1989-10-31

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present to the House this morning a number of petitions that have been certified correct pursuant to Standing Order 36. The petitioners are from throughout northwestern British Columbia, from Terrace, Prince Rupert, Kitimat, the Hazeltons and other communities who are expressing concerns about the proposed goods and services tax. They believe that this tax should not proceed and that the government should cease with the proposal which would shift the tax burden on to ordinary Canadians through a regressive consumption tax instead of through real tax reforms.


Mr. Fernand Robichaud (Beausejour):: Mr. Speaker, it is also my pleasure to present a petition to this House signed by over 1,000 Canadians, most of whom are students at the Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. They call upon their elected representatives to stop the erosion of quality and accessibility in our universities, colleges and other post-secondary educational institutions in Canada.
The petitioners are quite concerned that Bill C-33, introduced in the House on June 27, will reduce federal transfer payments for post-secondary education by approximately $900 million over five years and they respectfully call upon the government to withdraw Bill C-33.


Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition, signed by a number of people, with regard to the VIA Rail issue. In this petition these people, many of whom are Canadians, avail themselves of their ancient and undoubted right to present a petition in front of the House of Commons. They believe that the railway passenger service as carried on by VIA Rail is an essential means of transportation for many Canadians and has been part of the basic Canadian infrastructure for over 100 years. They believe that the government's announcement of a $400 million cutback over five years will hurt the industry and they believe it is very important for tourism.
I would like to explain that this petition has been signed by Canadians from Wabowden, Churchill, Gillam, Lundar, Winnipeg, Thompson, Rankin Inlet, Flin Flon, Rexdale, Ontario, and also by non-Canadians from Sweden, Greece, Germany and England.


Mr. Joseph Volpe (Eglinton-Lawrence):: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure and privilege to submit a petition to this House pursuant to Standing Order 36. The attached petition is certified as correct in format and content and is from many Canadians of Eglinton-Lawrence and the greater metropolitan area. All of them pray that this House put aside the GST proposals because they see in the GST proposals a tax that will encourage a greater number of cash transactions and lead to greater scoffing of the law and will begin to classify many Canadians in those categories of those who will start to evade as well as avoid paying tax.


Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour and the privilege today to present a petition, properly signed by the residents of Thunder Bay, who plead with this government to reconsider their orders to cancel VIA Rail passenger rail service through the city of Thunder Bay.

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Routine Proceedings
We have had passenger rail service in Thunder Bay for the last 105 years. As of January 15, unless this government changes its mind, we will no longer have passenger rail service.


Joseph R. (Joe) Comuzzi: Mr. Speaker, I would like to present another petition on behalf of the citizens of Egmont who plead with this government to review what it is proposing to do with respect to the goods and services tax that is presently before this House.


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, I have the duty to table a petition in the name of several Canadians who join with thousands of others to tell this House that they humbly pray and call upon Parliament to reject the proposed goods and services tax. These people were seen on the Hill yesterday protesting this unfair and inflationary measure proposed by the Tories and would like to make the point that indeed the government should understand that it has an imperative to withdraw this very regressive tax.


Mr. John Manley (Ottawa South):: Mr. Speaker, I have this morning in my possession over 1,500 signatures from residents of Ottawa South, certified correct pursuant to Standing Order 36, asking for the federal government to co-operate with provincial and local governments to once and for all begin the process of cleaning up the Rideau River, an historic waterway that flows through the National Capital.


Mr. Dan Heap (THnity- Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition duly signed by a number of residents of Toronto and Mississauga who are concerned for the aboriginal peoples of Canada, especially those in Labrador and Quebec. They ask this Parliament to join with the Assembly of First Nations and the Innu of Labrador and other aboriginal peoples of northern Canada in opposing use of their lands for NATO-NORAD attack training, specifically the low level flight training in Canada, and opposing the establishment of a NATO operations base in Canada at Goose Bay. They request the funding that Canada gives to NATO and NORAD be redirected toward enabling the aboriginal peoples to
regain control of their land and livelihood and toward promoting sustainable development for all Canadians.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, I have also a petition from a number of people of Toronto who are concerned for the large number of people who depend on VIA Rail transportation. They ask this Parliament to reject any proposed reduction or elimination of VIA Rail service, to see to the modernizing of the equipment so that VIA Rail can provide world-class service and to build a high speed passenger train between Montreal and Windsor.


Mr. Jim Jordan (Leeds-Grenville):: Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure of presenting two petitions in accordance with Standing Order 36, petitions from Prince Edward Island in such places as Mill River and Port Hill, but the predominance of them are from Summerside, P.E.I. The petitioners suggest that this proposal in addition to other things that have happened to them will have a devastating effect on their economy. It is a pleasure to present this petition.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, I too am pleased to present a petition this morning, pursuant to Standing Order 36 and certified correct by the Clerk of Petitions, that points out a whole set of reasons why the petitioners oppose the government's decision to curtail passenger rail service. The petitioners point out particularly their concern that this is a very environmentally unfriendly decision which the government has taken and are asking the government to not only reverse the decision but to actually invest in a modernized VIA Rail system to provide a rapid, economical, safe and environmentally sound means of transportation.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, on another matter,I have another petition signed by a number of western Canadians who are very concerned about the government's decision to tax reading materials, baby diapers, home heating fuels and almost everything else. They are asking the government to cease and desist from proceeding with this goods and services tax.


Hon. Ralph Ferguson (Lambton -Middlesex):: Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this House today, pursuant to Standing Order 36, to present three petitions on behalf of the residents of Lambton-Middlesex.
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Wherefore the undersigned, your petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to reject the proposed goods and services tax. There are eight petitions here and it has been an honour to table them.


Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of petitions to table today. The first is signed by 138 customers of the B & B variety store on the corner of Brock and Brown Streets in Westfort, Thunder Bay. It is addressed to Parliament and is duly certified as appropriate. The undersigned call upon Parliament to reject the current proposal for a goods and services tax, and to reform the taxation system so there is an effective minimum tax on wealthy individuals and corporations.


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, the second petition, signed by residents of British Columbia, is one of hundreds of petitions that have been tabled in this House by this party, calling upon the Government of Canada to scrap its plans to decimate VIA Rail and to move forward to not only maintain the existing VIA network but to upgrade VIA's equipment and guarantee VIA sufficient support to carry out its mandate to provide passenger service.
I also have a petition bearing 10,500 signatures from people from one end of the country to the other protesting the VIA Rail cuts. I will be forwarding that to the Prime Minister.


Hon. Roger C. Simmons (Burin -St. George's):: Mr. Speaker, the revolt against that unholy tax continues. What you saw on the Hill yesterday is but a small aspect of what is happening across this country. Here is the latest manifestation of it. More than 1,000 signatures from Burin-St. George's, Isle au Morts, Port au Basques, Grand Bank, Grand Bruit, Burin, Mortiere, and many other communities, people who want to register their protest against this terrible tax.
The undersigned, your petitioners, humbly pray and call upon Parliament to reject the proposed goods and services tax. There will be more.
Routine Proceedings


Mr. Joe McGuire (Egmont):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I want to present four petitions on behalf of the people of Egmont, who want the government to scrap the goods and services tax.
The petitioners believe the new tax to be an unfair tax grab and they request the government to set aside this new tax policy.


Joseph Blair (Joe) McGuire: While I am on my feet, Mr. Speaker, I would also like to present a petition pursuant to Standing Order 36 on behalf of the people of Thunder Bay, Ontario, who are asking this government to keep the VIA Rail service now operating in Canada and to improve upon it.


Ms. Beth Phinney (Hamilton Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, today I have the honour and privilege to present a petition signed by the residents of Hamilton Mountain. The petitioners have spoken out overwhelmingly against the Conservative government's proposed 9 per cent goods and services tax. The petitioners feel that the tax is unfair.
The petitioners humbly pray and call upon this House to reject the Conservative government's 9 per cent goods and services tax.


Mr. Ron Fisher (Saskatoon-Dundurn):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour and privilege today to stand and present two petitions, one from Canadians all the way from British Columbia to Ontario, calling upon the Parliament of Canada to maintain VIA as Canada's national railway.


Ron Fisher: Mr. Speaker, in the second petition, the petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to reject the goods and services tax, mostly on the basis that it is an unfair tax because of its lack of regard for people's ability to pay.


Giuseppe (Joseph) Volpe: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure and my privilege to rise again on a petition on behalf of the residents of Thunder Bay, who

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humbly pray and beseech this Parliament and this government to reconsider its decisions regarding cuts to VIA Rail passenger service, especially as it pertains to the citizens of Thunder Bay, who feel themselves veiy much a part of this province and this country, and who will, as a result of the cuts, feel themselves further isolated.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Government House Leader):: Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all questions be allowed to stand.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



POINT OF ORDER


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Government House Leader. This is in no way intended to be an awkward question, I want him to understand that. He would be aware that there are a number of people visiting Parliament today who are concerned about phase two of the Copyright Act legislation that is being proposed and processed.
I wonder if the parliamentary secretary could simply give the House some indication of the status of that legislation and when we might expect it to begin the process through the House of Commons.


Mr. Jim Edwards (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to give some observations to the hon. member. I am looking forward to receiving my own delegation in this regard this afternoon.
I am told that work is proceeding on target on phase two of the copyright legislation and that we should have a bill in the House in the early part of the new year. I am given to understand that there are issues other than the issues in which the ACTRA people are interested. It is indeed those issues which have caused some of the delays. There is no intention on the part of the government to not discharge its commitment to artists in Canada.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I say to the parliamentary secretary that we appreciate that indication. I think all we needed was some indication of the relative status of the bill and the fact that the first of the new year is being aimed at as the time for introduction, which I think is satisfactory.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena) moves:
That this House calls upon the Government to implement an
ecologically sound "green" tax system.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have today as a votable day with the motion before the House, calling upon the government to implement an ecologically sound green tax system.
Many members of the House, and certainly many Canadians, will wonder just exactly what that is. The green tax system, the GTS, as we call it, we believe is the way of the future. It proposes to make a new system out of the best of our options either technologically or in terms of the workforce in terms of the natural resources that our country has. The GST, on the other hand, the goods and services tax as proposed by the Minister of Finance, is an admission of failure. It proposes to make a failing system more expensive.
The government says that it endorses the concept of sustainable development, the government says that it wants to integrate economic concerns in all aspects of its policy making, and the government says that it cares about the environment. The government says that it endorses the Brundtland report, the World Commission on the Environment and Development, yet one of the most important doctrines in this report is that economic and environmental processes are inseparable.
It is with amazement and disbelief that we watch this government go backwards in time as it proposes a Draconian tax measure that only serves to compound and amplify our current environmental crisis. The GST is regressive. It taxes recycled paper at the same rate as unrecycled paper, bicycles at the same rate as cars, canoes at the same rates as motor boats, alternative energy at the same rate as fossil fuels.
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The GST is not just environmentally neutral, it is environmentally damaging. Environmentally sound products often cost more than products that are sustainable. The GST only widens this gap, making it more difficult for consumers to choose greener products. As we have learned in a number of recent polls that have been done by Angus Reid and by others across this country, Canadians are prepared to pay more taxes for certain objectives. The number one objective of Canadians from coast to coast is to have a cleaner, safer, sustainable environment.
The conservative approach of the Minister of Finance, as he admits himself, is to regressively tax workers, the middle class, the poor and small business, to tax transactions, to replace the manufacturers' sales tax with the 9 per cent GST. Many Canadians are wondering why 9 per cent. That is obviously a targeted amount which the Minister of Finance wants to raise for other purposes. The reason the minister has chosen 9 per cent to flog is so that he can bring the rate down to a lower one, then ratchet it back up again and look as though he has done some kind of honourable deed in lowering the tax from nine to eight to seven to six or to five only to ratchet it back up again as was done with the manufacturers' sales tax which went from 9 to 10 to 11 to 12 and continues progressively upwards.
The Conservative and Liberal approach to taxation is identical. If one looks at the last three decades of ministers of finance from both the Liberal and Conservative Parties, we now see the results. Corporations three decades ago paid 50 per cent of the taxes in this country and working families paid 50 per cent. Now corporations pay only 20 per cent and working families pay 80 per cent of the taxes in Canada. Most wealthy Canadians pay little or no tax and thousands of profitable corporations pay little or no tax as well.
We have to ask some fundamental questions such as where does such a tax system lead. The evidence is now overwhelming in Canada. We are among the most polluting and wasteful countries in the world. We learned just this morning in the environment committee from witnesses from Environment Canada that each Canadian produces more than four tonnes of carbon dioxide as a result of our activities in driving cars, through industry and through the various forms of
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carbon dioxide production which are adding to global warming through the production of greenhouse gases.
We are passing on huge fiscal and environmental debts to future generations. One does not need to look far in our environment to find the kinds of huge costs, whether it is the hundreds of billions in national debt to the kinds of debts that are being passed on through poor fishery and forestry practices, the erosion of farmland and the many other problems we have with toxic and hazardous waste dump sites across the country.
The simple fact is that we cannot produce laws, regulations inspectors or courts fast enough to halt, prosecute and clean up the colossal messes that are about us. The list is long. There is acid rain. There is toxic rain. There is Great Lakes pollution. There are holes in the ozone layer. There are greenhouse gases and global warming, toxic and hazardous waste dumps, PCBs, pesticides, nuclear waste, enough low-level radioactive waste and tailing ponds and impoundments to cover the highway from Halifax to Vancouver six feet deep.
The list is long and growing. How often do we now hear of endangered species and endangered spaces in Canada? We need a tax system that is fundamentally simple, ecologically sound and designed to encourage sustainable development. This tax approach will create jobs, reduce resource waste, clean up the environment and pass on to future generations as good a planet as we inherited, the fundamental premise on which the Brund-tland recommendations were made through the United Nations to the world.
How does a green tax system work? It is best, in my view, to deal with examples so that the public has as clear an idea as possible about what a green tax system is all about.
One could ask a question in relation to recycled paper. The question would be, what is the maximum amount of virgin paper that can be reasonably recovered and delivered for recycling. One could take any city, any urban area and in fact many rural areas of the country and ask how many packages, newspapers, and paper are out there and in terms of the costs of gathering and transporting that to a centralized depot near enough to a facility that can de-ink and recycle that paper. As we have learned in some cities on this continent including
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some cities right here in Canada, a very substantial amount can be recovered for that form of recycling.
Then you ask what is the maximum amount of recycled fibre that can be reasonably placed in various kinds of products. We know, for example, that the Minister of Public Works, whom I am glad to see here today, produced a Householder made out of recycled paper that had roughly 50 per cent recycled fibre in it. It is good quality paper, it provides legible type, it can carry the reproduction of graphs and photographs, and so on. In some products you in fact can go considerably above the 50 per cent recycled fibre capacity for paper and still have good reproduction quality.
Then you ask what are the environmental costs of landfills and so on. For paper packaging and paper waste and so on it is now approaching one-half the contents of the dumps. In Ontario alone landfills are now consuming one and a half acres a day. One has to ask what are the costs of, rather than recycling that kind of material, putting it into dumps that produce methane and other serious problems for the environment.
Take these and other factors such as the real cost of harvesting forests which must now include the loss of fish, bird and wildlife habitat, soil erosion and the forest's role. One of the fundamentally most important matters that the Standing Committee on the Environment is now looking into is the capacity of various species of trees and plants to act as a carbon sink to take that carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and hold it so that we do not face the horrendous consequences of global warming.
Then you plug in the green tax system which is really a very simple tax system, Mr. Speaker, as you would know. The Minister of Finance, just to deal with his day-to-day business, has dozens of feet of tax law. There are constantly new rulings. Parliament is constantly passing new laws in relation to the old tax system that we have adopted and has proven to be very negative in terms of our environment and our social development.
You plug the green tax system in at one or more levels to obtain the desired result. This is just in relation to the recycling of paper. You determine the maximum fibre
use and the minimum environmental damage and then you regulate the green tax based on your desired result.
There are amazing side benefits. The energy saving in recycled paper alone is up to 40 per cent and there is reduced marine pollution from pulp mills. We know that 40 per cent of the marine pollution of both fresh water and salt water in Canada, comes from pulp mills. You get improved air quality and improved water quality by having fewer dioxins, furons and organochlorines placed into the environment.
The staggering fact is that recycled paper is already cost competitive but because of present structures in Canadian society, including tax, marketing and industrial, it is not fully available and in fact is not available at all to many institutions such as Parliament itself.
Green taxes are not new. We have had them to encourage recycling here in Canada on glass milk bottles, for example, going back one-third of a century through the form of deposits on bottles so that people would not throw them away but would in fact send them back to the milk company to be refilled. Aluminum, steel, old batteries, beer bottles, pop bottles and many other items have been collected for the purpose of recycling.
For waste reduction the idea is catching on, from simple things such as a toilet dam which costs about $2. A toilet dam goes in the back edges of the toilet tank and reduces the amount of water that is required per flush. It might sound like a foolish thing to be raising in the opening speech on a debate on a green tax system, but simple, available Canadian-made technologies would save Canadian consumers $250 million a year on water bills. The way that you implement those kinds of measures is through a green tax system.
On packaging, many products have three or more forms of packaging. There is plastic covering on whatever you are getting, then there is another kind of styrofoam or fill, then there is a cardboard box and in many cases there are additional forms of packaging.
The green tax system would tax the waste packaging based on real energy costs and real landfill costs and designers will soon help Canadian society in phasing out the waste through the implementation of green taxes on those forms of waste.
[Stage Direction]
Let us take a look at acid rain, an area where green taxes would be far more efficient and far more effective than the kinds of reduction programs that have been implemented here or are proposed to be implemented, for example, in the United States. Parliament and government can design targets in terms of tonnage and timetables in terms of the time frame for the reductions and set caps or limits so that there is not future growth of acid generation of the atmosphere.
You base those on what the environment can safely handle and you tax directly through a green tax system every gram of S02 or N02 or SOX and NOX as they are more commonly known, based on known impacts. We know that a most conservative estimate that we deal with here in Canada is that the negative impact of acid precipitation on our environment is $1 billion per year made up of several hundred million dollars in lost forest growth, the killing off of more than 15,000 lakes, the impact on human health and so on.
If one wanted to look at the calculations that have been recently done in the United States on a per annum cost to the environment, it is $7 billion per year in building and monument destruction, $16 billion per year in lung damage according to the American Lung Association, $40 billion per year in damage resulting in medical costs and lost time to workers due air pollution and $5 billion a year in loss of lakes and forest productivity in the United States.
As we learned on a visit last week to Washington, D.C. to encourage our colleagues south of the border to do something serious about acid precipitation, a 50 per cent reduction of acid precipitation production in the United States will cost only $15 billion, less than one quarter of the cost in one year of airborne pollution and acid precipitation on the U.S. public.
This green tax system will fire up the research and development arms across Canada and bring about the production of energy efficient products, energy conservation and new clean sustainable technologies. We already know that we can save 52 per cent of the energy now consumed in Canada through conservation, releasing this energy for commercial, residential and other purposes.
What about a carbon tax, something that has rarely if ever been seriously debated on the floor of this Chamber. We already know that carbon dioxide, methane, CFCs and other greenhouse gases pose a relentless
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threat to the survival of planet earth. Entire countries will disappear beneath the oceans if we wait.
There are already alternatives. Mercedes Benz, for example, has produced a commercial test vehicle powered by hydrogen. One of my constituents in Prince Rupert makes his own hydrogen in his back yard out of simple wind technology through direct current, simply cracking the hydrogen from the water. He recompresses it with scuba equipment and puts it into retired aircraft oxygen cylinders. He has produced his own carburation system and has simply converted existing available North American and Japanese produced vehicles directly to hydrogen and, in fact, can operate them with the same carburation system on either gasoline or hydrogen should he want to take a long trip.
Present vehicles and future vehicles can be economically converted. A green tax on carbon is the carburetor for conversion costs because, as we know if one looks even at the more recent fossil fuel projects that are being proposed, whether it is Oslo, Lloydminster or Hibernia, those projects, at least according to their proponents, will only proceed if the Canadian taxpayers provide billions of dollars in direct welfare to those projects so that they can proceed.
It makes much more sense in the energy sector to have a green tax system in place providing for conversion to available technologies and alternatives that are more environmentally benign or, in fact, to options such as hydrogen which do not produce greenhouse gases.
The fossil fuel industry has become a leading danger to planetary survival.
Global warming is real and there is no known means to dramatically reduce C02 from fossil fuel use. We must go to alternatives.
This government has promised to reduce carbon dioxide output by 20 per cent by the year 2005 and yet has not taken any steps to substantially reduce it since the announcement was made 18 months ago. The rate is too slow and a carbon tax can make a much larger transition possible by the year 2000.
There are holes in the ozone. According to the most recent reports from Scott Base in Antarctica and from our own measurements, they are growing very fast. CFCs, or fluorocarbons as they are called, is the basic element in the cooling systems of automobiles, air conditioners in homes and businesses, refrigerators and freezers. It is frequently if not always released when the air conditioner, freezer and refrigeration units are taken to dumps. The CFCs are continuing to release unhin-
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dered into the atmosphere. CFCs are still being sold in the Canadian market at basically the same price as they were before the Government of Canada announced the intention to phase out 85 per cent by the year 2000.
This is exactly the kind of area where there should be a green tax levy. A green tax levy would apply not only to new CFCs that are being produced but to those that are already in systems, encouraging municipalities, producers, and facilities that are involved in the re-gasing, whether it is of rail cars or of refrigeration units or whatever, to move much more quickly to new and available compounds, but also to safely remove and destroy those CFCs that pose one of the most severe environmental threats that we face.
A green tax will do all this by making the product as expensive as necessary for its complete and urgent removal and replacement. In all of these cases, part of the green tax can be diverted as direct funding for R and D, replacement products, retooling and refitting, or for a reverse green tax credit for environmentally friendly or benign products.
We are on the brink of disaster or to a new and exciting frontier of ecological sustainability. A GTS, a green tax system, can provide many acceptable economic and environmental impacts. It can encourage transitions from non-renewable to renewable energy. It can discourage waste in terms of packaging, reusable products and resources. It will promote recycling of paper, metals and containers. It will encourage new technologies, conservation, solar and energy efficiency. It will create new jobs. While it would require three, four or five jobs per unit, rather than one or two, in the forest sector, only a green tax can seriously address those kinds of broad resource and economic questions.
Forty thousand children will die today around the world from diseases, starvation and poor quality water. Several species will become extinct while we have this debate today. The tax system as we know it in Canada is inequitable, regressive and designed to keep afloat economic systems that are drifting us toward unparalleled disaster. A green tax system that is designed to halt the flow of persistent, toxic and bioaccumulative wastes
into our environment, that is designed to minimize energy use and resource waste, that is designed for full employment, sustainable development, proactive as well as reactive health care, sustainable agriculture, fisheries and conservation areas, preservation of existing species and recovery of our much harmed environment is the politics of Canada's future and the fate of the earth.
We must have a green tax system, not a GST or any other proposal presently being promoted by the present government and Minister of Finance.
Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the presentation by the hon. member for Skeena. I must say that I was moved by his futuristic concepts and the fact that he has presented before us some very creative, thought-provoking ideas in terms of our tax system.
I suppose we could raise all sorts of points, but I would like to ask my hon. colleague from Skeena a question. He is aware of organizations that have put together ethical mutual funds, funds that are raised by those people who want to invest in economic activities that have ethical implications of a very positive nature.
Does my hon. colleague foresee tax incentives that might be provided for those people who would invest in ecologically positive enterprises? Does he foresee the possibility of a youth ecological corps in which young people could be mobilized to play their role in combating environmental deterioration? Does he foresee something of the nature of an ecological mutual fund where tax incentives could be provided for those investors who would put capital aside to mobilize and fight pollution?


