1989-06-15

[Stage Direction]
A message from Her Excellency the Governor General transmitting Supplementary Estimates (A) for the financial year ending March 31, 1990, was presented by the Hon. Robert de Cotret (President of the Treasury Board) and read by Mr. Speaker to the House.

[Stage Direction]
Hon. Robert de Cotret (President of the Treasury Board) moves:
That, pursuant to the provisions of Standing Orders 81(5) and
81(6), Supplementary Estimates (A) for the fiscal year ending March
31, 1990, laid upon the table earlier this day, be referred to the
Standing Committee on Agriculture.
Mr. Speaker:: The House has heard the suggestion of the Hon. President of the Treasury Board. Is it agreed?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Hon. Doug Lewis (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table in both official languages a nomination which was recently made by the Government pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 110(2) which is deemed referred to the Standing Committee on Energy, Mines and Resources.


POINT OF ORDER
Mr. Boudria:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.


Mr. Murphy:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Churchill on a point of order.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Mr. Speaker, I suspect that the Liberals are rising on the same point of order.
We understand that the annual report of Canada Post was supposed to be tabled in the House at this time today. It is the report that indicates that Canada Post made a $96 million profit on the backs of Canadians last year. We were informed it was going to be tabled in the House.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Speaker:: Before I hear the Hon. Minister I will hear the Hon. Member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, indeed I am rising on the same point. We had a closed-door briefing at 10 a.m. this morning on the understanding that we would not reveal the information until the document was tabled in the House of Commons at 11 a.m. If in fact the document was tabled in the manner in which we sometimes refer to as the "back door" method, in other words, merely handed to the Clerk, I would like to know why it was under embargo. If it was tabled with the Clerk, when did that occur?
I make that request since as we are speaking the President of Canada Post is holding a press conference across the street in order to make his document public. I want to know, has this document been tabled before the

June 15, 1989
Point of Order-Mr. Murphy
House. If it has, then, of course, the next question is why were Members not informed.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that my friends opposite want to comment on the progress that has been made by Canada Post, the fact that it is no longer a money losing proposition as it was under the previous Liberal administration, and the fact that it is more efficient and more Canadians are getting better service.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: I do not want to delay that.
My friend referred to a closed-door meeting. Let us not put the connotation of a closed-door meeting on the subject. Hon. Members were given the benefit of a briefing. I would not put that connotation on it. I understand that it is possible to table these documents via the front door, that is, in Parliament, or through the Clerk's office.


Don Boudria: Has it been tabled?


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: I am sure that if it was tabled it was tabled through the Clerk's office, and tabled properly. If my friend has any allegation that it was not tabled properly then-


Don Boudria: Was it tabled or not? That is all I want to find out.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: I normally do not like to debate this type of procedural motion on an opposition day. I do not want to delay the debate on the very important motion before the House. I think we can deal with it privately, if my friends will give us a minute to check.


Mr. Len Taylor (The Battlefords-Meadow Lake):: Mr. Speaker, I have in my hands, for the information of the Government House Leader, the press release that is being issued in the press conference being held in the press theatre right now across the street. It states in the second paragraph that the figure $96 million in profits released in the corporation's 1988-89 annual report were tabled today in the House of Commons.
It is our understanding that those were going to be released today. As such, I want to ask if it is the intention of the Government to ensure that the report is referred to the Standing Committee on Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Government Operations. Whether it is via the back door or the front door we want to ensure that
the reference is made to the committee as well as ensuring that the report is tabled here.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: The Table is presently checking the timing of the tabling in the official manner. I want to assure my friend that that report will be referred to the appropriate committee. I know my friend will want to bring lots of witnesses to show Canadians why Canada Post is now making money and delivering the mail much more efficiently than it had been under the Liberals.


Mr. Ross Harvey (Edmonton East):: Mr. Speaker, I was invited to no briefing this morning. I was not invited to any news conference this morning. However, I am very much interested in seeing this annual report of what some of us believe has become the major corporate vampire in Canada.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I want to return to the issue at hand. With respect, we are not debating the merits of what is in the document. Members of the House have been asked this morning if they were interested in receiving an advance briefing. The condition for that advance briefing was that we were under embargo until the document was tabled in the House.
Unless we can find out if the document has been tabled or not, I would submit that Members are prevented from even commenting on the report on the honour that we gave this morning not to reveal the contents. This is no laughing matter for the Minister of Justice (Mr. Lewis) who should at least know as House Leader what is going on and what document his own Government is tabling.
Right now a press conference is going on across the street. I am expected to comment on that. We can be dam sure that the President of Canada Post is not delaying his press conference while we are here arguing about whether or not the document has been tabled. I am still under embargo. I have given my word of honour. I intend to keep it even if the Government is making it almost impossible for me to do so.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, I think what has become clear, as the Government House Leader has indicated, is that the Government wanted to introduce this report via the back door. Obviously, it realized, too, that these profits have been made on the backs of the workers of Canada Post. The Government
June 15, 1989

wanted to cover up so that we would not get into any discussion in the House of Commons.
The fact that we find out now that it has been tabled via the back door-


Don Boudria: Has it?


Nelson Andrew Riis: I want to remind Members of the House that today's motion before us has to do with the fishing industry in our country. It is being devastated on both coasts. It is time to get on with the debate, in recognition of the fact that the Government did slip a fast one past us today.


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, the question put is a simple one. The Government can table reports by having a Minister stand in his place and do so openly. That is public.
The Government can also table reports through the Clerk. We call it via the "back door". Those are not my words. It is the traditional wording for ministries wanting to table documents. It is done every day via the back door. It is through the Clerk's office and it is without becoming public. I ask the Speaker can you tell us, Sir, whether that document was tabled via the back door today?


Mr. Speaker:: I am very cognizant of the importance of the question of the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier and the interventions of Hon. Members. The particular report was brought to the Journal's office some time between 10.30 a.m. and 11 a.m. this morning.


STRIKING COMMITTEE
Mr. Albert Cooper (Peace River):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the ninth and tenth reports of the Striking Committee.
If the House gives its consent I intend to move concurrence in the tenth report later this day. I would ask at that time that we dispense with the reading of that report by the Clerk at the table as the report concerns only membership changes to Standing Committees.
[.Editor's Note: See Today's Votes and Proceedings.]
Petitions


STRIKING COMMITTEE-CONCURRENCE IN TENTH REPORT OF STANDING COMMITTEE
Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I would like at this time to move concurrence in the tenth report of the Striking Committee, presented earlier this day.


Mr. Speaker:: Does the Hon. Member have the unanimous consent of the House to move this motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Mrs. Pauline Browes (Scarborough Centre):: Mr. Speaker, within the boundaries of Metro Toronto and the city of Scarborough, Canadians have a rare opportunity for a major environmental issue. That issue is to establish a Rouge River Valley system to be a preserved and protected area for all generations.
The Rouge River is a unique and precious natural area. It has significant archaeological sites within the valley that date back many thousands of years. The whole 5,000 acres of this land is being threatened by the discussions of the Metro Toronto Council of pursuing this as a garbage dump site. It is threatened as well by the Government of the Province of Ontario, who wish to build a major freeway right up through the middle of this particularly beautiful valley.
The constituents of Scarborough Centre, people in Metro Toronto and Canadians right across the country are really outraged with both of these discussions taking place.
They call upon the Government of Canada in the national interest, to join with the mayor of Scarborough, the federal Minister of the Environment for the Government of Canada, and the coalition of Scarborough community associations to have the Rouge River Valley preserved as a Canadian heritage land or a provincial park.

Order Paper Questions


Mr. Charles-Eugene Marin (Gaspe):: Mr. Speaker, with the restructuring of VIA Rail and given the location of the riding of Gaspe and the services that it receives from VIA Rail, I have the pleasure and the honour to table, in both official languages, more than 2,500 names asking VIA Rail and the Government to kindly consider the restructuring of VIA Rail, which is an essential service in danger of disappearing from the Gaspe peninsula. We are strongly oppossed to any disappearance of the minimal essential service that we have in the Gaspe.


Mr. Raymond Skelly (North Island-Powell River):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to place before the House a petition which has been signed by thousands of Canadians who live on the West Coast, and call on the Government to initiate a full and complete public inquiry into the Government's ability to prevent, contain and clean up oil spills on the West Coast.
I have also had the pleasure, as a representative for the people in these communities, to lay on the desk of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), 200 letters from individuals, which is part of a massive mail-in campaign to get the Government to initiate this inquiry.
Individuals on the West Coast have not had the moneys which they paid out of their own pockets in assisting in the clean-up reimbursed by the Government of Canada.
It is their intention to sue the Prime Minister, the Minister of Transport (Mr. Bouchard) and the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bouchard), in order to recover the moneys which they have had to put out on behalf of Canadians.
I lay the first of many petitions dealing with the issue of launching a public inquiry on the coast of British Columbia into the oil spill clean-up.


Mr. Brian White (Dauphin-Swan River):: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition this morning
from many petitioners from the Province of Manitoba, from communities including Brandon, Dauphin, Swan River and Garland.
The petitioners point out to the House that schizophrenia is a major illness in Canada. They call upon Parliament to ensure that research efforts related to schizophrenia will in the future be commensurate with the seriousness of this illness in Canada.


Mr. Ray Funk (Prince Albert-Churchill River):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition signed by a large number of residents from communities in northern Saskatchewan, such as Prince Albert, Shell-brook, Meath Park, Spruce Home, Weirdale, Smeaton and others.
These petitioners are asking that Parliament instruct the Government not to remove oats from the marketing jurisdiction of the Canadian Wheat Board and to place oats and barley under the Canadian Wheat Board Act so that in the future Parliament, farmers and their organizations will need-to be consulted if any changes are made in the marketing of these products.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Albert Glen Cooper: Madam Speaker, Question No. 63 will be answered today. I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


[Stage Direction]
Question No.63-Mr. Boudria:
Did the government incur any costs in (a) the printing, mailing and distribution of the April 27, 1989 Budget (b) media advertising and promotion of the Budget (c) any media campaign of April 1989 on the deficit and the accumulated debt of the government of Canada and, if so, in total, what were they?
Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Finance):: The costs were: a) $2.6 million; b) $110,000; c) $2.7 million.
June 15, 1989


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The question as enumerated by the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary has been answered. Shall the remaining questions stand?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
Mr. David D. Stupich (Nanaimo-Cowichan) moves:
That this House reaffirms the Government's pledge to the West
Coast salmon and herring industry to "not allow jobs, historically
established, to be threatened" by any government response to GATT
rulings.
Rodney Edward Murphy: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. There have been consultations among the Parties and I think you will find there is unanimous agreement that the Parties may divide their 20-minute and 10-minute question and answer slots. If they so wish, they can divide those slots into two Members speaking for 10 minutes each with a five-minute question and answer session to follow.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Is there unanimous consent?


Albert Glen Cooper: Madam Speaker, we on the Government side are happy to co-operate on that.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The Hon. Member for Winnipeg.


Mr. Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre):: Yes.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The Chair would appreciate, to help everyone keep the time straight, if the Hon. Member intends to speak only for 10 minutes, the first one in the 20-minute slot would mention it. It would make things easier. I do thank the House for their co-operation. I now recognize the Hon. Member for Nanaimo-Cowichan.


Mr. David D. Stupich (Nanaimo-Cowichan):: Madam Speaker, the motion we have moved is one which has the full support of the New Democratic caucus. It is also one which demands the support of everyone in the House.
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What we are doing is reaffirming the Government's pledge. We want the House to stand behind the Government so that all Canadians and all of the people directly involved, even internationally, will know how we feel about this resolution which can have ramifications far beyond the people directly involved. It could affect the whole of Canada and could even affect others as well. We welcome, ask and hope for the support of all Members in the House.
The issue arose from the U.S. challenge to GATT of West Coast fishing regulations which required West Coast salmon and herring to be landed in British Columbia to be processed. To be processed means landing, counting, eviscerating and grading. That is what the regulations required. These were challenged by the U.S. before GATT.
We need these regulations in B.C. to protect our market. It is an important market. Eighty per cent of that product is exported from B.C. and from Canada. We get top prices because we have been able to guarantee the quantities we promised. We have been able to guarantee the quality of our product better than any other supplier in the world. We need those regulations to protect our resource.
We are talking about five species of salmon and in excess of 1,200 separate races of salmon. To be able to protect each individual race, we have to protect the environment. When we are talking about the environment, we are talking about drift nets which are operating some thousands of miles out to sea and raiding our salmon resource. We are talking about a point as far distant from that as one in excess of 1,000 miles upstream in some cases, where some of the salmon spawn. All of that environment needs protection because we have to be able to ensure adequate escapement for each of the 1,200 races. We need that to protect the supply for the processors in British Columbia who have some $600 million invested in the processing industry. They have invested that, secure in the knowledge that they had control of the supply. They are constantly upgrading, rebuilding, and carrying on a continuing program of research and development to maintain Canada's standards of quality salmon being shipped to international markets.
We need the supply to protect the livelihood of some 19,500 people in the Province of British Columbia who work in the fishing industry. These are the Minister's own figures. There are some 8,000 shore workers and

June 15, 1989
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11,500 fishermen on gill-netters, seiners, and trailers. We need the supply so that they may catch it and maintain their livelihoods.
On the East Coast there are some 90,000 people working in the fishing industry at all levels. They need the supply on the East Coast just as much as we need it on the West.
We need the employment. We need to add value to what, by international agreement, is a Canadian resource. Everyone has agreed that salmon coming down our rivers going out to sea and coming back, wherever they are in the world, belong to British Columbia if that is where they came from to begin with.
We want to be able to add value to that resource. It is important to the many small coastal communities of British Columbia. It is the life-blood of many of these communities. Without processing, they will simply die. It is important because it provides the only alternative to today's social assistance, yesterday's social welfare or relief. We abandoned those naughty words and now call it social assistance. Whatever it is, it is a totally demeaning existence for thousands of women in particular, especially native women, whose only opportunity to get away from social assistance is to work in the canneries operating on the B.C. coast.
We have discussed the American threat under GATT, and it has been said that the New Democrats are strong supporters of GATT. Indeed we are. We all believe in trade, especially for Canada, since we are a very strong trading nation. We have to believe in trade for the B.C. fish. We export 80 per cent of our fish products, and we do not want to stop that or interfere with it in any way. Indeed, we would like to build on that, to increase it, and to continue to improve the quality of B.C. salmon. However, to abandon recklessly our right to process our own resource would threaten our ability to guarantee the market supply.
We have to know what is happening. We have to be able to count and identify the species. We have to be able to identify and control the races. To guarantee our supply, we have to be able to land those fish, count them, eviscerate them, and grade them. We can only maintain
our world-wide reputation for quality if we have total control of the value added factor in Canada.
We have to protect the continued existence of the many races of salmon. It is not enough to protect just one race or even one species. We want to protect all the species and all the races. We can only do that if we know exactly what is being caught, where they are being caught, and when they are being caught. We have to be able to ensure that there is sufficient escapement of each race so that the race will survive. We want to maintain employment opportunities in Canada for the over
100,000	Canadian workers on both coasts who work in the fish processing industry.
We were told that the GATT decision cannot be appealed and we agree with that. However, we could have rejected it, as has been the practice of the United States and other signatories to GATT on many occasions. We had that option but chose not to use it.
The new regulations, relatively useless as they may be, are supposed to be GATT consistent. Why did we bow so subserviently to the American Government in abandoning our opportunity through GATT to reject that decision? Why did we not ask for a GATT ruling on the new regulations if we were determined to go that route? Why did we go instead to the Free Trade Council? If we are sure that they are GATT consistent, why not go to GATT to ask the question; why go to the Free Trade Council? Are we in danger of setting a precedent?
By knuckling under so early to the Americans, are we jeopardizing other measures such as Newfoundland's regulations that prohibit the trucking of groundfish out of Canada, similar regulations in New Brunswick and Quebec, Ontario legislation that provides for the further processing of minerals in the Province of Ontario before export, B.C. legislation that provides for the further manufacture of B.C. logs before they may be shipped out? How about the United States itself? The American Magnuson Act provides for the processing of American fish before it may be shipped out.
We have no desire to enter into any kind of a war, trade or otherwise with the United States, our best trading partner. However, continued good relations depend upon fair treatment on both sides. We are their nearest, largest, and most politically stable supplier of

raw and partially processed raw material. We want to maintain that relationship.
We have shown our good faith by entering into the Free Trade Agreement which, among other things, provides for Canada to ensure the American energy supply by promising to invest billions of dollars in developing our oil supply for the continuing benefit of our neighbours to the south. Consistent with GATT, we could have imposed an export tax, but we gave it up under the free trade deal. We control the export of and imposed a tax on the shake and shingle industry in British Columbia because it was interfering with shake and shingle production in the United States. We co-operated with the Americans and have done many things to co-operate with them. There would be no advantage to us or to them if we were to issue threats or counterthreats. Neither would there by any advantage to Canada or to the United States if we, with wanton abandonment, gave up control of our resources, most especially our renewable resources.
This is an important issue in British Columbia today. It can be an important issue for the Maritimes tomorrow and for Ontario's mining industry the day after. If we lose on this issue there will be nothing much left for Canadians other than to be hewers of wood, drawers of water, and miners of minerals. Even the oceans will be open to anyone.
This is an important issue. We should have taken a firm stand, and the opportunity still exists to do so. I invite Hon. Members to support actions taken by the Government to ensure that we do not lose out on this issue. We must not lose out because this is just the first step on the road to being nothing but hewers of wood, drawers of water, and fishermen for the world to exploit.
This is an important issue. We welcome the support of the whole House and hope that it will support the Government in its actions to ensure that we do not lose on this issue.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, what we are discussing this morning is a two-pronged question. First, does the Minister stand by his promise that he made to the west coast fishing industry when he said that, as the motion indicates, this Government would "not allow jobs, historically established, to be threatened"?
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Over the years on the West Coast we have seen processing plants fall by the wayside as the industry has been rationalized, to the extent that now the processing of the fish resource is focused in just exclusive centres. The Government has said that there is no requirement to process fish in these plants but that they can be transferred elsewhere for processing.
Having made that decision, why would anyone carry on processing in Canada when one can move those processing plants to the United States where labour costs are significantly less, where the rules and regulations are less stringent, and where one would have the advantages of economies of scale to make the plants more efficient? Why would a single processing plant remain in Canada, make it impossible for the Minister to keep his promise, and see the disappearance of literally thousands of jobs on the West Coast? Would the Hon. Member respond to that question? How can we save this industry unless this Government changes its position and keeps it promise?


David Stupich: Madam Speaker, the B.C. salmon processing industry has a world-wide reputation for quality. Our price is high, but the world is prepared to pay that price because it knows the quality of our product. There has never been any problem with that. We have a reputation for being able to meet our market promises. If we promise to deliver a certain quantity of canned salmon or fishery products generally from British Columbia, we deliver them. We guarantee the quality and there has never been any question about that.
There is continuing upgrading in our canneries. A lot of money is being spent annually to make sure that we deliver a premium product because we know we are in competition with other countries that are shipping salmon. We have proven we can do it in British Columbia, and it can be GATT consistent. What we are doing is making sure that when the product leaves our shores it is ready for human consumption in the best condition possible in the light of the most modem technology, the most modem equipment, and the best workers in the world.


Raymond John Skelly: Madam Speaker, a year ago April in a committee of this House a representative of the fish processors of British Columbia, Mr. Bob Hunter, speaking on behalf of the Fisheries Council and Processors, said that if the Government permitted the loss of Canadian fish to the United States in an unprocessed form, which is exactly what the Minister and the Government are proposing, the processors would move their plants to the United States. He

June 15, 1989
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said that they would be crazy to leave them in Canada because wages are lower and economies of scale can be achieved in the United States. He made an emphatic statement.
Therefore, this Minister when he speaks in the House today should stand up in his place and explain to Canadians how he is going to turn around the emphatic statement of Mr. Hunter before a committee of the House who said that if the Government permitted the Americans open access to our fish, those jobs and factories would be moved to the United States. I would like to hear the comment of our critic on this matter.


David Stupich: British Columbia salmon has had an international reputation for quality for years, indeed decades, Madam Speaker. It has always been important for us to maintain that reputation in world matters.If we are going to keep them, we can only do that if we have control and a guaranteed supply to the canneries operating in B.C. If the barriers are down, some of those canneries are going to move to the United States and process the product there. They will not produce as good a product because they will not have to, but it is going to make our product that much more difficult to sell on world markets.


Mr. Reid:: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Hon. Member for Nanaimo-Cowichan. The Member has said that we should protect all our species and not just some. Therefore, is he advocating that all species of fish on the West Coast be landed on the West Coast, that we should have regulations or laws that demand that everything caught by Canadian fishermen be landed in this country first?


David Stupich: Madam Speaker, it does not give us complete control even if we could achieve it because some of the salmon are caught by Americans and in accordance with agreements. That is exactly what we want.
As I said, there are some 1,200 runs of salmon and five different species. To be able to police them, to know what is happening, to be able to perpetuate not just the five races but as many species and runs as possible, we have to know what is happening. The only way we can
truly know what is happening is when those salmon are landed in the Province of British Columbia.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I see someone rising. I made a mistake before and recognized the Hon. Member when he was not in his seat. I will try not to make the same mistake twice. The Hon. Member for North Island-Powell River.


Raymond John Skelly: Madam Speaker, I wonder if the Hon. Member for Nanaimo- Cowichan would answer a question as well.
This is such a blatant sell-out of Canadian resources. Most of the people in British Columbia believe that this sell-out was a trade off for a benefit elsewhere in Canada. They believe that this is the second sell-out of Canadians on the West Coast, the first time being the salmon and interception agreement. It is firmly believed that we were sold out on that issue in order that the Prime Minister would have something to throw away to President Reagan at the Quebec conference.
The magnitude of this particular sell-out is so horrendous. Would the Hon. Member speculate on what was traded off, what this industry was thrown away for? It is clear that it in fact was thrown away. Maybe the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans would be prepared to stand up in the House and explain why this was so blatantly thrown away.
I would like to have the Member for Nanaimo-Cowichan speculate on what this was thrown away for. It is the second throwaway that British Columbians have gone through in this particular industry.


David Stupich: Madam Speaker, I was hoping the Minister would comment as well. I would like to hear his remarks.
Could I just say that in this statement I am congratulating the Government for having taken a strong stand. I am saying that we want to keep that up. I am saying that we want to be able to control our resource in British Columbia in this case and in Canada as a whole with respect to the others. We want to achieve that, and we are standing with and urging the Government to support the motion that has been moved today.

For the moment, unless there is evidence that the Government is not supporting it, I would rather not go along the track of my colleague and hope that the Government will support the position we are establishing today.


