for a trust or any other body established by the IMF. The Government has explained that these moneys are for enhanced structural adjustment facilities, or ESAF. It provides highly concessional terms to the poorest countries faced with the problems of debt repayment and

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structural adjustment. Part of the money coming from Canada will be in the form of a loan and part in the form of a grant.
The purpose of the funds in the form of a grant are to allow very concessional terms to the recipient countries. In other words, the grant funds coming from Canada enable the borrowing countries to borrow the money at very low interest rates. At the same time, the IMF will be paying the regular commercial interest rates to the lending countries such as Canada. The grant portion of the money comes from our official development assistance, ODA.
I am concerned about some of the specifics in the Bill. First, while the Government explained that the purpose of these moneys was for the ESAF, the Bill does not say that. It says "any trust or body established by the IMF". The committee rejected an amendment that would have tightened that up. In the same way, the Bill specifies certain specific sums of money but then goes on to say that any other funds that the Government wants can also be given. In effect, the Bill gives a blank cheque, and again the committee rejected amendments that would have tightened that up.
I am concerned that this Bill has the grant portion of the funds coming from ODA at a time when that assistance as a percentage of our GNP is dropping.
A June 22 Globe and Mail report pointed out that foreign development aid from western countries fell by 2 per cent in real terms last year. According to figures released by the OECD, Canadian overseas aid spending fell as a proportion of Gross National Product from 0.48 per cent in 1986 to 0.46 per cent in 1987. That is a very small percentage drop, but we must compare that with the commitment the Government made when first elected.
At that time the Hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark) went to the United Nations and promised that Canada would meet its commitment of reaching 0.7 per cent of its funding for ODA by 1990. Since then we have seen one cut-back after another rather than the fulfilment of that commitment. Now, rather than increasing the percentage of our GNP which goes to development assistance, we are decreasing it. In this connection we are concerned that the grant portion which goes to ESAF is being taken from Official Development Assistance.
Roy Culpeper who studied this matter appeared before the committee and said:
In its recent report, the UN Secretary General's advisory group on financial flows to Africa concluded that $5 billion in additional flows annually would be necessary to secure some economic growth, increased imports, and reduce the debt servicing ratio in sub-Saharan Africa. If the ESAF and other recent initiatives, notably those by the World Bank, are factored in, then the net additional requirement falls to $2 billion annually, still a sizeable amount that we are nowhere close to meeting. However, it is important to realize that the positive effect of the ESAF itself requires additionality; that is, it should mean that new money is flowing into Africa and not simply being taken from existing aid funds.
Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, that is what is happening. Nevertheless, he and our Party see the ESAF as an advancement on traditional international monetary fund policies. The traditional IMF imposed form of structural adjustment with which we are all familiar involves currency devaluation, cutbacks in social programs, elimination of subsidies on basic food stuffs, cutting back on the public sector, privatization, and forcing Third World nations to spend more and more of their energy in exports and opening up their economies to external investment and control.
Very often this kind of structural adjustment, while being very hard on the poor people in these developing countries, helps local elites to become even more rich because it provides them with a pool of cheap labour, enables them to pick up bargains in terms of privatized parastatals, and so on.
ESAF will continue to impose this kind of conditionality, along the same lines as IMF traditional conditionality, but the funds will go to ease the impact on the poorest of the poor. In other words, there will not be a change in the basic kinds of conditionality that are imposed.
The head of UNICEF pointed out a couple of weeks ago that 40,000 children die every day from hunger and hunger related causes. We do not pay any attention to that because it happens in a quiet way and is far removed from the reality which we in Canada experience. He went on to point out that a good deal of that hunger and those hunger related causes are directly related to the kinds of conditionality that have been imposed upon these nations by forces such as the International Monetary Fund. Canada, as one of the nations which has a significant voice in the IMF, shares some of the guilt and responsibility for the death of those children.
I would like to suggest that there are different kinds of conditionality. In a report entitled "Adjustment with a Human Face", a group of people working with UNICEF suggested that instead of the traditional IMF conditionality we should be working for different kinds of structural adjustment. They make six suggestions.
First, there should be more expansionary macro-economic policies aiming at sustaining levels of output, investment, and human need satisfaction over the adjustment period. In other words, instead of retrenchment and cut-backs there should be expansion.
Second, there should be the use of meso policies to reinforce the more expansionary macro approach and to secure the priority use of resources to fulfil the needs of the vulnerable.
Third, there should be sectoral policies aiming at restructuring within the productive sector to strengthen employment and income generating activities and raise productivity in low-income activities, focusing in particular on small farmers and informal sector producers in industry and services.
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Fourth, there should be improvement in the equity and efficiency of the social sector by restructuring public expenditure both between and within sectors by improving the targeting of interventions and their cost effectiveness.
Fifth, there should be compensatory programs to protect basic health and nutrition during the low-income adjustment. Two major elements of such policies are public works employment schemes and nutrition interventions encompassing targeted food subsidies and direct feeding for the most vulnerable.
Sixth, and perhaps the most important, is monitoring of the human situation, especially of living standards, health, and nutrition of low-income groups during the adjustment process so that needs may be identified and the effectiveness of adjustment programs assessed and modified accordingly. Monitoring of human conditions, especially the health and nutritional status of the population, particularly that of vulnerable groups, should be given as much weight in monitoring adjustment as monetary variables have in the conventional approach.
In other words, when there is need for some kind of international intervention in the economy of one of these struggling nations, instead of imposing the kind of cut-backs and decimation of the local economy that the IMF has done traditionally, there should be a kind of structural adjustment that places the priority on human needs.
There has been a number of suggestions made in the last few weeks and months for debt forgiveness. When I think of debt forgiveness I think of a story which we studied in Grade 10 called The Revolution at Satan's Trap by Norman Duncan. The story was about a small outport in Newfoundland where the local people were indebted to the trader. No matter how many fish they caught they were always indebted to John Woll, the trader. By a combination of circumstances it so happened that they finally had him in a situation where he had to agree to a form of debt forgiveness and had to restore to the people what was rightfully theirs. However the story ended as follows:
And within three years John Woll possessed again all that he had yielded, and the world of Satan's Trap wagged on as in the days before the revolution.
In other words, debt relief without changing the system does not really change anything. Debt relief by itself is not going to help unless something is done about commodity prices.
The IMF, acting as international monetary policemen, has forced low commodity prices on the Third World which keep them in debt. Then it keeps dribbling these nations small amounts of money, sometimes just enough to keep them from defaulting but never enough to enable them to get out of debt. I mentioned earlier that the UN committee which considered this issue said that there was need for $5 billion a year. We are falling far short of the amount which is desperately needed if Africa is ever to get out of the deep pit into which we have
Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act
helped to put it as a result of the ecological destruction it is facing right now.
We must realize the basis of debt. Often democratically elected Governments are now faced with having to repay debts which were contracted by dictators. It is interesting to note that three-quarters of the debt of Nicaragua was contracted by Somoza. Twenty per cent of Third World debt is for the purchase of military goods. A great deal of it ends up financing elite consumption and megaprojects which often have very little developmental impact upon the great mass of the people. Sometimes these debts were contracted and in fact forced upon Third World countries by banks in Europe and North America simply because they wanted to make quick bucks.
In the September 1983 issue of Harpers, a Mr. S. C. Gwynne wrote an article entitled "Adventures in the Loan Trade". He told how as a young loans officer 25 years of age he had visited some 28 different countries in a period of six months, flogging money for a medium-sized bank in the midwestern United States. He described how he knew that when he made those loans they would simply not be repaid adequately, but in order to make them one only needed to get the guarantee of the government or the local national bank. By the time they defaulted on the loans, he and the other people who had been involved in making the loans had passed on to some other job.
The entire loans business that took place in the middle 1970s was simply a way in which the western banks became very greedy. They pushed money without adequate investigation into the ways in which loans would be repaid.
Susan George, in an excellent book entitled A Fate Worse Than Death made an excellent analysis from the perspective of someone concerned with development itself. She pointed to the impossibility of ever having debts, which amounted to over a trillion dollars for the Third World as a whole, paid in full, in hard currency. At the same time she opposed a policy of total debt forgiveness. As she pointed out, this often simply kept local elites and local dictators in place.
Instead, Susan George calls for a new type of restructuring, a new type of approach to the whole debt problem. It was radical in the sense of going to the root of the problem. She tied debt to the whole issue of development and democracy.
The repayment of debt should be tied to the development and democracy issues as well. For example, a country's bilateral debt could be dedicated to a development fund to which each debtor country would make regular interest payments. The development fund would have broadly based management from that country, including people from the rural area, proper representation for women and for different ethnic groups. Susan George said:
The development fund would finance projects and programmes determined by consultation and consensus, focusing primarily on rural areas. Various groups (village councils, associations of young people, women, artisans,

