1989-11-21

Ms. Catherine Callbeck (Malpeque):: Mr. Speaker, November 19 to 25 is Drug Awareness Week. To this end the Government of Prince Edward Island is working with schools, churches and other community organizations to promote the theme "Keep your dreams alive".
Through the media, classroom presentations, church bulletins and even through a one-act play people in my province are discussing a problem that affects many of its citizens.
We are all aware of the effects that alcohol and drug abuse have on the user, the user's family and the community as a whole. I hope and expect that the sincere and determined efforts being made in my province this week will increase the awareness of the dangers of drug abuse and contribute to an improved quality of life for all Islanders.


COLLEGE WEEK
Mr. Marcel R. Tremblay (Quebec-Est):: Mr. Speaker, since this is Colleges Week, 1989, I invite all my colleagues in the House to join me in paying tribute to those who work in college education, throughout Canada.
Courses given at the college level prepare our youth for university education and help them better choose the field of studies and the career that interest them.
CEGEPs and other college-level institutions also train our skilled labour, an essential element of our country's human resources.
Across Canada, more and more adults are registered for college courses. Colleges therefore play a key role in continuing education, especially in labour force retraining and the ongoing adjustment of workers to new technologies.
In short, colleges and vocational training institutes are an essential link in our education systems and a vital asset for a strong and dynamic economy.


Mr. Dave Worthy (Cariboo-Chilcotin):: Mr. Speaker, it is not that frequent that we in Canada can proudly announce world champions. It is even less frequent that I can do it for the Cariboo-Chilcotin.
Today, it gives me great pleasure to announce that the Canadian arm wrestling team consisting of both men and women have returned victorious with the over-all title from the world arm wrestling championships in Athens, Greece.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Dave Worthy: It gives me even greater pleasure to announce that for the second year in a row Mike Kadar, a resident of Nimpo Lake in my constituency, has been crowned world champion in the heavyweight class. Last year, Mr. Kadar proved he had the world's strongest right arm when he went undefeated in the world championships in Sweden. This year, in competition with the world's most powerful men, he reconfirmed his supremacy.
Arm wrestling is not a fancy or expensive sport. It has, however, ancient roots and world-wide popularity. I think the residents of Nimpo Lake as well as all of Canada should be proud of Mr. Mike Kadar.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: The only thing I can add to that is that I know Nimpo Lake very well.


EL SALVADOR
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg Transcona):: Mr. Speaker, I am sure I speak for all members of the House when I express relief that Karen Ridd from Winnipeg, someone who is working in El Salvador with Peace Brigades International, was released yesterday by the Treasury Police who had taken her into custody.
True to the spirit of the work of Peace Brigades International, e noticed that Karen refused to be released unless the Colombian woman who had been arrested with her was also released.
The work of people like Karen and Peace Brigades International, people who go to Central America to provide an escort service which is designed to protect Salvadorans who may be under threat of death or kidnapping, is truly in the spirit of Canada's peacekeeping role. These are people who are real peacekeepers, who put themselves, their bodies, between the victimized and the oppressors, in this case the Cristianni government.
I think it is about time the Canadian Government showed the courage of some of its citizens like Karen Ridd in El Salvador and put itself, diplomatically, politically and economically between the United States, its puppet regime in El Salvador, and the people of El Salvador.


TRIBUTE TO JEAN-CLAUDE MALEPART
Mr. Guy St-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, today I wish to pay a final tribute to our colleague and friend, Jean-Claude Malepart, whose death is a grievous loss for us all.
An outstanding Member of Parliament, Jean-Claude Malepart not only made his mark on Canadian politics but also left us with memories of a sensitive, fiery and determined man. With his sense of duty and justice and his courage to fight to the end for the causes he cared about for the good of his fellow citizens, he leaves an example of a model parliamentarian for all those who seek to excel.
Mr. Speaker, I wish to respectfully salute Jean-Claude, who lives on in my heart, with admiration and affection. Thank you, Jean-Claude!


EL SALVADOR
Mr. Dan Heap (Trinity-Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, while the death squads continue to roam the streets of El Salvador with the blessing of the right wing military government, Canada continues to deport people to that country. In effect, this government is upholding the U.S. policy of aggression in El Salvador. Thirteen El Salvadorans have been removed from Canada since January 1.
I call on the government to stop immediately this removal of Salvadoran citizens from Canada, to increase our embassy staff in that region, to speed up the processing of family class and other visas for those who wish to leave, and to use minister's permits to bring people out who are in danger of their lives, perhaps because their husbands or spouses are here in Canada as refugee claimants.
I call on the Minister of Employment and Immigration to use every effort she can to bring the endangered people out of El Salvador and not to send people back to El Salvador.


PUBLIC SERVICE ALLIANCE OF CANADA
Mr. Joe McGuire (Egmont):: Mr. Speaker, a strike by 2,200 crew members on federal government ships started in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia on November 11.
These union members work for the Coast Guard, Fisheries and Oceans, Public Works and National Defence. They have been without a contract for two years.
Treasury Board has been dragging its feet in negotiations, and now talks are not even taking place. There are a number of issues involved in this strike, but the most appalling is the wage disparity between east coast crews and west coast crews.
The federal government is supposed to have a policy of equal pay for equal work. RCMP and the Armed Forces are paid equally across the country according to rank. However, in this case, east coast workers receive an average of $2,500 less per year than their west coast counterparts. This is blatant discrimination against At-
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lantic Canadian workers. These people are being penalized financially for working on the east coast.
In addition, foreign fishing is rampant, the lobster season is opening in South West Nova without any patrols for enforcement, navigational aids are not being set, and if a freeze-up occurs many harbours will not be able to operate.
When will this government assume its responsibilities, give these eastern workers a fair settlement, and stop its policy of discriminating against Atlantic Canada?


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Francois Gerin (Megantic-Compton-Stans-tead):: Mr. Speaker, today, thousands of farm producers from Quebec and the rest of Canada travelled many miles and bravely withstood the cold to express their concerns about the future of agriculture in this country.
I will be out there with them, demonstrating in the presence of a number of Quebec Members.
They want a clear commitment from their federal representatives that we will stand firm during multilateral talks, especially at the next GATT round.
I have made an unqualified commitment, Mr. Speaker, in this respect.
Quebec producers demand adequate representation of Quebec on all Canadian teams at the multilateral talks. I could not agree more.
Today, on the anniversary of the day this Government was elected a second time, we must ensure that everything we do always reflects what we said in our election speeches and with our public commitments, and that is why, Mr. Speaker, I have made a solemn commitment, and I know the Quebec Caucus is solidly behind me.


PROPOSED GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Mr. Speaker, for a number of weeks now I have received calls and correspondence from a number of health care professionals who are really concerned about the goods and services tax and the impact it will have upon health care services in Canada.
For example, with respect to psychologists and their psychological services, they provide not only needed therapeutic services but useful and essential preventive health care. They are also a very cost-effective alternative to over-burdened psychiatric services. I am really concerned, as are they, that the imposition of the goods and services tax will affect our health services negatively.
There are also others, such as occupational therapists, who are in the same boat.

Mr. Speaker, in addition to this tax there are also the billions of dollars cut as a result of reduced transfer payments to the provinces, which will have a negative impact on health services in this country.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the minister responsible for the Federal Business Development Bank. It concerns loans made by the bank to the Lido strip joint in Hull.
Yesterday, the minister repeated in the House in response to a question that I asked that the Federal Business Development Bank conducted itself, since the Tories came to power, in a manner that was "irreproachable".
Given that less than four hours later Radio-Canada confirmed that the Federal Business Development Bank

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had made two loans to the Lido strip joint in Hull owned and operated by a friend of a former cabinet minister and totalling $1.3 million, does the minister still think that this conduct is irreproachable? Or does he not agree with me that government dollars should not be used to fund strip joints?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion and Minister of State for Science and Technology):: Mr. Speaker, of course it would not be appropriate for FBDB to have a policy of funding strip joints, and it does not. In fact, it has a policy that forbids the funding of such establishments.
A loan of $400,000 was made in 1986 to a company owning the land and buildings in which were operated, FBDB was told, a bar-disco. That loan was paid down to $250,000. In 1989, a request from one of the partners for an additional $650,000 was agreed to so that he could buy out his partners in this land and building.
There was an error made by the local officer in Hull not to investigate to determine that the land and building was home for a strip joint. There was an error made in the headquarters in approving the loan. Procedures are being looked at to remedy this situation to ensure that does not happen again.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, five years ago a minister was turfed out of cabinet for even going into a strip joint. Now the Government of Canada is building them.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Don Boudria: Have we not had enough of this nonsense?
I want to ask the minister across the way the following question.

Yesterday, a representative of the Federal Business Development Bank said, in referring to the strip joint loan: "It is not FBDB policy to finance this kind of establishment". If isn't bank policy, why did the bank make loans of this kind on two occasions? Especially in the case of the second loan, the bank should have know
it was a strip joint. That should be pretty obvious, I would think!


Harvie Andre: I guess the hon. member had his feigned indignation written out in advance, as well as his supplementary. He did not listen to my answer to his first question.
As I explained, a loan was made to a company which owned land and buildings in which FDBD believed operated a pub-disco. That loan was paid down to $250,000. Then there was another loan of $650,000, which brought it to $900,000, on a building in which headquarters believed was operating a pub-disco. It was a loan which had performed well, had been repaid, and it was renewed.
As I indicated in my answer to the first question, the officers in Hull ought to have informed headquarters as to the type of business it was. Had they done that, the loan would not have been approved. Procedures are being amended to ensure that does not happen again.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, that answer is not good enough for Canadians. Canadians want to know-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps the hon. member could put his question.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I want to ask a supplementary question to the acting minister responsible for the status of women. If such a minister is not available, then I direct it to the Deputy Prime Minister.
Ten days ago we found out that the best friend of the Prime Minister was sending legal bills to the Federal Business Development Bank. Now we discover that-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: It is not the place of the Speaker to in any way direct the selection of questions, but I am having some difficulty knowing how that question is supplemen-taiy to the questions that have been asked. Perhaps the hon. member could at least put his question.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, my final supplementary question is to the Deputy Prime Minister, in the absence of the minister responsible for the status of women.
November 21, 1989

Does the Deputy Prime Minister approve of this kind of loan? Does the government's representative for the status of women approve of this kind of loan to strip joints? Does this meet the criteria of improving the status of women in the country? Why does the government not clean up its act once and for all?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, for the third time, this type of loan is contrary to the policy of FBDB. It is clearly contrary to the policy of this government.
For the third time, an error was made.
That is three questions with the same answer.
Mr. Speaker, I will write it out and send it over. He can read it as well as hear it.


Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: Mr. Speaker, this morning, the Minister responsible for the Federal Business Developent Bank would have us believe that a mistake was made. Either he doesn't not know how the FBDB functions or he doesn't know what he is talking about. Mr. Speaker, the FBDB annually turns down thousands of loans because project proposals do not meet modem technological standards. Does this government see strip joints as the technology of the future? How can you say there was a mistake when the bank turns down any number of loans every year? Is there more to this?


Harvie Andre: I guess for the fifth time-


Some Hon. Members:: Fourth!


Harvie Andre: For the fourth time, Mr. Speaker, the loan should not have been recommended by the Hull office of FBDB. It should not have been approved by headquarters. An error was made.
It is contrary to the policy of FBDB for these types of loans.
Procedures are being investigated to see if changes can be made to help prevent this type of thing in the future.


Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, the minister for the fourth time is saying that he is giving us the same answer.


Some Hon. Members:: It is the same question.
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Alfonso Gagliano: Is the minister willing to say that he will start a full investigation to find out exactly what happened? This was not the first loan. What about the second loan? Every year the FBDB demands financial statements on any loans it gives. That means one officer could make a mistake. The second one made another mistake. Every year since 1985 mistakes have been made. We are almost in 1990. That makes five mistakes because every year they have to submit a financial statement.
Would you tell us exactly what happened and report to the House?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, for the fifth time, a loan was applied for by a company owning land and buildings in which FBDB believed a pub-disco was operating.
That loan was paid down and in 1989 an additional amount of $650,000 was added to it. Again, headquarters believed a pub-disco was operating in a building owned by the company to which the loan was made.
An error was made by the office in Hull in recommending the loan. An error was made in headquarters in approving the loan.
Procedures are being looked into to see what amendments would be appropriate to be sure that this does not happen in the future.


JUSTICE
Mr. John Brewin (Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Solicitor General.
I have just come from the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General at which the Commissioner of the RCMP was a witness. The Commissioner advised the committee that contrary to what he had said in May or June when he had appeared before the committee in respect of the Grise affair that the RCMP in fact made a decision last year during the election campaign to hold off the search warrants against Mr. Grise until two days after the election.
My question for the Solicitor General is this. When was he advised by the RCMP that in fact the decision had been to withhold the search warrants? If and when he received that information, why did he not come to this House immediately to advise this House of that information?

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Hon. Pierre Blais (Solicitor General of Canada and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: Mr. Speaker, I was informed of the statement made by the RCMP Commissioner. First of all, I want to say that this morning, the RCMP Commissioner emphasized that he had never been subject to political interference by anyone.


Mr. Robichaud:: Answer the question!


Pierre Blais: If it had happened, he would have condemned such interference in public, something he did not have to do because he was never subject to political interference.
As for the point raised by the hon. member, the Commissioner said he had been informed yesterday that the Chief Superintendent in Montreal had decided to delay the issuing of warrants in the case to which the hon. member is referring, and the Commissioner has promised to obtain all information in connection with this case. That is the only information I have for the time being, and I will let the RCMP, as is customary, clear up this case, and I think it is quite clear this was an administrative decision on the part of the RCMP and not a decision influenced in any way by politicians.


John F. Brewin: Mr. Speaker, it is in fact a matter of national importance as to the role of the RCMP in these political investigations. This issue has been before the country for a year now.
Again, to keep his record perfect, the Solicitor General failed to answer the question. The question was: when did he hear this information from the RCMP, and when he heard why did he not come to this House? If he is saying he simply heard this morning, then I suggest that the Minister has completely failed in his duty. This was an issue.


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, I think I made myself sufficiently clear in my first answer. I said that the RCMP Commissioner mentioned this morning, in the hon. member's presence, that he had been given the information last night and that he immediately informed the House committee this morning. So how could I have informed the House six months ago? The question makes no sense at all, Mr. Speaker. If I had any prior information, I would have informed the House accordingly, but the Commissioner himself was given the information last night, and he informed the people who were there that he would if the Hon. Member would care to listen, this may be of interest, and if you want your answer, here it is he informed the committee that he would explain, and that his information was that of the RCMP's employees in Montreal had made this decision, without any interference whatsoever. So I fail to see why this question should be raised. The Commissioner gave a very clear answer, and I think he repeatedly said, Mr. Speaker, and I think this is very important, that he had never been subject to any political interference whatsoever. He repeated this several times this morning.


Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby-Kingsway):: Mr. Speaker, this morning we heard that a political decision was made to delay issuing search warrants in the Grise case. Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Solicitor General. Last April, the RCMP Commissioner confirmed that it was a coincidence that very serious allegations by Phil Edmundston had been set aside until November 22, the day after the election. This morning, we heard that the superintendent of the Montreal section made the decision to delay issuing search warrants because of the election. My question is as follows: Could the Solicitor General confirm to the House today that there were no calls, from his office or from the Prime Minister's office in this case, because the Commissioner told us that he did not know whether Bernard Roy was involved or not, and he was going to ask.
Will the Deputy Prime Minister say to this House whether or not there were any calls from the Prime Minister's office to the criminal investigation division in Montreal? I may say, Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member has put his question. The minister may want to respond.


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, perhaps we should get back to the facts. What was brought to my attention only a few minutes ago is that the Commissioner mentioned that he had been informed of these facts last night and that he would go one step further and personally meet the RCMP officer who made this

November 21, 1989

decision in Montreal last November or October, I am not sure when, but in any event, he would make enquiries. He mentioned there was a possibility that the election may have played a part, but he did not say so categorically. That is what was said, and the text can be checked as well as the recording of this morning's testimony. In any event, those are the facts that were reported to me. And I think that, especially in the House of Commons, we should avoid making accusations of any kind against anyone. And to get back to the very emphatic statement made by the Commissioner, he said that he never, ever had been subject to political interference, and if that had been the case, he would immediately have taken steps to publicly condemn such interference something he had never had to do because there had never been any political interference whatsoever. That is what the Commissioner said this morning, and I think we can trust him.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Agriculture. Today, thousands and thousands of farmers from the UPA in Quebec and the OFA in Ontario are marching on Parliament Hill to protest the government's agricultural policy. They feel that they have been sold out in the free trade deal because their marketing boards have not been protected from imports. They feel that they were sold out because their incomes were capped at the GATT decision last spring. They feel that the government promised them open access to the U.S. market and they got a countervail on hogs.
I want to ask the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Agriculture when is the government going to start keeping the promises it made a year ago today in the last election and stop selling out Canadian farmers?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Privy Council and Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, other members of the House and I are always concerned about the welfare of agriculture. No one is more concerned than the members on this side
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of the House in the government and we have certainly demonstrated that.
The plain fact of the matter is that the hon. member is wrong on all three counts. He says the marketing boards have been undermined and dismantled and he is wrong in that regard. They have been protected under the Free Trade Agreement and they are being protected under the Free Trade Agreement. He says that we capped the incomes. That is wrong again, because as he knows the industrial price of milk rose by 39 cents per hectoliter. The hon. member says that we do not have market access to the United States. He is wrong again, because many, many agri-food industries are penetrating that market, are doing veiy well, are creating jobs in Canada and providing security to the agriculture community here in Canada.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, if the minister is all right and the farmers are all wrong, why are 12,000 of them marching on Parliament Hill today?
These thousands of farmers are concerned that the government is going to sell them out at the GATT council meeting on December 4 in Geneva, just as they were sold out in the free trade deal and with the capping of industrial milk. I want to ask the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture what assurance he can give these 12,000 farmers marching on Parliament Hill today that they will not be sold out in the GATT council meeting, and that the government will not accept the ruling of the GATT panel to allow a flow of cheap surplus dairy commodities into Canada from the U.S. What assurance can the minister give, in view of the fact that our chief partners, the Cairns Group and the United States, are both opposing our position with regard to marketing boards and with regard to import controls on dairy products?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons that there is concern within the agricultural community is that of the fear and the anxiety that is being perpetrated by people like the hon. member and other critics.


Maurice Brydon Foster: They are all wrong and you are all right?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the fact is that the position of the federal government taken by the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister for International Trade

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at the MTN negotiations is to strengthen and to clarify Article 11 so that we will not have the kind of decision that was brought down by GATT with respect to ice cream and yogurt.
That has been the position of the government for a long time, notwithstanding the fact that members opposite were suggesting that we should not tamper with Article 11. We are tampering with it to strengthen and clarify it so that it will preserve the supply managed underpinnings upon which the supply managed systems and the import controls obtain their power.
This government has provided unprecedented support to the agricultural industry. In the grain and oilseed sector alone, between the years 1984-85 and 1988-89, a total of $11,777 billion has been allocated in support of that sector.
Furthermore, in 1984-85, the support for the Canadian agri-food industry was something in the order of $4.6 billion. In 1987-88, that exceeded $8 billion, 75 per cent of which was provided for by the federal government. That is the kind of support this government is giving and that is the kind of support it will continue to give.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Maurice Brydon Foster: Twelve thousand farmers are wrong and you're right?


Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, if the Minister of Agriculture is right, why did the President of the Union des producteurs agricoles say:
The way Canada is trading away the future of our agriculture in
the GATT negotiations in Geneva is unacceptable-
Mr. Speaker, I ask the Minister how come only he is right and thousands of farmers are wrong.
Mr. Speaker, I ask the minister why the government is breaking the social contract with farmers.


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, barely a month ago, the Prime Minister, the Minister for International Trade, the Minister of Agriculture and I met with the leaders of the Union des producteurs agricoles.