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. First, on the concept of ethical mutual funds, there is no doubt that they are catching the interest of a lot of Canadians who have either a small or a large amount of money that they want to invest. The ethical mutual funds look at not only the impact of a particular industry or a particular proposal on the environment, but at what kinds of plant facilities there are, what kind of collective agreements there are for the workforce and so on. They are gaining wide support from a broadening section of Canadian society.
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In terms of the member's question in relation to tax incentives for those who are participating, that would not be the best approach. The best approach in fact is to apply the green tax system in relation to the resource sectors and in relation to industries themselves because the principle that is involved in ecologically sound taxation policies is to make sure that certain principles are adhered to; minimizing the amount of energy used, minimizing the amount of waste that is produced from any particular product, applying certain sound internationally respected principles such as using closed circuit technologies to make sure that persistent, toxic and bioaccumulative materials do not continue to go on to the land, into the marine environment or into the atmosphere.
The principal intention of a green tax system is and should be implemented by the Government of Canada in order to reduce waste and to move our technologies to the cutting edge. I think many of the stocks, shares and so on that would be found within an ethically sound mutual fund would be of those technologies, industries and social developments that are on the cutting edge and have been encouraged to do so by a green tax system.
The reason we do not have more accessibility and availability of renewable energy sources in this country is that it is not encouraged by the present tax system. The government has not only closed down access to public information in relation to the renewable sector, but in fact funding for R and D and so on has also been cut off. That is direct discouragement. On the other hand there is direct encouragement, through the funding of billions of dollars from Canadian taxpayers, to the nuclear and fossil fuel sectors which are now being demonstrated to be the least beneficial option either in terms of cost or energy efficiency.
The member's point on a green crop, I suppose you might call it, is one that I think Canada must look at with a much greater vigour because there are things in every single province and in both territories that require the serious address of not only young people, but society as a whole. It is often best to involve young people, either at the high school age or in the years immediately following high school, whether in terms of replanting stream banks to improve fisheries habitat or simply planting different species of trees.
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There should be scientific people along who talk not only about the commercial nature of the various species that are being planted, but the benefits to fish, birds and to wildlife and also the growing threat to the planet in terms of global warming and the greenhouse effect. The process of simply replanting trees is helping to get a larger carbon sink growing that takes more of that out of the atmosphere.
In terms of ecological mutual funds, I think there is a direct relation to a green tax system in that a green tax system is ethically appropriate.
I think one of the most repugnant self-admissions by our present Minister of Finance is that he has admitted that the GST, whether it is 5 per cent or 9 per cent, is a regressive form of taxation. Why, at this point, would we be making some of the more ecologically expensive and devastating industries in terms of the long term for future generations more expensive and less likely to be able to redesign, retool and refit to make themselves, at the very least, ecologically and environmentally benign?
I think there is a great parallel between ethical mutual funds and the ethics that one finds in the kind of taxation I am talking about in terms of a green tax system.
Mr. Friesen Mr. Speaker, first of all, I think we should correct the record. I do not think the Minister of Finance has ever said that the GST is regressive.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Yes he has.


James Ross Fulton: He admitted it in here.


Nelson Andrew Riis: He said it in the House.


Mr. Friesen:: I think he has misquoted the Minister of Finance.
I think the member's point is well taken in some areas. I think all of us are dismayed at the amount of styrofoam, for example, that McDonald's uses and the abuse of paper products by that corporation. Dr. David Suzuki has certainly made that point very well. He has also made the point that McDonald's gets much of its beef from Brazil to feed our hunger for red meat. He has labelled McDonald's as one of the great contributors to environmental problems.
In some ways you cannot argue with that. But at the same time McDonald's also is using its forum to have people send in coupons to oppose the GST. Now here you have an organization that is a polluter also opposing

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the GST. Since that is contradictory, would the member suggest that we should ignore all those coupons coming from McDonald's opposing the GST?


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, first on the member's attempt to correct the record, the Minister of Finance has stated, not only here but outside of this Chamber, that the GST is a regressive tax. It is obvious that it is a regressive tax. Any economist anywhere in the country would point out that it is a regressive tax.
On the matter of McDonald's, I do not think there would be any better or more efficient way of getting McDonald's to clean up its act than applying a green tax system to it. You would simply continue to push on the accelerator in terms of a green tax in relation to the amount of packaging they use until they go to recyclable, reusable or at least reduced packaging systems.
As the member quite properly points out, the problems that are being faced globally now as a result of the burning of the rain forests in Brazil to provide very short-term pasturage for beef in Brazil is creating a colossal problem for one of the largest parts of our global lungs.
In terms of McDonald's sending in coupons and opposing the GST, I think they are responding quite properly on behalf of their consumers. It is a bad tax and it should go.


Mr. Speaker:: Questions and comments are now terminated. I would like to listen to the hon. members all afternoon, but there are other members who want to speak.


Hon. Gilles Loiselle (Minister of State (Finance)):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak to the motion before the House today.

This motion relates to a new and insidious reality that has dramatically confronted not only Canadians but all citizens of our planet in recent times, namely that our environment is being threatened by the scourge of pollution and other ecological ills.

The problem is a global problem and requires global solutions. However, I think we can take some comfort
from the fact that more and more countries are realizing they will have to take steps to protect the environment.

Let us be clear; safeguarding the environment is one of this government's highest priorities. We are committed to positive steps that will halt the abuse of the environment and preserve this most precious natural heritage.
I do not take issue with the broad concern for the environment that is implicit in the motion. But the proposal outlined in the motion-specifically that the government implement an ecological sound green tax system-puts the cart before the horse in my view. It fails to recognize that one can only build from a sound base.
A tax system can be used to pursue good, desirable and important objectives, but only if it first meets the fundamental objectives of a tax system, namely, to provide a stable, reliable source of public revenue. This is necessary to provide Canadians with the services they need and to support an efficient and competitive economy. It is to provide Canada with just such a tax system that the government has undertaken its proposal for tax reform.
A sound, basic tax system is a key requirement for Canada's continued economic prosperity. Our objective as a government has been to ensure that Canada has a tax system that is as fair and as efficient as possible.
We have been working to achieve exactly that. In stage one of tax reform we restored fairness and efficiency to the personal and corporate tax systems. We lowered tax rates and broadened the tax base, eliminating many of the special tax breaks that distorted investment and hindered the development of an efficient, competitive economy.
Our tax reform package ensures that investment decisions are based on economic merit rather than tax considerations. It assures that corporations and higher income Canadians pay their fair share of taxes. It ensures more equitable treatment of individuals in similar economic circumstances. It ensures that Canadians in lower income brackets have a smaller tax burden in proportion to their income than higher income Canadians.
October 31, 1989

In stage two of the tax reform we are proposing to replace the existing, outdated federal sales tax with the goods and services tax.

The GST will achieve three major objectives: First, it will help the general effort to reduce the deficit and ensure that we can continue to afford the programs and services valued by Canadians. Second, it will help ensure that Canada is able to compete effectively on world markets. Finally, it will improve the basic fairness of our tax system. In fact, low and middle income Canadians will be protected when the GST is implemented.

Building a sound tax system is part of our overall strategy for ensuring a stronger, more competitive economy. During the last five years we have made considerable progress in implementing that strategy.

One of the main objectives of this plan is to deal with the need to cut back public spending, reduce our annual deficit and control the growth of the public debt. Mr. Speaker, we have made considerable progress towards achieving that objective. We have reduced spending on government operations as well as the rate of growth of program spending. Last year, we spent $1.7 billion less on government operations than in 1984-85, a drop of 10 per cent. As a result of the measures taken by the government, we were able to reduce program spending as a percentage of our gross domestic product from 19.5 per cent in 1984-85 to 16.5 per cent last year.
We have also cut the government's deficit by more than $9.5 billion compared to what it was in 1984, and we have reduced the growth of the public debt. During the past fiscal year, for the first time in 15 years the increase in the debt was below 10 per cent, compared to a peak of 24 per cent in 1984.
In addition to controlling costs, major steps have been taken to ensure that Canadians are competitive. These measures include deregulation of the energy and transportation sectors, improved training programs, a new competition policy and, of course, the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.
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These changes have helped to provide for a healthy and confident public sector. About 209,000 jobs have been created in Canada since January 1 this year, when the Free Trade Agreement came into force. These jobs are part of the 1.5 million new jobs created in Canada during the past five years.

In working to build a healthy economy this government recognizes that it is increasingly important to ensure that economic growth is compatible with the protection of our environment. The government is firmly committed to the principle that a healthy environment and a healthy economy go hand in hand. It is impossible to have one without the other.
We are giving concrete expression to this commitment by our support for the concept of sustainable development, in the policies we are pursuing here at home, as well as in initiatives we are undertaking internationally.

The public demands that we strike a new balance between the way we do business and the way we manage our environment. For governments, this means making environmental concerns a priority in economic policy development. Industry must make better use of natural resources. Our natural resources are a basic raw material for the production process and are vital to our growth and economic well-being. Our natural resources are also directly affected by production processes and the resulting waste. Finally, the general public must change its demand for consumer goods, its methods of waste disposal and indeed its way of life.
We have already seen the beginnings of a commitment to this: industries are developing codes of good environmental practice, consumers are taking part in waste recycling programs and choosing environmentally friendly products, governments are setting stricter standards to protect the environment and international agencies are developing protocols to protect the planet.
To protect our natural resources from environmental deterioration and misuse, we must ensure that consumers and producers bear the real costs of their decisions- not only the direct costs, but also all the social costs. Market forces can be channeled by creating economic incentives and deterrents that will encourage consumers, businesses and also governments to make decisions every

October 31, 1989
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day for more a cost-effective resource allocation and better environmental protection.
Incentives based on market forces provide real benefits for the environment and the economy, they promote more enlightened use of natural resources, they encourage businesses to be creative in finding economic solutions and they complement the policy framework already in place.

Like most countries, historically Canada has relied mainly on regulatory approaches to protecting the environment. We continue to believe that strong regulations are necessary to deal with the variety of threats to the environment such as dangerous chemicals. Nevertheless, in other areas there is significant potential to mobilize market forces to preserve the environment and to ensure that consumers and producers of polluting products bear the environmental costs of their actions.

Many activities that are a threat to the environment are not the result of efficient markets but rather of market failures. These activities often lead to what economists call externalities, where the environmental costs of manufacturing certain products are not borne by the producer or the consumer but by society as a whole.
In fact, in the case of transboundary pollution like acid rain, the costs are borne by the citizens of other countries. Using our resources effectively, which is, after all, the key to sustainable growth, requires an accurate assessment of the real costs and benefits of production and consumption.

This is the philosophy that underlies the initiatives we have taken and that we will continue to take in the international arena to ensure that environmental protection and economic development are mutually reinforcing and not mutually exclusive. This is the approach the Prime Minister pursued with his colleagues at the Paris economic summit. It is the approach we are pursuing at the OECD, in the Commonwealth and in our proposal to
ensure that the World Bank integrates environmental concerns more effectively into its operations.
We are committed to the same principles domestically as we are internationally. We do not believe that we can rely entirely on regulatory and legal approaches. Important as they are, they essentially stop things that should not be done.

It is also important, Mr. Speaker, to encourage appropriate action, and this is where market-oriented solutions could be used, for instance by encouraging a switch to new technologies that are able to bring pollution down to levels that can be absorbed without unacceptable consequences for the environment.

The importance that this government places on the environment was made evident in the Speech from the Throne. The government identified preservation of Canada's environment as one of four fundamental objectives for this mandate.
Recent changes to the cabinet decision-making system-the creation of the cabinet committee on the environment-will ensure that all government policies and initiatives are compatible with environmental objectives.
The forming of this committee represents a major change in the governmental decision-making process. As a catalyst for this change the government has created a new institution, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. The round table brings together representatives from government, business, environmental groups and the academic world to seek acceptable means of reconciling environmental concerns and economic challenges.
While round table members may have diverse views and priorities, they share a common goal: to harmonize economic and other types of development with the need to conserve the environment.

Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the Minister of the Environment, has announced that this government is preparing an exhaustive action plan that will translate the concept of sustainable development into real terms in Canada.

Although it will take many years to implement, this plan will provide a framework for initiatives that will help us change our decision-making.
Our environmental action plan will improve our decisions by providing for better scientific knowledge, and training, more reliable data, better communications and more widespread use of advanced technology to monitor and report on the state of the environment.

Our plan will emphasize the importance of maintaining partnerships and establishing new ones among all elements of society-governments, industry, labour, non-governmental agencies, citizen groups and individual Canadians.
The federal government is taking responsibility for implementing the environmental action plan. Because the market-place cannot by itself establish the proper framework for responsible decisions on environment issues, governments at all levels must establish roles governing activities that affect the environment. We must establish the value of the environment through regulations, laws, and through economic and financial penalties and rewards.
As I have suggested, selective environmentally-oriented tax measures can have a place in our tax system in cases where this is the most effective means of achieving specific goals. However, as I said at the start, a modem, efficient tax system cannot be designed to achieve one single desirable goal, no matter how desirable. We must have a fundamentally sound, fair and efficient tax system before considering the use of the tax system to pursue so profound and wide-reaching objective.

Mr. Speaker, I may recall and repeat that this government has made a commitment to take all necessary steps to protect and preserve our environment.
We encourage policies that are ecologically sound. We do not oppose them. In fact, considering the complexity and extent of the pollution problem in Canada, we must seek new and imaginative solutions.
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However, the opposition motion ignores the wider range of considerations that a responsible government must take into account. Canada must first have in place a stable, reliable tax system that will ensure our economy and fiscal health. Only when such a tax system is fully in place can we be sure we will have both the means and the ability to achieve the goal this motion seeks.

That, in a few words, is what this government is doing, Mr. Speaker, and for the reasons just mentioned, I believe the House should reject this motion.


Mr. Karygiannis:: Mr. Speaker, the environment is something that concerns not only the members in this House, not only the average Canadian, but every person around the globe. We must stop borrowing the land from our children. We must work very hard to protect the environment in the future.
In the Scarborough area very close to my riding there is a committee called Save the Rouge Committee, that is working very hard. It is an area where there is talk that an expressway will go through, where houses will be built. It is an area where children at the present time go for school trips to clean up the environment, and they feel happy about it. It is an area for wildlife and where metro residents can go to enjoy themselves.
However, I heard the hon. member across the way talk about tax reform, and about the GST being 9 per cent. Clearly I was just baffled. Has the member not listened to the people of Canada, 80 per cent of whom are saying that they are opposed to the 9 per cent GST? Yesterday, outside, we had thousands of people voicing their concern against the GST.
The member rambled on about how fair the taxation is that the government is implementing and how it is working to reduce the deficit. I am just wondering if the member is in a nightmarish state and he has to open his eyes and see exactly what the people of Canada want.
Yes, the people of Canada want a better environment. However, the people of Canada have repeatedly said, "No, no, no" to the 9 per cent GST.

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Just the other day my children brought home a form that I had to fill out and send to the government stating that we are against the GST because they will be taxed on their skating lessons. My little daughter asked me, "Dad, does that mean that I will have to pay more?". I am just wondering how the hon. member would answer this question to future generations of Canadians, how he will tell them that they have to pay more for their music lessons, more for their skating lessons and more for everything else. We are again turning around and taxing our education.
The Prime Minister stands up there and says, "We created 1.4 million jobs after the free trade legislation came in". These jobs are hamburger helpers at McDonald's.
My question for the minister is this. When will this government actually open its eyes and ears and see what the Canadian people want and listen to the Canadian people and stop rambling on about reducing the deficit? Since this government came into power the debt has doubled. Probably by the time the people of Canada kick you out, you will have taken it up by four times. The government should actually see what it has done to this country. It has taken it down the tubes.


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I would like to tell the hon. member that since we have come to government the deficit has not doubled. It has been lowered by approximately $10 billion, which is something important that he needs to know.
Second, when I listen to the description the hon. member from across this hall gives of our tax reform, I am not surprised that Canadians have some hesitation. But we will proceed to explain to them that this change is needed, that this change is a modem change, that it is a fair change.
I heard a little while back another hon. member say that the Minister of Finance had admitted that the GST was regressive-not at all. What the Minister of Finance has said is that sales tax can be regressive, and we have taken every measure to make sure that it is not so.
So we are talking about the deficit. We are taking the necessary measures to guarantee the income this government needs in order to provide Canadians with their programs. I can assure the hon. member that we will continue to do so.
He must agree that the decision we have taken to proceed with tax reform has not been done because we want to be popular. It has been taken because it is needed for this country. We are putting aside a tax which is devastating to our economy. We are doing it, following a model that is used in a large number of modem countries. Therefore, I do not agree with him on his conclusion.
I think that the environment, like all social programs, is threatened, not by decisions of any one government, but by the state of the finances of this country, which have to be put in order.
We inherited a very high deficit. We have worked to bring it down. It has been difficult, but we will continue to do so because we consider this to be the best way to guarantee this program, and to tackle environmental problems which are with us.


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, my question for the Minister of State for Finance is in relation to the concluding remarks he made, that there needs to be some further changes to our tax system before any serious consideration can be given to bringing in environmentally appropriate taxation or a green tax system.
I would like the minister to address some of the simple points that I made when I was speaking. How does he explain that it is appropriate to tax bicycles under the GST at the same rate as motor vehicles, virgin paper at the same rate as recycled paper, and to tax a non-polluting industry producing any given product at the same rate as a similar industry that in fact is a polluting one?
If one looks at the nature of the environmental problems facing Canada, one sees that they are broad, they are severe, and they are increasing in their severity right across the country, whether it is with respect to toxic and hazardous waste or the movement of persistent and bio-accumulative materials into the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence system. What is happening is that every major run of fish in the world is on the decline, which is true of the Canadian fisheries as well. There is the rate of soil erosion to be looked at, and so on. If you talk to any economist you can find a direct link between the form of taxation that is taking place, the rate of environmental decline, and the amount of waste that is going on in our society.
October 31, 1989

The minister says that we have to wait until some future, more regressive tax measures are put in place before doing anything serious about the environment. Does the minister support the concept of a green tax system, or does he only support the kind of tax measures that are in place or being proposed by the present Minister of Finance?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, what we support are all the measures that will enable this government to assume its full responsibility in all sectors. As I have indicated, we are changing a tax system which is very porous, which threatens the resources of the government, resources which are needed.
The member talks about bicycles. It is very easy to be very emotional about any particular item which is taxed, but bicycles are already taxed. He may not know that. A lot of other things are taxed directly or indirectly.
What we have been very careful about doing is providing a very generous credit system by exempting a certain number of basic essential products so that the system is fair. Once people are given the capacity to make their own choice they are not hampered by our reform.
This tax is far from being regressive. If we start removing this or that article, you will have to increase the rate, as the hon. member obviously knows. We are getting away from a tax system in which there are 75,000 tax collectors and 22,000 different particular arrangements, which are throwing our economy into a state of disorder.
These are central issues that we have to tackle in order to face the problems, which I agree are serious. The greatest reward or the greatest hope we can have is that we, at long last, are tackling these problems of the environment which have been with us a very long time.
I am very hopeful that all together we can pull out of this very damaging situation and make sure that we pass on a better world to our children.


John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, to keep it short, the minister speaks about how devastating the federal sales tax has been on the economy, and his word was "devastating". I think Canadians will note that his government has increased the tax from 9 per cent to 13.5 per cent, thereby increasing the devastation by 50 per cent.
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I would like to ask the minister this. Since he does not feel this tax is regressive, and since he thinks that the government has taken measures to ensure that it will not be regressive, why on earth does this government refuse to index the sales tax credit so that the poorest in our society can be assured that they are not going to be punished any more by this tax?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, we are very glad to stand by our record. We are the government that has put in place a tax credit for the sales tax. We have always been very careful to adapt it and raise it as needed in order to meet the same objective we have given, which is to have the fairest possible tax system. We will continue to do that.


Hon. Roy MacLaren (Etobicoke North):: Mr. Speaker, I have listened with interest to the motion introduced today by the hon. member for Skeena. I salute him and congratulate him for his initiative. It is a timely initiative, drawing our attention, in the broader context of tax reform and fiscal policy, to the possibilities that the tax system can provide for better environmental control and for improved services, both municipal and federal, to the people of Canada.
Most people in Canada, of course, as in many countries, see pollution as something that directly touches their lives, a matter often closely linked with public health. The challenge facing governments is to persuade people that curbing pollution is always in their interest, and that, invariably, it costs money.
In the past, Canadian governments and, indeed, governments in many western countries, have chosen to pursue the "command" route: thou shall not pollute. More recently, a number of European countries in particular have explored the possibilities of using the tax system as a method of encouraging environmental policies.
I have in mind the fact that Sweden taxes the active ingredients in pesticides and fertilizers. Finland and Norway impose charges on non-returnable containers, Italy on plastic bags, and Sweden on batteries containing mercury or cadmium. One could continue, for the examples are many. The initiatives in Europe are certainly something that Canada could look at with benefit. I suspect that my colleague for Skeena may have had such initiatives in mind when he introduced his motion today.