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peasants, etc.) could apply to the fund for seed money to undertake their own self-managed projects.
The fund would also provide money for revolving credit schemes to make modest loans directly to farmers and other small-scale rural entrepreneurs (with priority here given to the landless and to women.)
Each payment made by a government into its own national development fund would trigger a corresponding reduction ... of its external debt in hard currency by the IMF, the multilateral development banks and the official bilateral creditors.
Rigid, IMF-type conditionality would give way to a more flexible system. Whereas adjustment has always meant increasing agricultural exports, no matter how grim the internal food situation, and drastic curtailment of basic services in health, education, staple-food subsidies, creative conditionality would take the form of contracts.
These negotiated contracts would concern equitable, democratic management of national development funds and the terms for matching, in hard currency, each step towards improved performance.
She was suggesting that instead of nations like Canada and others that control the IMF just dribbling out bits of money to these nations to enable them to keep from defaulting, and at the same time imposing a kind of conditionality on them which put them on the rack, we should be developing a new approach. Rather than these countries paying money back to the First World, they should be paying money into their own development funds, which should be tied to genuine democracy and a genuine approach to development.
I urge the Government to consider this kind of radical policy. I urge it to recommend this policy to the IMF and the World Bank. It is a better policy than we practised last fall when there was a lot of criticism of the Government for its forgiveness of debts to Anglophone and Francophone nations in Africa that often had very bad human rights records.
Some of us felt some queasy about that. On the one hand, we did not want to criticize the Government for a generous gesture to the nations of Africa, but on the other hand we looked at some of the nations which did not have good human rights records and we wondered what was the real value of forgiving those debts. Instead, if we worked to establish this kind of internal development fund and insisted that local elites paid into the development fund to help their own people, perhaps we would have been doing a whole lot more for genuine development in our world.
The ESAF is a small step forward. One of my concerns, which is shared by other members of our Party, is that it is under the direction of the International Monetary Fund. We know that the one nation which cracks the whip for the IMF is the United States of America. Yet the United States is not putting any money into ESAF. We are contributing to a fund that will be controlled by the United States, which is not making any contribution to it.
ESAF is a small step forward, and I think we should be taking the much larger step recommended by Susan George. I regret that Bill C-126 does not have the kind of checks and balances that I think parliamentarians should have insisted upon. I would urge the Government to consider a radically new approach to the whole question of Third World debt.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in this debate on third reading of Bill C-126. I do so because our very distinguished critic, the Hon. Member for Trinity (Miss Nicholson), is not able to be here this evening. She has done an excellent job in taking part in the study of this Bill and putting forward our points of view.
This Bill will authorize the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson) to contribute to the new initiative of the International Monetary Fund known as the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility, or ESAF. This fund will assist the poorest developing countries with the provision of balance of payments support. Most of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa and include: Zambia, Zaire, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Rwanda, Niger, Mozambique, Malawi, Madagascar, Liberia, Lesotho, Kenya, and Ethiopia. The average per capita income of these countries is 300 Canadian dollars per year. The ESAF is a trust fund that will make resources available to these countries at concessional interest rates so as to minimize the impact on their debt servicing burdens.
The two main features of the program are long-term lending and concessional interest rates. This program is designed to allow these countries to make the economic adjustments required to reach a stage of development which will eventually lead to healthy economic growth, rising living standards, and a sustainable balance of payments position. I will talk more about this key provision in a moment.
This initiative arose at the annual summit of industrialized countries in Venice, Italy, last year. I understand the plan was endorsed at the meeting of the group of 24 developing countries that met in April of this year. The ESAF will operate on the basis of two accounts, a loan account and a subsidy account. This Bill authorizes Canada to lend approximately $550 million to the IMF fund. It also authorizes Canada to provide grants of approximately $250 million to subsidize the interest on these loans. This grant will bring the interest rate on Canada's contribution down to 0.5 per cent and will come out of Canada's aid envelope over a period of 12 years.
In a speech given on May 20, 1988, the Hon. Member for Trinity emphasized that the key component in facilitating conditional aid was effectively to implement change cooperatively and to monitor it closely. I must re-emphasize this evening the need for co-operation and acceptance by the recipient country. Imposing harsh and unwanted conditions on the recipient country will only yield resentment and a lack of co-operation. The Hon. Member for Trinity asked the Minister in committee what assurances we had that Canada would assist in monitoring such things as how the money was spent, the performance requirements, and the timetables for implementation. The Minister responded that the initiative was an experiment.
July 14, 1988