Louis J. Robichaud: Why are they coming back today?


Pierre Blais: The president himself said that he was very pleased with that meeting and that we could build on it.


Louis J. Robichaud: You are making fun of them!


Pierre Blais: These people have concerns and have come to voice them here. We met with them and we are prepared, Mr. Speaker, as we said, to continue to support them. To do that, we have to go to GATT, because that is where it is being discussed-there are 95 countries there-and where we must strongly and vigorously defend Section 11. In the past, we realized that this section was not clear enough.
So the decision made by this government is to defend the Canadian position, which is quite original, involving marketing boards, and to strengthen and clarify Section 11 so that Canadian agriculture will be protected internationally, Mr. Speaker. Never has a government done so much for its farmers and we will continue to do so, Mr. Speaker.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, the minister says that never has a government done so much for farmers, but never have we seen such a large demonstration by farmers here on Parliament Hill. That is the farmers' response to the minister after that meeting.
I ask the Minister once more: Will the Government answer Canada's farmers today that it will respect the social contract, take an unequivocal position in favour of agriculture and offer farmers formal guarantees for the future?
On behalf of Canadian farmers, I ask for a clear answer and not for the patter which the minister has given farmers in the past and again today.


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, my colleague has a short memory. He does not remember what happened in 1976,when he was in government. I will remind my colleague that when we arrived in 1984, Canada's dairy farmers had been waiting for over four years for a long-term dairy policy, which his government did not want to renew. Our government put in place a five-year dairy policy worth hundreds of millions of dollars and we made a commitment to renew this dairy policy with the farmers when they sat down with us and to eimplement it in 1991. On the other hand, for years, you did not want to
November 21, 1989

respond to Canadian dairy farmers, you never wanted to defend them. We were the first government to do so, Mr. Speaker. We have nothing to learn from those people about defending Canadian farmers.


JUSTICE
Hon. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa):: Mr. Speaker, I also have a question for the Solicitor General.
The minister now knows that the Commissioner of the RCMP before a committee this morning said that the superintendent of the Montreal region for the RCMP delayed issuing search warrants in the Grise case "because of the election". He said that in the committee this morning.
The member for Burnaby, earlier on November 7, asked the minister questions about the delay at that time. The minister, instead of saying he would look into it, came back with, to put it bluntly, his usual bluster and went on to attack the member who asked the question and said: "The commissioner is not just anyone. He is in charge of RCMP operations", et cetera, instead of pursuing the matter at hand.
Considering that this issue was raised November 7-indeed we raised this issue last May-and that the Commissioner of the RCMP admitted today there was a delay because of the election, why did the minister not do his job a week ago, a month ago, last spring, instead of just finding out this morning what was being said about this issue?


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, I am taken aback by the import of my colleague's query. Should I question the integrity of the Commissioner of the RCMP every time he makes a statement?
I had no reason to doubt the word of the commissioner. As I recall, last June the commissioner answered questions before the committee, and this morning he told the same committee that he had been mistaken and that he would make inquiries to find out why the decision was delayed.
I would suggest we can rely on the integrity of the Commissioner of the RCMP. He was very frank and honest, I did not have any reason to doubt his word, and I
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have no intention of asking for an inquiry every time an RCMP officer makes a statement.
I think we should let the RCMP shed light on this matter, as it has done and as it knows how to do. Mr. Speaker, it is very important to this House and to all Canadians that no questions be raised concerning the integrity of the RCMP and the commissioner.


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, I say to the minister that it is his responsibility as Solicitor General of Canada to ensure that the RCMP is doing its job. He cannot pass the buck. The buck stops with the minister and he knows that. Considering that it was Mr. Inkster, not someone on this side of the House, who said in committee this morning that the course of action that ultimately led to a conviction was not taken "because of the election", will the minister now do his job and immediately find out why there was a delay and why there was hesitancy to prosecute, to look at evidence to see if court proceedings should be taken? Was it for political reasons or not? Is the minister now prepared to exercise his responsibility, or does he just want this thing to be buried? That is no way to conduct his responsibilities, and the minister knows it.


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat surprised at the question, but since I was quoted, I suggest we go back to what I said on November 7 this year, and I will quote exactly what I said:

"The RCMP is an honourable police force that acts without political interference. I would like to refer to what the RCMP Commissioner said himself in June before a committee of this House. He was very emphatic about this, and I believe that in order to protect the integrity of this police force we must let them do their job and conduct their investigation as they see fit with the utmost integrity".


John Edward Broadbent: He changed that testimony this morning.


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member should realize that this morning, the Commissioner was most emphatic about the fact that he had never been subject to any political interference, and that if such had been the case, he would have been the first to say so publicly. This proves the integrity of this police force, which we must respect, and as solicitor general I do not intend to interfere in any way with the work of a police officer. I

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must let them do their job, and that is what we should all do as members of this Parliament, Mr. Speaker.


TAXATION
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance. For many months, Canadians have worried about the 9 per cent GST that will be implemented on January 1, 1991, while they have practically no reservations about the hidden 13.5 per cent tax now in effect, which applies, for instance, to milk taken from the farm. My question is this: There are only 13 and a half months between now and January 1991. Could the government and the Minister of Finance explain the 13.5 per cent tax to Canadians, which would help minimize the damage done by the GST as a result of lack of information? Sir, I want action on the 13.5 per cent tax. Let's stop playing games!


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, what the hon. member points out is quite right. There are a lot of people who do not understand that there is a 13.5 per cent tax. There is a federal sales tax on everything that we buy today, directly or indirectly.
My colleagues across the way say that that is wrong. There is a tax. The federal sales tax is in the price of everything we buy, directly or indirectly.


An Hon. Member:: Not 13.5 per cent.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: The hon. member says not 13.5 per cent. The 13.5 per cent is applied at the manufacturing level. It is on everything we buy, but it is impossible for anybody to tell the precise rate that the tax applies at the retail level. The tax is applied deep in the manufacturing process so that by its nature it is very invisible.
What we are trying to do with the new tax, under the goods and services tax proposal,is make the federal sales tax much more visible and also make it level across the
board; not the very distorted, indirect and hidden tax that it is today.


JUSTICE
Hon. Bob Kaplan (York Centre):: Mr. Speaker, the opposition has been charging for some time that the RCMP is being politically interfered with by this government and our charges have been supported-


Mr. Speaker:: I would ask the hon. member to put his question in the usual way. The preamble is in order to launch the question. It is not to initiate a debate which may or may not be a good thing or a bad thing, but it is not for me to control. I would ask the hon. member to put his question succinctly with a preamble that leads to the question.


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, the charges include not just allegations by Glen Kealey but sworn evidence by RCMP officers-


Mr. Speaker:: I have to ask the hon. member, who is a very experienced member in this House, not to put a charge by way of preamble. It puts the Speaker in an almost impossible position.
The hon. member has the floor. The hon. member will be given every right to ask the question. However, I would ask the hon. member to put the preamble, that is the facts upon which the question is based, not charges. If there are charges they have to be taken in another place.


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, given the indication by the commissioner this morning at the justice committee meeting that he had been misinformed and would proceed to correct the record about the possibility of political interference, I want to ask the Solicitor General to assure-


Donald Frank Mazankowski: He didn't say that and you know it.


Robert Phillip Kaplan: He did say that. I was there, and he did say that.


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps the hon. member could put his question.


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Will the Solicitor General assure that the Commissioner of the RCMP pursues not only the

possibility of political interference into the matter which was discussed this morning in the justice committee, but into all the matters of political interference which have been put forward in relation to the work of the RCMP?


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, we have repeated many times that it was not our intention to interfere in any way with the RCMP's job, and if you were there this morning, you probably heard the Commissioner say several times that he had never, ever been subject to political interference, and that if he had been, he would have said so publicly.


Mrs. Bourgault:: This is repetitious. You don't have any new questions.


Pierre Blais: I am really surprised to see, with the hon. member's experience-but Mr. Speaker, in this connection, I would like-


Lise Bourgault: This is repetitious. This is the seventh time he repeated the same question.


Pierre Blais: -to quote what my colleague said a few weeks ago.

"It is the nature of the Canadian Opposition's tradition to be irresponsible or non-responsible and I mean that in the highest sense of the word".

I think the intent of the hon. member's questions in this House is fairly obvious, Mr. Speaker.


Robert Phillip Kaplan: It is certainly the duty of the Solicitor General to protect the political independence of the RCMP.
My supplementary question is to ask the Solicitor General whether he will undertake to report to this House on the work which is being done in the way of an investigation by the Commissioner of the RCMP, given that the commissioner himself will be away for almost three weeks?


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, I can only refer to what the Commissioner said this morning. Yesterday, he was informed that the information he gave the committee a
Oral Questions
few months ago was incomplete, that a member of the RCMP in Montreal had made a decision and that he promised to look at the entire case and check the facts. However, he had not been advised of any interference and he himself had never been subject to interference and had never witnessed any instances of interference, and if he had, he would have condemned these actions publicly. I think we must trust the integrity of the RCMP Commissioner, which seems entirely normal to me. This morning, however, I am being asked to interfere in the RCMP's process, and that I refuse to do, Mr. Speaker. I will let the RCMP do its job.


EL SALVADOR
William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. He will know, I hope, that a Canadian from Winnipeg, Karen Ridd, was released yesterday after having been taken into custody by the Treasury Police in El Salvador. He will also know, I hope, that Karen is one of many who have gone down to El Salvador to help protect potential victims of death squads by accompanying them in their life and their various tasks in that country.
I wonder whether the government is now prepared to show the same courage that many individual Canadians have shown by putting itself between the people of El Salvador and the death squad known as American policy in Central America by urging the Pentagon, Washington, and Mr. Bush who seems not to have caught on to what is going on down there, to stop military aid to El Salvador immediately. When will the Canadian government call on the American government to do that and cut off the aid?


Hon. Monique Landry (Minister for External Relations):: As my colleague just said, Mr. Speaker, we were glad to learn last night that Canadian Karen Ridd had been set free by the Salvadorian authorities. I should point out to my colleague that the personal intervention of senior officials there proved to be a key element of the release of Karen Kidd. We are proud to note that Canada does have a certain influence.
I would suggest that Canada's position concerning conflicts has always been the same. We are now urging

November 21, 1989
Oral Questions
the parties involved to put an immediate end to armed aggressions, sit down for talks and negotiate a permanent cease fire. As we see it, the conflict will not be resolved unless the parties begin to negotiate. Such has been our position all along and we will continue to defend it until peace has been restored in El Salvador.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, the Canadian people on the ground in El Salvador-and there are not enough of them-were instrumental in obtaining Karen's release and we are all grateful for that.
The minister says that the Canadian government position has always been the same. I agree. The Canadian position with respect to Central America has always been to refuse to speak the truth about what is going on in Central America. What we are asking the government to do is to finally speak the truth about American military aid to El Salvador. If it will not do that, the very least it can do is not be complicit itself and cut off govemment-to-govemment aid to El Salvador.


Monique Landry: Mr. Speaker, of course my colleague has a different position, but still I want to say that the Central American countries are very thankful for the role played by Canada to restore lasting peace in that region of the world, and we will continue our efforts to that end.
Mr. Speaker, we have always urged foreign powers not to intervene in a conflict but to put pressure on the parties with a view to negotiating lasting peace. We believe that is the only way to find a solution.
As to assistance, I must say that in view of the precarious situation in El Salvador and to ensure the security of Canadians, the implementation of the assistance project has been deferred. I might point out to my colleague that assistance has been provided through Canadian and Salvadoran NGOs to help displaced people who are now victims of the armed conflicts.


FISHERIES
Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-IVinity-Conception):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and concerns the Emergency Response Job Development Program recently announced by the government that is designed to help bona fide fishing industry workers in Atlantic Canada adversely affected by circumstances beyond their control.
The criteria for qualification states that repeat claimants must have acquired a minimum of six weeks of work this year or three weeks this year and have qualified solely in the fishing industry last year. For those who had a bad year and worked under a similar program last year, by the strict application of the criteria, they would be ineligible this year because in fact they did not work solely in the fishing industry last year.
This is a Catch-22 situation. In the press release the department indicated that the criteria were intended really as a rough guideline and it stated that individuals unable to receive these special benefits but with proven long-term attachment to the fishing industry would be able to request review of their cases.
Can the minister assure the House that those bona fide fishermen and plant workers who have had two bad years in a row, but have been employed in the fishing industry essentially their working lives will be shown some flexibility and compassion in the application of these criteria, and that the bureaucrats would be advised and instructed to do so?


Hon. Thomas Siddon (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: Mr. Speaker, I know this is a very important question to the hon. member and many of the plant workers and communities of Newfoundland in particular that have been impacted by adverse conditions in the fishery this year.
My colleague the Minister of Employment and Immigration did announce a program of special measures two weeks ago and I do not think I am in any position today to interpret the rules for delivery of that program. But I can assure the hon. member that his question will be
November 21, 1989

brought to the attention of the minister, and appropriate latitude will be sought in the application of the rules to the benefit of the affected communities.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS

[Stage Direction]
[English\

Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Government House Leader):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 I have the honour to table several petitions.


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps the parliamentary secretary could clarify the record.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to table responses to several petitions.
[.Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, it is my pleasure to present three petitions on different issues.
The first petition is from western Canadians and points out that one-sixth of Canadian children live in poverty and the percentage of children finding themselves living in poverty is increasing each year. The petitioners are calling upon Parliament to support private members' motion 254 which calls upon the Government of Canada to negotiate with the provinces to provide a comprehensive bill of rights for children.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I have another petition from a number of people in western Canada concerning the government's cut-backs to VIA Rail passenger service. They are calling upon the government to not only maintain its existing VIA Rail network but to invest in its upgrading with new equipment. This will give VIA Rail the opportunity to develop a national passenger rail service like other western industrialized nations.
Petitions


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from a number of people in western Canada who point out a whole set of concerns they have regarding the government's goods and services tax, stating how unfair it is to people living in rural areas and how unfair it is to certain sectors of the economy. They are simply asking the government to go back to the drawing board, in other words stop proceeding with this goods and services tax.


Mr. Gilbert Parent (Welland -St. Catharines-Tho-rold):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour today to present two petitions. One is from a number of people in my riding which deals with the abortion bill that is going to be before this House this evening and tomorrow. The people who have signed this petition are asking that the government protect the rights of the unborn. I think that in the bill presented now the rights of the unborn are not protected.


Gilbert Parent: Mr. Speaker, I have another petition which was collected by one of my constituents. It is part of the
12,000	names she collected against the goods and services tax. My constituent, Mrs. Idris O'Neil, made this presentation to me last Monday. I think it encompasses the great dislike which some 12,000 people in my riding have for the goods and services tax. Once again we are asking that this government reconsider this heinous proposal which makes money on the backs of the poor and the lower middle class.


Mr. Jack Iyerak Anawak (Nunatsiaq):: [Editor's Note: Member spoke in Inuktitut.]


Jack Iyerak Anawak: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I have the honour to present a petition from my home community of Rankin Inlet. This petition objects to the proposed goods and services tax.


Ms. Margaret Mitchell (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to present a petition from a number of petitioners from British Columbia. The petitioners are concerned about children's rights. They state that one-sixth of all Canadian children live in poverty. The drastic lowering of incomes between 1980 and 1986 has increased this number of children by 13.4 per cent. They

Petitions
call on Parliament to support Private Members' Motion M-254 calling on the government to negotiate with the provinces to provide a comprehensive bill of rights for children.


Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Saskatoon -Humboldt):: Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege to present a petition on behalf of a number of citizens of Canada, all the way from Inuvik to Montreal, asking the government to not do what it is going to do to VTA Rail, and to ensure that VIA Rail has enough equipment and funding to remain a viable operation.


Stanley J. Hovdebo: Mr. Speaker, I also wish to present a petition, signed by residents of my constituency of Saskatoon-Humboldt, who call upon the government to reject the current proposal for a goods and services tax and to provide other means of taxation which is fair to Canadians.


Ms. Lynn Hunter (Saanich-Gulf Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition signed by 350 residents of my constituency in support of the CBC in Victoria. Victoria is the only provincial capital in Canada which lacks both CBC Radio and television facilities. The lower island is the third largest metropolitan area in Canada without a CBC facility. The petitioners pray that the government will reverse its cuts to CBC and include Victoria in its mandate to provide CBC service.


Lynn Hunter: Mr. Speaker, I also have a petition to present signed by residents of Whitehorse, Moncton, New Westminster, New Brunswick, Saskatoon, Brantford, Nelson and Powell River, B.C., all across Canada. The petitioners are appalled with the statistics regarding child poverty. The over-all child population has fallen by almost 4 per cent between 1980 and 1986, the number of children living in poverty has increased by 13.4 per cent in the same period.
The petitioners call upon parliament to negotiate with the provinces to provide a comprehensive bill of rights for children.


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition to present on behalf of a number of residents from Davenport and neighbouring ridings, expressing their deep felt disagreement and opposition to the proposed general sales tax.


Fred J. Mifflin: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition on behalf of a number of Canadians concerned with the increased taxes, 31 new taxes and tax increases since 1984; including the federal sales tax from 9 per cent to 13.5 per cent. Last evening we debated a tax bill with some 59 clauses.
The petitioners are concerned about the heavy burden of taxation and they humbly pray and call upon parliament to reject the proposed goods and services tax.


Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition signed by a number of Canadians who are opposed to cuts to VTA Rail services. This petition was signed in July last year, and I can only imagine how appalled these Canadians are at the cuts to VTA Rail recently announced by the government.


Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to deposit a petition with 150 names from the National Arts Centre who continue to be concerned about the state of the National Arts Centre orchestra. The present concern is over the management which has proved, according to these petitioners, to be incompetent and inadequate in artistic matters. They call upon this House to maintain the National Arts Centre, and ensure its sound cultural credentials to be the main criteria for any new appointments to their board.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, I would deposit for your information petitions from the people of Ikaluit, where I had the privilege of visiting earlier this year, who find that they are particularly hard hit and are carrying an already heavy burden of taxation and find that the goods and services tax will be an ongoing and further hard burden for them to bear.


Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, I have a number of petitions I would like to table today. All have been certified correct as to form and content by the Clerk of Petitions pursuant to Standing Order 36.
The first is signed by 33 residents of Kincardine, Ontario and it is regarding VIA Rail. The petitioners point out that railway passenger service, as carried on by VIA Rail, is an essential means of transportation for many Canadians and has been part of basic Canadian infrastructure for over 100 years. They go on to call upon Parliament to maintain VIA Rail, Canada's present national network, to upgrade VIA Rail with new equipment and to give VIA Rail a sufficient budget to maintain its national mandate for passenger service.


Iain Francis Angus: I also have a number of petitions that deal with the whole question of the goods and services tax. I have first to present petitions signed by 575 residents of Thunder Bay who stopped by the NDP booth at the Westport Days Fair in my riding.
They call upon the government to reject the current proposal for a goods and services tax and reform the taxation system so that there is an effective minimum tax on wealthy individuals and corporations.
I also have a number of other petitions that have been circulated in my riding by local business concerns. I have, first, a petition signed by 35 customers of the Thunder Bay Harley Davidson outlet on Roslyn Road. As well, there are thirty-seven customers of Riverdale Store on highway 61, 43 employees and students at Lakehead University and 60 customers of Creative Croissants in West Fort and finally 35 customers of the Royal Barbershop on North Brodie Street.
All of these petitions reject the current proposal for a goods and services tax. They want an effective minimum tax on wealthy individuals and corporations and if there is to be a reform, that it not be a massive tax grab such as the goods and services tax.


Mr. Joe Fontana (London East):: Mr. Speaker, over the past six months hundreds of thousands of Canadians including municipal leaders and premiers across this country have pleaded to this government to restore VIA
Petitions
to its rightful place in our history as a viable transportation mode.
I stand today, pursuant to Standing Order 36, to submit another 1,200 names from people in southwestern Ontario again pleading with this government to restore VIA to all of its full service so that they are not pushed to use the airlines and the roadways that are already congested and unsafe.