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Traditionally, governments have used the tax system for purposes other than merely to raise revenues. In a variety of ways and over the past century there have developed in Canada methods within the tax system either to encourage certain economic policies or to discourage certain practices considered to be contrary to the public interest.
The government-and I do not speak merely of this government but of previous governments as well-has sought in the Income Tax Act, the Excise Tax Act and the Customs Act various ways in which to encourage environmental policies, particularly in the corporate world.
In all those cases, and I could cite one or two other examples of the tax system being used as a method of encouraging better pollution control, they are only effective if they are coupled with broader governmental policy on the environment. In other words, if we are to make further use of the tax system as a method of encouraging better environmental practices, then it must be linked to the environmental laws and policies that we already have in place.
I mentioned the Income Tax Act. Capital cost allowances under the Income Ihx Act have provided for the depreciation of equipment relating to pollution control. It may be that the government would like to examine further the possibilities of accelerating the write-off of capital costs as an additional incentive to corporations, both with regard to water and air pollution.
The capital cost allowance write-off was three years. I believe that it is now two years. The government may wish to look again at that term to see whether some further incentive might be provided under accelerated capital cost allowances so that equipment would be purchased and put in place now for the future benefit of the environment and, indeed, the benefit of all Canadians.
I would also remind the House that the Income Tax Act has been used as a means of directly influencing environmental behaviour. The Oil Substitution Program were two elements of the National Energy Program that is now largely forgotten, but which did bring real benefit in terms of environmental improvement.
The Excise Ihx Act is a second example of government tax policy which can have an effect on the environment.
It provides for exemptions and reductions for a broad range of policy reasons. The government may want, as it revises and reviews the Excise Tax Act, to look again at its schedules of exempt equipment to see whether they are, indeed, comprehensive enough, whether they offer the municipalities in particular the possibilities of installing and improving the level of the equipment that they have available to them for pollution control.
Finally, of course, customs duties have also been a method whereby the import of pollution control equipment could be facilitated. Under the free trade agreement with the United States those duties will be eliminated. But, of course, the United States is not the only source of good pollution control equipment. Therefore, the government may wish to consider what further measures could be taken under the customs tariff to determine whether equipment from other than the United States might be made more readily available in Canada.
I have said that the tax measures cannot be viewed in isolation. In the case of environmental control incentives, if they are to be efficacious, the tax measures should be directly related to other programs that the government is conducting in the environmental area.
I do, however, want to say more about possibilities for the future. There has been a whole range of suggestions, and I regret to say less from this House than from outside this House, that has come forward about the use of the tax system as one route toward improved environmental control. These have ranged from additional deductions for scientific research to proposals for capital cost allowances for pollution control devices. We have seen more recently even more imaginative proposals that have been brought forward which have a direct effect on our tax system.
I speak, of course, of the idea of environmental bonds which have been advocated, I believe, by some members of this House, and certainly by a number of our fellow Canadians. Taking the United States example, a municipality floats a bond and the interest paid on that bond to the bondholder is exempt from federal taxes. That type of bond related to environmental purposes might be developed in Canada. A municipality, for environmental purposes, could introduce a bond, the interest on which would be deemed tax-free by the federal government. That is one area where some substance might be given to

the proposal of the hon. member for Skeena for a so-called green tax.
Many of us also will be aware of the initiatives taken by some Canadians to put forward the idea of environmental mutual funds. Particularly in Vancouver we have seen the initiative taken to limit the investment of certain mutual funds to those companies whose processes or products are considered environmentally respectable. The incentive for those mutual funds to invest in the companies making such products or conducting certain procedures, is limited of course by the profitability of those companies.
It may be that within the tax system there are ways in which investment in mutual funds directly related to the environment could be encouraged by a tax incentive.
The question of environmental flow-through shares has also been raised on a number of occasions, the comparison being with the flow-through shares in the oil and gas industry where basically the benefits of the profitability of the company flows directly through to the shareholder. The tax benefits normally earned by the corporation can be passed on to investors by the company renouncing its use of those benefits.
It may be that with some imagination and perseverance, it would be possible for us to develop within Canada, again basing ourselves on the precedent of the oil and gas flow-through shares, such a practice within the environmental area as well.
In conclusion, I want to say a word more about sales taxes, which of course are very much on everyone's minds these days. With regard to enviornmental incentives, the precedent in the case of the manufacturers' sales tax is there. The Minister of State for Finance will know that the present manufacturers' sales tax does provide, in a number of instances, for the exemption or reduction of the tax on products that are intended for environmental control.
I know that as soon as one puts forward the proposal for exemptions from a sales tax, one gets into a complicated area of public policy. But it may be that if the government chooses to pursue its present policy of exempting certain products and services from the effect of its proposed goods and services tax, it may want also to look again at its former practice of exempting pollution control equipment from the sales tax and consider
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whether it wishes to extend that practice into the new tax.
There is another possibility, in my view, where we could seek the opportunity to use taxation as a method of encouraging better environmental practices, and that is to try to develop an emissions tax. We have effectively provided for such an emissions tax in the case of automobile gasoline. Indeed, in Europe today there is a number of countries pursuing different taxations for different types of emissions by, for example, taxing unleaded petrol at a lower rate than leaded petrol.
The case that I have in mind is whether we can use an emissions tax as an effective method of encouraging better environmental practices when related to other government initiatives in the environmental field. I believe that we could.
There are methods of establishing environmental norms against which the practices of any corporation could be measured, whether it be in the area of air or water emissions, and a tax levied for those who are not meeting the norm. I want to acknowledge at once that a tax is paid only by a profitable company. In a number of instances the worst polluters are companies of only marginal profitability or indeed those that are not profitable at all. Therefore, broadly speaking, the effectiveness of a so-called green tax or a tax system along the lines that I imagine the hon. member from Skeena has in mind can be limited by the fact that a company must be profitable to respond to tax incentives.
I might conclude what I have offered this morning with the observation that today firms are often financially worse off by being good environmental citizens. There is not, in effect, a broadly based incentive for corporations to seek better environmental practices. I would join with our colleague from Skeena in seeking, through the tax system, any opportunity to make it profitable for companies to benefit from the introduction of better environmental controls and procedures.


James Ross Fulton: In listening to the hon. member's remarks it seems that he is supportive of the idea of a green tax system. As I am sure he is aware, the present process of prosecution under the Fisheries Act for allowing persistent or biocumulative materials to go into the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence, or into the salt water environment, simply is not working. In fact under the Canadian

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Environmental Protection Act there has only been one prosecution since the act was proclaimed.
We know that prosecution is simply not working, even though we have the concept of zero discharge included in our bilateral treaty with the United States on Great Lakes Water Quality. As we learned both from the IJC and the more recent reports from both Canadian and environmental authorities, the quality of the Great Lakes is continuing to go down. We know in terms of the atmosphere that the same is true. The quality of the air in Canada is continuing to decline. Prosecution and fines are not the way to encourage industries to clean up.
I wonder if the member could spend a moment to reflect on whether or not it is appropriate to bring in something like the GST which will tax recycled paper at the same 9 per cent rate as virgin paper. That is certainly not going to encourage the more environmentally appropriate use of recycled paper. In relation to waste reduction whether it is coming from a smokestack into the atmosphere, or from a pipe into a river, lake, or the ocean, or in terms of the more than 50 per cent of hazardous and toxic waste that is being illegally and improperly disposed of across the country, the prosecution route is not working. That stick is not working.
Would the member not agree that the carrot approach of a varying green tax in relation to minimizing energy used, minimizing waste production, and moving toward the cutting edge of technologies and renewable energy, is the route we should be going with our tax policies in Canada? We know that our environment is becoming increasingly degraded. We are facing significant levels of unemployment in areas where we in fact should have full employment in the resource production areas. By adding another layer of regressive tax, it will simply accelerate the rate of environmental destruction rather than reduce it.
It seems the member is supporting the concept of a green tax, but could he clarify exactly where the Liberal party stands in relation to a green tax system and compare it to the GST as proposed by the Minister of Finance.


Roy MacLaren: I certainly agree with the hon. member that the "command and control" approach to environmental matters is not often the most effective. Depending on how that approach is applied, it can penalize new entrants to an industry, since regulations are probably tougher on new entrants than they are on existing producers. Quite often the command and control procedure, for whatever reasons, is much less effective than the incentive system. I have no dispute with the member for Skeena in that regard; obviously it should be the carrot rather than the stick.
However, I want him to recognize that using the incentive system has some real problems. I was not certain this morning whether in his discussion he would become specific about what particular fiscal measures he envisaged to give substance to his green tax idea.
Having said that, let me add that in the case of the Liberal party-and I did not wish to interject any particular partisan note into this question because I think it is one question that concerns us all, I recall that it was a Liberal government of the late 1970s and through the early 1980s which did introduce various fiscal measures intended to provide incentives for corporations to introduce procedures environmentally improved over what they had been before. The record of the Liberal governments, while perhaps not always as aggressive or as imaginative as one might wish, did at least point in the right direction.
In the case of the manufacturers' sales tax, which was then 9 per cent and subsequently 11 per cent, the Liberal government of the day did provide exemptions for improved pollution control equipment.
Now we have the government of the day offering a goods and services tax which to my knowledge, except possibly in the case of municipal taxation, does not offer any comparable incentives for environmental improvement. It is for the government, in deciding whether it will set the rate of tax at 9 per cent or 7 per cent, whether it will also offer rebates for the equipment for improved environmental control. That is an option open to the government. I have not yet heard this government come forward with such exemptions or rebates. It may be that the Minister of State for Finance, if he were with us, would want to respond to the question of how indeed the

federal government intends to tax under the GST the services and the equipment used by municipalities, many of which are directly concerned with environmental control.
I for one share with the member for Skeena some puzzlement by what the government intends to do with regard to the imposition of the goods and services tax on municipalities. If we could at least have such clarification today, that alone would justify the member's motion.


Jim Jordan: Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague from Etobicoke North for what I thought was the very clear and scientific way in which he developed his position.
I just want to go back to the comments of the previous speaker from the other side of the House and try my colleague from Etobicoke North on a concern which I have and which I think all Canadians have. They set out something that was an action plan and it contained four vital elements. One of them in the future would have a great concern for the environment.
In other words, I think what they meant was that things would be put to the test and, if they could not stand the test in relation to what this action would do to the environment, they would not allow it; they would condemn it.
I am really puzzled as to why they would take the action that they have in reference then to VIA. Rail transportation has been proven to be the most compatible with the environment as far as emissions standards and the like. I am not aware of any public input that was allowed or any study that was done and released to the public to show that there was any concern there at all.
In your opinion do you think that they have broken with what they set out as a very noble set of conditions? And I think Canada would applaud those, however at almost the first opportunity that comes along, deliberately or otherwise-presumably an ignorance of their own rules-they put this out to the Canadian people without any discussion or any seeming justification for it. Certainly it has not been proven to be the most accepted way to go as far as environment is concerned in reference to mass transportation.
Would my colleague from Etobicoke North comment?
Supply


Roy MacLaren: The hon. member is of course quite right. In its decisions with respect to VIA the government has not limited itself by environmental considerations. Equally in its policy of airport expansion and, as the hon. member has put it, in mass transport generally we see no real commitment on the part of the government to take into account environmental considerations before making its final decisions with regard to the abolition of rail services or the expansion of airports. Both of those policies have major environmental considerations. It is a deplorable fact that this government has not seen fit to consider the environmental elements before announcing its commitment to the expansion of airports and the reduction of rail services.
With regard to rail services in particular, it seems to me self-evident that with the investment of additional funds in rail services not only would the services be improved for certain communities but, broadly speaking, the environmental impact would be a positive one.
In the name of deficit reduction, which is an understandable policy on the part of the government, it has decided to reduce those services, to reduce those government expenditures. It has not, however, shown any inclination to tackle the real problem which is high interest rates which make the deficit so high and which in turn encourages the government to turn to such alternatives in its view as reducing rail services or other environmentally damaging practices. I agree with the hon. member that the government has acted hastily and acted with only short-term considerations in mind.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I regret that the time for questions and comments has now terminated. The hon. member for Yorkton-Melville.


Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to take part in a debate which is a very important one in terms of a new idea for our tax system that has not been pursued in this country before. It is the fact that we have a tax system that takes into account the ecology. The motion of the hon. member for Skeena reads as follows:
That this House calls upon the government to implement an
ecologically sound "green" tax system.

October 31, 1989
Supply
I believe, as most people around the world believe, that we do not have too much time left in terms of saving the planet from the pollutants that we are constantly spewing out into the water, the atmosphere, our food system, and into the earth. We have to do whatever we can in this country and around the world to tiy to reverse the very dangerous direction that this world is going in.
Our country, despite its small population, despite its relative economic wealth, abundance of resources and progressivity in terms of social and economic programs, is one of the worst pollutants on a per capita basis in the world. I think that is a very sad commentary of where we have been and where we are as a country.
The question we must ask ourselves is: How can we change that? I think the member for Skeena has made a recommendation today that is very important about how we can go a major distance into changing how we look at our environment and what we do to the environment. If you look at the history in our country and other countries around the world, we find that tax policy has a tremendous impact on the social and economic policies and institutions of this country and other countries around the world.
We see around the world example after example of governments reaching out for their objectives through the taxation system and making sure that certain things happen because of a taxation system in this world and in this country in particular.
We see in the provinces as well social economic policy being determined in part by taxation policy. I know that in my own province of Saskatchewan, which is very rural, we often have taxation regimes that help people living in rural communities, small towns, farms, communities that are a long way from the major cities of Regina and Saskatoon. I suggest that we can do the same thing with the taxation system here.
I want to make the assertion-and I hope you agree, Mr. Speaker-that our present taxation system is one that was designed for the horse and buggy in terms of the modern problems of the environment. It is antiquated, out of date, and out of touch in terms of doing something real about the environmental problems that we have.
I will give a few examples of what I mean. The government across the way has introduced a goods and
services tax. It is a 9 per cent tax across the board touching everything from the pizza that you are going to buy, Mr. Speaker, to the haircut you will have every once in a while, to what goes into the inputs of industry, and so on. It is a tax that covers a broad sweep, regardless of whether or not that industry or that activity is polluting the atmosphere. It does not discriminate in favour of companies, activities, or products that help keep this planet green. It does not discriminate against companies, products, or activities that indeed pollute the environment and make this world a much worse place in which to live.
It is an antiquated system. It is a system that has to be changed. For example, the goods and services tax will have the same tax on a bicycle as on a motorcycle. A motorcycle will pollute the atmosphere where a bicycle will not. It will have the same tax on cycled paper as on recycled paper. Recycled paper in the first place costs more than virgin paper, yet the tax is the same. It will have the same kind of tax on alternative forms of energy as on energy that is based on fossil fuel. It will have the same kind of tax on motor boats as canoes. Yet of course a motor boat will pollute the atmosphere and the waterways a lot more obviously than one without a motor.
We will have a tax that will not discriminate at all on the basis of whether or not a contribution is made to keep our planet green, beautiful, and alive for this generation and future generations.
Perhaps what Parliament should do is to take this motion put before the House today by the hon. member for Skeena and in a very non-partisan way refer the idea to a parliamentary committee or to a task force for a thorough study of how we can change the taxation system in this country to make sure that it helps produce at the end of the road a planet that is liveable, safe, decent, and clean for this generation and generations that are to come. That would be a very useful activity of a number of members of Parliament in terms of a contribution to the economy and a contribution to the environment in the years that lie ahead. I think that that is something that could be done.
I believe that taxes in this country should reflect the cost of a product to the environment. The current taxation system does not reflect that at all.
October 31, 1989

I remember back in 1969, Mr. Speaker, about a year after the two of us were elected, when the then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau brought in a novel idea. It was called the Department of Regional Economic Expansion. It was to set aside some moneys for places like the Atlantic provinces, the Gaspe, northern Quebec, northern Ontario, and parts of western Canada to try to stimulate growth in the areas that were slower growing in this country. It was an area to use fiscal policy in order to provide economic development for people in this country who lived in areas where the market forces were not useful in terms of producing jobs.
I think now, some 20 years later, the time has come to change the taxation system in this country where one of the prime motivators is going to be the impact in terms of greening this country and greening the planet, along with other prime principles like progressivity and the ability to pay for ordinary Canadians.
That is perhaps a very radical idea. It is a very radical idea, but I think it is an idea whose time has come. The time has come to make sure we penalize companies that pollute, that we penalize individuals that pollute. A simple way of doing that is through the taxation system. It is a way that is not complicated, and it is not bureaucratic. It is a way that can be done that is in tune with the tradition of our times. It is something that can be done that is very, very useful. I think that that green tax system should reflect the environmental cost of manufacturing products in this country. I think that the money that we receive from that system can be churned over once again into promoting a greener planet and a greener Canada.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member will have 12 minutes left, plus 10 minutes for questions and comments when we return on debate.
It being one o'clock, I do now leave the chair until two o'clock this day.
The House took recess at 1 p.m.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Mr. Eugene Bellemare (Carleton-Gloucester):: Mr. Speaker, for the first time in Canada, 1,100 parole officers of the federal correctional service will go on strike next Monday morning, unless an immediate agreement is reached between the Canadian Union of Public Employees and Treasury Board. These public servants have not had a salary increase since December 1986 and have to work in deteriorating conditions. Mr. Speaker, if Treasury Board does not take these workers' demands more seriously, maybe it will take the security of Canadians more seriously, because if these 1,100 parole officers decide to walk out at the same time, who will supervise and monitor all the paroled prisoners?
It is imperative that the government act this week to keep this situation from worsening and all labour relations in the Public Service from deteriorating as a result.


FISHERIES
Mr. David D. Stupich (Nanaimo-Cowichan):: Mr. Speaker, representatives of the major fisheries unions in Canada are meeting here today in Ottawa to discuss the growing crisis in their industry.
A serious question has arisen. Who in this government is responsible for fisheries policy? Legislation before the U.S. Congress threatens the Canadian lobster industry. It calls for a ban on the import of lobster under a certain size. The Minister for International Trade describes these efforts as trade protectionism at its rankest. The Prime Minister told the House that the full weight and influence of the Canadian government will be brought to bear on behalf of Canadian fishermen.
What of our Minister of Fisheries? His briefing book prepared for the media reassures us that the new regulations are being brought forward for conservation reasons. Why has the minister judged the U.S. claim so favourably, thus prejudicing any case this country may make in terms of protecting our crucial market? Could the Minister of Fisheries explain why U.S. claims of

October 31, 1989
conservation are legitimate when his fellow cabinet minister and the Prime Minister so obviously disagree?


CANADIAN ARTISTS
Mrs. Edna Anderson (Simcoe Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to draw to your attention today the presence in Ottawa of a group of Canada's leading performing artists, some of whom are with us here and who have come to promote the issue of performers rights in the context of the second phase of amendments to the Copyright Act.
For the benefit of those who will be unable to meet with these performers today, members of this Elouse should be aware that these performers are seeking the right to be compensated for the use of their performances.
This government is very sensitive to these concerns, and will be taking them into consideration in planning the final phase of copyright revision. Moreover, the government is committed to broader initiatives that will enhance the socio-economic status of our artists and the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture will begin reviewing this important subject next week.


RIDEAU RIVER
John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, just a few hundred metres from this spot, one of Canada's most beautiful and historically important rivers, the Rideau, enters the Ottawa at the Rideau Falls.
This river makes its way slowly through the national capital and contributes much to the beauty of Ottawa and the pride that most Canadians have in their capital city, surely one of the most beautiful in the world.
But tragically, Mr. Speaker, the Rideau has become a symbol of what has gone wrong in Canada. Its waters are polluted, its beaches are closed, and no one that I know would think of eating a fish drawn from the lower Rideau.
The problems of the Rideau do not exist in isolation. They reflect the strains on water systems throughout Canada. But surely the Rideau should be a symbol of what is right in Canada. This historic waterway, flowing through the heart of our capital, is a challenge to
governments at all levels to prove our commitment to a clean and healthy environment.
That is why over 1,500 residents of Ottawa South in petition have urged the Government of Canada to engage in co-operation with the provincial and local levels of government to demonstrate on the Rideau a model of river clean-up and maintenance. I ask, Mr. Speaker, if the Rideau cannot be made clean, how can there be hope for the major industrial waterways of our country?


NORTHERN TAX BENEFITS
Mr. Guy St-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, health care for residents of northern Quebec is a major problem because hospitals providing a full range of basic services are rare in Matagami, Joutel, Lebel-sur-Quevillon, Desmaraisville, Miquelon and Waswanipi. Furthermore, many communities in northern Canada face a chronic shortage of physicians and hospital staff, which forces residents of these towns and villages to go to urban centres at great expense.
The task force on financial compensation for isolated northern communities wants to abolish travel deductions paid by the employer for medical reasons and also the deductions for two vacation trips a year.
Mr. Speaker, if Canada cannot afford to allow northern Canadians to travel for medical reasons, why does our government not reduce the size of ministerial delegations and abolish publicly funded travel abroad for members of Parliament who are part of a parliamentary association or Commons committee?


CONNORS BROTHERS
Mr. Greg Thompson (Carleton-Charlotte):: Mr. Speaker, I was honoured this past Friday to present on behalf of the Minister for International Trade the Canada Export Award to Connors Brothers. Located in my riding of Carleton-Charlotte Connors Brothers is the largest sardine processing plant in North America employing close to 3,500 people, and exports its canned herring, sardines, and kippers to over 30 countries

around the world. In fact, exports account for 70 per cent of its production.
In addition to maintaining its strong market share of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean, Connors Brothers this past year entered new markets in Israel, Mexico, the Philippines, Bolivia, and Hong Kong.
Since the Canada Exports Program was initiated in 1983 only 95 companies have been recognized for their contributions to the expansion of Canada's export capabilities.
Connors Brothers stands as an example that given the opportunity, Canadian businesses in every region of the country can successfully compete in the increasingly competitive global market-place.


NORTHERN TAX ALLOWANCE
Mr. Robert D. Nault (Kenora-Rainy River):: Mr. Speaker, the task force report on tax benefits for northerners and isolated areas calls for one northern zone, thereby eliminating many hundreds of communities across Canada from the current northern residents deduction.
In Kenora-Rainy River some 35 communities will lose the benefit if the government accepts the recommendation of the task force. If the recommendation of a single northern zone is accepted, employers will be faced with a dwindling workforce as workers leave northern Ontario and head south where the cost of living is cheaper.
The Dona Lake gold mine in Pickle Lake is already suffering from a shortage of workers and without the northern residents deduction it will have a more difficult time of it.

The Government must remember that the main purpose of this program was to encourage workers to go north where there are jobs.

If the government fails to keep this in mind hundreds of jobs will be lost to the south. I urge the government and the Minister of Finance to ignore the one-zone concept included in the report and to come up with
multiple zones and graduated levels of benefits which are equitable and simple.


ARMS CONTROL
Mr. Simon de Jong (Regina-Qu'Appelle):: Mr. Speaker, last week the Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament issued a significant report on Arctic arms control and security co-operation. This report was in response to proposals on Arctic security made by Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev in October, 1987. Unfortunately, the Canadian government's response to the Arctic arms control proposals by Gorbachev has been negative.
Is it not time that this government adopt a new attitude to arms control, particularly with the Arctic? Unless we start playing an active role, Canada runs the risk of allowing arms control to be bypassed in the thawing of east-west relations. The Prime Minister will have a golden opportunity to help make Arctic security co-operation a realizable goal when he visits with Gorbachev next month. While Arctic security is not on the formal agenda, the Prime Minister can further the cause by initiating some informal discussions. At a minimum, the government should accept two of the Arms Control Centre's recommendations. It should create an ambassador for circumpolar affairs, and it should extend the open-sky proposals to include the Arctic Ocean region.
There are historic opportunities to dismantle the military apparatus that has been built up during the cold war. I urge this government to take a leadership role in bringing about a secure and demilitarized north.


FREE TRADE
Mr. Larry Schneider (Regina-Wascana):: Mr. Speaker, as you well know, Canada is a trading nation. Our exports around the globe support three million Canadian jobs. By supporting the free trade agreement Canadians showed they understand the importance of competing internationally and expanding our export sector. That is why I am proud to rise here today to congratulate Westcan Alfalfa Inc. of Regina on winning the 1989 Canada Export Award.
Westcan is an excellent example of the progressive entrepreneurial spirit found in Regina and throughout Saskatchewan. The determination and initiative shown by Westcan Alfalfa is what will be needed to drive the Canadian economy forward in the face of tough interna-

October 31, 1989
tional competition. It is a good example to those who would have Canadians believe that we cannot compete with the rest of the world.
I know that the leadership shown Westcan Alfalfa will encourage other Regina companies to enter the international marketplace and bring increased prosperity to Saskatchewan and Canada.


