1990-04-10

Hon. Marcel Danis (Minister of State (Youth), Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport) and Deputy Leader of the Government in the House):: Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege of tabling, in both official languages, the Order in Council announcing appointments made recently by the government.
Pursuant to Standing Order 110(1), these Orders in Council shall be deemed to have been referred to the standing committees listed in appendix.

While I am on my feet, I move:
That the House do now proceed to the Orders of the Day.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Nay.


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


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the motion carried.
The hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier on a point of order.


Mr. Gauthier:: Mr. Speaker, I have a very important point of order. This procedure prevents members from tabling petitions. I just wondered if we could get unanimous consent to revert to petitions so that we could table very important petitions dealing with the GST.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: There is not unanimous consent.
Orders of the day.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Hon. Gilles Loiselle (for the Minister of Finance) moved: that Bill C-62, an Act to amend the Excise Tax Act, the Criminal Code, the Customs Act, the Customs Thriff, the Excise Act, the Income Tax Act, the Statistics Act and the Icuc Court of Canada Act, be read the third time and passed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Order, please. The hon. Minister of State.


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, the bill before the House today is the result of long and detailed studies and debate. It is a bridge to an equitable and prosperous future. Of course it is a tax, and of course it is unpopular, but it never will be, any more than income tax and all the other taxes introduced over the years. However, when we stop to think and consider the tremendous cost of our social programs and other services that Canadians demand, and rightly so, these taxes are necessary, and this particular tax reform, the GST, is both necessary and timely. Mr. Speaker, there is no future without a certain cost.
If we were to conduct a poll on income tax, I am sure most respondents would say they don't like income tax. Should we abolish income tax? That is the kind of logic or lack of logic being used by the opposition. Opposition members have been telling us, day after day, that the polls show that 80 per cent of Canadians don't like the idea of a tax on goods and services. According to them, Canadians are asking us to abandon this tax reform proposal. Of course, opposition members are playing on these concerns-after all, it is a major reform. People are entitled to express some concern, to have perfectly legitimate questions. However, our proposal is perfectly fair to people of modest incomes, for example, and provides assistance to small businesses in coping with this tax.
So we have answers to these questions but the opposition members, instead of acting responsibly by helping the government restore the nation's finances, take the easy course and use an unpopular tax to embarrass the government. The opposition members forget this great responsibility, especially in the present context when we
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are at the end of seven years of economic growth, when the economy is slowing down and when we are faced with a national debt and a large deficit that we must fight. Instead of looking for solutions to these problems for which they are largely responsible because of their previous management, they make sport of it. What is easier than asking someone, "Are you for or against a tax? Put your name at the bottom of the page". But what does that prove? It proves nothing. I feel that our responsibilities as members of Parliament go much further.
No tax in the world, Mr. Speaker, has majority support. I saw a similar tax implemented in France, where they talked about a second French revolution, in Spain, where they talked about a major social crisis, and six weeks after the law was passed, these taxes were working very well. We are told that it will be a disaster for the tourism industry. Just see how Canadians rush to Mexico, which has a GST, a value added tax, how they go in great numbers to England, France, Italy, countries where tourism is a very important industry that works well. A balanced tax system does not prevent this- These arguments are based on a fundamental misconception, which the opposition takes pleasure in exploiting to create problems for the government.
But you know, Mr. Speaker, there are times in a government's life when it must make decisions and take initiatives that may be unpopular, I agree, but are necessary for the country's health and well-being. So when an epidemic outbreak becomes a definite possibility the government may have no choice other than prescribe vaccination for everybody. As far as I know people do not particularly care for vaccination, but that just may be necessary to protect the health and even the life of the citizenry. It so happens that economic vaccines are required now and then, and such is the case today with respect to the federal sales tax which Canadians have been paying for almost 64 years and which is nothing short of a virus gnawing at the economy. I am sure most of our colleagues on the other side agree: the current manufacturer's sales tax, ultimately paid by the consumer, simply has to go. It has been identified as a virus and the GST is the vaccine which will help us get rid of it. The existing federal sales tax is a virus against which we must fight because it strikes at the core of our
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country's future growth and prosperity by stiffling domestic productivity and exports of Canadian made goods.
Mr. Speaker, picture if you will a major industrial country like Canada with its sparsely populated expanses, a country whose survival depends on exports and which is the only industrial nation with a tax structure having such a stupid levy that, on both domestic and international markets, Canadian producers are more handicapped than their competitors. We must do away with this aberration. This virus also undermines our efforts to lower the deficit and strengthen our budgetary process because this tax is an ever growing fester on our tax structure.
At the time of the last budget, as I said, when we increased the manufacturer's sales tax to ensure a certain level of revenue, we knew that by doing so, we were running the risk that businesses would attempt to avoid it. We said: Beware, for in a year from now, we are going to replace the current system with a value added tax system, with the hope that these businesses would not make drastic changes for such a short period of time, because the current tax which concerns only some businesses and applies to 75,000 items with 22,000 exceptions is a tax which is harmful, negative, unbalanced and which encourages evasion. Well, we want to replace it to consolidate the government's basic revenues and help finance the programs which Canadians have every right to expect.
Finally, the current tax is a virus we want to get rid of because its victims are the most vulnerable in our society, because it is a silent killer of jobs, because it destroys the ability of our industries to compete, and because it reduces the productivity of our labour force. It is harmful to our economy in a world where competitiveness is of prime importance and where other economic blocks and countries are not prepared to give us a free ride.
Mr. Speaker, the necessary vaccine against the current manufacturer's sales tax which has been identified as a virus is the goods and services tax. Judging from the reaction we get from the opposition at the mere mention of this tax, we get the impression that the GST is truly an abomination, although 48 modern countries, including many of our main competitors, have implemented a similar tax. Therefore, we cannot be accused of having an overactive imagination. We have looked at other

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alternatives. We have considered personal income taxes, where the government collects moneys straight from the people's pockets, allowing them little choice, as well as the pros and cons of a consumer's tax. We have accepted the notion that a consumer's tax could be regressive unless accompanied with several measures aimed at protecting those with limited resources.
This tax we are planning to introduce will liberate in some way the economic forces of our country. It is part of a plan this conservative government adopted when it first came to power in 1984 designed to stream line our economy and act as a positive factor to liberate the forces with are found in our businesses in Canada, and I am referring to our labour force. Our exporters and businesses will then be able to compete. It will be a solid basis for eliminating the scourge of the deficit. Our main sources of revenue include income, excise and corporate taxes as well as the leaky and unbalanced manufacturers' sales tax, which encourages evasion, applies only to certain products and creates all sorts of inequalities. By eliminating this tax which is getting increasingly difficult to collect, we will fight the deficit. It will make the Canadian economy stronger by injecting into it $9 billion, particularly in the Atlantic and Western provinces which are quite dependent on the export of natural resources.
By removing these pressures on our economy and releasing these new investments and development incentives that will benefit all Canadians, we will spread the wealth, increase public revenue through income and corporate taxes and thus fight the deficit. Mr. Speaker, this tax will guarantee a more equitable future for the most vulnerable members of our society.
During this long drawn-out debate-I will remind our friends opposite that, in the last campaign, many of my colleagues on this side of the House showed me the paper they published at that time about this reform we were proposing.
We discussed this proposal in detail in our White Paper and in our Budget documents. When pushed to the limit, the opposition has said: Sure, we understand, but we are a federal country and now we will have two levels of sales tax. And when we finished arguing that
aspect, they went across the country, saying: Not only the poor will be affected!
From the outset, we said that we wanted to make this a national tax. We discussed the tax with the provinces for two years. We knew right away this reform would not be popular, because in the past 50 years, despite any number of commissions of inquiry and reports, not a single government could bring itself to deal with the problem. Well, Mr. Speaker, we decided to deal with this problem, but the provinces, with a sales tax that was better organized than our present sales tax, could afford to say: Well, we are not going to be very popular if we go along with this. They were more reluctant and were not under the same pressures as we were. Because of the harmful aspects of our present tax, we were in much more of a hurry, and for the time being we have had to start the reform alone, but we are keeping the door open for the provinces, and at the present time, senior level talks are continuing which, I hope, will lead to a genuinely national tax in the future.
Our friends opposite insisted on the status quo. Although they admitted the status quo was unacceptable, they wouldn't budge. They also did everything they could to block the tax reform. This is not new. The Liberal Party always says no. They are against free trade, and they are against tax reform. Every time we ask for cutbacks in government spending to deal with the deficit, they object to these cutbacks which are in the best interests of this country. They object to every single measure we propose. So that is nothing new. Instead of trying to improve the measures we suggest, they have concentrated on building barriers to progress. Improvements had to come from this side of the House, from enlightened members, serious workers, who drew our attention to certain aspects of the bill that could be changed for the better. In fact, we made a lot of changes-more than seventy.
So I think the opposition's attitude is rather-


An Hon. Member:: Negative!


Gilles Loiselle: -is a rather bizarre joke, Mr. Speaker.


An Hon. Member:: Negative!


Gilles Loiselle: There is a great deal of irony in all this. We have our friends in the New Democratic Party, normally great believers in democracy who have been fighting for a long time for abolition of the Senate. They
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are now prepared to create one more obstacle by asking the non-elected Senate to reverse the government's democratic process. Imagine, a party that calls itself democratic! It's like countries in Eastern Europe that were literally democratic in name only.


Some Hon. Members:: That's true!


Some Hon. Members:: Shame, comrades!


Gilles Loiselle: When you have to-Imagine a party that calls itself democratic, as in the German Democratic Republic! Some democracy, Mr. Speaker!


Some Hon. Members:: Shame, comrades!


Gilles Loiselle: -a party that has a cordial entente with non-elected members to obstruct the efforts of a government elected by a solid majority of Canadians. That is really show biz, Mr. Speaker!


An Hon. Member:: They are still hamming it up!


Gilles Loiselle: And what about the Official Opposition? If what the New Democratic Party does is show business, Mr. Speaker, members of the Official Opposition are a bunch of actors being manipulated by the other place.
What I see before me is a real wasteland. No proposals except for general remarks such as: Soak the rich, vague remarks like that! We would like to introduce massive reform, but when you are in the government, you have to govern, and it is the Liberal Party's failure to do so which has put the finances of this country in the abysmal situation we see today-


An Hon. Member:: For 20 years!


Gilles Loiselle: -and we are now trying to get the country out of this situation by making difficult decisions that are both courageous and necessary.
Members on the benches opposite are offering Canadians a bunch of illusions. They are talking about a tax on luxury items, a tax on this and a tax on that. I think it is rather disconcerting to hear our opposition colleagues talking about the tax system. They would have Canadians believe that there are simple, straightforward and painless solutions to the problems associated with the present sales tax.
According to our New Democratic Party friends, all we have to do is make the corporations and the rich pay more. Actually, what they are suggesting would have a very severe impact on small and medium-size businesses
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and the middle-class. They are the ones who are now exempt.


Mr. Langdon:: It is up to you to do it.


Gilles Loiselle: Moreover, this reform, this approach, would add a tax burden to corporations, which would pass it on to consumers in the end. Unfortunately, they do not understand how the economy works. They are back at the time when bankers wore black coats and top hats and had fat cigars in their mouths, as we saw when we were children in rather naughty books that often came from eastern Europe. But the world has evolved.
For example, the New Democratic Party proposed alternatives. How daring! They proposed a royal commission of inquiry on the tax system. What imagination! After 50 years of study, royal commissions, parliamentary reports and so on, the New Democratic Party wants another royal commission of inquiry. How ridiculous can you get, Mr. Speaker! Now is the time for decisions. Although ridiculous, the NDP position is at least open. We cannot say as much about the tactics and approach of the Liberal Party, which cannot tell the difference between cleverness and sneakiness. They have had trouble with that for a long time. We hear the leaders or would-be leaders each giving their own solutions: One would abolish the GST, another would not, one will see after, another will see before, a third one will see in the meantime.


Mr. Saint-Julien:: They see nothing.


Gilles Loiselle: Meanwhile, we see how they ran the country in the past, bringing it into an extremely difficult financial situation.
We have to be wary of the Liberal Party's tricks. We remember when they told us, "Wage and price controls? Never!" right in an election campaign.


Guy St-Julien: We remember that.


Gilles Loiselle: A few months later, the Liberal government implemented a system of wage and price controls. The Liberal Party told us, right in the middle of an election campaign, that they would never impose an 18-cent tax on gasoline. We know what the Liberal government did a few months later, and it was not just 18 cents-it was a lot more.


Guy St-Julien: Thirty cents, thirty-two cents-

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Gilles Loiselle: Today, it is the same party which is saying "not on your life" about the GST. But what does "not on your life" means coming from that side of the House? In the Liberal lexicon, it means "yes, absolutely, but we will not say so before the election". That is why, had it not been for the courage of this government, the Liberals would have dragged their feet because they are unable to face difficult decisions. We are proud to say that this is the difference between them and us.
Fortunately, these difficult and courageous measures will have an impact which may ensure that the Liberal Party will never on your life come again to power!

Mr. Speaker, the government has stated its position clearly and honestly before the Canadian people. We have taken every opportunity available to us to debate the issue, to answer questions and to provide as much information as possible to Canadians right across the country. We will continue to do so.
It is very important to be attentive to the concerns of Canadian citizens and we are going to do that. We will try to be more efficient. We have told Canadians where we stand. We have shown that we have the courage of our convictions. That is not easy. It does not give glowing results in the public opinion polls, especially when the issues one is dealing with are painful, serious and complex. We will not imitate former Liberal governments which refused to deal with the problems associated with the federal sales tax.
You know, Mr. Speaker, I am quickly coming to the conclusion that most of our Liberal colleagues believe that Canada's national bird is the ostrich, because they keep insisting that we should stick our heads in the sand and pretend that there is no problem. Well, that may be their way of governing, but it is not ours.
In fact, on the question of tax policy, as we have done on so many matters, the members of this government are willing to put their seats on the line. The stakes are high. The existing tax costs Canadians about $9 billion in lost opportunities for growth and investment. What a price to pay to maintain the status quo, but that is exactly what the Liberal Party wants us to do.
As Jonathan Swift once wrote: "There is none so blind as they that won't see." And what about our efforts to
reduce the deficit? With a list of 22,000 exemptions to the existing sales tax, which list is growing year by year, where will we find the revenue to reduce the deficit and ultimately get rid of our $350 billion national debt?
Of course the Liberal party has never worried much about debt. The simple truth is that one way or another we all have to pay our programs and services as well as for efforts to reduce the deficit. Some people would have Canadians believe otherwise. Some people, for example, our colleagues opposite want Canadians to believe that government is Santa Claus.


Mr. Mills:: You doubled the debt.


Gilles Loiselle: We are talking about the debt. I will remind the hon. gentleman, a debt of $200 million with a deficit of $38 billion.


Mr. Milliken:: How much is it now?


Gilles Loiselle: We did not even have money to pay for Old Age Security. We had to borrow $16 billion when we came in. How could we tackle the debt?
We have reversed that. Now we have a surplus of $9 billion which allows us, finally after many years of good management, to start diminishing this debt. We had to go through that process, that together with fiscal reform is the answer.
But governments have no gifts to give because the money we have comes from the people. In the same way, the national debt is not the government's debt. It is our debt, that is, the debt of every man, woman, and child in this country.
People who try to pretend otherwise might as well be selling snake oil. However, far from selling dreams to Canadians, they are inadvertently selling nightmares, nightmares of growing national deficits and debt, nightmares of shrinking economic activity, nightmares of job losses.

Contrary to our colleagues opposite, we are not trying to impress anybody. Moments of truth are rarely easy or pleasant. They are often unpopular. If Canadians should choose not to listen to or believe the government they will have the choice to turf us out at the next election.


Steven W. Langdon: At the very first opportunity.
April 10, 1990


Gilles Loiselle: Let the people who will be tempted to do so, make no mistake about it. Whomever is in power will have to deal with these issues. Sooner or later, the government will have to find the necessary revenues to maintain our programs and services and reduce the deficit. The government is not proposing this GST because it likes taxes. The ultimate purpose of the GST is to rectify an increasingly complex situation in order to provide Canadian men and women with the best quality of life both now and into the 21st Century.


Guy St-Julien: Our children.


Gilles Loiselle: When we came to power first in 1984, and again in 1988, we made some firm commitments to the Canadian people. Our economic objectives were at the core of these commitments, namely streamlining the government finances in order to protect the security of the most vulnerable in our society and of future generations, while at the same time implementing an economic reform program, including the tax system, with a view to ensuring that Canada may further develop and be better able to face a more intense competition on the world markets.
The GST is one of the cornerstones of this economic program and, now hear this, we will not be sidetracked by any kind of pressure whatsoever. Mr. Speaker, we have listened carefully to the remarks and suggestions about the GST. When we formally introduced our propositions last December, they were the outcome of lengthy discussions and detailed analyses. The bill before us faithfully mirrors the additional improvements and corrections which make me prouder than ever of our legislative measure. It represents a serious and honest effort towards reform. It deserves the support of all those who do make the effort to understand the many faults of our current system, and I hope we can count on them. You did not understand. We do not expect Canadians to like the GST, after all it is a tax. Still I am convinced that most of our fellow citizens will understand that, confronted with difficult problems-


Guy St-Julien: Read this morning's papers.


Gilles Loiselle: -some of which seemed to be practically unsolvable, this government took a serious, responsible and fair approach.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: This is an unfair tax.
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Gilles Loiselle: Not at all. Ours will be the most equitable system of the 48 countries that have a similar tax. When time comes to make a decision-


Jean-Robert Gauthier: There is not a federation- None of the Canadian provinces wants this sales tax-


Gilles Loiselle: What has that got to do with it? Sure. But Canada has been under a federal regime for quite some time. We have ten Ministers of Finance, ten Premiers, ten tax systems, if you will. Taxes do exist, this is not a new phenomenon. It is part and parcel of both the complexity and the wealth of our country. Would you have us scrap the provincial systems so we can standardize ours?


Guy St-Julien: Never have you been able to make it visible at 13.5 per cent.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: It is an unfair and hidden tax.


Gilles Loiselle: Anyway, when time comes to pass judgment on this government, Mr. Speaker, I feel confident that our fellow Canadians will be first to admit that we took our responsibilities and stuck to our convictions.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) on a point of order.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if there would be unanimous consent, in view of the rather shocking speech, the minister just made, to have a couple of questions, even though the Standing Orders do not allow them? I wonder if there would a disposition to let hon. members ask questions of the minister.


An Hon. Member:: The answer is no.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: There is not unanimous consent.


Mr. Douglas Young (Gloucester):: Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. Minister of State (Finance) (Mr. Loiselle) with much interest, because I know he has been looking for quite some time at this government's problem, which is to try and sell Bill C-62, the goods and services tax, to the Canadian people. I have a lot of respect for the minister's hard and arduous work in trying to sell an absolutely unsaleable proposal.

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Very interestingly, Mr. Speaker, when I listened to my hon. colleague, he referred to us in opposition as if we were isolated on this whole issue. I find rather regrettable that the minister does not seem to notice the thousands of people from all walks of life, from Quebec and elsewhere, who are constantly telling us they made up their own minds the GST was no good. Admittedly, Mr. Speaker, the hon. colleague may think the dozens of Liberal members from Quebec have done a good job of convincing Quebecers, more than 75 per cent of them, that the GST is no good, because government members from Quebec have remained silent on this matter. The Minister of State (Finance) and a few other people were given the responsibility of discussing the GST on occasion. I think it is particularly disturbing that instead of asking well-informed members, members who by the way they vote in the House have shown that they support the GST, to campaign in all the provinces of this country and explain why the GST is a good deal for Canadians, instead of doing that, the government has decided to spend millions of dollars to try and convince Canadians through the media, instead of through its members, that the GST is a good deal for Canadians.
Mr. Speaker, it didn't work. We watch our hockey games, and we see people saying: Hey, Marie, we are going to get a cheque every three months. Fantastic! Who are these people? What is their income? How many children do they have? On what grounds are they saying that these people will get a cheque from the government every three months, starting December 1990? What is behind all this? It's the government's strategy for talking about the present 13.5 per cent tax and never letting its members, who are supposedly convinced of the advantages of the GST, act responsibly and stop talking about Liberals and New Democrats allegedly using scare tactics and misinforming the public. It would be only normal for the government to ask its members to do that, Mr. Speaker! These are the people who are paid to do their job, who say they are convinced, who say they understand the GST. They should be asked to go from door to door and talk to Canada's senior citizens, people in the universities and people responsible for small businesses. In other words, let them do what most members have to do as part of their responsibilities: meet their constituents. And if they do that, Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member and his friends to your right will realize that
Canadians are sufficiently well-informed about the GST to say: No! We don't want the GST!