Hon. Thomas Siddon (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: Madam Speaker, I am delighted to have an opportunity to take part in this very important debate which is being watched by many Canadians, especially British Columbians. I understand that some British Columbians are in this House today to witness this important discussion.
The motion calls upon the House to reaffirm the Government's pledge to the west coast salmon and herring industry to "not allow jobs, historically established, to be threatened" by any government response to GATT rulings.
What underlies the motion from the perspective of the New Democratic Party which has sponsored it is the suggestion that if only we could live in the old days of protectionism and keep export restrictions in place which guarantee a non-competitive fish processing industry, we could somehow guarantee jobs of the past in perpetuity into the future.
Recent history has shown that the New Democratic Party is usually wrong on these questions. I remember very well the Hon. Leader of the New Democratic Party standing in this House in November 1984. In decrying the economic statement of the Minister of Finance which set out the economic agenda of the Government for the past five years, the Leader of the New Democratic Party alleged that Canada would lose 150,000 jobs as a result of the initiatives which were taken and introduced at that time.
The people of Canada know better and they judged better on November 21, 1988. The NDP is using the same fear-mongering tactics in this House today and is trying to frighten people. The only way its Members can gain political support is by frightening people about the alternatives.
Instead of 150,000 jobs being destroyed, as they put it, 1.5 million jobs were created as a result of the economic initiatives of this Government. The national unemployment rate dropped from over 12 per cent to less than 8 per cent. There were major reductions, approximately a one-third reduction, in every province and in most industries in Canada.
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Hon. Members of the New Democratic Party do not want to hear the truth. The truth is that the fishing industry of Canada, during the four years that I have presided over it, has seen untold prosperity, unparalleled in Canadian history. The income, the amount of employment, the emphasis on quality, and the value added processing opportunity have increased because we have an increasingly competitive fishing industry.
I picked up a brochure put out by the fishermen's union. I wish it were as true as it appears to be to the innocent reader. However, there is a statement in this brochure that says "the rescinding of these export restrictions," which I will come to in a moment, "is a complete betrayal of a competitive Canadian industry". It goes on to state: "Why does the Government refuse to protect an industry?"
Any thinking person knows that we cannot have a competitive industry if we always attempt to protect it from the realities of the world market-place. TTie reality of the fishing industry is that Canada exports 80 per cent of our products. In terms of the Atlantic industry, which is a large part of it, two-thirds of our exports go to the United States market. In the case of the Pacific industry, a large proportion goes to Japan and the European Community.
The point is that we depend on access to those export markets to guarantee the jobs that employ our fish plant workers and our fishermen. If we are not competitive in the international market-place, we will not sell fish and the industries of Atlantic and Pacific Canada will not pay wages.
Indeed, the Government is dedicated to preserving and enhancing the opportunities for employment and the quality of employment in the Canadian fishing industry. That will not be done if we cut ourselves off from access to a market, 80 per cent of it being an export market, which ensures employment for our people.
That means we cannot have it both ways. We have to sell competitively into the market-place the highest quality product of any country in the world. That means customers have to feel that they get the best value for their money when they buy Canadian. That has increasingly been the case.
We should understand the nature of world trade and the liberalization of world trade to which Canada is committed. Members of all Parties are also committed, I presume, because they prescribe to the process of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in which Canada has been a participant for 40 years. Any country that is as export dependent as Canada knows that we cannot put up protectionist barriers to protect our industries, thereby ensuring they will be higher cost

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industries, lower volume industries, less competitive industries, and still expect to have the free opportunity to export our products into other world markets. In other words, we have to play by the international rules of trade.
It is a fact of life that some years ago previous Canadian Governments decided to protect our salmon and herring processing industries by erecting export prohibitions on unprocessed sockeye and pink salmon and herring unless the roe was extracted in Canada. These were very important regulations at that time which helped the Canadian industry to become competitive. That competitiveness now does not depend in perpetuity on maintaining those protectionist barriers because these industries have grown up. They are big boys and girls now. We can compete. We do supply the best fish products available from our west coast fishery in those markets.
If this Government and this Minister did not believe that, we would not be devoting tens of millions of dollars to enhancing our salmon stocks on the West Coast. I would not have gone to Cabinet and worked to gain an increase in the budget of the Salmonid Enhancement Program of $208 million over five years with a firm commitment of that funding into our a base on into the next century, if I did not have confidence and faith in our ability to get maximum economic advantage out of the salmon producing and processing industry.
As I said earlier, the record of the last four years shows it is paying dividends. We have had the most prosperous years. Again this year we are to have a record year in terms of the runs of pink and sockeye. As I announced only yesterday in Vancouver, we will expect to have over 17 million pink and sockeye salmon caught this year. They will be processed in British Columbia. I am confident of that.
It is a fact of life that when fish are caught and landed close to the point where they are caught where there is infrastructure, in which there is a significant investment, which is modem, and which is the most competitive in the world, it would make no sense to truck it 600 miles to somewhere else. If we process it at that plant, we get the highest quality product. It will be Canadian Grade A prime product whether canned, frozen, or whatever
form, and we will get the best dollar from that product by processing in Canada.
These old regulations were found to be offensive because Canada, and in particular some processing companies on the northwest British Columbian coast, wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted to go to Alaska and buy fish. This would not just be in surplus years, but in other years when the Alaskan processors did not have an adequate supply. They wanted to buy that fish by offering a higher price to Alaskan fishermen than the Alaskan processors were able to offer. Our processors in northwestern British Columbia want to go to United States waters and buy from their fishermen but in return say to the Alaskan processors that they cannot come into Canada and buy fish from our fishermen. That is clearly discriminatory and was found to be so by a panel of the General Agreement on Thriffs and Trade. If we want to export our products internationally, Canada has to play by the rules on a level playing field, and we were caught out in that case.
I could submit that the Americans would not have taken that case to the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade had the Free Trade Agreement been in place, because we would then have had an avenue to negotiate a solution to that problem which we did not have then. We now have a mechanism to resolve such future disputes.


Mr, Skelly (North Island-Powell River):: The resolution is delivery direct to the United States.


Thomas Edward Siddon: I want to point out to the House that whether we are talking about salmon, herring, codfish or other species, Canada is not God's gift to the world. We are only a small producer.


Mr. Rompkey:: It's the biggest exporter in the world.


Thomas Edward Siddon: We take great pride in our salmon and herring stocks, but the fact is that we produce only 20 per cent of the world's supply of salmon and herring. That is an important point those nervous Nellies over there fail to acknowledge. Any country that wanted to buy raw fish and take it home and process it-it would be rather silly to truck it on ice for hundreds of miles-could buy five fish out of every six from somewhere else. For example, they could buy it from Alaska, from Norway, or from Iceland. They could buy herring from Atlantic Canada or

from the Nordic countries. In other words, there is ample choice in terms of supply of raw fish. Americans processors have access to five times as many American codfish and salmon as they do Canadian cod. Why would they all of a sudden come and buy fish from Canada rather than buy from their own fishermen?
One reason would be if our fishermen would sell it more cheaply. But why would our fishermen sell it more cheaply to Americans if they were getting a decent price from Canadian processors? This is a question that the New Democratic Party fails to address. By these export restrictions, our fishermen are held captive to the Canadian processing industry, and that is unfair to our fishermen. Now they fall silent because they know that the fishermen's union is split on this issue. Fishermen want and are entitled to the best price for their fish while we carefully manage, licence and allocate quotas to their benefit.
Now let us ask Members of the New Democratic Party what their position is. Should our fishermen not get a world competitive price for their fish? Why is it that the processing companies do not have to pay a competitive price? Because they have the supply guaranteed by those old export restrictions.
The point is that countries that would buy our raw fish have many other ways to buy fish. The only way they buy Canadian is if they can get it cheaper. Why would Canadian fishermen sell it more cheaply abroad if they can get the right price from Canadian processors? That represents the heart of the injustice that will be rectified by the new regulations. These will ensure that we maintain control of our herring and salmon for management and conservation reasons. Under the new regulations all West Coast species, all five species of salmon, must be landed in Canadian ports, inspected, counted, and biological samples taken, before anyone can buy this resource of Canada.


Raymond John Skelly: Is that what the free trade panel said?


Thomas Edward Siddon: Let us not jump ahead. I will come to that in a moment. The point is that all five species will be brought to shore.
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I was interested a few moments ago when the Hon. Member for St. John's East (Mr. Reid) asked the lead speaker whether he supported this regulation. All Canadians should support such a landing requirement, including the processing sector, the fishermen's union and those organizations, and the New Democratic Party. I would like to know if Members of the New Democratic Party feel that groundfish, rockfish and other species should be required to be landed in Canadian ports. We believe this to be our right under Article 11 of the GATT and will be testing this shortly before a free trade panel.
If those Members are so immature as to suggest that we should not control our resource and manage it well by requiring it to be brought to Canadian ports, they should rise and state that they support those measures. They are attempting to say that the Government is going to relinquish control over our fishery. That is pure balderdash.
I have insisted during the whole period of the trade negotiations with the United States, that only Canadians shall be licensed to harvest fish in Canadian waters. We have steadfastly refused to allow American processing boats, buying boats or packers, if one wishes to call them that, to come into Canadian waters and take fish from our fishermen. This Government is adding to that assurance that we properly manage and conserve our resource by requiring it be brought to Canadian ports. To hear members of the Opposition, one would think they oppose that. Where is their sense of national patriotism?
The Government has done the correct thing in this matter by ensuring that Canadians receive the benefit of that resource at their point of landing where any self-respecting industry which intends to be competitive in the world market-place will have the best opportunity to process it right there. Not only to gut the fish. Members opposite want to have the guts taken out and then ship the fish away. We want them processed. We do not only want them to be stuffed into cans. We want our fish products put into TV dinners and higher value-added products such as fish cakes and restaurant meals. We want to get the maximum dollar value from our fishery resource. That adds up to employment for processing workers and for fishermen. It means they will get the best dollar for their product.

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Canada cannot hide behind archaic protectionist regulations which shelter our workers from the realities of the world industrial commodity trading market.
When this Government took office Canada was eleventh among industrial nations. We were down at number eleven in terms of our competitiveness. I suspect when we see some figures soon, we will see that Canada is near the top. That is because this Government has rejuvenated Canadian industry in all sectors and expanding opportunity to add value to our natural resources.
That is why the Free Trade Agreement is so good for Canada and for the fishing industry. It removes the tariffs upon entry into the United States market which the Americans were applying to our salmon, herring, lobster and other fish products. With the removal of those tariffs, the price to the consumer in the United States goes down and we sell more, and we sell more value-added product, not more raw material.
I submit that members of the Opposition are way off base as usual. They were wrong in 1984. The Canadian people judged them wrong in 1988 in an election, and they will do so again in 1992 or 1993 because this Government has Canada on the rails to prosperity and we will stay there. We do not need pessimistic doom and gloom when Canadians are confident and optimistic about their future and the opportunities we can give to our nation.


David Stupich: I cannot help but regret the attitude of the Minister. The motion I moved states:
That this House reaffirms the government's pledge to the West
Coast salmon and herring industry to "not allow jobs, historically
established, to be threatened" by any government response to
GATT rulings."
I had hoped that the Government would agree with that, but it seems that the Government does not. The Minister in his response said that we are No. 11 in terms of competitive pricing. We are No. 11, and yet we never have had any problem selling our product at premium prices because we deliver the top product in the world. Why would people buy Canadian fish if they can get their own more cheaply? Because they know historically they have been getting a guaranteed and a superior product when they buy Canadian fish at top prices. We have never had any problem selling our Canadian fish.
Groundfish today are being trucked from Prince Rupert to the United States. Fish can be moved and are being moved. If you are prepared to sell without the restrictions, without the quality guarantees, without the quality reputation that we have for our fish products in British Columbia, then you can sell more cheaply if you do not really care what kind of garbage you are selling. I cannot say that much about the East Coast because I do not know it that well. But West Coast fishermen and the industry have built a world-wide reputation over decades for selling a guaranteed top quality product and for meeting the demands of the market. That has been our reputation, Madam Speaker.


Thomas Edward Siddon: Madam Speaker, I certainly agree with the Hon. Member. That is why our Canadian fish products sell and why we never have anything left over going to waste. It is top quality product priced competitively. That is the way it will continue to be. With or without this regulation, that is the reality. Our industries have invested in the most modem technology. They have upgraded their plants.
If the Hon. Member is saying that the only way the industry can make a big enough profit is to pay the fishermen too low a price, we do not want that. We are on the side of the fishermen and the plant workers. It is about time the NDP were, too. If what they are doing is siding with the processing industry and saying the only way that industiy can make a profit is to keep paying workers too little, we do not agree with that.
I do not agree with the mischievousness of this motion. I am confident that the public will judge this Government as having created economic growth, new jobs and a more competitive economy in this country. That certainly has been true of the fishing industry these past four years.
Never has so much income been enjoyed, so much value added, so much use made of under-utilized species as has been the case under this Government. While I may not agree with the mischievous language of the motion which tries to protect archaic jobs in the form that was appropriate 20, 30 or 40 years ago, I can say with confidence to this House that there will be more employment, more rewarding and year-round jobs, not jobs that put people on unemployment insurance for six months of the year. This is a result of the competitive drive of this
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Government to extract more value from our natural resources, to modernize our industry and to export more product.
The Hon. Member said our fishing industry has produced the best quality product. It is bought because of its high quality. It is not bought because of the protectionist regulation that was removed. We will have an opportunity to do more of that processing when all the fish is brought to shore.
The Hon. Member has not told me why they would support the old regulations which did not require that coho, chinook or chum salmon be brought to shore. They do not want that fish protected. We are bringing that fish to shore under this regulation. Those fish have been exported in uneviscerated form-guts in, if you like-for years with the support of the New Democratic Party.
We want that fish to be brought to shore so that we get first opportunity to process it, put it in its highest most value-added form; not just sockeye and pink, but chum and coho and Chinook. If they want to throw in ground-fish, I would like them to stand up and say that we want groundfish restricted to being landed at Canadian ports. I would like to hear that. I would like to know how some of their supporters who are crewmen on the trailers would feel about that. I am prepared to listen because I think it makes good sense. But I want to hear the NDP propose it in this House.


Mr. Walker:: Madam Speaker, listening to the Minister give his response reminds me of an age-old struggle that has taken place between the Conservatives and the NDP which constantly misses the futures of people whose jobs are at stake.
The Government prides itself on giving millions of dollars to native organizations, for example, to build up an economy. This is an industry in which native people are involved, struggling and working hard and the Government pulls out from underneath them the very support structures they need to build up an independent life.
I would like to ask the Minister how he reconciles the fact that on the one hand the Government is saying that it supports native people and new Canadians, and on the other hand in an industry where they can get themselves set up in and involved with, and the Government pulls
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the rug out from underneath them and leaves them exposed to the international market-place in a way that is very hostile and alienating to them.


Thomas Edward Siddon: Madam Speaker, I appreciate the question. The Member who raises it was not listening to the basis on which I justified what the Government is doing as a means of creating more employment for native people, for new Canadians, for Canadians of all ages and all skills. That is exactly what this does. It is not just my opinion. I notice the Member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Walker) is not listening and preparing. He should pay great heed of the words of a very prominent West Coast Liberal, Dr. Peter Pearse of the University of British Columbia who wrote an important report for Mr. LeBlanc when he was Minister of Fisheries. This is what Dr. Peter Pearse said in his report about these archaic support restrictions:
Although pressure from established processors and plant workers to restrict exports of less highly processed products is understandable, to do so is inconsistent with fishermen's interest in high prices and with the public interest in generating the highest returns from the resources.
These are the words of a prominent Liberal, Dr. Peter Pearse. I am sorry that he was not elected to this House on past occasions as he once tried to be because he has got it the right way. He is saying exactly the same thing that I have been saying in this House this morning.


Ian Angus Ross Reid: Madam Speaker, one of the things that strikes me in this debate is the implication of our New Democratic friends across the way that this Government has turned its back on the British Columbia fishery, particularly the British Columbia salmon fishery. As the Minister has said, unfortunately only briefly, that clearly is not the case. The evidence is totally contrary to that. This Government, in particular the Minister, has made great strides in terms of policy, programming and funding for a variety of different things that have been designed not only to protect the fishery and all those who work in it, but to enhance that fishery.
I wonder if the Minister might take a moment to expand a little on that. He alluded to the salmon enhancement plan and some other things that have been so successful. Would he reaffirm his commitment and the Government's commitment to the British Columbia fishery?

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Thomas Edward Siddon: I do appreciate that unexpected question from my colleague, Madam Speaker. I did mention that I worked as a Member of the Cabinet to secure recognition, reinforced again last week by the Prime Minister vhile speaking in Vancouver, of the importance of the Pacific Coast salmon fishery the result of which was the conclusion of the Pacific Salmon Treaty. Our friend, the Speaker, was the Minister of Fisheries at the time and presided over the successful conclusion of that treaty which recognized Canada's sovereign ownership of fish that are spawned in our waters. It is clearly written into a bilateral treaty with the United States that we will achieve the benefit of the fish which belong to us.
We have increased the funding for the salmon enhancement program by doubling it and adding $206 million a year. We are funding all kinds of projects in classrooms with native groups, with fishermen's organizations, with concerned community groups to help to build small incubation boxes and hatcheries, to improve the habitat and clean up the spawning capacity of our rivers and lakes. The Government and I particularly take pride in that. If we did not have confidence in the future of the Pacific Coast fishing industry, we would not have spent tens of millions of dollars fixing up our ports and harbours.
I went to Cabinet, with the support of my colleagues, and obtained $200 million of new funding for our small craft harbours. We increased, in a time of restraint, the budget for small craft harbours by some 44 per cent for the annual operation. The Hon. Members opposite have benefited by those improvements to harbours in their ridings which amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars in new multi-million dollar harbour facilities. Why would the Government make those our priorities if it did not have confidence in the future of the West Coast fishing industry? Why would we have engaged and why did I secure the support of all provincial Ministers of Fisheries for the negotiation of a Free Trade Agreement with the United States? Yes, indeed, it is in the communique to First Ministers of 1986 that all Ministers of Fisheries agreed that free trade would be good for the fishery. Indeed it shall be.


Mr. Simmons:: Those people up there in the gallery are laughing at you.


Thomas Edward Siddon: I know you want me to take my seat, so I shall, Madam Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The period for questions and comments has now expired.


Raymond John Skelly: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This question is so vitally important to the people of British Columbia, I wonder if Your Honour might put to the House a proposal to allow the Minister's period for questions and comments to be extended since only two or three very short questions have been asked. I am sure that the House would agree to that.


Roger Simmons: May I speak to that, Madam Speaker?
I say to my friend in the NDP that, normally, his would be a great proposal. Normally, we would be prepared to entertain it. In this case, this Minister has demonstrated in the time he has had available to him that he does not know his file. He does not know the issue. I will not be a party to allowing the ignorance to be further paraded.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: For the Chair to entertain the suggestion of the Hon. Member for North Island-Powell River I would need unanimous consent. I think that the last remark means that I do not have that unanimous consent.
Resuming debate with the Hon. Member for Winnipeg South Centre.


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, before making my own comments I first want to express the regrets of the Member of Parliament for Vancouver Quadra (Mr. Tbmer) who has for several years had a very strong concern about this issue. Unfortunately, for personal family reasons, he must be in Winnipeg today. I hope the House understands that his absence is one that he regrets. However, he had no choice but to attend to a family matter. I want to express my regrets to the House on his behalf.
In saying that, in some ways I am glad that he is not here. Having listened to 30 minutes of drivel from the Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Siddon) would probably be more than any strong stomach could stand so close to the lunch hour.
Over the last two or three days many Members of Parliament have had an important experience. We have sat down and met with the workers in the West Coast fishing industry. We have talked to them about the concerns they have raised over a barbeque or over a table. What has been interesting is that people have come to the capital of the country with a simple request. They came to the Government to ask to be listened to
June 15, 1989

on a simple question. It is this. Why are they losing their jobs? Why are hard-working people who have spent years developing an effective and good industry on the West Coast, through no responsibility of their own suddenly threatened with the loss of their livelihood? It is a simple question. However, they have been unable to get answers from the Government.
We have listened to the Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Siddon) ramble on about all the great advantages of competitiveness and how we will make the fishing industry of Canada into a world class premium opportunity. However, he never answered the simple question as to why these people are going to lose their jobs. Why are they faced with a situation not of their own making but based upon a decision of this Government? That is the issue.
Neither the Minister nor his colleague, the Minister for International Trade (Mr. Crosbie), have explained why it is that it is a government decision that has put these people into this threat, that has put them into this problem. Perhaps more tragically not once have we heard from any Member on the other side what the Government is prepared to do about it. Is it really prepared to listen to these people? Is it prepared to understand the nature of the problem? From the Minister's reply today there is little hope being offered.
What is tragic is that we have a Minister of Fisheries who has the gall, the ultimate and incredible effrontery to stand up in this House and say: "The fishing industry has never had it so good". I ask him to tell the thousands of fish workers from the East Coast who have been laid off in the last month that they have never had it so good.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Lloyd Axworthy: I ask the Minister to tell it to the fishermen who have had their stocks and quotas cut back by 50 per cent because of the Government's mismanagement.
This is the Minister of Fisheries talking, and not the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) who we are accustomed to hearing make those kinds of exaggerated claims. This is the Minister supposedly responsible for the stewardship of that industry. What kind of time capsule, what kind of insulation chamber is the Minister living in? What kind of warp has he found himself involved in so that he does not understand that the fishing industry of Canada is in peril on both coasts, that it has real problems and that the workers are asking somebody in
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the Government to listen to them and to respond to their needs?
That is the point of this debate. I find in part that the arguments made by our friends in the NDP are a little unusual, somewhat strange, since they are saying: "We want to support the Government in its strong stand on this issue". It has not taken a strong stand on behalf of the fishing industry of the West Coast. It has been a consistent history of sell-out right from the very beginning. Right from the beginning it has taken a stand to sell out this industry with the most blatant, callous forethought.
The Government has had its public relations people working. They have churned out the press releases. The fact of the matter is it has not defended this industry.
Let me give you a little history, Madam Speaker. The great crown prince of blather, otherwise known as the Minister for International Trade, gets up to say with his hand over his heart: "The devil made me do it. It is a GATT decision. What have I to do about it?" He shrugs and sighs and moans and says: "I had no responsibility. It is the GATT that made me do it".
Madam Speaker, I will tell you what the real history is. In 1986 the Americans started complaining about this problem. At that time we were already engaged in negotiations with the Americans on the free trade deal. Things were put on the table and things were taken off. The Americans took things off the table. They said: "We are not going to talk about the Jones Act protecting the shipping industry. We are not going to talk about the Magnuson Act concerning the fish processing industry". They took those off the table. Did our Government take the West Coast fish processing industry off the table? Dam right it did not. It put it on the table. It was a bargaining chip.
When the Member from Nanaimo says that we should support the Government's strong effective stand I say that back in 1986 during that negotiation the Government had every opportunity to say to the Americans: "This is a non-negotiable item. We have the right to protect the processing of our own natural resources and we will not bargain it away". However, the Government put it on the table as part of the deal. Yet Members of the Government stand up to say that the GATT made them do it. They had two years of negotiation in which to protect the West Coast fish processing industry, and they did not take the opportunity to do it. It was there. There were certainly enough examples of things that were
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Supply moved off from one side to the other and nobody dealt with it.
Then we come to the GATT panel. Again, the Minister for International Trade and his sub-junior colleague, the Minister of Fisheries, says: "I had nothing to do about it. I am sorry, it is the GATT panel". However, what they do not tell Canadians, which is part of the big lie, part of the big propaganda machine that keeps going on, is that under the GATT rules it is perfectly permissible to use an export tax to protect any processing in one's own country. The GATT has allowed it with us in the past, as well as other countries. It is perfectly legitimate to use an export tax to say that raw fish leaving Canada should be subject to a higher tax.
Guess what was given away in Section 408 of the Free Trade Agreement? What was given away was the right of Canada to impose an export tax. The legitimate remedy which we had as Canadians to protect our natural resources and to protect our fish to ensure that it would be processed in Canada was given away under the Free Trade Agreement.
How does the Government defend that? When the Minister of International Trade and his colleagues stand up and say "the GATT made me do it", they should add the real bottom line that the GATT also offered a solution which they threw away, bargained away, and sold away. For what? I will not go into the history of what we did not get in return, but the fact of the matter is that the remedy was at hand. The remedy could be used today to protect the west coast fishing industry, but it has disappeared from our arsenal of public tools.
I would hope that the people of British Columbia, in fact all Canadians, would recognize just what a bad bargain was struck when they gave away the sovereign right of a Canadian Government to protect its own
industry and its own people, for merely a song and a dance.


An Hon. Member:: We get a song or a dance.