FISHERIES
Mrs. Coline Campbell (South West Nova):: The Minister of Fisheries has been hiding behind a report of the Scotia-Fundy Industry Capacity Advisory Committee. He has used this report as his bible to give direction to a hard-pressed inshore fishery in the Scotia-Fundy region.
The members of that committee acted in good faith, something I am beginning to realize this minister knows nothing about. At no time did the committee feel that this report would be acted upon in isolation. One has only to look at the report to know that it could not be taken in isolation from the problems in the groundfish management plan and the offshore fleet capacity. The first page of the report states: "The committee emphasizes that quantification of over-capacity of any fleet sector is a direct function of the resource allocations available to that sector. Thus, implementation of capacity reduction programs should be preceded by resolution of long-term resource shares. Although the review of this offshore enterprise allocation program was undertaken by DFO while this committee was functioning, the committee could not achieve success of what it viewed as the important results of that review" without review of the offshore program.
As well, the last sentence of this report, and there are only 11 pages, states that: "The committee now seeks a commitment from DFO to complete the task, in continued consultation with industry". I say, Mr. Speaker, that at no time did the members of the committee see this report implemented before a further in-depth study of the critical areas be done. This has not been done, it is not being done.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member's time has expired. The Hon. Member for Sarnia-Lambton.


PARLIAMENT HILL
Mr. Ken James (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday's noon-hour incident was indeed unfortunate even more so unnecessary and uncalled for. Arrangements had been made prior to the demonstration which would have permitted an agreed on number of cabs to drive by the Centre Block in a safe and orderly fashion. However, once it became apparent these conditions were being changed, the RCMP responded in an appropriate and responsible manner. An earlier 12-minute fire alarm only enhanced the fundamental need for access to the Centre Block.
Less appropriate were the actions of some members opposite. Certainly in a democracy the people have an inalienable right to demonstrate and express their opinions. This, however, must be done in a safe and responsible manner. As such, the choice of some colleagues opposite to aid and abet a demonstration which clearly would raise security concerns and deny emergency access to the House of Commons borders on irresponsibility. It is incumbent upon us as Members of Parliament to fully recognize a proper and important role which security and safety assumes in this place for all members, their staff and the staff of House of Commons. In the future, let us all work together to continue to make this place an accessible, secure and safe place for us all, not simply for a select few.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member's time has expired.



Hon. Bob Layton (Lachine-Lac-Saint-Louis):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same subject as my colleague. To demonstrate publicly and legally in support of or against an issue is one of our basic rights as citizens.
Yesterday's efforts by cab drivers and others to focus attention on the goods and services tax was no exception. In the course of those events, officers of the RCMP had difficulty in meeting their obligation to ensure access to Parliament Hill for emergency service and for those people, including MPs and Senators, who work here. I hope that all in this place, government supporters and opposition alike, will act to uphold the RCMP when officers act to protect the persons and property that comprise the Parliament of Canada. It was disheartening to witness on the TV reports of the incident yesterday the intolerance of some of the demonstrators in their
October 31, 1989

attack on the young man who publicly supports the GST as the best alternative to the unfair and long out of date sales tax on Canadian manufacturers.


ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES
Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-St. Clair):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Secretary of State for External Affairs said in response to my leader's question about Canada's ability to act independently within the OAS: "We set Canadian policy here in Canada for Canadian reasons. That is our practice, that will continue to be our practice".
Will the Secretary of State practice what he preached? Will Canada denounce continued covert aid to the Contras whose present activities have resulted in the death of hundreds and which threaten to destabilize Nicaraguan peace process? Will Canada denounce the $9 million spent by the United States government in support of opposition parties in the Nicaraguan election as an unacceptable intrusion in the internal affairs of another state?
In short, will Canada resist the OAS' historic compliance with U.S. military and political intervention in the affairs of member states, or will the Secretary of State be fearful that in reflecting Canadian opinion the Americans will perceive him, as they did Douglas Roche, as too vigorous?



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, Canadian performers are in Ottawa today with flowers and with the message that bouquets are not enough. Performers are playing a primary role in the shaping and strengthening of our Canadian cultural identity, our national consciousness. Accolades are fine, but it will not put food on creators tables, it will not look after their social benefits or their tax concerns. That is not going to happen until the status of these artists is given full professional standing.
Oral Questions
My question, in the absence of the Minister of Communications, is for the Prime Minister. I want to know, artists want to know and Canadians want to know when will he introduce status of the artists legislation that will provide for the social and economic benefits to which these artists are entitled?


James (Jim) Stewart Edwards: Mr. Speaker, this question was raised earlier today on a point of order having to do with questions about phase two of the copyright legislation. I can tell the hon. member that the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture of which she is a member will shortly be seized with the issue if it is not already. It has the authority under the House rules to identify its own areas of study and the minister is anxiously awaiting the labors of that committee.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, it is ironic that the Parliamentary Secretary would answer in that way. He knows that we did not one, but two studies on the status of the artist, the taxation of the artist, and he was chairman of the committee at that time.

Mr. Speaker, my second question is as follows: It has always been recognized that one has the right to be paid once a job is finished. This is a fundamental human right. Nowadays, in the 20th century, in a so-called civilized country like Canada, hundreds of performers do not receive money that is rightfully theirs, in return for the reproduction and sale of their work, and the government is not doing anything about it.
Mr. Speaker, I want the Minister to tell us here and now, in the presence of all the great artists with us here today, exactly when he intends to table phase two of the copyright bill that would give them the legal means to collect the fruits of their work.


Hon. Marcel Masse (Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, first I would like to thank the hon. member for her question. Today is of course a very important day for members of the Canadian arts community who have come to meet Members of Parliament and the ministers. I met them this morning, and we discussed these issues, with particular emphasis on two aspects: the status of artists and copyright phase two. The hon. member knows perfectly well that the government is defining its approach, objectives and goals in close co-operation with

Oral Questions
the Canadian arts community. We have advisory committees that are travelling across Canada to identify the areas the government will deal with. I can give the House the assurance that the government's commitment as expressed and approved by the Prime Minister, is well-known to the arts community.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, bouquets and flowery words since 1984 have not changed one bit the status of the artist nor the legislation that we wanted in phase one of copyright.
It is now clear that artists, orchestras, dance troupes, opera companies, playwrights and regional theatres will face severe financial hardship because of the government's proposed goods and services tax.
That 9 per cent will strain to a breaking point the cultural activities which employ thousands of people in Canada. Does the minister not realize that the GST could be the straw that breaks the artists backs? Why is the minister sitting on the sidelines while his colleague, the Minister of Finance, is busy sinking the cultural ships of this country?


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member wants to show her teeth, I will have to answer that since 1984, there has never been a government in this country that did so much for structural reform in the cultural domain.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Marcel Masse: Since 1984, we have created task forces on the arts and on copyright. We identified policy, and as far as legislation is concerned, we started to do what not a single government had done previously, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg-St. James):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister of Communications. Over 70 per cent of English language television programming in Canada originates in the United States. This country allows Americans to sell their product to Canadian networks at a fraction of production costs. That is dumping and that is unfair to Canadian artists.
Foreigners are not allowed to do that, say, with their wheat. They are not allowed to do it with clothing. They are not allowed to do it with boots. Why is television programming treated any differently from other products that enter the Canadian market-place from abroad? My question for the minister is this: why are Americans allowed to dump their television programming on the Canadian market-place thereby undermining Canadian cultural sovereignty and taking much needed jobs away from Canadian artists?


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, the answer is very simple. It is because what we have now is the law that you passed in 1968. That is the one we want to change.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview-Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister responsible for culture and communications. Many Canadians do not realize that most artists in this country do not get their full pay cheque after the first production of their work. Many Canadians do not realize this, Minister. And the question that I have to ask you is: do you realize how insulting it is for people to watch their work on television when they are not being paid? How would you like it not to get your full pay cheque?


Some Hon. Members:: Order!


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, we are now making structural changes to correct a vast number of problems we have identified in the cultural sector. When Lemeac, a publishing company, went bankrupt, which government helped the creative arts? The Government of Canada, Mr. Speaker.
Tomorrow in Toronto, I will have the pleasure to announce increased revenues for Canadian writers under the public library utilization program, and that was arranged by this government, with the agreement of my colleagues and especially of the Prime Minister. And we intend to continue in that vein, Mr. Speaker.


MEMBER OF THE SENATE
Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Right Hon. Prime Minister, and I must say that I am sad to have to ask the Prime Minister this question. He will be aware from the press

reports this morning that Senator Cogger was found to be in breach of the Parliament of Canada Act. As a result of access to information, it was found that Senator Cogger was in clear contravention of the laws of Parliament by sending a bill to the Federal Business Development Bank for legal services.
The Prime Minister will be aware, very aware, that under section 14 of the Parliament of Canada Act, it is illegal for a senator to do business with a Crown corporation. Now that he has been informed of this act by Senator Cogger, has he done the right thing, the decent thing, and approached his friend and asked for his resignation?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion and Minister of State for Science and Technology):: Mr. Speaker, the member is referring to reports alleging impropriety on the part of an hon. senator. That should be dealt with in the other place.
I understand that the hon. senator is making a statement, at this very moment, in the other place. I think that is the appropriate forum for that issue to be dealt with.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, since the Prime Minister essentially appoints the senators, I think it is only appropriate that he respond.
It was only after access to information that we were able to determine that Senator Cogger, in fact, had collected money from this Crown corporation. I hope we do not have to go and do an examination of every single Crown corporation to determine where else Senator Cogger was collecting funds.


Mr. Speaker:: I want to proceed with very great care. What we have in front of us-and I ask hon. members to pay attention-is apparently something which has appeared in the newspaper. The hon. minister has said that the gentleman involved, who is a member of the other place, is making a statement this afternoon.
I am very reluctant to let questions go too far for fear they become, by way of their preamble, accusations to which there may or may not be any evidence whatever, and certainly, under the principles of fair play, if the hon. member of the Senate is going to make a statement this afternoon, that statement ought to be heard.
Oral Questions
I would ask the hon. House Leader for the New Democratic Party, who is very experienced in this place, to proceed with very great care.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I will proceed with very great care. I appreciate the comments that you have made.
The question is that this issue only arose after this information was provided through using access to information on this one Crown corporation. We do not want to go through every Crown corporation using the same process to find to what extent the senator has been involved.
I am asking the Prime Minister-


Mr. Speaker:: I very much regret feeling that I am going to have to go on to the next questioner, because the preamble is becoming an allegation, at least it is an implied allegation and I think that the obligation of the Speaker in this place is to be extraordinarily careful.
I have said in the past that there has to be, and there is, a duty upon members to ask questions. But especially in this day of television a preamble can be very close to a charge, and there is another place to make a charge. There is, of course, instant publication of this. I think that somehow the Speaker has to find a way that respects fair play and, at the same time, allows questions to be asked.
There is another hon. minister here who is ultimately responsible for that particular Crown corporation. If the member wants to put a question to the minister with respect to the Crown corporation then I invite him to do so.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the sensitivity of this issue and I want to be very careful. I simply want to say that we will await the senator's comments in the other place and would expect, of course, that if the accusations are correct, that not only does he have a $200 fine per day to pay, which would be about $140,000 now, but we would expect the full amount to be paid back.


Mr. Speaker:: What I am asking hon. members to respect is that if hon. members have charges to make there is an appropriate place to make them in this House. There are consequences that go with it. There may be more questions on this and I would ask hon. members to proceed with fairness and care.
The hon. member for York Centre.

Oral Questions


Hon. Bob Kaplan (York Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the minister who you identified as being responsible, indeed, for the Federal Business Development Bank. I want, before asking, to underline that whatever happens in the other place, there is no doubt that ministers here have responsibility for the operations of the corporations under their jurisdiction.

My question for the Minister is as follows: Did he get in touch today with officials at the Federal Business Development Bank to find out whether this payment had been made, as indicated in information released by the government, which shows for instance that $72,000 was sent to this law office, attention of the senator? I would like to know whether the minister is prepared to ask the bank to recover these funds.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, yes, I have been in contact with the Federal Business Development Bank and was informed that the Federal Business Development Bank has hired the law firm of Lapointe Rosenstein on many occasions going back over a couple of decades.


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, the documents which that department released show that payments made to that firm of lawyers were made to the attention of Senator Cogger and there is no doubt about that, it is in the minister's own documents. Therefore, I am not satisfied that the answer the minister has given about what years and years of work may have been done by a firm. Is the minister looking this into and does he agree that these payments should be reclaimed by the Federal Business Development Bank?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, the Federal Business Development Bank representatives informed me that they made the decision to hire Lapointe Rosenstein on this occasion as they have on other occasions. They hire companies across the country. They received the work for which they contracted and they satisfied the invoices. I am not aware of any obligation on the Federal Business Development Bank to ascertain whether the invoice is properly filled out and so on. Those are the kinds of things that the member in the other place will perhaps be dealing with.
The responsibility that I have, that this government has, is did the Federal Business Development Bank conduct itself properly, did it hire a law firm to do legal business. Yes, it is a firm that it contacted with many times in the past. It received the services it contracted for.


PROPOSED GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Revenue. In August, the President of the Treasury Board said that the personnel necessary to administer the goods and services tax would be provided as they became necessary but this will not result in further job reductions elsewhere in the public service.
Why then has the minister gone ahead and pulled 200 people so far out of other federal departments? How many more people does he intend to bleed off from other departments to implement the goods and services tax?


Hon. Otto Jelinek (Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, the letter the hon. member refers to written by the President of the Treasury Board stands. We are following the advice as outlined by the President of the Treasury Board.
I can say to the hon. member that within my own department obviously we are looking for existing resources to prepare for the administration of the GST. We are utilizing the people who are administering the very flawed existing federal sales tax. I think the hon. member opposite and all Canadians across the country would have to agree that it is very important for us to be able to utilize existing resources from a flawed sales tax in order to administer a far better sales tax.


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister. People are being drawn from other departments, not only from his own department. Perhaps he might wish to clarify his answer. In fact, they are being offered positions. The President of the Treasury Board also said that he could not comment on either the costs or the staff needed to implement the GST. What he did say was that through supplementary estimates we will be seeking parliamentary approval for resources to develop detailed plans to implement the new tax.
October 31, 1989

Will the Minister of National Revenue then tell the House why he is going ahead and staffing a whole section from other departments to develop these detailed plans when he has no authority from Parliament to spend one cent, when the government has not even formally presented a bill to this House and when Parliament certainly has not approved the goods and services tax?


Otto John Jelinek: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member knows very well that my department and the government as a whole has been working toward a more efficient public service. We are very proud and Canadians have applauded us for being able to reduce the size of the civil service by 12,000 people over the last five years for the benefit of all Canadians. That is a mandate that we ran on five years ago. That is a mandate that we ran on one year ago. So far as the specific question is concerned I can assure the hon. member that we are applying our efforts in accordance with the letter written by the President of the Treasury Board to the letter and that we are utilizing, wherever possible, resources that exist within our department that are now administering the flawed federal sales tax in order to prepare for a smooth launch as we move toward the GST.


CANADIAN ARTISTS
Mr. Ian Waddell (Port Moody-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker-


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Ian Gardiner Waddell: I thank my colleagues over there for the applause, but if they could just send donations that would be-
My question is directed to the Prime Minister and is a follow-up on previous questions and the fact that the Minister of Communications has said that the performing artists who are here today have the support of the Prime Minister. I asked one of the artists, a well-known woman performer, if she were in my place and if she had to put a question, what question would she put. I put that question to the Prime Minister.
We know that the Prime Minister can sing, we know that the Prime Minister can act in a manner of speaking and we know that the Prime Minister thinks, at least,
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that he can direct. The artists want to know whether he can produce.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Ian Gardiner Waddell: They want to know whether he can produce a timetable for phase two of the copyright legislation that these artists want and-I would ask him to answer this personally-whether he would give that his own personal support.


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I am surprised at the nasty question from my hon. friend. I have already sent my cheque in.
The question is, can I produce. That is a sexist question but I will answer it anyway.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Four kids and two majorities.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: With regard to the serious part of the question, and I take my hon. friend's question very seriously, I have had the occasion to meet personally on a number of occasions with many members of the artistic community who are promoting and have promoted the needs that my hon. friend has just described. I would not be violating any great secrecy if I conveyed to my hon. friend the fact that I have instructed the minister and his colleagues to make certain that this government proceeds as quickly as we can to ensure that those legitimate needs of the artistic community are met for the first time in Canada.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Right Hon. Prime Minister for his serious answer and for the cheque. I have not received it yet. Perhaps it has been detoured by way of the Senate or something like that. Perhaps it is in the mail.
I want to ask the Prime Minister whether he is aware, to follow that up, that the average income for a Canadian artist in Canada is about $8,000 a year and in Quebec, Le groupement des professionnels de la danse says that the average income for a dancer is $3,500 a year. For a choreographer, it is $1,500 a year. These Canadian artists are the lowest paid people now in Canada.
I ask the Minister of Communications or the Prime Minister, would the government go further and give us a timetable for phase two of the copyright law, and when?

October 31, 1989
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Would it go even further and agree on principle to bring in status-of-the-artist legislation whereby artists could get properly treated in taxation and could get access to social services in Canada?


Martin Brian Mulroney: I was
able to meet Serge Turgeon, Diane Juster, Gilles Vig-neault and other artists who worked on this initiative, which reflects the entirely legitimate desires of artists in Quebec and across Canada. In fact, there are even more on the anglophone side whom I met and who also met the Minister. The hon. member identified the purpose of these efforts. With the support of all members of this House, I am sure that in the near future, the Canadian government will be able to draft a bill and take steps that reflect these wishes, for the greater benefit of the Canadian arts community.


NORTHERN TAX BENEFITS
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance. The task force on northern allowances has recommended that deductions for northern workers who must travel for medical reasons be abolished. My question is as follows: Is the tax situation in Canada so bad that we have to skimp on travel for medical reasons for designated workers in the North, as opposed to trips made by Members of Parliament abroad for a parliamentary association or a Commons committee? Do you intend to approve this recommendation?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows, the government has established a task force to look at the question of northern allowances. That task force was manned by three individuals who live in northern communities and have some good understanding of the problems of living in northern communities. They worked for well over a year in preparing the task force report which was given to me last Friday.
Our position is that we want to review this report before making any decisions to try to understand better the reasons for the recommendations that the task force committee put forth in its report.


AIR TRANSPORT
Hon. Andre Ouellet (Papineau-Saint-Michel):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Transport. Yesterday, the minister stated, and I quote:
Intair couldn't get the slots it wanted at Pearson International
Airport because it was too late with its application.
Does the minister now realize he was misinformed and that Intair was in fact one of the first companies to apply for slots under the winter schedule, and that Canadian Airlines and Air Canada, who co-ordinate the terminals at Pearson, blocked these applications? Consequently, is the minister prepared to intervene and give this small regional carrier fair treatment?


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of Transport):: First of all, Mr. Speaker, I would like to correct the Hon. Member. Intair could not have applied for slots in Toronto in June, since the company did not exist at the time, and in fact was only established this month. The application was made by Inter-Canadian. The flights were operated by the company today known as Intair. Twenty-nine of the thirty-eight applications were approved. Four were eliminated because there were no slots, and the other five are now being negotiated.
So what I said yesterday, and I say it again today, is that as everybody knows, the airport in Toronto is extremely congested, and the number of landing opportunities is limited. We have tried to accommodate all the companies at Toronto, but it is clear, Mr. Speaker, that generally speaking the minister does not and will not intervene in a process that is meant to achieve a balance between the various airlines. Again, a final answer regarding the five slots that are still being negotiated will be given by a committee a week from now, while both companies have been asked to reach some kind of agreement. The minister did not intervene in Saint-Hubert to avoid interfering with the process, and he will not intervene in Toronto for the same reason, Mr. Speaker.


André Ouellet: The minister's answer is very disturbing because in fact, when the Conservative government passed the bill deregulating air transport, we were told that it would increase competition and enable new small airlines to have access to airports. Now the exact opposite is happening. Air Canada and Canadian Airlines are dividing the market between them and elimi-nating all
October 31, 1989

competition. Is the minister aware that it now costs $371.40 to fly from Montreal to Toronto and back in economy class, which is twice as much as a trip to Boston and about the same as a trip to Europe? Will the minister act to put a stop to this abuse by the two giants of Canada's aviation industry?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, first of all, my colleague knows very well that throughout the country, from Vancouver to St. John's, Newfoundland, accessibility is three or four times greater, in terms of number of airlines and flights offered to Canadians.
As for cost, Mr. Speaker, all these airlines offer competitive prices compared to other modes of transport, so that in the past three years and since deregulation, Canadians do 30, 40, even 50 per cent of their traveling by air. My colleague himself told me that the Toronto airport is overcrowded. Surely that is because Canadians like to go by plane, Mr. Speaker.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Bob Speller (Haldimand-Norfolk):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the part-time Minister of Agriculture. I note the minister has recently confessed about the effects the free trade agreement will have on Canadian farmers and Canadian-American trade relations. He said in a recent speech in Alberta that Canadians were being subjected to American trade policies which were "wrong, unfair and hypocritical".
Given this new-found friendship with the truth, will the minister now admit to Canadians that we do not have the access to the American market that he claimed we had during the past election?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Privy Council and Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, I find it strange that the hon. member would take issue with the Minister of Agriculture of Canada standing up for Canadian farmers, and that is exactly what I have been doing.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
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Donald Frank Mazankowski: Notwithstanding the fact that there are some irritations from time to time which we have to defend, and will defend, I would draw his attention to the Financial Post of October 18 which states in the headline "Canada is reaping benefits from the trade deal, U.S. figures show". That should be proof positive that the trade deal is working for Canada.


Robert (Bob) Speller: Mr. Speaker, I do not know if his buddies at the Financial Post know anything about Canadian agriculture.
My supplementary question is also for the Deputy Prime Minister. The minister stated in the same speech that the Americans want to play rough, and that if Americans want to play rough, then Canadians will have to do the same.
What is the minister saying here? Since the minister has realized that his government signed a bad deal, is he now admitting to Canadians that the only remaining alternative is to have a trade war with the Americans? What effect does he think this trade war will have on Canadian farming?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: I must say, Mr. Speaker, I would rather take my cue from the Financial Post, which does a pretty good statistical job of evaluating agriculture trade, than from the part-time critic sitting across the way.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


NORTHERN TAX ALLOWANCE
Rodney Edward Murphy: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. Earlier in this Question Period in answer to a question he said he would wait to find out what the reasons were for the report of the task force on northern benefits before he made any decisions. I want to submit to him that the reason the task force came down the way it did is because he changed the rules in midstream.
On April 29, 1988, the Minister of Finance, in establishing the task force, said in his terms of reference that any changes should be "essentially revenue neutral". On May 26 of this year, after all the northerners had made their presentations to the task force, he changed the

Oral Questions
rules. He said that the changes must reflect "federal budget restraints".
Over 2,693 communities are being cut off from northern benefits. My question is, does the minister think it is fair to change the rules after each and every northern community had a chance to present recommendations based on the rules he had made earlier?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, let me just correct what the hon. member said in repeating what I had said. I said I wanted to consider the recommendations of the task force report before making any recommendation to the government as to what decision we should take in relation to that report. The hon. member is quite right, we did change the terms of reference at the request of the task force members themselves because they found it difficult to arrive at an equitable borderline, an equitable means of assessing which people should be eligible for the northern allowance and which should not. It was because of the difficulty in arriving at an appropriate borderline that the request was adhered to.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Mr. Speaker, the proposal is no longer revenue neutral. It is a tax grab that is going to affect thousands and thousands of Canadians in northern Canada. Since this same minister has said that his goods and services tax is also supposed to be revenue neutral, how can he expect all Canadians to trust him when he has already betrayed northerners by changing the rules after the hearings?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, let us revert to the establishment of the task force. The task force was established because the qualification criteria that were in place were creating a large number of inequities between people who found they were eligible and others living within a few kilometres who found that they were ineligible for the northern and isolated post benefits. It was on that basis, to try to find some equity in the qualification criteria, that the task force was created.
If the hon. member will refer to the report, he will find that the task force members who, as I pointed out in my earlier response, all live in isolated communities themselves, set out the reasons why their criteria have been proposed. I would suggest that my honourable colleague, as well as the government, review the reasons and try to
understand those gentlemen who spent a good amount of time visiting many, many communities across northern Canada to listen to people and try to understand the problems before they came up with the recommendations in the task force report.