As I listened to my colleague I realized that today we will have to do something which we don't often do in this place, we will have to talk about lies; we will have to talk about cowardice; we will have to talk about misrepresentation; and we will have to talk about the kinds of things the Minister of Finance was talking about in 1988, when he said: "Wilson calls Tbmer liar, coward, and defends national sales tax plan".
That is what we will have to talk about in this place today. We will have to talk about lies; we are going to have to talk about cowardice; and we are going to have to talk about misrepresentation. We are going to have to make sure that Canadians have an opportunity to decide who is lying and who are cowards-


Mr. Langlois:: This is terrible! I can't believe my ears!


M. Douglas Young: Terrible? What is so terrible? Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member, and I agree that when Mr. Wilson said to Mr. Turner that he was a liar, that he had no guts-you can see for yourself, Mr. Speaker, that Mr. Wilson did not mince words in describing Mr. Turner.

I want quote again the words of the Minister of Finance when he called John Turner a liar and a coward. Regarding the national sales tax in the 1988 election campaign, we find this report: " Mr. Wilson took pains", undoubtedly it was painful for him, "to play down the effect of his controversial tax proposal on Canadians, saying 'Canadians will not pay one penny of additional tax, as a result of these measures'."
Now we have the Minister of State for Finance saying that this is going to be a deficit reduction tool, that Canadians are not going to pay one penny more, not one penny more. At the same time the hon. Minister of Finance was calling people liars, he was saying that he would not be collecting one penny more from Canadian taxpayers. Let us take a look at the tissue of deception and lies that has taken place in the last seven or eight months. Let us start with the documents of the Department of Finance itself. I think it is very important to take a look at them since my hon. colleagues to your right, Mr. Speaker, get a little nervous. I know they all
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understand. I know the member for Abitibi has read all of this material produced by the Department of Finance since August of last year. I know the member for Abitibi has looked at it all. I have no doubt about that. It is a simple tax. He being a simple man would understand a simple tax.
What I want to make sure of is that we look not at what the Liberals have have said about this and not what the New Democratic Party has said about it. Let us take a look and see what the Tories have to say about their tax.
The first document I wish to refer to is entitled Goods and Services Tax: Technical Paper issued by the Hon. Michael H. Wilson, Minister of Finance, August 1989. The H incidentally stands for "hold-up", I think. In any case this document of course was a simple document dealing with the tax, just a technical paper.
What the government did was produce this other document which is entitled Goods and Services Tax, an Overview. It was issued by the Minister of Finance in August of 1989.


Mr. Wilbee:: It is to make sure that everybody understands it.


M. Douglas Young: My hon. colleague says we should try to make sure that everybody can understand it. Let us just start anywhere. Where should you start with a document, maybe just by happenstance, but at the beginning. This is what is says on the very first page: "The goods and services tax is an integral part of the government's agenda for securing Canada's economic future. Sales tax reform will achieve three important goals. The GST will contribute to the deficit reduction effort and ensure we can continue to pay for programs and services Canadians value".
Let us look at the very first statement made in this document published in August of last year by the government. "The GST will contribute to the deficit reduction-". However, our friend who calls other people liars, says: "Mr. Wilson took pains to play down
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the effect of his controversial tax proposal saying Canadians will not pay one penny of additional tax".
This was the Hon. Michael H. Wilson saying: "Not a penny of additional tax". This is the hon. minister saying at the very same time in his document produced in August of last year: "The GST will contribute to the deficit reduction effort". Which is it?
Another thing that went on in this very same paragraph was that the government said that we can continue to pay for programs and services Canadians value. This document was published in August of last year. Let us talk about the programs that Canadians cherish and value.
For example, let us talk about programs to protect women. Maybe someone in the House, like the hon. Minister responsible for the Status of Women, would like to comment on this particular document. The words were: "to continue to pay for programs and services Canadians value". The fact is not only will he not be doing it next year, we are not doing it now. As the hon. Minister responsible for the Status of Women would know, programs have been cut.
Already the first paragraph in this document can be contested very directly on the basis of the minister himself having said: "deficit reduction" and "We are going to continue to pay for programs and services Canadians value".
Let us look at another paragraph on the very first page where it states: "The GST will improve the over-all fairness of the tax system". This is the Tory way to be fair. You collect more money from Canadian taxpayers, but you redistribute it. You go from $18.5 billion, which was projected for 1991, and you collect $22 billion or $23 billion with the 7 per cent tax. I remind hon. members that these documents were produced, of course, at 9 per cent. We want to make sure we do not misrepresent the numbers.
With respect to the notion of fairness that is alluded to in this particular paragraph, go and ask the people who are supposedly going to be helped by the fairness aspect of this system, which I assume refers to the tax credit system. The problem is that the credits are not indexed. What we will have to do is take the minister's word. The

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minister says: "Well, from time to time, we'll index them". If the intent is from time to time to index and to be fair, why would not the government say: "We'll just index it"? That is the fair way to do it.
Even the hon. chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance understood that. He was very clear in his statements. Many members of the Conservative Party were as well.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is the hon. Minister of State for Finance rising on a point of order?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I apologize to the hon. critic for the Liberal Party. Much as I would like to listen to the hon. member, I have to leave. I will be reading very thoroughly his intervention, but I have to meet someone from my riding who is being honoured. I apologize to the hon. member.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same point. We understand the minister possibly has another place where he wants to be rather than in the House listening to a good speech by the member for Gloucester. We accept the minister may have a prior commitment. We would like to have at least some ministers of the government stay with us while my colleague's speech is going on. It is a highly important speech.
Since the government does not seem to be interested in this debate, maybe we could adjourn the sitting and come back this afternoon when the government members can be in their places.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member for Gloucester has the floor.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, while you were listening to the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier, I was listening to my hon. friend for Abitibi saying that there are eight cabinet ministers in the House. That is indicative of how Tories count.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


M. Douglas Young: I know the hon. minister is worth a lot of ministers. There are two here, to be generous, and it is nice to have them here.
I want to refer again to the document produced since it will take some time to get through the process that the government set forth to be able to come forward with its goods and services tax. Again referring to the overview that was produced in August 1989 by the government, it states on the first page: "In addition to improving the
over-all fairness of the tax system, lower and modest income Canadians will be better off once the GST is in place".
As I indicated, in 1988 the Minister of Finance took some pleasure in calling the Leader of the Liberal Party a liar. I can only state-and obviously we are not attributing this particular statement to any one person; it is a government document-that that is certainly a lie. Lower and modest income Canadians will not be better off once the GST is in place. Some may be, but not all, and that is the lie.
The studies produced by Pat Grady of Global Economics and by Neil Brooks both clearly indicate that the distributional aspects of the GST that was put forward by the Department of Finance are not accurate and cannot be defended. They say that they are erroneous and flawed. In fact, unlike what is alleged in this document produced by the government, it will not be the case once the GST is in place that low and modest income Canadians will be better off. It will mean that over half of Canadians, members of families earning under $30,000, will be no better off or worse off. This is in complete contradiction to what the government alleged in August of last year.
There are differing views on what it means for families to be better off. Some will be marginally better off. Others will be marginally less well off, but a number will be affected negatively. The Minister of Finance and the Department of Finance have been aware for some time of these figures produced by Pat Grady and by Neil Brooks. They simply said that they are wrong, but the government has not challenged them on the facts.
The government has not challenged them on the basis of the model on which they base their projections. In fact, both Mr. Brooks and Mr. Grady have been very outspoken in their criticism of the methods and the base used by the Department of Finance to arrive at its very optimistic projections which most people, including the people who are going to be affected by this, disagree with.
Poor people know that sending them a cheque every three months will take money out of circulation, while imposing a tax on practically every service that they use and every product that they buy. The Department of Finance and the Department of the National Revenue have no notion of what the implications are in terms of
April 10, 1990

the implementation of this tax for low and middle income people. Just imagine what is going to happen to anybody with less than $30,000 of income.
In order to get these cheques out in December of this year, what is the department going to base its information on? Is it going to take numbers out of the air or just conjure up a number? No. It is going to go to a data base. What is that data base going to be? What is the information going to be?
It is going to look at information on a family unit that is already two years' passe. In the case of a family that does qualify the department is going to send a cheque to whoever filled in the income tax return for that family. In this day and age in Canada imagine, first, the changes in family structures that occur year to year. People have had children added to their families. How will one possibly know? Children will have left the family setting. Families will have broken up. There will be divorce, separation, or death. Who is going to handle this and what is the process?
When we asked the officials of the department they told us that they do not know. There is no provision in the legislation before us.
For example, what will happen if the money is paid in excess of what should be paid? Even more important for poor people, what will happen if insufficient moneys are paid because the government was not aware of what the actual family situation was?
Where will the government find these people and how will it keep track of them as they move around? We know what a transient society we have with people moving about. How does a mother with custody of the children go and get the cheque from her spouse who filled in the income tax return the year before? How are we going to deal with poor people and low income people?
The government does not know because it has not looked into it yet. It is more interested in selling the goods and services tax as a tax proposal than it is in dealing with the real problems it is going to create by implementation.
When this document came out there were a lot of other things that were said in it. For example, one of the obvious advantages that the government has been promoting is that it will replace an existing sales tax that is a silent killer of jobs. At the same time that we were being told that, the government was increasing the federal
Government Orders
sales tax from 9 per cent when it came to office in 1984, to 10 per cent, to 11 per cent, to 12 per cent, to 13.5 per cent.
All through this period this terrible invisible tax which the government talks about so much now had actually doubled the revenue accruing to the Government of Canada from that tax source. We are talking here about lies and misrepresentations, the way people distort and try to convince Canadians that black is white and good is bad, and that what is going to happen to them with the GST is going to be something to bring smiles to their faces.
Imagine at the same time the government going through a process from 1985 to 1988 and saying that it was creating more jobs in the country than have ever been created before. The government went before the people in 1988 and said: "We have created a million-plus jobs". At the same it had nearly doubled the tax rate, as well as doubled the revenue from this federal sales tax that it now says is a silent killer of jobs. You cannot have it three or four different ways.
I have listened to the Minister of Finance, the Minister of State for Finance and others talk about the existing federal sales tax. They have said: "Everybody agrees it is a bad tax". That is about the only truthful thing that has been said in this entire debate. Everybody agrees that the existing federal sales tax is a bad tax.
However, this is where the hook is put in. Then we hear people say that for years there have been royal commissions, task forces, and study groups, and they have all recommended this tax. That is an absolute lie. Never has any royal commission or task force recommended this goods and services tax. Never has a royal commission or any task force recommended a two tiered retail, consumer driven sales tax in Canada. Never has that occurred.
What all of those commissions and task forces said is that we have a problem with the existing federal sales tax. It has 22,000 special cases and circumstances and exemptions and so forth. It is a very thick and difficult document. It does create problems for 70,000 to 80,000 manufacturers in this country. That is a fact that is acceptable.
But no one has said: "Now go out and create a tax monster, a two-tiered administrative nightmare both for government and for business to replace it". No one has said that, and I defy anybody in this House to come forward with any statement by any respected economist,

April 10, 1990
Government Orders
any commission or task force that has ever suggested such a foolhardy thing.
I listened to the Minister of State for Finance today saying: "But why point a finger at us? Forty-eight other countries have done the same thing". I know that the hon. Minister of State for Finance would not intentionally mislead the Flouse, so I want to take this opportunity to clarify that.
Not a single country in the world has a two tiered retail consumer tax-not one. There is a reason for that. It is because it is unmanageable and unfair. It is because it is too complex. It is because when you eliminate a problem from one sector of our economy, which is manufacturing, instead of causing problems for 75,000 manufacturers or so you then cause a problem for 1.6 million to 1.8 million registrants who will have to collect the GST.
When we talk about fairness, how can we possibly discuss a two tiered sales tax in Canada in every province except for Alberta that will require the hiring of at least 4,000 new tax collectors?
As I indicated, the government has been very proficient in putting out all kinds of material. In August of 1989 it came forward with the proposal. At that time it was said clearly by the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister that that was it. It was another one of these take-it-or-leave-it deals that the government likes. The government said: "It is not going to change. We are adamant and we are going ahead".
It turned out that there was a fly in the ointment, and a big one at that. The chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance had already smelled the rat in 1988. In 1988, when the government was running around saying nothing is going to cost you more and everything is going to better and all of these programs that we are putting together in our electoral platform will not cost you a single nickel more, the member for Mississauga South, the chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance, ran the flag up the pole and said: "Whoa, that is not so".
That was a very courageous act.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: When did he say that?


M. Douglas Young: In 1988 during the campaign. That is when the member for Mississauga South made a clear statement. Based on his experience and the experience of the committee having looked into the situation in New Zealand and being aware of what had happened in other jurisdictions where the goods and services tax was opposed, the hon. member said: "Just a minute here. You are going to find a lot more money in that goods and services tax than you guys are saying".


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Is that the only Tory who was telling the truth?


M. Douglas Young: He was the only Conservative member at that point who would tell the truth and come straight out and say: "Look, that is just not going to fly because it does not make any sense".
The Conservative member for Mississauga South, the chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance, said this. I want to be fair about this since the proposal at that time was for a 9 per cent tax. Whatever the proposal was the member must have known because he made this statement. He estimated that a national sales tax would bring in between $10 billion and $14 billion in additional revenue.
Obviously, that would not be the figure at this point, and I want to be fair to the hon. member, because everyone expected that the rate would be somewhat higher than 7 per cent. Looking at what has happened elsewhere, and this is why I want to come back to what the Minister of State had to say today, you have to question whether or not the government would put itself through this masochistic exercise to maintain revenue neutrality.
What sane human being, what kind of government would do that, after seeing itself so low in the polls? If this continues, and I am not one to make predictions, the rate on the GST will be higher than the popularity rating of the Conservative party in this country.
Why would any government in the face of this unheard of coalition of opposition continue down this path to self-destruction? There has to be a hook, because that is the Tory way. Thank goodness that the experienced member for Mississauga South, the chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance, spotted it early and alerted Canadians to the fact that the pot of gold at the
April 10, 1990

end of the GST rainbow is a $4 billion to $5 billion windfall that will help the government on its merry way to try to buy Canadians before the next election and convince them that things are not as bad as they thought they were going to be.
I want to put this in a little bit of perspective. Consider any Canadians putting themselves in the position of the Minister of Finance and saying: "Okay, here we are now, we have Shirley Carr and the Canadian Labour Congress, we have John Bulloch and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, we have the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, senior citizens' organizations, anti-poverty groups, professional organizations and insurance adjusters all opposed to the GST". The list goes on forever.
As a matter of fact, if I can ever get the chance, Mr. Speaker, I have over 100,000 signatures on petitions in my possession from bowlers across this country to table in this Flouse. Imagine, men and women, young and old, people who go out for recreational bowling or competitive bowling taking the trouble to sign documents that have been certified by the Clerk-over 100,000 of them-saying "no" to the GST.
Just imagine the average average Canadian sitting there saying: "I am the Minister of Finance". Why would a person undertake the goods and services tax as it is proposed here? This is the proposal. Bill C-62 is now a package at last. Why would you do it, when some people say, and the documents maintain it, that it is revenue neutral? The Minister of Finance said it is not going to cost Canadians one penny of additional tax. Yet you have got 80 per cent of Canadians outraged. You have got small business in such an angry state of mind that the Minister of Finance has refused to meet John Bulloch now for months and months and months. He will not talk to him, or have anything to do with him, a person who represents some 80,000 Canadian small businesses. All of these people are massively opposed to the GST and here is the government saying: "We are going to continue going ahead with it anyway".
Talking about tax cuts, the government has shut down VIA Rail and laid off people all over the place. It has cut back on programs, closed down shelters for women and cut off funding for information media for aboriginal peoples. The government has done all those things, Mr. Speaker, but then says to the Canadian people, because it wants to be consistent: "In order to collect this
Government Orders
revenue neutral tax that is going to be good for Canadians we are going to hire a minimum of 4,000 new tax collectors, and we are going to hire 250 specialized people who will be tax police. We are going to recruit from the commercial fraud section of the RCMP and anybody who has a background in tax and being able to see through all these problems".
Mr. Speaker, just put yourself in the position of being an ordinary Canadian sitting in your living room saying: "I am going to pretend I am finance minister. So what am I going to do? I am going to put a tax on people that they despise. It is going to turn 80 per cent of Canadians against me. I am not going to have one penny more left after I have gone through all of this exercise. I am going to have 4,000 new tax collectors on my payroll. They are going to be all over the place checking into everybody and all of their dealings. I will not be able to get into a cab because the guy will slam the door on my hand, because I have to have my hand out to collect the GST". So here you are a finance minister who is going to have to walk for the rest of your life or drive your own car.
The finance minister cannot go and get a haircut because, even though there is not too much business now for a shave and a haircut, the barber may decide to give him a shave with a straight-edge razor.
The finance minister cannot go to a movie theatre because he would walk in and the people standing in line would say: "Well, well, well, this is the guy who is costing me an extra 7 per cent to go into a movie theatre."
He cannot go to a hockey game. The finance minister is going to have to become a hermit.
This whole question is going to be part of the Canadian game and there is not much humour in this affair, to say the least. But with Michael H. Wilson you are never sure. Is it "hold-up"? Is it "hermit"? What does that "H" stand for?
The question I want to put to Canadians is: If you were sitting there actually thinking about doing this yourself, would you undertake this perilous journey down the slippery slope of goods and services tax and say: "Not a penny more? Eveiybody is going to be mad at Mike. But I am going to have 4,000 new people on the federal payroll collecting taxes, tormenting people, running around and auditing people, finding out if they are registered, checking the paper trail, doing all the kinds of things that so outraged Canadians not that many years ago with the income tax system". I think that no matter

April 10, 1990
how many pieces of paper the government produces it will not change their mind.
There is so much paper here concerning this tax. It has been one of the most savage attacks on Canadian forests that we have seen in a long time. Not everybody is going to accept this tax. The government has produced all kinds of paper, and we are just at the August documents at this point.
At that point in August, these were the pamphlets, Mr. Speaker, if you can imagine, that the government put out to explain this simple tax. There is information for senior citizens, for barbers and hair-stylists, for convenience stores, for exporters, housing, self-employed tradespeople, farmers and fishermen, information for dealers and used vehicles, information for commission agents, information for tutors and instructors, information for travel agents and tour operators, information for real estate agents, information for students, information for pharmacies and drug marts, information for taxi limousine drivers, information for service station operators, and information for charities.
These are just the booklets to help explain what goes on here. This is just the beginning of this savage attack on the forests of Canada to try to make sure that Canadians understand the goods and services tax.
At the same time, I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that there was a previous document that we missed. This document came out with the 1989 budget.
One of the reasons that Canadians are not too convinced about the goods and services tax is because in 1989 in the budget you may recall, Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance was predicting interest rates around 10 per cent by the end of the year.
Mr. Speaker, you could imagine that would throw a few people off when they are looking at other things that are said in here. This document was brought out with the 1989 budget. It misrepresents what the goods and services tax has become because it talks about simplicity, fairness, revenue neutrality and integration.
None of those basic elements has been achieved. That is why, as the government continues on its attempt to try to tell Canadians what is good about the GST, it has even failed, Mr. Speaker, as you well know, to convince
members of the government. That is why we will not have a free vote later on today when we have a vote.
Two people who even decided to exercise minimum freedom have been expelled.


Mr. McCreath:: How may free votes did the Liberals have?


M. Douglas Young: I am just listening to the hon. member for South Shore. I know he is upset about this tax.


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


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Mr. Gus Mitges (Bruce-Grey):: Mr. Speaker, today our government honours a number of our citizens who have made significant contributions to their nation. Citation for Citizenship awards exist so that we can publicly acknowledge individual Canadians who care enough about our nation to proclaim their citizenship for all the world to hear. They care enough about Canadian values to do something to make a difference in their local communities for their fellow citizens.
These awards are given to individuals and organizations who have continuously shown a commitment to their Canadian citizenship and all of the rights and values that accompany being Canadian.
This year's recipients have made outstanding contributions to citizenship in areas ranging from literacy to human rights to multiculturalism. Their contributions represent the partnerships that build our nation.
I call upon all hon. members of the House to join me in applauding these respected fellow citizens and to participate in events during National Citizenship Week, April 15 to 21.
April 10, 1990

[Translation\


RAILWAY TRANSPORTATION
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, on January 31, 1990, the National Transportation Agency ordered the CN to restore service on the branch line from Franquet to Chapais, in the Abitibi area, by July 31,1990.
During the hearings, the Agency learned that the CN had closed off that section in contravention of a ruling made by the Canadian Transport Commission, on November 19, 1987, requiring the rail company to keep that branch line open.
In its ruling (45-R-1990), the Agency makes the following recommendations: Illegal closure of branch line; as mentioned before, the Agency thinks that the illegal closure of that branch line is a serious offence. Consequently, pursuant to section 173(2)b) of the 1987 NTA, it recommends the Attorney General of Canada to consider sueing the plaintiff for violating of the Commission ruling.


GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, the GST is nothing more than government sanctioned theft. I rise today to report that the constituents of Hamilton West say no to Bill C-62, the GST.
In a poll conducted through my latest householder, there were those who were in favour and those who were opposed. In favour, 144; opposed to the GST, 1,155. They know that the tax is regressive and will take money out of their pockets and out of the pockets of those who are least able to pay. They know that the tax is unfair; that the tax credits are not fully indexed to inflation. They know that the tax will be inflationary, adding at least 2.25 per cent to the rate of inflation, signalling the Bank of Canada to maintain high interest rates.
The Conservative government is not even prepared to listen to the people. Again today, the government will not hear the petitions signed by hundreds of thousands of Canadians opposed to the GST. So, Mr. Speaker, constituents of Hamilton West join the overwhelming
number of Canadians who say no to this Conservative government and no to the GST.



Mr. Cid Samson (Timmins -Chapleau):: Mr. Speaker, in the last three days more than two million Canadians have expressed their opposition to the Goods and Services Tax.
They have protested against this deeply unfair tax which does not differentiate between rich and low income families.
Recent polls show that 80 per cent of Canadians are against the GST.
As members of this House, we are all accountable to the Canadian people. Members of my party have joined the protesters ever since the GST was introduced. We know the Canadian people want a real and equitable tax reform.
I therefore call on all members of Parliament to join the tax fairness movement and vote against the GST.


NATIONAL CITIZENSHIP WEEK
Mr. Marcel R. Tremblay (Quebec-Est):: Mr. Speaker, I take the floor for a few minutes to tell my colleagues that, for the third consecutive year, the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and Citizenship awards civic merit certificates to mark National Citizenship Week.
The theme of this year's celebrations-from coast to coast-fittingly applies to the contribution which certificate holders have made to our society. Their dedication can be felt from coast to coast and involves a wide array of important sectors of Canadian life.
This year's laureates, including four organizations, are active in major urban centres and smaller rural communities. Deeply aware of their responsibilities as Canadian citizens, they proudly display uncommon public spiritedness and commitment, and they highlight the ideal epitomized by the Canadian flag which was raised for the first time 25 years ago.
Their contribution reaches indeed from coast to coast and, if Canadians are known the world over as a nation

April 10, 1990
where peace, diversity and humanism are traditional hallmarks, for that we are indebted to Canadian men and women like those we honour this week.
Mr. Speaker, I would urge my colleagues and all Canadians to express their appreciation to the recipients of the civic merit award-


Mr. Speaker:: The time allocated to the hon. member has expired.


STANDING COMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS AND CULTURE
Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, the St. Matthew Passion, the Emperor piano concerto and il Noce di Figaro are examples of musical compositions well-known to millions of Canadians and written by, to use the words of the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture, "musicians from some other country".
One would think that the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture would be supportive of the arts in Canada. Why does the government attribute such a low priority to the arts as indicated by its choice of chairman of this committee? Surely Canada's cultural community deserves support, not the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune hurled by Tory mugwumps.


TOURISM
Peter L. McCreath: Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the Ottawa weather, spring and summer are rapidly coming to Nova Scotia's beautiful South Shore.
This past weekend, the South Shore Tourism Association had a highly successful annual meeting with over 200 in attendance. Tourism is one of Canada's most rapidly growing businesses, and not surprisingly, in Nova Scotia.
If you like wonderful beaches, beautiful seascapes, wonderful landscapes and a glimpse of Canada's history, plan to come to Nova Scotia's South Shore this year for your vacation.
I encourage all Canadians to consider Nova Scotia as their vacation destination this year. Come to where the hospitality is warm and there is so much to see.
The South Shore Tourism Association has produced an excellent and thorough guide, copies of which I would be pleased to make available to all members.


CANADA-U.S. SUMMIT
Mr. Jim Peterson (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker,
A Canada-U.S. summit Takes place tonight under the Dome,
The agenda is Eastern Europe,
Clean air, our new Mexican home.
They will not talk about trade,
'Cause the auto pact's shot to hell.
They won't even mention takeovers,
We've nothing left to sell.
They will not talk about water,
Oil, gas or secure supplies;
The U.S. agenda is finished,
What's ours is theirs, no surprise.
And paying us won't be a problem,
They keep their interest rates low.
And American Express will finance Wilson and Governor Crow.
And when Brian gives advice on taxes,
George again will have the last word.
"An American GST, never,
How could I be such a nerd?"
Before our Blue Jays beat Texas,
Our leaders will throw the first pitch;
And then George will turn to Brian And say "Read my lips".
"The people can't stand your new tax,
It's regressive, oppressive and unfair,
So be a good boy and join with me As together, we all declare"


Some Hon. Members:: Hey hey, ho ho The GST has got to go.
Hey hey, ho ho -The GST has got to go.


SOCIAL BENEFITS
Godfrey Stanley (Stan) Wilbee: Mr. Speaker, Bill C-21 proposes improved special benefits for needy unemployment insurance recipients throughout Canada.
April 10, 1990

Natural fathers cannot receive parental benefits today, but will be entitled to do so by C-21. Natural mothers and adoptive parents too, will be entitled by C-21 to receive parental benefits in addition to any benefits for which they otherwise qualify. And these special benefits in general, now subject to a cap of 15 weeks, will be provided to a maximum of 30 weeks by C-21.
Some of these changes follow through on previous court judgements and thereby make the UI system as consistent as possible with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Together with other improvements to the UI system proposed in Bill C-21, these benefit provisions are necessary changes to an out of date system that should be put behind us. I urge all members of the House to do their bit and help make this happen.


LAND CLAIMS AGREEMENT
Ms. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, for the second time in ten days I am pleased to offer congratulations on the signing of a land claims agreement in northern Canada.
The Dene-Metis of the Northwest Territories, who last night signed a final agreement on their long-standing claim, are the second in such a length of time to do so. This is a credit to the spirit of the Dene-Metis and to those who have supported the long struggle that they have led for justice in the north.
All Canadians should celebrate the signing of this agreement because settlement of land claims works to the benefit of all communities and all Canadians. Whether it is the development of resources or the establishment of national parks, only when all parties have clearly defined their rights can progress take place.
I congratulate the Dene-Metis people, the Government of the Northwest Territories and the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. The settlement of the Yukon First Nations claim and the Dene-Metis claim are important steps in the right direction. I urge the minister to continue to resolve other outstanding land claims. First Nations deserve nothing less.


THE RIGHT HONOURABLE ROLAND MICHENER
Mr. Willie Littlechild (Wetaskiwin):: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my constituents of Wetaskiwin and the people of Canada, I rise in the House today to extend best wishes to a constituent, former Governor General Roland Michener, who will celebrate his ninetieth birthday on April 19.
Daniel Roland Michener was bom in Lacombe, Alberta. He first served as an Ontario provincial member and cabinet minister and then went on to serve as a federal member of Parliament and Speaker of this House from 1953 to 1962. In 1967 Prime Minister Pearson appointed him as Governor General of Canada.
Throughout his distinguished career, he has had a positive influence on all Canadians. I know he made a significant contribution to Canadians physical fitness by his own personal example.
Once again, I would like to take this opportunity to salute his efforts for all Canadians, and ask the House to join me in wishing him a very happy birthday and continued good health.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


LAND CLAIMS AGREEMENT
Ms. Ethel Blondin (Western Arctic):: [Editor's Note: Member spoke in Slavey.]

Yesterday was a very historic moment for the Dene and Metis of the Western Arctic. They initialled a land claims agreement with the federal government.
My grandfather was a signatory to Treaty 11 in July, 1921. I believe he would be proud of our people who have come together and have made the decision to go forward and initial this agreement.
1 congratulate my people. After almost two decades of negotiating with Ottawa, this agreement gives control and management of their affairs to the Dene and Metis of the Northwest Territories. By initialling this agreement the leaders have given the opportunity to the people in the communities to study and vote on the

April 10, 1990
Oral Questions
arrangements that have been negotiated with the government.
I commend the Dene and Metis leaders for their skill, their tolerance and their had work.


GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Mr. Garth Turner (Halton -Peel):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday we witnessed a poorly-attended demonstration on the Hill against the GST featuring the Communist party, the CLC and the Pro-Canada Network, with special guest appearances by the members for Edmonton Southeast and Calgary Northeast.
If these members are so eager to join with the Communist party in opposing the tax, maybe they should join the Communist party and stop being all things to all people and stop being Tories of convenience.


MUSEUM CORPORATIONS
Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg St. James):: Mr. Speaker, Bill C-12 establishing the four museum corporations has been delayed for some time now. The result is that more than 56 appointments that need to be made have been held up.
I would hope that this delay is for good reasons. I hope the government has been delaying these appointments only because of its search for good quality people. These corporations deserve first class appointments who will contribute to the good of the cultural community.
Let us hope that this delay has nothing to do with the Voice of Fire controversy or any discomfort that the government may have with the arm's length relationship with cultural agencies. Let us hope that this is not old-fashioned government indecision.
I urge the government to get on with these appointments for the sake of the cultural community, and especially for the sake of the museum corporations which have a lot of work to do.


GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Mr. John R. Rodriguez (Nickel Belt):: Mr. Speaker, we have all heard of the Calvin Klein and Alfred Sung lines of fashions. Today, I am going to introduce the latest in men's fashion; it is the Michael Wilson GST slacks. They are manufactured by Cambridge Clothing-


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member is exceeding the bounds of the proper use of a member's statement.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. The Prime Minister stated a few weeks ago that interest rates in Canada would come down shortly. The Minister of Finance based his budget estimates on an 11 per cent interest rate for the current year. Finally, last weekend, the Minister of Finance stated in London that interest rates in Canada would not come down. My question to the Minister is this: What really is the policy of the Canadian Government concerning interest rates in this country?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, this Government is well aware of the need to reduce interest rates for an efficient economic performance. But the fact is that we just cannot reduce them artificially by simply pushing a button. The best way to go about it is to reduce inflationary pressures thus making it possible to bring and keep interest rates down.
As for the rates which appeared in the budget, I submit that since they apply to the year beginning April 1st, we hope that the policies we are taking combined with favourable international conditions will help us achieve our objectives.


GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, again in the area of contradictions the Minister of Finance has
April 10, 1990

Oral Questions
stated and the Minister of State said this morning that the goods and services tax will be revenue neutral. Documents prepared by the Department of Finance say the GST will both be revenue neutral and will serve to reduce the deficit in this country.
The chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance says that the GST is going to raise an extra $4 billion to $5 billion. The Minister of State for Finance discussed this matter this morning. Is the government prepared to tell the Canadian people that the goods and services tax is the biggest tax grab in Canadian history?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the hon. member would not want me to lie to this House, therefore I will not say that.
There is something that the hon. member and many of his colleagues have great difficulty in understanding. When we say that the GST will contribute to deficit reduction, that does not mean that we will grab an awful amount of money and use it. It means that this type of tax is less porous, less prone to avoidance than the one we have. The present tax leads to evasion.
Second, because it will have a very positive impact on our economy, it will be the equivalent of $9 billion in our economy. We hope that this performance of the economy will contribute to higher government revenue.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister said this morning that Canadians are going to love the goods and services tax.
In view of the fact that the Prime Minister and others have said that the problem with the goods and services tax is that Canadians do not understand it, can the Deputy Prime Minister explain to the House why he will not allow a free vote this afternoon on this bill if he is convinced that members of his government understand the goods and services tax?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Privy Council and Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, I am going to vote the way I want and I hope the hon. member does the same thing.


Mrs. Shirley Maheu (Saint-Laurent-Cartierville):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. The Government insists that families will not be unfairly treated under its GST. We are all aware that in Quebec, footwear and clothing at a certain price are deemed to be basic items and therefore non taxable. Why does not the Conservative Government offer the same exemptions? Or better, why does it not completely abandon this tax which is unfair to Canadian families?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, it goes without saying that I do not share the view of the Hon. Member as to the unfairness of this tax. Quite the contrary. Obviously a great many categories of people and goods would like to be exempted, which would compel us to increase the rate. We are determined to keep the tax base as wide as possible. Having already exempted groceries, drugs etc., we feel that by maintaining as wide a tax base as possible and giving low income families significant credits, we will end up with a much better and fairer tax system.


Shirley Maheu: My supplementary question is still for the same minister, since the Deputy Prime Minister does not want to answer. Middle-income families will have to pay on everything they buy-food, clothing and shoes. Why is the government so determined to make life miserable for these families?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, once again, I would say that is certainly not our intention. You must understand that in the end, Canadians will pay the same amount. The government will still collect $18 billion. Basically, it is a different breakdown, which will quite specifically protect various categories of people, like seniors or those on lower incomes. In particular, credits will be provided for those earning up to $40,000, and those earning up to $30,000 will come out of the reform with more money than they had before.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. By now the

April 10, 1990
Oral Questions
Deputy Prime Minister must know that more than 2 million Canadians registered their opposition to the goods and services tax by signing a ballot through a national campaign organized by the Canadian Labour Congress and the Pro-Canada Network.
Last weekend in the shopping malls, on street corners and in the workplace, citizens took the time to give this government a message. They voted against the unfair tax in perhaps the largest protest vote in the history of Canada.
Will the Deputy Prime Minister admit that this government has no mandate to impose this tax and will he simply submit to the Canadian people this government's alternative to this unfair tax?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I would like to tell the hon. Leader of the NDP that there is no great merit in inciting people to sign petitions against taxes, any taxes. The New Democrats should try this against income tax because they would probably get a few million signatures.
We have been listening to Canadians and we will continue to listen to them. They told us that they want a fair tax system. This is what we are providing. The opposition systematically hides this fact from Canadian citizens, but we will continue to work hard to explain to the people why we are undertaking this reform and why it is good for them.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. Yes, this government is listening to Canadians. It is listening only, however, to the Council of Bankers and to the National Council on Business Issues. We are asking this government to listen to the Canadian people.
As one example, Mr. Speaker, today in the news we are informed that the government has extended a tax break for its friends on Bay Street. Can the Deputy Prime Minister tell us why stockbrokers will get more tax breaks while ordinary Canadians are going to be taxed on muffins and movies?
Where is the fairness? Scrap the tax now. Listen to all Canadians.


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I would not expect the Leader of the NDP to understand very well the functioning of a free economy. But the measures we have taken are precisely devised to prevent tax avoidance. We want our industry to remain
under Canadian control and this is why these measures have been taken.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: I have a supplementary question for the Deputy Prime Minister. This government and its friends in the Business Council on National Issues are the only ones who like the GST. Eighty per cent of Canadians are against the GST. Yesterday, people throughout the country told the government that they do not want this tax. More than two million people who voluntarily filled in a ballot voted "no". When will the government accept the judgment of all these people and present fairer alternatives?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I believe that the Leader of the New Democratic Party must admit that of course Canadians, like people in other countries, do not usually like taxes, and I think members on both sides of the House would agree that asking their opinion on this does not have much merit. You must understand that we are implementing a change, a tax reform, that is good for Canada, that will create jobs, that will encourage better use of our resources and that will release our economy's productive capacity.


ATLANTIC CANADA
Mr. Lawrence MacAulay (Cardigan):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. The lobster fishermen of Atlantic Canada are concerned as to what help they will receive from the much-promised aid package for Atlantic Canada.
Will the minister tell the lobster fishermen of Atlantic Canada if they are included in the aid package, if there is one?


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: Mr. Speaker, if the question is about whether or not the federal government will participate with the lobster industry and the provinces in trying to find a solution to the inventory problem experienced, the answer is yes.
If that is not the question, maybe the hon. member should take his sheet and read it more carefully so that I can get his real question.
April 10, 1990


Lawrence MacAulay: Mr. Speaker, the fisheries aid package should also be used for wharf and harbour repair in Atlantic Canada.
My supplementary question is for the same minister. Before there is-


An Hon. Member:: Read it slowly, he can't understand.


Some Hon. Members:: Slowly, slowly.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member has the floor. The hon. member will put his question.


Lawrence MacAulay: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister. Before there is unnecessary loss of life, can the minister assure us that the needed wharf repair and harbour dredging will be done before the fishing season opens, which is just around the corner?


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, I could warn the hon. member to tell his researcher not to apply in my shop because he has no chance in it.
If the member wants to bring to my attention a particular port where there is a life-threatening situation, I am sure I will want to look into that matter.


NATIONAL UNITY
Mr. Brian Tobin (Humber-St. Barbe -Baie Verte):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. Yesterday in the House of Commons the Prime Minister of Canada balked at the opportunity to refute the comments of the Minister of the Environment who suggested that in future Canadians may have to choose between Quebec and Newfoundland.
When a minister in Newfoundland spoke out of turn, the Premier of Newfoundland disavowed those comments immediately. When the Minister of the Environment of Canada makes inflammatory statements, the Prime Minister makes excuses.
My question is straightforward. Will the Deputy Prime Minister advance the cause of national dialogue in Canada by dissociating the Government of Canada from
Oral Questions
the irresponsible speculation of the Minister of Environment?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, unfortunately Hansard for yesterday is not available.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Yes, it is.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: I would refer the hon. member to the answer that the Prime Minister gave yesterday where he quoted in full the context within which the hon. minister's comments were made, and I think that that explained it very clearly.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, Canadians have no desire to choose between members of the Canadian family-


Mr. Bouchard (Lac-Saint-Jean):: Ratify the accord, then. We will be a family when you ratify the accord.


Brian Vincent Tobin: -and to ignore the remarks of the Minister of the Environment by twisting and turning, trying to escape the import of what was said is to condone those remarks. That is something that neither the government nor Canada can afford.
Will the Minister of the Environment himself withdraw those remarks, make a contribution to Canada by putting an end to words that are offensive to the spirit of Confederation, and particularly offensive to the people of Quebec and to the people of Newfoundland? Withdraw them now.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I have nothing further to add to the Prime Minister's response to the hon. member's question yesterday. It is pretty clear. When an hon. member is quoting a minister or any other member-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Brian Vincent Tobin: Let the minister speak.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: -he or she should quote it in its fullest context and not be selective, as the hon. member has been.
Oral Questions PRESENCE IN GALLERY

April 10, 1990


Mr. Speaker:: I wish to draw to the attention of members the presence in the gallery of Mr. Aklilu Afework, Minister for Foreign Economic Relations of Ethiopia.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


WOMEN'S CENTRES
Mr. Phillip Edmonston (Chambly):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State. A spokesperson for the Secretary of State pointed out that the 100 per cent cuts affecting 39 women's centres in Quebec have had a beneficial effect, since the centres will now receive $10,000 from the Government of Quebec instead of $8,500 from the Department of the Secretary of State. How can the minister claim this has a beneficial impact on women's centres in Quebec? Is that his idea of viable federalism?


Hon. Gerry Weiner (Secretary of State of Canada and Minister of State (Multiculturalism and Citizenship)):: Mr. Speaker, I had an excellent meeting this afternoon with representatives of women's centres. I am familiar with their work and I know how important it is to the community. I may add that last Friday, I had the pleasure of meeting the provincial minister responsible for the Status of Women, Mme Violette Trepanier. We had an in-depth discussion about the future of the centres, and ways in which we work together effectively to guarantee the vitality of these mechanisms which are so important to the community.


Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster-Burnaby):: Mr. Speaker, the Secretary of State said that he had a pleasant meeting with the women of Quebec today. From what I understand from that meeting, he made it clear to them that this decision to cut $1.6 million from women's programming was not simply his decision but the decision of the entire cabinet.
The Secretary of State is now paying for women from Newfoundland, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Yukon to fly to Montreal, business class, and to stay at the Dorval Hilton in order to meet with him on Thursday.
The Secretary of State is also spending an estimated $500-


Mr. Speaker:: I wonder if the hon. member would put her question.


Dawn Black: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Every dollar that is not spent on women's centres directly is-


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member is getting into a speech. I know she has a question, and I would ask her please to put the question.


Dawn Black: My question is this: instead of spending money on extra security, instead of flying women all over the country, business class, will the Secretary of State reinstitute the core funding to women's programming, and will he do it today?


Mr. Speaker:: I must advise hon. members, especially those who wish to ask questions, that if I have to interrupt and delay, it takes time out of your colleagues' questions later on. The hon. minister.