Mr. Gus Mitges (Bruce-Grey):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to present to the House today more petitions from people all across the province of Ontario on behalf of all unborn children.
These petitioners, all 1,804 of them from such diverse communities as St. Catharines, Hamilton, North Bay, Espanola, London, Woodstock, Kirkland Lake, Thunder Bay, Sturgeon Falls, Stoney Creek, Massey, New Lis-keard and Toronto call upon Parliament to pass legislation that will protect life from conception with a law that will seek to save the life of both mother and child. I am in full support of these petitions.


Mr. John Reimer (Kitchener):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of presenting a petition pursuant to Standing Order 36 which has been certified correct by the Clerk of Petitions.
This petition, along with another petition already on file with the Clerk of the House, has been signed by over
195,000	Canadians from across the country calling on Parliament to enact legislation that would effectively protect the life of the pre-bom child from conception without distinction as to stages of development.
These petitions were brought to Ottawa by Evelyn Wyrzykowski and Doreen Ferraton of the Catholic Women's League of Canada who are here today as part of their nation-wide "women-sign-for-life campaign".


Mr. Jesse Flis (Parkdale-High Park):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 I too have the duty and honour to table a petition of behalf of the residents of Parkdale-High Park who object veiy strongly to the imposition of this government's new general 9 per cent tax on goods and services. The petitioners strongly oppose this new goods and services tax which according to them is an unprecedented tax grab from the pockets of Canadians and will hit them not only with higher taxes

November 21, 1989
Government Orders
but with higher inflation, higher interest rates and higher unemployment.
The petitioners call upon this Parliament to reject the proposed goods and services tax and I know that you are taking note, Mr. Speaker, that even today we have had such petitions coast to coast and north to the Arctic.


Mr. Lyle Kristiansen (Kootenay West-Revelstoke):: Mr. Speaker, I rise pursuant to Standing Order 36 to present two more in a long series of petitions on the subject of VIA Rail. These petitions are signed by a significant number of citizens of Revelstoke, British Columbia and other communities throughout the west Kootenay protesting the closure in particular of the Canadian line of the VIA system.
Many of these petitioners are now increasingly outraged and incensed that despite repeated assurances from the Department of Transport that there would be a representative at a meeting of some 30 people representing five federal ridings in B.C. and Alberta last Thursday, there was no representative of the Department of Transport there and their anger as expressed in this petition is even more compounded by that fact.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, if Question No. 62 could be made an Order for Return, the return would be tabled immediately.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House that Question No. 62 be deemed to have been made an Order for Return?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Plamondon: 1.	Since 1945, has the government taken any measures to develop energy resources and, if so, by province and, for each province, by energy sector (a) what were they (b) what was their cost?
2.	Since 1945, has the government made any investments in order to develop energy resources and, if so, by province and, for each province, by energy sector (a) what were they (b) in what amounts?
Return tabled.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions be allowed to stand?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: Pursuant to order made Monday, November 20, 1989, the sitting is suspended until 6 p.m.
At 11.23 a.m., the sitting of the House was suspended.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 6 p.m.


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Wednesday, November 8, consideration of the motion of Mr. Lewis that Bill C-43, an Act respecting abortion, be read for the second time and referred to a legislative committee.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Debate. The Hon. Minister of State for Employment and Immigration and Minister of State for Seniors (Mrs. Vezina).


Hon. Monique Vezina (Minister of State (Employment and Immigration) and Minister of State (Seniors)):: Mr. Speaker, fellow members of the House of Commons, I intend to treat the debate on Bill C-43 with all the seriousness it deserves, all the attention, the good will,
November 21, 1989

even unselfishness that various individuals and groups in my riding have for this great social issue.
For example, last Friday, my riding office received a petition with 10,000 names. It contained the names of
10,000	people in Rimouski and Temiscouata who said: "We are against abortion in any form for a normal pregnancy, that is one with no risk, and we are against it from the moment of conception."
Others representing a completely different school of thought told me quite clearly that only the woman concerned should decide whether or not to interrupt her pregnancy. One of them told me clearly that she never regretted having interrupted an unwanted pregnancy when she was 20.
I received the testimony of a father who said that he supports our bill, but who told his 13-year-old daughter who asked him what he would do if she came home pregnant: "If you wanted to terminate this pregnancy, we would take the necessary action. If you wanted to keep the child, we would want you to have a normal happy life and we would help you bring up this child as if it were our own."
Mr. Speaker, with these examples, I just want to show the interest all of society has in this most serious issue and the many points of view that we must consider as legislators, our main duty as elected representatives.
As far as I am concerned, I wish to state at the outset that I would certainly prefer to be somewhere else and not to have to participate in such a poignant, troubling discussion.
No one will say that abortion is an easy issue. No one will say that we can debate it light-heartedly, for the simple reason that no bill can ever faithfully reflect all shades of individual opinion on this agonizing question. In this regard, this House reflects Canadian society and the right to freedom of conscience which is one of its values.
No age or social group can escape the dilemma now facing society.
The decision to give birth is one of the most important, personal and private choices that can be made by a human being. But personal rights, health and life protection are also fundamental values that concern society as a whole. The balance we, as legislators, must maintain between a woman's right to choose whether or not to
Government Orders
interrupt her pregnancy and the state's responsibility to protect the foetus is extremely hard to find. Whether from a religious, moral, social, legal, medical or political standpoint, our conscience must inevitably grapple with this issue.
Mr. Speaker, over the last few months, like every other member of this House, I have been concerned with the abortion debate mobilizing Canadian men and women. I felt all the more concerned since I knew that a moment like today would come when, after thinking about it as parliamentarians, we would have to give this country a bill addressing the issue. Today I would like to share with you the various thoughts that come to my mind.
First, I would like to deal with our responsibility as legislators. I think it is important to properly define the realities we are talking about. At the risk of shocking some of my colleagues, I would suggest that the worst threat to the proceedings of this House would be to become idealistic. Finally, I would like to speak to the bill introduced by the government.
Mr. Speaker, I will deal first with our work as legislators. I want to stress how the debate that has just started is personally demanding. Seldom will our work be so challenging and require so much self-denial on the part of honorable members.
There is something extremely personal about the abortion issue. It challenges our most basic values and most private experiences. Yet, today I wish to emphasize the need for all of us, each and every one to somewhat distance ourselves from our own personal experience and opinions.
On this issue, the Right Hon. Prime Minister insisted on a free vote. He deserves to be praised for respecting our freedom of conscience. I appreciate the respect he is showing to Parliamentarians. But I see also in the Prime Minister's decision an invitation to reach out to others.
This new debate has nothing to do with what we personally think about the abortion issue. What is involved here is not what we would do in our heart of heart if we had to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. No matter how free we are as members of the House, our debate must deal with the legislation which, as legislators, we must develop in Canada in the area of abortion.

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Although I would not wish to show disrespect to any member of this House, I know that most Canadians men and women are not interested in our moods. They want us, as their elected representatives, to do our job.
Having sat in this House for nearly five years now, I trust that most of my colleagues will share my views. Mr. Speaker, I do not take part in this debate so much as Monique Vezina, the mother of four children, as the Hon. Member for the Rimouski-Temiscouata riding, duly elected by her constituents to provide our country with the legislation it needs.
Now to come to my second point. As a rule, I have always felt that, both as Parliamentarians and legislators, we had to show idealism, look toward a better world and strive to achieve it.
Today, however, in view of the very nature of the problem we are dealing with, I wish to state emphatically, without renouncing these ideals, that the principle of reality must prevail completely and totally in this forthcoming debate.
In 1988, there were between 73,000 and 74,000 therapeutic abortions in Canada. When reviewing the available data for previous years, it will be found the number has remained relatively unchanged. From 70,000 in 1982, it fell to some 65,000 in 1983-86. I conclude from those figures that abortion is a fact of life in Canada, a reality in our society. I also conclude that the women involved in those 74,000 therapeutic abortions wanted people to respect their personal decision. None of them claimed to have taken that course of action without some reluctance. They submit however that in all conscience that was the solution they chose.
Mr. Speaker, each and everyone in this House is hoping for that ideal world in which all those women could have all the financial means and the psychological and emotional strenght that would have let them bring their pregnancies to completion.
Again, Mr. Speaker, I am refering to the real world. Without sacrificing our dreams and our hopes, we must face up to the realities of human life where there will always be tragedies, where society will always be perfectible. I am asking that we as legislators recognize social reality in this country and the experience of Canadian women.
Let me turn to a third aspect, Bill C-43 as such. This government's challenge was to develop legislation that would fit with the Canadian reality. Yes, we looked for the area of widest possible social consensus. In any other area, we might be accused of being political opportunists. But in this matter this is the only tenable position.
What about the proposal? The Government states in the first place that abortion is a crime, and in the second place that it is not where it is induced in consultation with a who is of the opinion that if the abortion were not induced, the health or life of the female person would be likely to be threatened. There again, I suggest that we get away from any philosophical debate.
Personally, and along with large number of a very Canadian women, I also would have preferred that the legislation do not re-criminalize abortion. As legislator, I have found this to be impractical. This enactment is the only possible way to allow Parliament to regulate abortion nationally.
The legislation's first goal is not in my view to re-criminalize abortion nor, as claimed in some quarters, to return to situations where the lives of human beings, individuals, women are jeopardized in conditions that are worse than before.
Our first objective, therefore, under the circumstances, in the present Canadian context, is to take another step forward, another step to the future, taking account of our evolution as a society over the centuries, another step towards the equality of men and women: an equality which can only enrich both sexes with their complementarity, another step towards the fundamental freedom that we all seek. More and more men understand-and I know several among my colleagues who do-that subordination is not liberating for a couple, it is not liberating for a family, it is simply not liberating for the whole of a democratic country like ours. The same goes for our abortion bill.
Nevertheless, our government must be cautious and moderate, it must avoid venturing into uncharted waters, when many Canadians are telling us that we do not know how deep they are. The Government is instead choosing to bridge the two sides, the two extremes, so as to serve the most Canadians who want to use it. This bridge is our new legislation.

You will agree that we are taking a step forward, after the legal vacuum left by the Supreme Court judgment, when our government is eliminating the anomalies of the old law such as life imprisonment for women, among others. Also, as the Leader of the Opposition explained it so well in this House, we will no longer say that abortion is allowed if the mother's health is in danger, but if the mother's health is threatened.
Mr. Speaker, as a woman elected to this House, as a woman who has fought for recognition of women's rights, I urge all women who are still hesitant to cross this legislative bridge. I urge them to look back to the past, to look at history and remember how women have contributed to the development of this society. But they did so only when they could express themselves freely, as equals.
It is my profound belief that women must never give up their equality and their freedom. They should take advantage of this opportunity to perfect this very fundamental legislation and jump at the chance to increase their independence by having more control over their own bodies. That is what the new legislation will give them.
Men will also benefit because they will have friends, advisers, wives and doctors who are increasingly free, responsible and worthy of their trust.
There are critics in some groups who object that despite this national standard, there will be differences in treatment from one region to another, from one province to another. That is true, Mr. Speaker. However, I belong to a political party that has never been ashamed to recognize regional realities. As far as abortion is concerned, it is only natural that eveiy region in Canada should be able to proceed at its own pace. On what basis do they want to reduce Canada to a one-dimensional society? Here again, the government has made a genuine sociological reading of the abortion phenomenon and has drawn the appropriate conclusions.
Mr. Speaker, I do not claim that Bill C-43 is perfect. Far from it. I do say, however, that the greatness of our Canadian society and its ability to be a pluralistic society will be reflected in the ability of this House to vote.
These legal concerns will never reflect all the nuances that our hearts and minds want to express.
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Mr. Speaker, we must therefore rise above that which might divide us irreparably and seek a common ground that is acceptable to the majority. Our most dependable guide posts in this respect are tolerance, understanding and maturity.
Mr. Speaker, we all realize that men and women benefit by change, even if change comes very gradually. That is why, speaking in this public and democratic forum, I urge women to support this bill, and I urge men to realize that when women change, so do they.
Together, let us cross the bridge the government has built for us. As a woman and a Member of Parliament, I say that we are going in the right direction.


Lynn Hunter: Mr. Speaker, I rise with respect to the Hon. Secretary of State's speech. The tone of her speech had a great deal of dignity and I appreciate that. I appreciate also the difficulty with which she has explored her soul in this whole discussion about this very difficult question. I think she has set a tone tonight that is worthy of respect and I credit her for that.
I too have spoken with many people of different views in my own riding and I respect their views. However, when it comes to the responsibility of legislators, she and I have to part company. She said that we must give a bill to this House. I see no reason to give a bill to this House. I think it is only increasing the kind of pain that exists in our country now. This very debate is increasing that pain and encouraging the kind of lobby that is going on outside the House of Commons which is also increasing that pain.
We all dream of our ideal world, as the minister has said. My question to the hon. member really relates to the reasoning behind this bill. The minister said it was the only vehicle which would set down regulations on a national scale. The Criminal Code is not going to ensure access to abortion in the regions of our country where poor women are the ones who are having to turn to back street abortionists or having to terminate their pregnancies themselves.
How is Bill C-43 going to solve those problems?

November 21, 1989
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Monique Vézina: Once again, Madam Speaker, I will refer to the principle of reality. When I look at the statistics as a woman and as a legislator I can readily see that last year 65,000 women had to undergo an abortion for whatever reason. There is a legal void. It is up to the provinces to guarantee access to health care, and as a woman and as a legislator I want to make sure that any woman seeking abortion services can do so with dignity, if I may put it that way, because it will be recognized as a medical act performed by a qualified medical practitioner in a recognized institution.
I used to be involved in development motivation. I met women and teenage girls. I saw how abortions were carried out in many cases. I deplore the fact that the legislative measure we are proposing involves the Criminal Code, but as we said on so many occasions, this is the only way to proceed at the national level if we want to enable Canadian women in any province to use this emergency service, this emergency measure, but with a medical approach, through a medical act which will take into account the quality of life.
That being so-the principle of reality-we must build a bridge which will reach both pro-life and pro-choice advocates, but within the context of Canadian reality. As legislators we must also implement measures to achieve this ideal project which will make it possible for women to protect the unborn child, practice family planning, and provide information.
And I maintain that with respect to this legislative measure, as a legislator I will support the government position because it enables us as a group of men and women to take a small step ahead, yet I would urge all women to continue to enjoy their freedom.


Mrs. Catterall:: Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. minister a question, again with appreciation of the great thought that she has obviously given to this issue.
Given the minister's statement about the importance of women having access to good and proper medical care, can she explain to me why the bill in its present form provides an equal penalty for the totally unqualified person who preys on vulnerable women and provides abortions without any training to do so and for a
doctor exercising his best medical judgment who, for one reason or another, does not perhaps completely meet the intentions or the wording of the law?


Monique Vézina: The answer that comes readily to mind is that I have faith in the medical profession. Our government considers abortion as a medical act that must be performed by a qualified physician. Doctors are men and women who also live by a professional code of ethics. Health will be defined by the medical body, which reassures me, as a woman, that women's health will be kept safe and private, since the woman will see a doctor with whom she will share responsibility for the decision. Having said that, I call on women, with whom I have worked for many years, to demand their right to quality services.
But the bill under consideration gives me the assurance that Canadian women throughout the country will be respected whatever the habits and customs of their province, because indeed habits vary from one province to the next, but that the decision to perform the medical act will be made with a clear conscience with the physician in appropriate quality surroundings. We are taking a step towards the acknowledgement of the freedom of the woman, of her sense of responsibility, of the right of the foetus. As a society we must acknowledge that women should have freedom as well as responsibilities-for responsibilities come with freedom-but we must also acknowledge the evolution of life. I would suggest that the bill enables us to reach both objectives.


Mr. Karpoff:: Madam Speaker, I also appreciate the tone with which the minister speaks. I too am a social worker. I have practised in the field and have seen women die from illegal abortions.
I think women make the decision to terminate a pregnancy after a great deal of deliberation. They do so based on sound judgment, a knowledge of their own circumstances, and in consultation with their doctors.
For nearly two years now in Canada, we have had no criminal law on abortion. I think the women of Canada have demonstrated that they have acted responsibly during this time. They have shown Canadians that there is no need for any legislation, particularly criminal legislation, concerning abortion.
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Is the minister aware of some particular circumstances in the last two years that would prompt her to feel that this House is more capable or more able to make a judgment than the woman herself in consultation with her doctor?


Monique Vézina: I repeat that the central government has to make sure that health care is of first quality and readily accessible to all Canadian men and women. This is why we must have this legal measure in place. Personally, as a legislator, I would rather not go through the kind of situation we were in last July. It is imperative that every Canadian woman-wherever she resides, I repeat-be entitled to that service. There exists a legal void which needs to be filled. This is a medical act which has to be recognized as such and performed by a physician. As a legislator I am convinced that the bridge we are proposing under this measure will enable the proponents of both positions to reach a common ground. As legislators we have to rise above personal opinions. What our constituents and Canadians expect of us as law makers in this House is that we take measures to improve the quality of life in this country, and such is the aim of our efforts: a medical approach, and proper balance between the right of the woman and the concern of society with respect to the evolution of the foetus and of human life.


Marlene Catterall: Madam Speaker, the issue of abortion is a highly charged one for the House and for each of us as individual Members of Parliament, and also for the nation. It is even more so for the woman who finds herself pregnant unexpectedly and faces a situation in which carrying, bearing and raising a child seems an overwhelming impossibility. For her, the choice she faces is agonizing and painful.
For us as legislators, I believe the task is not to determine how, through law, we can impose our own individual consciences on all Canadian women. Rather, it is how we can draft a law that respects the right of a woman to exercise her conscience, that respects the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and its guarantees of the right to life and security of her person, but that also reflects the value society gives to the worth and dignity of human life.
Madam Speaker, whatever our opinion on abortion, the law must apply equally to all Canadians, rich or poor. It is not enough to say, as the Minister of Justice did two weeks ago, that it is a provincial decision as to what medical services are to be provided in their jurisdiction.

If I could return to the question of balance, we do not find this balance of rights and of interest in human life in most of the representations we have been receiving by the thousands. Instead we find two opposing views so strongly held as a matter of conscience that any meeting of the minds seems impossible. On the one hand are those who firmly believe in the existence of human life from the moment of conception and believe that any abortion should be illegal and the perpetrator subject to punishment under the laws of the land. On the other hand are those who believe, as a matter of conscience, that any abortion at any time agreed to by a woman and her doctor should be no concern of society and that society has no interest in the unborn child at any time until the moment after birth.
The people we are not hearing from are the vast majority who hold a view somewhere between those two, who believe that a woman with sound medical advice and support should be able to decide at a certain point, according to her own conscience, whether she is able, physically, mentally and emotionally, to not only give birth to but to provide for the life of a child. They also believe that there comes a time in a pregnancy where another life is involved and must be considered. I am not convinced this bill is even a good starting point from which to develop such a law.
The Canada Health Act guarantees Canadians that health services will be universal, accessible and comprehensive. If the government is bringing forward a bill, and it has, that makes abortion legal under certain conditions and under fairly broad conditions, then it must ensure that women have equal access to safe, quality medical care when they choose to exercise their rights under the law. It is not good enough to say, as the justice minister did, that it is a provincial decision as to what medical services are to be provided in their jurisdiction. When one says that Prince Edward Island, for example, has the right to fund or not fund abortion services, what one is really saying is that if somebody can afford to go

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somewhere else is what it comes down to, then they have a right to exercise their legitimate entitlement under the law, and others who cannot afford it cannot exercise that entitlement.
This bill fails to guarantee access to a service that the bill says is perfectly legal under the right conditions. It provides the same punishment for a totally unqualified, perhaps unscrupulous practitioner who will take advantage of vulnerable women as it provides for a fully qualified medical doctor providing the same service and perhaps not quite meeting the requirements of the law. I find that inadequate protection for women from unscrupulous practitioners.