AGRICULTURE
Mr.   Brian@: Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the Opposition, yesterday and today this House heard little substance, few constructive suggestions if any at all and a lot of rhetoric from our colleagues opposite on the state of Canadian agriculture. My question is directed to the Minister of Agriculture. Can he tell this House what he and the government intend to do to continue to support and enhance the situation of Canadian farmers in response to recent U.S. trade actions?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I must say that I share the hon. member's view that there is very little in a positive sense emanating from across the way that would enhance agriculture trade for Canadian interests.
The Prime Minister about three years ago decided that it was important to bring agriculture to the top of the agenda in international fora, whether it be at the GATT or whether it be at the multilateral trade negotiations, to redress the debilitating trade-distorting subsidies that were killing Canadian agriculture.
There have been a number of initiatives taken since that time, including the discussions at the MTN where we are pursuing Canadian interests and attempting to strengthen and broaden Article 11 under which the supply-management system exists. With respect to the issue of the pork countervail, thanks to the free trade agreement, we now have an objective binational disputeresolving mechanism that can deal with this thing in an effective way. With respect to Durum, we only have to remind Americans that they are not free of sin when it comes to subsidies. By virtue of the fact of their actions, the export enhancement programs and the subsidies, they in fact are driving down the price of grain and we are asking them to cease and desist that practice.
October 31, 1989


NATIONAL DEFENCE
Joseph Blair (Joe) McGuire: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. As a result of the recommendations of a royal commission report which came out of the Ocean Ranger disaster, a national search and rescue secretariat was announced on April 15, 1986. This secretariat was to be "an independent body responsible and accountable for a national search and rescue program under a lead minister with no conflict of interest in supplying search and rescue services".
In view of this directive, how can the Prime Minister justify having the same minister responsible for both the search and rescue service and the secretariat? Clearly there is a conflict of interest and clearly there has been no consultation with the secretariat before the move of the 413th squadron to CFB Greenwood.


Hon. Bill McKnight (Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, the NSS, which reports directly to the Minister of National Defence, does just that. It reports directly. There are two other departments involved in search and rescue in Canada, as I am sure the hon. member is aware, the Department of Transport, with coast guard responsibilities, the Department of National Defence which augment those responsibilities of the Canadian coast guard and provide additional support. The national search secretariat provides direct information to the minister responsible. In this case, it happens to be the Minister of National Defence.
There is also an interdepartmental committee of government agencies to which search and rescue recommendations are provided, and those recommendations are then communicated to the lead minister.


Joseph Blair (Joe) McGuire: Mr. Speaker, all I can say to the minister is the lives that were lost in the Ocean Ranger disaster will appear to have been lost in vain if this government refuses to follow the recommendations made to it to prevent any such accidents from happening in the future.
I have a supplementary question for the Minister of Employment and Immigration. The minister has been to Summerside and she has seen first-hand the impact the impending closure is going to have there. The town is suffering economically and emotionally. After six months of fighting, the people do not see any light at the end of the tunnel. The minister has all the recommenda-
Oral Questions
tions from the joint federal-provincial committee, and all of the reports. A significant federal presence is required there-


Mr. Speaker:: I would ask the hon. member to put his question.


Joseph Blair (Joe) McGuire: Can the minister tell us what the committee is doing at present, and will she be making an announcement this week as to what will be replacing CFB Summerside?


Hon. Barbara McDougall (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, certainly my visit to Summerside was a very useful one. I was very impressed with the eloquence of people in the community who are not just looking to the government for support in this but are also looking at plans that they can develop themselves.
We have two people who are continuing to work with the task forces because this is an ongoing job. We are looking at both private sector and public sector alternatives, as I made clear to them. I will be making recommendations to the Prime Minister because we do care very much about the future of Summerside and we are going to come up with some answers.


Mr. Speaker:: A single question from the hon. member from Glengary-Prescott-Russell and a single question from the hon. member from Thunder Bay-Atikokan.


FEDERAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT BANK
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the minister responsible for the Federal Business Development Bank and it concerns the administration of the Federal Business Development Bank.
I want to know from the minister why the Federal Business Development Bank paid an invoice when Article 14 of the Parliament of Canada Act says that no person who is a member of the Senate shall directly or indirectly, knowingly and wilfully, be party to a concern in any contract under which the public money of Canada is to be paid. I want to know why that invoice was paid to Senator Cogger when he has just admitted in the other

October 31, 1989
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house, and I quote: "I have in some instances signed the covering letters accompanying such bills for fees".
He admitted signing a bill, sending it to an agency of the government, and the government paid it against its own laws. Why did the government break the law?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, all of the invoices sent to the FBDB and from Lapointe Rosenstein were from Lapointe Rosenstein. All of the cheques written in respect to those invoices were written to Lapointe Rosenstein, the legal firm that did the contract.
The hon. member asked about a covering letter. With the invoices that were sent from Lapointe Rosenstein, as admitted in the other place, Senator Cogger apparently wrote a couple of the covering letters. Other lawyers in the firm wrote other covering letters. FBDB received legal services from Lapointe Rosenstein and wrote cheques to Lapointe Rosenstein in response to the invoices for those legal services.


VIA RAIL
Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Right Hon. Prime Minister. As he knows, the transport committee has been studying the government's plans for VIA Rail. This morning the committee was told by the director general of surface policy and programs for Transport Canada that not only were the staff who conducted the initial environmental assessment not trained in environmental matters, but in fact they did not do an assessment of the increased pollution that would be put into the environment as a result of people moving from VIA Rail to automobiles.
Given that revealing bit of information that no such study was done, will the Prime Minister now indicate that a moratorium has been placed on the changes to VIA Rail until such time as both the royal commission has reported and a full environmental assessment has been done on this vital part of Canadian institutions?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, the answer has not changed because the Prime Minister is here. It is exactly as we have been saying. The deputy minister said this morning that, as we would for any department, we would have done a preliminary study
on the environment if it had been necessary at the time, in consultation with the Department of the Environment. That is what he said. He also stated that if it becomes necessary and is requested by the Department of the Environment, we will move to a full environmental assessment. We did not because it was not necessary. Again I repeat, there is no necessity to put a moratorium in place.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Fulton:
That this House calls upon the Government to implement an
ecologically sound "green" tax system.
Rodney Edward Murphy: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Normally on an opposition day there is an agreement among the three parties that each party can use its time as it wishes; for example, either having one 20-minute speech and a 10-minute question and answer period or two 10-minute speeches, each followed by a 5-minute question and answer period. I would ask the unanimous approval of the House to do this for the remainder of the day.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is it so agreed? The hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Yes, Mr. Speaker, with the understanding that those who address the House will give notice before they start their speeches what period of time they intend to use for their speeches.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I want to signal once again our willingness to co-operate with the opposition on a day that is theirs. I would also ask at the same time that they consider in the future giving us the same consideration when we would like to get a number of speakers on government bills.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Mr. Speaker, before I respond to the parliamentary secretary's request, I would like to indicate to the Liberal Whip that it is our intention to have the member for Yorkton-Melville not take 20 minutes, that he would finish his speech with one more minute of
October 31, 1989

debate and then we would go to the member for Thunder Bay-Atikokan for another 10-minute speech.
In response to the parliamentary secretary's request that more Conservative members get up in the House, we certainly would welcome them speaking on a number of the bills.
If they wanted to speak on the UI bill, we would let them. If they wanted to speak on tax reform, we would let them. If they wanted to talk about the clawback, we would let them speak.


Mr. Parent:: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if you could direct the House as to whether or not, after his or her speech when we ask questions of the speaker, supplementary questions are ever allowed, or does the intervener simply have one question?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: We will allow supplementary questions if nobody else gets up in the chamber.
I think it is agreed that the hon. member for York-ton-Melville will have another two minutes left in his speech, plus five minutes for questions and comments.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, in conclusion I want to ask the House to think very seriously about the idea of a special task force or a parliamentary committee to look at changing our taxation system so that a very important part of that system is what we call the greening of Canada or the greening of the planet. We need a system of sticks and carrots that will motivate not only corporations, but also individuals, to consume and produce products that are going to be of benefit to the environment of Canada. I think we should be doing that.
There is so much we can do with the tax system in this country in terms of the kind of country we want. If we are to have incentives to keep this country cleaner and penalties to make sure that industry does not pollute our rivers, our lakes and our air, I think we would all be better off for it.
It is a new idea being pushed by the member for Skeena that we should have a very important principle in our taxation system namely, that we have the eco-tax or the green tax. I think it is something that we should study. I am sure that we can get all three parties looking very seriously at the problem, and perhaps we can make
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a very important change that would be as important in principle as the principle of ability to pay or of making sure that our taxation is not regressive but progressive.
Let us take a look at that in our taxation system.


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in this debate today. I want to focus my comments for the next 10 minutes on the impact of an ecologically sound green tax system on transportation because, in this vast country of ours, no policy that we develop should be in isolation of transportation.
We and my colleague from Regina-Lumsden in particular, who has fought this battle for many, many years, have talked about and believe in the concept of a transportation system that is interconnected, a multimodal system wherein you maximize each of the modes of travel to the extent possible within the geographic realities, but more importantly in the context of this debate, in terms of environmental realities and in terms of the use of fossil fuels and other forms of fuel.
Just a few moments ago in this House I raised a question about the environmental impact of the cuts to VIA Rail. We were told this morning by the officials of the department, the person who is in charge of surface transportation, that the seven-page initial environmental assessment that was conducted by the Department of Transport, by her and a gentleman who comes from the economics branch of transport-we have a transportation specialist and an economic specialist deciding on environmental matters. It is like the Minister of Finance making decisions about VIA Rail and transportation matters. But we will come back to that at another point.
First of all, they did say that x number of people will be shifted from the rail passenger mode, which is one of the most environmentally friendly modes of travel, particularly in terms of the large scale movement of people within a country, to see what the impact would be. They know how many people will take their car rather than the train, and how many people will get on a bus or how many people will get on a plane. But what they did not do is to then quantify that. If we have one million more car trips per year, which is what they are suggesting it will be the result of their decision on VIA Rail, although even that is in dispute, that means one million more cars

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driving probably an average of 250 kilometres which I think is the suggested norm.


Mr. McDermid:: No, it doesn't.


Iain Francis Angus: I am not talking about one million new cars, I am not talking about trips that would not have otherwise occurred. But what they did not do was the next logical step. In any environmental assessment the most logical step is to measure the impact on the environment. How many more kilograms or kilotonnes of nitrous oxide or carbon dioxide would be emitted in the atmosphere? They did not do that, Mr. Speaker. They just said that one million more car trips, really will not have much of an impact so let's not bother doing a full environmental assessment. Part of the reason why we of the New Democratic Party put forward this motion today is to make the point that we have to treat our world a lot better than we are now.
Any kind of government policy, in this case on taxation, but also on transportation, should have as its uppermost concern the impact on the environment. Let us hope it is in terms of how we can lessen the impact on the environment, not how we can add more like this decision on VIA Rail has done. In this great country of ours, which is such a vast magnificent land, many people live in a very narrow corridor next to the Canada-U.S. border, with some fingers of development in the northern territories. In northwestern Ontario we have had to build around Lake Superior and the Great Lakes in order to get from east to west. We need an integrated system.
It does not make sense for people to be flying from Toronto to Ottawa or Toronto to Montreal, or Montreal to Ottawa when for substantially less money, fuel and land, and much less pollution, we could be using high speed electrified rapid transit between those main communities. Given the congestion of Pearson International Airport, which is not going to be solved by a new terminal, it will be quicker, downtown to downtown, to travel by rail between these cities. Think of the atmosphere, Mr. Speaker. I know that you travel on the trains from time to time. Consider how much easier it is to do business in that particular corridor with the high-tech we now have. On the train we can use cellular phones and have a desk away from home, so to speak. You arrive in a much less frazzled state. We can do with that kind of thing.
It makes sense in some of the regions of the country to use rail, to link Thunder Bay and Dryden for example, or Cape Breton and Halifax, rather than air for these short distances. There are many options for environmentally friendly forms of transport.
That is on the passenger side. What about the freight side? As a country we have to be able to move both raw materials and finished goods. Right now we do it on the basis that because of the high cost of transportation, those people who are farther away will pay more.
From an economic standpoint, dare I say it, we could change a couple of policies and follow the lead of the private sector. Some of the major department stores have what they call a regional pricing policy. We all get the fliers from Sears or Eatons and see that a fridge in Thunder Bay is priced the same as the one in Toronto. We have done it with beer in Ontario. We do it with milk in other provinces. We are required, by the company policy, to include transportation costs in the over-all price so it becomes part of their cost of doing business. Therefore, it is averaged out so that that fridge can be sold in every community at the same price.
One might ask what that has to do with an environmental tax. It has everything to do with it. We are crowding so many people into the golden horseshoe of southern Ontario, mainly because that is where the markets are, the people buy the finished goods. Therefore it makes sense, given the Canadian economy as it is structured now, to locate the plants there. So that means more people come to the golden horseshoe to work and therefore create more demand, and on and on and on. A transportation policy should reflect the environment and land use planning. We so often forget that land use planning is an important environmental consideration.
I listened with interest to an open line CBC program last week on which a well known author, who is also a farmer, was talking about the impact of the paving over of the agricultural land in southern Ontario. That by itself reduces the emissions of oxygen into the atmosphere, the ability of this planet to recycle its air, to clean it and to put it back out in a form that is suitable for human beings.
We could mix all these together and have an environmental tax system under which there is no tax or lesser tax on environmentally friendly things. For example, what if we exempted bicycles from sales taxes, from manufacturers taxes, to lower their price so that more
October 31, 1989

and more people could afford to use that extremely non-polluting form of transportation? We could electrify. The reality in this country is that by themselves CN or CP or VIA Rail, whatever is left of it by the time this government is finished, on their own cannot justify electrification because of the high up-front costs, but if the government was to do it we would not only save in the environment, we would save in terms of fossil fuels and we would promote a healthier planet.


Hon. Lucien Bouchard (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, with each passing day Canadians are more aware of and concerned with the state of the environment. More and more they realize that life on earth is predicated upon a delicate and complex fabric of ecologic systems. As humans we are at the same time a product of that environment, a major cause of its present state and a determining element of its future evolution. Each calory of energy used, each ton of mineral mined and processed by our technologies, each crop planted and harvested impacts in some way on the environment. From time immemorial the earth has provided the basic ingredients that are essential to life, namely air, water, food and heat. Those resources also are a global environment capital drawn upon by every economic activity, every development project. And, perhaps more importantly still, the earth sets the natural limits of economic development and life itself.
Mr. Speaker, it would be a total delusion to believe that we can escape environmental features and processes that are quite independent from human actions. The bottom line is that nature deals the cards and establishes the rules of the game.

In the last few generations the capacity of man to alter the global ecosystem has increased dramatically with increases in population and rapid advances in technology. World economic activity, for example, has increased 20-fold since 1900. As a result, many of man's activities are taxing the capacities of our global ecosystem beyond its limits. Each year we dump five billion tonnes of C02 in the atmosphere, consume 40 per cent of the planet's
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biomass and the amount of fossil fuel it took the planet about one million years to create.
While global economic activity has expanded rapidly and living standards have improved enormously in the developed world, global poverty and population growth remain a fundamental problem. Global population is projected to double by 2050. Eight-five per cent of this will join the majority of the world's population which lives in poverty today and aspires to a better quality of life. Whether the global economy and the global environment can accommodate these hopes is perhaps the greatest challenge of our time.
Without a systematic framework for addressing these stresses, it is unlikely to be any relief for our global ecosystem. As the 21st century approaches, the outlook is for more and more demands on our planet's environmental resources as the global economic system seeks to meet the needs and aspirations of the growing world population. This will put at risk not only the capacity of our planet to sustain economic growth, but its capacity to sustain life. Future generations will pay dearly if we do not act now.

Mr. Speaker, when thus describing our environmental problems, one might think they are far remote from concerns of the Canadian people and that individual efforts are futile. However, neither perception is true. The problems that directly concern Canadians, for instance air pollution in our cities, Great Lakes water quality, climatic changes, ozone layer depletion, all those problems are symptomatic of larger problems deriving from the complex process of environmental interactions at the continental or global level.
It is equally erroneous to believe we are powerless as individuals. The way we use the natural environment is the result of countless day-to-day decisions made by individuals, corporations and governments. Whether this involves setting the thermostat and deciding how to use water or dispose of household garbage, managing effluents or building new industrial facilities or determining government economic policy, all those decisions have a cumulative impact on the environment. If the global environment today is threatened, it is because in making

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those decisions we failed to consider the costs of pollution to the environment and our environmental heritage. Indeed, we treated the environment as a gift of nature.

We have not been blind to the need for action. There have been some important successes in dealing with pollution problems. Through the combined actions of individuals, corporations, interest groups and governments, sulphur dioxide emissions in Canada have fallen by almost 50 per cent since 1974, while lead levels have fallen by over 50 per cent. In many cases, however, these responses tended to be reactions to a crisis or problem situation, sometimes focusing entirely on clean-up. More than ever we realize the need to anticipate a problem and prevent its occurrence.
What is needed to cope with our emergency environmental challenges is not more rhetoric, not meaningless resolutions. What is needed is a fundamental change in the way we make decisions at all levels of society. We must begin to integrate environmental considerations into the day-to-day decisions we make as individuals, as corporations, and as governments. We must begin to treat the environment like the scarce and unique resource that it is; an ecosystem that is essential to the sustainability of development and life itself. This is what sustainable development is all about, changing behaviour, changing the way we see the environment, and its relationship to our activities. And that is how we will move from a reliance on reactive solutions to preventive solutions.
Each of us has a responsibility and a role as a decision-maker in changing behaviour and the behaviour of those around us. Globally, Canada has a responsibility as a steward of a significant fraction of the world's environmental resources and as a source of global ecosystem stress. This means we must look to a response that is both domestic and international in scope and demonstrates much needed leadership. Individuals, businesses, and governments have an important stewardship role as property owners and users of environmental resources.

However, governments bear an additional responsibility. A good part of the natural resources used by our economy are outside the market system and therefore considered a free product or service.
Normal market forces do not provide sufficient incentive to make environmentally sound decisions. Since the market is not able to provide a decision-making framework for responsible measures-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: On a point of order, the hon. member for Hamilton East.


Ms. Copps:: Mr. Speaker, on the most important issue on the government's agenda there are only two government members here. We lack a quorum.


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I now see a
quorum. Resuming debate, the hon. minister still has two minutes left in his speech.
[Translation\


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, Canadians expect the federal government to play a leading role on the environment. The government is meeting this challenge eagerly, and, in the spirit I announced several weeks ago, the government is now preparing an environmental action plan for Canada consisting of a national framework for implementing sustainable development.
Mr. Speaker, we know that the environment is a "hot" issue, a subject of concern in Canada and throughout the world. We know that governments are forced to react to the situation.
That is why the government decided several months ago now to task my department and all those departments represented on the environment committee with preparing a comprehensive environmental action plan for the next five years. We all know that we need comprehensive policies, additional measures and more resources.
Mr. Speaker, I shall vote against the motion before us, not because I believe that the government does not need
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more resources: I do believe we need more. But, Mr. Speaker, I believe that the concept of an extra tax for the environment must be part of an approach that includes new environmental policies with new fiscal policies and harmonizes them, and that it must be perceived as such. All this will be in the action plan that will be presented to the government and made public in the spring.


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, I listened with care to the remarks of the minister. It seems to me that he is hedging. He is not saying that he is opposed or that the government is opposed to a green tax system. It is a bit of a wait and see attitude.
As the minister knows, many countries around the world and very much across Europe have already introduced carbon taxes. They have already been introduced in Japan. Many of these green system taxes have been demonstrated to be highly beneficial. Not only do you reduce your energy consumption, but at the same time you are reducing the amount of pollution and in fact you are creating commodities. You are creating jobs at a much faster rate than under our existing archaic tax system.
I would just like to get clarification from the minister. Does he think that the approach being taken by his colleague, the Minister of Finance, in applying the new proposed 9 per cent GST to recycled paper at the same rate as to virgin paper is environmentally appropriate? I think the minister knows that a green tax system can be put to a wide range of uses, whether it is on recycled paper, on bicycles versus automobiles, or on canoes versus motor boats, or whatever. It will make for a cleaner environment, lower costs, lower energy use, less pollution, and full employment.
What kind of a recipe would any government be looking for that would bring in a more regressive form of taxation, self-admitted by the Minister of Finance, when other countries around the world have picked up and cobbled together different pieces of a green tax system? Does the minister not really want to stand up today and say he supports a green tax system, that now is the time to bring it in, and that we cannot wait any longer?


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, taxes will always be needed for one main purpose-to raise money. The government needs money. The reason for
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which governments have been created is to pool the resources of a nation in order to address the national and global problems of a nation.
This being said, we in this government think that we now have a new challenge in front of us, an international challenge, a national challenge. This challenge will call for new and additional resources. The problem is of such a magnitude that it will require the government to devise new fiscal policies. The GST question has no direct link with what we are doing in environment. GST is there to rationalize the way taxes are raised in Canada. This must be done. This has been the objective of our government. No government before has had the courage to do it. We had this courage because we think it is necessary. We did not do it to be popular. We did it because we think it is our duty.
Apart from that, we think we need more money for the environment. The way to raise that money is not necessarily something to do with one more tax. It is something to do with the framework of a new approach wherein, as the member has very eloquently said, we have to mesh the environmental purpose and the money raising purpose. This can be done. I am sure it will be done.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the minister a question. Given his concerns rightfully expressed about global warming, why has his government cut energy efficiency research and development grants and programs by 91 per cent?


Lucien Bouchard: It is a matter of philosophy, a matter of perception of what the problem is. This government does not believe that all the money spent on the environment must come from the public purse.
Recently, I had the opportunity to announce the creation of a fund to clean up orphan sites. One of the main conditions is that provinces must, in return, implement a legislative and regulatory mechanism in order to make it compulsory for companies to clean up 950 other sites. I give that example to show that the money will not come exclusively from new taxes and energy consumption measures, but also from the application of the polluter pays principle.
So it is obvious that, in our action plan, there will be a very strong emphasis on energy conservation measures, but energy conservation does not create energy. Obviously, that is where we must start, and that is exactly

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what we will do. As we look at possible ways to conserve energy, we must also find ways to create energy.