Gérard (Gerry) Weiner: Mr. Speaker, there are almost 200 women's centres across Canada, from Newfoundland to British Columbia including the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. Many of them have indicated a desire to meet with me as quickly as possible. While I am always available and would like to have that dialogue, I did feel it was important to have a few of them come to meet with me so that I could hear their concerns.
Is the member saying that I should not be meeting with any women's group on Thursday? Is that what she is saying? We have a very important program-


Some Hon. Members:: Yes or no.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Wetaskiwin.


INDIAN AFFAIRS AND NORTHERN DEVELOPMENT
Wilton (Willie) Littlechild: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.
April 10, 1990

As we heard during the members' statements yesterday, the minister signed an historical agreement with the Dene-Metis people.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Wilton (Willie) Littlechild: This agreement is welcomed by Canada's native people and I am sure by all Canadians.
I would like to ask the minister if he might inform the House on the specifics of the agreement and what ratification process will be necessary to approve it.


Hon. Thomas Siddon (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for a question of significant importance not only to the Dene-Metis people of the western Arctic but to all Canadians.
The agreement which was concluded yesterday, a final agreement with the Dene-Metis people, recognizes the special status of those Canadians who occupy their homeland known as Denendeh. This agreement, in its main elements, provides the Dene-Metis with cash compensation of $500 million, a land quantum of some 70,000 square miles, a share of any future resource royalties the government collects on resources developed in these areas, and a significant voice in the ongoing management of wildlife and the environment.
All members are extremely grateful to the Dene-Metis people for the confidence they have shown in Canada. We are grateful to them. I say to the Dene-Metis people: mahsi cho, thank you very much.


Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.
On February 20, the Minister of Finance said in his budget address: "Today, I am asking Canadians to join with me in a program to reinforce our efforts to control government spending."
The very next day the board of directors at FedNor increased their per diem rate by over 20 per cent.
How does the Deputy Prime Minister reconcile the position of the government, as given by the Minister of Finance, with what the minister responsible for this agency did the very next day?
Oral Questions


Hon. Tom Hockin (Minister of State (Small Businesses and Tourism)):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member knows full well that FedNor does not increase its own honorarium for its own board, but perhaps it should when one considers that FedNor has already created over 2,000 jobs in the member's area and close by.
FedNor itself has generated 332 businesses that did not exist three years ago. FedNor is making a contribution to northern Ontario like no other regional agency ever has.


Joseph R. (Joe) Comuzzi: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question. That certainly was not an answer to the question I asked.
Let me ask a question from his own press release. The advisory board stated that since FedNor began it maintained a business-like bottom line approach to all its activities.
I ask this minister what is business like and what is bottom line when someone asks the Canadian people to observe restraint and he allows his agencies to do exactly the opposite?


Thomas Hockin: Mr. Speaker, the FedNor board has been one of the hardest working federal boards established since 1984. Part of the reason it is so busy has been recognized in the announcement I made last week.
Members opposite wrongly said that FedNor was going to be hurt by recent changes in the budget. The exact opposite is true. We announced last week a 26 per cent increase in FedNor's budget. We also announced, very importantly, that from $100,000 or less FedNor could continue giving grants and contributions and not just loans. That is 90 per cent of its present business.
I would like the province of Ontario to follow our lead and continue to have a hard working northern Ontario economic expansion.


AIR SURVEILLANCE
Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Supply and Services who earlier today said that one of his primary objectives as minister is to maintain fairness and integrity in the tendering process.

April 10, 1990
Oral Questions
In the case of the controversial east coast surveillance contract and concerns raised earlier in January by a number of the bidders who felt that the bid was written to favour one company, in effect sole sourced, the minister's silence was damning.
Was the minister made aware of these concerns when they were first raised and, if so, why did he still insist on dancing to the jig of Tory lobbyists, instead of protecting the integrity of the federal contracting system in this country?


Hon. Paul Dick (Minister of Supply and Services):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member asked me the question in committee this morning and I gave him a very full and detailed answer. He is obviously trying to play for some political partisan purpose today in talking the way he has.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Nault:: What kind of business do you think we are in?


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. minister.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Three companies out of the 14 that were invited replied. Two of them were compliant: one from the Atlantic provinces and one from Calgary. We chose the one which was the cheapest.


Ronald MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is to the same minister.
Prior to today, was the minister aware that there were proposals on the desks of his colleagues, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the Minister of National Defence that would have seen the government owned tracker aircraft fleet operated by the private sector providing increased surveillance at the same cost and also save the badly needed jobs in Summerside, P.E.I.?
If he was aware of that, then why the suspicious haste to effectively sole source a $28 million tender?


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, I do not know what specific proposals he might have had on somebody else's desk, but if he had wanted me to know about them he could have put them on my desk.
I do know that the third person who put in a response was non-compliant. If he wants to be a spokesperson for Ken Rowe, why does he not just stand up and say so? It was a non-compliant bid.


HOUSING
Mr. Dan Heap (Trinity-Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of State for Housing.
As the minister knows, Toronto City Council must decide by Thursday whether to bid to host the 1996 Olympic Games and their decision turns on whether CN will sell 50 hectares of its former railway lands to the City Non-Profit Housing Corporation so that they can provide 3,200 units of housing, first for the Olympic athletes and later for affordable housing for low income residents.
CN is stalling. They are demanding, instead, an upzon-ing for commercial towers on land nearby.
Will the minister use his good offices to persuade CN to drop this stance and use public land for the public purpose of the Olympics and affordable housing?


Hon. Doug Lewis (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, CN is discussing the matter with the city of Toronto. I can assure the House that federal government support will be consistent with that which was given to Calgary for the latest Olympics. We are in the game with the Toronto bid with a full range of essential services. We believe that the negotiations are going forward. We see no reason for the government to interfere.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, in view of this government's pledge to provide public land for affordable housing in Toronto, will the minister seek the support of his cabinet colleagues to provide this 50 hectares of land, not used any longer for railway purposes, to be used for the government's declared purpose of public, affordable housing?


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, CN is very cognizant of the commitment to assist the city and to help with housing. All of CN's plans are based upon agreements between CN and the city, and have been approved by the Ontario Municipal Board.
April 10, 1990


RAILWAY TRANSPORTATION
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. In 1987, CN unlawfully closed the section between Franquet and Chapais, in Abitibi. In Decision 45-R.-1990, the National Transportation Agency recommended that the Attorney General of Canada prosecute CN.
My question is as follows: Could the minister inform the House whether she read the letter dated February 13,1990, sent by the Hon. Erik Nielsen to the Minister of Transport, in which he asks, and I quote: "to take all measures you may judge desirable to enforce the agency's recommendation". I would also like to know when you intend to take action on this troublesome issue.


Hon. Kim Campbell (Minister Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, indeed I did read Mr. Nielsen's letter, and the hon. member is aware, CN has applied to the Federal Court of Appeal for permission to appeal the National Transportation Agency's decision dated January 31, 1990. I shall therefore have to await the court's decision before taking any further action on this matter.


Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Deputy Prime Minister in the absence of the Minister of Health.
On Sunday, April 8, in a follow-up to a death in Winnipeg, W-5 showed that there is no clear accountability for the rules and regulations overseeing medical drug studies affecting thousands of Canadians and their safety.
What is the minister going to do to ensure that there is accountability, that someone or some organization is ready to accept the responsibility for the clear interpretation and application of the rules and regulations dealing with the testing of new medication affecting the safety of thousands of Canadians?
Oral Questions


Marcel Danis: Mr. Speaker, the particular case to which the hon. member referred is very sad for everyone. However, I think it would be inappropriate to comment on this matter right now, given the fact that the matter is being investigated by a medical examiner at the present time.


Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, why does the minister not suspend the Volmax drug studies in which Candace James was involved at the time of her death, until he knows that there is absolutely no danger to anyone's safety?

Why not stop the study, Mr. Minister?


Marcel Danis: Mr. Speaker, if we stop the study, this would prejudice the current investigation.


FUNDING FOR WOMEN'S CENTRES
Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister responsible for the Status of Women. In light of the solidarity of women's centres nation-wide to refuse project funding until her government resolves the core funding issue, can the minister tell the women of Canada that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that core funding will be restored?


Hon. Mary Collins (Associate Minister of National Defence and Minister responsible for Status of Women):: Mr. Speaker, I am veiy pleased, as the member knows, to have had the opportunity to meet last week with representatives of women's centres in Halifax and Newfoundland, and today from Quebec. I am pleased that my colleague, the Secretary of State, is also going to be meeting with them to see if there is a method of resolving some of the difficulties.

April 10, 1990
Oral Questions
I cannot give her the assurance that core funding will be reinstituted, but I know that my colleague is looking at methods to try to find a resolution of this very difficult problem.


Mary Catherine Clancy: Mr. Speaker, the minister says she knows and says she understands how these women feel. We want to know whether she has managed to convince her colleagues to change the policy or is she too, like Canadian women, being ignored and overlooked and are her efforts a failure?


Mary Collins: Mr. Speaker, I am sure my hon. colleague would agree that none of the women in this cabinet would ever be ignored by their colleagues. They would do it at great risk, I can assure you.
While we cannot give a definitive response today on this issue, I hope to work with my provincial colleagues so that we can come forward with some better plans in the long term for delivery of services to women at the community level, which will involve different levels of government and the communities to provide these much needed services.


INTELLIGENCE
Mr. John Brewin (Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Solicitor General. According to reports published today, the United States government, over an extended period of time, persistently engaged in illegal intercepts of the conversations of Rene Levesque, then the duly elected Premier of Quebec.
I am sure the Solicitor General will agree that both the intercepts are illegal and that the acts are completely unacceptable behaviour by a so-called friendly government to Canada.
Can the minister tell the House, first, did the federal Liberal government of the day know of and acquiesce in these intercepts and, second, who else in Canada is being spied on by the United States government?


Hon. Pierre H. Cadieux (Solicitor General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to point out to the House that the press reports to which my hon. colleague is referring are related to a book that was released yesterday.
Considering that I have not had time to read the book since it was released yesterday, it would be inappropriate for me to comment.
On the other hand, I would like to take this opportunity to reaffirm the policy of the Government of Canada that any intelligence operation in Canada can be conducted only with the consent of the Solicitor General and under Canadian control.


John F. Brewin: Mr. Speaker, when the minister and his department get around to reading the book, I hope that they will then take the obvious response-


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


John F. Brewin: Mr. Speaker, will the minister take steps, as soon as he has absorbed the details of the book and verified the accuracy of the account, to advise the United States government that the behaviour in that case was completely unacceptable and will he get plausible, clear assurances from the United States government that this action will not happen again?


Pierre H. Cadieux: Mr. Speaker, I take it for granted that if my hon. friend in his first question referred to the press reports, it is because he also has not had time to read the book.
I can assure this House that appropriate steps, if necessary, shall be taken and we will take cognizance of the book.


CATELLI FOODS
Mrs. Carole Jacques (Mercier):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology.
On April 7, the workers at Catelli in east-end Montreal ratified a new three-year collective agreement by a 53 per cent majority. Catelli management said that this new agreement, which lowers wages and eliminates many benefits for employees, was essential if the plant was not to close.
Mr. Speaker, since the Catelli employees have done more than their share in accepting considerably reduced working conditions, what does the federal government
April 10, 1990

intend to do for its part to ensure that the Catelli plant is restructured and modernized in the short term?


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology):: Mr. Speaker, Quebecers, and especially Montrealers, are pleased with the decision the union made last week and the agreement reached with Catelli in Montreal. Yesterday, officials of the department met with people from Catelli and the company applied for aid. We are studying the request, future meetings are planned and we hope to be able to reach an agreement with the company itself.


MINISTERIAL TRAVEL
Mr. Len Hopkins (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the President of the Treasury Board. On October 25, the President of the Treasury Board stated that he had initiated an urgent study on ministerial travel accountability for a report to this House.
By February 8, the minister still had not reported and as chairman of Public Accounts, I wrote to him concerning the denial of information required to audit ministerial travel. He replied to my letter 33 days later and still did not answer the question.
When is the minister going to live up to the commitment he made in this House and table his report on ministerial travel?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, in the unavoidable absence of the President of the Treasury Board, I will take that question as a representation from the chairman of the public accounts committee, but perhaps the President of the Treasury Board did not want to embarrass members of his party since this government has used ministerial travel so much less than its predecessor government.


Leonard Donald Hopkins: Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General of Canada has stated that the Government of Canada is the only jurisdiction left in Canada where ministers' travel receipts are not made available to the appropriate Auditor General.
Oral Questions
In his March 13 letter to me, the President of the Treasury Board does not make a single mention of ministerial receipts, to which the Auditor General wants access.
Will the minister tell us today when he will be introducing a policy that will make ministerial travel receipts available to the Auditor General for auditing purposes in Canada?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the President of the Treasury Board will comply with all commitments that he has made. The policy of this government was very simple: we should travel less than our predecessor government, and even if we did that, it would keep us on the road twice as much as we are.


SCIENCE
Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-St. Clair):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for Science. The government-appointed hatchet man at NRC has now said that NRC is not in the business of high energy physics and has proceeded to close down one of the most significant scientific enterprises at NRC. Some of the scientists are threatening to go to other places.
What action does the government plan to take, if any, to save a very significant scientific enterprise in this country, which is quite significant to other activities such as the neutrino laboratories and others, of which the minister is aware?


Hon. William C. Winegard (Minister for Science):: Mr. Speaker, over the years one of the interesting things about the National Research Council is that it has always been able to initiate various kinds of research, to take that research up to a fruition point, and occasionally have spun it off to other corporations or other universities.
One of the things that we are concerned about here is the high energy physics group. My hon. colleague says it is going to disappear. It is not going to disappear. The high energy physics group is likely to remain intact.

April 10, 1990
Privilege
I also wish to tell my hon. colleague that as far as SNO is concerned, nothing will interfere with the operation of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, and I promise my hon. colleague that that will be the case.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, the hon. minister says that it is not going to disappear, and subsequently says that it is not likely to disappear. I think that we want clearer assurances about whether it is going to disappear, or is likely to disappear, or whether it is going to continue. The scientists there and the scientific community want to know the answer. What is the government going to do to ensure that that high energy physics establishment continues to make its valuable contribution to Canadian and international science?


An Hon. Member:: I guess you have to spell it out for him.


William C. Winegard: Yes, I will try to be even more clear, Mr. Speaker.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


William C. Winegard: The high energy physics group at NRC is not going to disappear as a group. Is that satisfactory?


An Hon. Member:: No, it's not good enough.


PRIVILEGE
Ronald MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. Earlier in the proceedings in an exchange between myself and the Minister of Supply and Services, in response to my second question, the minister clearly, I believe, impugned my motives and my privileges as a member by indicating that I was a mouthpiece for a contractor.
As a member of Parliament, I try my very best to raise matters of public concern with the government. If that implies somehow that I am working or lobbying for someone, then that is absolutely ridiculous. I would ask the minister, to whom I sent a note because I do respect my colleagues in this place and indicated I would raising this point of privilege, to withdraw that remark.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: If the shoe fits, wear it.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Dartmouth-


An Hon. Member:: Who are you?


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An Hon. Member:: The minister was up on his feet.


Mr. Speaker:: The Speaker does decide who has the floor. The hon. House leader.


Harvie Andre: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday, when the hon. member for Dartmouth rose to ask a question, he implied wrongdoing in his preamble and the Speaker, quite properly and in keeping with the long tradition of the House, ruled the question out of order. This was challenged by the House leader of the Liberal party afterward.
The hon. member knows that we have immunity in this place and that the laws of slander and liable do not apply. But coupled with that, it is not proper under that immunity to slander or liable, by accusing another of an illegal act. However, in the event that the hon. member is convinced that others have committed an illegal act, they need only make that charge formally. Of course, if they are not able to substantiate it, they forfeit their seat. That is the tradition of this place.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mrs. Gaffney:: You are shameful.


Harvie Andre: Earlier today the hon. member asked another question where he made the suggestion that the government was-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An Hon. Member:: Eric the second.


Mr. Speaker:: Just a minute. The hon. member has raised a question of privilege on a specific point. The hon. minister can reply to it or he does not have to, or the hon. House leader can reply to it. This is getting into a much more extensive debate.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, I was indicating what his comments were today to which my colleague replied.


Some Hon. Members:: Sit down!


Mr. Speaker:: I am sorry. I am not entering into a long debate on this. There is a point made by the hon. member. Either the minister involved can respond or I will look at the "blues" and come back to the House.
April 10, 1990


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Speaker:: I am recognizing the hon. minister.


An Hon. Member:: The other minister.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, I merely want to make the point that if in fact there is a prima facie question of privilege, as one should indicate when one raises a question of privilege, the member can ask that the matter be referred to the appropriate committee of the Elouse and have it discussed there.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. House leader has every right to take part in this. But I have made it very clear. The hon. member for Dartmouth rose on a specific issue. It can probably be settled in a moment or two. I am prepared to listen to the minister who is involved in the question of privilege.
I have not said it is a question of privilege and it may well not be. If the hon. minister wants to respond, he can.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, I do not think there is anything I said in my response that requires me to withdraw. People in this place lobby on behalf of people all the time. That is their job as members of Parliament.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mary Catherine Clancy: Oh, no it's not.


Paul Wyatt Dick: If he is now saying he was not lobbying, that he was just a mouthpiece, then so be it.


Some Hon. Members:: Order!


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I just heard that it is the job of members of Parliament to lobby. It is against the law-


Harvie Andre: Wrong, wrong.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: -in the way the minister is saying. There are two or three points that have been raised by the minister which I think require a response; first, yesterday's Question Period, which the minister alluded to in his remarks. I went back-


Paul Wyatt Dick: I never alluded to it.


An Hon. Member:: He did, not you.


Mr. Speaker:: Just a minute. He opened it and I closed it down. We are not getting into debate on the hon. member's question of privilege. I will consider what the "blues" show and come back to the House.
Point of Order
That matter is closed until I refer back to the House.
The hon. government House leader.


POINT OF ORDER
Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Yesterday, the House leader of the Liberal party raised a point of order in respect to Question Period, and in that context I would like to respond briefly in terms of today's Question Period.
I wanted to point out that the question raised by the hon. member for-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Brian Vincent Tobin: Question of privilege.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. Government House Leader has a point of order.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, the member for Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte today raised a question that had been raised yesterday by the leader of the Liberal party, who asked a question about a newspaper story respecting a comment made outside the House by the Minister of the Environment.
I merely want to acquaint the House with the fact that Beauchesne's fifth edition, section 359(10) says:
A question ought not to refer to a statement made outside the
House by a Minister.
Based on that citation, the questions yesterday and the question today are out of order, Mr. Speaker.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same point of order. I will bring the minister up to date. There is a sixth edition, Parliamentary Rules and Forms, Fraser, Dawson, Holtby publishers, Beauchesne's.


Brian Vincent Tobin: He needs to be brought up to date.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: I shall read Citation 410:
In 1986 the Speaker put forth further views in light of more
recent conditions and precedents. It was observed that:
(1)	Television has made a marked impact on Parliament and public perception thereof;
(2)	While some previous guidelines remain valid others have fallen into disuse, e.g. that it is out of order to ask about matters reported

April 10, 1990
Privilege
in the media or statements by Ministers outside the House or "certain questions regarding government policy".
That, Mr. Speaker, I'll repeat:
(2) While some previous guidelines remain valid others have fallen into disuse, e.g. that it is out of order to ask about matters reported in the media or statements - .
Mr. Speaker, that has been ruled out of order a long time ago and it is now in order to quote ministers when they say things outside this House.


Harvie Andre: The lead question for the Liberal party today was GST. Let me read section 409(12) of Beau-chesne's sixth edition:
Questions should not anticipate a debate scheduled for the day, but
should be reserved for the debate.
The debate scheduled for today is on GST. The questions by the leader were out of order.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte.


PRIVILEGE
Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, earlier I gave notice to the Minister of the Environment, who I suspect passed the information along to the Government House Leader, that I wanted to raise a question of privilege, which the Government House Leader has now tried to anticipate.
Mr. Speaker, during the course of Question Period the Deputy Prime Minister suggested that comments I had made in framing my question in fact were a misrepresentation of the words of the Minister of the Environment, or did not fully give credence to the words of the Minister of the Environment.
Perhaps in a different atmosphere than has prevailed and has been exemplified by the government House leader in the last few minutes, I am prepared, if I in any way have misrepresented the words of an hon. member and an hon. minister of a national government in this place, to withdraw anything I may have said. I am not prepared to accept a claim by the Deputy Prime Minister that I deliberately misrepresented anybody.
It would be most helpful, and a great opportunity, were the minister in question to rise in his place and tell us precisely what he meant by those remarks, because I am prepared to acknowledge and accept his apology or his explanation now. This is his opportunity.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member has made a statement. I am not sure it is a question of privilege. If in fact his point of of order is that he was referred to in an unparliamentary way, perhaps I could look at the "blues" and if that is so, I can come back to the House. But I think that is the end of the issue unless I find something there.
The hon. member, on the same point of order?