Lloyd Axworthy: We did get a
song and a dance. We got Yankee Doodle Dandy, and the Prime Minister was up in his Gucci shoes doing a dance the whole time. That is what we got.
I cannot see the Minister here any more, but he might be around in the vicinity. I want to talk about his argument that somehow this regulation he has brought forward is a great advantage to the fishing industry on the West Coast. It is going to come as a surprise to the fisheries council, the unions, the processing people, and all the rest of the industry. I want to remind Members of the House that this is a Government which states that it listens to the industry. It states that it consults with Canadians. Why is it that all the major players, the owners, the unions, the workers, and the processing plants universally say that this is a bad deal?
Maybe the Government does not listen to the people. We know that from the past. Maybe the Government might listen to its own officials. The thing that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans did not talk about was a report prepared by his own Department, the Department for which he is responsible. It stated that the export of large quantities of unprocessed fish is possible, reducing the supply of raw material for B.C. processors and causing an impact on unemployment. That report was prepared by Tom Rideout, Fisheries and Oceans International Directorate.
Does that mean that once again we have a Minister who cannot read? Has he picked up the bad habits of the Minister of Trade? Does he not read his own documents? Has he forgotten that illiteracy is one of the primary criteria for being a Minister of the Crown? In his own Department officials say that this particular regulation will provide for the removal of large quantities of raw fish and the loss of employment.
Why does the Government not listen? If it will not listen to the fishermen, the fish processors, the businesses, or members of the Opposition, why does it not listen to its own officials and read its own reports? We

know it will not because this has nothing to do with hard analysis. This has got to do with simply knuckling under, being afraid, and bargaining on our knees with the neighbours of the south. That is what it is all about. That is what the issue is about. It is simply craven politics at stake here.
The Minister of Fisheries went on to state: "Well, I expect our people to be so competitive." He was talking as if there was a level field out there. The people who came to visit us passed on some interesting communications members of their own processing plants are receiving.
I have a letter from the Economic Development Association of Skagit County, down there in the great State of Washington, which is providing a sales pitch to processing plants in Canada to move south of the border because they can pay lower wages and do not have to pay the same rate of unemployment insurance or the same rate of health benefits. In other words, it is what we have been arguing in this House for three and a half years. It is not a level field. It is a biased, distorted, bevelled field. It is in fact coming to bear-and it is the truth-in the fish processing industry. We now have enticements and inducements being offered by the economic development organizations in the United States stating that they can give us a good deal.
It is like those guys with the old, dirty postcards in Paris. They say: "Come on down here, we are going to give you a good deal. You do not have to pay your workers the same wages." If that is what the Minister of Fisheries means by competition, that we are going to expect our workers to take less money and have less benefits, then that totally contradicts the great promises of the Prime Minister who stated that this deal was going to open up an economic bonanza for Canada.
The hard truth and reality is that this deal says that the only way we will expect Canadians to compete is if they are prepared to accept a lower standard of quality of wages, a lower standard of quality of working conditions, a lower standard of quality of support for their families and their communities. It expects that we will reduce ourselves and harmonize downwards, that that is the basis for competition. Of course it fits its agenda, the agenda of the Conservative Party. That Party does not like unions very much.
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Its Members do not like occupational standards. They do not like unemployment insurance. They do not like the kind of structures we have built up in this country over the years to ensure that we have a decent workplace and that workers, particularly those in seasonal work and particularly in the resource industries, have a safety net to live on. That is not free enterprise, according to their version. That is not the market-place. I will tell you, Madam Speaker, that it is the Canadian way of doing things.
That is why the example of fish processing industry on the West Coast is so important. I agree that it should tell us is something about the fish industry in the rest of Canada as well.
I will not take a long time, because I have learned colleagues who are directly experienced in the east coast fisheries. However, I just want to remind you of one thing, Madam Speaker. If this sticks, if the Americans make their case and this regulation is allowed to stand, if we do not get up and fight as Canadians, then what is happening in the west coast fisheries is simply a prelude to what is going to happen in the east coast fisheries. It is the test case. The fact of the matter is that there is so-called protection in the Free Trade Agreement. I will read Article 1203 which exempts provincial controls on the export of unprocessed fish on the East Coast. Article 1801, however, states that the U.S. has the choice to challenge any trade restriction in the GATT.
If this GATT precedent is allowed to stand, they will then take the next case and move it over to the East Coast; then the entire Canadian fishery and the workers in it will be put in jeopardy. That is the real issue we are facing.
I would even go one step beyond that. It is another test case similar to what we have seen in the softwood lumber case. It is a retreat, a surrendering of the rights and abilities of Canadian Governments, federal and provincial, to protect our own natural resources, to try to provide the best laws and regulations in the interest of conserving our own resources, managing them, and ensuring that they are used in an effective and efficient way for the employment of Canadians.
The Canadian public policy over the years has been judicially applied-it has not been exaggerated or abused-to ensure that our vital natural resources can be properly used. As experts have pointed out, this landing

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requirement does nothing for the conservation or management of our resource. Again it is simply a throwaway.
The same thing will happen in other natural resource areas. Our ability to make decisions in our own Legislatures, our own Parliaments, on how we want to use our natural resources in an effective and conserving way is being lost because we no longer have the instruments. They are being taken away from us. We do not have a Government which either understands or accepts the need and the utility of those kinds of important public policy tools and important public policy programs.
I say to you, Madam Speaker, on behalf of my colleagues from whom we will hear more throughout the day, that the intent of the resolution is the right one to get the Government to act. We would not endorse the notion that this is a Government which has been doing its best. Far from it. It has been doing its worst. It has been covering up. It has not been trying to protect the west coast fishery as a responsible national Government should. It has had as its overriding obsession and preoccupation the signing of a deal with the Americans, regardless of the cost or how many victims it had to throw on the scrap heap.
Unfortunately, the people on the West Coast in the fishing industry are right now the visible victims. There will be many more in the months and years to come, unless we stop this deal and stop what this Government is doing.


Charles-Eugène Marin: Madam Speaker, I listened with great attention to what our colleague just said. Although we must admit that the Opposition is fulfilling its role of officially being against any government action or policy, it is still a little difficult to understand that intelligent people sitting in the Opposition can confuse such important things as the decline in eastern fish stocks, the problems with GATT in the West and free trade. The Hon. Member who just spoke got it all mixed up! If GATT creates problems in the West, that is necessarily the reason for our resource declining in the East.
I will ask our colleague a question: Would he be prepared, on behalf of his party, to ask that Canadian fishermen not have the right to sell wherever it suits them?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, I am not the one who was confused; it was the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. The Minister said that the fisheries sector was in good shape; I did not. I have the responsibility of asking in the House whether the problems with the fisheries, especially on both coasts- this problem is due to a decision of this Government.
Madam Speaker, especially in the free trade negotiations, your Government gave the Americans the right to protect the fishing industry with export taxes. That is a simple fact. It is not a problem of confusion, it is the decision made by your Cabinet, which decided with the Americans during those negotiations to give away this fundamental, sovereign right of Canada.

I resent the tactics used by the Member and by the Minister himself to try to pit one sector of the fishing industry against the other. They are turning the fishermen against the people in the processing industry because if they can divide, they can conquer. If we had the right to protect our fishery through a proper export tax, a .right which the Government gave away, then we would not have a problem protecting the fishermen, the fish processors, and the industry as a whole.


Mr. Barrett:: Madam Speaker, I have a quick observation to make and a question to ask my Liberal colleague. First, I would like to ensure that my comments are in order by referring to the motion we are discussing. The motion reads:
That this House reaffirms the government's pledge to the West
Coast salmon and herring industry to "not allow jobs, historically
established, to be threatened" by any government response to
GATT rulings.
To put this in context, I want to tell Hon. Members where the words in quotes come from. The words in quotes were deliberately chosen because they were plucked out of a pledge given by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to the west coast fishing industry. The NDP is not suggesting that we support the Government's initiative. We just want to see if government
June 15, 1989

Members vote to back up the Minister's very words to the industry.
The Hon. Member eloquently answered the last question asked regarding the GATT ruling. Does the Hon. Member not find it passing strange that the Government has said that GATT forced the Government to do it, as the Hon. Member so eloquently, if somewhat theatrically, put it?
If the GATT forced the Government to do it, why is it going to a free trade panel to deal with a GATT decision? I would ask the Hon. Member to explain, since he is knowledgeable about the Free Trade Agreement, why the Government has copped out, given in, abandoned the logic that GATT made the Government do it? Why has it not gone back to GATT but has used the free trade agreement panel?
It has been reported to me that the Minister said that the Government is going to the free trade panel because that is what the Americans wanted. I do not need to ask who is the monkey and who is the organ grinder. The Government's position is one of capitulation, does the Hon. Member not agree?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, that is a tough question to answer. Let me say at the outset that in my remarks I did not criticize the motion. I did say that the Hon. Member for Nanaimo- Cowichan, who said that he was supporting government initiatives in the past, should have pointed out that those initiatives were no more than a subterfuge and a camouflage. They were not seriously intended to protect the interests of the west coast fishery.
I would simply say, because time is limited, and this amplifies just what a hoax the Free Trade Agreement really is, the reason the Government is not going to a panel under the Free Trade Agreement is that it knows it would have to apply U.S. trade law. It would be required to use U.S. law as the basis for a decision-


David Barrett: It is going to the free trade panel.


Lloyd Axworthy: But it is not
going back to GATT because when the Government signed the Free Trade Agreement it in effect signed away its options and choices and has implicitly accepted that U.S. trade law will determine the outcome of those decisions.
Supply
The Minister knows full well that the great promise of guaranteed access to U.S. markets was really a charade. All we really got was to be the instrument of applying U.S. trade law to Canada.


Mr. Dave Worthy (Cariboo-Chilcotin):: Madam Speaker, today we are engaged in a discussion that is very important for the people of British Columbia. I do not rise as an expert on the fishery, but I do rise as a Member from British Columbia who is keenly aware of the importance of this industry to British Columbia and in fact to Canada, particularly to the thousands of fishermen and fish processors who are engaged in this very important livelihood.
It is essential that we focus our attention for a few moments on the history surrounding the salmon and herring fishery and that we do not forget that it was British Columbians who built the fishery, it was British Columbians who developed the product lines and the markets which make our fish products second to none in the world, and it is British Columbians who will continue to be the leaders in the trading of fish.
The concerns that have been expressed are felt by all who are close to British Columbia because the salmon and herring industry represents a major component of the B.C. economy, an economy that is dependent on trade as is the rest of the country dependent on fair and free trade. As a signatory to the GATT and to the Free Trade Agreement, Canada recognizes that there are trade rules which must be followed. We play by the rules of the game in Canada.
What is on the minds of many British Columbians is the removal of the requirements for the processing of Pacific salmon and herring in Canada. Why were these regulations removed?
In 1986 the United States indicated to Canada that it found the regulations requiring the processing of salmon and herring to be a restriction on trade. Canada and the United States entered into consultations but could not find the means to arrive at a mutually satisfactory resolution. The United States appealed as was its right to the GATT. As a result, a panel of trade experts was established to review the salmon and herring processing requirement regulations to ascertain if they constituted a GATT illegal barrier to trade.

June 15, 1989
Supply
Both Canada and the United States made their supportive arguments before the GATT panel. In November 1987 the panel ruled that in fact the processing requirements for salmon and herring could not be justified under the GATT rules and that they were a trade barrier. In April 1988 the Government accepted the GATT panel findings and indicated that the GATT illegal regulations would be removed.
This Government heard the concerns expressed by the B.C. fishing industry over the acceptance of the GATT panel findings and responded accordingly. First, it assured other sectors of the fishing industry that we were not going to take actions which would jeopardize our trading relationships around the world.
Second, it assured the fishing industry that measures would be taken to ensure that the fundamental principles of sound resource conservation and management would not be compromised by the Government's decision to accept the panel finding.
Third,it assured that any new conservation and management measures taken by the Government would be GATT consistent.
In the summer of 1988 a high level industry working group was established to identify what measures were necessary to ensure that the conservation and management of the salmon and herring industry would not be compromised by the removal of the processing requirements. It should be noted that the processing requirements constituted a de facto landing requirement and that their removal meant valuable conservation and management information could be lost.
The working group considered the problems created by the removal of the processing requirements and submitted their report in early September 1988. To ensure that any new requirements were GATT consistent, the working group recommendations were scrutinized by GATT scholars who advised the Government that some aspects of the working group's recommendations were not GATT consistent and should not be adopted by the Government.
However, the implementation of the landing requirements to ensure the collection of essential and accurate conservation and management information was considered to be GATT consistent and was implemented by this Government in April of this year. It was implemented after five lawyers gave this Government their best advice
that these new regulations were, in fact, GATT consistent.
Following the review of the working group proposals by the GATT experts, the Government undertook to discuss the new landing requirements with the United States. Bilateral discussions continued into the spring of the year with the hope that the disagreements on the landing requirements could be resolved. This has not been the case, and the matter has been referred to the free trade dispute settlement panel which will bring forward its decision in September of this year.
We have all heard the rhetoric associated with this issue, rhetoric which clouds the essential points that need to be made. I share the concerns of the B.C. workers who feel that their jobs are threatened but ask what would be the impact on the same workers if Canada was not a member of the GATT. I submit that protectionism would be the norm and B.C. and Canadian products would face trade restrictive initiatives in many of our markets.
What kind of business plan could companies or individuals prepare for a market which determines trade policy on an ad hoc basis? It would not be successful. Our membership in the GATT in recognition of the GATT rules means that we can develop products and markets with confidence. In those cases where we are treated unfairly we can appeal to the GATT for action. We should not lose sight of the importance of trade rules to effective trade and the long-term positive impact for all Canadians.
I accept, as I think we all do, the principles underlying the GATT. I accept, as I think we all should, that the Government had no other option but to abide by the GATT panel findings on Pacific salmon and herring. However, I cannot ignore the concerns of British Columbians over the potential impact of the GATT ruling. I am reassured by the action that has been taken to date, action based on sound conservation and management principles following the recommendations of the industry.
If we step away from the issue at hand and examine the B.C. fishing industry as objective observers, one cannot help but be moved by the pride this industry gives to its employees, its province, and its country. We are price setters in the market-place, not price takers, even though our products are not in the majority. When other countries have faced crisis after crisis due to inferior processing practices, our skilled and technologically
June 15, 1989

advanced industry has continued to produce top quality products.
The words "British Columbia" mean dependability and top quality around the world. Do we really need to provide trade protection for this industry? I submit that we do not. We do need to ensure that Canada's principles of conservation and management are not compromised and that no competitor is permitted to malign the B.C. reputation for quality.
The Government has initiated GATT consistent regulations to ensure that conservation and management principles are not compromised. I am confident that our fishing industry has the competitive edge and in the long term will agree that trade restrictive measures are not necessary for the continuation of this vibrant and productive industry.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: If the House agrees, may we call it one o'clock at this time and there will be a question and comment period after Question Period?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: It being one o'clock, I do now leave the chair until two o'clock this afternoon.
At 1 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumes at 2 p.m.


Mr. Eugene Bellemare (Carleton-Gloucester):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to condemn a statement by Mr. Robert Bourassa that appeared in La Presse on June 13, in which he criticized scientists who disapproved of relocating the Space Agency to Saint-Hubert, Quebec.

Mr. Bourassa accuses them of narrow-mindedness and being limited in their competence. This cheap shot from the Premier of Quebec was only made for political gain. I have no doubt, Mr. Speaker, that these people are some of the brightest Canada has ever produced. The very fact that they can find jobs so quickly points to their excellence. TTie Premier of Quebec owes them an apology. I have great sympathy for people who are forced to uproot their families for political expediency.

Robert Bourassa has shown an incredible lack of tact towards the families in question, in addition to his flagrant ignorance of the excellence of these Canadian scientists.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) should publicly affirm the competence of our space scientists.



REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT


Ms. Catherine Callbeck (Malpeque):: Mr. Speaker, over the past weeks, many investment and employment opportunities have come to a halt in Prince Edward Island.
This is a direct result of two measures taken by this Government. First, it failed to renew more than $720 million in regional economic development programs in Atlantic Canada. Second, the amount of money received under ACOA will be spread over seven years rather than five. This amounts to a reduction of approximately 25 per cent.
Now some projects will not proceed and the opportunity to create new jobs in the private sector will be lost. Islanders are frustrated and bewildered by these cuts. They believe that this Government has broken its commitment to regional development.
I urge this Government to reconsider its commitment and provide the necessary funding to encourage economic development in Atlantic Canada.



S. O. 31 TRANSPORT COMMONS DEBATES

[Stage Direction]
June 15, 1989

Mr. Les Benjamin (Regina-Lumsden):: Mr. Speaker, according to yesterday's Globe and Mail, the Minister of Transport (Mr. Bouchard) says that his Department has no detailed breakdown of the number of passengers travelling by train, bus, and airplane, and that he only has national figures from Statistics Canada.
The Minister should do his homework. I have in my hand a breakdown of the share of public transport modes for all the routes in the Quebec-Windsor corridor for 1987. For example, in that year, 48 per cent of passenger travel between Montreal and Toronto was by public transport modes. Of that share, 26 per cent travelled by rail. Between Toronto and Windsor, 34 per cent of passenger travel was by public means. Half of that was by rail. Twenty-seven per cent of travel in the corridor was by means other than the private automobile. One third was by rail.
These are part of a national tracking study tabled by VIA Rail at the National Transportation Agency hearings. The Minister of Transport no longer has an excuse for not knowing what he is talking about when it comes to VIA Rail ridership levels. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a Minister of Transport who knew what he was talking about?



ACID RAIN


Mrs. Pierrette Venne (Saint-Hubert):: Mr. Speaker, it is a. privilege for me to rise in the House today to speak about acid rain.
Thanks to the perseverance of our Government and especially of our Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney), a major milestone was reached a few days ago, when the President of the United States presented a bill on reducing acid rain in the United States.
Under the proposed legislation, the United States will cut sulphur dioxide emissions by half between now and the year 2000.
We all know that most of this pollution comes to us from the United States.
Industrial emissions of sulphur dioxide, the main component of acid rain, affect the provinces of Ontario and Quebec to a very great extent.
I am therefore both proud and thankful that the Prime Minister has been so insistent on this very important issue, since our quality of life and our environment are at stake.



ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE


Mr. Bill Domm (Peterborough):: Mr. Speaker, the NDP has been claiming that the Government is applying political interference by influencing the RCMP to lay charges under the Criminal Code in connection with the federal budget leak. We heard this accusation at the Justice Committee hearings this week, even when the RCMP Commissioner, Norman Inkster, stated to the NDP questioner from Victoria: "No one from the Government called me. No one tried to influence me in any way, shape or form".
Commissioner Inkster flatly rejected suggestions by the NDP that there had been political interference in the decision to lay charges. The NDP then moved and lost a motion asking the RCMP to withdraw the charges laid against the television broadcaster and others for the leak.
Could the NDP not realize that a motion to direct the RCMP to withdraw a criminal charge would be direct political interference, showing a most blatant interference in the due process of law.
I am sure Canadian people will be happy to know that our national police force, not the NDP, is the investigating authority in determining when criminal charges should be laid.



TRIBUTES TO MAURICE BELLEMARE

Mr. Denis Pronovost (Saint-Maurice):: Mr. Speaker, this morning, all Quebecers heard to their sorrow about the death of the Hon. Maurice Bellemare. The ex-MNA
June 15, 1989

for Champlain and Johnson in the Quebec National Assembly had been a well-known figure on the Quebec political scene since 1944.
With the passing of the last survivor of the Duplessis era, an important page in Quebec's history has been turned. Mr. Bellemare became well-known as Minister of Labour and as the loyal servant of Premiers Duplessis, Sauve, Johnson and Bertrand. He was a man of great character and personal warmth, very sincere and with a termendous concern for the problems of others.
Mr. Speaker, I am sure that all federal Members will join me today in paying a last tribute to a very great Quebecer.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



PAKISTAN


Mr. Maurizio Bevilacqua (York North):: Mr. Speaker, persecution of Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan continues. I have now received reports that last Thursday, June 8, as a result of a provocative and inflammatory speech apparently delivered by a Muslim clergyman, a Member of provincial Parliament, a mob of Pakistan Muslims raided an Ahmadiyya Mosque in Lahore. They burnt down the articles of the Mosque, the home of an Ahmadi and vandalized the shop of an Ahmadi Muslim. Last month, an outstanding Ahmadi doctor was murdered in broad daylight. This was the seventeenth Ahmadi murder in the home province of Pakistan's Prime Minister.
It is high time that the Government of Canada take up the matter seriously with the Pakistan Prime Minister as it is a clear violation of human rights. As the Member of Parliament for York North where the Ahmadiyya Mission and Mosque are located, I strongly urge the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark) to convey, in the strongest possible terms, the serious concerns of the Government of Canada and of Canadians on this ongoing persecution against Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan.



NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY


Rodney Edward Murphy: Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, the Member from Portage-Interlake rose in this Houses and criticized the intention of the New Democratic Party to have a squeaky clean leadership campaign. Thanks to the handiwork of a prominent Liberal supporter, Patricia Starr, we now know that a charity listed with Revenue Canada has donated more than $60,000 to various Liberal campaigns.
Meanwhile, at the federal level, Senator Michael Cogger, a close friend of the Prime Minister, is now implicated in an influence peddling case. He has also used a plane which was donated to work in a by-election campaign.
Kenneth Washcuk, a Regina pollster has been appointed to the Air Canada Board of Governors by the Conservatives. He is now in political trouble.
Tommy D'Errico, a federal Tory supporter and a provincial Liberal bagman has been appointed to the CBC Board of Governors and is now in the centre of a land flip scandal in Quebec.
There is no other reason for having a squeaky-clean campaign and an ethics committee of the House of Commons than the pasts of the Liberal Party and Conservative Party of this country.



THE ENVIRONMENT


Mrs. Edna Anderson (Simcoe Centre):: Mr. Speaker, this week's announcement of clean air proposals by the American administration is welcome news for Canadians too, and comments from the United States Senate that Canada was instrumental in this latest initiative are worth a bit of uncharacteristic Canadian self-congratulation.
But it is only the first step.
I urge the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bouchard) to immediately take the next step to initiate discussions resulting in an international agreement on acid rain. This would commit both countries to achieve

June 15, 1989
promised emission controls. Legislation is good. An agreement is even better.



CANADA POST


Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, the Government's gross insensitivity to Canadian cultural undertakings has once again reared its head with the Government's decision to cut $45 million over the next two years from the century-old postal subsidy.
Canadian periodical and magazine publishers state that the cut to this postal subsidy could put them out of business. This industry only earns pre-tax profits of 2 per cent.
Studies have demonstrated the necessity of the postal subsidy for the survival of this industry. One year ago the Government announced that program funding would be maintained at approximately its current level for at least five years. That was a show and promise to Canadian voters that a Canadian cultural initiative would be preserved. With the election over, the Free Trade Agreement a fait accompli and a little pressure from American printers, the Government has broken another of its promises to Canadians.
The Government's slashing of this vital link between publisher and reader may irrevocably affect the lives of 95 per cent of Canadians who read Canadian magazines. Does this Government not realize that Canadians like to read Equinox, Chatelaine, Maclean's, and others?



THE ECONOMY


Mr. Rene Soetens (Ontario):: Mr. Speaker, on Monday when I spoke in the House about the new jobs being created in my riding in the pharmaceutical industry because of good Conservative government policy, members of the Opposition complained that it was not helping their ridings at all.
I can only encourage members of the Opposition to look again. By example, I would like to tell them about some jobs that are being created in eastern Ontario in an opposition held riding.
Banner Packing Ltd. will be building a new 45,000 square foot pet food plant in Trenton creating 49 new jobs in a community that needs those jobs. When the national sales manager was asked why the expansion was occurring he stated: "The decision to expand at this time is in keeping with the advent of free trade as the products are aimed at new markets in the U.S. and Europe".
It just goes to show that good government policies such as free trade are helping even those who chose not to vote Conservative, this time.



CREDIT CARDS


Mr. Garth Turner (Halton-Peel):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on an urgent matter. In this country we have green credit cards, gold credit cards and platinum credit cards. Now we are about to have a red card.
As the House knows, this week the Standing Committee on Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Government Operations has been conducting an investigation into the matter of credit cards. Members of this committee, from both sides of the House, have been relentless and effective in their questioning of the bankers. Some real concerns have emerged from the committee.
I wonder how the Liberal members of the committee feel about a plan that would see their Party in bed with the Royal Bank for the issuing of a new credit card. Is it right for a political Party to hand out credit cards? Is it right for a political Party to get a pay-back when a Liberal Member of Parliament uses that card for parliamentary business?
What type of signal does this send to the Liberal members of the committee who are trying to do their job in the committee? Does the Liberal Party brass not believe that this puts their members in a compromising position.



CANADIAN ARMED FORCES


Raymond John Funk: Mr. Speaker, yesterday's announcement of low-level flights in western Canada has again reminded us of a lot of what is wrong with this Government.
June 15, 1989

First, it reminds us of arrogance towards remote regions of the country when the Minister states that those areas were chosen because they are unpopulated. There is the community of La Loche in the flight path which has more than 3,000 people, and many other communities where people have lived for generations.
Secondly, there is the myth of consultation. No one along that flight path has ever been consulted. Third, the Government's thinking is still mired in the cold war. We have made it through all these years without these flights. Why do we need them now just when international relations are improving?
Therefore, I call on the Minister to get in touch with the real world and cancel these flights.



MEECH LAKE ACCORD


Mr. Gilles Bernier (Beauce):: Mr. Speaker, Canada will be celebrating on July 1. We live in a country where the ten provinces that make it up are very diverse and have very different needs. We all enjoy innumerable benefits in this Canadian society which is free, prosperous, democratic and so tolerant.
Canada is open to immigration, a promised land for its inhabitants, a country of hope for young people who are learning to live with its linguistic duality and soon, I hope, we will live with the wonderful reality of the Meech Lake Accord, which is still in suspense because two provinces do not want to accept Quebec's specificity.
I represent Beauce in Quebec and where I come from, Mr. Speaker, people think that differences between the provinces are normal and they are proud to be Canadians. We do not understand why Manitoba and British Columbia do not accept our reality as Quebecers within the great Canadian family.
It is together, Mr. Speaker, in a united Canada, that we will make progress.
Oral Questions



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. This morning a national coalition of Canadians announced their plans to vigorously oppose the Government's cruel changes to unemployment insurance.
The Unemployment Insurance Act was introduced in 1940 and since that time it has served Canadians well when they have lost their jobs against their will.
Now, with Bill C-21, the Government is making it more difficult to qualify for unemployment insurance, is cutting back on the benefit period, and is taking $1.3 billion away from regular benefits.
Can the Prime Minister tell us how many Canadians will directly lose because of those changes in the Unemployment Insurance Act? How many Canadians will have no unemployment insurance benefits because of these changes? Who is going to take care of those unemployed Canadians?


Hon. Monique Vezina (Minister of State (Employment and Immigration) and Minister of State (Seniors)):: Mr. Speaker, when we announced the strategy to implement the policy for those who must work, we took account of regional disparities. The purpose of the strategy, the unemployment insurance reform, is to create jobs. We want to break the vicious circle of those who work 10, 12 or 15 weeks and then collect unemployment insurance. So we have an active strategy for an active population, with access to training!


THE UNEMPLOYED DEPRIVED OF BENEFITS-GOVERNMENT POSITION
William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, the Minister did not answer my question, which I will repeat.
Since the Government took $1.3 billion from the Unemployment Insurance Benefits Fund, thousands of unemployed people will certainly be deprived of bene-

June 15, 1989
Oral Questions
fits. Now I ask again: How many unemployed will be the victims of these changes and who will be responsible for these abandoned unemployed people?