Mr. Lee Clark (Brandon-Souris) Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in today's debate, particularly with respect to the fact that daily we are becoming increasingly aware of the deteriorating nature of the environment. There are front page stories and television news items. Literally Canadians and other people around the world are being bombarded with a litany of old problems getting worse and new problems becoming more evident.
There have been tremendous implications for us as a government and as a country in terms of our domestic policy and with respect to our international relations with other nations and other governments. Later on this afternoon my colleague, the hon. member for Fredericton-York-Sunbury, will be speaking with respect to some of the matters to which the Government of Canada has responded vis-a-vis domestic policy.
I would like to look for a while this afternoon at some of the very, very important developments which have occurred in international arenas. To a very real extent the crisis of the environment is a global crisis, and the solutions must be found both outside our boundaries as well as inside.
As you know very well, Mr. Speaker, the United Nations-sponsored Brundtland commission issued a new agenda just a short time ago saying that the planet needs "a new era of environmentally sound economic development". That report said from now on-and I think most governments including ours have echoed that conclusion-we must have policies and economic positions based upon the concept of sustainable development. We must ensure that in future environmental decisions are a first thought in the decision-making process rather than an afterthought as they were all too often in the past.
We must change, as the Minister of the Environment said just the other day. We will have to tailor and change our lifestyles to fit the ecological realities of this new world in which we live. It may affect the way in which we grow food, harvest trees and generate power. We will obviously have to reduce the pollution that changes the
atmosphere and endangers our food and water supplies. We will have to protect our all too critical resources such as the farm land, the forests and the wildlife from overuse.
I come from Brandon-Souris in the province of Manitoba. We are all too aware of the fact that we have had drought for two years in succession. There is a growing amount of concern that it might be one of the first results of global warming.
We must favour types of economic development which fall within this planet's ability to absorb our wastes and to renew its resources. To do that we will have to link economic decisions and environmental impacts, whether we are making household purchases, industrial development decisions or forming government policy at the federal, provincial or the municipal level.
The question before us, however, is not whether the Government of Canada is prepared to respond to the key environmental problems that we face either as Canadians or as citizens of the world, which clearly we are. The question before us is whether or not we are simply prepared to put our eggs in one basket, in this case the basket of the so-called green tax, or whether we believe that we must develop a comprehensive national strategy in order to address all aspects of environmental issues.
We believe that there must be that comprehensive action plan to which the minister has alluded. We have given notice of our intention to act. We have indicated our willingness to translate the concept of sustainable development into concrete reality.
I think Canadians understand that some of the most compelling of the problems facing us are global, transboundary. We as a government understand therefore that we are going to resolve the problems, whether they be with respect to the depletion of the ozone layer, global warming or acid rain; that we are going to have to secure the co-operation of governments outside our own country.
I am proud of the activity that has occurred in recent years in which Canada has played an integral part. For example, we were the first nation to ratify the Vienna Convention for the protection of the ozone layer. This government took a lead role in developing and adopting
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the Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer.
I was proud, if I may say so, as an individual member of Parliament to head our delegation to the Helsinki Convention last May where the nations of the world took further steps, recognizing that the Montreal Protocol in itself would be inadequate to rectify the crisis facing the ozone layer.
We agreed in Montreal to a partial reduction of chlorofluorocarbons by the year 2000. We as a government and other governments throughout the world now understand that there must be a total ban on the use of CFCs by 1999 or earlier.
In 1988 Canada hosted the Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere, an important international conference with real implications for global security. In February of this year we followed that with a meeting of legal and policy experts where we developed proposals for a convention for the protection of the atmosphere. These initiatives have placed Canada in the foreground of international environmental diplomacy.
The Canada-United States Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement was renewed in November of 1987, providing stronger control over toxic substances entering the Great Lakes. Fulfilling a promise made in the Speech from the Throne the minister announced just recently $125 million as part of the five-year Great Lakes action plan.
Although we understand that the action plan is going to require the co-operation of provincial and municipal governments and industry if that cesspool, if one can use that term, of the Great Lakes is to be clean, what was announced just recently by the federal government was an important first step. It will have to be one of many.
Canada signed the Basel Convention which puts in place an international regime to govern the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes. This will prevent in the future the embarrassing situation of hazardous wastes being dumped as we have seen in the past in developing countries.
More recently, the Commonwealth heads of government issued a strong endorsement of sustainable devel-
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opment. These accomplishments demonstrate our commitment to the environment. I believe we have been among world leaders in reducing threats to global environment.
Over the past 10 years, however, probably no single issue has been more important to Canadians with respect to international consequences than acid rain. The progress this government has made in that regard demonstrates our commitment to reducing the problem of acid rain and our commitment to ensuring better air quality for Canadians today, tomorrow and in the future.
Mr. Speaker, if you remember in 1984 there were no specific emission controls in place. Funding for vital acid rain research was about to lapse. Emission standards for new cars and trucks had not been changed for almost 10 years. Significant amounts of lead were still being used in gasoline in Canada.
Since 1984 we have reached an agreement with the seven most easterly provinces with respect to reduction of sulphur dioxide emissions. Those emissions have been reduced by some 40 per cent now, and it is clear that we will reach our objective of 50 per cent by 1994.
Loans have been made available to large emissions sources, to companies such as Noranda which have met their objectives for the reduction of sulphur dioxide emission reductions. Funds have been made available to assist in the development of new technologies.
Reduced allowable emissions from automobiles have been changed on two different occasions-in 1987 and in a very important agreement in Charlottetown last week where it was agreed we would adopt California standards by 1994. A decision was also made to eliminate the use of lead in gasoline by 1990 and to increase the excise tax on leaded gasoline in the meantime.
All these instances, plus a continuing effort on the part of Canada to work closer together with the United States to ensure that acid rain will be reduced, are evidence of first the recognition on the part of this government that the threat to our environment is global in nature and will require the co-operation of international governments, and that the federal government must work closely together with the provinces. We must come up with a long needed and much overdue comprehensive action plan of which perhaps the proposal that is

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before us today may indeed be a part. I would not be able to anticipate that.
Certainly what I think is evident is that to preserve the environment from some of the dangers that we have so readily inflicted in the past and to ensure that the damages are reduced in the future requires a comprehensive and co-operative approach in which I hope all members of this House as well as all governments in Canada will participate. I hope the end result we see will be a better environment for our children, our grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member whether he believes that pollution control devices should be subject to the goods and services tax.


Mr. Clark (Brandon -Souris):: Mr. Speaker, I think, as all members of this House know, the proposed goods and services tax is a long overdue response on the part of this government to the inadequacies of a manufacturers' sales tax which has been in place in Canada since 1924.
If I understand correctly when members on that side of the House in the Official Opposition had responsibility for government, which they did for many years, they looked on occasion at the possible abolition of the manufacturers' sales tax but, for whatever reason they chose, they decided not to proceed.
What the government is proposing today with the goods and services tax is something which is obviously not politically advantageous to us. I may say that sometimes I often hear from constituents who say to me as a politician, to the government of which I am a part: "Why do you not take tough decisions? Why do you not provide the kind of leadership which Canadians are seeking?"
I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the hon. member that the proposed goods and services tax is clearly an example of a government deciding that it must act in the interests of the nation as a whole.
All the polls tell us that what we propose is clearly not done in order to incur political favour. You need not be a political scientist to know, when you look at the statistics, that Canadians like other people throughout the world do not enjoy either new taxes. Nor do they enjoy direct taxes that are highly visible. I see in the goods and services tax an attempt to rectify an old problem, one
that has been here in Canada, one that has not worked well since 1924.
Speaking in general terms some 75,000 businesses have been affected by that tax. There are some 22,000 different tax arrangements. There is an estimated $2 billion in tax revenue that legally belongs to the Government of Canada that is not being collected.
I would suggest that we take that $2 billion, assuming we could collect it now under the goods and services tax which would be far more difficult for people to escape than otherwise before-and I would mention to members opposite that they have often criticized the government for permitting loopholes through which people can escape their obligation to pay tax-give it to the Minister of the Environment and permit him to do what he would wish to do. Not only would we have a very effective comprehensive action plan in place within the next 12 to 24 months. He would also have the kind of resources necessary to do the job in such a way that all members of this House would applaud.


Mr. Karpoff:: Mr. Speaker, did the parliamentary secretary to the minister just announce that there is $2 billion being given out of the goods and services tax to the Minister of the Environment?


Walter Leland Rutherford (Lee) Clark: What I announced, however, and I think the member probably knows this, is that the manufacturers' sales tax has worked so inefficiently that there has been on a year by year basis in essence $2 billion that was traditionally due to the Government of Canada which has not been collected because of the inefficiencies in that particular tax.
What I said to the hon. member was that that revenue by law properly belongs to the Government of Canada. I suggested that if we had those kinds of additional revenues in place we would have far more resources. I think all members here would agree that the environment should be higher on our priority list. We would have the resources available to do some of the things we believe are necessary.
At this point in time the Government of Canada must spend $28 billion, $29 billion, $30 billion a year on interest alone on a debt which has accumulated since the early 1970s. It takes almost 33 per cent of our government revenues alone to go to interest on money spent in
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the past. We have limited our capacity to respond to the degradation which has already existed.
We live in the midst of a crisis, a crisis that is twofold. First of all, we have inherited as a people a degraded environment as a result of the failures of Canadians for decades. Governments as well as individuals have contributed to that degradation through some sort of failure on their part.
In addition, the second part of the crisis which is so significant is that the growth of the national debt at a time when there was no economic rationale for its development, particularly during buoyant years of the 1970s, has contributed to an economic malaise and almost an economic bankruptcy within this country to the extent that they cannot respond to the environmental crisis which is ours.
We are now at a stage where we are well aware of the problem, where we have the political will to address it, where I think to a large degree we have the co-operative support of not only members of this House but governments throughout the land, federal, provincial and municipal, that are strapped with the fact that they lack the economic resources that they would wish.
If the goods and services tax can succeed in reforming the tax base to the extent that it becomes a fairer and more equitable tax with fewer loopholes and the moneys which are legitimately the Government's of Canada are collected more effectively and distributed more equitably than they were in the past, then I would suggest that that indeed would be good for the country even though it may not contribute to our political well-being in the short term.


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


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, we have just heard from the Minister of the Environment a difficult and repetitive bilan of the state of the Canadian and the world environment.
I feel somewhat frustrated because it seems to me that time and time again we hear from this minister how bad the situation is, and we have heard his rather flowery rhetoric on this subject on dozens of occasions, but in actual fact his capacity to encourage change is completely lacking. I am frustrated, as millions of Canadians must
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be frustrated, when I hear the Minister of the Environment and the Prime Minister claim that their first priority is cleaning up the environment, when he actually has the audacity to stand in his place today and vote against the principle of a green tax.
The principle that has been put forward in the votable motion by the hon. member for Skeena is in fact a wide-ranging motion which would incorporate the notion of green taxes into the Canadian economy. I fail to understand the logic of the Minister of the Environment who claims to be an environmental advocate when every single one of his actions since taking office has gone in the opposite direction.
He avoided the question about how this government has cut back drastically on alternative energies and on conservation research. He claimed that he wanted a public-private sector mix. How does he rationalize that statement with his own budget document which shows that his government is going to be spending $5 billion to develop energy megaprojects which they know contribute to the burning of fossil fuel that is creating a situation in which our climate is warming at the same time as the total package for alternative energies is pathetically small and cut on a daily basis?
Friends of the Earth analysed the financial objectives of the government in relation to energy policy. They showed, quite rightly, that for every dollar spent on energy conservation the government is setting aside $19 to spend on development of fossil fuels which lead to global warming. In fact the actual amount cut in alternative energies and energy consumption in conservation since 1984 will reach 93 per cent within the next few years. The actual amount of money the government has set aside for conservation unrenewables, according to a document published recently by Friends of the Earth, is actually $250 million and falling-I believe it has actually been reduced a further $60 million since that time-as compared with $5 billion set aside for fossil fuel megaprojects.
I do not know whether the Minister of the Environment thinks Canadians are stupid. I do not know whether he takes us all for fools. But how can he continue to insist that his government has a plan for global warming, that his government has a plan for reducing the amount of fossil fuel that we bum, when his own department along with the Department of Energy are unwilling to

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even assume target dates for fossil fuel reduction for this country?
It came as no surprise that California emission standards were announced by the Ontario Minister of the Environment at the national conference in Prince Edward Island a few days ago. It seems that when you talk about leadership in the environment in this country the Ontario Minister of the Environment is taking the leadership. We have the federal minister who followed up with a recommendation originally.

A recommandation from the premier of Quebec encouraging the adoption of the California emission standards.

But they did it after the United States had already decided to move in that direction.
I would like to ask the minister-and I would like him to speak to the people of Canada-about why a green tax is such a bad thing. He says he may not want to use tax policy to shape our conservation and consumption practices in this country. But he should admit right now that his own department in an internal document is examining the possibility of setting up emissions trading in the same way that is currently being endorsed by the Clean Air Act in the United States. He is examining a proposal which would turn pollution into a marketable commodity. That is how his government sees the market-place. They are going to be able to buy and sell pollution permits.
Instead of saying to companies that they should reduce their over-all level of pollution because it is going to be good for the air we breathe, it is going to be good for our children, it is going to be good for our country, he is actually examining the creation of a pollution permit which would permit Canadian companies to trade pollution rights among themselves. God forbid that we arrive at the day in this country when the right to pollute is a marketable commodity. That is exactly what is envisioned in the notion of having these pollution permits.
I know that the government likes to take ideas from its American counterparts. I know that that is currently one of the domestic provisions of the U.S. Clean Air Act. But I believe that in the past under successive Liberal governments Canada has shown a leadership role in
reduction of SO2 emissions. I would hate to see us follow in the footsteps of the United States where it concerns turning sulphur dioxide and other emissions into a commodity.
Canadians deserve better. Canadians want better. We only had to attend the meeting of the International Joint Commission at which for the first time in the joint study released by the Conserver Society and the IRPP, which is as a matter of fact as we speak making a presentation before the environment committee on global warming, to see for the very first time a link between airborne toxins and human brain damage.
I know that that biannual meeting of the International Joint Commission did not interest the minister. He would prefer to be studying water filtration problems in Paris. I can understand why he would not want to have been there for the launching of the IRPP report. It is the first time that we have actually drawn a link between actual brain damage in humans and airborne toxins.
Last summer I had the opportunity to go to Broughton Island. I had a chance to meet there with the city council of Broughton Island. It is a small community in the eastern Arctic that volunteered for a study of the effects of trace contaminants of PCBs.
Do you know what that study showed, Mr. Speaker? In the most pristine, untouched part of the world currently accessible only by plane, set up on the DEW Line in about 1960 essentially to service the needs of the military, the women in that community have PCBs in their mother's milk.
This minister and this government will not move to reduce the allowable burning of trace PCBs from 50 parts per million to 20 parts per million because, the minister says, the scientific data is inconclusive. The scientific data may be inconclusive for trace contaminants, but the scientific data for those women who have PCBs in their mother's milk is not inconclusive.
We actually heard during the Liberal caucus in Iqaluit that some mothers were so distraught about the situation that instead of feeding their children with their own mother's milk, they fed them with Coffeemate and the children suffered from malnutrition. They could not afford to pay the exorbitant price of fresh milk that comes in by plane and costs about $6 a litre in the store
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in Broughton Island, so they fed their children with Coffeemate.
When the minister talks about developing a world protocol and about the international conventions, they are all extremely important and should be supported, but in our own country we have to act and we have to act now. That means we have to be prepared in the case of green taxes to look at examples that have been working for example in the European Community, with which the minister is very familiar and from which he likes to draw a lot of ideas. Why do we not look at what has been done in the European community or in Japan to cut back on the consumption of carbon fuels at the same time as we increase the awareness that there is a cost benefit relationship between pollution, taxation, and the GNP.
In the current move in Alberta to set up, at the latest count, almost nine or ten pulp and paper mills using old technology which would not be acceptable in Japan, why is it that we have not included in the cost benefit analysis the cost to the rivers and to the health and to the future of the people of the Northwest Territories, and the people who are living along the Athabasca and Slave River basins?
Why is it we have not moved with the recommendation that there be in fact an element of the GNP assessment specifically devoted to environmental degradation. Surely as trees are cut down across this country so there is a cost, short term and long term, that is being borne by ourselves and by our children. That cost is not currently reflected in the tax system, and that cost is not currently reflected in accounting principles adopted by the government.
What the hon. member for Skeena is recommending is that we be prepared to move in new and different directions.

For quite some time we have heard the Minister of the Environment's empty rhetoric on his good intentions with regard to the environment. But where was he, Mr. Speaker, when the PCB crisis broke out in Quebec? He was hiding in his cottage afraid to come out and take a stand. He did not want to show federal leadership on a national issue, just as he is now ready to reject the proposed tax system which would reflect more closely for
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the Canadian people the cost of pollution and the cost of preservation.
We know full well that the tax system, for example, has been used for years to speed up corporate development. For instance, a company can claim depreciation when purchasing new equipment. It is a strategy adopted by several governments precisely to speed up development in our country. We have now got to the point where, in our own future, in my daughter's lifetime, temperatures in the Great Lakes are expected to rise so much over the next 50 years that winter in southwestern Ontario will be two to four weeks shorter. As Canadians, we can say that a shorter winter is a good thing but we have to consider the effect it will have on farmers and agriculture since, according to the Great Lakes report, Canadian farmers will have 50 per cent less moisture to work with.
Mr. Speaker, yesterday the House held a debate on the crisis facing family farms in Canada. We know that the tax issue is not the only major problem with which the farming community must come to grips, for it has to deal as well with rising temperatures and the world-wide warming trend which has become so obvious.
In that context the minister has little choice other than at least endorsing the principle of green taxation, much in the same way as he must support a federal government policy aimed at reducing grants awarded for megaprojects. At the same time, additional funds must be set aside for conservation technology and research on renewable resources.
Mr. Speaker, ever since this government took office the Minister of the Environment and his officials reduced by 93 per cent the money available for conservation and alternate energy projects, not to mention the fact that at the same time they are going to allocate $5 billion for megaprojects without first considering the possibility of cutting down on Canada's over-all energy requirements, along the line of well-established European conservation principles, for example.
So all I can say to the minister is that talk comes cheap, but why is he not prepared at least to consider the advisability of implementing green taxation such as they already have in a number of sectors in Europe and Japan and which seems to have a double impact. The first has to do with tax revenues, and the minister maintains that it is the only purpose of a tax system. The second impact can be seen in consumer habits. If as citizens, as federal

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government, as provincial government, or as corporations we really want to distance ourselves-

If we want to get ourselves out of the mess we are in, we are going to have to be prepared to look at new ways of encouraging changes in behaviour patterns. That includes encouraging Canadians, by way of tax policy, to conserve. Why is it in our own House of Commons we cannot get recycled paper?
Last summer I was in British Columbia looking at the over-all environmental situation. I sat at a table across from a lumber company representative who told me that they could not get into the manufacture of recyclable papers because Canadians were not disciplined. Unlike the Japanese, I was told Canadians would not be prepared to separate paper from plastic waste from other waste. It is happening all around us. Canadians are crying out not only for recycled paper, but they want to be able to buy the products and be able to recycle plastic. The technology is available. It is the companies and the politicians that are lagging behind.
Once again, with the simple principle of a green tax the government comes forward and states: "No, no. We have done it this way for 30, 40 and 50 years". Heaven forbid that we should look at a new way of directing the tax system to achieve the objectives of obviously having enough money to run the government, but at the same time to reshape behaviour patterns.
If the minister truly believes that we are on the edge of a precipice, as he is wont to say, and he has described us rightfully as the most wasteful country in the world, the least energy efficient country in the world, we should be ashamed. We should be examining innovative new ways of encouraging conservation and innovative new ways of rewarding those people who, for example, are into conservation by taking their bicycles, or those people who are into purchasing cars that are more energy efficient or those people who in fact are following the mandate of thinking globally and acting locally. There are many millions of concerned Canadians out there. You only have to look at any magazine, Chatelaine, The Financial Post, the Report on Business-
L'Actualite. Everyone involved in environmental issues knows full well that the people want to forge ahead. Politicians however are the ones lagging behind, afraid to say something new that might cost them votes.
I am convinced, Mr. Speaker, that Canadians are willing to make sacrifices, they are even prepared to accept new pollution taxes, new green taxes in order to answer direct needs, such as pollution control and environmental clean up.
Mr. Speaker, I know Canadians are ready. I wonder why the Minister does not trust the people of Canada.


Kenneth Albert James: I listened with interest to what the member for Hamilton East had to say. I was especially interested in that last part of her discourse because I, too, have great concern over those who talk about the environment but do not practise it.
Any time we ask a hundred people what is the most glaring issue of the day, their answer is it is the environment. However, if we followed those hundred people around for a day, we would find that a great percentage of them are polluting our environment. It seems to be a mindset; it is somebody else's problem and not theirs. They use environment unfriendly products; they throw their cigarette butts on the street; they wash their driveways down into the storm sewers without cleaning them up; they sneak burn their leaves; they take all the wrappings that they should not take at the fast food stores. I might ask the member when was the last time she refused some of the wrappers offered at the fast food drive-in. We should say no, we do not want them. We just want the food. We do not want all that environmentally unfriendly material.
I wonder what we are doing with our young people. I met with a number of school children just a week or so ago and they were talking about the environment. The environment is of great concern to them, but they do not seem to realize that they should be concerned about the environment through all they do.
Do we really have to throw money at this sort of thing and tax people? Do we have to use taxes to make them
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think about the environment, those individuals who pollute our environment every day? I have concern about whether we have to tax them, or whether we should be using other means.
Members of Parliament themselves should show examples. Perhaps we should use some of the ways we have of communicating with the public, i.e. Householders and so on, wherein we could talk about the environment and what people individually could do to be helpful in not polluting our environment and not necessarily always have to look at dollars. Yes, we need dollars, but are there not other ways.
We as members of Parliament, the member from Hamilton included, should do something by communicating with our constituents and do a better job of communicating the need to being environmentally conscious and practise some of the more simplistic measures rather than constantly bombarding them with the more complex side. Not that we should not be concerned about all that, but individuals on the street need to be coaxed and cultured into being more environmentally conscious in everything they do all day long every day.
Ms Copps: My point, and I do not know if the member agrees with it, is I believe that the people are doing and are prepared to do much more than the politicians. The member mentioned fast food packaging. Who establishes packaging laws in this country? It is the federal ministry of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. It could move in and require that all packaging be produced in a material that is recycled. The federal ministry of Consumer and Corporate Affairs could move in and do that. What I am suggesting is that the public is prepared to do it, but we the politicians are not prepared to come forward with some innovative new approaches.
The federal government is not broke when it comes to the $5 billion it is setting aside for energy megaprojects, so it is a question of making choices.
Who chose to spend $5 billion on energy megaprojects and about $250 million or less on the renewables? That is a political choice of his government. It was his government that moved in 1984 to do away with the Canadian Home Insulation Program, probably one of the single best ways of permitting Canadians to insulate their homes so they would use less energy.
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What is the intelligence of cancelling the Canadian Home Insulation Program and at the same time spending $5 billion on energy megaproject claiming it is in the effort to assure security of supply? Surely security of supply has to deal with not only getting new energy sources available, but also reducing the energy that we are using on an ongoing basis.
Every single Canadian could move with a retrofit of incandescent light bulbs. People in Europe or other countries who have not had the tremendous access to "unlimited energy supplies" that we have had in this country are more energy conscious. They do not use as much water in their toilets. It sounds ridiculous, but a simple water dam could save millions of dollars in water costs across this country because it would reduce the amount of water needed to flush a toilet.
Surely we can build a federal tax policy that provides incentives for people to make these kinds of changes and disincentives to continually consume, merely to create a larger demand for the supply. That is the point of a green tax.