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, I can only assume from the silence in this place-


Harvie Andre: Point of order!


Brian Vincent Tobin: -that my words stand and that the minister indeed made those comments and should withdraw-


Mr. Speaker:: Order.


Harvie Andre: Point of order! Order!


Robert Daniel Nault: Storm the chair again.


Brian Vincent Tobin: He hasn't got the backbone to get up on his hind legs and clarify. He hides behind the Prime Minister's skirts.


Mr. Speaker:: I did not hear what the hon. member for Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte said because of the shouting. I want to hear it.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, do you want to hear what I
said?


Mr. Speaker:: Yes.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, I said that the Minister of the Environment in my judgment, given this opportunity to clarify the issue, has no backbone and is a coward.


Some Hon. Members:: Shame!


Harvie Andre: Withdraw.


Lucien Bouchard: Just go outside. Come outside the room and we will settle that outside. Nobody calls me a coward.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker-


Harvie Andre: Sit down, you little jerk.
April 10, 1990


Some Hon. Members:: Order.


Mr. Arseneault:: You started it, Elarvie.


Lucien Bouchard: I will never accept that.


Mr. Speaker:: Orders of the Day.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, I demand-I demand-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An Hon. Member:: Charge the chair.


Mr. Speaker:: I am going to advise the hon. House leader, and I want him to listen. I want him to get his temper under control.


Harvie Andre: I have my temper under control.


Lucien Bouchard: Question of privilege, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: I want to advise the hon. House Leader of this. I am going to deal with this in my own way and I will come back to the House if it is necessary. In the meantime I am calling Orders of the Day. The hon. House Leader.


Harvie Andre: The Minister of the Environment was slandered in the House-


Mr. Speaker:: I am calling Orders of the Day. I will deal with it in my own way.
The hon. minister.


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I would first of all like to clarify the substantive issue in this debate and then go on to correct something I find unacceptable. As for the issue in debate, the statements reported in the newspapers on the weekend and attributed to me are all accurate. If I am asked to repeat them here or elsewhere, I shall gladly do so, because they arise from the deep indignation all Quebecers feel with the attitude of Premier Wells of Newfoundland, who had his legislature tear up one of its own decisions, and who repudiated his predecessor's signature. I will not allow Quebec to be held guilty for wanting to maintain the Meech Lake Accord, which was approved by this House.
Privilege
Mr. Speaker, I would not say what I think of the behaviour of all those who are on their feet feigning indignation. I will be polite, which the hon. member who just spoke was not. I do not wish to impute to him feelings and attitudes that I find reprehensible. And with that, Mr. Speaker, I leave it to you to set the record straight and to restore my honour. But I want to be sure that no one can ever say of me what was just said here.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Blais:: Apologize first.


Shirley Maheu: Just a minute.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, given that the Minister of the Environment has now categorically stood in his place and indicated that he does not withdraw the words uttered by him the other day, and that he is prepared to repeat the words uttered by him the other day, I withdraw the accusation that the minister is a coward.
He is certainly not a coward, but he has clearly told us that he is not fit for national office.


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I was elected as the member for the Lac-Saint-Jean riding. For those who do not know where it is, it is in Quebec. I have been sent here with fellow federal members from Quebec to represent the interests of Quebec within the national government.
We did that, believing that the Meech Lake Accord would be ratified and would be passed. We did that because we believed that people in Canada would honour the signatures of the premiers who signed the Accord in June two years ago.
So I consider myself perfectly fit to assume national responsibilities, and be a Quebecer at the same time.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member has withdrawn the offending words. He said other words that are not necessarily parliamentary. I am moving to orders of the day.
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GOVERNMENT ORDERS

[Stage Direction]
April 10, 1990

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of motion of Mr. Wilson (Etobicoke Centre) that Bill C-62, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act, the Criminal Code, the Customs Act, the Customs Tariff, the Excise Act, the Income Tax Act, the Statistics Act and the Tax Court of Canada Act, be read the third time and passed.
Mr. Speaker:: Before moving on, I wonder if both the hon. member for Gloucester and the hon. member for Dartmouth could see me in my Chambers on the matter that was raised yesterday.
The hon. member for Gloucester has the floor and I would not want to interrupt that, but perhaps at a time convenient to both of them they could come and see me.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, I would be more than pleased to meet with Your Honour at a time appropriate and convenient to us all.
To continue, Mr. Speaker, the whole question of dealing with Bill C-62 is a very arduous one. From the very outset the tone was set for the debate in the 1988 election. As we have discussed many times in the past year and half, the credibility of the government is fundamental to whether or not Canadians believe that the goods and services tax is an acceptable proposal.
I think it is fair to say that this proposal did not get off to a very good start when the Minister of Finance characterized our concern about it during the 1988 election campaign by describing the Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada as a liar and a coward. We know how abhorrent those terms are in this House. We have just had some indication of that in the kinds of words that have been uttered back and forth across the floor in this place in the last few minutes.
What is extremely critical for Canadians to recognize is the fact that the government is now telling Canadians that this is the only way to proceed in several areas of major concern that it has identified. The government has told us that the existing federal sales tax is so badly
flawed that there is no alternative but the goods and services tax.
In 1984, I believe that most Canadians were prepared to give the Minister of Finance the benefit of the doubt, when he stated that he was going to involve himself and his government in a major reform of the tax system in this country. Going back again to the legislation, the draft legislation and the technical documents that were brought forward, it is hard to understand where we went astray.
There were a number of aspects to tax reform when the government began the process in 1984. It involved reform of the tax system as it applied to corporate taxes and also for personal taxation. It was our impression and I believe that of Canadians that this was going to come together as a package.
What is actually taking place is that we are asked to deal with this legislation at this time, after a general election, during which time, the Minister of Finance was describing the Leader of the Liberal Party in very unflattering terms. The government at that point was telling Canadians that there would have to be a rate for a national sales tax that would be lower in every province than the existing federal and provincial sales taxes taken together.
Those are the kinds of statements that were made and on which I believe people depended. We are now being told that the goods and services tax was an issue in the 1988 election, and that Canadians have given this government a mandate to deal with the reform of the system by imposing the goods and services tax. Surely, we are beginning to recognize that there is nothing in the goods and services tax proposal, Bill C-62, that remotely resembles what was either promised in 1984 as part of tax reform, or what was talked about during the 1988 election campaign.
I repeat. The Minister of Finance said, and I quote:
The rate of the new national sales tax would be lower in every
province than the existing federal and provincial taxes taken
together.
Except for Alberta, which does not have a provincial sales tax, the imposition of the federal sales tax not only will not result in what that commitment undertook but the provincial sales taxes will be hiked because it is imposed on top of the federal sales tax. So without the provincial governments doing a single thing, we are faced with a situation where not only was this commitment not
April 10, 1990

recognized and adhered to, provincial government sales taxes will be increased because of the cascading effect.
I listen often to members of the government talking about alternatives, and that you have to put forward alternatives. Let us call a spade a spade. The government has had since 1984 to put forward an alternative to the federal sales tax. It has come up with a tax that 80 per cent of Canadians are opposed to.
I want to be very clear that there are groups which have consistently opposed the federal sales tax. They are convinced, as are many Canadians, of the difficulties inherent in the federal sales tax, such as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, at its annual meeting in Saint John, New Brunswick, last fall stated that as bad as the federal sales tax is, unless it was changed and basic requirements and conditions for change were made, then the government should stick with the federal sales tax until it can get this proposal put together properly to let real tax reform take place.
I want to make sure that Canadians understand that the red herring we are being given of there being no alternative, is just that. The Chamber of Commerce-I do not want to misrepresent its position-do believe that the FST should be replaced. It even believes in the principle of the goods and services tax which we in the Liberal party oppose, but the Chamber of Commerce, having taken that position over a number of years, have said to the government and the Standing Committee on Finance as recently as this year, that with the existing proposal, it would recommend to every member of the House of Commons that they vote against the goods and services tax, Bill C-62.
How can we possibly accept the approach of the government members that everyone who is opposed to the goods and services tax is opposed to it either for partisan or political reasons, or doesn't understand it? That was the attitude taken last fall when the goods and services tax was being considered by the Standing Committee on Finance and we travelled across the country.
We went into Alberta and Albertans were told by the standing committee chairman that they were so uninformed about the tax-the actual word used was so
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"ignorant" about the tax-that grade five teachers from Ontario should be sent west to educate westerners on the goods and services tax. I think it was a monumental mistake for the chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance to say that because those Albertans who perhaps did not understand the tax have taken up the issue and have learned enough about it to make sure that they know they are totally opposed to it.
But what particularly irritated Albertans was the cavalier attitude taken by members of the government toward the serious reservations put forward by the premier of Alberta, the hon. Mr. Getty, and his treasurer, the hon. Mr. Johnston.
This is not unheard of but it is extremely unusual in this country to have the Conservative premier of Alberta and the Conservative treasurer of Alberta being told implicitly by government members that they do not understand, that their opposition to the goods and services tax is ill-founded.
Beyond that, to put a little salt in the wound, government members have stated, the Minister of Finance and officials of his department have also said, that Alberta will be better off than any other province in Canada after the imposition of the GST. Imagine the kind of guff that the government is trying to peddle in Alberta.
Here is a government that commissioned its own study. The Government of Alberta commissioned a study released before the end of the year, in which it clearly set out its position that the goods and services tax would have a very negative and serious effect on Alberta. It would cause problems in a number of areas, such as the service industries, the resource-based industries, the tourist industry and will affect disposable income.
So, Mr. Speaker, here we have this very unusual situation of us, to your left, being told by government members, that we do not understand the tax, and that we are doing it because we are exploiting-to quote the Minister of State for Finance-"for political purposes" the fears of people by setting out the GST as a terrible burden on Canadians.
Following a study commissioned by the government of Alberta, and paid for by the taxpayers of Alberta, the premier and treasurer of Alberta have said that the goods and services tax will be a terrible burden on

April 10, 1990
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economic activity and the social well-being of the people of Alberta.
The basic question is, who are we to believe? I want to be very clear on this. I have been to Alberta more than once. Everywhere I go people I meet are aware that I am a Liberal. I would not be offended, and I mean this, to be in Alberta and to have people say: "Well, you know Doug Young from northern New Brunswick, a little town called Tracadie, is out here telling us that the goods and services tax is a bad thing for us". They probably would not be very upset with the fact that I am from Tracadie, but they would be very upset with the fact that I am a Liberal. It is a fact of life in Alberta that it can cause you some grief in terms of credibility to go out and tell people that you are a Liberal representing this party and that you come from the east.
If I were the one who was putting forward this premise, I could accept that people would have some reservations. On the weekend the Premier of Alberta, in convention, faced extremely serious questions about the future of this country. I do not want in this place at this time to get into that. I think Canadians from coast to coast were proud of the fact that Albertans and their government stood up for Canada. Surely, I am proud of that.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


M. Douglas Young: At the same time the Government of Alberta was faced with having to deal with its colleagues in Ottawa imposing a goods and services tax. I do not want to focus entirely on Alberta. I use it because it best exemplifies the dichotomy that exists in this country from the point of view of Conservatives. Here you are with a party in government, a party which has been there for a long time with Mr. Getty and his predecessor Premier Lougheed, in full open convention dealing with major national issues such as national unity and the economy with the leadership of the premier having been reaffirmed unequivocally, and we have people who have the audacity to say in this place and outside of it that Liberals and members of the New Democratic Party oppose the goods and services tax for partisan reasons.
Canadians have to understand that if Premier Getty and Treasurer Johnston oppose the goods and services
tax, surely it cannot be for partisan reasons. Surely it must be because they understand better than anyone what the impact will be on the economy of their province.
I ask Canadians as we continue dealing with what this government wants to do to them with respect to the imposition of the GST to remember not to question the motives of those who point out the difficulties with the goods and services tax, but to question the motives of those who insist that they have seen the light and that their view of the affair is the only one to take and if you do not take it there is something wrong with you. Never argue it on merit. Always try to colour it and play it with smoke and mirrors. It is revenue neutral, but it is going to be a deficit reduction tool. Even I am boggled at times when I start to think about the way the Tories approach Bill C-62, because it does get very convoluted.
Going back to the question of alternatives Canadians have to understand that the Alberta government put forward in its study a clear process that it believes should be followed.
First, it insisted that there had to be meaningful tax reform. That is a situation that I believe we must address when we are talking about the goods and services tax. There is a feeling in the country now that the FST has to go, and surely it should go at an appropriate time when an appropriate tax package is put together. The Government of Alberta in rejecting the goods and services tax did not rush out and say: "This is what we should do specifically". What it said was: "We should have tax reform based on consultation".
I think that that is the key. Let us look at what has happened in Canada in the last four or five years. We have had over 30 tax hikes. We have had significant change, as the last budget indicated, on how Canadians will be able to finance social programs at the provincial and municipal level. The federal government is moving unilaterally in a number of sectors like, for example, with this goods and services tax.
About one year ago in April all the ministers of finance from across the 10 provinces, the Northwest Territories and Yukon were here with the Minister of Finance for the Government of Canada. They undertook, as we understood it at that time, to consult on how
April 10, 1990

we could as a nation go about implementing a national sales tax. The finance ministers then left.
My information is that that is the one and only time there were political discussions about a national sales tax. There had been some preliminary meetings at the officials' level, but this was the first time it was raised in a formal context at the ministerial level.
Within two weeks of that meeting here in Ottawa, the Minister of Finance for Canada unilaterally announced that the Government of Canada was proceeding with the goods and services tax. That repudiated a basic element of what the government had said all along: that it would be integrated, that it would be fair and that the final amount would probably be less than existing provincial sales taxes because the base would be changed.
The whole problem with the goods and services tax is something the government does not seem to understand. I do not think any number of ads could ever overcome that. The people of Canada do not believe the government when it says that it is going to be fair, simple and good especially for those with low incomes.
Can anyone in this country imagine, under any circumstances other than a national emergency like war, famine or something of that nature, a coalition as broad as what has developed around the opposition to the GST? I do not think that we can overstate the case. Canadians from every walk of life, from every part of the country, have come together and said that this is not going to work.
Among those people is small business, and I think it is important to recognize specific areas of concern. Over the years, again because Canadians are becoming extremely well informed about what goes on in our political system, I think that it would be fair to say that John Bulloch, the president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, has not been one of the more outspoken or consistent supporters of the Liberal Party of Canada. Mr. Bulloch has mounted major offensives on behalf of his membership against what they consider to be unacceptable tax economic activity on the part of the government.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business represents 70,000 to 80,000 small and medium sized businesses in this country. From the very outset it has
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consistently opposed the goods and services tax proposal that is before us.
Let us not mince words: the CFIB has said that in principle the goods and services tax approach is one that it could live with, but there were many, many factors that it did not agree with. Among those was the fact that there was a commitment on the part of the government when it talked about tax reform that the goods and services tax would be simple. The response of the small business community in this country to the suggestion that the proposal we have before us is simple is probably best illustrated by how it entitled its response to the goods and services tax. It called it "A Nightmare on Main Street".
Again, we are talking about John Bulloch, the president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. This is not a Liberal dominated organization of some kind taking a partisan position on a tax issue for political advantage.
What the government has said, and even what officials of the Department of Finance have said, is that small business in this country does not understand the goods and services tax. It does not realize just how good the goods and services tax will be for it and for the economy. There is a limit to how much condescension people can accept. Here are men and women, struggling every day for years and years. They know their businesses better than anybody. I know some of my friends opposite would say: "Yes, and they had tough times in the late seventies and early eighties". That is right, many of the small businesses had tough times then, which is why they are so sensitive to anything which is going to cause them grief. Many of them have been through it before.
Here are people who have survived high interest rates, difficult times, downturns in the economy and a full recession who are saying that this measure is worse than anything that they have ever gone through. They do not say that lightly because they know they will be challenged. The challenge has been such that no one has wanted to diffuse it.
As recently as a couple of weeks ago Mr. Bulloch was in touch with the government again, begging to meet with the Minister of Finance who refused to meet him, not only on the goods and services tax. You will recall, Mr. Speaker, in the hey-days of tax reform and the conciliatory approach to government that this group of people allegedly practise, that there used to be pre-budget consultation. People like John Bulloch and the

April 10, 1990
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Canadian Federation of Independent Business were called in: "Come on in, John. Let's sit down and have a chat about what direction this country is going in, what kind of budget proposals we think we might want to put forward. What kind of suggestions do you have for us?" This year: "Bulloch, you stay in Toronto." "Small business, we do not want to hear from you, not even in the budget consultation, never mind the GST."
How far should the ordinary Canadian go in believing the government's contention that if you understand it, then you will support it? The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is a very sophisticated operation. It has looked into this in great detail. For months and months and months it told us in all kinds of ways. It had polls taken of its membership, which it does on a regular basis. It interviewed people in various segments of small business to find out how the GST would impact on the different kinds of small businesses, and they said: "This is going to be a nightmare on Main Street." But the government said: "You just do not understand it."
We talked about the nightmare that small business would have to administer. These are people who should understand it. We have had a hard time deciding what are biscuits, muffins, cakes, chocolate bars, wafers and all the rest of it, but it goes far beyond that. Take the corner store, for example. The corner store in a way in people's minds has become the old general store of years ago in the country where that one store sort of served everybody's needs from equipment for the farm to clothing, to the necessities of life, food and patent medicines and so forth.
The corner store in a way in many areas of this country has taken on that kind of aura. It is the mom and pop operation. People are working hard all hours of the day and night, seven days a week and so forth.
Rather than deal in the abstract, let's just walk into that store. There is a young lady working there on a Sunday afternoon, probably the daughter of the owner or the daughter of a friend of the owner. Certainly she is somebody from just down the street, not from out of town. She has not graduated from the Harvard School of Business or anything of that nature.
This person is going to be asked to deal with all the items in that store. Corner stores now carry a vast variety of items similar in so many ways to what we had 50 years or 100 years ago in the general store; different but similar. Instead of having equipment for the farm maybe there are videos for rent. They will still have the odd bit of patent medicines, aspirins and that kind of thing. They will have a microwave as opposed to the old stove that people sat around. Out of that microwave comes the kaiser roll and a slice of ham and a piece of cheese.
Do you know what happens, Mr. Speaker? That young person standing at the cash register has to decide on some very important stuff. If that person is fortunate and has a member of Parliament who took home the simple tax law to them, this is what she could have as reading material sitting up around the cash register. She could say: "Let's take a look at this, because there must be an answer to my problem in here."
This is what has been put together. I got rid of a lot of the stuff that we dealt with this morning. This is just starting with the draft legislation that we got in October 1989. These are not the technical documents that we got in August 1989. We have already dealt with that.
Mr. Speaker, picture this person sitting there or standing there, having to deal with the myriad items that are in that store. There is ice cream in the store. That person will have to remember: "Ice cream, if it is in a cone I handle it one way, but if it is in the deep freeze and it is in a container then that is another way. Then I have that microwave to worry about because McCain's makes pizzas." I hope you will not mind, Mr. Speaker, if I put a little plug in for a good New Brunswick business. So now you have a situation where there is a McCain's pizza, and if you take that pizza out of that comer store and take it home and put it in your microwave, then that is okay. The young lady has to know how to charge you for that.
But if the young lady is industrious and her dad and mom have said: "Look, why send him down to Pizza-Pizza when we can do that here. Let's cut that McCain pizza in four pieces and as people come in you can fire it into the microwave and we will sell it by the slice". But that is a different kind of thing, and it has to be paid for.
April 10, 1990