Monique Vézina: Mr. Speaker, the losers will be workers who quit their job voluntarily. We know very Well that training can facilitate job creation.


CONCERNS OF PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTS
William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to the Prime Minister. What kind of smoke and mirrors game is this? The Government is cutting $1.3 billion from regular unemployment insurance benefits and it is pretending that no one is going to lose. It is evident that if you are unemployed and have no unemployment insurance benefits, then you are going to have to rely on provincial welfare. Now several provinces have already expressed their alarm at this possibility.
I ask the Prime Minister, or the Minister of Finance, how many provincial Governments have already approached him with respect to this problem, and how are they going to help the provinces carry this additional burden of taking care of the unemployed of Canada?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, the simple answer is that none have, but I think the Hon. Member should reflect on the reasons why we are proceeding with these unemployment insurance changes.


William Warren Allmand: Answer the question.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Well, Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member says, answer the question. I did in the first sentence of my answer, if he would clean out his ears.
What I said was that it is important that we understand the reason why we are proceeding with these unemployment insurance changes. We believe that it will be beneficial. The savings that are being made in the unemployment insurance system are being recycled right back into making the labour market a healthier labour market so that people can get training, so that people can get better jobs, so that people can stay with their jobs for a longer period of time. That surely is the objective
that this Government has, and it surely should be the objective of the Hon. Member.


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Mr. Joseph Volpe (Eglington-Lawrence):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Employment and Immigration.
Her Government intends to cut nearly $5 billion from its social programs. Six hundred thousand Canadians will feel the impact of these cuts, the 20 per cent who receive unemployment insurance, and I am referring to women, young people, Native people, the disadvantaged and those with very little training.
How can the Minister claim to help the neediest in this country, when her Department has agreed to withdraw the Government's share of unemployment insurance contributions to the tune of $2.9 billion, to meet the objectives of the Minister of Finance?


Monique Vézina: Mr. Speaker, we are not cutting programs, we are making them more effective and more active. Recommendations were made by parliamentary committees, and we know perfectly well that our employment strategy, which worked well during the first four years, was aimed at manpower training and that we now have to train people to meet new labour market needs.
We are not cutting our programs, we are making them more effective and more productive.


JOB DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS
Giuseppe (Joseph) Volpe: Mr. Speaker, the facts, if the Minister would just look at them, tell an entirely different story. The same people upon whom she is imposing this onerous tax burden, will be contributing over 58 per cent of all funds to the Finance Minister's budget cuts for the upcoming spending year, are those on whom she is also shutting the door to training.
Why is the Minister cutting $53 million from job development programs and denying, thereby, access for over 10,000 Canadians the opportunity to improve their
June 15, 1989

employability? Does she think it is fair to penalize those who cannot help themselves for her Government's wastrel habits?


Monique Vézina: Mr. Speaker, the reform we announced allows for regional differences. I come from a region where, unfortunately, the unemployment rate is still too high.
In fact, we have made it clear that it is possible to work together with the provinces and the private sector, to establish an employment strategy and to ensure that workers are an asset to the labour force.


CANADIAN COUNCIL OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT REPORT
Hon. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Labour.
The Canadian Council of Social Development produced its annual assessment of the reality of Canadian poverty today. It contained a number of alarming statistics. Among them was the fact that some four million Canadians remain at the poverty level in this country. One of the major reasons cited by the Council for this is that poverty among young families has almost doubled in the past 15 years. Again, the reason that poverty among these families has gotten so bad according to the Council is the deplorable state of the minimum wage in Canada which has gone down in real terms an awful lot.
My question to the Minister is simply this-


Mr. Crosbie:: How much?
Mri Broadbent: The Minister says how much. The reality is that the federal minimum wage is the lowest in Canada, lower than the provinces, lower than the territories at only $4 an hour, and that is one of the major reasons for poverty.
I want to ask the Minister of Labour, will he take some concrete action on behalf of the poor and raise the minimum wage immediately?
Oral Questions


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, like all Members of this House we are, of course, very concerned about the level of poverty among certain Canadian citizens, and action will be taken. Some very interesting statistics, published several times during the last few months, indicate that far fewer people in Quebec are living below the poverty line now than in 1984.1 think we should acknowledge this fact, which is an improvement for a large number of Canadians.


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, how complacent can you get? We have almost four million people living in poverty and you get that kind of nonsense from the Minister.


REQUEST FOR ACTION ON MINIMUM WAGE
John Edward Broadbent: I have a question for the Prime Minister. If you look at the record of the Conservatives since 1984, the only group of Canadians who have improved their income position in this country are the richest 1 per cent-the richest 1 per cent I say to the Ministers on that side. Since we have a virtual doubling of young families living at the poverty level and a major reason being the low level of the federal minimum wage, will the Government take action now to increase the minimum wage for Canadians and set some standards?


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the NDP refers to Canadians living in poverty. Of course all parliamentarians work to alleviate that situation. I know that my hon. friend will be happy to learn that the number of Canadians living below the poverty line fell by 549,000 from 1984 to 1987. That is a tremendous improvement for Canada. The number of children living below the poverty line fell by nearly 200,000 during that same period. It is important to note that since 1984, almost 1.4 million new jobs were created.
If we maintain that kind of attitude and economic outlook, we will be able to keep up that kind of job creation and ensure the elimination of a greater degree of poverty in Canada and bring about a greater degree of social justice.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!

June 15, 1989
Oral Questions


REQUEST THAT POVERTY AMONG CHILDREN BE ELIMINATED
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister knows perfectly well that the percentage of Canadians living below the poverty line has not changed in twenty years. It is about 20 per cent. The Prime Minister mentioned children, for instance. In Canada today, there are one million children living below the poverty line. My question to the Prime Minister is quite straightforward: Can the Government guarantee that in September, after the summer holidays, its goal will be to completely eliminate poverty among Canadian children?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I am all for eliminating poverty in Canada. I am not going to wait until September. I would like to do it tomorrow. But unfortunately, it is-


John Edward Broadbent: September was a target date!


Martin Brian Mulroney: -it is a very serious problem.
I have just given the figures for Canada. Perhaps I may give those for Quebec. Since the election in 1984,
315,000	new jobs have been created in Quebec. The number of Quebecers living below the poverty line has declined by 171,000 since 1984, and this includes 53,000 children. So I think that with the job creation rate we are achieving, with the creation of new wealth by reducing the number of people affected by poverty, we are making substantial progress. We still have a lot to do, and we intend to reach that goal with the help of all Members of this House.


POVERTY
Mrs. Shirley Maheu (Saint-Laurent):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. This morning, the Canadian Council on Social Development announced that a quarter of Quebec families live below the poverty line. That is a total of 615,000 households or two and a half times the population of the City of Laval. When will the Government act to halt the widening gap between
Canadians? What will the Prime Minister do so that Quebec will no longer be the second poorest province in Canada?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member has heard the response that was given to that same question by the Right Hon. Prime Minister. She asks when are we going to act. We have been acting.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Michael Holcombe Wilson: We increased the child tax credit between 1984 and 1988 from $367 to $559 per child. We introduced a refundable sales tax credit, a major progressive advance in social policy which will reach, in 1990, $140 per adult and $70 per child. Also in 1988, as a result of the income tax reform, we introduced changes in the income tax system which resulted in
850,000	low income Canadians not paying tax in 1989.
Those are three clear actions that address the problem the Hon. Member has raised.


PEOPLE LIVING BELOW POVERTY LINE-MINISTER'S POSITION
Shirley Maheu: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is still for the Prime Minister and I have a comment for the Minister of Finance: You raise taxes and cut programs.
In his recent Budget, the Minister of Finances predicted an increase in the unemployment rate, which means that the rate in Quebec could go over 10 per cent. The Minister of Employment and Immigration is determined to present her Unemployment Insurance Bill, which will force Quebecers to depend more and more on welfare benefits. What does the Minister intend to do to help women and children who live below the poverty line?


Monique Vézina: What we are determined to do, Mr. Speaker, is to implement measures for more training, measures for seniors, measures that respect the Charter of Rights, measures that will support the talents of young people, women and seniors.
June 15, 1989


REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed for the Prime Minister. Over the past few weeks the Prime Minister and his Government have waged an all out attack on the people of Atlantic Canada. Military bases have been closed. Fish plants have been shut down. Regional development agreements have been allowed to expire.
After $3 billion in cuts and thousands of jobs put at risk, the Prime Minister is slashing another $200 million in unemployment insurance benefits in Atlantic Canada.
Why has the Prime Minister decided to slash benefits and impose tougher requirements at the very time when the people of Atlantic Canada are pleading for some compassion and some relief? Is the Prime Minister's real vision of a caring and compassionate Canada-so much for those who have and to heck with everybody else?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend is talking about an area of the country that has received a great deal of attention from the Government and deserves even more, and will be receiving it.


Mr. Tobin:: That is what is scaring us.


Martin Brian Mulroney: I ask my hon. friend to consider, for example, during the time that his Party was last in government regional development averaged $185 million per year in Atlantic Canada. Over the last five years regional development went to $282 million per year. Over the next five years the average spending level will go to $425 million per year, which is an increase for Atlantic Canada of 51 per cent.
My friend will want to consider the objective facts. Results of programs have to be measured some way. One way to do it is to measure it by unemployment or employment results. Since we came to office there have been 29,000 more jobs created in Newfoundland; 6,000 more jobs in Prince Edward Island; 35,000 more jobs in Nova Scotia; and 38,000 more jobs in New Brunswick. That is results for Atlantic Canada.
Oral Questions


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Ronald MacDonald: We know how to add in
Atlantic Canada. We know that what this Government has done to Atlantic Canada is both obscene and unconscionable.


REFUSAL TO MEET WITH PREMIERS OF ATLANTIC CANADA
Ronald MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the Prime Minister.
The Atlantic Premiers have jointly asked for an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister regarding his callous treatment of our region. The Prime Minister's response is to give the Premiers the back of his hand.
In light of the Prime Minister's rhetoric on national conciliation, why has he refused to meet jointly with the Premiers of Atlantic Canada to discuss these changes and their devastating impact on the people of Atlantic Canada?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I know that my hon. friend would like to pass himself off as a hero in Atlantic Canada. However, he represents the political Party that voted against the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Atlantic Canadians know that.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Members of his Party held it up, led by Senator MacEachen in the Senate. Atlantic Canadians will never forgive them for what they have been doing to betray the interests of Atlantic Canada.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Mr. Ron Fisher (Saskatoon-Dundurn):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. It concerns unemployment insurance.
We have heard that all this government largess is going to the unemployed people of Canada. I met with a group of people this morning ranging all the way from the FTQ in Quebec, to the Status of Women, to the Canadian

Oral Questions
Federation of Students who are opposed to those changes. They are not exactly appreciative of all these wonderful things the Government is supposed to he doing.
Could the Prime Minister name one organization that is in favour of the changes to the UI program?


Monique Vézina: Mr. Speaker, all employers in this country want an active labour force. All employers and the private sector want the labour force to be up to their new requirements. However, individuals who through no fault of their own have to leave their jobs will receive the same benefits, but in a different way.


IMPACT OF PROPOSED AMENDMENTS ON UNEMPLOYED
Ron Fisher: Mr. Speaker, obviously that is not the case. We do know that all employers in the country are not in favour of it. The Minister cannot make any blanket statements such as that one.
As part of the devastation that is being heaped upon the unemployed people of Canada, I want to point out that $200 million or $300 million is now going to be paid in the form of tuition by unemployed students who otherwise would have been receiving funds out of general revenue. How can the Minister possibly say that those are improvements for the unemployed people of Canada?


Monique Vézina: Mr. Speaker, what is going on in this House! What we are trying to do as a Government is ensure that our labour force is retrained and ready to take its place on the labour market and meet new requirements, and they are clamouring for measures and mechanisms to support unemployment insurance! Our reform is aimed at breaking this vicious circle of being unemployed, employed for a while and then unemployed all over again. What we want to do, on the basis of the recommendations made in various committees, is to provide more training under our program. We want to make a more active, more
effective and more dynamic program, and that is what the unemployment insurance reform is all about.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY OF PARLIAMENTARY DELEGATION FROM NEW ZEALAND
Mr. Speaker:: I wish to draw to the attention of Members the presence in our gallery today of a parliamentary delegation from New Zealand, led by the Honourable Kerry Burke, Speaker of the House of Representatives.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Prime Minister, in the wake of his scorched earth policy in Atlantic Canada. During the election campaign both the Prime Minister and the Minister for International Trade stated and restated that absolutely no way would there be any cuts to unemployment insurance.
Can the Prime Minister tell us now what cataclysmic change occurred in this country between November and April which caused this complete reversal of government policy and broke yet another sacred trust?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, may I just comment briefly on the scorched earth comment of my hon. friend from Halifax.
From 1984 to 1989 the unemployment rate in Newfoundland dropped from 23.5 per cent to 14.4 per cent. In Prince Edward Island it dropped from 14 per cent to 12.8 per cent. In Nova Scotia it dropped from 13.8 per cent to 9.5 per cent. In New Brunswick it dropped from 16.3 per cent to 12 per cent. Mr. Speaker, that is not a scorched earth policy.
The scorched earth policy took place between 1980 and 1984 when the Liberal Party trampled upon the economy of Atlantic Canada and left the economy of that region decimated. This Government, with the co-
June 15, 1989

operation of Atlantic Premiers, brought it back to life. That is why Atlantic Canada continues to do well today.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mary Catherine Clancy: I can only say that somebody should tell that to the over 8,000 fish plant workers in Atlantic Canada who are going to be affected by the fish plant closures.
Many of these jobs are held by women, and most are in areas where the fishery is the only game in town.


RETRAINING OF WORKERS
Mary Catherine Clancy: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Employment and Immigration, I would like to know from the Prime Minister, who does such a great thing for my region, does he plan to retrain these workers for industries that do not exist, or is this Government so insensitive to community ties in Atlantic Canada that he is just going to tell them all to move to Toronto.
We have heard that the Minister is going to consult on training. How about you, Prime Minister? Why don't you consult?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, we are not going to tell Atlantic Canadians to move to Toronto. A Liberal royal commission tried that in 1957, and it failed then and it would fail again.


Mary Catherine Clancy: I could not vote in 1957.


Martin Brian Mulroney: My hon. friend said that she was not born in 1957. I was only a child myself, Mr. Speaker.


Mary Catherine Clancy: I said I could not vote. I was bom.


Mr. Speaker:: Well, I was and I probably have a better memory than all and any of you. Perhaps the Prime Minister could answer the question.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend asks a question-and perhaps given her political background she would want a more authoritative voice than one from this side of the Chamber-with regard to attitudes in Atlantic Canada. Perhaps I could refer her to a recent statement in The Financial Post which stated: "The Canada-U. S. Free Trade Agreement is already starting to reverse the fortunes of Atlantic Canada, New Brunswick Premier Frank McKenna said yesterday- APEC figures show planned spending on projects of more than $10 million each has jumped 25 per cent since 1988 to
Oral Questions
$48.5 billion. A third of those projects will-get their start in 1989." I share the enthusiasm of Liberal Premier McKenna for the well-being of Atlantic Canada and not the pessimism of a lady from Halifax.


CANADA POST CORPORATION
Garth Turner: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister responsible for the Post Office. This morning the Minister tabled the corporate plan for Canada Post and its annual report. I was impressed by the amazing if not unbelievable turnaround in the financial position of the corporation.
I would like to ask the Minister: What impact will that financial turnaround have on what Canadians really care about and what they demand from Canada Post, that is, service?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion and Minister of State for Science and Technology):: Mr. Speaker, Canada Post announced today a profit of $96 million.
In reaching that first profit in 30 years, it has improved its on time delivery rate to 96 per cent as established by outside auditors, Clarkson Gordon. A recent Gallup poll established that 97 per cent of rural Canadians think Canada Post service is excellent. Canada Post even passed The Toronto Sun delivery test. We have just started.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


REQUEST FOR CANCELLATION OF POSTAL RATE INCREASE
Mr. Jerry Pickard (Essex-Kent):: Mr. Speaker, with the announcement this morning, the Government has introduced a new tax. Will the Minister explain why he intends to use the Canada Post system as a new means of taxation by grabbing $300 million surplus for its general revenue?
Will the Minister cancel the increase in postage stamps projected on January 1, since it obviously does not need an increase to operate Canada Post?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party cannot stand success. After years and years and billions of taxpayers

June 15, 1989
Oral Questions
money poured into the Post Office finally the taxpayers are going to get a return on their investment.
In view of the fact that 80 per cent of revenues for Canada Post comes from business, the Hon. Member is suggesting that we should continue to penalize taxpayers, continue to have them subsidize business through the Post Office. We think the taxpayers have earned, after 30 years of billions of dollars of subsidies, the dividends coming to them.


EQUALIZATION OF SERVICES
Jerry Pickard: Mr. Speaker, the proposed $300 million tax grab, I would like to note, does not even meet the legislation. However, Canada Post was established to provide a service for Canadians, a service which should be provided equally, yet today it is far from equal.
In all communities, we see supermailboxes, door-to-door delivery, letter carriers, and green box service. There are different levels of service depending on what street one lives on. Will the Minister provide quality service and equality for all Canadians? Will he eliminate the inferior service provided by supermailboxes and the like?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, perhaps the Hon. Member did not hear my comments about the Gallup poll that showed that 97 per cent of rural Canadians think the postal service is excellent and that 90 per cent of those who live in communities where the service was changed in the last four years think it is as good or better than it was before.
Why in heaven's name is the Hon. Member advocating going back to something the people believe is worse than what they have today?


MUSEUM OF CIVILIZATION
Mr. A1 Horning (Okanagan Centre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Communications and is with regard to the
screening of The First Emperor at the opening ceremonies of the new Museum of Civilization.
Can the Parliamentary Secretary advise the House whether or not this film is being withdrawn and, if so, why it would not be shown on June 27? Has the withdrawal been a result of pressure from External Affairs?


Mr. Jim Edwards (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for a cogent and timely question-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: It is just what the Hon. Member has suggested it is, and I think the House ought to listen to the answer.


James (Jim) Stewart Edwards: I will try to give a cogent and timely response. The film has not been withdrawn. It was deemed inappropriate by the Minister of Communications, in consultation with other Members of the Government including the Secretary of State for External Affairs, and officials of the Museum of Civilization and the National Film Board, to have a celebration just short days after this House passed a unanimous resolution condemning the actions of the Government of China. This is a Government to Government project.
However, I am pleased to advise that once the celebration of the opening of the museum is behind us, the public will have an opportunity to judge the film on its artistic merits and it will begin its screening at the museum on July 4. The withdrawal is not the result of any pressure. It was a decision of the Minister of Communications.


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Mr. Bob Speller (Haldimand-Norfolk):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. During the 1988 election campaign, the Government promised that social programs would be enhanced, not cut. It also left the distinct impression with Canadians that no social programs would be affected by the Free Trade Agreement and that Canada could expect a level playing field.
Is it not true that Americans see government involvement in unemployment insurance benefits as a subsidy
June 15, 1989

and wanted Canada to withdraw its involvement in unemployment insurance during the free trade negotiations?
Is it not also true that the Government dutifully complied with their demands, even before the negotiations on subsidies started?
Who drafted the unemployment insurance changes, the Minister of Employment and Immigration or the Minister for International Trade under the thumb of the Americans?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, the answer is quite clearly, of course, that unemployment insurance was never discussed or negotiated in the course of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade negotiations.
The United States has never made a representation to us about the unemployment insurance program, and all we have had since the FTA came into effect are complaints from Americans that they are not up to our competitive standards because they do not have our medicare and other social programs. Those poor devils are suffering because we have those programs.


Robert (Bob) Speller: I remind the Minister that it was he who said that there would be no changes to the unemployment insurance system.


GOVERNMENT RESPONSE
Robert (Bob) Speller: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the same Minister.
The Government knew all the time that it would make changes to the unemployment insurance system. In fact, at the same time as government Members were running across Canada saying that these programs were a sacred trust, they were secretly giving them away at the negotiation table.
Is the reason the Government has not started negotiations with Americans on subsidies that it has already given away the farm, as is the case with unemployment insurance, and now it has no bargaining position left?


Hon. Perrin Beatty (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, no changes in unemployment insurance are as a result of the Free Trade Agreement.
If the position taken by Hon. Members opposite is that all changes in social programs made since the election
Oral Questions
are as a result of free trade, then they will want to give credit for the $865 million increase in payments to seniors, the $307 million increase in the Canada Assistance Program, the $26 million increase in family allowances, the $127 million increase for initiatives relating to seniors, AIDS, the child care initiatives fund and Bill C-31.
What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. It is time opposition Members recognized the fact that the Government's commitment to social programs remains strong and is growing.


CANADA POST CORPORATION
Leonard William (Len) Taylor: Mr. Speaker, I want to return to the matter of Canada Post's profit of $96 million.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Leonard William (Len) Taylor: I appreciate the applause.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: Given the time that remains, perhaps we could get on with the question.


Leonard William (Len) Taylor: At this time when communities across Canada are organizing to save rural post offices and to get door-to-door delivery to the hundreds of thousands of people who are being denied door-to-door delivery, how can the Minister responsible for Canada Post justify $96 million in profits generated by the corporation when real people are organizing to improve the service in their own communities?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, across Canada today in weekly newspapers there will be an advertisement with the following heading:
"People in my community are benefiting from this new postal service. It's good for the community."
This is signed by 80 reeves and mayors from across Canada, including Mr. Edward Kjargaard, Reeve of Alticane, Saskatchewan, which is in the Hon. Member's riding.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!

June 15, 1989
Oral Questions


Leonard William (Len) Taylor: I am sure Canadians will take a lot of heart in the gloating of the Minister and Members on the other side.


MINISTER'S POSITION
Leonard William (Len) Taylor: Mr. Speaker, the mandate given to Canada Post by Parliament in 1981 was for the corporation to deliver a service and to work toward self-sufficiency.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


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


Leonard William (Len) Taylor: Is the Minister not taking liberties with the mandate Parliament gave Canada Post when he takes self-sufficiency and turns it into a $96 million profit at the expense of services?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, service has increased everywhere in Canada. The satisfaction level of the public has gone up. The price of stamps has risen less than inflation and is therefore down in real terms, and the post office has made a profit. What terrible, terrible news, Mr. Speaker!


NATIONAL DEFENCE
Ms. Ethel Blondin (Western Arctic):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Ministers of National Defence, I direct my question to the Prime Minister. The Arctic is increasingly becoming a focal point for provocative international defence manoeuvres. Yesterday, the Minister of National Defence announced his approval of low level test flights over a vast area of the Northwest Territories. Given that the Dene, Metis and members of the Government of the Northwest Territories emphatically object to these outrageous military war games for environmental as well as other reasons, I would like to know whether the Minister consulted with these groups on his decision, or whether the groups were even advised
of his commitment to the Americans. If they were, why were they not listened to?


Hon. Bill McKnight (Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, as I explained to the House yesterday, the request for these routes came from the binational command of NORAD. The routes were studied since 1985 by a private environmental firm hired by the Government of Canada. We held meetings and discussions with the Dene Nation. We held meetings with the Metis Association of the Northwest Territories. We held meetings with the Dene-Metis Negotiation Secretariat. The approval was given by the RERC of the Northwest Territories which is comprised of members made up of the territorial, federal and environmental groups in the Northwest Territories. Because of the discussions and the meetings held in the communities of Fort Resolution, Snowdrift and two other communities in the Northwest Territories, changes were made to the routes on their recommendations and changes were made to the altitude at which the exercise would be maintained.


RIGHTS OF ONGOING LAND CLAIMS IGNORED
Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew: Mr. Speaker, in conducting the environmental review, it concluded that the only possible danger was the effect of aircraft noise on people and animals. Given the fact that much of the land area affected in the Northwest Territories is currently the subject of land claims negotiations with Canada's first people, specifically the Dene and Metis, why did the Minister choose to ignore this opposition, especially in light of the erosion of the right to negotiate ongoing land claims. Why were these rights ignored?


William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: Mr. Speaker, as the Hon. Member knows, I am fully aware of the negotiations that take place between Canada and the Dene-Metis Secretariat in the Northwest Territories. As the Hon. Member should know, the routes were changed after consultation. There is still an opportunity for change if it is shown there would be animal activity that may be encroached upon by the routes.
The Hon. Member should listen and I will try to answer her question. The air routes belong to Canada. They do not belong to the Territories or to the Provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta or British Columbia.
June 15, 1989

The Member for the New Democratic Party left the wrong impression yesterday. We have six low-level routes in Canada.


Some Hon. Members:: Routes!


William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: There are 100 routes in the United States. Some people can question my pronunciation but they cannot question the consultation and the opportunity that was given to those people in the Northwest Territories.


EMPLOYMENT AND IMMIGRATION
Mr. Dan Heap (Trinity- Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Employment and Immigration, my question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Considering the several thousand young people from People's Republic of China now studying in Canada who may fear to return because of that Government's violent repression and who may wish greater assurance than extension of their visas, will the Government create a special program for nationals of the People's Republic of China in Canada as was done for Poles, Salvadorans, Iranians and others, by offering them an opportunity to apply for landing within Canada with relaxed employment criteria?