Mr. Pierre H. Vincent (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today on the motion which asks the House to enact important changes to the present tax system. I must at the beginning of my remarks place the issue in its proper context. As the member for Trois-Rivieres, I feel the government has shown up to now that we are more than favourably disposed towards the environment and since 1984 we have done tremendous work in that regard and about the environmental situation our country and the world is in. I think we owe it all to our Right Hon. Prime Minister as well as to the Minister of the Environment we have had for five years.
There is always great danger, Mr. Speaker, when politicians and particularly managers of a country such as Canada try to mix apples and oranges. That is what this motion does today. It says on the one hand: We want to protect the environment, and on the other hand: Let us tax, let us use the tax system for the environment. That reminds me, and you will remember it too, Mr. Speaker, the pre-1984 tax measure called scientific research tax credit that cost not millions but billions of dollars to Canadians and did not in the end bring any scientific research to the country. We must be very careful. If, regarding environmental matters, a budget is allocated

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to the Minister of Environment, his competent officials administer that budget, invest the money and develop proper policies, fine!
Mr. Speaker, I agree with that approach. But don't ask the Department of Finance, don't ask the tax experts, who are certainly not environmentalists, to make decisions on a tax for the environment. That is the problem, Mr. Speaker. Since 1984, we have established or re-established a tax system that works. We closed loopholes and removed tax shelters that existed when we came to power in 1984. We introduced a minimum income tax. We reduced the number of tax brackets from ten to three, as you know. We removed personal exemptions, basic exemptions, exemptions for the sick, and so forth, and we replaced those with a tax credit, the same amount for everybody, irrespective of income. We made the system fair and effective.
And now in Phase II of the tax reform, we will finally get rid of a 13 per cent manufacturer's sale tax and replace it with a 9 per cent goods and services tax, which will benefit all Canadians. This will be the last step towards an effective and valid tax system in this country, one that will make us competitive internationally. It is all very well to have a fiscal policy in this country, but that policy must also help our businesses, either to compete with imports or to export their products and compete on the international market. In both cases, our fiscal policy and our economic policy must be compatible and help Canadian business. Our tax system will now be complete. However, if we want to add a tax to deal with environmental problems, I can see the Opposition saying tomorrow or the day after: We should have a tax to deal with some other problem in another department, for instance, a special tax on transportation. The next day, the Opposition will tell me they need a special tax for the deficit. And in three, or four or five years, if we listen to the Opposition, if we introduce every single tax they ask for to deal with all these problems, our tax system will be in the same mess, it will be the same major problem we had when we came to power in 1984. That is why, Mr. Speaker, I think we must keep taxation and the environment separate.
Mr. Speaker, when we talk about improving the quality of life of our constituents, we must always be sure it will be in their best interests. A typical example Canadians will remember, as I said earlier, was the scientific research tax credit-some cases are still before the courts-where there was a terrific waste of taxpayer's
money without any benefit to the community. This was an example of bad management, and it certainly didn't do scientific research any good.
The Minister of the Environment, the Hon. Member for Lac-Saint-Jean (Mr. Bouchard) has acted responsibly on environmental issues. He has made firm commitments. We must not forget, when we are talking about the environment, that this is not a regional or a provincial issue but a federal issue, and also an international issue. At that level, the Prime Minister of Canada and the Minister of Environment have also acted responsibly, and that is very important. We must keep working at the international level because even if your own backyard is clean, if the neighbours don't clean theirs, it is very likely the bugs will migrate from their yards to yours. So as far as the environment is concerned, we must keep up the pressure, both internationally and nationally.
Of course, Mr. Speaker, you will realize that in the circumstances, I cannot agree with the motion as drafted.
As I said earlier, there have been some very substantial changes in our tax system since 1984. We have expanded the tax base, both for individuals and companies, so that everyone will pay his fair share of taxes. The same applies to capital gains. The same applies to the lifetime exemption on capital gains.
I don't think we should dismantle what we managed to build during the past five years, a system that has resulted in substantial dividends both for Canadians individually and for the quality of life in this country.
With the GST, all families with an income of $30,000 or less will be in a better position as far as taxes are concerned, meaning that once the system is in place in 1991, they will have more disposable income than they have now. They will be entitled to an annual tax credit of $275 per adult and $100 per child, to which may be added another tax credit, depending on individual or family income. Furthermore, businesses will be entitled to a maximum of $600 for completing the paperwork required in connection with the goods and services tax. You know as well as I do, Mr. Speaker, that the paperwork will not be significant. It will be just one 8 1/2 by 11-inch sheet the company will have to complete once a month. Monthly sales minus monthly purchases, and the difference multiplied by 9 per cent, and that amount is sent to us here at the federal government. Nine million Canadians will receive a cheque in December 1990. Before the goods and services tax is even in place, nine million Canadians will have received a cheque. That is not what
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I would call a regressive consumer tax system but rather a just and fair system.
Moreover, we will further reduce by 1 per cent the personal income tax of Canadians who are in the middle tax bracket.
Then, Mr. Speaker, we will have an excellent tax system. And I don't think we should collect a green tax because if we do start with the environment, we will have to follow through with transport, fisheries, and so on. Departments have competent people to manage their budget, and we should give them the money they need to improve the quality of life for Canadians.
To conclude, as I said earlier, Mr. Speaker, I am against the spirit and the letter of that motion.


James Ross Fulton: I wonder if the hon. member could rise and give the House a single example of a green tax.


Pierre H. Vincent: Either I did not get the point raised by my hon. friend opposite, Mr. Speaker, or he failed to get the gist of my remarks. What I said is that our tax system and environment minister are both excellent. Let us keep our tax system and the environmental separate, for if we adopt today the principle of this so-called "green" tax system, we might be faced again with the same problem tomorrow and the day after. Departments exist to look after the problems of this country. Each department has its own framework and professionals. Again, for my hon. colleague's information, I will remind him of the so-called scientific research tax credit scheme which was supposed to promote scientific research in Canada. Did it promote scientific research in this country? No, but there were people who managed to make a bundle at the expense of Canadian taxpayers. It did not help scientific research one little bit. What we are saying is that the Department of Finance exists to implement the income tax and sales tax legislation for the purpose of collecting money for the federal treasury. Then, the federal government is responsible for distributing this wealth among Canadians men and women, through the various depart-
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ments which apply the programs set up and adopted by the House. That is the point, and not through a tax system.
The purpose of the income tax legislation is to collect money, the Department of Environment exists to improve the quality of life for all Canadians in every part of this country. That is the difference we should recognize, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments are now terminated. Debate, with the hon. member for Ottawa West.


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, I heard comments in this House that I often hear when we want to introduce social and economic changes and change for the better of our world. The question is asked: what are we doing with our young people? Our young people are not the ones who have messed up the world. We are. Let us take the responsibility for that and let us take responsibility for our ongoing contribution, not only for the pollution of our environment and our water and the world, but for the rapid depletion of the world's resources.
I spent a number of years before I entered this Chamber in municipal governments, including chairing the committee that was responsible for dealing with sewers, garbage and river pollution, among other things. I guess I have a very down-to-earth view of some of the solutions that we need to pursue. It is very clear to me that we need to pursue intergovernmental solutions, not all at one level and not in isolation.
We need to recognize that municipalities are way ahead of us. We need to recognize that the people of Canada are way ahead of us as governments, as politicians and as leaders.
I want to address a number of areas in which we are not meeting our responsibilities or obligations. Every time there is a measure that is retrograde and counterproductive it is blamed on taxes. We are told we have to

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cut the public service because taxes are too high or our deficit is too high.
What are we cutting? In many cases we are cutting the solutions to our problems. Rather than solving problems, we are creating new ones. We have done that by cutting millions of dollars out of environmental programs at the National Research Council. The solutions to the world's problems and, to a large extent, our economic problems are in that research. Energy research within the federal government departments has been cut. There have been cuts to programs that lead people to reduce their energy consumption and ultimately reduce costs to all of us.
We fail to take a comprehensive approach. Let me suggest another way of looking at how we spend our dollars. In the ministry of the environment alone, the purchases of vehicles this fiscal year jumped by some $3 million, nearly a third over last year. That is one of the smallest departments.
How many millions of dollars are we spending on those vehicles? How are we using that purchasing power to exercise leadership in demanding the kinds of vehicles for government use that will help deal with the problem of global warming? The government has failed to use its economic power to demand the kinds of products in a variety of fields.
Through that leadership, in fact, we could be providing the incentive to industry to develop products that not only do less damage to the environment but delete less of the world's resources.
If we look at all levels of government, the power of that purchasing ability is multiplied severalfold. Municipal governments across this country spend 25 per cent more than the federal government on the purchase of goods and services and slightly less than the provincial governments. We as governments can triple our influence simply by what products we choose to purchase and what criteria we put on the product we buy. We can have a triple whammy effect on what kinds of products are produced and therefore available to the public.
I am not tremendously optimistic that there will be that kind of comprehensive approach because in the last year, and as a member of the environment committee, I have seen very little indication that there is any high level of understanding.
Let us not talk about educating the public. They are educated far beyond us in terms of what they are doing, what they are prepared to do and what they are prepared to spend. If anything, they need information from government on how to carry out the motivation that they already have.
As I say, I am not optimistic. I listened with a great deal of concern to the debate in this House when one of my colleagues proposed that the Ministry of Industry, Science and Technology should include in its mandate responsibility for sustainable development. The minister dismissed it as basically hearts, flowers and music, something nice to have, but can live without. What does that have to do with the economy? Anybody who understands the principle of sustainable development understands that if we do not change the way we run our economy and do not develop economically in a way of our resources, we will have no resources on which to prosper.
I see the same approach in transportation. I see the Minister of Transportation who stands up in this House day after day in Question Period and says: "I can't afford to be concerned about the environment." If that is the government's attitude about its own operations and its own activities, I cannot believe that this is a government that is going to say to industrial polluters, "It is going to cost you but you are going to have to clean up."
We see it in department after department. The Minister of the Environment says that he is not responsible for environmental matters, that it is the responsibility of every department. When a department is challenged on its responsibilities for environmental matters within its area of operation it states that it is the responsibility of the Minister of the Environment. The other side of the House is going to have to get its act together or the world is going to fall apart.
I want to talk about the issue of intergovernmental co-operation. We have an ideal opportunity in this capital city of Canada to demonstrate how intergovernmental co-operation can work to ensure that transportation policies, land use policies, parks policies, activities of government are carried out not only in a way which does not damage the environment but would improve the quality of our environment and diminish our use of resources.

We have in this region three levels of government. Two provincial governments control what happens on both sides of the river. There are numerous municipal governments and the federal government. The federal government controls one third of the land mass in the national capital region and 30 per cent of the employment. Such influence on how a community develops gives one the power to work with the other levels of government to make substantial changes and demonstrate through our own national capital region how other cities in Canada and, indeed, around the world can become energy-conscious communities. Yet, not a 10-minute walk from Parliament Hill, the National Capital Commission is planning the development of the last major open space in the heart of this region. It is not paying attention to principles of sustainable development. It is designing a standard community in standard ways.
One of my colleagues has a private members' motion, which I certainly hope comes to the floor of this House, proposing that the NCC take the leadership and initiative to become responsible to co-ordinate and co-operate with an effort to use the nation's capital as a demonstration project for environmentally sustainable urban living.
It is not always a question of spending money. We know from a number of experiences and experiments and some great successes in the private sector that doing things in on environmentally sound way can be cheaper, less wasteful and less harmful to the environment. I wonder how many members of the House have Research Council report. The council co-ordinates grants and identifies environmental technology as one of the key economic opportunities for Canada in the future. Here is a marvellous opportunity to not only prosper economically but to contribute to the future survival of the world. What is the government doing to seize that opportunity to develop those technologies? It is cutting back on research and development. It is cutting back on our scientific institution such as the National Research Council. It is fragmenting programs like our space program by having a space agency in Montreal and a centre of excellence for space in Calgary.
We are too small an economy for that kind of fragmentation. We do not yet have the critical mass that we can afford to scatter programs like that here and there across
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the country. That is what happens when science and research is treated like a political goody to be handed out wherever you need a few more votes or need to reward a friend. It is time for all of us to make a commitment to exercise leadership as politicians to make it clear that this is of national priority not only in terms of words but in terms of where our dollars are spent and how our decisions are made.
It is time for leadership, not by telling Canadians the severity of the problem, what they should be doing about it, but by seeing how we, as the largest employer in this country and controlling virtually any kind of a process that is operated in industry, can we set the example. How can we use our purchasing power and our role as employer to demonstrate to other Canadians that creating a better world is a sound economical policy? We have never even addressed how present tax policy hinders or helps achieving environmental objectives. To refuse to even begin to address that issue is truly foolhardy.
In the area of scientific research there are all kinds of tax credits and tax write-offs, as well as in the area of scientific development. Are these incentives achieving the objectives with respect to the environment and the use of resources that we want to achieve? Is it not time to begin that examination knowing that tax policy and economic factors are a key initiative to people, either to act positively of negatively?
I encourage members to adopt this motion. Above all, whether or not the motion is adopted, I encourage the government to take seriously the debate in the House this afternoon and have a serious look at how its tax policies affect the environment.


Jim Jordan: Mr. Speaker, I have a question and a comment. I wish to compliment my colleague for her excellent speech. Maybe I am paraphrasing a bit but the Minister of the Environment said something to the effect that he did not want to use a tax or a lack of a tax to dictate environmental policy.
Sometimes I think we do need motivators. It is not a perfect world that we are living in, and when profit is the motive, sometimes people will do things out of character, very unusual things perhaps with little or no regard for the final results. I look upon the "green tax" as a motivator to try and clean up the environment. What would be so wrong with having a tax on those things which, in their final stages, are left to society to clean up? Would this not be a way of having those who have

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been responsible for the contaminants pay for the cleaning up of the contaminants?
If we were in the ideal situation we would not need that motivator. We would think enough of our environment that we would not dare touch this or we would make sure that that species survived. But that is not the world we live in. Would it be so wrong then, to put the responsibility for cleaning up the environment in the laps of those who are responsible for contaminating it in the first place?


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker,I thank my colleague for the question. Obviously, I do not believe there is anything wrong with that. In fact, I think it is absolutely essential.
The government already has tax policies that either encourage or discourage certain things. The very minimum that needs to be done is to look at the existing tax policy and see to what extent it discourages. I think we all have to recognize that what we pay for in goods and services is only a small part of the real cost of those goods and services. Obviously we are reaching the stage where we all have to be responsible for our own pollution, and that includes financial responsibility.
I trust we will never again see a situation where we are shipping off our poisons and our pollutants, risking the pollution of the oceans of the world, just to get them out of our backyard. Until there is a responsibility for us to clean up, to treat, or to destroy whatever we produce in the way of waste, there will be no responsibility for our actions. I personally believe it goes far beyond simply taxing the undesirable by-products of production. I think it requires more of an incentive process. For the minister to say that he is not prepared to use the tax system to help clean up the environment, when elements of the tax system already encourage the damaging of the environment, is absolute nonsense.


Kenneth Albert James: Mr. Speaker, through you, to the member for Ottawa West, I want to express my concern and interest about the environment. I live adjacent to the Great Lakes and even though someone earlier made a fairly disparaging comment about the Great Lakes, they
are still beautiful and wonderful, but we do need to be very careful about what we do around them.
I am also especially interested in the municipalities that are around the Great Lakes or on our rivers and lakes. Earlier, a colleague of the member opposite from the immediate Ottawa area expressed great concern about how the rivers in the immediate area have been polluted, how the beaches cannot be used and so on. I relate that with the member saying that she was on a municipal council, it appears, and also headed up an important committee that was certainly connected with the environment.
So I would be interested to know, as a guide for all of us to follow, what percentage of the levies were paid by the taxpayer toward environmental concerns in her municipality, how that changed while she was there, and how she laid on an environmental tax. Because that seems to be what is being promoted I would be interested in that. It does not appear that it is working so well if, in the immediate Ottawa area, we still have this ever polluting of our river that certainly has been contributed to by the municipalities in the area, comments in that regard.


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, I might say that one of the contributors to pollution in the Ottawa River is the Agriculture Canada research station upstream from Britannia Beach.
I am pleased to say that while I was on council I did initiate a major study of the Ottawa River designed precisely to identify what actions the municipalities could take. Some of that has been done. I understand there is ongoing work as a result.
We are into the issue of municipal infrastructure. As the member opposite is well aware, a number of programs in the past did assist municipalities with major sewer works and other works that contributed to environmental clean-up. They have the national and provincial associations of municipalities, an agreement by all environmental ministers or responsible ministers at the provincial level across the country, that that is one major initiative needing to be taken on a cost-shared basis. The municipalities are prepared to put in their bucks and the provinces are prepared to put in their bucks. It is only the federal government that has said no.
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I think it is worth-while pointing out that that kind of work is Government of Canada can put its money.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments are now terminated.
On debate, the hon. member for Fredericton-York- Sunbury.


Mr.   J.W. Bud Bird@Fredericton-York-Sunbury: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak in this debate this afternoon as a member of the Standing Committee on the Environment and as a supporter of the goods and services tax measure-as well.
The hon. member for Skeena has very cleverly combined the considerations of the environment and the taxation issue in a very interesting motion, one which I cannot support, but one which I nonetheless appreciate for the essence of its provocation and for the attention and emphasis which it brings both to the environment and to the tax issue.
Let me say that I support the environmental concerns of the hon. member for Skeena. I acknowledge and pay respect to his considerable knowledge about things environmental, and I share his concerns and his environmental goals but I must say that I differ considerably on how to accomplish and pay for the achievement of those goals.
On October 23, the hon. Minister of the Environment addressed the United Nations and said that we can speak to the environmental problem in rather simple ways. We can either move to develop sustainable economic and social practices or we can leave the problems to our children and hope that they are capable of solutions that escape us.
If the choice can be stated that simply, it does not mean a quick-fix single panacea like a green tax system, or some other socialist-oriented, profit-motive that I would fail to understand, but a comprehensive framework for action, a comprehensive strategy, and a financial strategy designed to provide the wherewithal by which government can carry out not just its environmental program but its entire program from which we may ultimately be able to initiate some environmentally sensitive taxation issues. The idea is not all bad. Were it not for the fact that the hon. member would move the entire federal government taxation structure in the direction of the environment, I think that some of his ideas certainly bear watching although I am not sure they would bear scrutiny.
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In any event, Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw your atention to the comprehensive strategy that the government addressed in the Throne Speech in April, in which it talked about five significant directions. One direction was financial integrity, solvency and fulfilling our fiscal responsibility to future generations. I believe that the goods and services tax is a progressive tax, one that raises funds with the growth of our economy, with the growth and spending of our nation, and that we are addressing financial integrity.
The second direction is economic growth, the creation of jobs, regional development, and I think we are addressing that.
A third strategic direction is national unity, one proud country. We are addressing that in a number of ways.
The fourth is the environmental imperative, the search for sustainable development in almost all that we do. We are certainly addressing that today. This motion and its emphasis in those directions is valuable for debate in this House.
Lastly, the Throne Speech spoke about a caring and compassionate society. I think that the goods and services tax speaks to that subject. The goods and services tax is not just a new source of revenue. The goods and services tax is an effort to change the burden of taxation, to shift the emphasis from those who are unable to pay to those who are better able to pay. The goods and services tax does that in a number of ways. It does it by eliminating and maintaining the elimination of taxation on food. It does it by providing a goods and services tax credit to low-income families. It does it be integrating effectively with the income tax system. It does it by replacing the federal sales tax which is a very bad tax and which has inhibited many of the progressive measures we would like to take, including those in the environment. The goods and services tax is an instrument of social change, an instrument of shifting the burden of financial support of government administration and government efforts from those at the low-income levels to those who are able to pay. I submit that the goods and services tax is an essential instrument of both financial responsibility and financial fairness.
When we address the environment in Canada, we have to think about some of the geographic facts, some of the economic facts and some of the demographic facts of our nation. For example, one in three Canadian workers is employed directly or indirectly in resource based activities. These activities count for one half of our export

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earnings. That is not an area that we can deal with frivolously in a quick fix green tax approach.
Canada has one of the world's longest coastlines, I guess the world's longest coastline of about 29,000 kilometers. We cannot deal with that on a user-pay, quick-fix green tax basis. Canadians are responsible for nearly 8 per cent .of the world's total volume of fresh water lakes. We cannot administer those on a quick-fix green tax basis.
Our country has some of the planet's largest stretches of productive farmlands and forests, and we cannot manage those on a quick-fix green tax basis. Beyond any kind of economic ties, the quality and diversity of Canada's natural resources, our parks, our mountains, our forests, our wheat fields, our rugged coastlines, undeniably shape our self-identity, our sense of Cana-dianism and shape our thoughts about how the rest of the world thinks of us. We certainly cannot address our statement of nationhood on one quick-fix green tax basis.
In light of those considerations, it is hardly surprising that Canada was an early and strong supporter of the Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development. Indeed, it is fair to say that the Brundtland commission served as a catalyst for changes that were already under way in Canada.
I have invited the hon. member for Skeena a couple of times now to visit New Brunswick and to get New Brunswick forestry legislation straight in his mind. He would discover that it, conceived in the early years of this decade, was moving in the direction of sustainable development. We are going to get him down there some day soon and set him straight. We may even get him to change his political loyalties, because sooner or later, he is going to realize that if he really wants to participate in progress in this country, he is going to have to join another team.
Canada has embraced the sustainable development credo as much as any other nation. We are working in all sectors to help put that philosophy into practice, and Canada's actions have come in a number of areas. We have established a national round table on environment and the economy, chaired by Dr. David Johnson, principal of McGill University. We have passed a new Environmental Protection Act. We will be introducing new
legislation to protect our water resources and for stricter control of toxic chemicals. Under this government's environmental choices program, we are providing seals of approval to products so that the consumer can make the right environmental choice. In 1988, this government made major amendments to the National Parks Act and moved to establish six new national parks.
All of these actions and more illustrate the movement from the old environmental agenda to the new one. The development of a comprehensive environmental agenda does not involve a single initiative. It cannot be solved by a single quick-fix green tax but by a series of purposeful steps of which the tax reform which we are presently debating and introducing in this country is a major pillar. From being simply a regulator, we must become a leader.
From simply treating symptoms, we must deal with the causes and the solutions. From merely acting in isolation, we must build partnerships.
Regulation remains an important element of our environmental policy tool kit, and Canada has recently adopted a new environmental law, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Nevertheless, Canadians also recognize that regulation alone will not achieve sustainable development. Governments, industry, communities, and individuals must demonstrate leadership within their own spheres of influence.
This government has moved quickly to establish innovative decision-making approaches that institutionalize sustainable development and make it part of the every day process. Some of those recent developments include a new federal cabinet structure that gives prominence to the environment, a new environment committee of cabinet that has been established to provide leadership in ensuring that all federal policies and programs take environmental factors into consideration.
The Standing Committee on the Environment, of which members of all parties in this House participate, has demonstrated leadership in the care it has taken to select its program for a study and a report on atmospheric pollution in the context of sustainable development with respect to global warming. A federal environmental assessment review process has been established which will have a legislative underpinning, a state of the environment reporting system, development of conservation strategies in the areas of waterfowl habitat and

wetland preservation, fish habitat maintenance, and efforts in the forestry sector.
The second major step in meeting the new agenda is shifting from treating symptoms to dealing with root causes and solutions. No one can ignore, for example, accidents or spills when they occur. Yet the cliche is true, it is cheaper to prevent than to clean up. Sustainable development imposes this attitude as a necessary condition.
The third element is the shift from acting in isolation to building partnerships. The government has created round tables on the environment and the economy to bring these two important decision-making perspectives together among government, industry, labour, science, and citizen groups. They are to serve as permanent mechanisms for exchanging concerns, finding areas of common ground and seeking approaches that are understood and respected by all sides.
Canadians are building partnerships in other forums as well. Industry and consumer groups are co-operating to establish an environmentally friendly products labelling system so that consumers can make informed choices in their purchases. Environmental interest groups are working with governments to increase public awareness about acid rain and other environmental problems such as the ozone layer and global warming.
These domestic initiatives will help establish sustainable development in Canada. The actions in effect will help put our own house in order. The government is dedicated to taking clear and decisive leadership on the environment in partnership with all Canadians. It has taken mankind a great deal of its history to realize that we the people are really the cause of the ecological crisis of unprecedented proportions which we are now facing. We in this government have decided to act.
In the Speech from the Throne, we committed ourselves to a vision of a nation living in harmony with the environment and one that will co-operate with other nations to establish and achieve sustainable development
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on a global scale. This mission demands that all of our energies be directed toward that goal.
The key word is still development. We must create new capacity to feed our human populations which will double on this earth in the next 50 years. We must create new energy sources and new energy capability five times the present capacity, according to the Brundtland Commission, just to be able to create and sustain the development of our emerging population.
The aim of this House must be, as the previous speaker said, to rise in a non-partisan way above political posturing and to take real and constructive action. We have the opportunity to join peoples from all regions, young and old, men and women, in a common cause. We have among us the talents and the energies to demonstrate that we deserve the trust of future generations to protect and to preserve their interests. We must move beyond debates of simple answers to complex problems and get on with the development and the implementation of a comprehensive environmental agenda.
This motion, as well-intentioned as it may be in an environmental sense, is really an exercise in quick-fix simplicity, a user-pay guide to environmental sustainability. That, with respect, Mr. Speaker, simply will not work.
I will be voting against this motion.