I could go on literally for hours. Everybody who came before us kept setting out specific examples of some things that are taxed provincially but are not taxed federally; some things that are taxed federally but are not taxed provincially; some things are taxed at both levels; and other things are not taxed at all.
I am coming to the problem that John Bulloch and small businesses have had in convincing the government that they understand their problems far better than the government recognizes the kind of mess it is creating for them.
You would think that next to that young lady there would be a cash register. You can go into places now such as a major food retailer and there are all kinds of sounds that we would not have heard in a general store 50 or 100 years ago-little beep-beep-beeps as the electronic gadgets check over the markings on all kinds of products and decide how much you are going to pay for them.
In the large operations they will have to calculate to some extent how they are going to apply the goods and services tax. Is it going to be on single servings? Is it going to be on a small can of soup or just a big can of soup because a small can of soup can be heated there whereas the large can soup most likely will be taken home? There are lunch counters in these large food outlets.
But back at the corner store we have the young lady trying to figure out how she is going to do this. "Well", you say, "there is no problem. Let's get her a cash register". All one has to do in this day of technological progress is program it. Of course that's no problem. How many different kinds of items would there be in a corner store? I suppose it would depend if the corner store is in a small rural area of Canada, or if it is a Mac's Milk, a Green Gables, or one of the larger operations in one of the metropolitan areas. I do not know. Would there be a thousand items? Five hundred? Five thousand? When the price changes who programs it? Who goes in and takes care of all this? Is it the girl sitting there helping out her parents on the weekend? Is it the mother, the father? How is this all done by small business? Is there some magical trick to pricing that allows for the complexity of Canada being the only country in the world with two levels of consumer taxation.
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The people who have had to address that are in the business of trying to provide that young person with an answer to her problem. They have cash registers, point-of-sale equipment. You would think this is a heck of a windfall for them. If you were in the business you would be saying: "Gosh, they must really be looking forward to this". However, they realize that they are dealing with people on very limited incomes in terms of profit margins. The competition is fierce, the hours are long, and the return is very limited. But they are also faced with real limitations in terms of technology.
Sweda Canada Inc. manufactures 35 different models of point-of-sale equipment that it supplies to Canadian retailers. It has written letters two and three pages long explaining just how difficult this is going to be. This is not somebody with an abacus or pocket calculator. We are talking about sophisticated companies dealing on a world-wide basis with point-of-sale equipment.
Mr. Speaker, can I for the record read to the House a letter I received on March 30 from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business telling us that its consultations with Sweda had this result:
Dear Mr. Young:
Information received from the cash register industry confirms our position that the goods and services tax should not be implemented until agreement can be reached with the provinces on a harmonized sales tax system.
The CFIB understands what is needed to reduce the administrative nightmare.
The attached material produced by our research department and a letter written by Peter S. Boyle, President of Sweda Canada Inc., confirm that the industry would not be able to meet the demand for new equipment or the conversion of existing equipment in less than a year after all the rules and regulations pertaining to the GST and the nine provincial sales tax systems have been finalized. To proceed with the proposed two-tier GST sales tax system will cause chaos at the cash register and wide-spread consumer confusion.
We urge you to use all of your influence and efforts to prevent this ill-conceived tax from being implemented.
The letter is signed by John Bulloch.
That is not very ambiguous. What he is saying is that it cannot be done efficiently.
As my colleagues will recognize, when the Auditor General came before the committee he raised very serious concerns about the government being able to put a system in place that could effectively and efficiently administer and collect the goods and services tax. He

In his budget the Minister of Finance says that he expects this year that the interest rate will be at 11.1 per cent. We are just barely into the year now but the same Minister of Finance, who had a different audience when he released his budget on February 20, told Canadians that everything in the budget was based on the premise that the interest rate over the year will average 11.1 per cent. He said that that was achievable and that Canadians should be confident.
As a matter of fact, he did not stop there. This year he was extremely confident. Last year, in the budget of 1989, he told us that by the end of 1989 and the beginning of 1990 interest rates would be around 10 per cent. You know, Mr. Speaker, how well we did with that.
This year, the minister very confidently predicted that by next year the rate would be down to 9 per cent. This is why Canadians have enormous difficulty believing that the goods and services tax that is being proposed is going to be good for them because nothing that has been suggested has come to pass.
You may recall, Mr. Speaker, that the Minister of Finance was very confident about a number of other things. He was predicting in his five-year budget and economic recovery plan in 1985 that our deficit would be down below $20 billion. Of course, we have had two increases in the deficit in the last two years. The government worked at it for a while and then a thing called an election came along. That sort of threw the plan off.
In 1989, the average interest rate was 12.2 per cent. The minister had said it would be around 10 per cent. The projection for 1990 was 11.1 per cent. You might want to put three or four points on that if you are going to reflect what most economists and most analysts in Canada believe.
Here is the real hook, Mr. Speaker. In 1991, with inflation being bumped up by the GST by at least 1.25 per cent, according to his own figures, the Minister of Finance is predicting that the interest rate will be down to 9.5 per cent. Well, I have some swampland in Florida I want to sell tomorrow to the Minister of Finance at interest rates somewhat above 9.5 though, because even at that I could not make a buck.
If we are serious in trying to deal with how Canadians will cope with this tax and why members opposite should vote against the tax, then let us look at problems from a
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cash flow point of view for small business. Small business does not have the capacity or the lines of credit that large manufacturing plants do. We know that the FST caused problems for 75,000 manufacturers. What is going to happen with small business? They are involved with things such as the 21 days, input credits, paperwork, getting their money back, writing this off, dealing with a non-profit organization, is it 50 per cent, and dealing with goods across the board.
For example, when ice cream is manufactured, how much of it is going to go into ice cream cones and how much of it is going to go into tubs. One could say it does not make any difference because they will not be paying the goods and services tax anymore. That is right. It is quite a break for the manufacturer of ice cream. However, once it gets to the comer store, it is a big headache. The headache is taken away from the manufacturer who is going to supply 500 corner stores and the problem is put on mom and dad and the people who are trying to eke out a living.
I talked about the hidden costs. In most small businesses the margin of profit is very narrow. After the people who are usually self-employed take reasonable and, in many instances, very minimal salaries out, there is very little money left to reinvest, maintain inventory, and upgrade. The compliance costs are estimated by the CFIB at being at $1,200, $1,300 and $1,400 a year on average. What does that do to already shrinking margins of profit?
We believe that, had the government listened to the people who came before the Standing Committee on Finance and had the Conservative members sitting on that committee listened, this is what they would have heard. They would have heard many people say that they accepted the principle of a goods and services tax. There is no doubt about that. Many people who came before the committee representing organizations and groups said, yes, they could live with the goods and services tax, but there was this problem, that problem and the other problem and they set out a litany of complaints. They said: "If you cannot do these things, it is going to be disastrous for us."
I am not exaggerating. All the briefs and the comments made by the 300 or so witnesses that we actually heard, as well as the hundreds of briefs that came in from people who did not get to appear before the committee, laid end to end would never, ever fill the bill. Without exception, everybody who came along had all

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kinds of complaints, suggestions, concerns, fears, and problems of every nature and description.
There was one thing they understood, and this was terrifying and I can understand why members opposite will feel that they have to vote with the government on this. Even sophisticated, strong and well-represented organizations believed the government would drive the GST through no matter what. They came in with an olive branch. If the truth were known, many of those people did not support the GST at all in any way, shape or form. They thought they might get a break if they came and said: "Look, we know you are going to do this anyway." It is the old story: If I am going to get strapped or struck with a whip or a bat, or anything else, and I know it is inevitable, I am going to try to negotiate it down to as few bashes as possible. There was this very sorry spectacle of people coming in and saying: Look, we don't want anybody to get the wrong impression. We think the government has to do this and it has to be done, but could you help me out?" This went on and on. There was not any great reason for people to be concerned about the fact that they were going to be apologetic and they were going to be looking for ways out.
As you well know, Mr. Speaker, we have been through the documents of August, 1989 when the technical documents were brought forward. It was a very large document and then a subsequent document to explain it. Then, all kinds of pamphlets came out and told us how to try to figure this whole deal out. In October, out came draft legislation because the original documents were technical documents. This is the draft legislation that the government brought forward after about five years of being in office. It provided us with this and said to take a look at it and go across the country.
The Standing Committee on Finance then sat in hearings across the country and produced these two documents. Generally speaking, this is what Conservative members found to be unacceptable or should be corrected during those hearings. The New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party filed minority reports dealing with suggestions on how real tax reform might take place.


Mr. Dorin:: What was your alternative?


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member from Edmonton asks about the Liberal alternative and I want to take a moment because I think that that is a very fair question. I want to quote from two sources as to the alternative.
First, I will quote from the study prepared by the Government of Alberta, commissioned by Premier Don Getty and the Treasurer Dick Johnston, wherein it states without equivocation that it is opposed to the goods and services tax. It suggests, first, that meaningful tax reform take place in consultation with the provinces. I was struck by the common sense being exhibited by the Conservative Premier of Alberta, and particularly his treasurer.
The hon. member from Edmonton will recall well the meeting we had in Edmonton and the wonderful reception that was provided for members of the Standing Committee on Finance by the Government of Alberta at Government House in Edmonton. On that occasion I was absolutely enthralled by the lucid exposition of the problems of Alberta put forward by the Treasurer, the Hon. Mr. Johnston. I was so excited by his approach where he indicated clearly, based on their information, that Alberta would suffer so terribly under the goods and services tax that we took it upon ourselves as Liberals to learn from what the Treasurer of Alberta and the Premier had done in terms of their work on their report. We listened to the Mayor of Vancouver, His Worship Mayor Campbell, in his presentation before the Standing Committee on Finance in Vancouver. I know that the hon. member from Edmonton was present at that hearing as well. The Liberal alternative could be summarized as being based very, very much on the very thoughtful suggestions made by the Premier and the Treasurer of Alberta and the Mayor of Vancouver.
In our minority report, we indicated that tax reform was certainly very, very important and that meaningful and massive tax reform should be based on principles. There were a lot of goods thoughts put forward. Because the original premise set out in the documents that were put forward by the Minister of Finance in how the goods and services tax, the value added tax, or whatever form that tax took, would have to be based on certain principles, we compiled and distilled the best ideas from all. This is what we came up with. We said this in our minority report:
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Acknowledging that overall tax reform will be a complex and delicate process-
God knows that that is true, Mr. Speaker, because the Conservative government after five and half years has come forward with a process that has 80 per cent of the Canadian people against it.
-	it is important for Liberals to make clear the principles upon which tax reform should be based.
These are the principles on which we would base our tax reform, and they are taken nearly verbatim from the premises put forward by the Minister of Finance in a number of documents relating to his own tax reform proposals. Our report continues:
1.	Fairness-A Tax System Based on the Ability to Pay
The Liberal Party has always stood for and defended a fair and progressive tax system. Reform must respect the principle that the burden of paying taxes should be based on the ability to pay.
That would be the very first principle that we would have to respect. The report goes on, and this will sound very familiar to the member from Edmonton:
2.	Simplicity
Tax reform must be designed to make the tax system easier for Canadians to understand and thus ensure compliance.
Compliance is a major problem with the existing federal sales tax and we listened carefully to Canadians who said that. So we said we have to make sure that the tax system allows for compliance. We went on to say:
Voluntary compliance has always been the foundation of our tax system. But -
-we questioned and I think rightfully so-
-	for how long will Canadians continue to comply voluntarily with a system that is beyond comprehension -
We recognize that the FST did have those problems, but we were not positive that this kind of tax reform that was called simple would really meet that test.
Obviously, again relying on the very valid points made by the Minister of Finance when he first began this adventure of tax reform, our third principle was integration. This is what we said in the Liberal minority report from the Standing Committee on Finance:
Sales tax reform cannot be undertaken independent of income tax reform, corporate tax reform, social welfare reform or independently of the other levels of government. Canada is in need of an overall tax reform that encompasses all forms of taxation and all levels of government. An integrated tax reform must recognize
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that while there are several levels of government in Canada, they will all look to the same person to pay their bills-the taxpayer.
That is as accurate a reflection as we could arrive at to put into words what had been expressed to us, particularly by the Treasurer of Alberta, the Hon. Dick Johnston and the Mayor of Vancouver, His Worship Mayor Campbell. They both expressed the fear of what is happening to our system. The federal government encroaches on provincial jurisdiction and makes it more difficult for provincial jurisdictions to be flexible enough to be able to respond to the needs of their own government administration, apparatus and programs.
Very fundamental to the whole discussion was what was happening to municipalities and how they were being left totally out of the equation. As the federal government plays its tax games, and the provincial governments play their tax games, all of a sudden, people who for centuries have depended on real property taxes were being squeezed out. I thought that was the most interesting point that was made in Vancouver by Mayor Campbell.
Going back to the principles put forward by the Minister of Finance when the Conservative government embarked on its tax reform program, the fourth element that we addressed in our minority report was visibility. The Liberal minority report said this:
Canadian taxpayers have a right to know what taxes they are paying. Any reform of the tax system should be designed to help Canadians understand exactly how much and to which level of government they are paying their taxes.
That question of visibility was addressed by practically everyone who came before us. Because of the existing federal sales tax, people were very concerned. I want to come back to the question of visibility because I am very upset that in the government document, the question of visibility is not addressed in Bill C-62 to the extent that Canadians expected it would be.
The whole idea of visibility was seen by many Canadians as being a deterrent to free-spending governments, which would just raise the tax, get the money it needs at election time for promises, spend it foolishly, and then all of a sudden be in extremely difficult times. Above and beyond the discussion on goods and services tax, tax fairness, and that kind of thing, the recurrent theme throughout all of the hearings on the goods and services tax across the country and here in Ottawa, was

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Canadians talking about the terrible burden of the deficit and debt.
The fifth principle, and this is the last one, dealt with revenue neutrality. This again was taken directly from the principles put forward by the Minister of Finance as the Conservative government began its process of tax reform. The report states:
Tax reform should not be a smoke-screen for raising taxes. Rather, tax reform should be undertaken with the goal of improving the tax system.
-and making it more fair.
If a flawed tax can be replaced with a better tax, then it should be done in a way that does not raise the revenues of the government. In this way the new tax would be less likely to affect the economy adversely and Canadians would be better able to judge whether the new tax is working fairly and effectively.
One of the reasons for bringing this particular idea forward is that the government had indicated that it was a fundamental part of its initial program. That is what it had committed to, but had not followed through on. Even more telling was the tremendous commitment of the member for Mississauga South to fairness and to openness. He was the first to jump and sound the alarm when the goods and services tax was proposed in the 1988 election. That was first and foremost in our minds as we drafted our minority report. The hon. Member for Mississauga South, the chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance, had clearly seen the tax-grab that was inherent in that proposal put forward during the election campaign by the Minister of Finance.
It is hard to believe but the Member for Mississauga South believed that anywhere from $10 billion to $14 billion would accrue as a windfall to the government if the tax went through at 9 per cent. It was obvious that we had to address the question of revenue neutrality, since the government had said it would do it, and the Member for Mississauga South was so impassioned and articulate in his commitment to the fact that if one is going to do something, say it. If one is going to go for an extra $8 billion, $10 billion or $14 billion, one should not sit back and all of a sudden find it as a windfall, and say: "Oh, my goodness, are we ever lucky! This is the gold at the end
of the GST rainbow." He saw it coming, so we wanted to address it.
In summary, my friend from Edmonton Northwest was very kind in asking the question and that is why I want to address it as completely as I can. In fact, tax reform would have to be based on fairness and simplicity. It would have to be integrated. It would have to be very visible and, of course, it would have to be revenue neutral.
After five and a half years, the government, not having consulted or worked at making sure it came forward with a tax reform package that was acceptable to Canadians, is in this morass of the GST. There is as much unrest as any of us have ever seen with respect to a tax bill in the country. Even John Bulloch's tremendous fight years ago against a budget that we will all remember did not come anywhere near this. There are some parallels.
I remember in this place, not all that long ago, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom told Canadians and members of this place that the free trade deal would be a good deal. We know that there is a great deal of affinity between the Prime Minister of Canada and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. If one wanted to push an analogy right to the limits, I suppose one could say that the Prime Minister of Canada appears to want to duplicate what is going on in the UK with respect to the infamous poll tax. Surely the Prime Minister is not prepared to push Canadians to the wall, but I think one could say that we are going in that direction. Canadians have a great deal of patience, but it is being tested.
We are not into Boston tea parties, particularly, and we all know that in Canada there is perhaps a lack of awareness on people who are not native to this country. I look at the Governor of the Bank of Canada, for example, and I wonder sometimes if he really understands Canadians when he suggests that there should be wage moderation and that we have to have higher unemployment to control inflation, and that we have to have high interest rates. It is one thing to say: "Let them eat bread," but I suspect that many Canadians, having learned that the Governor of the Bank of Canada has just enjoyed wage increases between 20 per cent and 40 per cent over the last three years, might want to eat some "crow" at this stage. That is not the way that we
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normally do things. I would think that Canadians will want to have many opportunities to continue to express their concerns about the goods and services tax, and I am sure they will do that.
I want to discuss the alternative that we believe arises normally out of the principles that we have set forth and on which we would base tax reform. Obviously, the first thing that we would want the government to do is to withdraw the goods and services tax. We think that that is what Canadians want. It is not a question of whether the Liberal party wants it or the New Democratic Party wants it. Canadians are saying: "Look, withdraw the tax. There is a federal sales tax there. You are raising $18.5 billion. That is two and a half times more than you were raising in 1984 when the tax was at 9 per cent. You have moved it from 9 per cent to 13.5 per cent. We know it is there now. It is not as visible as it should be, but there are very few Canadians after all the hooha that has gone on who don't know there is a federal sales tax there."
The Chamber of Commerce says: "Withdraw it." The Canadian Labour Congress says: "Withdraw it." The CFIB says: "Withdraw it." Poor people say: "Withdraw it." Senior citizens say: "Withdraw it." And we believe that that is what should be done. We also believe that we have to have massive, fair, total tax reform. That tax reform has to be predicated on the basis that there is only one taxpayer in Canada. Whether that taxpayer is paying municipal water rates, sidewalk taxes, or property taxes, provincial sales taxes, excise taxes, gasoline taxes, taxes on booze, income taxes, goods and services taxes, federal sales taxes, or tobacco taxes, there is only one taxpayer. We cannot continue to pretend that one government can move, unilaterally, and say it is going to correct its problem by raising taxes, or as this government has done, not only raise taxes and impose new taxes, but shift the burden onto the provinces by forcing them to either reduce services or increase taxes as well.
One of the strangest things I have heard in a long time was a statement made by the Prime Minister today that Canadians will love the GST. It boggles the mind that the Prime Minister would say that, unless he is convinced that the advertising campaign that his government is undertaking will do it.
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We hope that there will be a will in this country at the municipal, provincial and particularly the national level to get involved in some real tax reform and I think we can be terribly creative. My friend, the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood has put forward a tax proposal for a simple and a fair tax that has generated a lot of interest all over the country. Some people will attack it and say, "Is that the Liberal party position?", or there may be some problems with it. That is not the point. It is an alternative that has every right to be considered. Other people have put forward personal expenditure tax proposals, luxury taxes, corporate taxes, wealth taxes, corporate profits being deemed as dividends in the hands of shareholders for tax purposes. There are all kinds of situations that we have to address.
One area that is of particular interest to me and I believe it will become that to many Canadians, is that I am not sure that real property taxes are any longer a measure of a person's capacity to pay. I think they become location taxes. You could have a home, Mr. Speaker, in St. John's, Newfoundland, in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Willowdale and the same house will be very much the same price. There will be some differences because of local costs involved in terms of the people who build the house, the physical labour, but the cost of transporting goods to St. John's, Newfoundland or to Victoria, British Columbia, goods coming out of Toronto or Montreal, will balance out, so the cost of the house itself will be very similar. There may be larger and more expensive homes in Toronto than in Tracadie, but what has evolved in this country is a system where the land beneath the house dictates the price of the house. Where the land is located decides what is the value and the price of the land.
Should we call into question what we have traditionally accepted as the Bible on local taxation and revenue generation for municipalities, real property taxes? Well, that has to be done in the context of tax reform.
For instance, take the case of a widow in Chatham, New Brunswick, who moved into a home with her husband and family 40 or 50 years ago. Her means really have not changed very much, but life has continued on and perhaps she is very comfortable. That house might be worth far more than she ever dreamed it would be worth. However, the only way she can realize that equity

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is to sell it, and then what does she do? People say, yes, but we have to tax it because it is situated in town and we have to get our money out of it.
This has happened with remarkable results in places like Toronto, where people bought homes for $30,000 and $40,000 and are now sitting on real estate that is worth $500,000 and more. For people from other parts of the country, it is difficult to believe how people can buy a home in Vancouver, never mind how they can maintain it and pay taxes, insurance, and so forth.
I do not want to belabour the subject, but I think that when we get into tax reform we will want to look at real property taxes. We will want to look at something that is only now beginning to surface and that is the whole question of water rates.
In Canada we have taken as a given, since we have been here, that we have clean, pure and good water and lots of it. In some municipalities people pay nothing for water. They have water to their door in a system where they pay nothing. In other municipalities it is costing more than $1,000 a year for water for a residence. Is that fair? People have to have water. At one point it was so minimal that it just seemed to be fair that a system for generating revenues for a municipality was arranged where water was part of it.
I do not think that we want to be locked in with old ideas. We have to look at what Dennis Mills has to say about taxation. I think we have to look at what Neil Brooks has to say about taxation. I think we have to look at the Fraser Institute, the C.D. Howe Institute, the Economic Council of Canada, at what Pat Grady, McCormick and all the rest have to say about taxation. We do not want to be, under any circumstances, involved in trying to deal with-


Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I noticed that my colleague from Gloucester noted a couple of minutes ago that he did not want to belabour the point. I simply wanted to request that he contribute to a fair debate in the House of Commons by permitting the leader of our party to make her contribution to this debate.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same point of order. I wanted to say that there has been a kind of cosy
deal here between the government and the New Democratic Party which has deprived members in this Party-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I am listening to the point of order. If the hon. member would come to the point of order, then I will resolve this grievance immediately.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Your Honour, the difficulty seems to be that the member has asked whether or not my colleague is about to finish his speech. I was enjoying his speech very much and I think that the point I was seeking to make was that, because of the sweetheart deal that has been made between the government and the New Democratic Party, we in this Party have been deprived of our opportunity to debate this bill on numerous occasions and my friend-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I do not find that a point of order. I find this a grievance. The hon. member has unlimited time, and I am afraid I am going to have to recognize the hon. member for Gloucester.