Right Hon. Joe Clark (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister made it veiy clear a week ago I think, in Vancouver, in public comments there that we had no intention of sending students here from China back to any kind of danger in China. Pursuant to that undertaking by the Government of Canada, the federal Government has begun a series of discussions with non-governmental organizations and with provincial Governments. There will be a meeting here in Ottawa tomorrow involving the provinces, the federal Government and non-governmental organizations that will focus particularly on the situation of the students. I expect it will result in two committees being established. One is an assistance committee designed to deal primarily with financial assistance but also with other kinds of assistance. A second will be an advisory committee established for the purpose of making available advice on a wide range of questions that may come from the students of Chinese origin in Canada.
Points of Order
In addition, we have made it clear that any application for refugee status would be considered in a most sympathetic way.


HANDLING OF REFUGEE
Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate very much the Minister's answer and I know the Chinese community will appreciate it. With regard to refugee applications, considering the danger of overloading the new system which is already overloaded, will the Minister and the Government consider asking the immigration officials to give sympathetic consideration at the front-end humanitarian review before the rest of the process is followed on a refugee application?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, we will consider seriously every practical step that can be taken to ensure that we can deal expeditiously and sympathetically with applications for refugee status.


Mr. Nunziata:: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: I am sorry. We are already over time and I think we must conclude.
I know there are Members seeking points of order. I am aware of it and I will get to all of them. The Hon. Member for Beauce.


POINTS OF ORDER
Gilles Bernier: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I wish to correct the mistake I made at 2.15 p.m. when I read my statement. I inadvertently, and I repeat, inadvertently, mentioned the name of two provinces which had not yet ratified the Meech Lake Accord. I referred to Manitoba and British Columbia, and of course I meant Manitoba and New Brunswick. This is an unpardonable slip of the tongue, especially since, you Mr. Speaker, represent that particular region. I do apologize!


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Windsor West is rising on a point of order. However, I have another point and perhaps I could deal with it first. I will come, of
June 15, 1989

Points of Order
course, to the Hon. Member for Windsor West in just a moment.
The Hon. Member for Ottawa West (Mrs. Catterall).


REQUEST FOR TABLING OF DOCUMENTS REFERRED TO BY MINISTER FOR INTERNATIONAL TRADE
Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a point of order under Citation 495 of Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, Sixth Edition and I refer to yesterday's Hansard and to statements by the Minister for International Trade (Mr. Crosbie) in response to a question as reported at page 3019.
The Minister rose to respond to a question with a document in his hand and referred in his answer to:
a list seven or eight pages long setting out plants that have expanded and factories that have expanded-as well as new investments that have been made because of the Free Trade Agreement.
The Minister then proceeded to quote from those documents, both names and figures. He went on to say:
There is page after page of examples that we can give.
I believe that the Citation referred to requires that the Minister not refer to such documents unless he is prepared to lay them on the table of the House and I would ask that those documents be laid on the table. I have not looked up the specific Hansard references but this is perhaps the fourth or fifth time the Minister has done this. I would like to ask that in fact he table all similar documents that he has referred to in the House.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, yesterday I did indeed refer to a list which I had. It was seven or eight pages long. It set out the plants that have expanded, factories that have expanded and new investments made. I do not have it here today. I prefer not to table any such list. I prefer to drop the names out one by one, or two at a time. Why should I table all my ammunition at once just because the Hon. Member wants to have it all tabled at once?


Mr. Speaker:: If the Hon. Minister has all this ammunition and he had it in a document in his hand to which he referred, then of course he must table it. If it were some other kind of note made for Question Period, that is something else. I am not particularly helped by the Hon.
Minister's representations. Perhaps he could assist me further.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, this was information and notes that were prepared for me for Question Period. Surely I am not to be stripped naked of my notes.


Mr. Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, the rules and precedents of this House must apply to the Minister for International Trade to the same extent as they apply to anybody else. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, to apply these precedents to the Minister for International Trade.
We saw the Minister get up and read from sheets of paper. He was not using them as notes. If he has confidence in the information he was presenting in Question Period, I do not see why he would not be delighted to table these documents pursuant to the rules.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, in support of the discussion raised around this very important point, the Minister referred directly to the documents and used the documents in response to a question. It is the right of this House to have access to those documents. Otherwise, the whole use of documents in this House will be abrogated by ministerial choice rather than rules of the House.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Minister has made it very clear that he was reading from notes prepared for use in Question Period. The Hon. Minister made good use of those notes. As he has indicated, he is under no obligation to table them. I think the House should take the word of the Minister that those were notes prepared for Question Period.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: I am going to settle this immediately. I want to put it to the Hon. Minister very directly that if this was a document from which he was quoting, then of course it must be tabled. If it was preparatory notes for Question Period, then I do not think the rule extends that far. Could I have the Hon. Minister assure me one way or the other?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, these were notes prepared for Question Period so that I could answer the untruthful assertions made by Members of the Opposition.
June 15, 1989


Mr. Speaker:: I am not interested in getting into further argument. The Hon. Member for Windsor West (Mr. Gray)? I hope the Hon. Member will keep in mind what I have just said. I do not want further argument. I want to know whether anybody can help me in making an appropriate procedural decision.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, I first of all invite you to review Hansard and, perhaps more important, the electronic television record and reserve judgment until you have done so.
Second, I ask you to ask the Minister to withdraw the language he just used in referring to Members of the Opposition as making untruthful statements. I think that is unparliamentary and that word should be withdrawn.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Minister would perhaps like to respond.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, the Question Period is absolutely full to the top of the barrel with completely false and untrue statements made by Members of the Opposition in introducing their questions. That is just a fact. I have nothing to withdraw about that.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Could he tell us about his answers too, while he is at it?


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, on this point of order, we are not discussing the relevant matters of judgment of whether or not under somebody's opinion a statement is true or untrue. We are asking that the rules of the House be applied. When you asked the Minister to give us a statement of his assurance, he went far enough to accuse the Member of saying an untruth rather than responding to your question. I think that is an offence to this House.
I would suggest the question be put again to the Minister and, hopefully, we can have a ministerial response on that basis.


Mr. Speaker:: I think that perhaps the best way of dealing with this is for me to consider the matter. First of all, there has been a suggestion made that the Hon. Minister is quoting from some document. The Minister has stated very clearly that he is not quoting from any document but is quoting from notes preparatory to Question Period. As all Hon. Members know, there are all kinds of things in notes preparatory to Question Period. I will take the admonition of the Hon. Member
Business of the House
from Windsor West, who has been here a lot longer than most of us, and I will consult Hansard.
On the other issue, the question comes down to this: As the Hon. Minister said, Members on the opposition side have been intentionally distorting the truth. I have some doubt about that, but I will consider what has been said. I will report back to the House as soon as I can.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, I do not want to cause you to have to look anything up unnecessarily. I withdraw whatever was found to be objectionable from my statement.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Friesen:: Mr. Speaker, respectfully, I never did hear you recognize the Member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca (Mr. Barrett) yet his mike was turned live. I wonder now if the people throwing the switches are the arbiters of who is going to be recognized.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Surrey-White Rock (Mr. Friesen) is of course absolutely correct. By some inexplicable happening, the Hon. Member, who was of course the Premier of the Province of British Columbia, was recognized without even the Speaker of the House intervening in any way, shape, or form. I would hope that the House would be very gracious about this because I do not know how I can unrecognize the Hon. Member.


An Hon. Member:: He spoke by divine intervention.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member spoke of divine intervention. I cannot resist asking him whether it was from the Old Testament or the New Testament.
The Hon. Member for Windsor West.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, quite frankly, I want to assure the Hon. Conservative Member who worries about such things that it is obvious that I have been fully recognized by the Speaker and I deeply appreciate his courtesy.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, I ask the Government House Leader if he could give us the customary statement of government business for the next several days? I realize he is working on this and there are consultations going on. However, if he is able

June 15, 1989
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to, perhaps he could outline in a preliminary way some of his priorities for the next two weeks.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I wish to report that tomorrow we will resume debate on Bill C-2, the Transport Safety Bill, at report stage. There is some indication that we may complete that tomorrow. If so, we will continue with second reading of Bill C-10, Forgiveness of Debts.
Monday, we shall commence the day with debate on Bill C-15, Plant Breeders' Rights, second reading. For the balance of the day, the debate will depend upon the progress that is made in that debate and discussions between the Parties.
On Tuesday, debate will commence on Bill C-22, amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The balance of the day will depend upon discussions between the Parties.
On Wednesday, the entire day will be devoted to resumed debate on Bill C-21, the amendments to the Unemployment Insurance Act.
As my hon. friend has indicated, there are discussions under way with respect to making as much progress as possible on the Order Paper by June 30. We would hope to have an agreement in the very near future as to what can be done by that time. I do not believe I am being presumptious in suggesting that Members on both sides of the House should be in contact with their House Leaders with respect to the daily agenda. We are making every effort to adjust the agenda in order to accommodate spokespersons in the opposition Parties vis-a-vis the Bills that we wish to move along through the Order Paper.


Ms. Copps:: I understood from the government House Leader (Mr. Lewis) that Bill C-22 would be called quite early. We were under the impression that the deadline for the Montreal Protocol implementation is July 1 and the clock is ticking very quickly.
In the meantime, there are 25,000 refrigerators in Canada releasing coolants that contain CFCs which are entering the environment and killing the ozone layer. Obviously, we will want to have more than one speaker on this particular issue. We would like to co-operate with the Government, but it should have called the Bill before. The Government should bring this Bill to the House in order that we can discuss some of the devastating effects of the CFC releases that are occurring as we speak.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: We are discussing those very things with the House Leader of the Liberal Party and with the House Leader of the New Democratic Party. As I indicated in my comments, we intend to bring that particular Bill on for debate on Tuesday at 11 a.m.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Stupich:
That this House reaffirms the Government's pledge to the West
Coast salmon and herring industry to "not allow jobs, historically
established, to be threatened" by any government response to GATT
rulings.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: When the House rose at 12.59 p.m. the Hon. Member for Cariboo-Chilcotin (Mr. Worthy) had completed his speech. The question and comment period following the Hon. Member's speech is now available to Members, otherwise the Chair is prepared to recognize Hon. Members on debate.
On questions and comments the Hon. Member for North Island-Powell River (Mr. Skelly).


Raymond John Skelly: The previous speaker listened to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. Siddon) state that this Government and he as Minister were not prepared to preserve uncompetitive Canadian jobs in the fishing industry. By "uncompetitive jobs", he is talking about Joyce Brown's job in Prince Rupert. She is here today. She has been a widow for the last 11 years. She has three children aged 11, 14 and 17. She works in the B.C. Packers plant in Prince Rupert. It is one of the largest and most efficient plants in the world.
The aspect of her job that the Minister sees as uncompetitive is that she works for $14 an hour. She is protected by a union agreement with safety committees and all the supporting facilities in the plant. In addition,
June 15, 1989

when she retires she will have the opportunity to receive a pension.
In order to make her job competitive, the Minister of Fisheries wants Joyce Brown and her colleagues to work for $6 an hour, which is the rate in the United States. The Minister of Fisheries wants to get rid of the union in that plant. He wants to get rid of the pension plan.


Thomas Edward Siddon: Who said that?


Raymond John Skelly: Those are the consequences of sending those fish to the United States.
The clarification I would like from the previous speaker is that he will stand up with Joyce Brown and the other women who work in that plant, who are here today attempting to protect their jobs from the actions of the Minister of Fisheries and this Government, and state that he is not prepared to see those fish go across the line, and not prepared to see Joyce Brown and her fellow workers out on the street.
The Government and the Minister have cut back the unemployment insurance benefits. When the fishing season is over, she will not be able to qualify for unemployment insurance.


Benno Friesen: That is wrong, and you know it is wrong.


Raymond John Skelly: She will wind up on welfare with her three kids because of what the Minister has done. She is standing up here today in Ottawa saying: "Please don't do this to me and my kids, and please don't do this to the community".


Benno Friesen: You know that is wrong.


John Carnell Crosbie: You are a damn liar.


Raymond John Skelly: The Prince Rupert Chamber of Commerce has stated the equivalent thing in a brief. Is the Member prepared to stand up with NDP Members, stand up with the UFAW members and state that these jobs are competitive and effective in preserving and raising families in those communities? Would the Hon. Member be prepared to stand alongside those women, or is he going to listen to the balderdash spread by the Minister of Fisheries and the rest of the Cabinet Ministers in this Government?
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Dave Worthy: I sure will stand up with those women. Some of the members from Prince Rupert spent the lunch hour with me. It is not this Government they have to be concerned about when it comes to their jobs. I think the Hon. Member is old enough to remember the time when his colleague was leading British Columbia back in 1974, and he should understand what real concern about jobs is all about.
The Hon. Member referred to the ladies from Prince Rupert. I know they are here and that they have real concerns. People from all departments of the Government have been listening to those concerns. Every one of those people have stated that they are competitive, that they have the best quality fish in the world. Yesterday, the Hon. Member's colleague yelled across the floor at me in the Standing Committee that our industry in British Columbia is the best in the world. If the Hon. Member really believes that, he will know that it is going to be competitive.
The quality of our fish is the best in the world. Our workers are the best in the world. The industry recognizes that it can afford to pay the wages the workers have and still be competitive. While we do listen to them, and we are concerned for the jobs of all people from British Columbia, in fact across Canada, I do not accept that the people in our industry cannot be competitive with people around the world.
The Hon. Member knows that 75 per cent to 80 per cent of all of the salmon that those workers process is exported to other countries around the world. I do not accept what the Hon. Member states, but I certainly will stand up with the workers any day the Hon. Member asks.


Benno Friesen: We have just heard from the Member for Comox about job loss in the fishing industry.


Raymond John Skelly: Correction. This guy can't get his facts right on any given day. It is North Island-Powell River.


Benno Friesen: I apologize, Comox-Powell River.


John Carnell Crosbie: He is just as obnoxious under either name.


Benno Friesen: I do want to put on the record what is going on in the fishing industry. If the Hon. Member wants to talk about job loss, I suggest he looks at the statistics.

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In British Columbia for the fish processing industry shore workers in 1984 there were 2,972 jobs. In 1985 there were 3,695 jobs. In 1986 there were 3,788 jobs. In 1987 there were 3,746 jobs. In 1988 there were 4,051 jobs. That is an increase of approximately 33 per cent in jobs in a matter of four years. The Hon. Member from Comox has the nerve to talk about job losses in the fishing industry.


Raymond John Skelly: Thelma Peterson is here from Prince Rupert. She works in the fish plant.


Thomas Edward Siddon: She has a job.


Raymond John Skelly: She has a
job, but the reason she is here in Ottawa is that her job is threatened. They are already trucking fish out of Prince Rupert. Her husband is disabled and she is the sole support of her family. What we have is the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. Siddon) putting her job out in the cold.


Thomas Edward Siddon: She has a job.


Raymond John Skelly: This Government, by increasing the qualifying period for unemployment insurance, is going to ensure that Thelma Peterson and her colleagues are not going to be able to qualify for unemployment insurance. Those who are lucky enough to qualify will get reduced weekly benefits.
I want to ask the Member to stand up again with these women and say that he is not prepared to see them lose their unemployment insurance and still be the sole support of their families-in this case a woman with a disabled husband and in the other case, a single parent with three kids-say that he is not prepared to see them go on welfare. Is the Member prepared to stand up and say to this Government that the unemployment insurance proposals stink, that they are harmful for those people,and he is not prepared to see itimpose regulations that would allow that fish to be trucked for processing in the United States. Fish is already being trucked from Prince Rupert to the State of Washington. Those trucks are going by their plant full of fish down to the State of Washington already.
I would ask the Member to stand up and declare that he is not in favour of those unemployment regulations, that he is not in favour of the regulations put in by the Minister of Fisheries that will cost them their job, cost
them unemployment insurance access and do irreparable harm to the community. The Prince Rupert Chamber of Commerce echoes these exact words. Why is the Member not listening?


Dave Worthy: Madam Speaker, I am listening and the Government is listening. I can assure the Hon. Member these people he refers to will be far further ahead with this Government. They do not want a lot more unemployment insurance. They want meaningful work. They want more and better jobs. They know that they will get that through this Government. There are examples in the fishing industry, the industry of the people who are here visiting us this week. As they have explained it, they have untold tonnes of groundfish and whitefish that never get inside the plant doors. They want to see that fish and those jobs in British Columbia. There are salmon that are being plundered on the high seas that belong to British Columbia. It is those jobs that they want to see in British Columbia and on our coast. It is the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into the salmonid programs by this Government that will bring more fish back to those shores. It is those jobs that they want on their coast.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The period for question and comment is now over. Resuming debate.


Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-THnity-Conception):: Madam Speaker, as I believe you have agreed, we in the Official Opposition have agreed to divide our time into two periods of 10 and 5 versus one of 20 and 10.
I am very pleased to rise and speak on this motion today to protect the west coast of Canada jobs related to the herring and the salmon industry. This motion has to do with free trade, and it has to do with the fisheries.


John Carnell Crosbie: It has nothing to do with free trade. What bunk.


Fred J. Mifflin: Since the passage of the Free Trade Agreement, the policy on trade is reasonably clear, if not the consequences. I wish I could say the same for the fisheries policy. If I were to ask what is the fisheries policy of Canada today, I wonder who would answer for the Government. Would it be the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. Siddon) or would it be the Minister for International Trade (Mr. Crosbie)? That question is more than rhetoric because I have sat in this House and I have observed the policy questions on the fishery go back
June 15, 1989

and forth like a political tennis ball. No wonder the policy is not clear.
Today we are discussing the situation in which the Conservative Government surrendered to demands by the United States under the GATT rules for virtually unrestricted access to processed Canadian salmon and herring. These new rules, conceded on April 26 of this year, invalidated long-standing rules prohibiting the export of unprocessed salmon and herring. They require now only that fish be deposited at a designated landing station for counting prior to export. In the short term these changes threaten the loss of thousands of jobs in the processing sector in British Columbia. In the longer term they create a dangerous precedent that could signal the undermining of Canada's ability to manage and conserve valuable fisheries resources.
As if that were not enough, even this bold move was unsatisfactory to the United States Government. It threatened massive retaliation under U.S. trade laws unless Canada would guarantee that our fish could be purchased by the U.S. without it touching Canadian soil. What happened then? This Government, apparently frightened by the prospect of what Big Brother would do, offered to send even this vastly conceded issue to arbitration under the dispute mechanism of the Free Trade Agreement.


John Carnell Crosbie: It has not got to arbitration. Get your facts straight.


Fred J. Mifflin: It is going to arbitration, and the tricky part here is that the arbitrators must determine whether or not the rule changes are consistent with U.S. law, not Canadian law.


John Carnell Crosbie: My God, you are mixed up. This is absolute madness.


Fred J. Mifflin: Not international law, but U.S. law. More and more we are being made to look like second-class citizens in our own country. That is not a very good feeling as we prepare to celebrate Canada Day with our friends and family across this country.
Now despite the many guarantees that were given on free trade during the election campaign, there is a major implication for the East Coast fishery. Now that the U.S. has successfully challenged Canadian restrictions on the
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export of unprocessed fish from the West Coast, the logical next step for them would be to challenge the same type of Canadian restriction on the export of unprocessed fish from the East Coast. Whether this is because of trade policies or fisheries policies, it does not matter. Canadian fishery workers are being adversely affected by external forces, something over which this Government, any sovereign Government should have control.
I submit that just as the goal of Canada's defence policy should be to protect Canada and the interest and well-being of all Canadians, so should a fisheries policy be designed clearly and unequivocally first and foremost to protect fishermen and all those Canadians involved in the fishing industry. It is an industry that represents billions of dollars and an industry the scope and significance of which reflects Canada being the world's largest exporter of fish.
I could not believe my ears this morning when the Hon. Minister of Fisheries and Oceans suggested that we were small time on the world scale. We are the world's largest exporter of fish. No wonder we are in so much trouble. Does our present policy protect fishermen? That is the key question. I have just indicated what it will do to B.C. fishermen. What will it do to East Coast fishermen, to Newfoundland fishermen? Ask a fisherman in Bonavista Bay, Trinity Bay or Conception Bay. They wake up every morning and here is what they see. They see, first of all, signs of mismanagement. They see a giveaway of a portion of the northern cod stock in order to entice France to submit the St-Pierre and Miquelon fishing boundaries dispute to binding international arbitration just like the giveaway of processing jobs in British Columbia to the United States.
To add insult to injury, factory trawlers registered in France are harassing Newfoundlanders and their longlin-ers and they are destroying their gear in their own economic zone. They see the hope given in the 1982 Kirby Report for a total allowable catch of 400,000 tonnes reduced to a 1988 level of 255,000 tonnes. A recent recommendation by federal scientists, confirmed by a blue ribbon panel, is that the 1989 catch is going to be further reduced to 125,000 tonnes. I regret to say this, but there are signs of worse to come.

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What else do these fishermen see? They see over-fishing by other foreigners, especially the Spanish and the Portuguese. In 1986, when Spain and Portugal joined the European community, the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization, NAFO, allocated 23,200 tonnes to the European community, but the community unilaterally set their own quota of 102,000 tonnes. Then they went away and took 171,000 tonnes. Similarly in 1987, NAFO gave the community 23,000 tonnes. They gave themselves
110,000	tonnes and then they took 140,000 tonnes. They give themselves five times the allocation and then go off to catch seven times the allocation.
Stemming from this mismanagement, with the acknowledgement of the serious depletion of northern cod stocks, they see the possibility of an ecological disaster, one that will not only wreck the economy of Newfoundland but one that will savage communities in Nova Scotia and will affect seriously the coastal communities of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
Furthermore, with the announcement of the Government to retire the venerable tracker fleet as part of the CFB Summerside shutdown, they see a cut-back in surveillance and control so crucial to police these waters and the 250 floating trawler fish plants in our own inshore and offshore economic zone. These aircraft provide 800 of the 900 flying hours of fisheries surveillance in the Atlantic. Given the mismanagement and the ecological catastrophe issues that we are facing, there should be at least a reasonable expectation of the opposite.
They see the loss of jobs despite what has been said here. There are 65,000 registered fishermen in Atlantic Canada and 30,000 plant workers in 900 plants.
There are 14,000 people employed in the B.C. fish harvesting and processing industry. These jobs, as we see here today, are being seriously jeopardized.
There is something else that we see. We see band-aid regulations and policies, perhaps well intentioned, but these policies confuse and anger our fishermen. I want to give you one example, Madam Speaker.
We have in Newfoundland a new crab closure policy for the Newfoundland region which came into effect on January 31 this year. In all fairness to the Department and its officials, the objective of this new policy was to
ensure uniformity of closures throughout all districts and to reduce the risk of quota overruns. The new policy stated that at midnight on the pre-announced closure date, no crab would be permitted to be landed. That is to say that if there was any crab found in the crab pots, they had to be left in the ocean. They could not be retained.
The key to making this procedure work was that ample warning time be given to the fishermen. Ample time depends on a number of things, such as the number of traps set, the size of the vessel and weather conditions, all individually variable and variable as a combination. What might be acceptable to a 65-footer with 800 traps over a calm period would clearly not be ample for a 40-footer in rough weather with a different number of traps.
The end result in Bonavista Bay last week was that the time given was such that when the quota was reached and the closure was announced, many fishermen did not have sufficient time to clear their pots and return then-catch for processing ashore. They had to dump them instead. We have a situation in which the crab were caught but the fishermen had to get up in the middle of the night, steam out, haul their pots, return the crab to the ocean and come back without their catch. They were angiy and upset. I think they had every reason to be so. Under the conditions and with the new policy in force more warning time was needed.
Are these policies protecting our fishermen? They do not think so. Quite frankly, I do not think so. I am sure that there are Members in the House on this side and opposite who do not think so either. These fishermen are honest, hard-working and trusting people. I believe they have been let down by the Government. They would certainly not agree with the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans that they never had it so good.
I could go on relating these ills from now until the House shuts down on June 30, if it closes down then. Fishermen have to cope with an awful lot. However, I do not want to look backward. Life is interesting looking backward but, unfortunately, it has to be lived forward.
What we need is an overhaul of our fisheries policy that will offer protection for fishermen. Plainly and simply, we need a fisheries policy that will guarantee jobs for our fishermen and our plant workers. We need to raise the profile of the fishing industry so that it becomes an issue of national importance and concern. Finally, we need accompanying and foreign policies that will imple-
June 15, 1989

ment and support our fisheries policies, ones that will make our industry healthy, viable and vibrant.
As a Member hailing from a riding so predominantly dependent on the fishery, I strongly support this motion that this House reaffirms the Government's pledge to the West Coast salmon and herring industry not to allow jobs historically established to be threatened by any government response to GATT rulings.