Kenneth Albert James: Mr. Speaker, the fundamental objective of the tax system is to raise revenue, to finance the provision of a Public Service and to service the public debt. The tax system should be fair and efficient and it should not distort economic decisions in an undesirable direction.
This motion would have the House make major changes to the tax system, including the corporate income tax system, so that its fundamental objective would be to achieve a quite different goal. While it is a laudable goal, I would question whether the taxation system should be so changed. Rather, we should continue the process of tax reform initiated by the government in order to build a sound, reliable and fair tax system. Only then should consideration be given to using it to achieve goals such as that proposed in today's motion.

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The corporate tax system that existed when this government came to office in 1984 was seriously in need of overhaul. A host of special deductions, exemptions and credits had seriously eroded the tax base. Many of these incentives had been put in place for what would appear to be exemplary reasons; for example, job creation, economic growth and the expansion of research and development. But their existence forced tax rates to be increased to generate the necessary revenue.
Moreover, the results being achieved by the combination of generous incentives to direct corporate behaviour and high tax rates is well known to all members, including members of the opposition.
Many profitable corporations were non-taxpaying. Corporate tax revenues were low and there was little evidence that the measures were achieving the desired objectives. Numerous schemes to further reduce corporate taxes were being developed by aggressive tax planners seeking to get the most out of these measures. It is extremely useful to look at this experience and the results of the corporate tax reform when considering the wholesale introduction of tax incentives or penalties to achieve other eminently desirable objectives. Preservation of the environment is an objective, of course, which we all support.
As the Minister of Finance emphasized in his speech to the Commonwealth Finance Ministers meeting in September, the environment is an area where changes in policy are essential. This presents a great challenge to governments in Canada and elsewhere in the world. Managing changes in policies to achieve the best results with minimal adverse side effects are as important here as in other areas of economic management.
The corporate tax system is one part of the tax system where there has been substantial change and experimentation in recent decades. It is instructive to look at it as an example of the constraints that arise. As I noted, the corporate tax system which this government inherited was widely considered a failure. Substantial corporate resources were being used, not to create real economic benefits, but rather to generate tax benefits, and the objectives of growth and job creation were not being achieved.
Equally disturbing was the fact that the generosity of these special incentives led to their growing year after year at a faster rate than could possibly be used. Intricate mechanisms were designed to use losses against income from unrelated activities.
Faced with the situation the government made a fundamental choice. It did not adopt a quick-fix solution with an appealing name. It developed a careful analysis of the problems of the system and the direction and changes that should move the system.
Following the release and public response to a discussion paper in 1985 outlining this analysis, proposals for change were put forward as part of a tax reform. The changes were balanced in nature, recognizing the factors that bear on the system. Taxes were raised by some $1 billion annually from the corporate sector. Tax rates were designed to keep us internationally competitive. The base was broadened to reduce the list of profitable non-taxpaying firms. Perhaps most importantly, the system was redirected so that economic, not tax factors, were at the base of the corporate decisions.
The steps taken in line with this over-all strategy have extended well beyond tax reform itself and include measures taken throughout the government's mandate. The first step was the moratorium on scientific research tax credits, that prime example of a wasteful and ill-conceived incentive, albeit directed at an important objective, R and D.
Other steps include measures to prevent a variety of schemes to transfer tax losses from non-profitable corporations to profitable corporations; the reduction of the accelerated capital consumption allowance rates across a broad range of capital goods and industries; the elimination of the general investment tax credits which proved to be such a failure in producing real wealth; the reduction of a variety of special purpose investment tax credits; an increase in the rate of taxation of capital gains; the introduction of a corporate surtax; the introduction of put-in-use rules to limit the use of deductions where taxable income is not forthcoming; removal of inventory allowance; curtailment of the use of leasing to transfer benefits for accelerated capital consumption allowances from non-taxable entities to profitable firms; and a creditable tax on large deposit-taking institutions.

Most recently, a large corporations tax has been adopted to ensure that all large companies contribute to deficit reduction. This tax, of course, will add almost $1 billion dollars to the debt control effort.
These changes were fundamental and their benefit has been significant. We have a broader and more stable corporate tax base which ensures that corporations, and especially large corporations, pay their fair share. They had not done this in the past. In total, these measures add some $2 billion annually to corporate tax revenues and, just as important, it directs attention back to the basic economic fundamentals.
I have not listed these serious problems of the past and the major effort that has been made to correct them to imply that tax changes should not be used to support desirable objectives such as environmental policy. Rather, I have set them out to show what serious problems can arise if wholesale measures are adopted without recognition of the limits on the tax system's ability to deliver. Let us not revisit the mistakes of the 1970s in the name of environmental policy.
I appreciate the opportunity to bring some of this information to the attention of the House today as we consider the motion of the member opposite, which is about adding a new tax for environmental purposes.


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in favour of this motion. Since I was elected a number of people have asked me, of all the things that we deal with in Parliament, what really are the significant issues. I started off by thinking that when it really comes down to it, there are probably only three overriding issues that are particularly significant to the next generation. The first is peace and the question of disarmament, because without that, the next generation is not going to be here.
The second is the question of poverty and the distribution of wealth, not only within Canada, but on a world-wide basis. Canada is starting to create a whole class of poor people; 1.2 million children live in poverty. In the world, we have a severe problem of economic wealth on the one hand and abject poverty, starvation and death on the other.
The third issue is the question of the protection of the environment and sustainable development. In many ways, these issues are rolled up into one. Certainly peace and disarmament is going to mean less use of materials
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that are involved in the pollution of the environment and that will allow us to deal with the question of income and poverty. I think there is an interrelationship between those three issues.
The environment is one issue on which this government does not seem to be leading the way. There is far more acceptance in Canada of strong measures to deal with the question of the degradation of our environment than this government is prepared to deal with.
I just want to remind government members of what the Secretary General of the United Nations Commission said about this government. "The federal government is long on talk and short on action when it comes to cleaning up the environment. Canada is a country noted for leading with rhetoric and following others with action". Again that is what is being discussed here, when the people on the other side say that a green tax is not a feasible way to change the way we relate to our environment.
Let me talk a bit about the whole question of what is the purpose of taxation. Hon. members on the other side of the House indicate that the raising of taxes is simply a matter of raising money. If that were true, then I would think they would simply raise the money from those who could most afford it. They use tax for social policy. They have consciously shifted the tax burden from corporations to individual families. That is a social policy. That has nothing to do with raising revenue. This country has gone from corporations paying 50 per cent of the tax down to them paying 20 per cent.
The GST is as much a direct social policy as it is a method of raising money. There are many ways that the government could raise money and what it is choosing is a regressive tax.
One speaker said this afternoon that corporations only use pure economic considerations and that is what we should do in making decisions about taxation. Most big corporations do make pure economic decisions, and if they can get away with polluting because it is simply cheaper, they will do so. There are many large corporations, including Cominco, that consider fines almost like a licence to pollute, simply because it is less expensive than putting in proper scrubbing or air pollution equipment.

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In this country, we have allowed the companies to make the economic decisions that are best for them, and we pick up half the costs. For example, do we bill McDonald's for disposing of all their garbage? The cost to the whole community for cleaning up pollution, dealing with garbage and a deteriorating environment is very, very expensive. Yet we have told companies that we will pick up that cost so they can become profitable. The total community is subsidizing that industry through taxation.
The other thing I hear a lot about from government members is the discussion about reducing the deficit and the debt. I think it is time someone went back to basic business school and started looking at what is involved with debt. Debts include assets. This government has reduced a lot of its deficit by getting rid of some of its best assets like Air Canada. It has given away our assets.
When one starts looking at debts, one has to look at accounts payable. Any corporation at the end of the year has to take into consideration accounts payable. What we have done as a society is create an accounts payable for our children in environmental damage that is horrendous. Right now, in order to allow a big corporation to make a little bit more profit today, we are transferring the debt to our children. I think it is time that some of the people over there not only learn a little bit about the environment but learn a little bit about basic economics and how a balance sheet reads.
In Surrey we have a number of environmental problems. The whole question of the use of landfill as a dump has been very difficult for the Greater Vancouver Regional District to deal with.
In the last year, Surrey went into a recycling program. Initially people thought it might be done as cheaply as $4 per household. It has turned out to cost $15 per household. Let me tell you, most people are quite willing to pay an additional $15.
As they brought in the blue boxes, they were surprised at the extent of their use within the community. Eighty per cent of the households are now using the blue boxes. This has already meant a 16 per cent reduction in the use of the landfill, and that is only with part of the municipality participating.
Also, the volume of tonnage going into the blue boxes and being recycled is much greater than we had anticipated. In fact, in Surrey, out of the first 36,000 homes, we
are collecting more recyclable materials than is now being collected from 67,000 homes in Edmonton.
We are now seeing that individuals are willing to change their behaviour to become environmentally responsible and are also willing, at the local level, to pick up some of the costs. They are quite prepared to pay through their municipal taxes additional money to allow recycling.
The government does not seem to realize that Canadians are quite prepared to pay through a tax system in order to bring about environmental clean-up. I refer to a survey which showed that two-thirds of Canadians would accept a five cent a litre pollution tax on gasoline if the money would be turned back into air pollution control. Six out of ten Canadians would pay 10 per cent on energy consumption in order to promote conservation. Two-thirds of Canadians would accept a 50 per cent increase in the cost of garbage collecting, not just a minor increase, but 50 per cent, if there was a recycling program involved.
The Canadian public is more than willing to start to look at not only their individual behaviour but their tax base as it relates to the environment. We now have to bring in a green tax that will do two or three specific things, particularly as it relates to large corporations. It will provide us with some revenue that would allow us to monitor environmental impact. It would provide us with some funds for cleaning up the environment. It would also allow us funds for research because the new technologies are what we are going to have to develop if we are going to get control over our environment.
Many of the processes we are now using simply are not environmentally sound, but there is no incentive for corporations to do new research if they can get away with using the old technology. We need an environmentally sound green tax that would collect money so we could do things like monitor, clean up and research. It would also give an incentive to users and corporations so it would be more to their economic advantage to change their methods of production and to change their ways of interacting with the environment.
I would like to talk briefly about one of the things that we have to do in the area of carbon fuels. That is one of the major areas where, if there was motivation, government leadership and a proper green tax, we could reduce our carbon fuel use by at least 50 per cent. This would have a significant impact on global warming and on the
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quality of air plus on the reduction of a limited resource, our fossil fuels.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I want to say how much I appreciate your recognizing me today to speak on what is a very historic debate. I think that we will look back in years hence and say that this was the day that the House of Commons really began addressing the serious environmental and ecological issues facing not only the country but indeed the planet.
I am pleased to participate in today's debate sponsored by the hon. member for Skeena, the New Democratic Party's environment spokesperson, who moved that this House call upon the government to implement an ecologically sound green tax system.
We sometimes ask what the point of the tax system is, and I think it is fundamentally twofold. One is naturally to obtain revenues for the federal government to enable it to serve the people of Canada in a variety of ways. But the tax system also does other things. It certainly shapes consumer demand, and that is what we are talking about to a certain extent today.
We are most familiar, in times past, with what we called the sin taxes. We would jack up the prices on beer, wine, spirits, and cigarettes, presumably not only to generate revenue but also to encourage people not to use these sin products with the assumption that if the price is high enough people will have second thoughts and realize that not only are these products bad for their health, they are also very expensive.
We also encourage corporate behaviour. We, as a matter of fact, lose billions of dollars each year through our tax system as we encourage companies to locate in certain areas, to invest in certain types of activities, to introduce new plants and equipment, and to conduct various research and development programs. We use the tax system not only to shape consumer demand but also to shape corporate behaviour.
In that respect my hon. friend from Skeena has introduced to us now an approach to use our tax system to encourage not only consumers, but corporations as well, to behave in ways that are environmentally friendly.
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He has referred to the green tax system or the GTS as opposed to the GST, the goods and services tax, which my hon. colleague has pointed out adequately was veiy regressive not only in terms of taxing the lower income people at essentially a much higher rate than the upper income earners but also in terms of the environment.
As my hon. friend from Skeena pointed out, the taxes on recycled paper are the same as on unrecycled paper, bicycles are taxed at the same rate as large automobiles, canoes are taxed at the same rate as luxury motor boats, and alternative energy is taxed at the same rate as fossil fuels. This simply shows that as a Parliament we do not distinguish in our tax system between those activities and those products that are environmentally friendly and those that are environmentally unfriendly. The green tax system would differentiate clearly between these types of products and their related behaviour.
I cannot help but bring to the House's attention the fact that Margaret Thatcher, who I suspect is no friend to the environment in many ways, saw the need to introduce a lower tax on unleaded gasoline. Within the year following that tax measure unleaded gasoline tripled its market share which of course resulted in health benefits for British children. Probably a lot of young children are alive today simply as a result of this one measure that encouraged people to use unleaded gasoline. I hate to think for a moment that Margaret Thatcher is ahead of us as a country in terms of dealing with environmental issues. That is why I am so pleased to participate in this historic debate today calling for a GTS, a green tax system, as opposed to the goods and services tax initiative.
I think it is important to recognize that we do not have years and years to deal with the environmental catastrophe that presently faces us. It is happening around us as we speak. There will be cataclysmic implications unless dramatic action is taken. To create a Department of the Environment and so on, to go out to have a look after a major spill has occurred or major toxic wastes has been dumped into a river system, to say "naughty, naughty", to slap somebody on the wrist and to impose a small fine is obviously an approach of the past tense. No longer can we afford to approach the challenges in this way.

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That is why this green tax system is so important, because it would reflect the environmental cost of manufacturing a product, for example. Such a tax system would reflect the cost to the environment of dumping toxic substances into lakes and rivers and the cost of dumping chemical waste down river banks and in landfill sites.
To look at something very specific to those of us from British Columbia, those forest companies which are investing in practices that result in sustainable development would be taxed at a different level than those corporations which are involved in practices that are obviously resulting in the deterioration, decline, and destruction of our forest resources. We will say to those companies that that type of corporate behaviour is unacceptable and consequently they will be taxed at a much higher rate than the company that is very environmentally sensitive and is conducting silviculture and reforestation practices at a very sophisticated level to ensure that the forest resource is maintained in perpetuity.
We will be able to reward, on the one hand, and say to those who simply ignore the environmental and ecological implications of their corporate behaviour that this is something that we are not going to accept and they will be paying taxes to compensate accordingly.
Obviously, the green tax system would be used to promote and encourage recycled products. Those manufacturers who use new resources, especially non-renewable resources, would be taxed for these while other manufacturers who use reused resources would benefit. This is one way that we can indicate how serious we are as a Parliament in encouraging those manufacturers that would be open to using recycled material.
Of course, this idea that we can recycle is not a new idea. After all, we do make it financially attractive so that certain companies will recycle copper, batteries, bottles and so on. But we need to extend this to a much greater extent to encourage those firms which it will actually in most cases cost more money to participate in using recycled material. They can be compensated for those additional costs at least in the beginning, by a revised tax system. In that way we will be encouraging those environmentally and ecologically sensitive manufactures.
Under a green tax system styrofoam egg cartons would have an extra tax to reflect the waste that is created in the manufacturing of styrofoam, paid for by the manufacturer, as well as the cost of safely disposing them, which is now paid by the consumer. Again the tax system would be modified so that the users of styrofoam, the manufacturers of styrofoam products and so on, would again be paying a different tax from those who are using products that are much environmentally sound.
I must say that I do not feel comfortable making that statement knowing that in our own lobbies here on Parliament Hill and in the restaurants we are drinking beverages from styrofoam cups. While we speak today we ought to be cleaning up, in our own lobby, to indicate at least some sensitivity even here.
Sticking to the egg carton example, egg cartons that a manufacturer would make out of recycled pulp would be tax exempt or would be taxed at a significantly lower level. Or, perhaps an incentive could be built into the corporate tax system that would require them to use these types of these recycled materials.
We can refer of course to the need to have a carbon tax, recognizing that carbon emissions are very serious polluters in many ways. Not only are the carbon emissions contributing to the greenhouse effect, but carbon emissions combine with sunlight to produce ground level ozone which has serious implications and impact on the health of Canadians. A carbon tax would recognize the heavy cost to the environment of burning fossil fuels. Such a tax would encourage energy conservation and raise revenues for research and development of alternative energy sources.
When we look at what other countries do we see that we are quickly falling behind countries that already have modified their tax systems to fend off the impending global catastrophe. Sweden taxes the active ingredients in pesticides and fertilizers and batteries containing mercury and cadmium. Italy taxes plastic bags. Finland and Norway tax non-returnable containers. Japan, West Germany and Switzerland charge higher landing fees for large, noisy and polluting aircraft.
In our own country those people who choose a smaller fuel efficient car should be taxed on that vehicle at a much lower rate than those people who, for whatever reason, choose a large gas guzzling car, again contribut-
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ing much more in terms of environmental deterioration than the person driving a energy efficient vehicle.
One could go on and on in terms of the details that a green tax would incorporate.
I simply want to say that I feel, as I am sure do all the others who participated in this debate and the people who have listened to the debates, that today may be a turning point in that this is the first time such a discussion has occurred in Parliament in terms of using our tax system to motivate Canadians, to motivate the corporate sector to behave in different ways that would be more in tune with a clean environment.
As I say, we do not have ten years to work this out. We do not have five years to discuss this matter. We must move with haste and we must encourage people, not only in Parliament but beyond, to do what we can together to ensure that such a tax system is implemented as quickly as possible.
I give great credit to my hon. colleague for Skeena for initiating the discussion today and introducing a lot of us to the possibility of a green tax system.


Mr. Whittaker:: Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to thank my colleagues for the debate on this topic. I think it is a legitimate topic. It is very topical, if you will; with the times.
I would also like to say what a great opportunity this is for Canadians to look at the option of taxing in the area of environmentally unsound products. I would like to address my question to my friend in the area of agriculture. Within the Similkameen Valley in particular we have what is euphemistically called organic farming. It, of course, uses no pesticides, no herbicides, and no chemically produced fertilizers.
In an area in the Okanagan and throughout the Similkameen Valley where a lot of those products have been used over a good number of years in the agricultural community, we have high levels of phosphates in our water systems and we are in the process of looking at methods of cleaning it up.
It seems to me that the area of organic farming is an area that should be looked at. Does my colleague see a green tax as a way of encouraging research in the area of
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organic farming and, in fact, encouraging farming methods that will be environmentally friendly?


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my hon. friend's very thoughtful question. I must say that he has touched an area that a lot of us have spent a lot of time thinking about in the last little while, that is, how to encourage the use of organically grown food that is pesticide-free in terms of residue.
I think it is fair to say that at the moment, unfortunately, those foods that are most ecologically sound often cost more because of the way they are grown and the intensive labour involved and so on. I think this green tax provides us with an incredible opportunity to send a very clear signal to those firms, large or small, and those individuals who are presently involved in organic food production, to give them encouragement and provide a tax system that would encourage the development of organic food production and, quite the contrary, increase taxes on those foods that are saturated with herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers of one kind or another.
That is exactly what the consuming public is saying. It is prepared to pay a slightly higher cost, but I think we can do our role by changing our tax system to give all the encouragement possible to develop organic food free of pesticide residues.
I appreciate the comments of my hon. friend who represents part of the Okanagan Valley because I know in his constituency there are a number of individuals who are actively involved. If there is some way we could provide them with encouragement, that would be very satisfying indeed for all of us.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being 5.45 p.m., it it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the Business of Supply pursuant to Standing Order 81(14).
Accordingly the question is on the motion of the hon. member for Skeena.
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.

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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 nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Call in the members.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the motion lost.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to ask the government House leader what the business for tomorrow will be. Has he any idea what bills will be called tomorrow morning?


Mr. Lewis:: Mr. Speaker, earlier this afternoon I had the opportunity, which perhaps my hon. friend does not have, to communicate with his House leader. It was agreed that we would call Bill C-38, legislation dealing with the Federal Courts Act, followed by the forestry legislation at third reading. On Thursday, we will call Bill C-21, the amendments to the Unemployment Insurance Act. It will be the first day of third reading.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I attended that meeting. I asked the question so that all members of this House will
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know what is going on and so that they will know that there are no secret meetings.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Larry Schneider: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. While at a committee meeting in Room 536 of the Wellington Building we noticed, thanks to a reminder from someone with the Clerk's office, that the time was
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pressing on. The time was five minutes to six o'clock and the bells calling us to vote had not sounded. I wanted to bring that to your attention.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being 6.15 p.m., this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.15 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Wednesday, November 1, 1989