I want to address the balance of my remarks to a serious issue that is not covered in this bill and that I do not expect to be covered in any companion legislation that there is even the remotest hope of this government introducing. I want to address some of the fundamental factors that lead women to the point of feeling desperate when they find themselves pregnant and convinced that abortion is their only remedy. Abortion is the failure of social policy, of health policy and of economic policy. It is the failure of a society to adequately reflect, in its allocation of resources, in its laws and in its programs, a full and abundant respect and love for human life at all stages.

Madam Speaker, I see every day in my own riding that the society we live in does not recognize the worth and dignity of every human being.
While we are trying to decide whether we must limit or prohibit abortion, provincial governments continue to restrict access to contraception to those who can afford it. Indeed, the health insurance plans of these governments do not include contraceptives. How can we, in all good conscience, allow this abuse to continue?

How can we say on the one hand we are criminalizing abortion and yet at the same time allow people across this country not to have access to the contraceptive devices, advice and counselling that would prevent the need for an abortion?
A third point I want to make on the bill specifically is that whatever are a person's rights under the law, they have a right to know what those rights are and to exercise them. They have a right to be absolutely clear about when they are performing an act which is not legal and when they are performing one which is. I think this bill fails to a large measure to provide that clarity. The lack of clarity is evident in the fact that it is presented on some occasions as a bill that gives fairly liberal choice to women in the matter of abortion and on the other hand of clarity can only leave people unsure of their their rights, unsure of their responsibilities and unsure of whether in fact they are obeying the law.

I see every day in my own community the reasons women seek to abort rather than bear a child. I see a world of work that still punishes women for wanting or needing to be both workers and mothers, that deprives them of earning potential, promotion opportunities and even a decent pension in their old age because they choose to rear and nurture children. A society that truly valued children, that truly valued the women who bear them and the raising of those children, would put its mind to finding solutions so that women can both be mothers and fulfil every other aspect of their life.


Some families living in poverty and earning only minimum wages are forced to turn to food banks because they are unable to adequately feed and clothe their children.

I see women brutalized by an abusive partner and a society that provides to them no support and no shelter. I see women left alone with their children on the breakup of a marriage, forced to give up their homes, forced perhaps to give up a job to care for their children, to try to rebuild a secure family environment for them to grow up in. I see a society that does not value their roles as mothers but through its welfare system provides poverty level support and hems them in with rules and regula-
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tions that keep them and their children trapped in poverty. I see them deprived of the encouragement and support they need to become self-sufficient, left on long lists, waiting for child care and waiting for training programs.
Just this past week I received a letter that clearly outlines this from a young woman who is finally breaking out of that trap. She is back in school and has parent who is attending school, who has a goal to obtain an education in order to get a worthwhile job. If there are not sufficient subsidized day care spaces, what happens to the others like me who have this same goal?" Yet the budget clearly says that because of the fiscal situation, the government has decided not to proceed with the expenditure of $4 billion over the next seven years to increase significantly the number of good and quality child care spaces across Canada.
That is a plea from a woman, who is making her way in the world, that we provide what is necessary for others like her to do the same.

Women are trapped in a social system which deprives them of life's essentials and does not help them become self-sufficient.

The statistics speak for themselves. Families headed by women are four times as likely to be poor than families headed by men. At the same time as these women struggle I see them and their families, their children, shunned and condemned by a society that brands them and their children as leeches on the generosity of society, responsible for all the ills of their communities, responsible through the social programs even for the national debt.
I see women out in the workforce struggling to support themselves and their children but unable to earn a decent living because they are trapped in pink collar ghettos where pay Women still earn only 66 cents for every dollar a man earns.
Most heartbreakingly I see the children of poverty entering our school system with three strikes against them, judged as incapable before they are even five years old because they are not as well nourished, not as well dressed, their hair is not as bright and shiny and they do not speak the same way as children from better off famlies do. Is it any wonder, branded as failures, they drop out of school at a rate double that of the general
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population? It is vicious cycle as poor incomes lead to dropping out of school which results in poor incomes which leads to the next generation dropping out of school.
In this, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we have over one million children, one of every six children, living in a family where the income is below the poverty level. And two-thirds of children raised by female single parents are poor.
I see a justice system that punishes theft more severely than it punishes the sexual abuse of a child. I see our children bombarded by a society that uses the sexuality of women to sell products in the marketplace. Yet I see people who do not want to see sexuality and birth control even discussed in our schools. I see young girls who become sexually active while they are still children, seeking some small token of self-worth in a society that tells them that being sexy and glamorous is the way to have value and importance and in many areas they still are told that only men achieve success and value.
I see neighbourhoods where showers are held for 13-year old pregnant girls because when the predominant climate of the community is poverty and hopelessness, the birth of a child is a reason to have some new hope.
The public debate on abortion has been so polarized around the question of birth that it has to a large extent obliterated the question of life. I would love at some point in my stay in this Parliament to have as many phone calls and as many letters addressing the issues of poverty for women and children as I have had on this issue.
The polarization on one end has been focused on giving women the legal and theoretical right to choose not to bear a child. I have chosen to address those factors that rob women of choices, that make it impossible for them to choose pregnancy with joy and with hope.
On the other end the debate has focused on the right of a child to be bom but not on the right of every child to be nurtured, supported and valued to fully develop its humanity at every stage of life.
There are many things that have been said and will be said about this bill, and I do not need to repeat them all. Whether by placing the onus on doctors for meeting some nebulous criteria we ensure that more and more doctors in fact choose not to risk their careers and their practice by making a decision that is somewhat ill-defined; whether doctors are subject to private actions that call into question their judgment as medical practitioners; whether pregnant women can still be dragged publicly through the courts, every detail of their private

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lives flashed on the television, radio and the newspapers; whether the bill fails to adequately respect the developing human life; whether it forces women to lie and deceive to achieve a right which the law at least on the surface gives them; whether it gives a choice to women of economic means and not to women who do not have the same economic advantages; whether the issue could not be dealt with more thoroughly in the Health Act where it could be combined with measures on contraception, on counselling, on options and on various other related matters; whether this bill describes with sufficient clarity the rights and responsibilities of women and their doctors; whether in fact the bill is any more than a duplicitous attempt to please both sides, without really addressing the issues, society at large feels the need to be addressed.
It is difficult but necessary, I think, not to be guided by our private moral values, by the conscience that we would apply in our own lives to choices that we might personally have to make but to act as legislators with respect for the belief of others who perhaps have different standards and different moral values. We must act with compassion for those who find themselves in a situation in which certainly most of us in this House would never find ourselves, and with a commitment to do that which respects the pluralism of our society and the democratic principle that the laws will not force the moral beliefs of one segment of society on all of society except where society itself is directly threatened. It is clear that we do not know what the predominant moral value in society is on this.
I started out by saying it is a difficult question. It is a difficult question. I urge us all to act with that respect, that compassion and that commitment to a law which respects the diversity of views that Canadians have on this subject.


Margaret Anne Mitchell: Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to the member and I am still not sure what her position is on this bill. I guess that probably goes for her party as well. I wanted to ask this question of the minister who has left the House. The minister said a little earlier that each Canadian woman will be entitled to a medical abortion and will be able to have it with dignity as a result
of this legislation. I wonder if she agrees with that, if that is her interpretation of the limits? Well, really this bill has no limits as far as access is concerned which is what the minister, I think, was saying.
The member mentioned some examples in the form of questions. I wondered about the example of women, for various reasons, seeking abortions which doctors do not judge to be for health reasons. She was indicating that doctors may be feeling that they have to have a very strict interpretation of "health" under this act. The member mentioned young people whose health is not in danger but who simply cannot care for a child and who have many reasons for not wanting to continue with the pregnancy. She mentioned single women who are healthy but become pregnant and do not want to bear a child for various reasons. She mentioned as well low-income women who may have several children and simply cannot cope financially with an abortion. All these examples would probably be women who are not seeking abortions strictly for health reasons and therefore, I assume, would be not eligible for a legal abortion under this bill and doctors indeed might be fearful of giving too liberal an interpretation of the question of health. I would like the member's views on this.


Marlene Catterall: Madam Speaker, the member has raised a myriad of questions which may require another 20-minute speech in which to reply. It is true that the Liberal party does not have a position on abortion. It has done what I think is the right thing and allowed each member to vote according to his or her own conscience. I think that is an appropriate approach on a bill such as this.
If the member detected no firm commitment one way or another on this bill, she is absolutely right. I have a number of reservations with the bill. I have not yet concluded whether, in fact, it is worth allowing a bill like this to proceed through second reading to committee stage where it might be improved and some of the issues she raised addressed. That is why I am paying very close attention to all the debates in the House and to a number of other people whose advice I am seeking.

Obviously I do not believe that this bill gives women equal access everywhere in the country, regardless of their financial circumstances, to what the bill purports to deliver as a legal right and entitlement for them. I do not want to comment on how the law will be interpreted. I suspect that the Minister of Justice knows quite well that under this law there is virtually no possibility of a doctor or a woman being prosecuted and convicted for the carrying out of an abortion.


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Madam Speaker, I have a number of questions I would like to ask the member. I am particularly struck by her last comment because I think people are playing ostrich. They are putting their heads in the sand and passing criminal legislation and then saying, "Let's not worry about it because a doctor is never going to be prosecuted under this act".
The reality is that doctors are going to be prosecuted. People who are anti-choice are going to be trying desperately to have a doctor charged and doctors are going to become fearful. This bill does not allow an abortion for a 14-year-old-girl. It does not allow abortions for deformity of a foetus. It does not allow abortions for incest. It does not allow abortions for family planning or socioeconomic reasons. People said that if a young girl went to a doctor and the doctor said that he would not perform an abortion, she need only go to another doctor. The first doctor has made a decision that the abortion could be subject to criminal sanction because there is not a threat to the woman's health. Now is the second doctor going to perform that abortion? I doubt it. If no doctor is ever going to be charged, why do you think they are putting it in the Criminal Code? Is it not the intent to put it in the Criminal Code so that if people step over the bounds they will be charged?


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, I think the member misunderstands. I am not the person proposing this legislation and I think those comments and questions should more appropriately be addressed to the minister who did propose it and I trust that he either has done or will be doing that.


John Edward Broadbent: Madam Speaker, when the Supreme Court struck down the existing criminal legislation on abortion almost two years ago Justice Wilson said at the time, and I quote: "The right to reproduce or not to produce-is properly perceived as
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an integral part of modem woman's straggle to assert her dignity and worth as a human being."
I completely agree with this and I and my Party take this principle as the starting point in any serious discussion about the right to abortion.
The problem today in our country is not that we no longer have criminal legislation respecting abortion, the real problem today is that Canadian women do not have assured access to abortion services. They are denied the dignity that Justice Wilson specifically wrote about.
The bill we have before us does nothing to change that. What it does is confront women with the threat of criminal prosecution. What it does is reduce women's right and ability to make decisions that affect their lives. The New Democratic Party of Canada cannot accept such legislation.
Women have varying philosophical and religious beliefs about abortion. That is obvious. Some are totally opposed for reasons that I respect, if I do not agree with them. Others believe it ought to be their right to decide. We believe as a matter of policy, I believe as a matter of principle, it is not for the state to legislate one answer for everyone. The state must provide a legal framework for all women to choose freely according to their own philosophy or their own religious convictions. This bill does not do this.
Quite the contrary. It makes abortion illegal except for women who fit certain health criteria. It reduces access to abortion by threatening doctors with criminal action. It makes women possible accessories to a crime. It invites third party interventions. It in no way addresses prevention or unwanted pregnancies. For those who believe morality is based on freedom, as do I, this bill must be defeated.

Let us be frank! Women faced with an unwanted pregnancy under this legislation might feel compelled to claim they are weak or under trauma in order to qualify for abortion. They would need their physician's judgment. If the physician refused, they would have to seek another one. And where a first physician had refused to induce the abortion, would a second one take the opposing view thereby taking the risk of being charged under the criminal code? Certainly or probably not. The legislation is unfair to medical practitioners. It forces

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them to make decisions they would rather not make. But, it is deeply unfair to women.
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the time of the same ruling that I quoted earlier had this to say:
Forcing a woman, by threat of criminal sanction, to carry a foetus to term unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations, is a profound interference with a woman's body and thus a violation of security of the person.
Women must have the right to be free in reaching a decision themselves in this domain, obviously, after consultation with loved ones in a particular case, after consultation for medical purposes with their doctors, after consultation with any range of a number of people that they may want to discuss the situation with, if they so desire in terms of moral considerations involved. But the fundamental human right-and I stress human right-ought to reside with a woman to decide. The bill denies Canadian women that right. Therefore it is unacceptable for this reason.
The bill should also be rejected because it does not guarantee access. Those women who have been denied abortions because of the control of hospital therapeutic abortion boards by those opposed to choice may be no better off as a result of this legislation. They can still be denied access to what I regard as a fundamental human right, as does the Supreme Court.
Poor women will suffer. Wealthy and powerful women have always had access to abortion, and always will. Throughout the whole history of civilized existence, when abortion was at one time condoned by the church, after it had ceased to be condoned by the church, when abortion was deemed to be unacceptable for a variety of secular reasons in certain societies, those with wealth and power, women with wealth, have always had access to an effective right to an abortion if they wanted it. The reality is that money has bought freedom. Money has bought choice. I believe that freedom, whether in this domain or any other, should not be dependent on wealth. That ought to be a fundamental concern.

The truth is, there is no need for criminal law to regulate the morality of Canadian women on that issue.
Our mothers, sisters, wives and daughters are not criminals. In Canada, there is no need to introduce abortion into the Criminal Code. Since January 1988, abortion no longer comes under the Criminal Code. The number of abortions has not changed. But in Prince Edward Island, women still do not have access to abortion services. In Newfoundland, only one medical practitioner induces abortions in a hospital. Women in northern British Columbia, northern Alberta and northern Ontario must travel great distances to obtain an abortion. In Nova Scotia, where the number of late abortions is higher than the average, with a higher risk of health hazards, the provincial Government recently took measures to restrict still further access to abortion services.
Canadian women have no need for threats of criminal penalties. What they need is that the Canadian Government ensures they have access to abortion services.

The Canada Health Act stipulates that universality, comprehensiveness and accessibility must apply for all medically required services. Through the financial clout of the federal government, it should insist that these principles apply to the issue of abortion. The federal government, as we have made clear for a number of years now, has the legislative mandate to achieve these principles in application to the question of abortion. It is time this government showed leadership by using the Canada Health Act the way it could be used effectively to guarantee access to this important right from one coast to the other.
Despite the best intentions, some 64 per cent of pregnancies occur while partners are using some form of birth control. All methods of birth control have flaws, and any choice involves some kind of compromise, a compromise to a woman's health. Danger by and large tends to increase with the reliability of the birth control device that is used. Women who use IUDs risk pelvic inflammatory disease and sterility. Those on the pill can face two to four times the risk of heart attack and stroke.
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When birth control fails-to state the obvious under such circumstances-women are faced with unwanted pregnancies. If the foetus is carried to term, women in today's society overwhelmingly continue to be the primary care givers in the family structure, and frequently for single women, the only source of financial and emotional support for the child. That is what is involved if a woman is forced to have an unwanted child.
I ask members of the House to keep in mind, if we are thinking of single women here, that 56 per cent of single-parent families in this country live at or below the poverty level. Knowing this reality, I repeat, a woman ought to have the right to freely decide for herself in such a situation.
Family planning organizations all over the country have long recognized women's lack of control over their own fertility as a major health risk for themselves and for their families.
Pregnancy in women 15 to 19 years of age is considered to be the number one health problem by many health specialists. Teenage mothers experience a higher rate of mortality and morbidity. Pregnancy in adolescent women can seriously interrupt educational goals and often results, as we all know too well, in lifelong poverty. Young women who become pregnant after discussing all options, again I repeat, must be free to choose.
We have come a long way since 1969 when we threw out laws that made it illegal to disseminate information on birth control. But this bill shows we have not come far enough.
One woman in four is sexually active in our society on this continent and in northern Europe by 15 years of age. It is time we all understood that. Fewer than 10 per cent of North American teenagers use an effective method of birth control when they first become sexually active. In contrast, 90 per cent of adolescents in Scandinavian countries use birth control methods from the start.
Quebec, a province with one of the best birth control services in North America, also happens to have one of the lowest rates of unwanted pregnancy in the country. A child bom in the province of Quebec tends to be a wanted child. We believe all children bom in Canada ought to be wanted children.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
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John Edward Broadbent: Madam Speaker, the Family Planning Division of Health and Welfare Canada is composed of one full-time staff person. Surely this must change. Surely the federal government must make a substantial increase in the funding of birth control education and all other aspects of family planning in this country.
I want to conclude this brief but serious speech on this very serious subject by saying that families, as all of us know, can be the source of infinite joy, of boundless love, of security and of kinship. The decision to bring children into this world is quite possibly the most serious decision a man and a woman together-a woman in the ultimate sense here-will ever make. Such a decision, with all its responsibility implied, should be a free decision.
Let us not enact a bill that would make criminals of women who do not look lightly upon the responsibilities in such a choice. Let us do all we can instead to ensure that all children in Canada are wanted children.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Kilgour:: Madam Speaker, I listened with care to the very serious speech that the member for Oshawa just made. I would ask him if he is telling the House by implication, taking his premise that abortion should be exclusively a matter between a woman and her doctor, that society or the government, if you like, has at no point the right to interfere with that, to regulate that matter. Or, in other words, is he telling the House that at 16, 20, or 22 weeks it is still his view and that of his party that society has not the right to say, at some stage: "You cannot make the decision exclusively between the two of you"?


John Edward Broadbent: I am saying that of course we need regulations in this domain, but they are health regulations. The evidence is overwhelming that we do not need criminal law.
We have criminal law in our society and in others, if there is a mode of behaviour, a kind of behaviour that is deemed to be repulsive or morally unacceptable, and we need the sanction of criminal law to curtail. The evidence is overwhelming in this particular area that we are now debating that criminal law is not required, that Canadian women, as I said in my comments, whether they are our friends, wives, sisters, mothers, or lovers, are responsible, moral human beings. They have so

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demonstrated it in the case of the country as a whole since the Supreme Court decision almost two years ago.
Also, in the case of the Province of Quebec, where there has been freedom of choice for many years before that, there has not been irresponsibility-if one chooses a word-to deal with the issue in moral choices made by women.
Overwhelmingly, the decisions made about pregnancies are in the earliest stages. Overwhelmingly, when they occur late in a pregnancy, it is to save the woman's life, or for some other very serious medical reason involving deformities that may occur.
The evidence for us, not only in this party, but for the large majority of Canadian women, I repeat, is that we do not need Criminal Code sanctions, with all the attendant risks that come with such a measure in this domain.


Don Boudria: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the hon. member for Oshawa. It is a follow-up to the question my friend from Edmonton just asked. I know this is a very serious issue and he and I, as he obviously knows, will disagree strongly, our positions being naturally very different.
I want to get it clear in my mind if the member is telling us that at no point in the pregnancy does he think that society has an interest of such a magnitude that criminal law should apply, that at no point in the pregnancy is there an offence against society if the life of the unborn were terminated. In fact, that is criminal law-it is an offence against society. My colleague is a lawyer, and I am sure he knows that far better than I.


An Hon. Member:: He is not a lawyer. He is a professor.


Don Boudria: I am sorry, he is not a lawyer. Neither am

I want to ask him very seriously if the position that he is taking is that at no point in the pregnancy is that the case. If it is, even for people who do not agree with me on my pro-life position-I happen to think that life begins at conception and that human life should be protected from that point-surely, then, there must be some point at which he would think that society has an interest and that it is society's moral duty to intervene, to
protect and to punish behaviour which is contrary to what society thinks is right.