John Carnell Crosbie: I thought that this was a debate about the West Coast salmon and herring industry. The hon. gentleman opposite spent all his time talking about the fishery on the East Coast. These two fisheries are some
3,000	miles apart. If the hon. gentleman knows as much about the West Coast fishery as he knows about the East Coast fishery, God help us.
When I get to my own remarks I will expand on this issue. The dispute about the salmon and herring regulations on the West Coast of Canada has absolutely nothing to do with the Free Trade Agreement. It was a complaint initiated in 1986. It was a complaint brought under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, not brought under American legislation or under the Free Trade Agreement, which did not then exist.
This is a dispute about what the GATT international trading rules mean or do not mean in relation to certain regulations. When this matter goes, by the way, to a panel under the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, the panel is not going to consider American law at all. American law does not come into the matter. It will not be considered.
What the panel will be considering is Chapter 18. It will examine the consistency of Canada's landing requirements for Pacific salmon and herring with our obligations under the GATT. That is what it will be examining.
The hon. gentleman referred to the protection of fishermen. I will be able to elaborate on this in my own remarks. I want to point out to him that if Canada ignores the results of the GATT panel with reference to these regulations on the West Coast of Canada, the United States would be justified under the GATT in taking retaliatory action against Canada. Whatever the amount of the trade damage was that it had suffered as a
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result of our continuing with regulations that were GATT inconsistent and damaging it, it could take counter measures against Canadian exports to the United States. The Americans could choose whatever Canadian exports they like to take those counter retaliatory measures against. They might well choose to counter retaliate against East Coast fishery products-lobster from the East Coast, or cod, or whatever. I would like to hear what the hon. gentleman would be saying about the situation because Canada ignored a GATT panel decision, and his own fishermen on the East Coast were injured as a result. I would like to hear what the hon. gentleman would then say about that particular situation.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Order, please. As this is a five-minute period of questions and comments perhaps the Hon. Minister would allow the Hon. Member some time for rebuttal on what the Minister has already said.


Fred J. Mifflin: Madam Speaker, I do not really think that there is much to rebut. I thank my hon. friend across the floor for his comment on my knowledge of the fishing industry. I have to remind him that I grew up in a family that had been in the fishing business for seven generations. I am sure the Minister would agree that some of this has to rub off on one at some time.
The one question or query I have in my mind is this. It is still not clear to me, as I am sure is not clear to Members over here, and members of the NDP, precisely why we had to go to a dispute settlement mechanism after we agreed under the GATT that something should have been done anyway.
We are adding insult to injury. It is no wonder that these people are upset. I say once more, I more strongly support this motion the more I hear from Members opposite.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Resuming debate with the Hon. Member for Burin-St. George's.


John Carnell Crosbie: More repetition.


Roger Simmons: Madam Speaker, I say to my friend from St. John's West, we will see whether it is repetition or not. I will let him

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decide. He has the opportunity to follow me, I would think. I look forward to hearing what he has to say.
First, I want to congratulate the hon. gentleman from Nanaimo-Cowichan for bringing this motion forward, and for putting it down in such eloquent terms. For the eloquence he cannot take all the credit, I say to him. The eloquence actually belongs to another Member of this Chamber. We ought to give credit where it is due. The eloquence is that of the gentleman who happens right now to be the Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Siddon). The words are largely his. It was he who said first that the Government would "not allow jobs, historically established, to be threatened" by government actions.
Those were his words, Madam Speaker. I congratulate my friend for Nanaimo-Cowichan for putting down this resolution in words which are clearly going to be acceptable, certainly to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. Siddon). If there ever was a motherhood resolution, this has to be it. It calls upon the House to reaffirm the Government's pledge not to allow the salmon and herring industry to be threatened by any Government response to GATT rulings. I would expect that the entire Government would want to support that particular resolution. I do.
I would like to state in the next few minutes why I do. I have had some visits, as I am sure many Members have had in the past few days, from people who have come all the way from Prince Rupert and from other parts of British Columbia to acquaint us with some of the details of the situation which they face. I represent a fishing constituency which I believe is the largest one in the country in terms of numbers of persons who depend on employment in the fishery, either in catching the resource or processing the resource. There are 16,000 such persons in Burin-St. George's. I claim to represent the largest fishing riding in all of Canada.
I found common cause when I heard those people from Prince Rupert and other parts of British Columbia, and when I saw the thoroughness with which they had prepared their case. I believe many Members of the House will be familiar with this particular document, an appeal to Canadians, which I hold here. Also for the edification of the gentleman who is the Minister of Fisheries, I will quote some more of his words. On November 17, 1987, he said that: "I give you my assurance that those jobs are safe." Of course, he was talking about the jobs in B.C. which are very much the subject of
this motion today. "I give you my assurance that those jobs are safe." That was November 17, 1987.
By May 3, 1989, a month or so ago, he was saying something quite different: "I have never said the specific jobs would remain intact." I submit that these are two completely mutually exclusive statements. He either means one or the other. He cannot mean both unless the gears are changed along the way. Clearly, that is what has happened in this particular case. The people who prepared this brochure are quite justified in labelling that part of their brochure the betrayal of an industry.
Had I the time, Madam Speaker, I could talk to you at some length about the betrayal of the fishing industry on the East Coast. However, today, let us stay for a moment with the West Coast. Before we do, let us go to a gentleman from South Shore in whose riding is located the fish plant at Lockeport. He has said quite recently, less than a month ago, on May 16 that: "We are exporting 1,000 jobs a year from Nova Scotia along with our roundfish". That was from a Member in the same Party as the Minister of Fisheries, who lauded his Government today and the administration which he is part of, for how it was getting the best dollar, in his words, how he was seeing to it single-handedly that we were encouraging further processing. I have to say to him, that is not at all what the figures say.
I have this fresh from Statistics Canada just a few minutes ago and it states that in 1988, our primary export in the fishery-that is to say whole, dressed, fillets and blocks-last year for all of Canada 371.9 thousand metric tons. That is the figure to keep in mind. If we compare that to the exports we did in the fishing industry after secondary processing had been affected, that is, smoked, cured, salted, canned and so on, the figure is 204.9 thousand metric tons, or a ratio of approximately two to one. We are still exporting essentially in the unprocessed form two-thirds of all the fish we catch in this country.
Why the Minister of Fisheries can stand there and brag about that escapes me completely. He said something else that needs just a quick rebuttal. He said, and I copied his words down this morning: "Canada is near the top as a competitive nation." He said we are way down from No. 11 and now near the top. I agree with him on one thing. We are way down. I will tell him how far down now. I have this from the World Bank in its latest economic atlas, which compares growth rates for the 1980 to 1987 period. The World Bank states that Canada does not stand first or second, as the Minister is saying, and as the Minister for Consumer and Corporate Affairs
June 15, 1989

(Mr. Valcourt) has been saying recently. It does not stand first and second at all.
Here is what the World Bank says. That is the organization that my good friend from St. John's West is going to- I want to be the first to predict this publicly- when he leaves here, which is sooner than a lot of people think. He has got his mind essentially made up, he is going to the World Bank. I believe that he will be the new president of the World Bank. He will then have to espouse those very figures. I say to him today: "Tread softly. Don't do anything and don't say anything which might turn off your prospective employers a year or two down the road." The World Bank stated that: Canada is not in the first or second in terms of growth. In the last eight years, it actually stands forty-sixth. Forty-five countries have managed to grow faster than Canada in the past seven or eight years.


An Hon. Member:: What are the names?


Roger Simmons: Oh, you want some. West Germany, Japan. The Minister wants some more. There are 45. That is not bad.
Nor is Canada at the top of the league among the industrialized countries. The Economist of London, the great right-wing Conservative publication which my friend from Toronto and from St. John's sleep with every night, has the following to say on the subject. It compares the performance of 13 industrialized nations. In the past year, industrial production in Canada has been the second slowest growing of all the 13 industrialized nations in their grouping, underwhelmed only by Great Britain. All the rest, United States, Sweden, West Germany and the others grew faster.
I realize that I do not have very much time left. The Government would do well to adopt just a little bit of ordinary down-to-earth common sense on this particular issue. It would do well to take the advice of those people from Prince Rupert, and the people from my riding in Burgeo, Fortune, Grand Bank and Marystown. They are saying the following to the Government of Canada: One, implement regulations which would ensure Canadian
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needs for fish are met before any fish is allowed to leave the country unprocessed.
Two, take steps to halt the foreign overfishing of Canadian stocks. The people in my riding know all about the devastating impact the give-away is having on their fishing activity and their opportunity for jobs in the fish plant.
Three, increase spending for the conservation and protection of fish resource and, four, an immediate relief program for shore workers, plant workers and fishermen.
Why does the Government not take some of that common sense advice from the people who are there who know full well what the real problem is. Why is it that the Minister wants to suggest that the whole world is wrong except him? What about his people in B.C. and the Fisheries Council? Are they so wrong when they say: "The response of the Government of Canada to the GATT case paid scant attention to legitimate and longstanding national economic policy." Is he telling his own people they are wrong when they go on to say: "Worse, this case threatens to undermine the potential of the industry to contribute to a strengthening of the economy of British Columbia so that there is full utilization of our natural resources.
Let me close up with this plea to the Minister from British Columbia. Why does he not get off his high horse and stop mouthing every last syllable that the Prime Minister and the people who are orchestrating things for him tell him to say. Why does he not sit down with the people of Prince Rupert, with the fishery council, with the UFFAW and talk to them? Maybe they will knock some sense into his head so that he does not make such a fool of himself when he rises in this Chamber to talk about fish.


Ms. Langan:: Madam Speaker, I am glad the Hon. Member raised the question of comments made by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. Siddon). When I listened to the Minister's speech earlier today, I was quite surprised by it and I wish that the Hon. Member

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had commented on some of the things that were said. I will ask him to do so now.
The Minister said that it would be kind of silly to truck fish on ice to the United States, yet there is already fish on ice being trucked from Prince Rupert to Washington State as we speak. The Minister also said that Canada is a small producer and he mentioned that it produced 20 per cent of the world's fish. Canada's population is only 0.5 per cent of the world's population and we produce 20 per cent of its fish. Does that make us a small producer?
The Minister said that industry wants to go to Alaska to buy fish. However, the Fisheries Council of B.C. met with the standing committee on Tuesday and in fact said just the opposite. The Minister said we were on the rails to prosperity. With the direction in which this Government is taking us, we will not have any rails. I suspect a better assertion would be that this country is on its way to the ropes.


Mr. Boyer:: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I hesitate to interrupt the Hon. Member while she is making her points-


An Hon. Member:: Then why do it?


Patrick Boyer: The reason I do it, in answer to her colleague, is I believe we are now in the period allowed for comments and questions relating to the previous speaker, a Member from Newfoundland, but we have been hearing comments on statements made by the Minister.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I would like to ask the Hon. Member for Mission-Coquitlam (Ms. Langan), the way I asked the Minister, to please allow time for the Hon. Member who just spoke to have his say after she has made her comments. I remind her that this is a five minute question and comment period.


Joy Langan: Madam Speaker, that was one of many questions I was asking the Hon. Member to comment on, and Hansard will show that I prefaced my remarks by asking the Hon. Member if he would comment on the statements made by the Minister earlier today.


Roger Simmons: Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Mission-Coquitlam for her comments and her question and I would be delighted to make a comment. By way of explanation, my friend from Bonavista-Trinity-Conception has spent some time talking about the Minister's
very asinine statement about Canada being a small producer.


Thomas Edward Siddon: I didn't say that.


Roger Simmons: I listened to the Minister and he said that, using those words exactly. I have it in front of me and I ask him to deny this when he receives Hansard. He said, "We are only a small producer".
If we are the largest fish exporter in the entire world, we are hardly small. If we are producing 20 per cent of the total output, that is hardly small. We produce 20 per cent of the world's fish, one in five, 20 per cent, 20 per cent. Has the Minister got it? One fifth of all the fish output in the world is produced in Canada and the Minister has the gall, or should I say kindly the ignorance, to stand there and say that that is small.


Thomas Edward Siddon: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I do not think it is in accordance with the orders of this House for Members to take points totally out of context without interpreting what was actually said in that-


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The Hon. Minister may have been raising a point of debate but it is not a point of order. There will be one minute left for the Hon. Member to continue.


Roger Simmons: Madam Speaker, I would ask my energetic friends in the NDP not to get overly excited. We may have an opportunity here that we should not miss. Perhaps the Minister is really saying with his spurious point of order that on reflection, he is wrong. Does the Minister deny that he said that we are only a small producer? He wants to dance about context. I would give him an opportunity to dance all he wants if he would retract one thing, if he would say, "I was wrong, we are not a small producer, we are the largest fish exporter in the world". That is true and he admits that.
We want in the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans a man who will beat his breast for the fishing industry of Canada, not a man who goes around minimizing our magnificent effort in the fishing industry.


John Carnell Crosbie: Madam Speaker, I would like to address the resolution about the situation with the West coast salmon and herring industry because this is a serious problem that affects a large number of people. It is a problem to which, since I became Minister for International Trade, I have devoted a tremendous amount of
June 15, 1989

time and a lot of concern together with the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. Siddon) and his Department.
Why is this an issue that gives us so much difficulty? In the fist place, we want to ensure that the fishermen and fish plant workers of British Columbia retain their jobs and continue to prosper. We see their concern by the fact that a delegation of 40-odd of them came from British Columbia this week to demonstrate their concern in Ottawa. We are concerned about that too, and we are also concerned with the place of Canada in the world. We are concerned that Canada, whose life blood is trade, continues to have the opportunity to gather wealth from trade with the rest of the world. I believe that something like 30 per cent to 35 per cent of the total Gross National Product of Canada comes from our trade with the rest of the world.
We are a small to medium-sized country. We are not one of the world's powerful countries in a military sense. All very large, small and medium-sized countries have to depend upon the world trading system and the international trading rules contained in the GATT to protect them and their trade. If we are not prepared to observe those principles ourselves, we are throwing ourselves to the wolves. When we get thrown to the wolves, it is the medium-sized and the small that will be harmed. That is why the Uruguay Round of the MTN is so important and that is why it is so important that we observe any GATT panel rulings that find against us with respect to whether or not we are observing fair and proper international trade rules.
Why is this so important to the fishery? The figures for the total amount of fish landed in Canada may have been given earlier, and 80 per cent of all the fish landed in Canada is exported. If we do not observe the rules with reference to fishing and fish processing in our own country, what will happen to the 80 per cent of the fish that we export elsewhere in the world? If we do not observe a GATT panel report the U.S. gained when it complained about us with the U.S. being our main market for fish, how can we defend ourselves if the United States wants to take retaliatory action against us in the fishing environment?


An Hon. Member:: Five million bucks.
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John Carnell Crosbie: We do not not know if it is five million bucks or how many bucks it is. We do not know what kind of retaliatory action they may take. It may be tens of millions or it may be 20 million or 100 million. We do not know what retaliatory action they might take.
We exported $2.67 billion worth of fish to the world in 1988 and $1.4 billion worth of that went to the United States, $600 million worth to Japan and $437 million worth to the European Community. That is what we have to keep in mind when we are dealing with this GATT panel ruling. We cannot just say we are going to ignore the rest of the world, we are going to ignore GATT panel rulings, we are going to ignore the fact that these regulations we had in place are clearly contrary to the GATT because they are protective, because they are against the rules of fair trade and free trade. Are we are going to ignore all of that and keep these rules in place?


Mr. Fulton:: Why did you send Mickey Mouse to Geneva?


John Carnell Crosbie: And then have the Americans say to us, when we complain about the U.S. to GATT and get a panel report, that they will ignore GATT panel reports in our favour. If that is the game the New Democratic Party wants to play, let them sell it to the people of Canada, get into power and see where we will be after five years of their administration with that kind of law of the jungle in trade rules. That is the back rub.
What was the dispute? By the way, talking about fishermen, why do you not listen for a change?


Raymond John Skelly: I am from North Island.


John Carnell Crosbie: You don't make any sense. You are too darned ignorant to listen to anyone else who wants to make a case. Now, pipe down and listen. Do the people who came here and travelled a couple of thousand miles the courtesy of allowing them to listen to my point of view instead of making such an ignorant noise over there.
Let us look at the position of fish processors and fishermen. The figures were given here earlier today. In 1984, when we came into office, there were 17,187 fishermen in B.C. Today, there are 20,613 fishermen. In B.C. in 1984, there were 2,972 fish processing workers. Today there are 4,051. That will show you what is happening to the fishing industry under our government. In Canada the figures are just as favourable; 84,038

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fishermen in 1984, 93,551 today. There were 24,372 plant workers in 1984 and 29,253 today. The NDP does not have any monopoly on worrying about people or fish processing workers or fishermen. I was worrying about them and looking after them 20 years ago before that motley crew ever got into this House. That is why fishermen and fish processing workers have been electing me, Madam Speaker, for 20 years and will elect me, I hope, for another 20 years if I go before them. They know that I have their interests at heart, that I am not out just trying to bluff them about their jobs.
I am not out trying to worry them about their jobs like the motley crew opposite, because there has not been one of them who lost their job yet. That is a fact, Madam Speaker. Not one fish processing worker has lost his job in British Columbia yet. But you are filling the workers with alarm and trying to scare them to keep them in your camp, to bluff them and to fool them. Well, Madam Speaker, we are here today to clear their minds for them.
This situation does not affect fishermen at all. The fishermen of British Columbia will still be catching the salmon and herring. This is an issue that might affect most fish processing workers, not the fishermen.


Roger Simmons: You have got it finally.


Raymond John Skelly: It is time you woke up.


John Carnell Crosbie: How does this situation arise? In April, 1986, the U.S. filed a petition under Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act complaining about an unfair trading practice in Canada. The complaint was that while Canadian fish processors were buying significant quantities of unprocessed Alaskan salmon and herring, U.S. processors were denied any access to unprocessed salmon and herring from British Columbia. That is their complaint. Surely, the Americans have the right to complain about that. We Canadians can buy their unprocessed salmon
from Alaska and their unprocessed herring. But they could not come here. That was their complaint.
Regulations under our Fisheries Act prohibited the export of Pacific sockeye, pink salmon and herring unless it was processed in a federally certified plant in British Columbia.


James Ross Fulton: Since 1903.


John Carnell Crosbie: Other species such as coho, chinook and chum were not subject to those regulations. In the past we have bought as much as 15 per cent of the salmon processed in British Columbia from Alaska fishermen and as much as 8 per cent of the herring processed in British Columbia was imported from Alaska.


Mr. Skelly (Comox-Alberni):: Surplus.


John Carnell Crosbie: That is why the Americans were complaining. The Americans were saying "What's sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander and if you won't allow us to buy your salmon and herring then we are going to make a complaint to the GATT". Long before we got to the Free Trade Agreement which was signed in December, 1988, in November, 1987 the GATT panel made its findings. What were its findings? That our export restrictions were inconsistent with the GATT because the measures were primarily trade restrictive rather than conservation or marketing measures. If we kept those regulations in effect, then the United States is entitled to retaliate against Canada for whatever the Americans say is the amount of the damages they have been suffering. They will retaliate against Canadian exports to the United States and it will cost Canadians- we don't know what Canadians-it will cost other Canadians $20 million, $10 million, $100 million because we would not observe the GATT panel report.
The hon. gentlemen over here say "We don't care about other Canadians. We don't care who gets hurt if we ignore this panel. We don't give a dam about anyone else. Go ahead and ignore the panel, ignore the trade law of the world, give Canada a bad reputation. Go ahead and do all that". You say "We do not give a damn who suffers, but we do not want these regulations changed in British Columbia". That is the alternative of the New Democratic Party and a pretty despicable alternative it is. Completely irresponsible, Madam

Speaker. This is a Party that says it believes in the GATT, that it is a supporter of the GATT. The New Democrats did not want a free trade deal with the United States. They supported the GATT. The Liberal Party supported the GATT.
The Hon. Member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. Axworthy) on March 21 said this: "I would like to underline and reinforce the strong and important commitment that this country has to the international trading system and in particular to GATT and to endorse the spirit that the development and enhancement of the international trading system are essential to our own economic and international progress". That is the statement. That is the policy of the Liberal Party. The Liberals are for the GATT except when a chance arises of making some political mischief. Then they are not for the GATT. Then they want to be for the rat, or to be for something that causes the Government trouble instead of helping with the solution. They want to worsen the problem. That is the NDP and that is the Liberal Party. They are for the GATT until it means something, until they can make political mischief and then they are no longer for the GATT, and we hear nothing more about the GATT.


James Ross Fulton: What about the right to get fish?


John Carnell Crosbie: The GATT panel made its finding. We considered the matter and negotiated with the United States for a number of months. On March 22, 1988 we announced our intention to remove the GATT inconsistent measures and to replace them with measures that would be GATT consistent. That is what we have done. We have had a series of consultations with the industry, with the union and with the British Columbia Government. We have had meeting after meeting in devising a new set of landing regulations that will act to help in the proper management and conservation of the B.C. salmon and herring stocks.
The main purpose of these regulations is to better manage the B.C. salmon stocks and to ensure conservation. No one can sell over the side. Everyone is required to land as of late in April when the new regulations were passed. You have to land your fish at an approved landing station. The fish had to go through, be observed, measured, and certain biological tests and checks had to be done so that we have the proper information to
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manage and conserve the B.C. salmon stocks. After that has happened, anyone who wants to buy the salmon can buy it.
By the way, one has to assume it is a bit better for the B.C. fishermen. The more competition there is to buy their fish the better it is for them. One has to assume that the Alaskan fishermen are not complaining because Canadian buyers can buy Alaska salmon or that Canadians can buy Alaska herring. The more competition for the fish the better the price. But here are these great NDPers over here, how they love the fishermen, how they want to protect the fishermen. They do not even see any conflict of interest in what they are doing and saying here. There is a conflict of interest between the interests of the fishermen and the interests of the fish processing workers which the New Democrats do not even pretend to notice.
During 1988, we had consultation between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the B.C. industry union and the provincial government. Then on March 29, the U.S. trade representative told us that even our new proposed regulations are considered to be unfair trading practices. So on April 25, we revoked the old regulations because they are clearly trade restrictive and inconsistent with the GATT. We put in place the new landing requirements for Pacific salmon and herring.
We believe that given a chance, this system will help ensure good management and quality of B.C. salmon. Incidentally, it will also be helpful to those who are worried about the B.C. processing industry.
We are getting no help from the NDP Members. None whatsoever. They are not giving us any ammunition to support these new landing regulations. No. They are giving all the ammunition to the United States people who are going to appear before the GATT panel. They are going to have all the protectionist statements of the NDP Members from British Columbia to use as evidence before the panel. They do not care if they help the Americans. All they care about is trying to score a few cheap political points in this House. They do not care about the good of the fish processing workers. They do not care about the fishermen. They do not care about anything but trying to skulldug themselves into power.


Some Hon. Members:: Shame!

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John Carnell Crosbie: On May 23, 1989, the U.S. requested a dispute settlement panel be established under Chapter 18 of the Free Trade Agreement. That panel is going to examine the consistency of these landing requirements with our obligations under the GATT. That is the question. We are lucky enough to have three Canadian members on that panel. We have two Canadian nominees to the panel and two Americans nominees. They could not agree on a chairman. They had to choose a chairman by lot. The chairman is going to be another Canadian, the dean of the law school here in Ottawa who formerly taught out at UBC, I believe, the University of British Columbia. So we have a Canadian chairman on this panel, two Canadian members and two American members. They will do their job in accordance with international trade rules and they will examine the system to see whether they feel this system is GATT-consistent or not. If we happen to lose that case, the blame will fall squarely upon Members of the New Democratic Party in this House.
Canadians have not lost their right to access fish caught in their own waters. They are the only ones who can catch fish in their own waters. It is our administration and our rules that say there are no over-the-side sales. The fishermen of British Columbia are to catch the salmon and herring.
The representatives from British Columbia do not care about the position of the fishermen. They think they are onto some other political point that is going to do better for them than the cause of the fishermen and fish processing workers. But we are protecting both. We are protecting the B.C. fishermen who are going to have the sole right to catch the fish in B.C. and Canadian waters and we are protecting the fish processing workers, because these regulations are going to assist the management and conservation of the industry. I think they are going to continue, the result of which will be that I will be surprised if not all the fish caught in B.C. waters, but nearly all, do not continue to be processed there.


David Barrett: You would be surprised? Is that all you are prepared to do is be surprised?