Of course, we cannot ask for guarantees. We are not asking for that, but to refer to this initiative as an experiment is not apt. Conditional aid is not new and the failures in implementing this aid are not new. Canada must ensure that these errors are not repeated. Our representatives on the International Monetary Fund should be involved in the monitoring of the program.
As the Hon. Member for Trinity said during her speech at second reading that our Party supported the Bill in principle. The ESAF, as one expert witness told the legislative committee, will provide a window through which richer countries can channel resources to poorer countries. It changes the structure of the IMF from that of a revolving fund. Mr. Michel Camdessus, the new managing director of the IMF, has shown great interest and sensitivity to the concept of adjustment with a human face. I hope this sensitivity will be reflected in the important evaluation, implementation, and monitoring of conditional aid about which the Hon. Member for Trinity spoke previously.
However, while we support this Bill and while the ESAF is necessary, I must point out that it is not a sufficient vehicle for alleviating the debt crisis in the poorest countries. According to a recent United Nation's report, $5 billion in additional flows are required to secure adequately economic growth, to increase imports, and to reduce the debt service ratio in subSaharan Africa. The commitments by Canada and other countries to the ESAF reduces this $5 billion figure to about $2 billion annually, so it is a help. It is also important to note that Canada's contribution to the grant component is not new money but is allocated from our development aid envelope.
Much remains to be done. The poverty in these countries is crushing. Evidence of assistance and aid that address the quality of life, employment needs and social programs in developing countries has been meagre to date. In order to improve the economies of these countries and to set them on the road to economic independence, programs like the ESAF are important. We also need to see evidence of the human face of adjustment that will ensure sensitivity to each country's needs. This means mutual co-operation between assisting and assisted countries when it comes to conditional aid in the future.
I offer these comments as a contribution to the debate on third reading of this Bill. In so doing again I want to pay tribute to the important work of my colleague, the associate critic of finance for the Liberal Party, the Hon. Member for Trinity, for the excellent work she did in studying this Bill and putting forward the point of view of the Liberal Party.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I will recognize the Hon. Member for Winnipeg North Centre and let the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary be the clean-up batter.