M. Douglas Young: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Epp:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on that same point of order. The only point that I would want to make to my hon. friend who just spoke on behalf of the Liberal Party is that there are no cosy deals with this government, with either the Liberal Party or the NDP on GST. It is important for us to get the GST legislation through and let the hon. member speak.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: That is not a point of order either. It is a point of debate and a grievance. The hon. member for Gloucester has the floor.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, on the point of order raised by the hon. minister, I think we would all agree with that, that there are no cosy deals with the government. Anybody who would make a cosy deal with the government at this point would have to be a fool. This is just not the time.
In dealing with Bill C-62,1 think we need to recognize the point that was made by my hon. friend with respect to participation by all members. It goes without saying that, since we began dealing with the goods and services tax, we in the Liberal Party have tried to deal with it in a very forthright and dignified way. We intend to do that
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throughout the remainder of this debate. Canadians have come to understand this fact.
If we are going to deal with tax reform, we are going to have to deal with it on the basis of what people are saying, what people are doing, and how people are presenting the alternatives that they hope Canadians will have to look at at some point.
I want to return to the alternatives. One of the problems with the goods and services tax that many, many people-


Mr. Butland:: Be fair.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, I hear things about alternatives. I will be fair. I will address the concerns of the New Democratic Party because I want to make sure that Canadians understand what is happening with the goods and services tax as it applies to the New Democratic Party.
When we began consideration at the Standing Committee on Finance on this matter, we had to deal with a number of people who wanted to appear before that committee-


Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member for Essex-Windsor on a point of order.


Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, if in fact the speaker wishes to address points dealing with the New Democratic Party, it seems to me he has at least a responsibility to permit New Democrats to speak in this debate.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I do not think I have to listen to any more grievances. I appreciate what the hon. member for Essex-Windsor is saying, but this House has made up its own rules and whence the rules are changed we will be able to look after such problems. The hon. member for Gloucester does have the floor on debate.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to the rules and how they are applied, how they are interpreted and how they affect members of this place whether we are in the House or in the Standing Committee on Finance. One of the things that I was looking forward to as a member of the committee was the presentation that was scheduled on a Monday a few
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weeks ago by the New Democratic Party and a further presentation that was to have been made by the New Brunswick Federation of Labour.
I want to point out that the leader of the New Democratic Party of New Brunswick was here in Ottawa to assist in the presentation of her party. Mr. McCarthy, the president of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour, was here to assist in the presentation. Further, representatives of the Canadian Labour Congress were present in Ottawa and prepared to make presentations to the Standing Committee on Finance. I was looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to those presentations being made, as I am sure were all my colleagues.
Unfortunately we were unable to hear those persons. There was a procedural wrangle. The government became involved in moving motions in retribution for the way the New Democratic Party had handled matters previously when other witnesses were present at the beginning of hearings. This went on, Mr. Speaker, and I am sure that you deplored it as much as I did, for hours and hours and hours. The only redeeming grace in the whole thing was that, thank goodness, the New Democratic Party left its brief with members of the committee as did the New Brunswick Federation of Labour and the Canadian Labour Congress.
What we have today is a situation where I am glad to be able to help out in this way. I can indicate that as the Liberal Party said when we filed our minority report last fall we believe in massive and total tax reform based on the principles that I read today and which have been articulated over and over and over again. I cannot repeat it often enough. Any tax reform has to be based on fairness and simplicity. It has to be integrated into an over-all system respecting provinces and municipalities. It must be visible and it must be revenue neutral.
This was part of the minority report that was filed. From time to time, by various members of the New Democratic Party, the suggestion was made that there was no alternative. Treasurers and ministers of finance across the country at the provincial level were saying: "You have to consult with us. You have to understand what the impact is on us". Mayors, like the mayor of Vancouver said: "You have to understand the burden and the difficulty we are faced with when governments move unilaterally".

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We took all of that into consideration and we said: "The Conservatives have not listened. We are in a terrible mess here." They would not listen. They did not care. We were going across the country. We were listening and we heard and we paid attention. My colleague from Sudbury and various other members of the committee sat down and said: "We have to put this together. We spent all this time listening. We will have to do it".
The New Democratic Party had done the same thing, had gone through the same process. Every now and then, like a sound from the depths, we would hear: "What is your alternative?". We would say that our alternative was to deal with tax reform in a meaningful way based on these fundamental principles that Conservatives and everybody else in the country, I am sure, agree on. The Conservatives had them set out in their documents dealing with their tax reform package. Unfortunately they had not met the test that they had set for themselves.
Then, as I say, thankfully I was able to read the briefs that were brought before the committee on that day. Through all kinds of machinations and tomfoolery that I would never get into, do not want to mention, and hope I never see again, we were unable to hear people who came in from my province of New Brunswick and from Sudbury.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Why?


M. Douglas Young: The only explanation was tit for tat.The Tories were mad because the NDP had acted up and filibustered when other witnesses were before the committee. The New Democratic Party is a nationally recognized party. Where is it in the polls now?


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: They are slipping too.


M. Douglas Young: They are going down with the new leader.


Steven W. Langdon: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.


M. Douglas Young: Here we were with people who were coming in to try to deal with serious measures and we just could not get to listen to them.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member for Essex-Windsor on a point of order.


Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, I hesitate to interrupt this fascinating, absolutely brilliant speech by the member
for Gloucester, but he has suggested that the New Democratic Party has been declining in the public opinion polls. I simply point out to him that the most recent polls in fact show us going up.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member for Gloucester has the floor on debate.


M. Douglas Young: I want to deal with the facts that would have been presented to the Standing Committee on Finance had we been able to hear these people when they travelled from all over the country to Ottawa to be heard.
I refer to the brief presented by the New Brunswick Federation of Labour. It is very important to make these points clear when you are talking about alternatives because the implication has always been that the New Democratic Party has alternatives. I would like you, Mr. Speaker, to listen to this very closely.
The New Brunswick Federation of Labour joins with the trade union movement across Canada in rejecting the GST and demanding a royal commission on taxation.


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: We've had 20 of them.


M. Douglas Young: The minister says that we have had 20. This is the NDP. The New Brunswick Federation of Labour asked that there be a royal commission. This is very interesting stuff.
Here is the New Democratic Party's presentation to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs-


Steven W. Langdon: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member for Essex-Windsor on another point of order.


Steven W. Langdon: I appreciate very much the effort on the part of the Liberal finance critic to put these points on the floor. I would simply ask, especially as he is a member of Parliament from New Brunswick, that he not insult the New Brunswick-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: That is debate. The hon. member for Gloucester has the floor.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, I would like to quote the Canadian Labour Congress and the brief that it presented.


Steven W. Langdon: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.
April 10, 1990


M. Douglas Young: This is what the Canadian Labour Congress had to say: "Today we again urge the government, through this committee, to withdraw the proposed GST and instead launch an independent systematic review of the existing tax system". That sounds good to me; that sounds real good to me.


Steven W. Langdon: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.


M. Douglas Young: The following are the comments made by the New Democratic Party in its brief presented to the Standing Committee on Finance; "The New Democrats would start the process toward a fairer tax-"


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I will recognize the hon. member on a point of order.


Steven W. Langdon: The point of order which I was finishing was that the member had suggested that he would outline the alternatives of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour. He mentioned just one point from the brief and I would urge him, as an MP from that province, to-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: That is not a point of order. It is a point of debate. The hon. member for Gloucester has the floor.


M. Douglas Young: I understand the point being made by the member. I do not blame him for being embarrassed. If the New Democratic Party has a position, why does it want a royal commission? If you have a position, you have a position. The New Democratic Party says in its own brief: "New Democrats would start the process toward a fairer tax system by rolling back the level of the existing sales tax to 1984. Of course this would only be an interim measure, as New Democrats believe the time has come for another royal commission."


Mr. Whittaker:: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, this is the New Democratic Party. It has a position and it wants a royal commission.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I believe there is another point of order by the hon. member for Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt.


John R. (Jack) Whittaker: Mr. Speaker, I know this particular member for Gloucester to be an honourable person. He has spoken of fairness and honesty with respect to
Government Orders
alternatives. I would urge him to wrap up his speech and give the Leader of the New Democratic Party the opportunity of putting some of those alternatives to the House.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member for Gloucester.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, the point I am trying to make is a very simple one. The government has had a lot of difficulty in selling the GST. The New Democratic Party has said over and over again that it wants a royal commission to be able to develop a position. I understand that. There is no problem with that.


Mr. Fisher:: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.


M. Douglas Young: Our position is very clear. We have said over and over again that the only basis for tax reform in this country is to deal with it in a fair and equitable way.


Ron Fisher: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member for Saskatoon-Dundum on a point of order.


Ron Fisher: Mr. Speaker, I take exception to the-


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: That's not a point of order.


Ron Fisher: The member has insinuated that the New Democratic Party somehow brought the CLC and the New Brunswick Federation of Labour-


Some Hon. Members:: Debate.


Ron Fisher: We had their support.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: That is debate. The hon. member for Gloucester has the floor.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: On a personal point of privilege, Mr. Speaker.


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: Personal? What's the difference between that and privilege?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member for Willowdale has a point of privilege.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: Mr. Speaker, I have been in this House for the last 15 minutes listening to the member for Gloucester making very credible points. During that period of time I have counted and there have been 10 interruptions by the NDP on spurious points of order. I feel my ability to carry out my function on behalf of the people of Willowdale is being impaired by the disorderly conduct in this Chamber of those members. I can only

April 10, 1990
Government Orders
suggest that the only discipline appropriate would be to cut them off.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: That is not a point of privilege. It is a point of debate. It is a grievance. The hon. member for Gloucester has a couple of minutes left.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, again in the spirit of fairness, we should make sure that the point of view that would have been expressed at the Standing Committee on Finance on the day in question is heard in this House. It is very simple. I feel very badly that the New Democratic Party does not want to recognize the documents that were brought forward here. This is a presentation by the Canadian Labour Congress to the House of Commons on the goods and services tax-


Murray Dorin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member for Edmonton Northwest on a point of order.


Murray Dorin: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood has put forward a very interesting tax proposal. I am wondering whether the hon. member for Gloucester can respond today and endorse that on behalf of the Liberal Party, and then we could perhaps all agree to go forward.


Some Hon. Members:: Debate.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Edmonton East- Petro-Canada; the hon. member for Halifax-Women's Centres; the hon. member for Chambly-Environment.
It being 4.45 p.m., pursuant to the order made in accordance with the provisions of Standing Order 78 on Thursday, April 5, 1990, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the third reading stage of the bill 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 (Mr. Paproski):: All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Nay.


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


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


Mr. Speaker:: I declare the motion carried.
Bill read the third time and passed.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam.


Ms. Langan:: Mr. Speaker, I was unable to reach the House in time, but had I been here I would have cast my vote with my party against this bill.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being 5.21 o'clock p.m. the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.
On a point of order, the hon. member for Kamloops.


Mr. Riis:: Mr. Speaker, recognizing that we have had an important vote, and recognizing the value of Private Members' Hour which we have cut into by 22 minutes, I wonder if we could have unanimous consent to have the full hour of debate today.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is there unanimous consent?


Some Hon. Members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: No, there is not unanimous consent.


PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS-MOTIONS   SCIENCE WATER SCIENCE RESEARCH INSTITUTES
Mr. Lyle Dean MacWilliam (Okanagan -Shuswap) moved:: That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of developing Water Science Research Institutes in critical watersheds, such institutes 1o be responsible for researching and developing innovative methods of water resource management, including land-based sewage treatment, waste-water recycling and the development of long-term water management plans.

April 10, 1990
Private Members' Business
He said: Mr. Speaker, what I have to say may be a little anti-climactic after such a session, voting on the goods and services legislation, but I think it is an important matter in its own right.
A fundamental global threat is the acceleration of the pressure of human activities on the natural resources and the ecosystems on which life itself depends.
The recent report of the Brundtland Commission stated very bluntly that our fragile planet simply cannot sustain the current destructive industrial practices when its population is expected to double within the next 35 years. That threat is best exposed when we look at the impact of man's activities on the quality of our inland waters and oceans.
Water is the lifeblood of the biosphere and, as a fundamental component of a complex ecosystem, the preservation of its quality is essential to ensure our continued survival.
Although Canada holds 20 per cent of the world's fresh water, it possesses only 9 per cent of the world's fresh, renewable water. The rest, according to the Science Council of Canada, is "fossil water" which is a legacy of the melting ice sheets.
Our over-all supply of water is truly formidable, but the picture disguises wide variations. Over 60 per cent of Canada's river flow is carried northward where only 10 per cent of Canada's population lives. Major sections of Canada's population, including the prairies and the interior dry belt of British Columbia live in regions of chronic water shortage.
Canadians have failed to recognize that, despite our exponentially increasing demand for water, there is in fact a limit to the fresh water run-off from the land each year and thus there is also a limit to its availability for consumption.
The 1973 report of the Science Council of Canada stated that "Canadians must begin the transition from a consumer society preoccupied with resource exploitation, to a conserver society engaged in more constructive endeavours" and, I might add, a more judicious husbandry of our resources.
Evidence of the over-exploitation of our water resources and the consequences of environmental stress are becoming all too clear to all of us. Pollution from human activities has destroyed aquatic life, inhibited the reproductive capacity of mammals and birds and now
threatens our very existence. The misuse of our water resources has caused widespread degradation of our soils, has disrupted our supplies of clean potable water and has generated massive economic dislocation. We can no longer afford to use our waterways as convenient dump sites for domestic and industrial wastes. To continue on our present path jeopardizes the integrity of our total environmental system. With it, it jeopardizes the economic well-being and in fact our very survival.
In recent years, pollution from human activities has seriously disturbed the composition of species and has greatly increased the rate of species extinction. It is estimated that aquatic ecosystems in some parts of North America have lost up to 20 per cent of their indigenous species because of the acidification of our lakes by airborne pollutants.
Twenty-four species of birds are endangered in the east as a result of the impact of acid rain.
Estimates of the number of lakes at risk in Canada from acid rain range up to 600,000. Already as many as
100.000	lakes have been seriously damaged. Approximately 14,000 of those lakes are biologically dead. Unless acid rain depositions are reduced, another 10,000 to
40.000	will also die.
More than 360 chemical compounds have been found in the Great Lakes systems alone. Among them are a number of persistent toxins. They include alkylated lead, benzopyrene, DDT, hexachlorobenzene, mercury and other heavy metal contaminants, polychlorinated biphenyls and a slew of other chemical cocktails.
It is no wonder that of the 10 most highly valued species of fish in Lake Ontario, seven have almost completely disappeared. It is no wonder that in the species still remaining, tumours and lesions have been found and their ability to reproduce effectively has been questioned. Evidence also links a sharp increase in deaths among beluga whales to contaminants in the fish that they eat. Canadians should not be surprised to hear of closures in the west coast shellfish industry because of the dangerously high contamination from pulp mill effluents.
Throughout the aquatic food chain the phenomenon of biological magnification is occurring, causing those species at the end of the food chain to ingest and to accumulate lethal concentrations of toxins and pollutants. Fish-eating birds, for instance, such as herring
April 10, 1990

gulls, herons, and bald eagles have been affected and populations have declined.
The need for urgent action to maintain the health of our waterways is abundantly clear. Although pollution is more often the cause of water problems for Canadians than scarcity, there is also the problem of the demand for water in areas such as the southern prairies and in the interior of British Columbia where the demand already approaches the limits of supply and shortages in dry years are becoming more and more common.
Problems also exist in how we dispose of our sewage effluent. Only 57 per cent of Canadians are in fact served by waste water treatment plants, compared to some 74 per cent of Americans and 99 per cent of the Swedish population. In addition, 28 per cent are served by sewage collection systems, but the sewage is discharged into a lake, into a river or into the ocean without treatment. In 1984 approximately 2,200 of Canada's 3,250 communities had sewer systems, and of these only 44 per cent had some kind of sewage treatment.
However there are some success stories. The communities of Vernon and Osoyoos in the Okanagan Valley have demonstrated what can be accomplished with innovative approaches to waste management disposal. These communities have learned to put their effluent to work for them, by disposing the treated waste water on to the surrounding grasslands and the fields and crops. Vernon is now attempting to implement a program of wild land irrigation, but I must add that the lack of provincial and of federal commitments for this funding are proving to frustrate their efforts.
It is high time that the federal government took an active role in developing and in funding alternative methods for sewage waste disposal so that other communities across Canada can benefit from these efforts.
Canadians too often take our water resources for granted. We are in fact the world's second largest user of water on a per capita basis. Canadians use 4,100 litres per day and Americans use 6,300 litres per day. Those figures include both domestic and commercial use. The average domestic use for Canadians is a startling 300 litres per day. Our experts tell us that we need to curb the waste of
Private Members' Business
our water resources. Our water crisis in Canada is fundamentally a problem of resource mismanagement. According to scientists we can become 90 per cent more water efficient. What is needed is to allow a better husbandry of our water resources and a more thorough understanding of our hydrologic cycle. We need more information about how water supplies are managed before we can implement the detailed management strategies that are needed. Above all, we need to develop a coherent picture about the state of Canada's water supplies, both in terms of quality and quantity.
Canadians, largely out of ignorance, have squandered their water resources. For too long water in Canada has been treated as a free commodity with no financial incentive for conservation. It is estimated that it would take the equivalent of 5,000 litres of water just to put a restaurant meal on the table. The average Canadian uses 300 litres of water per day, but biologically they need only 1 to 2 litres a day for consumption. It takes 10,600 litres of water to grow a half a pound of beef. A McDonald's Quarter Pounder requires 2,790 litres of water just for the beef. That does not include the water needed to grow the tomatoes, lettuce, or the grain for the bun.
One apple tree growing in the Okanagan Valley consumes 465 litres of water each day. When you consider that 70 per cent of our irrigation water is lost to evaporation, it conceivably takes up to 1,500 litres of water each day to feed a single growing apple tree.
There is no doubt about it: water is indeed critical to human survival. That is why it seems reasonable that to tackle the environmental problems before us today we should start with the most basic of all resources-our water.
Canada's federal water policy announced in 1987 has remained essentially a toothless document. It has limited itself to a philosophical statement of the government's goals and its projected objectives.
However the federal water policy does commit the government to a joint co-operative approach to water management with the provinces since under the Constitution Act the provinces in fact exercise direct control over many aspects of water management.