John Carnell Crosbie: The Hon. Member will not be surprised because he is in the House telling untruths. He is in here pretending people have lost their jobs when they have not lost their jobs. He is trying to scare the wits out of people unnecessarily. He does not want to be helpful.
There have been months of work done on this. There are resources committed to the west coast salmon industry which doubtless the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. Siddon) has expanded on what has been spent through the Salmonid Enhancement Program and other programs. I notice from my notes here that it is $41 million a year.
The GATT is the cornerstone of Canadian trade policy. It served us well over the years. We sometimes win at the GATT and we sometimes lose at the GATT. But if we, as one of the medium-sized powers of the world, are going to abandon the GATT when it does not suit our own narrow interests and not accept our obligations as a trading partner in the system, then the system is doomed and Canada is doomed because Canada depends on trade for our prosperity. One-third of our whole national wealth comes from that trade. Four million Canadians depend on exports. Members opposite want to jeopardize four million Canadians while they try to scare a couple of thousand other Canadians. This is the kind of statesmanship we get from the New Democratic Party, Madam Speaker.
We depend on strong and predictable international trade rules to protect our own export sales. A strong GATT is the best security we have for Canadian trade. How can we turn our back on it? There are individual cases where we do not particularly like the results but we have had to recognize certain regulations were not GATT-consistent.
By the way, the situation on the East Coast is that regulations that were in place are grandfathered under the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. That has nothing to do with this situation. However, anyone who wants to challenge even the east coast regulations under the GATT could do so. There is nothing to prevent that from happening. It simply cannot be challenged under the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. The United States would not agree, because of their success in this case, of grandfathering the B.C. regulations under the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. They would still have been exposed to a challenge under the GATT in any event as they were challenged in 1986.
Let us forget all the rhetoric and forget the attempts to confuse the issue.
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I might point to Mr. Peter Pearse's report. He ran for the Liberal Party in the last election. In his report of 1982, he said this:
Although pressure from established processors and plant workers to restrict exports of less highly processed products is understandable, to do so is inconsistent with fishermen's interest in high prices and with the public interest in generating the highest returns from resources.
Of course, Hon. Members opposite are not interested in the fishermen's interest in high prices. We already know that.
Just to reiterate, no jobs have been lost. None. No jobs. We have a new set of regulations in place that we think will protect Canada's and British Columbia's interests, the interests of the industry and the people in the industry out there. Canadian fishermen are not going to be damaged in any event. Only Canadian fishermen can catch the salmon and herring. We have an increase in plant workers and fishermen in the last four years as the result of our efforts and policies. These are the facts.
We have worked hard to put the system in place that we have now. We need the support of the Members from British Columbia, the industry, and the unions of British Columbia to maintain our position in the panel that is now going to operate under the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. What we need is help, not hindrance by Members of the New Democratic Party.


Raymond John Skelly: I have a point of order. It is that jobs have already been lost in Prince Rupert. The Minister is giving us misinformation.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The Hon. Member may wish to debate the point later on this afternoon. On questions and comments, the Hon. Member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton).


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, the Minister tried to make it seem that there is no connection here between the Free Trade Agreement and GATT and what is taking place on the West Coast.
As the Minister knows, export taxes are inconsistent with the Free Trade Agreement but are consistent with GATT. I would like to read him a quote and get his comments on it. I quote from one of his own government officials, the Assistant Deputy Minister for Pacific Fisheries, Pierre Asselin. On May 16, 1989, he said: "One thing I would like to mention, however, is that an export tax would not work with salmon because an export tax could never be imposed against the United States
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because of the Free Trade Agreement". That is before the Standing Committee on Fisheries here in Ottawa.
How does the Minister continue to rise in this House and say that there is no connection between what has gone on here and the FTA?


John Carnell Crosbie: Here would be the situation if we did what the hon. gentleman is suggesting we do. The United States or some country goes to GATT. GATT establishes a panel. The panel finds that Canada's particular regulations are inconsistent with GATT and with the world international trading rules which have been in effect since 1947. Canada accepts the GATT panel report as it must and should do, if we believe in a world trading system in which we are so totally dependent, and then we turn around and add an export tax and vitiate the whole results of the GATT panel report.
Does the Hon. Member think the other countries of the world in the GATT trading system will put up with that, or that this would be consistent with GATT? You win on the one side, and then the country against which you are successful comes in and imposes an export tax.
At the present time an export tax might well be permitted under the terms of the GATT. However, with respect to the United States of America under the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, we have both agreed not to impose export taxes on goods that we sell to one another which are consumed in the country to which we sell them.
If we sell the Americans goods that they are to consume themselves in the United States, we are prevented from imposing an export tax. In the same manner, the United States is prevented from imposing an export tax on goods that we import from them to consume in Canada.
Why is that? Because it is a free trade agreement. We are going to reduce tariffs between our two countries over 10 years, so there are no longer any tariffs. If there are to be no longer any tariffs, how can we have export taxes and put on the reverse of tariffs so in effect there is a tariff going in the other direction? Part of a free trade

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agreement is that two countries agree not to put export taxes on the goods that one another consumes.
However, if the United States wanted to import something from Canada to re-export somewhere else and not to consume in the United States, then an export tax would be valid with respect to those goods.
I hope that clarifies the matter for the hon. gentleman, although I think his mind being so murky it would take a lot more than my abilities to clear anything up for him.


Bill Rompkey: The Minister stated that nobody has lost jobs but I thought I heard him say that some fish plant workers might lose jobs.
The Minister has been making the argument that the Government has to go along with GATT because of the fear of retaliation. Yet, who is that retaliation going to be against? Surely, it will not be against the fishermen and the plant workers on the East Coast or the West Coast. They have already suffered that pain. We have to be led to the conclusion that it is retaliation against other people in other parts of the country.
This is a fair country. We all pay the same taxes and we all have the same rights. Should not the pain from the market forces be spread across the country? Does the Minister agree that the fishermen and the plant workers on the East and West Coast are those who are least able to bear the pain?
Third, I would like to ask the Minister why are we so locked in still to the American market? Why has the Government not developed other markets? For example, on the West Coast, as part of the Pacific Rim, there are markets available for species from the West Coast. The East Coast is close to Europe and has traded with Europe for years. For example, the East Coast has sold salt fish to Spain and Portugal. Yet, the Government has not supported the Canadian Salt Fish Corporation.
Why are we still so locked in to the American market? Why have we not developed other markets so that we do not have the fear of retaliation as a result of protectionism?


John Carnell Crosbie: The protectionism in this case is Canadian protectionism. Canadians are not totally innocent in every aspect of their national life and activity. This is a case of a complaint against Canadian protectionist activity. We were caught being protectionist. Under the rules
forbidding the export of unprocessed salmon and herring, we were found to be protectionist by an impartial GATT panel. We have to observe the GATT panel because we are players and dependent upon the world international trading system. If we are not prepared to obey the rules, how can we expect others to?
In this case, the protectionists are not the Americans, but the Canadians. The Americans are there in Alaska willing to and selling us salmon and herring.


Bill Rompkey: But you signed the Free Trade Agreement because you were afraid of American protectionism. That is why you signed it.


John Carnell Crosbie: They have been selling Canadians salmon and herring, so they have not used protectionist measures, but we did. The protectionists in this case were Canadians. That is why we have had to change these rules.
The answer to the question on the pain is the following. Under GATT rules, if we do not observe a GATT panel report, the Americans are entitled to estimate what the damages are to them a year-


James Ross Fulton: According to the applicant, $5 million.


John Carnell Crosbie: -and they will get the approval of GATT if they go to GATT to ask for it, and taking retaliatory action against other Canadian exports. They can pick what they like. The likeliest thing they would probably pick are other fishery product exports from Canada to the U.S. Perhaps they would choose lobster from eastern Canada, or they might choose cod from eastern Canada. Therefore, they would impose a counter-retaliatory action on other fish products which would harm the fishermen in the district of the hon. gentleman. Then we would hear him talking about sharing the pain. Would he be up saying that we must all share the pain? Like heck he would be up saying we must all share the pain. He would be saying: "Why didn't you observe the GATT panel rules? Why don't you observe the GATT? Now my people are suffering". It might be producers of some manufactured product in eastern Canada.
With respect to markets, last year of $2.67 billion in fish product exports, $1.4 billion went to the U.S. We now have $600 million worth of fish products going to Japan as a result of our efforts, particularly under this Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. Siddon), for example, salmon, herring and female capelin from New-
June 15, 1989

foundland. We are up to $600 million in exports to Japan, and $437 million in exports to the European community.
I ask the Hon. Member to keep that in mind when he is bawling about trade sanctions, how we should sanction the European Economic Community if they do not do what we want on the nose and tail of the banks. There are $437 billion worth of Canadian fish products sold to the European community every year, and a tremendous amount of value in lobster from Nova Scotia. Would Hon. Members like to see us sanction the European community so they sanction us back and don't buy any of our lobster? I do not think so. I think that this is very much a two-edged sword.
Let us try to keep in mind whose interests we are acting in. We are acting in the interests of B.C. fishermen, B.C. processing workers, the B.C. Government, the B.C. people, and the people of Canada in observing this GATT panel report and in bringing in these new regulations which we hope to have accepted by the panel that has been established under the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement.


David Barrett: Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to listen to the Minister for International Trade (Mr. Crosbie). What he lacks in substance he makes up for in rhetoric. We will attempt to deal with the detailed analysis in the answers he gave to the questions.
In answer to the second question of the Hon. Member for Labrador (Mr. Rompkey), the Minister stated that if we ignore the GATT decision we would have to penalize the East Coast fisheries, the fishermen and the producers.


Benno Friesen: That is not what he said.


David Barrett: Yes, he did. He criticized the Member for even raising this by saying there would be a tariff on lobster and other fisheries.
The original application to GATT by the company that was opposed to Canada's practices pointed out that it was talking about the potential of a $5.1 million penalty. That is the maximum. On the West Coast of Canada we are dealing with a fishery that produces $860 million in the export market and we put that at risk for a $5 million
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penalty for ignoring the GATT decision, and that would only be if we lost.
This is supposed to be a business-like Government. It is risking $860 million worth of international trade under that Minister who is supposed to be protecting our international trade for the potential penalty of $5 million in a countervail duty. Does that make sense? Twenty cents for every Canadian to risk this whole industry on the West Coast. It is more than that, and I will come to my further arguments in a moment.
Second, in November, 1988, the Minister said that it has got nothing to do with free trade. That is what he said-nothing to do with free trade, if this situation has nothing to do with free trade, then why after the GATT ruling have we acquiesced to an appeal of this ruling, not through any mechanism of GATT, not by taking the risk of paying that $5 million countervail, but acquiescing to the Americans by saying we want a panel under the Free Trade Agreement to settle the GATT decision, knowing all the time that under the Free Trade Agreement that no matter what the panel does, it cannot under any circumstances go against American law.
I want to the Minister to explain to the West and East Coast fishermen how a GATT decision that has got nothing to do with the Free Trade Agreement is now in front of a free trade dispute settlement mechanism. How is that so? The Minister was not giving the whole story to this house and to the Canadian people. It has everything to do with the free trade deal. Otherwise why is it there at that panel? Probably any Canadian left awake in this country watching us wrangle over the details of this debate is totally confused as we exchange our interpretation of facts to suit our argument. So let us abandon that debate for the few moments that I have got and I will raise this proposition.
The Tories asked to become the Government of the day. They espouse a certain series of policies that the Canadian people would either benefit from or suffer from. They took as a course of action on this particular issue to deal with a response by a decision from GATT. The decision that they were responsible to make was to make a series of choices. We have outlined some of the choices they could have taken. They did not take those choices. They chose a very weak landing regulation that is now subject to a panel under the Free Trade Agree-

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ment. They said all along when political statements were being made about the threat to jobs that no jobs would be lost. In the substance of this motion in front of the House, the Minister of Fisheries said: "not to allow jobs historically established to be threatened."
Of course we will not know until this fishing season is over in west coast British Columbia what has happened. It is a fact that the New Democratic Party, the Official Opposition and the Government will not know what the impact of the decisions are until this fishing season is over. We say it will be a disaster. They say nothing will change. They are responsible for putting us in this situation. We did not agree with the process that they took. We offered alternate advice and we were ignored. It is now incumbent on government Members to stand up and say: "We have made this decision, we think that we are right, we have denied that any jobs will be lost. However, since we have ignored the advice of our own experts or ignored the advice of the Official Opposition and the New Democratic Party on how to handle this, we are prepared to stake our seats on our word." I put this challenge to the Minister of Fisheries.


Mr. Crosby:: How do you propose to put your seat on the line?


David Barrett: Under the rules of the House if a Member says clearly that no jobs will be lost, and that is the end result of a government policy, they cannot get away with saying, oops, we were wrong.


Patrick Boyer: Will you put your seat on the line?


David Barrett: Yes, I will put my seat on the line.


Howard Edward Crosby: Send a letter to The Speaker.


David Barrett: If the jobs are not lost in British Columbia, I will resign my seat at the end of this fishing season on the basis that either one of those two Ministers, the Minister of International Trade or the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. Siddon), will do the same. If I am wrong, I will step down from my seat in this House. If they are wrong, let them step down from their seats in this House. I make no bones about it.
I did not come down here to play games, hear attacks of rhetoric and accusations. Let us put it down to cases. I am prepared to stake my seat on this issue right here in this House. If I am wrong, I will resign my seat only on the basis that if they are wrong, they will resign their seat, too. That puts it down to a clearly understandable situation. The people in British Columbia whose livelihoods depend upon this issue, the industry in that province, the small towns, they do not understand the nature of this banter back and forth in the House. They do not understand the intricacies of the Minister's rhetoric. They understand only one thing, and that is that they are out of a job. Who was responsible for putting them out of a job? The Government has handled this problem in a stupid fashion and caved in to the United States every step of the way on this deal.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


David Barrett: We can talk about who said this and that. We can talk about who should have done this and that, but this is not a roll of the dice. This is the responsibility of a Government that swore on behalf of the people that they were going to protect the jobs of those workers. I say they put them at risk and they say they have not. If I am wrong, I am prepared to walk away from it by saying that I put my seat on it. They should be prepared to do the same.
Let the Minister of Fisheries stand up in this House today and say, as it is in this resolution, that not a job will be lost, and that if a job is lost, I will step down from my seat. Let the Minister of International Trade with all of his bluster and nonsense and personal attacks say that if I am wrong, I too will step down because I put too much at stake on the roll of the dice. Do the Canadian people have anything less to expect? Not at all. We are talking about the livelihood, the maintenance of succour and care for those rural communities on the coast of British Columbia.
Let me predict this. Should this happen in British Columbia, God help us, it is going to happen in the Atlantic provinces as sure as the sun comes up in the morning because Americans will see how weak-kneed, how stupid and how lacking in ability this Government is in dealing with these kinds of issues. We are not going to score debating points about you said this and I said that. That is all nonsense now. Now the crunch has come.
In a few weeks the fishing season will start. Yes, the British Columbia fishermen will catch the fish as they have always done and as they have always had a right to do. To pronounce in this House that somehow the Government has protected this inherent right by Canada being a sovereign nation is nonsense. The fishermen will catch the fish. Who will process the fish is the question? We predict that once those fish are in this phoney landing situation, they will be scooped up by American

buyers, trucked down to American plants and off to Japan.
What the Minister said in his last hidden comment in response to an answer of my colleague was about the export taxes. We cannot put an export tax on anything consumed in the United States. Ninety-five per cent of the canning of Canadian fish under this agreement will not be consumed in the United States. It will be sold offshore for a massive profit by the American processors. If the Americans had to eat all the fish that they imported from Canada, they would have fish three times a day and an extra meal at midnight trying to get through those cans. Who is he trying to kid? It is not for consumption in the United States. It is for the export market, trans-shipped and processed through the United States. You have sold us out. You have sold out British Columbia. You have sold out the people of my province and you play games in here.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. I know my time is up. I repeat calmly and rationally that if I am wrong, I will resign my seat. I expect from either one of those Ministers to respond to my challenge by saying that if they are wrong, they will resign their seat.


Howard Edward Crosby: Madam Speaker, I want to make a comment and then pose a question to the Hon. Member. First, he did refer to the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and he did refer to Atlantic Canada even though the focus of this debate is on British Columbia. I want to tell him this. I think I am repeating what the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) said in the House of Commons today.
The Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement is already starting to reverse the fortunes of Atlantic Canada. Who said that? The Premier of New Brunswick, Frank McKenna, who had a unanimous victory in that province. He praises the Free Trade Agreement. He said: "We are starting to feel like we are on the move, that we have got an opportunity to share the wealth of Canada in an equal fashion. That is what the Free Trade Agreement has done for Atlantic Canada". That is what Premier Frank McKenna, with the unanimous support of his electorate in the Province of New Brunswick, says about free trade.
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I tell the Hon. Member to be careful about what he says about free trade in Atlantic Canada and stick to British Columbia.
Let me tell the Hon. Member something about British Columbia. The Hon. Member said in his speech that the fishermen will catch the fish. The question is who will process that fish. These fishermen are Canadians. Canadians own and control every fish that is caught in this exercise. Why does the Hon. Member not go to the fishermen and ask them not to sell it to the Americans? Why does the Hon. Member not say: "Sell that fish to Canadian processing plants"? Why does he not get his answer there. There is no law in the world that compels Canadians to sell fish to American processors.
The Hon. Member blames the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. Siddon) and the Minister for International Trade (Mr. Crosbie) for who buys and sells fish in British Columbia. He is looking at the wrong people. Never mind resigning his seat. When he gets back out to British Columbia he should tell the fishermen to keep that fish in Canada. Do not let it go to the United States, if that is what the Hon. Member is worried about.


David Barrett: Madam Speaker, one of the ironies of debate in this Chamber is to have the people who should least be in the position to get up and attack on these kinds of issues be the first to jump up and attack. It is in the province of the Hon. Member, because of the trucking of fish, that 1,000 jobs have been lost in the fish processing industry. His own colleagues have said that. If he is so concerned about protecting jobs, he should be up on his feet demanding that the sale of unprocessed fish stop from his own province and protect the jobs of his own workers in that province.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


David Barrett: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member talks about me and suggests that perhaps I should not take this tack and I should not do that. I reiterate, we are now at the stage of a guessing game as a consequence of the Government's policy. We criticized this policy. We are predicting what the consequences of this policy will be, in spite of the promises made to us by the Government. The Hon. Member does not know what will happen. I do not know what will happen. I have a dam good guess as

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to what will happen. The Hon. Member thinks that something else will happen.
I reiterate on the roll of the dice that if Members opposite really believe that they are right in everything they have done then they should be prepared to take my challenge. I repeat it. If Members opposite are right and no jobs are lost in the processing of fish in the Province of British Columbia this season, I will resign my seat. The other side of the challenge is that if Members opposite are wrong after all their rhetoric, all the bumpf, all the baloney and everything else, it means more than just standing up and saying with the wringing of hands: "Gee whiz, we were wrong. The devil made me do it". Members opposite must be prepared to be responsible, morally and physically, for their jobs. They must put their seat on the line through the Cabinet Minister.


Mr. Harvard:: You have little to worry about, David.


David Barrett: Madam Speaker, I wrap up by saying again the question is this. Will the Government take the challenge or not? Do Members opposite believe the policy or not? The challenge is on the table. If they believe in what they are doing, then they should take it up. If they do not take it up, then we all know what they have done. They have sold out to the Americans.


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, I would like to touch on a few of the things that have been raised by the Minister of Fisheries (Mr. Siddon) and the Minister for International Trade (Mr. Crosbie) today. There is a very fundamental issue that has to be addressed in this debate. It is that one cannot compete if one does not have the fish.
What we are talking about here is the ideological and the philosophical approach that we just heard once again from the Hon. Member from Halifax. He said: "Go talk to the fishermen". He thinks that is the solution.
Let me run through a few of the designs that we see coming out of the ideology of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, or as Alan Fotheringham refers to it, the regressive convertibles.
What is going on in the high seas? We know that Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Korea are involved in a massive drift-net fishery-50,000 miles of drift-nets this year. They are taking between one-fifth and one-third of
British Columbian salmon. What does the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans do? He wrings his hands. He will send five observers out to go on 1,500 boats. He is a real tough guy. He is really out there standing up for Canada. He is a great Canadian.
What does the same Minister of Fisheries do for Alcan? Alcan wants to take all the water out of a river system in British Columbia. It is dealt with in Section 20(10) of the Fisheries Act, one of the oldest constitutional and parliamentary powers in Canada in relation to flowing water and fish. What does he do? He signs on the dotted line. He gives up all powers and turns over those spawning areas in those river systems to the Aluminum Company of Canada so that they can make power to export where? To the United States.
What did he do on the Queen Charlotte Islands when Frank Bevan Logging caused a big slide? The slide went down into the river system and blocked the salmon four seasons in a row so that they cannot get in. We win every way. We win in provincial court. We win in the Court of Appeal. We win in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The case is on its way to the Supreme Court of Canada so that we can get the logging companies to pay restitution for cleaning out the stream. In the middle of the election what does the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans do? He drops the charges.
There is a design here on the high seas and in the rivers. What about pollution? Some 17 out of the 23 pulp mills in British Columbia have been in significant noncompliance with their permits for more than a year, accounting for 50 per cent of the marine pollution in Canada. We will have fisheries closed right in Prince Rupert. Fishermen cannot even take crab, prawn or shrimp out of the harbour because they are polluted with dioxin. What does the Minister of Fisheries do? He sits on a 600-page report that demonstrates that almost every pulp mill in Canada is in significant non-compliance with the Fisheries Act of Canada. Does he do anything? He does diddly-squat. There are only two places in this country where wool grows. One is on the back of a sheep and the other is inside the skulls of the Minister for International Trade and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. That is clear to anyone who studies this issue for even a moment.
June 15, 1989

Let us go back to where this all began. Let us go back to the grand design. What did the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans say in Prince Rupert? Let me quote his words. We used to have CBC in Prince Rupert but the Toiy ideology was that regions of the country cannot have news and weather. No, we have to get rid of the CBC. Here is what the Minister of Fisheries had to say in Prince Rupert on CBC. I quote: "If we are talking about liberalizing trade, and we are talking about free trade talks, maybe we should be talking about the free flow of fish between the two countries," referring to Canada and the United States.
When the former U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Thomas Niles, was asked out in British Columbia about what some of the articles of the Free Trade Agreement meant when it came to logging he said that his understanding of the Free Trade Agreement was that it would mean that U.S. loggers would be able to come into British Columbia, fell trees, buck trees, load the trees and take those trees back to the United States. I am paraphrasing what he said. However, it is on the public record.
We hear a lot of buffalo chips from the Minister for International Trade. He says: "This will not affect Maritime Canada, the East Coast, Newfoundland, P.E.I., Nova Scotia".
The same GATT challenge to which the Government acquiesced supinely out in British Columbia is going to affect New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Quebec. I urge people in those provinces to read Article 1205.
It is the same ideology, the same philosophy. This whole process to sell out the fishing industry all over Canada began on April Fools Day, 1986. The decision had been made in Cabinet. They never told the backbenchers. I do not suspect for a moment that most Tory Members of Parliament know what the underlying agreements are between Canada and the U.S. on this.
I know all of the issues that brought Icicle Seafoods about. We could not buy and bring those fish into Prince Rupert if they were not surplus to the plants in the State of Alaska. The Ministers never want to talk about that. The Ministers do not want to talk about the Magnuson Act. They act as though it did not exist. We cannot do in
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U.S. waters what they claim to want to be able to do in ours.
What happened, Madam Speaker? My colleague for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca (Mr. Barrett) made it very clear. The actual applicants from Icicle made it very clear. The maximum damage they tried to seek under 301 was $5 million. What does this Government do? It puts an $867 million industry from last year on the ropes, on the chance. There is no certainty that Icicle could have even won it. But the Government put our entire industry on the block for $5 million. It does not even want to fight it.
Then what happened? We get this GATT panel in Geneva. It is unbelievable. Someone was sent who knew almost nothing about law. He stood up for Canada, at the very best on his knees. What happened while we were there? He did not argue the Canada-U.S. Salmon Treaty which predated this process. He did not argue on the principles of the Law of the Sea, the covenants of the International Law of the Sea which gives us very specific identifiable rights, which predate the Magnuson Act of 1976. Was that argued? No. This was by design all the way along. This was a coldly, calculated way of fudging the issue all the way along.
Let me give another issue of fudging, Madam Speaker, from the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. Siddon). What did he say while this matter was in Geneva? I asked the question right here on the floor of the House. He said right here in this House of Commons and I quote: "What we have here is a panel recommendation which will in all likelihood be overturned by the GATT Council". We, speaking for the Government of Canada on the floor of the House of Commons, said we will be opposing the recommendation when it reaches the GATT Council. That is what he said. Shore workers and fishermen in British Columbia said that the Government blew it in terms of allowing it to get where it has got. It gets to the GATT panel. We do not even argue on Canada's behalf, do not argue for Canada's outstanding position which we would have won. We allow it to be lost there. We then say we are going to oppose it when it goes to GATT Council. Does Canada oppose it? Fat chance. On March 21,1988, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the Minister for International Trade (Mr. Crosbie) capitulated to U.S. interests.