Cyril Keeper: Mr. Speaker, once again I will assure the House that I will not take too much time this evening, but I have a fundamental point I want
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to make. I will start by indicating that we will not be opposing this legislation.
I understand that the legislation makes some money available at low interest rates to developing countries, and this is not to be sneezed at or condemned, yet important questions have to be faced in this debate with respect to debt and international development.
The simple point I want to make is that this issue is not a question of whether we have done our share or whether we have done a little more. There are fundamental questions of direction involved, of conception about what is the problem, and what it is we are trying to do on the international development arena with regard to debt.
Over the last few days I focused my attention on a headline in the newspaper. A gentleman who was involved in an international development agency had done a study and said uncategorically that international debt owed by developing countries, which were being forced to pay back, was causing the deaths of children. What we are faced with here is a question of life and death. It is a critical question.
When I hear of international debts, what I understand as a lay person is that the big western banks, including Canadian banks, went on a binge in the last couple of decades lending out money to the poorest nations of this world. Now that they are faced with the hangover and now that the western banks themselves are shaking, they are asking these poor countries to pay up. But, at what price? It is at the price of life and death; that is the implication for those communities. These banks, which want to preserve their efficiency as institutions of capital, are doing it at the cost of the lives of people in developing countries.
If that was the only thing that was possible, then I guess we could close our books and our mouths, go home and watch television and forget about it. I saw something else in the newspaper over the last few days. It was an article about a man who lived in Bangladesh. He started a bank with a difference. It was a bank that lent money to the poorest of the poor in the poorest country. When the man went to a conventional bank to help borrow money for a local family, a local entrepreneur but a poor person, he found that poor people could not borrow money. The poor people did not have access to the capital necessary for development. He stood good for that person. He used his own name as a guarantee in order for the loan to go through.
That was the start of this bank with a difference. What was different about it was that it lent money to poor people who had no collateral. Western banks, as we generally know them, demand collateral before one can borrow money. He changed that. What he did was that he got together a dozen people, each of whom needed money. They all stood for each other in terms of their loans. Thus, if one person in the group was not