John Edward Broadbent: Madam Speaker, let me begin my clearing the record. I have many faults, but being a member of the legal profession is not among them.
On the substantive matter, as I said earlier, my understanding of the principle of why criminal law is needed is that certain modes of behaviour become not only repulsive but the instrument of the state is needed to ensure that they do not take place. The evidence as we have seen it in our own country is that the kind of outrageous act envisioned by the hon. member-and perhaps he might think of a woman having an abortion at the latest steps, beyond a certain point in the development of the foetus-does not take place. Therefore, if there is no evidence that this practice is taking place, from our point of view you do not need the sanction of a moral code. You do not need to leave the implication, as it would for me, that women are not exercising their moral responsibility seriously when I believe they are.
If there were a situation that is hypothetically possible along the lines that the hon. member alludes to, and he has acknowledged a philosophical conception, a view that fundamentally differs from mine-and I repeat that I respect that difference quite seriously even though I do not share it-if we are evolved in our behaviour as a society, and if we consider the kinds of practices that he alludes to as being hypothetically possible, then perhaps hypothetically at some point you might need that.
Why make that assumption now when there is no evidence to warrant it? The evidence goes very clearly all in the opposite direction that women, like men, are morally responsible human beings and therefore ought to have the right, in my view, to continue to exercise their freedom unfettered by the potential threat of the Criminal Code.


Mr. Harvard:: all members of the House that if you want to protect the unborn, you protect their mothers. That is how you do it.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Harvard: I have a question for the hon. member for Oshawa because I want him to expand on one particular area of his remarks. He said that the woman should have the right to freely decide this matter of having an abortion.
I would like to ask him this question because there are some people who already feel that under this proposed legislation women would have that unfettered right, they would be able to freely decide in consultation with their doctors whether they are going to have an abortion. They say that because, as some people say, the criteria are so wide that you could drive a Sherman tank through them. I ask the hon. member for Oshawa why he would be concerned about women not having this unfettered right to make this decision once this legislation were passed, if it were to be passed.


John Edward Broadbent: I would be veiy happy to answer that question. As the member knows, the criteria is essentially medical. It seems to me that it is something that ought to concern us from a point of view of moral responsibility. We are doing precisely what I believe the Supreme Court and this legislation has ultimately tested. There is better than a fifty-fifty chance that it will be declared ultra vires because it does deny the basic rights of a woman in terms of free choice, independent of medical criteria, to make a decision.
I will just repeat in my answer the argumentation that I found both moving and logically cogent in the ruling of the Chief Justice. He said: "Forcing a woman by threat of criminal sanction to carry a foetus to term unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations-" There is no reference to health, physical or psychological. He says: "-unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations is a profound interference with a woman's body and thus a violation of security of the person".
That is a very cogent expression of the view that a woman ought to have the unfettered right to decide. If I were involved, if my wife were pregnant, we would have this discussion. I believe this myself.
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Our party's position is a question of a choice here. I am saying as an extension of that principle, if I advised my wife that I did not favour her having an abortion, even as a partner in the act of creating a potential human being, then she should be free ultimately to reject it. I believe that. She ought to have that right. Certainly, she should not, nor should any other person, married or unmarried, have to go to a doctor for other than medical reasons. If a doctor says there are good medical reasons for a woman not to have an abortion, then that opinion should be respected.
The woman should not have to be dependent upon anyone's opinion, medically, psychologically or whatever, if she is to have the respect, as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada said, to her security as a person, her ultimate freedom. We have to give her that freedom. We ought not to deal with the question again, having legislation that refers to medical criteria basically as the only criteria to be used in reaching such a decision.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Hon. Jake Epp (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Madam Speaker, as I rise to take part in this debate it goes without saying that members of all sides of the House face a dilemma. Can we support with our vote a bill that we may find difficult to support in our hearts and in our minds?
At the outset, it is important that the country observing this debate recognize and accept that as legislators we have the duty not only to vote but to speak, to explain our votes. The two go together. So, in my comments today, I ask members and my constituents not only to note that I support this bill, but also to remember why I do.
We must remember where we were in this House on this issue in the summer of 1988. The House faced an obligation imposed on it by the Supreme Court following its decision in Morgentaler to come to a consensus on a new law on abortion, a law that would balance the rights of women desiring an abortion and the rights of the unborn child.
The House faced an opportunity, an opportunity to choose from a variety of approaches to a new law. We failed to achieve a consensus. That process proved what we knew then and we know now. There is no agreement in this country. There is no agreement in this House.

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Possibly there is no agreement in any party on what an ideal abortion regime in Canada should be.
Agonizing as it has been, futile as it appeared, the process in my mind was useful. It was useful if only to demonstrate through our imperfect means in this place that no one's ideal law can be achieved in this place.
The government has done what it had to do in the context I have just described. It has introduced for debate, for study, for possible amendment and finally a vote, a bill that attempts to balance the rights to security of the person of the woman seeking an abortion and the right to life of the unborn.
Simply, as I see it, the bill does this by beginning with the premise that an abortion cannot be performed unless it is necessary to preserve the health of the woman. It removes the previous procedural obstacles that the Supreme Court indicated infringed on the security of the person of the woman and which has been part of this debate in earlier speeches.
The bill, in acknowledging that abortion is a medical procedure, places on the medical practitioner the responsibility of determining whether the procedure is medically warranted. I do not shy away from placing that responsibility on those who are trained, those who are professional and those who must make life and death decisions in the course of their work every day.
But in my view the bill does not adequately circumscribe the grounds on which the act of terminating unborn life should be allowed. From my perspective and that of many Canadians of every region, both men and women-and I believe from every walk of life-this is the bill's greatest deficiency. It will be said that the bill allows abortions for too wide a variety of motives and under too many circumstances. I freely admit that such a prospect troubles me deeply.
In response, however, I can only point out the inherent weakness of the law, of any law, not just this law. How does law deal with the motives of the human being? For the law to command respect and to have any effect it must do two things.
First, it must bear some relation to things as they are, and not exclusively as they should be. Second, it must be capable of enforcement.
I have come to the conclusion, though reluctantly, that no abortion law would be capable of preventing abortion on the scale on which it occurs in our society today, and that no law would reverse what has been done in our society for the previous 20 years.
I believe that women seeking an abortion are not going to change their intentions if a law imposes a threat to their health or their freedom. Is a remedy a sanction against the woman? Remember, we are dealing, my colleagues, with criminal law. A sanction can only take place after an act has been committed. For those of us who are pro life it does not address the saving of life.
Physicians are not going to deny abortions to women whose health is affected by the pregnancy as they determine it in their professional code. Regrettably, juries are not going to convict today any more than they have in the past.
I acknowledge that our society does not respect unborn life sufficiently. I acknowledge further that in general our society inadequately supports women who bear children. As a former Minister of National Health and Welfare I struggled with the issue of what type of programs could we come forward with which would strengthen the support for women and with it the support for the family. I agree that in general men have a long way to go in respecting and placing sufficient value on the roles of parenting and caring for children.
This debate is not simply a woman's debate or an issue relating to or affecting women only. It affects women, obviously. It affects men. It affects children. These failings of our society are not going to be solved in this law or any other because the law cannot reform the human heart, and too often we try here to do just that. The law cannot achieve what society is unwilling or incapable of achieving.
We freely admit that the state cannot solve the great issues of human life. Many of us know that genuine reform in society will not come through political reform. Yet I believe that the state has a moral obligation to restrain the actions taken by men.
Chuck Colson in his book Kingdoms and Conflict writes the following: "Attitudes are forged by spiritual forces, not by legislation. Values change when spiritual move-
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ments stir the hearts of people and when fresh winds of reason stir their minds."
I am also convinced that we need a law because virtually every action, individual or corporate, in society is circumscribed in some manner by law, no matter how minimal the protection or the sanctions within that law. Surely members on both sides of this issue would have to agree that this issue is of sufficient import that if other actions are circumscribed by law, this action of abortion is sufficiently serious to be considered to be circumscribed by law as well.
What I do believe, therefore, is that what this proposed law will do is reinforce the principle that human life has unique value; that unborn life cannot be terminated simply on the basis of one person's choice without recognized grounds. Therefore I support this bill, albeit after much struggle and soul searching for two more fundamental reasons.
The first alternative was to have a law that rests on the principle that unborn life somehow attains greater value with the passage of time. The cabinet, and I say this even though we are all restricted by cabinet confidences, struggled with that issue. This House struggles with that issue. I am absolutely convinced that if we ever accept the principle that life somehow gains value as it matures, we are then subject to that great danger of asking ourselves the question: Does life lose value as it ages?
The second reason for supporting this law is that the alternative is no law. That, to me, is unacceptable because underlying such a course of action is the principle that unborn life has no value at all. It needs to be said in this place that the kind of solution for a middle ground proposed by the Law Refrom Commission, namely a gestational principle, is arbitrary in moral and scientific terms. Arbitrariness is precisely what the law is supposed to prevent. That was one option open to the government. I am pleased and frankly relieved that that course of action has not been taken.
This bill maintains that there are no stages in the value of life. If there were, then any other stage of life would be subject to arbitrary evaluation. If we introduce the idea of relativism in this matter, it will be difficult to exclude it in other matters. The whole concept of human rights rests on the principle of excluding arbitrariness and relativism.
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A bill based on the gestational principle could have been one alternative, but the House would have faced the same dilemma it faces now, a membership comprised of those who believe that the law is not even necessary, of those who believe a law must prevent abortions under any circumstances except for a threat to the mother's life, and of those who favour a law that allows abortions in some cases. No bill, I am convinced, would be capable of covering that spectrum. The point, therefore, is that we have this bill and we have to decide what to do with it.
The alternative to this bill, the result of a negative vote, would be a complete absence of any signal by society or to society that abortion is a serious matter involving human life.
The proposal has been called a compromise bill and I suppose it is. I think of it rather as an incomplete bill. It is incomplete because it rests on what is outside the law for its force and its effectiveness, namely, the values that thousands of Canadians bring each year to the decision of abortion. It is incomplete because it does not contain all the protection for human life, for unborn life, that I would like personally to see contained in abortion law. It is incomplete because perhaps society will ever yet move to a greater respect for human life in every dimension.
Possibly in the not distant future, in a more perfect and caring world, public attitudes and the public institutions by which we govern ourselves will respect the most innocent and vulnerable of human life. It will be a society which celebrates the fact that we have been given the joy not only the obligation of experiencing divine creation and giving support to that divine life in all its stages. Regrettably that day is not today.
Therefore I have not been persuaded by the arguments of my colleagues on the other side of this issue and I, in turn, have failed to persuade them with my arguments. However here we are with the best that the government could do, the best that the House could do, and I think the best that society could do on this issue in law at this time.
All of us have been influenced by certain forces. We all are influenced by what we have experienced and what we have been taught. On this issue I have been influenced by the British parliamentarian Wilberforce

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who, as my colleagues will know, was instrumental in having the slave trade abolished in the United Kingdom in the early 1800s. Wilberforce struggled with the need to compromise in public life as well as the obligation to be faithful to his faith. In that struggle his clergyman, a minister by the name of Newton, a member of the Church of England, gave Wilberforce some advice. Wilberforce was saying: "I have to compromise too much in public life and I might as well leave public life and do something else."
Wilberforce, after he had spoken to Newton, took the counsel of Newton, who said very simply: "You follow your own faith, your own convictions, but you do not abandon public office." Wilberforce followed that advice, Madam Speaker, and I intend to do the same.
And so it takes me to my last point. What can we do tonight? I am convinced that the law will not change the hearts of men and women. I am convinced as well that the law will not change the fact that 65,000 young Canadians die each year. I have to recognize that. I also have to recognize that sanctions are not the answer.
Therefore, I challenge the churches, I challenge the men and women in society to put faith to action: Adopt an unborn child. Let us take away the stigma that just because a child is unwanted that that child should therefore have no future. I have seen churches adopt children. I have seen them take under their care unwed mothers, give them care, give them support, give them a future. I have come to the conclusion that it is men and women in that setting who will have to become the answer to helping those who are most vulnerable and, in so doing, be that leaven, that catalyst in society that society can pride itself in preserving life.
It is with those conditions that I support this bill.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: I have a comment and a question for the hon. member for Provencher who I know has struggled authentically with the various responsibilities that come in public life-tension between one's own individual conscience, the view of one's particular religious community, the view of one's political party, the view of one's constituents, and all those things that go together to make being in this place sometimes a very difficult place to be, particularly when it comes to an issue like this one.
Without entering into debate about the member's reasons for indicating his support for this bill, I was only moved to rise at the end when, if I remember him correctly, he threw out a challenge to the church and presumably to all those in the Christian community who out of their Christian belief have taken a pro-life position and who have advocated either a position similar to the one that this legislation which we have before us represents, or a position which is even more restrictive with respect to abortion, and I expect something like the member for Provencher might have advocated in another context.
When I heard the word "challenge", what I was hoping for-and I do not say this in any polemical way-was not that the challenge would only be to individual families or churches to adopt, but that the challenge would be to society to create the social and economic conditions in which women could choose life, choose pregnancy, without as it is the case in so many cases choosing poverty. If we want to send signals about the value that we place on children, we do that every time we make law with respect to family allowances, we do that every time we make law or we don't with respect to child care, and we do that every time we make law with respect to unemployment insurance and make a distinction between the benefits that adoptive parents get and natural parents.
There are a host of ways in which the concern that the member for Provencher raised could be more comprehensively articulated. I think that is the challenge which ought to be issued to those churches that find themselves at odds with this law or that advocate a stricter law.
In that respect I have to say to the member that many times when certain churches have been involved in advocating certain social and economic policies they have been told by successive governments that it is not any of their business, that these are matters for economists.
I hope we could at least agree that it is not just a question of individual action with respect to adoption. It is also a question of social and economic policies, both sending signals to potential parents as to how supportive society is going to be of their choice to be parents in whatever context that choice is exercised and to society in general. It seems to me that that is where the challenge should go out to the churches and to the Christian community or, for that matter, to any other religious community. They ought to teach not by the

force of law in this case but by the power of example, by the power of love exercised not just individually but through the civil community, and by the other laws that might be passed.


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: Madam Speaker, to answer that question would take a lot of time, and in the issues of human life there is never one answer.
I know the member asked the question in the spirit that I have seen him address this question at other times. There is no doubt in my mind that social or economic circumstances have an effect on the decisions we take, but I would caution him, if I might, in the same spirit that it is not necessarily those in the lower economic groups who seek abortions today in Canada. I think we should be careful with that.
Perhaps I could use a personal example. I do it with a great amount of hesitation, but I do it perhaps to make the point. As I said earlier we come from our own experiences. I am a member of a family of four and I am the only one who is not adopted. My father and his first wife adopted two children who are brother and sister naturally and who escaped the Soviet Union. One was four and the other five. That family was very poor. The children were advertised in a church newspaper. It had very little to do with economics. It had everything to do with attitude.
My mother and her first husband adopted a girl. My mother's first husband for their entire married life was ill. They adopted a girl. All I am saying is that we should be careful when we give to this question that easy economic answer.
When I take a look at our native people, if I may speak about them for a moment, their attitudes to life and the reality of their poverty, I find very different attitudes in that society than I find in the general mainstream of Canadian society.
I do not want to deflect from the member's comments and his question, so I come back to the question. I say to him that I believe that not only the Christian churches but society in general should not ascribe to society the powers that it does not have. I believe that society only sets frameworks through law. People then work within that framework to do good or to do evil. I have tried to challenge them to do one of the greatest goods, and that is take from their own resources both financial, physical, emotional, spiritual and help someone rather than simply condemn because either the law is not good enough
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or that society does not understand or want to understand.
I appreciate what the gentleman says when he talks about economic factors. I am sure they play into that from time to time with certain circumstances, but I would suggest they do not affect every case or every decision relating to abortion.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: I did not mean to suggest-and I think the record will show it-that every case is affected only by economic factors. I tried to go beyond that. For instance, with respect to child care, in many cases the need or the prospective lack of child care is something which affects decisions about parenthood, decisions made not only by the poor but by middle income and upper income Canadian women who have to make decisions about whether or not they would have to leave their job in order to provide the kind of care that they may think is unavailable because of the current child care system or may be unavailable to them depending on where they live or for a variety of circumstances.
I certainly was not meaning to suggest that it is only poor women who seek abortions, although in many cases economics are a very strong element in why people make the decisions that they make, and we know that to be a fact.
All I am saying is that when it is a question of pure economics and choosing poverty by choosing pregnancy, or when it is a question of other things that may come into the factors in the decision-making process by women who we would not consider poor, all these things are related to social policy decisions that we make on other days in this House of Commons.
The challenge that the member issued at the end of his speech to the church should be a challenge not only to do the individual moral thing of being available to adopt children who may be unwanted, but the social, moral thing of being involved in the political process in building up the kind of support networks that would enable all women, regardless of their circumstances, to make the kind of choices that the hon. member wants them to make.


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: There is a lot of truth in what the hon. member says. The only points that I would repeat in this complex issue of abortion are these factors which play on decisions that are taken by individuals. That is why I come back to the main thesis of my point tonight, and that is, yes, let us strive to get a society that is more equitable, but let us never ascribe to society the ability to change the moral factors which I believe are personal

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and spiritual and come from a basis other than from laws passed in this House.