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On March 22, 1988, what happened? Well, history speaks for itself. What went on in Washington? The fishermen were told: "Okay, don't worry, we are going to have a working group in terms of getting some new regulations." Bear in mind, these regulations date from 1903 in terms of herring and salmon in British Columbia. It massively predates the FTA, and predates GATT by more than 40 years.
There are principles of international law which must be upheld if the international forum is to survive. The Minister states that we have to be GATT-consistent and a lot of other bluster and bull. History is very clear about what happened here. This was a sell-out by design.
Who do we send to Washington after we had been promised in the working group, we were promised landing rights? We were promised grading rights and we were promised evisceration. We were told Canadians have a right to gut fish. If we do not have a right to gut fish, logs will go to the United States. Do we ship pigs? Do we shoot hogs in this country and ship them with their guts into the United States? Do we do it to chickens or anything else? This is the thin edge of the wedge.
If you will just give me a moment, Madam Speaker, I will close on a couple of quick points. What went on in Washington is crucial. We sent down how Howie Wilson. Who did the United States have on their side? They had Peter Murphy who had just been through the whole FTA negotiation with Simon Reisman. He knew exactly how deep the desire to sell out the fishing industry was from the Conservative Government. It was a chip, a bargaining pawn in relation to other agenda items. It was Mickey Mouse versus Godzilla. Peter Murphy said that he did not want that evisceration right on the table. Howie Wilson runs out of the room and takes it right off the table again. No bureaucrat would have done that without the direct support of the Minister for International Trade.
On April 25, the Minister for International Trade proclaimed the gutless regulations. The industry in British Columbia is threatened, every single processor. They were here in Ottawa this week. Mike Hunter who is with the Fisheries Council said exactly what the unions are saying from Prince Rupert and from throughout British Columbia. I am sure there will be a question and I will carry on.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Questions and comments. The Hon. Member for Nickel Belt.


Mr. Rodriguez:: Madam Speaker, after listening to my colleague present such a very clear picture of what is taking place, there is only one comment I would want to make. He described that some bureaucrat ran out of the room and took it off the table and that he did not do it without the Minister knowing. We know that for the 75 missing minutes bureaucrats do make decisions in that Government without consulting the Minister.
He described very clearly the silent supine surrender of this country with respect to the whole question of processing fish. I want my hon. colleague to comment on the following. Imagine the implications for other resource sectors. What are the implications, for example, of finishing nickel in this country? Ontario has a law which states that the nickel that is mined in Ontario must be finished in Canada. That is the mining law of Ontario. There is only one exception to that law and that exception is Falconbridge. It has been written in because Falconbridge had established a refinery in Norway and it is still on the books.
I would like to ask my hon. friend: What is the implication for Nickel and for a whole host of other resources? We are still hewers of wood and drawers of water largely. This will condemn us to forever being hewers of wood and drawers of water.


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, earlier this afternoon we heard from the Member for Halifax West (Mr. Crosby). I think fisher people around British Columbia and around this land will have listened with care when he said: "Talk to the fishermen. You have a right to catch fish but that is as far as it goes". After that, it is free enterprise, he would have liked to have said.
Let me deal with what my hon. colleague for Nickel Belt has just raised. It is abundantly clear what the implications are in terms of the thin edge of the wedge. We can see it directly and visibly in Articles 1203, 1204 and 1205, as to how the fishing industry in other areas of the country will be challenged on precisely the same grounds as what happened in British Columbia.
In terms of any kind of prohibitory provincial or federal law, such as that to have to process nickel in a certain area of Ontario, as an example. It will simply be a

matter of time before the argument espoused by the Member from Halifax is used in that situation.
They will say that once the nickel is mined then it is up to the open market. That means situations where we have in fact become, as we are in the B.C. fishing industry, the most competitive, the world leader in terms of price and quality. We have done that over generations. We are doing it in other sectors in our economy. However, let us not forget what Thomas Niles had to say when he spoke about our forest industry, because he had been briefed about what the FTA really means.
According to him, even though the export of logs of all species is in Article 1203, the same place where we find the. fish regulations, his interpretation is that U.S. citizens, under U.S. law, will be able to come into Canada and cut our trees down and take them back to the mills in their country.
If this debate does not alert Canadians to the underlying ideology and the ultimate goal of what was negotiated between our Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) and President Reagan, and if people cannot see it now in relation to what is going on in the fishing industry, they then will not understand why Members of Parliament like myself will be standing on the docks and doing whatever is necessary, including civil disobedience, to make sure that our fish are not exported, regardless of the smelly deals cut by the Conservative Party of Canada to sell out our nation.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Resuming debate. The Hon. Member for Delta.


Mr. Stan Wilbee (Delta):: Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to stand in the House today and speak on this very important matter to British Columbians. As a native British Columbian and one who has spent a great deal of time on the north coast, as well as the west coast of Vancouver Island, I realize the importance of this topic to all of us in British Columbia and indeed across Canada. One of the things we have not talked about too much in the debate this afternoon is whether or not Canadians can compete in this world, and that is what I would like to talk about this afternoon.
It has been asked what the Government will do to help the West Coast industry in the face of the current
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salmon and herring situation. One should not be left with the impression that the West Coast is being abandoned. The West Coast fishery, like most other world fisheries, has gone through and will continue to go through both turbulent times and prosperous times. Since 1985, the industry has been both buoyant and prosperous.
The Pacific fishery is dominated by salmon which in 1987 accounted for approximately 46 per cent of the total landed value of $416 million. Herring, mainly roe herring, accounted for 26 per cent of it and groundfish for 22 per cent, with shellfish and the remainder types making up the balance of landings.
Can West Coast fishermen remain competitive? To respond to this question one must realize the tremendous pressures on West Coast fish stocks. To take salmon as an example, apart from ocean survival and environmental concerns, these fish must first pass through U.S. and Canadian commercial fisheries as well as recreational and native fisheries before returning to their streams of origin. Within these returning stocks, there are weak and strong runs of fish, enhanced and wild stocks of all five species of salmon. To ensure that adequate escapement takes place makes the business of fisheries management extremely complex and fisheries managers must exercise extreme caution. All fishing plans in British Columbia are designed to target specifically those stocks which are expected to be returning in abundance and to minimize or avoid the harvest of weaker stocks which cannot withstand commercial harvest.
In 1976, in response to declines in many salmon stocks, the federal Government launched the Salmonid Enhancement Program, SEP, which to date has invested one quarter of a billion dollars to rebuild depleted salmon stocks and enhance fishing opportunities. SEP continues a formal commitment by the federal Government and the Province of B.C. to an extensive systematic program of enhancement of salmonid stocks.
In 1987, 607 million juvenile salmon and sea-run trout were released from enhancement projects. The resulting catch in escapement through 1991 is anticipated to be
8,570,000	fish plus. In 1985, enhancement contributed approximately 14 per cent by weight and 21 per cent by landed value to the commercial salmon fishery catch.

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By the early 1990s, SEP is expected to account for one third of British Columbia's salmonid production. SEP has been the vehicle allowing approximately 12,000 volunteers to help enhance and rebuild the resource and has served to increase the public's awareness of the importance of protecting fish habitat. By 1990-91, the funding commitment to SEP will stabilize at $42.5 million a year and 19 of SEP's projects are contracted out to remote native communities in B.C., thus providing training and experience for natives as well as economic development opportunities.
SEP is an increasing factor in B.C. fisheries. It is a program aimed at ensuring that future prospects for this valuable resource will be greatly improved. Maintenance of a program such as SEP clearly indicates the Government's commitment to fostering a strong West Coast fisheries resource base.
Prior to 1985, the SEP program could not expand to realize its full potential because many stocks targeted for enhancement were being fished in Alaska and Washington. As a result, following almost two decades of negotiations, the Pacific Salmon Treaty was signed in March of 1985. This treaty sets out long-term goals for the benefit of salmon. The principles of the treaty are to prevent overfishing and to provide for optimum protection and for each party to receive benefits equivalent to the production of salmon originating in its waters.
Why did we need the Pacific Salmon Treaty? Salmon fishery managers in Canada and the United States are challenged by the fact that some of the Pacific salmon each country produces are intercepted by fishermen of the other country. Interception exists because salmon swim across international borders beyond the jurisdiction of the Government in whose waters they were spawned. The fish migrate long distances, spending several years at sea. In the course of their migratory cycle, United States spawned fish enter the fishery zones of Canada and Canadian fish enter U.S. waters where they are vulnerable to the other country's fishing fleets.
Over the years, research by both countries revealed that Alaskan fishermen were catching salmon bound for British Columbia, Oregon and Washington. Canadian fishermen were capturing Coho, Chinook and other species bound for the rivers of Washington and Oregon. Fishermen in northern British Columbia were intercepting salmon returning to Alaska, and United States fishermen were catching salmon as they travelled
through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and San Juan Islands toward Canada's Fraser River.
Unless management policies and conservation concerns are jointly agreed on, one nation may harvest too many of the other country's stocks and frustrate the home country's management plans. Uncontrolled interceptions may also jeopardize the administrative and financial support needed for salmon enhancement programs. The home country may be reluctant to invest in hatcheries for habitat protection and restoration if the fish produced are caught by fishermen of another nation. Intercepting fisheries encourage over-harvest and discourage investment in conservation and enhancement.
Through the years, the United States and Canada reached agreements over the management of particular salmon stocks in limited regions, for example Fraser River Sockeye and pink salmon. However, the number and diversity of each country's intercepting fisheries defied small-scale solutions. The Pacific Salmon Treaty is broad in scope, enabling it to serve as the means to co-ordinated management of the coast-wide salmon resource.
Management of the West Coast fishery is not a simple task. The Department, for example, has the following objectives for the salmon fishery: First, it wants to achieve escapement objectives by ensuring that each salmon stock or groups of stocks are not overfished. It wants to ensure that the international obligations for all five species of salmon under the new Pacific Salmon Treaty are met and it wants to ensure that the domestic allocation of the total allowable catch between sectors, whether native, commercial or recreational, and within sectors, whether seiners, gill netters or trailers, are achieved.
Verification programs are necessary to confirm which species are caught, where they are caught as well as what stocks make up the catch. As each fishery commences, Department of Fisheries officers collect catch and biological information on the harvested species. The first stage, hailing, provides information to DFO on the fishing grounds by fishermen. This information is subsequently verified at the second stage when the catch is delivered to landing stations and reported to the Depart-
June 15, 1989

ment on sales slips. Estimates of catch and catch rates are calculated and fishing plans are adjusted accordingly.
Some biological information is gathered on the grounds but the bulk of sampling, and I think this is key to the topic we are talking about today, is done as the harvested salmon are being delivered to shore-based landing stations, hence the need for a landing requirement. Catch and biological sampling programs which verify what has been caught by species and stock are the key elements of a salmon conservation program.
To meet national and international obligations and to protect the resource from overfishing, fish managers must gather and verify this information quickly and adjust harvest plans accordingly. The integrity of these programs must be maintained to optimize production of salmon in B.C., and this is the reason we are insisting upon the landing regulations that are the topic of the debate today.
Careful husbandry of the fisheries resource has allowed the stocks in most West Coast fisheries to remain abundant. The West Coast fishery has seen days of depleted stocks, such as herring.
In the early 1970s the whole fishery had to be shut down. However, recognition by the industry as a whole- this includes the Government, fishermen and the shore workers-of the problem and subsequent good management practices by the Government have allowed these stocks to rebuild to allow solid fishing opportunities and the maintenance of strong markets.
The management techniques practised by Canada are further extended by a committed inspection service that allows Canadian products to maintain a top position in world markets. We are concerned about the quality our Canadian products are presenting to the world, and it is important in the whole competitive arena.
I asked if West Coast fishermen and shore workers can remain competitive. I say absolutely. As you have heard, Madam Speaker, various programs are in place, of which I have only given a sample, to ensure that fishermen have healthy stocks of fish to harvest. They have been ridiculing the depletion of stocks on the East Coast, yet when the same thing is done on the West Coast it becomes a bad thing. This is the whole concept of
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fisheries management. Stocks are allocated and, for commercial fishermen, landed to be sold.
Can the industry as a whole remain competitive? Absolutely. With a strong competitive market, fishermen will surely be able to demand top price for top quality fish as they currently do. Processors with labels that are synonymous with premium quality fish should surely want to purchase top quality fish and maintain their niche in the market. To process the fish, workers will be needed in the plants.
Can Canadian fish companies remain competitive? I say they can. The Government has invested heavily in the development and management of Canadian fisheries. Our management practices and fish inspection services are respected in today's international fishing forums. We may need to make changes in how we do business to adjust to changing times. But the basic premise of Canada maintaining strong viable fisheries for the benefit of all Canadians will always remain. Yes, we are now facing a dispute with our friends to the south but it will be resolved. The combination of government management of the resource and private enterprise initiative to process and market the resource, will prevail. Canada can be competitive in today's market and in the climate of free trade.


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, I wonder if the Hon. Member would care to comment on the correspondence between the State of Washington from Skagit County and processors in British Columbia. One letter in particular, from Mr. Don Miller, President of Great Northern Packing, pointed out all of the various benefits that there would be for the processing industry from B.C. to move there. Under the tax credit section of the proposal to get the processing industry to move to Washington it states: "Because there is a surplus of available workers in Skagit County, new business and industry are eligible for state tax credits". Under financial programs it states: "Low interest loans are available to new industry creating jobs in Skagit County. Average hourly wages range from $4 to $9". Would the Member comment on that? Is that the kind of competition the Member would like to see in terms of the B.C. processing industry? Would the Hon. Member agree that British Columbians have a fundamental right to eviscerate fish? Many of our trading partners, such as France and Great Britain, will not allow

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British Columbia salmon into their markets unless it is eviscerated.
No one, including the Americans, has ever gone to GATT to challenge the right of a country to demand that incoming British Columbian and Canadian product be eviscerated. Do we have a right to do that? Does the Hon. Member see what the real design is here?


Godfrey Stanley (Stan) Wilbee: Madam Speaker, I think the Hon. Member from Skeena and I have much in common in that we both, you might say, represent border areas and we both have fish processing plants in our ridings. We should remind ourselves that it was because of the highly competitive nature of the plants in the Prince Rupert area that we were buying fish from southern Alaska that really upset the Americans. In other words, the Canadian fish plants with their modem processing and excellent workforce were able to buy American fish and process them. The American processors were unable to get the fish for their plants.
As far as my own area is concerned, we do have several fish processing plants. These are all new plants. They are well equipped and I have not had any complaints from any of their people about the possibility of heading south. In fact, I think they are all looking for more sources of fish. They are looking for areas where they can get more fish rather than worrying about moving south.
As far as the letter from Skagit County to processors is concerned, I think this is fairly routine. I can show you several letters from my own municipality of Delta. Letters have been sent to other businesses encouraging them to come to Delta, telling them all about the virtues of the place. I have not heard concerns from people in the fish plants in my area that they are seriously considering a move south. Right now, the processors have ready access to fish and I cannot see that this is a factor.
I used to work in the Prince Rupert Cold Storage many years ago. It was mentioned earlier about the trucking of fish to the States. At that time all kinds of fish were being transported via reefer barges through Prince Rupert to Seattle and to Vancouver. I think this whole industry is highly mobile and as long as our plants can remain competitive, keep up to date and produce a top quality product, we do not have too much to be concerned about.
The second part of the Member's question concerned evisceration. I think we all recognize that if you do not eviscerate the fish as soon as possible, it deteriorates. This has been recognized by Canadian officials and is why they want these landing requirements. If fish are landed and reloaded again with the guts left in, as time passes the quality will deteriorate. I think if we can get these landing requirements through, and I have every reason to believe they will because they have been judged to be GATT-consistent, then I trust we can have these fish completely processed. I would like to see them smoked, canned and whatever else we can do to have value added. It is important for British Columbia.


Mr. Langlois:: Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to the speech by the Hon. Member for Delta (Mr. Wilbee) and also to the reply he just gave the Hon. Member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton). Madam Speaker, I think the Hon. Member's speech should provide the people of British Columbia with some measure of reassurance regarding the Government's intentions. I think it also puts the debate in a more logical context, allowing for market conditions and for the ability and expertise of the people of British Columbia which, with the Government's support, should help get them through the present situation.
I would like to direct the following question to the Hon. Member for Delta, and perhaps he could inform the House how he expects the fish processing plants in his riding in British Columbia to remain competitive with processing plants in the United States.


Godfrey Stanley (Stan) Wilbee: Madam Speaker, there are great changes going on in the fishing industry with the fish farms and so on. A few years ago there used to be canneries all over the coast. Changes in the ability to transport fish with the modem seiners and gill netters make it possible to cool the product right away. Before, they had to unload it every day. They can now go for several days with icing. This is even in the smaller ships.
What this has done, of course, is tremendously increase the quality of the fish that are available. It is still a fact that the sooner fish is processed, the better the quality.
June 15, 1989

We talked about the Japanese market earlier. I think this is a wide-open field for us to go into. Top quality, well prepared sea food. The market is going to be unlimited. This is where the plants in my area are concentrating. They are going into the Japanese markets as well as trying to maintain their nick in the European and North American markets.
I think because we are closest to the source of the fish, we have the best fish. They can be brought in and processed rapidly under ideal conditions. We have an edge on quality. The workforce that we have is highly skilled. We have an excellent marketing program. I think this is what is going to maintain the fishing industry in British Columbia.


Bill Rompkey: Madam Speaker, I want to say a few words on this motion which is very ably worded by the NDP. I congratulate them for bringing it forth and in such an imaginative way. It allows people to put their seats on the line. It shows how strongly they feel about it.
The reason I want to stand up and say a few words is because we feel just as strongly. This is an issue that is not confined to one coast.
We had a visit on Wednesday in the Atlantic Liberal caucus from the consortium who put together this trip, and this initiative, and this exercise called "The case for government action to protect and develop the fishing industry". It included the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union. We have those in my province and in the Atlantic provinces as well. The Prince Rupert Amalgamated Shoreworkers and Clerks Union and others were included. They came to us as people from the West Coast and people from the East Coast with a handout for help in a situation that affects us all.
Whether people live on the East Coast of Canada or the West Coast of Canada, they are a coastal people. The reason we live there is the marine resource. We live by the sea and from the sea. We live off the sea. If the harvest of the sea is threatened, then it threatens us on both coasts. We understand the seriousness of that.
Indeed in their brief and documents they put together, they suggest that both coasts are at risk. The document says that Canada is the world's largest fish exporter, but
4,000	B.C. shore workers and an equal number in the Maritimes face lay-offs while unprocessed fish move
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south. Our greatest export industry, the mainstay of our coastal economy, is at stake if we fail to act.
Let us look at the B.C. situation first. We are told that the Government could have done nothing, yet I think my colleague from Winnipeg said earlier today that they could have acted. They could have acted and refused to act. Indeed as the Member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton) has pointed out, the issue has been fudged all along. They could have fought, in the Free Trade Agreement, for the protection of the West Coast fishery as they did for the Atlantic. They could have insisted that it be on the table, but they did not. They let that go by. They put it on the table as a bargaining chip. They gave it up. It was a give-away on behalf of the Government of Canada. They must be held to account for that.
Second, they could have vetoed the GATT ruling. My understanding is that Canada had the right to veto the GATT ruling when it was made, yet it decided not to. The Government did not veto the ruling. Instead, it attempted to implement regulations to ensure that fish were landed, graded, and eviscerated in Canada. Those regulations are not going to hold up.
What these regulations do and what the actions of the Government of Canada do are to put the fishermen and plant workers on the West Coast of Canada on the same footing as those in the United States. The fishing industry in the United States now has the same equal opportunity to Canadian fish as do Canadian fishermen and Canadian plants.
What has really happened is that we have given up our sovereign right to develop our own natural resource.
I want to point out that we can talk all we like about the changing market-place and changing economy. The fact is that on both coasts, we are still a resource-based economy. There are not the alternatives that are available in parts of central Canada and other parts of the country. The East and West Coasts are still resource-based economies. What Canada has now done is to give up our right to control the harvest of the sea.
I think the Government has to be held to account for that, because there will not be equality. Americans and Canadians are not on the same footing. The fact is that in the U.S., there are lower wages. In the U.S., there are no medicare costs. In the U.S., there is no national unemployment insurance program. That means that the U.S. is in a better position to compete for Canadian fish than our Canadian plants. We are going to see jobs going


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to the U.S. We are going to see jobs going to the U.S. on the West Coast just as we are for the East Coast.
The brief that was put together by the West Coast people points out very vividly and very graphically that the Atlantic coast is at risk as well.
My colleague from Bonavista-Trinity-Conception was criticized by the Minister for International Trade (Mr. Crosbie) this afternoon for focusing on the Atlantic coast. As I pointed out earlier and as is pointed out in this brief, this is not simply a West Coast issue. The West Coast is at risk right now. The West Coast is concerned. The West Coast is threatened. The Atlantic is no less threatened. Our turn will come. This brief points out that the future of our coastal communities is threatened by the Government's apparent inability to protect and manage our marine resources. All four maritime provinces have long had legislation giving them the right to control or eliminate the export of unprocessed fish. This legislation was grandfathered into the Free Trade Agreement. Similar regulations protecting B.C.'s salmon and herring were specifically excluded.
It was a short-lived victory for the maritime industry because it is at risk too. Many of our products will be at risk. The implications for the Atlantic fishing industry are clear.
The Member for Skeena referred to Article 12.03 of the Free Trade Agreement. There is nothing to prevent the U.S. from challenging the Atlantic statutes in the GATT. The Tory Government has, in effect, conceded that we do not have the right to restrict the export of unprocessed fish in order to protect jobs on the West Coast. The same applies to the East Coast because the Government has treated us in the same way.
This afternoon, the Government and Minister for Trade claimed that the overriding principle behind the actions of the Government is to respond to protectionism in the United States. They were afraid of what would happen. They were afraid of the threat from the U.S. if we did not sign the Free Trade Agreement. That is the overriding principle. We had to do it. We had no choice. We had no option. We had to operate within GATT. We cannot exclude ourselves from GATT. We cannot ignore
GATT. We cannot challenge GATT. We cannot overrule GATT. We cannot veto GATT.
That is what the Minister of Trade said this afternoon. That is the underlying principle behind the actions of the Government. Surely, there is a more important principle. That is the sovereign right of Canada to harvest and manage its own resources for its own people. Surely that is a more fundamental principle. If we give up that principle, we are really giving up our nationhood and sovereignty as Canadians. I submit that that is the underlying principle.
The Government has caved in to American interests. We are suffering the consequences. What are the alternatives? Has the Government thought about that? What is going to happen to those people?
Nobody has lost their jobs yet. The Minister of Trade admitted this afternoon that they could. Maybe fishermen will not lose their jobs, but plant workers may. The Minister of Trade admitted that in the House this afternoon.
What are the alternatives? I can tell you that on the East Coast there are no alternatives. The fishing industry is the mainstay of our economy. Why are there
500,000	people in my province yet millions of Newfoundlanders spread across the country? Why are they in Ttiktoyaktuk, Thompson, Manitoba and Galt, Ontario. Why are they in Toronto? Why are they in other parts of the country? They are there because the jobs are there. They have been forced to go to those places to look for work. Now, with the crisis in the fish stocks off the East Coast, there will be more people going down the road.
At the same time, the Canadian social security system is beginning to be dismantled. Today we were having a debate in Question Period and the main theme was the unemployment insurance program. We have had that safety net to fall back on. It has not been available to the Americans, but we have had it here and we can be proud of the social security system that we have had.
At the same time as the fishing industry is in crisis on the West and East Coast, at the same time that jobs are threatened in the fishing industry on the West and East Coast, at the same time where there are very few, if any, alternatives for employment on those coasts, the Government is starting to dismantle the Canadian social security system.
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Under unemployment insurance a person will receive less benefits and have to work for more weeks in order to quality, and will have to pay more premiums. With the money that it gains, the Government is going to start to train people. It will not provide jobs, but it will train people.
For what will the Government train a 40 year-old fisherman who lives in a small community of about 500 on an isolated coast? He is going to lose his job. His children are the ones who will be affected. His wife is the one who will suffer. His community will suffer. The Government states it is going to stop paying those social security payments to people who are out of work through no fault of their own and it is going to train them. For what is the Government going to train that fisherman whose livelihood is affected, and whose family's livelihood is affected as a result of the negligence of the Government?
It is a myth, and an idea that has jumped full blown from the vivid imagination of some central Canadian bureaucrat. It does not make any sense at all. The management policy does not make any sense, and the social security policy does not make any sense for both the West Coast and East Coast. Whose interests are being served, I do not know, but it is not the people who live on either coast. Those are the implications of what has happened.
This Government prefers to let market forces govern no matter what, and particularly if those market forces originate in the United States. In this country we are falling into a master/slave relationship with the United States. Someone today stated that we are starting to become second-class citizens in our own country. That is what is happening.
Leslie Gordon Benjamin: We used to tell the Liberals that, too.


Bill Rompkey: The second thing that is happening is that rural and small-town Canada is being cut adrift. These regulations and policies may very well work in the larger cities of Canada, but they do not make any sense at all in rural and small town Canada.
That is what is happening as a result of the GATT ruling. That is what is happening as a result of the free
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trade agreement. That is what is happening as a result of the policies of the Government of Canada. Market forces are being allowed to rule and they will rule us right out of existence. We are going to see a shut-down. Our leader stated during the campaign that rural Canada and small-town Canada is cut adrift. That is the effect of the legislation.
I applaud the motion of the NDR We in the Atlantic area stand with our brothers and sisters on the West Coast in opposing the policies of the Government in fisheries management. I applaud the NDP for bringing forth this motion today.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: It being 5.45 p.m., it is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 81(14), to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith all questions necessary to dispose of the supply proceedings now before the House.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Nay.


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


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Pursuant to order made Tuesday, June 13,1989, the recorded division stands deferred until 6 p.m. on Monday, June 19, 1989.

It being 5.46, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


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The House adjourned at 5.46.
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Friday, June 16,1989