July 14, 1988
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to pay back his loan, then that would affect the creditworthiness of the whole group. They all worked together and they paid back their loans. This man found a new way to run a bank. It was very significant. It said to me that there was another approach. He put the highest value on human development, on the development of the human community, and on the rescue of those people who live in poverty, not by doing something for them but by arranging things in a way that capital could be put at their disposal to do the kinds of development they wanted, which was very small-scale development.
The question before us today is about values, about what we think is most important. Do we agree with the large western banks which seem by their behaviour to put the highest value on the dollar? Or, do we agree with this person from Bangladesh who started a bank that could operate in the poorest corners of the globe and who put the highest priority on the human person? That is what I think is essential to the question of international debt today. What is required is a spiritual reawakening in the sense that the human person will be treated as sacred, as the highest value, and that capital be used to serve human development, the development of the community and of shared responsibility.
I want to say that while we do not oppose this legislation since it makes some money available for poorer countries and communities, there is a greater challenge. The challenge is to make some fundamental shifts in direction.
One of the things this gentleman who started the bank in Bangladesh said was that we need a commitment. We need to renew the commitment or make a commitment to eradicate the pollution of poverty from this planet. It is enough of a surprise actually to find a person who is doing something that makes a difference for poor people, someone who can actually change their situation while at the same time allow for their development and give them control over what is happening to them. That is enough. Then this person challenged us to say that poverty on this planet is a pollution. In other words, it is something that threatens our survival.
I think there is a greater challenge than that which has been faced up to in this legislation. While I will not vote against it, it is about time that we in the western world in particular take up the challenge to change the direction of how we approach the use of capital and make a real difference in regard to poverty on this planet.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, I will be brief. I would like to begin by thanking members of the Opposition and government Members for the co-operation that we have had since supper hour. I think you will find, Mr. Speaker, a predisposition to vote as soon as I am through my remarks and then we might see the clock as ten o'clock. It is a kind of reward for the co-operation that we have had this evening.
I was lucky enough to be asked by the Government in the fall of 1984 to attend the General Assembly of the United Nations for 11 weeks as the Canadian representative to the Third Committee where we dealt with issues of poverty, health and so on. I came away convinced that what we as western and so-called rich nations could do most effectively is co-operate with other nations, and to be a moral conscience at times, as well as to be a prodder and developer, in order to get international co-operation in place. A great many people live in poverty. A great many people could use and benefit from our help.
If someone reads our Hansard and hears about the Bretton Woods Agreement, they will see that it is not a very descriptive title. It does not say much about what it is we are engaged in as the House of Commons and as a country. This initiative, these few paragraphs, spell out what we are intending to do. At this point we are really carrying out the consequence of the June 1987 Summit where western industrialized nations, and Canada as represented by our Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), agreed that the International Monetary Fund should increase its resources significantly, for the specific purpose of helping low-income countries by establishing what is referred to in English as the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility, which are very complex words. The essence of it is that western industrialized nations would provide more resources to the International Monetary Fund so that it could make them available to eligible countries once they have a program in place designed to promote structural adjustment and economic growth over the medium term.
I think it is self-evident to nations such as ours that if the structure in place which has produced the poverty is not changed it is not likely to change.

Mr. Speaker, through the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility, the IMF will be able to make loans to the poorest debtor countries on very favourable terms, by means of contributions made to two accounts. The loan account will facilitate the transfer of funds that will earn interest at market rates. The subsidy account will allow the IMF to lend loan account funds to eligible developing countries at one-half per cent interest per year.
Mr. Speaker, many countries have reacted favourably by transferring substantial amounts to the facility. Canada will give $550 million in loans and $250 million in grants.

France has pledged some 800 million in special drawing rights in loans. West Germany has committed special drawing rights of 700 million to the loan account and 300 million Deutschmarks to the subsidy account. Italy has contributed special drawing rights of 370 million to the loan account and a corresponding subsidy. In total these western nations I have mentioned pledged special drawing rights of 5.7 billion in loans and special drawing rights of 2.2 billion in subsidies.
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James Douglas Manly: None from the United States?


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: I mentioned that to indicate that it is working. I hear a friend from the NDP, and I say the word "friend" with some mixed feelings. He asks whether or not the United States has contributed anything. On the Third Committee we dealt with refugees, and this Chamber has dealt with refugee legislation. I would like the Hon. Member opposite just to remember that the United States of America provides about 65 per cent of the resources that go to refugees through UN agencies. It is somewhat disturbing when we hear from time to time in the House such a good friend, ally, and generous country to so many people in the world treated with such disdain. I am sure the United States of America more than pulls its weight.
The Central Agencies of the United Nations are dependent upon the United States for approximately one-quarter of their
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income. There are many countries, particularly iron curtain countries, that do not produce a dime for refugees.
In any event I thank Members for their co-operation. I hope there is unanimous consent to pass the Bill and to help get the money where it belongs to start helping those poor nations.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, Bill read the third time and passed.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I believe there is unanimous consent to call it ten o'clock.


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being 10 p.m., pursuant to Order made June 20, 1988, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 3(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 8.51 p.m.
[Stage Direction]

Friday, July 15, 1988
[Stage Direction]
Prayers