Hon. Kim Campbell (Minister of State (Indian Affairs and Northern Development)):: Madam Speaker, it is with some pleasure and very serious intent that I rise this evening to join in this debate on Bill C-43.
Perhaps I might just comment on the speech of my colleague, the hon. Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, because nothing shows more clearly the difficulties faced by members in this House. The hon. member is a colleague whom I love and admire very much and whom I am proud to stand beside and on most days sit behind as a colleague of this House. Yet, he and I take very different views on the issue which is the subject of the bill being debated this evening.
I think we can understand that when trusted and loyal colleagues take very different views on an issue such as this one-and it is truly a divisive issue indeed-not only does it not lend itself to the kinds of usual partisan organization that we find in this House, but it is a profound challenge to our understanding of our role as parliamentarians to find some common ground to meet the expectations of Canadians that we will make some kind of sense out of one of the most divisive issues in society today.
Like my colleague, the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, my position on the issue of abortion itself is well known in my community where I am well known as an advocate of those who are pro-choice. Like the hon. minister, I face the challenge of going into my community and trying to reconcile views that are basically irreconcilable on this fundamental issue.
My particular perspective on this issue of abortion arises from my own experience and my own intellectual and spiritual development. As a philosophical Conservative, I have a great distaste for dealing with human problems in the abstract. I am often reminded of the statement of Edmund Burke, perhaps one of the great founders of philosophical conservatism, in his commentary on the French Revolution written in 1790 that the French revolutionaries saw men as abstractions and in seeing them as abstractions they forget that they were
human. It has been one of the guiding principles of my life to try never to lose sight of the human dimension of an issue.
In the issue of abortion there are a number of human dimensions but, in particular, it is an issue that lends itself very poorly to attempts to generalize or to understand in the abstract. I am reminded also of the opening lines of Tolstoy's great novel Anna Karenina, where he says words to the effect that all happy families are alike; unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way. I think similarly one could say that all welcome pregnancies are in a sense alike; but each unwanted pregnancy is unwanted in its own way. The existence of an unwanted pregnancy is a circumstance that is unique to the woman involved.
I am among those Canadians who are very comfortable without a law because from my perspective I feared a law which would attempt to generalize about what is basically an experience that cannot be generalized. I feared that we would not be able to come up with a law that would respect the uniqueness of the decision to terminate or continue a pregnancy.
Bill C-43 has been described as a compromise law. Certainly for those who are on the pro-choice side of the issue the fundamental compromise is whether to have a law or not. As I say, I dreaded the prospect of a law in this area because I feared very deeply the notion of trying to create a legal framework that would lose sight of the unique circumstances that are involved in each decision with respect to pregnancy. But I can say quite sincerely and with quite a clear heart that I believe that this bill is actually better than no law. I realize that this is a position which will come as a surprise to many people who share my position on the fundamental issue of abortion. I want to address myself this evening to the reasons why I, as a very committed and passionate pro-choicer, can support Bill C-43.
I believe that in order to have a law there has to be some quid pro quo and the law itself has to respect the privacy, and, as I say, the uniqueness of the decision that has to be made about a pregnancy. I believe this bill does

both. It certainly describes abortion as fundamentally a decision made by a woman with her doctor.
Unlike many people on the pro-choice side of the issue, I am not at all uncomfortable with the role of the doctor in that decision because I believe that what the bill describes as the legal framework within which abortion is performed is fundamentally good medical practice. The definition of "health" is very broad and I believe takes into account all of the circumstances in which a woman would seek an abortion.
But I would be very disturbed by a regime which did not require of medical practitioners that an opinion be formed before the procedure be carried out because just as I am deeply opposed to the notion of a woman not being able to obtain an abortion when she wants it, I think it is equally tragic for a woman to have an abortion which she later regrets. Now, that is part of human life and we all do things which we may later regret, but I think it is extremely important that when a woman goes to a doctor with a request for something as serious as a termination of a pregnancy that there at least be an inquiry as to whether that decision is an informed decision, whether it is based on a realistic evaluation of her circumstance.
I give as an example an older woman who is pregnant who may go to a doctor and may otherwise not be averse to having a child but may be convinced that at her age she will undoubtedly produce a deformed child. Some reassurance from a doctor about the diagnostic techniques of amniocentesis, for example, may be very helpful there. A woman who is in an emotional state because she fears she will be left by her partner because she is pregnant may want to reconsider that decision in light of broader options that are available to her.
So I think what is described in the bill, the requirement that a doctor form an opinion based on standard medical practice is simply good medical practice and it is something that all women are entitled to. I do not find that a problem at all.
What I think is extremely useful about the bill and what for me tips the balance in terms of this bill as opposed to no law is that I believe that in so far as it is possible for the federal government to take steps to ensure access to abortion, this bill does so by clarifying
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abortion as a medical procedure performed for health reasons.
It has been stated by many people in the House during this debate, including my colleagues the Minister of National Health and Welfare and the Minister of Justice, that the federal government has no jurisdiction to regulate health practice in Canada.
Contrary to the understanding of many Canadians, the Canada Health Act is not a statute regulating health, it is a funding statute by which the federal government basically intrudes into the area of provincial jurisdiction with its spending power. So the notion that somehow one could put a provision into the Canada Health Act that would assure access to abortion is a mistaken notion, relying on a failure to understand the realities of Canadian constitutional law.
I believe that this law accomplishes perhaps the one good thing that was accomplished by the law that was struck down in the Morgentaler decision. Under the previous provisions of the Criminal Code, by definition, every abortion performed in Canada was a medical procedure performed for a health rationale. For that reason funding was assured under the Canada Health Act.
I can remember that in my own province there were those who wished to pressure the provincial government not to fund abortion. They found that they could not because it was, by definition, a medical procedure under the Canada Health Act.
I believe that Bill C-43 accomplishes the same thing by its very clear definition of abortion being performed for a health rationale. Although that may disturb some people who are very much against abortion, I think they would agree that whatever the status of abortion in Canadian society, it ought to be a status that is uniform across the country. If it is to be a legal procedure, it ought to be equally accessible across the country, and I believe that Bill C-43, to the extent that the federal government has the jurisdiction to do so, accomplishes this.
Bill C-43 ensures that abortions will be carried out by or under the supervision of a qualified medical practitioner. Bill C-43 creates no barriers to access in the way of procedural requirements or the requirements that abortions must be performed in any specific facility, for example. Whether abortions performed in clinics will be funded under provincial medical plans is something that

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is beyond the federal government to ensure, but abortions may be performed in a doctor's office or in a clinic without any legal penalty. The question of whether they will be funded under provincial plans is something that will have to be worked out with provincial governments. But, in so far as the federal government has jurisdiction, it has removed barriers to access that I think were very troublesome in the last bill.
I believe that Bill C-43 goes as far as federal jurisdiction can to ensure a national standard of access to safe, legal, funded abortions.
I would like to address some of the criticisms of Bill C-43 that have come from those who share my own position on the basic issue, criticisms from the prochoice side of the issue. Perhaps the most important criticism is with respect to this bill as an amendment to the Criminal Code and a distaste for what is described as the "recriminalization" of abortion.
I think there are two aspects of this. One is the concern that somehow women or doctors will be subject to arbitrary penalties for providing a medical service which many feel is a right that women should have in Canadian society. I think it is important to examine what is meant by recriminalization because what has been criminalized in this bill is, first, abortions performed by non-medical practitioners or not under the supervision of a medical practitioner; abortions performed without forming an opinion as to the health rationale which, as I said before, I believe is quite simply bad medical practice; and the sale of abortifacients, toxic devices or equipment to induce abortions or for women to induce abortions in themselves. Abortion is criminalized only in a very narrow sense.
What also offends many pro choice people with the notion of abortion being in the Criminal Code is that somehow they feel that having abortion mentioned in the Criminal Code implies a moral judgment even upon those who avail themselves of legal abortions. I think that is very much a misunderstanding of the way criminal law functions in our society. If you look through the Criminal Code at the subjects of things that are regulated under the Criminal Code you would find that many
perfectly acceptable kinds of activities in our society have been criminalized in certain contexts.
Those would include sexual intercourse, sexual touching, lighting a fire, gambling, being near a dwelling house at night, driving a car, possessing a narcotic, taking possession of property. Under certain circumstances those activities are all criminal and incur criminal penalties under the Criminal Code. But under other circumstances they are perfectly natural and acceptable activities in human society.
What this law does is draw a line around the legal practice of abortion and, beyond that line, certain practices relating to abortion will incur criminal penalties. But within that line activity is perfectly legal and there is no implied judgment upon those who avail themselves of the service, according to the law.
It is important to emphasize, as have my colleagues, that there is no other constitutional jurisdiction under which the federal government can act in this area. We do not have the constitutional jurisdiction to regulate health care. The residual jurisdiction of peace, order and good government is a very weak ground and unless we were to regard things happening about abortion as a national emergency, it is simply not a usable constitutional head of authority. So the only way the federal government can act at all to create some kind of national standard is to use its criminal law power. I think it is very important for people to understand that. The only way we can establish the legality of abortion in a positive legal statement is to define the boundaries beyond which it is illegal.
The question of access is the other aspect that is raised with respect to this bill. As I have said, there are limits to federal jurisdiction. I believe that the defined status of abortion as a medical procedure in this bill accomplishes a great deal toward ensuring equality of access across Canada. None of the barriers that existed under the old law, the committees, the need to perform abortions in accredited hospitals, exist in this legislation. I believe that this should ensure access for women in all parts of Canada.
The issue of abortion is, of course, something very fundamental to value systems in current Canadian society. It is impossible for us to have a legal framework
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which will satisfy all. The Minister of Justice has said: "We are not asking Canadians to change their views as to what they think is right, we are asking Canadians to respect the views of others and to respect this new law."
That is a harder challenge than it first seems because I know how passionately I feel about my side of the issue, and I know that many of my colleagues feel equally passionate about their side of the issue. To give ground on that kind of a fundamental commitment is the most difficult thing you can ask of anyone. Tolerance is the hardest virtue to practice in a democratic society. For those of us who make laws, moving from highly principled positions is very difficult indeed.
What is interesting about this law is that it represents agreement on some aspects of the issue among people from both sides of the issue, although, interestingly enough, for different reasons. For example, my colleagues who are strongly anti- abortion are adamant, as my colleague, the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources has said, that abortion only be available for a health rationale. I can accept that because first, only a very broad definition of health will pass the House and will pass, I believe, court review. But also, from my perspective, a health rationale clarifies the status of abortion with respect to the Canada Health Act.
So, for very different reasons, we can agree on putting a health rationale into the bill. My colleagues who are strongly anti-abortion do not wish to see gestation limits in legislation. I agree with them on that but for different reasons. For them gestation limits suggest a varying value of human life at different times of pregnancy which is anathema to them. For me, gestation limits simply feed the myth in society that women seek abortions late in pregnancy when over 99 per cent of abortions are, in fact, sought in the first trimester of pregnancy.
You will remember that Chantal Daigle could not get an abortion in Quebec after 20 weeks. There was no law. There was no criminal law against abortion and there was no law in Quebec setting out gestational limits, but the ethics of the medical profession apply here. We sometimes forget that that is a very important force. That is a force recognized in this bill where decisions about abortions are made according to standard medical practice. There are substantive limitations within the Canadian Medical Association about the performance of
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abortion. I and my colleagues who are on the other side of the issue can agree that it is not necessary or appropriate to have gestational limits in this bill. We have never had them in Canada. There are de facto gestational limits and they are gestational limits determined according to medical ethics in Canadian society.
The use of the criminal law is not only our only jurisdictional choice constitutionally, but I believe it also is a reflection on the seriousness of the issue. I had a letter recently from a very good friend of mine, a leader in the civil liberties field in Vancouver. He wrote to me congratulating the government on the bill. He is a person I admire very much because although he is deeply committed to civil liberties he is also a pragmatist who understands the difficulty of translating values into public policy. He says: " By retaining the criminality of the procedure the government has offered a potent symbol of conciliation to those veiy many Canadians who feel that this can never be seen or treated as just another moral issue. Its deep significance must, they insist, raise it to the level of the criminal law".
I think that recognition is appropriate. Strongly prochoice though I am, I recognize that abortion is not just another issue. It is a deeply important issue, it is a deeply important issue to me as a woman and all my understanding of what fertility means to a woman.
I would say in conclusion that I am among those Canadians who are comfortable with no law regulating abortion. I have confidence in the judgment of women and the ethics of the medical profession, and both of these views, I believe, are reflected in Bill C-43.
If this were all it would be a helpful declaration but not perhaps necessary. I do believe that Bill C-43 goes farther and, in clarifying the status of abortion as a medical procedure, it improves access. It also considerably narrows the range of possible legal challenges. I believe this law reflects the views of people on all sides of the issue although it does not reflect all the views of people on all sides of the issue.
The nature of the compromise that is required in this bill has been shown by the supporters of this bill. In reading some of the debate that has taken place so far and listening this evening, I am struck by the kind of maturity that is being shown in dealing with this very sensitive issue.

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I believe that Canadians are looking to us to be pragmatic and to understand where the broad range of Canadians are. They are not asking us to give up our personal views or to cease our struggles in other arenas to convince others of our views. I believe that this bill is the best we can do and that it is an opportunity for us to show that we recognize the true role of parliamentarians in this House. For that reason, Madam Speaker, I am pleased to support the bill.


Margaret Anne Mitchell: Madam Speaker, I was veiy interested to hear the rationale presented by the Minister who shares a pro-choice point of view. I want to raise two or three points that to me did not seem quite logical in her presentation. For one thing the Minister spoke about the medical aspect of the bill and felt this was a positive aspect of the bill. I wonder why she feels that it needs to be under the Criminal Code again when in fact abortion currently is a medical procedure and is regulated as a health matter.
She mentioned also in the Chantal Daigle case that the ethics of the medical profession applied in Quebec as far as the 20-week limit on abortions was concerned. Yet she was using the rationale that we need the Criminal Code in order to apply this at this time.
I would ask her why we need it when there was no need during that period when this was occurring in Quebec? I agree with her that there are health regulations in that the medical profession certainly has a code of ethics which is pretty general across Canada.
I am worried about the member's statement and the statement of a number of other government members on the question of equality of access. I cannot see how this bill provides for equality of access, including geographic access. I cannot see how it will help women in P.E.I. and Newfoundland who have no access to abortion now.
I certainly cannot see how it will encourage access in the future. I do not see how it will help those women who want an abortion, have made a decision, and do not have a valid health rationale. I think we have to agree with the difficulty this presents for many doctors who undoubtedly will feel that they have to interpret health with a fairly narrow rationale. These are women who do not, in honesty, have a health reason to seek an abortion, but who find it very difficult to be honest because they are desperate and this is their decision. I would ask her
to respond to those points. I find it very difficult to find them in her remarks.


A. Kim Campbell: Let me respond first of all to the member's comment about gestational limits in the Criminal Code. I do not think the member understood what I said, or perhaps I did not express myself very well.
There are no gestational limits in this bill. We have never had legislated gestational limits for abortion in Canada. The point I was making is that I do not believe they are necessary. I believe that their existence in legislation reinforces a myth that I think is injurious to women and, therefore, I do not believe they should be in the legislation. In fact, they are not in the legislation. My colleagues on the other side of the issue from me also do not wish to have gestational limits.
In this bill there are some principles that we can agree on, although for different reasons. That is the point I was trying to make. My reason for not favouring gestational limits is different from the reasons that my colleague, the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, would give. But the fact that we can agree on the substance of what should go in the bill is a step in the right direction. Therefore we have some consensus. The reasons are very different.
With respect to the member's question of access, her first and third questions, let me just draw on my own experience in British Columbia when the Morgantaler decision came out striking down provisions of the Criminal Code when there was no law. The government of British Columbia moved to restrict money for abortion, except in cases of rape and incest. That regulation was struck down, but it was struck down for a largely technical reason, that there was no statutory basis for it. But that could have been corrected by the legislature.
Where attempts to limit funding for abortion can be impugned as being veiled attempts to prevent abortion, I believe will not survive legal challenge. They will be seen as an attempt to invade the division of powers and invade the criminal field which is the sole jurisdiction of the federal government. I believe that without any law, it does leave the door open for the provinces, quite legitimately, to draw a distinction between abortions which are medically necessary and those which are not, and to fund only those which are medically necessary, drawing their own criteria. I believe this bill solves that problem by making it clear that every legal abortion in
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Canada is a medical procedure performed for reasons of health.
When we get to the question of the valid health rationale and the breadth of it, we already have a fair amount of dicta in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada, which indicates how health should be interpreted, which is why psychological health is included in this bill. A narrower definition, we believe, would not survive a constitutional challenge. I believe that health is a very broad concept. Chief Justice Dickson used the terminology, I believe, "the aspirations of a woman." There is other commentary. One thinks of the World Health Organization definition of health.
Under the previous legislation, the legislation that was struck down, there was strong pressure from pro-choice groups in Canada, that somewhere, somehow a definition of health, for the purposes of that provision of the Criminal Code, be defined as the World Health Organization definition. It was recognized that a broad definition of health would open up access to abortion.
I am the first to agree that putting that definition in the bill is the compromise, that having a health rationale is a compromise for somebody coming from my perspective. It is the provision that concerns strong pro-choice women. I believe that the definition is broad enough, and the trade-off in terms of securing the status of abortion, which I believe puts it firmly under the Canada Health Act, is a reasonable trade-off to make. I do not believe that that health rationale will be an impediment for any woman. I believe that it is important to see health in terms of the whole human being. The definition of this bill includes health as physical, mental or psychological which, it seems to me, those of us on the pro-choice side of the issue have been fighting for for years and fought for when we had to deal with the old law. We said there has to be a broad definition of health because otherwise the old law was not fair. The old law was struck down, but we are now faced with defining health in a helpful way.
So to answer the member's question about equality of access geographically, once again, I believe that in firmly putting abortion within the purview of the Canada Health Act, by removing the previous barriers, for example, the need to perform abortions in an accredited hospital which existed under the old legislation, the hurdle of therapeutic abortion committees without the
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requirement to form them, that the federal government has done as far as is possible for it to do under its jurisdiction all it can to ensure access.
There is no legal penalty under this bill for a doctor to perform an abortion in Prince Edward Island. I believe that if provinces are not prepared to make those services available, that as with many other services that are not available in all jurisdictions in Canada, they will be obliged to provide funding for those services in other parts where they are available. There are many services for which this applies in Canadian health care.


Mr. Wenman:: Mr. Speaker, in the minister's speech she spoke about the role of the medical practitioner. It seemed to me she suggested that the medical practitioner's only role certainly was not the physical act of performing the abortion, but rather that it had to do with revolving around consent and that that consent should be based on information. The minister used the word "informed" consent.
Would the minister be willing to give a full and fair consideration to a potential amendment relating to informed consent? Second, might she consider an amendment that related to perhaps a period of time for reasoned judgment? In fact, after the first consultation with the medical practitioner there might be a 48-hour period whereupon further reflection and reasoned judgment could be brought to bear for that person to consider the information that the doctor, in fact, might give that woman. Third, would the minister define an abortion itself as the termination of life? Does the minister accept that definition, the termination of life is what an abortion is in fact?


A. Kim Campbell: Mr. Speaker, on the question of informed consent, no, I would not support that kind of amendment. First, there are already civil remedies against physicians for performing procedures where informed consent is absent. It is part of the law in Canada now with respect to medical procedure.
What I was speaking about was simply good medical practice-time for reasoned judgment. Once again, we are talking about this question of dealing with things in abstractions and trying to generalize about what are unique circumstances. One woman may come to a doctor and say, "I have been thinking about this now for two weeks, and I have talked to my clergyman, and I have talked to my partner, and I have talked to my parents, and I have been all around this issue and I have made

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this decision and I just feel that I cannot go ahead with this pregnancy" for all these various reasons.
Another woman may come to her doctor in tears or simply may advise the doctor of her pregnancy and at that time begin the process of coming to a decision. I do not think it is the business of Parliament to dictate to practitioners how they deal with that. That is precisely the thing I fear, this desire to create a general regime for what is basically a unique situation for each person. I think we have to have some confidence in the medical profession. As I say, what I like about the way the health rationale is put in this bill is that it demands good medical practice for women in Canada.
Finally, the member asked me the question about whether abortion is the termination of life. That is a philosophical question. I do not accept the notion that a foetus has the same rights as a born human being. Maybe I am too much of a product of the common law, but I think that is an opinion and a discussion which is philosophical. We are trying to legislate in the real world and I do not think it is helpful to get into that discussion at this time.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Fee):: The time for questions and comments has expired. On debate, the hon. member for Ottawa South.


Mr. John Manley (Ottawa South):: Mr. Speaker, I must say the Chair becomes you veiy well. I welcome this opportunity to participate in the debate on this bill and to put my views on the record with respect to the complex and difficult issue of abortion.
I wish to say that I have very carefully considered the views of the hundreds of my constituents who have taken the trouble to contact me either in person or by mail. I have also considered the many written materials sent to me by groups and organizations concerning this issue. I have told those who have contacted me that I take my responsibility in this matter very seriously.
I endeavour to approach this issue from what I would call a non-doctrinaire point of view. I seek to apply my judgment as a legislator trying to find a framework in law for the benefit of all Canadians.

Each and every one of us, as members of this House, must use his or her own judgment on this issue. As a group we bring a unique combiration mix of life experiences and of political and sometimes personal philosophies.

My own experience has been profoundly touched by the reality of life and death. I have witnessed the birth of each of my three children and these are three of the most precious moments of my life. At each of them and at the memory of them, I was and am moved by the miracle of human life.
My wife and I have also experienced the grief of a miscarriage and we have shared in difficult decisions relating to the use of artificial life support for both of my parents.
The need to reflect on matters of birth, life and death can escape none of us for these are the common denominators of the human experience. Consideration of matters of life and death is not limited to abortion. Modern technology presents us with a host of questions about life and death that never before needed to be answered by humankind. Some of these questions, in vitro fertilization, surrogate parenthood, voluntary euthanasia, create difficulties that are as profound as those presented by abortion.
I believe the principle that life is special is self-evident and even that it is not in dispute, including in this debate. Some refer to this principle as the sanctity of life. Human life should represent in a civilized society a very special value, a higher value. Human life itself should be preserved and protected as the highest possible priority of human endeavour and ingenuity.
Life, however, is much broader than the issue before us. Human life itself cannot exist independent of other life forms on this planet. What we must be learning from the environmental crises that surround us is surely this:
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While human life may be sanctified, it will only be preserved on this planet if we show concern and respect for our world, its plant and animal life forms as well.

Have we not finally understood that all life forms are interdependent? Respect for life involves a lot more than just preventing abortions.

That being said, it also seems to me to be self-evident that human life begins before birth. Nature in its own course provides for the human child to be carried by its mother well beyond the point at which modern technology has rendered it viable outside the mother.
I also believe in the principle that in our society, the maximum possible scope for individual freedom or choice should be permitted. I do believe, however, that freedom to choose brings with it the obligation to accept the consequences of one's choices. We take pride, and rightly so, in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms but sometimes I believe that we should have a charter of rights and obligations because obligations flow necessarily from rights.
I am not unaware of, nor do I disregard, the views of those who believe that a woman should have the right to control her own body. I am not one who favours a pervasive government interference in the private lives of individuals and I believe that matters of private morality should not be within the purview of the state.
I have heard the plea from some women that the life within a pregnant woman, especially in the early stages of pregnancy, is not independent life but really part and parcel of her own body. To enact a criminal law to interfere with a woman's control over this aspect of her person is viewed as a profound interference in a woman's private, personal matters.
I understand this viewpoint and I am responsive to it, especially to the extent that I believe that the state should have less rather than more control over the personal lives of individuals. But I find enormous difficulty with the view that the unborn child, especially after the point of viability, has no right to protection by the state.
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Having outlined my view of the meaning of respect for life and the need to accept responsibility for one's choices, I would like to comment on the proper role of the criminal law in this matter.
First of all, as a lawyer, I agree that the sole head of federal jurisdiction in this matter is the criminal law power, whether exercised through the Criminal Code or otherwise. This requires us to define an offence and to prescribe a penalty.
I also believe that the rule of law is fundamental to our system of government. Without the rule of law, that is, the acceptance that the law is paramount and of equal application to all, the integrity of our system of government will be undermined. The acceptance of the rule of law depends upon respect for the laws we enact in this place, fortunately, far more than it depends upon respect for us as legislators. The importance of this principle should give legislators great pause in deciding to enact a criminal law.
What is required for us to enact a criminal law to prohibit behaviour in our society? I believe that a very broad consensus within our society is required, a consensus which encompasses the following elements: First of all, the behaviour which is prohibited is such that it should be punished. The behaviour must offend against society's view of acceptable behaviour. Second, the person to be punished for committing the offence must be deserving of punishment. Third, the punishment must be fair and reasonable in the circumstances.
I have been told by some of those who support a law prohibiting abortion that it does not matter if the law cannot be enforced or if it is commonly disobeyed. It is enough for them that the law be in place to demonstrate society's values even if enforcement is impossible, impracticable or even undesirable. On the latter point, some have told me that they favour an abortion law but would not like to see women punished for disobeying it. These statements undermine for me the argument for legal intervention.

I suggest that if the law is not enforced or is full of loopholes or if juries refuse to convict those who disobey it, there will be us respect for the law and this will thus undermine the Canadian legal system.

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There are doubtless many times that citizens consider the law to be an ass, as Mr. Bumble said in Oliver Twist, but when this is said of the criminal law in respect of a matter which touches people broadly in the country, the danger to respect for law is intensified.
The values implicitly or explicitly contained in the submissions I have received, both in favour of and opposed to a law, are not reconcilable, premised as they are on a fundamentally different view of the time at which human life begins and is worthy of protection.
I must say that some of the extreme presentations of these points of view have been rather offensive to me. This debate, more than most, has resulted in the characterization of opposing views in provocative and extreme epithets reflecting to the disgrace of those who make them.
I too am a product of my upbringing, my experience of life, my legal training and, perhaps most important, my faith and the understanding it gives me of life and the meaning of the universe. The views that I hold of matters of life and death are the ones that I will teach my children and that I will seek to apply in my personal life. But as a legislator, I am responsible for shaping laws that will affect the rights of other people in matters of life and death. In our pluralistic society, I cannot expect that everyone will agree with my views or accept my values. But a society must have values which it owns and which unite it. It is to these values that I now appeal.
The first, as I have explained, is the principle that the laws we enact must be worthy of and receive the respect of the population. But further, I believe that we share values in Canada that will provide us with the affirmation of human life that is sought by caring people. It is upon these values that we have built a system of social programs that is envied by other nations.
As Governor Mario Cuomo of New York has said:
We should understand that whether abortion is outlawed or not, our work has barely begun: the work of creating a society where the right to life doesn't end at the moment of birth; where an infant isn't helped into a world that doesn't care if it's fed properly, housed decently,
educated adequately; where the blind or retarded child isn't condemned to exist rather than empowered to live.
The unfortunate truth is that in Canada, abortion is often motivated by economic considerations. If we condemn some of our people to live in poverty, whether through lack of jobs, lack of adequate child care or an unfair tax system, can we rightly criticize these same people when they seek to mitigate their responsibilities? If we keep our young people in ignorance, if we deny them the moral guidance and the physical means to avoid unwanted pregnancy, is it fair to condemn them when they seek the means to continue their adolescence without the interruption and responsibility that childbirth provides?
If I have never experienced rape or incest, how can I judge whether a woman impregnated in these circumstances is wrong to want to remove from within her the consequences of these violations of her person and her dignity? Again, quoting Governor Cuomo:
If we want to prove our regard for life in the womb, for the helpless infant-if we care about women having real choices in their lives and not being driven to abortions by a sense of helplessness and despair about the future of their child-then there is work enough for all of us. Lifetimes of it.
We must see that justice is done, not only for the unborn, but also for their parents. Any abortion law should be accompanied by a very positive pro-active agenda that will endeavour to prevent unwanted pregnancy, to support mothers during pregnancy, to enable families to live without hardship and to ensure that women have readily available to them counselling services and advice concerning the adoption alternative and to ensure that no woman obtains an abortion who might have been willing and able to bear a living child.
As Canadians, let us find common ground for policies and programs based on these values, values which affirm the dignity of human life, values that promote caring and compassion.
Before I conclude, I wish to comment specifically on Bill C-43. During the election campaign and since, I have maintained that I would support a law that would protect the unborn and that would be consistent with the Charter of Rights. I believe that Bill C-43 meets or appears to meet the minimum requirements of this test.
I have carefully reviewed once more the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Morgentaler and I believe as a lawyer that the proposed bill is constitution-
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al. However, I do not disagree with the suggestion that the bill be tested by reference to the court after enactment but before proclamation.
However, I believe this bill to be fundamentally dishonest. It appears to protect the unborn from the time of conception, and yet it is hard to see how even one abortion would be prevented under this law. It appears to leave the matter to a woman and her doctor to decide and yet it criminalizes the act of abortion and I believe exposes doctors to real peril of prosecution.
In short, I fail to see how this bill can do other than to lead to disrespect for law. Would Canada have an abortion law? Yes. But that law would be worse than a bad law or no law. That law would be a joke.
Because of the critical importance of respect for law to the rule of law and of the rule of law for the preservation of freedom, I cannot support this bill. I will not vote for a law that will fuel cynicism and contribute to a sense that the laws we enact here, much like the talk we often engage in, are irrelevant to contemporary society.
I will vote for the bill on second reading, however, not because I support it in principle, but because I think the matter should be studied by a committee of this House and amendments considered. I will vote against this bill in its present form at third reading.
For the record, I will say that I absolutely support the use of criminal law to prohibit abortion after the foetus is viable as an independent human life. It is to me totally unacceptable for an abortion to take place after the point of viability which I understand may be as early as 21 weeks. How can we countenance an abortion in one hospital room of a foetus at the same stage of development as that of a premature baby whose life we are seeking to save in a room just down the corridor? Only if it is a matter of saving the mother's life should the life of a viable foetus be sacrificed. I believe most Canadians agree with this, and would support such a law.
In the earlier stages of pregnancy, I am not any more content that abortions occur, but I draw back from the prohibition of elective abortion at an early stage, not because I think the unborn has any less value at 12 weeks
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than at 20 or 30 weeks, but because I perceive that such a prohibition would not be enforceable.
I am offended by the reality that abortion is being used in Canada as a means of birth control in 1989. There can be no other explanation for the number of abortions that occur in Canada each year. It is evident that in many of these cases, choice is exercised irresponsibly before conception and abortion is the means of avoiding the consequences of one's choice.
However, I believe society does not accept that the state should intervene in the life of an individual woman at this stage of pregnancy. I also believe that if the state attempts to do so, the result will be legal chaos, with confrontations between police and groups, refusals by juries to convict accused, and also, unfortunately, many illegal abortions and the gruesome possibility of back alley and self-inflicted abortions.
Whatever my own opinion about whether abortion is right or wrong, I cannot as a legislator support the enactment of such a law, one which will not be effective and could cause hardship and suffering for those whose act is viewed by society as essentially private and unworthy of attention by the state.
I feel the burden of this legislative responsibility to be very heavy. I know that many will criticize me for the conclusion I have reached since, like Bill C-43 itself, it satisfies neither extreme in this debate.
In response, I say two things: First, I do not believe that we are here to debate whether abortion is good or bad, right or wrong. Rather, we must debate and decide what is the best legislative response within the constitutional powers of the Parliament of Canada to the issue resulting from the demand from women to obtain abortions. Second, my response is to remember the advice given by Polonius to his son in Hamlet:
This above all, lo thine own self be true.
And it must follow as the night the day
thou canst not then be false to any man.


John Henry Reimer: Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by briefly outlining my position in support of the protection of the life of the foetus or the unborn child. First, it is well known that all of the components necessary for the development of a unique individual human being are contained in the genetic code

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that is present from the moment of conception, the hue of our eyes, the colour of our hair, the size of our feet, as well as the capacity of our brains, have all been established in that instant. Nothing needs to be added, other than food, shelter and care.
Second, the indicators of life and its development are manifested early and dramatically. The unborn child produces its own blood at 17 to 20 days after conception. Its heart begins beating from 20 to 24 days after conception. Between the sixth and seventh weeks, the electrical activity of the brain is discernible and at the eighth week, all essential organs are present.
Canada has accepted in medical practice that the cessation of brain wave activity is the irreversible indicator of death. Well then, should it not be reasoned that the first readable signs of brain wave activity confirm the presence of life? Nevertheless, our behaviour as a society deliberately and in a premeditated manner destroys that life. From Statistics Canada's figures for 1986 and 1987, it can be readily seen that approximately 75 per cent of all abortions occur after the beginning of brain wave activity.
I think it is highly instructive to read how, in 1975, after an exhaustive examination of the available biological and physiological evidence by 133 world-renowned scientists, geneticists and gynaecologists, the West German Federal Constitutional Court responded to the question as to when life begins. It is also important to note that the court was acutely conscious of the historical events which took place between 1933 and 1945, and was therefore especially anxious to ground its judgment in scientific objectivity. Its conclusion was:
Life, in the sense of historical existence of a human individual, exists according to definite biological-physiological knowledge, in any case, from the 14th day after conception -
Or the period of nidation or individuation.
The process of development which has begun at that point is a continuing process which exhibits no sharp demarcation and does not allow a precise division of the various steps of development of the human life.
In view of this concrete evidence, it is a sad commentary on our society that one's position on abortion can then be construed, and thereby dismissed by some, as being simply a matter of personal opinion or belief. No,
it is not a matter of personal opinion; the medical evidence of life is concrete, it is objective, it is compelling. To anyone with an open, enquiring and honest mind, life then must be accepted as an uninterrupted continuum which begins at conception and ends at death. Without doubt, abortion brings about the death of a living human individual during the process of its development along that continuum.
I fail to see why anyone including our Supreme Court Justices, do not see this logic, for surely a human foetus will never result in a cat, dog or a horse but only in a human being which it became at conception and will remain so until death. Only shelter, food and normal development and protection is required throughout pregnancy or up to age two, or five, or fifteen, or twenty, or fifty, or seventy years of age.
Dr. Jerome Lejeune, one of the world's foremost human geneticists, stated the following to the United States Senate Committee in 1983:
-if a fertilized egg is not by itself a full human being, it could never become a man, because something would have to be added to it, and we know that that does not happen.
After I read the tortured reasoning of the Supreme Court Justices which they revealed in their judgment of November 16, 1989, in the Chantal Daigle case, I wished and I prayed that someone could get our judges to contemplate the simple yet profound common sense of what Dr. Lejeune said.
Indeed, according to Sir William Lilley of New Zealand, knighted because of his pioneering work in amniocentesis, the unborn child is not a part of the mother's body, as some incorrectly suggest, but rather is a separate person who dictates his or her own growth and when he or she is to be bom. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that our laws protect life from conception. That is why it is so important that the government reject any legislative proposal that followed the gestational or highly arbitrary approach of foetal viability.
The bill before us implicitly recognizes that life begins at conception by placing a criminal sanction against the taking of foetal life. Further, the criminal prohibition on abortion is throughout the pregnancy and is not only mandatory to protect the sanctity of life but also this criminal sanction is highly symbolic. Mr. Joseph Main-got, a member of the Law Reform Commission which
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issued a paper this past summer entitled "Crimes Against the Foetus", put this very well when he stated:
The criminal law is our nation's fundamental statement of public policy. It is the instrument by which the community draws a line between the tolerable and the intolerable. Criminal law defines those whose interests are worthy of respect and protection, and in my view this should include all members of the human family. Ultimately the criminal law is a mirror of what we are; it reflects our commitment, or lack of commitment, to human dignity and equality.
The law does not exist for the sole or primary purpose of punishing illicit acts. It exists as an expression, in a broad sense, of the kind of people we are. It does not merely regulate our behaviour, it articulates and symbolizes our values and beliefs.
I am pleased that the government heeded this advice and demonstrated its respect for human life and made the taking of a life by abortion a crime within the Criminal Code except under certain circumstances. This action by the government is in keeping with the invitation of our Supreme Court in its decision on the Morgentaler case of January 28, 1988, in which Chief Justice Dickson wrote:
The precise point in the development of the foetus at which the state's interest in its protection becomes 'compelling' should be left to the informed judgment of the legislature.
In this bill, the government has defined that precise point as conception when the state interest should become compelling since the criminal sanction against taking foetal life applies from conception. The Supreme Court decision of Januaiy 28, 1988, also stated in the judgment of Chief Justice Dickson:
Like Beetz and Wilson, I agree that the protection of foetal interests by Parliament is also a valid governmental objective. It follows that balancing these interests with the lives and health of women a major factor, is clearly an important governmental objective.
This balancing of interests between that of the mother and her unborn child is also a part of the bill before us in that it allows an abortion only when the life or health of the female person is likely to be threatened. If we in this House believe in the sanctity of life, we must ensure that there is an equal concern for the well-being of both mother and child.
Unfortunately, the abortion debate has been interpreted by some as being one of competing interests; the right of the mother to be free to choose versus the right of her unborn child to live. However, it surely defies all that we hold dear about humanity to speak of a mother
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and her unborn child as being in competition against one another. Only a pathetically distorted sense of what is right, or what is freedom of choice, or what is demanded as control over my own body, or what is a deliberate act of ignoring all medical and scientific evidence could render a mother and her child as antagonists.
In view of the limitations placed upon us by the Charter of Rights, I would like to state the following: I believe an abortion should be performed only on the grounds of self defence in those very limited number of circumstances where the mother's life and narrowly defined health is, in the opinion of a medical doctor, in demonstrable danger, and where there is no other accepted medical procedure to treat that danger according to the opinion formed using, as this bill says: "the generally accepted standards of the medical profession."
I would submit that this bill is sound in principle. Life from conception must be protected within our Criminal Code. It is also on the right track in that it permits an abortion only when there is a threat to the mother. But the bill goes far beyond that by permitting an abortion, not only for the rare legitimate reasons of the life of the mother but for health broadly defined as physical, mental, and psychological.
That definition of health is so broad, so open to abuse, that abortion could be and has been justified by unscrupulous and unprincipled doctors for almost any reason. Anyone who has studied the reasons for abortions from 1969 to January 1988 knows full well that veiy few abortions were performed, one, to save the mother's life or, two, to save the mother's physical well-being where in the professional opinion of the doctors involved there was no other medical procedure or option to treat that risk. In fact, Madam Speaker, the vast majority of abortions were performed for reasons of convenience and the desire simply not to have the child.
Therefore, this bill is in obvious need of, in fact it cries out for, amendments to circumscribe more definitive boundaries and standards around the word "health" so that we truly are balancing the interests involved.
We need to carefully consider adding words such as "seriously endangering" the pregnant woman's health. Further, we need to clearly state that an abortion should be only undertaken by a doctor if in his professional opinion there is no other medical procedure or option

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open to him to treat this serious health risk endangering the pregnant woman.
I also think we must strike out the word "psychological" in the definition of health and retain the words "physical and mental", but only within the constraints I have just mentioned. I think the bill should demand, and I also take it as a given, that every doctor would retain a written documentation of his professional medical judgment justifying the performance of the abortion.
We must carefully consider other amendments such as Mr. Justice Beetz indicated when he wrote:
Parliament is justified in requiring a reliable, independent and medically sound opinion in order to protect the state interest in the foetus.
Further he stated:
Parliament requires this independent opinion because it is not only the woman's interest that is at stake in a decision to authorize an abortion".
The penalty against unlawful abortion proposed in this bill is that it is an indictable offence with a possible prison term not exceeding two years. If the principle of the bill is to protect life and to balance both the interests of mother and child, then surely two years is woefully inadequate and an amendment providing a term of up to 15 years or life is far more appropriate. Only then would we be truly protecting life as we do in manslaughter or murder cases.
The purpose of second reading debate is to debate the principle of the bill. I believe that one of the principles of the bill is to protect the life of the foetus or the unborn child from conception. This bill does this by placing a criminal sanction against the taking of that life from conception.
The bill also seeks to balance the vital interests of both the mother's and child's life by permitting an abortion only when the life or health of the mother is likely to be threatened. In this case, the bill is far too weak to achieve any proper balance by not carefully limiting the word "health", by providing only up to a possible two-year prison sentence and not requiring an independent medical opinion.
The way the bill now stands, all of its provisions are on the side of the mother and next to nothing protects the child within her womb. To succinctly summarize the nature of this bill, I would submit that one could
characterize this bill as one that is pro-life in form and pro-choice in substance. It is pro-life in that it assumes that life begins at conception and should be protected throughout the pregnancy. But it is pro-choice in that it literally permits a woman to go to any doctor prepared to do abortions simply for cases of anxiety or alleged psychological harm.
Nevertheless, because at least the basic principle of protecting the unborn from conception is the implicit foundation of the bill, I will support it at second reading in spite of its serious inadequacies which I will seek to amend at committee and report stages when amendments are permissible. I do not support this bill with any joy within my heart. I do so only after much soul searching and only in order to make full use of all of the opportunities the process affords us as members of this House to make amendments to improve this bill so that the vast majority of abortions done for none other than the frivolous and shameful reasons of convenience might decrease in number. Then and only then will we begin to do what we in this chamber should always strive toward, to defend the innocent, the weak and the powerless and to stand for the truth and for the protection of the sanctity of life that that truth demands of each of us.


Mr. Jim Jordan (Leeds-Grenville):: Madam, Speaker, it is a pleasure to participate in this important debate, a sometimes very moving debate. We have had experiences with that here tonight. A very sincere group of speakers has been addressing the problem with which we are all wrestling with.
I am sure we all bring different perspectives to the debate. The perspectives are as varied as are the people addressing the bill. I personally bring all of my life experiences to what I am about to say. My sense of worth and my sense of values are going to be brought into the discussion as I am sure will those of many who will address the bill. In spite though of all these variances that we find among ourselves, we would all agree on some fundamentals I think, one of these basic fundamentals being that life is worth while, life is a valuable entity, life is worth protecting.
I am sure that to argue otherwise would contradict what we see going on in any hospital in the city of Ottawa tonight. Doctors and nurses are there working to try and
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preserve a life. Lifelong sacrifices are being made by some families to preserve a life, a life which some would have thought was not worth preserving. There is something very, very fundamental that touches us all when we talk about preserving life. It does not matter whether it is a big person or a small person, a young person or an old person, a sick person or one who is well. All people are very different. All are lives and in spite of different surroundings, in spite of totally different circumstances, they are worth our protection.
That is what this debate is all about. Sometimes we get off on ramifications of economics and so on and I have heard it mentioned here tonight. It seems to suggest that economics should be the dividing line. We are talking about life, fundamental life.
Our obligation as human beings is to protect the lives of others who are in no position to do so. They have no voice. A tremendous moral responsibility rests upon us to particularly protect those who cannot protect themselves. The inconvenience that one life may cause to another life is not justification for the dominant one to discontinue the life of the innocent one. In no way is that justification to turn somebody else's life around, to discontinue the life of that person because somebody happens to be in a stronger position.
A child on the verge of being bom is developmentally indistinguishable from a newborn infant. In a free and democratic society infants have the status of persons. They possess fundamental rights, including the right to life and the right to legal protection.
The mere fact that a baby is inside someone else's body does not imply to me that it is not a person. If it is not a person at this stage, presumably the reason for that is that it is still physically dependent on its mother. But if its personhood is diminished in this way by dependence then the personhood of seriously ill people who are on life support systems would come into question as would the personhood of other seriously dependent or handicapped persons with whom we are surrounded daily.
If intrinsic value of the life were diminished by dependence, some persons would have less intrinsic value than others, and I think that would bring our Charter of Rights with regard to life into play. The
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problem I have with viability as a determinant is that the level of development at which the foetus becomes viable depends on the stage of medical science and technology. We have made tremendous strides in society in that area of science in recent years. Let us not turn our back on it.
I think it would be a disgrace, a reflection on the personhood of people to turn our back on newly developed medical techniques and newly developed awareness such as we have heard spoken of here tonight, things which we did not know 25, 50, 75 years ago. I do not think we should turn our back on new medical evidence that life begins at conception.
Section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says: "Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right of the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination".
Failure to protect the life of the foetus by law would, in my opinion, be permitting the taking of a life. If a law prohibiting infant abuse becomes unenforceable, or very difficult to enforce because of widespread deterioration in values in our society, that would not be sufficient reason to promote the absence of such a law. It is difficult to enforce but surely we do that in society all the time.
If no one's life is valuable enough to protect by law then none of us really have any basic rights. If a foetus has the right to have its life protected by law, such a law is justifiable in a free and democratic society and it is in accordance with our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
On January 28, 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada declared Canada's abortion law unconstitutional. We need a new law which will be found to be constitutional. Certain women's groups, and I have heard this alluded to here today, oppose any form of protection for the foetus. I want to caution women. The justice women which have achieved, and rightly so, will be seriously undermined in society if it is bought at the price of injustice to persons conceived but not yet bom. Women will lose. If they think that gives them the right to impose upon and extinguish the rights of others, what have they gained? There is tremendous risk if women feel that they now have the right to impose their new found rights, justifiably distinguished and determined, for which I give them all sorts of credit, but not pushing it so far that they think

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they can now impose rights on others who are in no position to express themselves.
Pregnancy concerns the whole person. It concerns the family, it concerns the community, and I think it concerns all of society. It requires, above all, communities and a society that cares. It is like poverty, which is a concern of all society. Racial inequality is a concern of all society. Institutionalized abortion means to me that the community is opting out, opting out of caring; caring socially, caring economically, caring judicially and caring personally.
To say that a man, the male species, should not comment on abortion because it is something that he will never experience is a simple way of copping out too. I have never witnessed war. I have never been on the front lines of war. I have read much about it and have heard many stories about it, but surely I can have some appreciation for that. I have some appreciation of what war must be like. I feel confident and certain that I can speak out on that issue and try to see that we will never have that to contend with again, although I have not experienced it myself.
If we have legislation to protect the unborn, I think the state then has a responsibility to introduce social programs which will assist people for whom abortion seems to present the only temporaiy solution to their problems. There is some responsibility for the state here which includes such programs as access to counselling; the full range of adoption options explained to people; housing needs, on which the determination to have an abortion is very often made; the provision of time for parenting and child care; programs in child care; affirmative action for fathering, something which probably was not thought of a few years back but should be addressed in today's changing times. Above all, we need education to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
Calling anything a woman's issue strikes me, personally, as being rather offensive. Spouse beating, day care and abortion are society's issues, they are not strictly and rigidly women's issues. It would be like calling apartheid a South African issue. Apartheid is not a South African issue, it is a universal society issue and society is no one gender, race, colour or religion. Injustices of the past toward women or any other group in society cannot be
corrected by perpetuating further injustices and denying life to unborn children.
I am asking my hon. friends who have not thought this through or have not taken a position to consider voting for the life of the unborn. Come down on the side of human dignity, be a promoter of life. What legitimate right requires for the exercise of that right the infliction of pain and death on another innocent human life? I ask that question.
There are two lives here to consider and, therefore, the moral question of abortion is absolutely not a women's rights issue exclusively. It involves the question of whether it is moral to dispose of or to destroy the weaker of the two individuals. When two people enter one of Morgentaler's clinics, only one comes out.
History tells us that in more barbaric times if a woman condemned to die was found to be pregnant, the execution was postponed to allow the innocent party to be born. In pregnancy there are two different heartbeats, two different brain wave patterns, often two different blood types and, in about half the cases, two different sexes. There are two people involved.
The question is not so much should they break the law but rather should they kill babies? That is the question. In a civilized society one does not kill one human being to alleviate the problems of another human being. We would not tolerate that. This bill would allow that to happen.
The foetus is not just a potential human being but rather, in my opinion, a human being with full potential that needs time to develop and to mature. Life is a continuum. It is not measured in weeks, in inches, in pounds or in kilograms, life is a continuum.
I do not think it is good enough to say that the legislation will be okay because most people's rights are respected. We are talking about individual rights. An apology to those whose most basic right, that of life, has been denied does no good whatsoever. As long as just one person's rights are encorached upon with the result that life is denied them, then I think society is in deep trouble.
I heard tonight that every child is a wanted child. That suggests great love, a reaching out for children. It is a common slogan, but let me remind you, Madam Speaker, that this slogan is not quite as loving as it sounds. It reduces children to objects with the right to exist only if
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somebody wants them more than some other material thing. I think life is worth more than that.
Abortion is an attempt to solve one's personal problems by eliminating the life of another. Nothing threatens the most basic foundation of human civilization more directly than the widespread assault on the sanctity of life, whether it is by terrorists, plain murderers, or by the advocates of unrestricted abortion and euthanasia. Such cheapening of human life, apart from destroying the highest moral values, cannot but encourage the rise of crime and violence in our society. It is part of the throw-away society. Already crime is inflicting humanity at an alarming scale.
Any solution that I would have to this topic we are discussing would not be without any problems either. I admit that. I concede that. But we solve a problem because it is there and it challenges us. We have a problem confronting the Parliament of Canada now.
How terrible it would be if someone levelled all the mountains in life and, if it were possible, removed all the problems that we will be confronted with over our lifespan. There would not be any opportunity left for human beings to become really human, with the real qualities of a human being, if there were no challenges left.
What better time in the history of this country to show some leadership and be viewed by the rest of the world as the most generous, the most compassionate people in the world and the nation which showed the most human dignity in the world. All of us are here because of the generosity and the sacrifice of someone else. I think we have an obligation to others to return that sacrifice that others made on our behalf.
The gestational approach which has been mentioned tonight is unacceptable in principle because I think it arbitrarily determines that human life is more worthy of respect at some stages than at others and this, it seems to me, lends itself to selective living and selective dying. To offer easy access to abortion shows a callous failure of responsibility to protect life. To outlaw it, on the other hand, without proposing some positive measures to remedy the situations that we have heard mentioned here tonight encountered by pregnant women would also amount to a failure of responsibility.
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I am suggesting a coherent and effective family life policy. It would require a co-ordinated effort from all levels of government.
Instead of this proposed legislation, which is just a fancy way of having abortion on demand, I think the government should be proposing a family life plan which could then be supported by all members because it is something positive. It is a positive attitude toward life. Measures would have to be taken in education, labour, revenue, and housing, as has been mentioned.
In closing, what I am asking is a new approach to something that is very old. If you take away life as a basic right, all other rights that you would extend to the foetus are meaningless. Do without that one, you will do without them all.
Why not reject this proposed law in favour of a family life policy that is positive toward life in its outlook, one that would see the family elevated above every other social unit or organization-the ultimate unit, the family, the one that is of prime importance if we are to advance as a society on the world scene.
I think Canada has an opportunity to show leadership. Forget about party differences. What I am proposing is developing an attitude that respects the family and transcends all the petty differences we find when we bring party lines into play.
I think we must commit ourselves to elevating our purposes once and for all. Do something because it is right although it may not be popular. Do it because it is right.


David Kilgour: Madam Speaker, the member who just spoke did so thoughtfully and obviously very sincerely about an issue of importance to all of us.
I take it from his final comment that he is inclined to vote against this bill. Nobody would agree with him more that there are major defects in the bill, in my view as well. I would ask him if he would consider-and he obviously does not have to answer now-what would happen if this measure were voted down on second reading. I am told by a journalist friend that it is very close now as to whether or not it will pass, that nobody will be happier than the people sitting to his left who believe in abortion on demand. Of course they are not all sitting to his left.

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I would ask him if he and others in his party, as well as those on this side of the House, might consider what would happen if that does happen. Maybe we would be better to try to get this bill into a committee and to try to make amendments either there or at report or third reading stage which would make this bill more acceptable from the point of view he has been advancing.
I ask him if he and others might consider that before voting this bill down when it comes up for second reading.


Jim Jordan: Madam Speaker, I will not be supporting this bill. I am tom terribly on it. At the present time I do not think you will ever reach ideals unless you are prepared to pursue those ideals. To break it off and say "I can support it, although I do not quite support it on something as basic as human life" puts me in a bit of a jam.
I am really puzzled at the people who normally would be here at my left, and I do not want to get into great debate with them. These are supposed to be the people who have great compassion for people. They are not showing too much compassion when it comes to this little person who cannot defend himself. That is the thing that bothers me. They may have their own rationale for their opinion on it, as I have my own rationale for what I have said here this evening, but that one puzzles me terribly. I just cannot understand their vein of thought at all.


Lynn Hunter: Madam Speaker, I have listened with great attention to the hon. member. I think that much of this debate tonight has been very thoughtful, and many of his comments fall into that category. I am struggling to give him the kind of respect that I think is accorded to those who participate in this debate.
However, when he makes comments that women choose to have an abortion because it is part of a throw-away society, for some material thing, as a woman I take great umbrage.
This is the kind of attitude that causes women to want to make it very clear that this is a woman's issue. I would like him to comment on that.


Jim Jordan: It is a woman's issue, but because women are part of society, it is a societal issue. I do not think it is strictly and solely a woman's issue.
My basic premise is that there are two people involved. If you do not agree with that, then of course you disagree with what I have said. If you do not agree with that, that there are two people involved, then I can see where you take the position that you have already taken.
It is a woman's issue. Because women as men and children and everyone else are part of society, it is a societal issue. It is something as fundamental as life. It is a societal issue.


Mr. Hogue:: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the hon. member opposite, the Member for Leeds-Grenville. Certainly I would not try to influence him, and it is basic in my view that he asks to some extent that the House not play politics on such a basic and important matter. For quite some time I have been working on the pro-life side of the question, and I am proud of it. What I do not understand is the position taken by the hon. member opposite. As it seems to me after examining and pondering the legislation, it protects the fetus to a much larger extent more than I have heard him state. So much so Madam Speaker, that it recognizes it not as an extension but rather as a part of the human being, because it introduces the concept of criminal act into the thought process and the legislation. Again, I would not try to influence the hon. member, but it seems to me he could reflect a moment on that double dimension and his personal position, which I share indeed.


Jim Jordan: I have difficulty agreeing with you if, as I understood you to say, this bill protects the foetus. This bill allows open season on the foetus. All you have to do is convince a doctor that you have some physical ailment-it could be a scratchy throat or a headache that you did not used to have that-and attribute it then to your pregnancy.
I am thinking of certain doctors, and I will not mention names, who do not have much guiding them, it seems to me, morally. They would have no trouble accepting your word for that and perhaps getting a signature or whatever is required of them to give to you so that you could have your pregnancy terminated. I do not see much in
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the bill that would prevent that from happening. Indeed,
I think it will become commonplace.
The next thing that follows of course in a country that gets too liberal on abortion policy is to permit euthanasia. I think China is a good example of that. I was reading in the newspaper the other day that China has a very liberal abortion policy. Right now in China euthanasia can be performed in hospitals. The state does not interfere. Somebody in the hospital decides that somebody's life should be snuffed out. It is permitted in China today without question.
I think you will be finding yourselves with this kind of legislation which is so weak in terms of protection of the foetus.
To me, it permits abortion on demand. If it is not on demand immediately the legislation passes, then the tendency with any legislation like this, though, is to become more and more liberal as society becomes more and more accepting of it. If it is not abortion on demand immediately, it soon will be. I am going back to what has happened in China where they went with a very liberal abortion policy and now they have euthanasia wholesale.


Mrs. Gabrielle Bertrand (Brome-Missisquoi):: Madam Speaker, never in the Canadian parliamentary history have elected representatives been confronted with such an agonizing issue as that of legislating abortion.
During this last year especially, so much has been said and repeated on the subject, so many arguments have been put forward in support of legalizing or prohibiting it; so many extreme, intolerant, not to say disquieting reactions have come from legal, health and other professionals, people in responsible positions; there has been such an escalation in the media sometimes bordering on indecency, that I wonder if there is any point today to preach one way or the other.
Maximum exploitation of the victims of situations that arose last year has helped radicalize the already irreconcilable positions of both sides of the question. What with publicity, the temperature kept rising, and verbal violence even erupted at times. Is it any surprise that our fellow citizens differ in their views when the interpreta-
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tion of government actions varies from one newspaper to the other? Indeed, after our legislation was tabled, we could read on November 4 in the Edmonton Journal: "This Bill makes sense"; in the Ottawa Citizen, "Abortion compromise pleases no one"; in the Gazette: "MPs on both sides unhappy with"; in Le Devoir. "Ottawa recriminalise l'avortement"; finally, in La Presse: "La femme et son medecin decideront de Vavortement''.
Madam Speaker, first of all, I want to make quite clear that I am neither a lawyer, a doctor nor a social worker. I am a citizen of this country, a mother and a grandmother, and my hair is white. However, I am very much aware of the debate that is going on today, in and outside Parliament and before our highest courts. I am also very aware of the many comments I have read and heard, of often hasty judgments that would benefit from a more critical view, and the many personal statements that at times I found chilling. And here I am again, in the same situation we had during the debate in 1988, tom between my personal convictions as a woman, as a Christian and a Catholic. I also have my responsibilities as a legislator, and I am a member of a government that is seeking legislation that is in line with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, while it is also seeking the best solution, and does so in the best interests of the society it has been asked to lead. The government and Parliament cannot and must not claim to dictate to women what they can think and do.
The government's role is to help these women opt for life, for having a child and a family. It is not the State's role to act as their conscience and to make for them a choice that is so difficult and problematic.
Last summer, journalist Jean-Luc Mongrain wrote the following in the heat of the debate, and I quote:
We don't need full-page ads of guilt messages. When we have to make decisions as important, as intimate, as disturbing and as profoundly existential as these, we certainly do not want to be hustled by people defending the ideololgies of pro-life or prochoice!
We need people who listen and understand, who reach out and are tolerant, and we need love and understanding. No court and no Parliament will ever be able to satisfy us and provide the right answer.
Experience has taught me the following: Coercive laws will not change people's attitudes. To try to understand the human drama going on today, we need tolerance and

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an open mind. In most cases, the problem we are discussing today is a disturbing reality for those who are directly involved.
Following a judgment by the Supreme Court on abortion, some people shouted and screamed that the so-called legal vacuum had to be filled as soon as possible.
The opposition in Parliament, many editorial writers, those whose only defence and opinion is to pass the buck-all these people have been clamoring for federal legislation. But no one has had solutions or concrete proposals to suggest and when our bill was tabled, it was often the same people who criticized it most strongly.
Faced with the innumerable comments on this bill, I feel somewhat like a referee between two fighters whom nothing can dissuade from doing everything to beat the other.
These two gladiators-a term I reluctantly use for extremists who tolerate no compromise-each have a share of public opinion behind them. Each has the support of 15 to 20 per cent of the population, but between them lies the majority, often called the "silent" majority, which certainly does not make the headlines.
One thing is for sure: No law will please everybody. If we want to protect the rights of the fetus, will we have to continue to take women to court? That is the terrible dilemma we are asked to resolve.
However, we cannot escape our responsibility, because what Canadians want now is an end to the confusion. They want the government to take a position and legislate in a way that strikes a fair balance between abortion on demand and criminalization. Such a law might not deal with the moral issues raised in this debate, but there will always be such problems which are hard to solve by legislation.
As my colleague, the Minister of National Health and Welfare, said, we were elected by the Canadian people to choose the course that will respect the rights of all concerned in as fair a way as possible.
That is why, Madam Speaker, I support this bill. However, I would like it to be just the starting point for another step. For all of us who care about respect for life, respect for the embiyo, the fetus, the unborn child, for all of us who deplore the alarming number of pregnancies that are terminated every year, it seems
urgent and imperative to me to lay the foundations for a real family policy.
The government's responsibility goes far beyond legislating or banning abortion. Since our role is to promote the welfare of the people, would it not be logical that, along with other government levels, with the private sector and with organizations dedicated to the future of our nation, we direct our combined efforts towards the prevention of abortion, prevention which in concrete terms means helping women who reject their pregnancy, and enhancing the desirability of the child and of the role of the mother?
AFEAS, a group well known for its enlightened and reasonable positions, advocates the establishment of family planning clinics for men and women alike where they would have access to services related to contraception, fertility, sterilization, and therapeutic abortion. A pregnant woman would be offered a full range of services such as reception, information, local resources reference and psycho-social support. A woman who does not want to have children should be aware of the many contraceptive methods which she and her mate can use.
On the other hand, it is just as important that a woman who wants to bear a child be in a position to look forward to maternity with enthusiasm and optimism. If this commendable aspiration is to be fulfilled, it is essential that a family policy have two objectives, one material, the other psychological.
In the first instance, the policy must eliminate or reduce as much as possible the destabilizing impact of pregnancy on the financial status of an individual, of a couple, or of a family. This could be done through tax measures which clearly favour women who want children. The baby bonus is a modest step in the right direction, but we have to think about the longer term. It is absolutely imperative that the career of family mother-or family father, in some cases-no longer be beyond the reach of most Canadians. The time has come for the tax burden to be distributed more equitably among those who are concerned about the survival of this nation and those who care only for their pleasure here and now.
As to the psychological objective of this policy, it seems to me to consist only in the enhancement of the contribution made by the father and mother. Even if we succeeded in making this contribution financially affordable, we would have achieve only half our goal if we did not make it socially worthwhile in the eyes of everyone. The mother who stays at home must be perceived as a
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precious asset and not simply as an "Yvette", as she was unfairly caricatured in Quebec during the referendum campaign.
In our new society, the couple who decides freely to enrich their home with one or several children deserve the congragulations, encouragement, moral and financial support of the state. In short, they should get incentives to realize their objectives and to achieve their educative goal.
Personally, I think it is high time for the government to help society become more open to all life, as suggested last year by our Catholic Bishops. It should take society by the hand, walk side by side with it, educate it, convince it to help the family seek more children.
Thanks to such family human development assistance policies, abortion would practically disappear. Then and only then might we feel that we have done what we had to do to prevent abortion. That could be our most worthwhile contribution to the welfare of Canadian men and women.


Mr. Nicholson:: Madam Speaker, I wonder if there would be unanimous consent in the House to call it ten o'clock.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The House has heard the suggestion of the hon. parliamentary secretary. Is there unanimous consent?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Before adjourning the House, I think it would be in order for the chair occupant to wish each and every one of us in the House a happy first anniversary.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: It being 11 o'clock p.m., pursuant to the order made Monday, November 20, 1989, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at two o'clock, pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 9.54 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Wednesday, November 22, 1989