April 10, 1990
Private Members' Business
The policy states: "The federal government intends to work with the provinces and territories to encourage the provision of safe and sufficient water supplies for Canadians". The over-all goal of the federal water policy is to "encourage the use of freshwater in an efficient and equitable manner consistent with social, cultural and environmental needs".
To achieve this goal the policy identifies two major objectives: first, to protect and enhance the quality of the water resource and, second, to promote the wise and efficient use of water.
To achieve these objectives the policy has outlined specific tasks. These include establishing research advisory mechanisms with representation from scientific and applied research personnel, developing and maintaining with the provinces and territories water data and information systems directed to improving the knowledge available for managing Canada's water resources.
It also talks about promoting co-operative federal and provincial endeavours as well as undertaking and supporting research and development in these issues.
The policy further emphasizes that it endorses an integrated approach to water management, taking into account all water uses and water related activities within whatever political, administrative, economic or functional boundaries that are defined. I interpret that as an approach that is synonymous with joint federal-provincial territorial planning.
The critical point to make here is that the 1987 federal water policy gives a firm commitment from the federal government to become directly involved with water management in co-operation with the provinces and territories.
That commitment, although it has been well inten-tioned, I submit has as yet remained unfulfilled. It is time that the government replace the rhetoric with action.
In a recent document entitled Water 2020, which was put out in 1988 by the National Science Council, the report states that the water use problems facing Canadians can only be solved when we apply science to achieve our goals.
The growing scale of cultural and technological developments which pose threats to water quality requires that water science become central to all policy decisions.
Canadian water policy requires strong leadership. However there has been little evidence of that leadership in water science today. The research is fragmented among many different departments and co-operation between agencies, to say the least, is weak indeed.
The federal government has 22 departments and agencies with different responsibilities for water. For example, pesticides, a major contaminant of inland waters and a potent toxin to aquatic life, are regulated by Environment Canada while exhaust emissions, which is a causative factor in acid rain, are the responsibility of Transport Canada.
As a result, we have at best an ad hoc and unco-ordinated response to complex environmental problems rather than an integrated approach to monitoring, control and conservation.
Today, in some federal departments, scientific excellence is imperilled by a dispirited research population that is struggling to find the appropriate challenges and an effective policy role. As of 1988, Environment Canada had only five Ph.D. level scientists in ground water research working at its two national research institutions.
There is no national, long-term, co-ordinated program in water science research today. Partly as a consequence of that, Environment Canada has over the past seven years lost many top notch scientists to the United States. To be blunt about it, the present political and administrative structure is totally incapable of developing the integrated policy and the programs that are needed to tackle our water related environmental problems. We must adopt a new approach if we are to find effective solutions.
What are the solutions? There is an urgent need for the federal government to develop a national plan for water use and conservation. This plan has to be backed up by strong legislation.
The National Science Council has recognized the need for increased research and development in water science, including the need for the development of a comprehensive water resource inventory, the develop-
April 10, 1990

ment of a program for integrated water resource management, and the implementation of specific post-secondary educational and training programs in water science.
As a first step in facilitating these objectives, my colleagues and I call upon this government to establish regional water science research facilities in critical watersheds throughout Canada. Such facilities could be administered jointly by the ministries of the Environment, Fisheries and Oceans, Health and Welfare, and Agriculture through a newly established department of water science. This department would in turn be mandated to work co-operatively with the appropriate provincial and regional authorities to establish needs and priorities as determined by the nature of the watershed.
As has been recommended by the National Science Council, each facility should be attached to at least one university or other post-secondary institution and should include at least five scientists. Each facility would be responsible for conducting ongoing research in all aspects of water use, including the collection of pertinent hydrologic data of the water supply area. Each research facility could work with the provincial and regional facilities to ensure that the efforts are incorporated into regional water management plans.
As well the new department of water science, in liaison with the National Research Council and provincial post-secondary institutes, could develop educational and training programs in water science research. Such programs would help resolve the critical lack of training facilities and provide academic centres for post-graduate research programs in conjunction with the research facility.
Finally, I would suggest that as a provincially designated environmentally sensitive area, which is already experiencing serious water shortage conflicts, the Okanagan and Shuswap watersheds could provide an ideal location for a pilot project of this sort. The construction of a prototype water science research facility would address the serious water resource problems in this region and would help develop the framework for the implementation of a national program of water resource management.
Private Members' Business
In concluding, I ask that this government support this motion today and, by so doing, begin to tackle the serious water resource problems that continue to confront this nation.


Mrs. Monique B. Tardif (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Supply and Services):: Mr. Speaker, water resource management has been the subject of thorough consultation in this country. The Commission of Inquiry on Federal Water Policy, established in January 1984, stated in its final report, published in 1985, that water management problems were no longer local problems of water supply and water pollution; they had taken on regional and even global proportions.
Subsequently, an interdepartmental task force was set up to consider the commission of inquiry's recommendations and draft a general framework for the federal water policy.
In November 1987, the government announced its federal water policy, whose main objective is to encourage fair and realistic use of fresh water in Canada, so as to meet the social, economic and environmental needs of present and future generations.
The policy is intended to achieve an integrated approach to water resource planning and favours the kind of water use that will help to maintain the many relationships established within our ecosystem. To manage Canada's water resources, the government has set itself two main goals: Preserve and improve water quality and encourage realistic and effective water management and consumption. The policy outlines 25 specific issues and five basic courses of action: pricing of water services; leadership role in water science; integrated planning; legislation; and public awareness.
Mr. Speaker, with these strategies the government not only intends to obtain the co-operation of the provinces and territories as well as multilateral organizations in other countries, it also wants to support various federal agencies, municipalities, industry, universities and environmental organizations so that they will be able to take the necessary action to deal with specific issues that concern them and can meet future challenges in water resource management.
This policy is now being discussed at the interdepartmental level, with discussions to be followed by a report to the Minister of the Environment on the various activities of the departments involved in its implementation. The problems with which Canada must deal in this

April 10, 1990
Private Members' Business
area are national and international in scope and concern increasingly complex issues. Faced with a range of water-related problems that goes beyond traditional geographical boundaries, the government stresses its leadership role in water science, bearing in mind the responsibilities it shares with the provinces and territories.
Supporting research efforts and developing scientific expertise and the transfer of knowledge and technology by promoting effective partnership among the various parties concerned and co-operation at the national and international level are major components of the role the federal government intends to play. One of the most important areas identified by the federal government for the development and transfer of water management technologies in municipal infrastructures is waste water treatment.
Together with the provinces and municipalities, the federal government promotes pricing of water consumption by publishing findings, data and studies on water pricing. In line with this policy, Mr. Speaker, the federal government, through its waste water technology centre in Burlington, is involved in research and promoting the development and transfer of new technologies in the treatment of municipal and industrial waste.
Careful management of our water resources depends on a thorough knowledge of these resources and their utilization. Data collecting and scientific research are essential to appropriate decision-making on water management, which requires the co-operation of all levels of government and the private sector. The increasing number and complexity of problems encountered in water management has made it necessary to go beyond strictly local considerations to develop skills commensurate with regional, national and international requirements.
Furthermore, most of the major issues in Canada at this time that represent a challenge to scientific research, for instance, climatic changes and toxic contaminants, require both a multidisciplinary approach and effective co-operation among the various members of the scientific community and the decision-makers, as well as between the government and the private sector,
and also increased emphasis on international co-operation.
Environment Canada supports a large part of federal water research which, in most cases, is carried out by the Inland Waters Directorate and its two research institutes. These institutes total 328 person-years and have a research budget of $25 million.
The National Water Research Institute located in Burlington, Ontario, is the largest centre for fresh water research in Canada. The research carried out by the institute is aimed at improving knowledge and skills in the area of water quality, in order to play a leading role in upgrading aquatic resources and promoting the transfer of these skills and technologies in the perspective of sustainable economic development.
Mr. Speaker, the institute's research program covers many fields but focusses on the following national and international issues: toxic contamination of the Great Lakes; contamination of underground waters; acid rain; deterioration of Earth's atmosphere; contaminated sediments; restoration of lakes; pesticide evaluation; and evaluation and modeling.
The National Hydrology Research Institute, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, has the mandate to study various aspects of the hydrologic cycle with a view ensuring a more efficient management and a better protection of Canadian water resources.
Research projects are grouped under three main programs: hydrological processes and climatic changes; impact of human activities on the environment; and Northern watersheds.
The institutes try different ways of regionalizing research projects. Scientific expertise is available to conduct research projects in many areas of the country where problems vary more by their magnitude than by their nature. For example, National Water Research Institute technicians have begun tests in Prince Edward Island to find out whether Aldicarb, a pasticide used in potato fields, has any effect on underground water levels.
The NWRI technicians have also develpped new lake water clean-up techniques in Alberta and Ontario. Mr. Speaker, on the northern edge of the riding of Charles-
April 10, 1990

Private Members' Business
bourg, in the middle of the Parc des Laurentides, we have the calibrated basin of Lake Laflamme, something which can best be described as an open air laboratory.
In their survey on atmospheric pollutants drifting over long distances, Environment Canada and three Quebec universities-Laval, McGill, Universite du Quebec-have. been working for more than three years on a complex model to predict the impact of acid water from melted snow and ice on the water habitat and the organisms that live there.
Thanks to the work of this dedicated team the integrated model's quantitative and qualitative parameters have been checked against the on-site data collected during the spring thaw at Lake Laflamme.
Research has been extended outside the calibrated basin because the model is now being used in a project to find out the effect of spring run-offs mixed with acid rain over Quebec's southern regions.
This open air laboratory also enables Environment Canada researchers to monitor rain and surface water quality, thus highlighting the beneficial effects of the federal-provincial sulphur oxide emissions.
Considerable progress has been made in dealing with the most important water problems such as the effect of acid rain on water ecosystems, toxic contamination, climate changes and municipal and industrial water demand management.
Mr. Speaker, the federal government is committed to maintaining its leadership role in science and to promoting continued co-operation with the provinces in order to co-ordinate efforts.
The St. Lawrence action plan and the establishment of the St. Lawrence Centre in Montreal through which the federal government will spend $100 million over five years to clean up, protect and preserve this river symbolize the intensification of federal-provincial efforts to promote efficient co-operation and consultations among multiple partners.
The government also recognizes the water-savings aspect and will focus its efforts on maintaining a balance between growing socio-economic demands and the continued capacity of our freshwater resources within the context of sustainable development.


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, it is no surprise that the member for Okanagan-Shuswap feels compelled to put such a motion, given this government's bad record on water.
In November 1984, $45 million was chopped from the budget of Environment Canada, including a 25 per cent cut to the Canadian Wildlife Service and eliminating programs like the herring gull study in the Great Lakes. The government received good advice but chose to ignore it. In September 1985, the report of the inquiry on federal water policy, headed by Peter Pearse, provided the government with a blueprint for a federal water policy.
However, in 1987 the minister of the day released a flimsy collection of one-page statements optimistically called "A Federal Water Policy". It was descriptive of the problems facing Canadians but lacked substance. It promised to consider legislation to ensure safe drinking water but only in areas of federal jurisdiction. This promise was recycled in the Throne Speech in April 1989 and is recycled again in the present Minister of the Environment's recently released discussion paper. Unkept promises, that is the trademark of this government.
Today Canada does not yet have model legislation on water nor a clearly defined policy. The 1987 paper promised to strengthen federal legislation to prohibit the export of water. The 1987 paper promised to strengthen the approval process under the Navigable Waters Protection Act. Two and a half years later the Oldman Dam is the subject of a court ruling. Why? Because the Minister of Transport fails to comply with the guidelines of environmental assessment.
After promising strength the government delivers weakness. To make matters worse, it has now been one month since the Federal Court decision and still this government refuses to comply with the ruling. What a degree of hypocrisy.
We must conclude that there is an alarming pattern emerging on the issue of water. This government reduces spending on research, has not kept promises of new legislation since 1985 and poorly enforces existing laws. Unfortunately, this pattern is typical of the over-all environmental policy of this government.
Take, for instance, the mythical environmental assessment legislation. It was promised by the Progressive

April 10, 1990
Adjournment Debate
Conservative Party in the 1984 election campaign. The second time was a promise of extensive public consultation during the spring of 1988-which actually did take place. The third time we heard an announcement of the main components of the draft legislation was during the 1988 election. Then we hear again about the environmental assessment legislation in April 1989 with a Throne Speech. The fifth time is the discussion paper released by the Minister of the Environment at the end of March 1990, and for the sixth time in a very fine speech on March 30 by the parliamentary secretary of the environment when he told us that it would be five weeks from that date.
I am glad to see him in the House because I am quoting him word for word when he said five weeks. We have six commitments over a period of six years. That is the period of time over which the Progressive Conservative government has promised environmental assessment legislation.
I know that one of my colleagues who would like to speak so I will conclude briefly by saying that the Tory record on the environment is highlighted by the debates today on water. It will be remembered at the next election because it was strong on promises but weak on action. It was good on public relations but weak on substance. It was successful at raising expectations but it was followed by widespread let-downs. No wonder the Tories are so low in public opinion polls.


Godfrey Stanley (Stan) Wilbee: Mr. Speaker, I have a 10-minute speech to deliver in about two minutes. What I would like to do this afternoon is briefly outline some of the steps that the government has already taken.
I think we recognize the need to protect our water, as this motion suggests, and to safeguard our drinking water and protect the many waterways we have in our country. My colleagues have already outlined extremely well the valuable asset we have.
In my province of British Columbia we are currently discussing the sale of water to the Americans and across the Pacific. One of my colleagues across the aisle was showing me some of the statistics on the value of clean water. A gallon of fresh water has a value of $7 in Japan and $4 in the United States.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hour provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired. Pursuant to Standing Order 96(1) the order is dropped from the Order Paper.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 is deemed to have been moved.

Mr. Ross Harvey (Edmonton East):: Mr. Speaker, the government says it is going to privatize Petro-Canada. In fact, it is going to sell it off for less than it is worth and it is going to increase foreign ownership and control of the Canadian energy industry. Furthermore, it is going to throw away what is potentially one of our best vehicles for positive environmental action, for moving Canada away from being one of the most irresponsible wasters of energy toward a more environmentally responsible energy future.
Who loses in this deal? The Canadian taxpayer. The government says it will start the privatization with a treasury issue of 15 per cent of the company. What will it do with the estimated $500 to $700 million expected from the sale of that 15 per cent share? In a brilliant marketing move cited in the February 21, 1990, Ottawa Citizen, unnamed finance department denizens speculated that it would all be ploughed back into the company. Such a deal!
Mr. Capitalist would buy shares knowing that the Tories would give him back the money he paid for the shares, in the form of equity in the company of which he had just become a shareholder. And equity assets built up in a Crown corporation on behalf of all Canadians would be torn out of public hands and given away. And these guys are known for their shrewd management of the public purse? It boggles the imagination.
Who, besides the eventual owners of the shares will benefit from this deal? RBC Dominion Securities and Wood Gundy Inc., the two firms that conducted the
April 10, 1990

August, 1987, study for the government on whether or not Air Canada should be sold, themselves underwrote that privatization one year later, walking away with over $30 million for their troubles. The total brokerage fees, bonuses and miscellaneous payments on the Petro-Can-ada sell-off could amount to more than $170 million. Thanks, Canadian taxpayers.
Why are the Tories doing this? Their story is that the company needs capital but cannot assume any more debt. The question that confronts us is: Is Petro-Canada really lumbered with debt to the point where it cannot borrow any more? The answer is, no. As of the end of 1988, Petro-Canada's total debt was about $2 billion, of which about $1 billion was long-term debt. Its shareholder equity was about $4 billion.
In fact, Petro-Canada's long-term debt compares favourably with that of such other notables as TransCa-nada Pipelines Limited, at $2.4 billion; Amoco Canada Petroleum Company Limited, with a $4 billion long-term debt; Columbia Gas System Incorporated, at $1.3 billion; and one my favourites, Nova Corporation of Alberta, with a $4.2 billion long-term debt. Those are 1988 annual report figures.
More to the point, Petro-Canada's long-term debt to equity ratio, 1 to 4, is well within industry standards. With the exception of long-established multinational subsidiaries like Imperial Oil, with a 1 to 7 ratio, many industry players have ratios similar to or worse than Petro-Canada's. Canadian Oxidental Petroleum Limited at 1 to 3; Alberta Energy Company Limited at 1 to 1.2; Norcen Energy Resources at 1 to 2.3; Total Petroleum North America Limited at 1 to 1.8; and Pan-Canadian Petroleum Limited at 1 to 3.5 remain active participants in the industry. Indeed, one of the oldest, best established multinationals in Canada, Shell Canada Limited, has a long-term debt to equity ratio identical to Petro-Canada's.
So it was no real surprise when, last December, the well-known New York rating agency, Moody's Investor Service Incorporated, gave Petro-Canada a triple A rating on about $400 million of newly filed debt securities.
As the Toronto Star observed in its report:
Such a raling, a shade lower than the highest designation for debts
of the federal government, suggests strong borrowing status.
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Indeed, "strong borrowing status". It would seem by all standards that Petro-Canada could comfortably assume a great deal more debt than it has now and still remain a healthy and vigorous player in the Canadian petroleum industry. In fact, as the Moody's rating shows, while in the public sector the company can support greater debt, because of lower service costs occasioned by its status as a federal treasury backed Crown corporation, than it could as a private sector player.
But what about the other side of the capitalization coin? What about all that money that can be made for Petro-Canada from the huge stock issue? Sorry. Unless the federal government is willing simply to give away money to the company by continuing to plough the proceeds of share sales back into Petro-Canada as the shares are sold, Petro-Canada will not get that money at all. Again, the taxpayers of Canada have about $4 billion worth of equity in Petro-Canada. If the company is to be sold, those taxpayers are quite reasonably going to want at least that $4 billion back.
As noted before, the government is already talking about giving back to the company the proceeds of the first offering, that 15 per cent share offering totalling somewhere between $500 million and $700 million. Presumably, the government would have serious political difficulty pursuing such wonderful generosity further, especially at a time when it is cutting back on health care, education and social services because of the fiscal holy crusade.
That leaves the energy equity markets having to absorb a subsequent issue of $3 billion to $3.5 billion, all of which has to go to the federal treasury before Petro-Canada can haul in so much as one more loonie.
The fact of the matter is that dumping Petro-Canada on to the energy equity markets, especially at a time when Imperial Oil will be struggling mightily with the capital task of swallowing Texaco Canada, seems to be just about the worst way one could go about raising the further money the company needs. It will be cumbersome, necessarily long term, and unavoidably entail a raid of some scale on the public purse. There is plenty of corporate elbow room for further debt financing anyway.

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Adjournment Debate
The question we have to ask ourselves, and the question I would put to the government this evening is simply this. How is it that you folks continue to so blindly choose the wrong options?
I will have more to say on this in debate on the bill which we have been promised for this session. For the time being, I will let it go at that.


Mr. Lee Clark (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Minister of Finance, I am happy to have this opportunity to respond to the questions raised by my hon. friend both here this evening and in the House on February 23 of this year.
I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that it is probably premature at this time to speculate on how much Petro-Canada is worth and how much it will be worth at the time at which it is offered to the Canadian public.
The actual value of the corporation will be determined at the time when the shares are offered to the public. I would suggest that that value will be determined by a number of factors, including the world oil price at that time, the corporation's expected performance and the state of the equity and bond markets.
Even then, the value will probably only be relevant for a short period and will fluctuate significantly over time as the government sells its shares.
The initial offering will be a treasury issue to be managed by Petro-Canada. The final details, including the size of the issue and the method of distribution, will be worked out with the underwriters after the legislation to which the hon. member has referred has passed this House. The size will certainly be no larger than the market is capable of absorbing.
On February 23 the hon. member referred to the net worth of Petro-Canada, by which I would assume he means the company's book value of assets less liabilities or shareholders' equity. I would point out that the number he quoted on that occasion is somewhat different from the amount appearing in Petro-Canada's most recent financial statements, which is approximately $2.7 billion.
In any event, I would assume that any market analyst would advise the hon. member that today's book net worth is only one of many criteria to be taken into
account in determining the value the government will receive for Petro-Canada over the coming years.
In valuing Petro-Canada, potential investors will consider that the company has one of the largest holdings of Canadian oil and natural gas rights, is a leading producer of oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids and is one of the most active oil and gas explorers in Canada. With annual operating cash flow of some $800 million and plant and equipment of almost $5 billion we believe that Petro-Canada is well positioned to take advantage of discoveries in both western Canada and eastern frontiers.
We believe that the offer, when it is presented, will be well received and it will provide the company with the type of equity which it needs to enable it to be more active in the future.


WOMEN'S CENTRES
Mary Catherine Clancy: Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight pursuant to a question that I posed in this Chamber last week relating to the funding of women's centres under the Women's Program of the Secretary of State.
This issue has become a cause celebre for Canadian women. The basic core, if I may use that word, of the issue is the difference between core funding and project funding.
Core funding covers the kinds of expenses that keep these organizations open. In other words, it pays the rent, for lights, heat, incidentals of that nature and usually a part-time salary for a co-ordinator.
Project funding, as its name implies, covers a specific project put forward in a grant application by the organization to cover any number of things. It might have to do with studies relating to sexual assault victims. It might have to do with employment equity programs or shortterm education programs. Various and sundry projects come under project funding.
The problem is that $1.6 million, which covered over 70 centres in this country, has been cut. The women who depend upon these centres, as well as the women who work and volunteer in these centres, have no security for their future endeavours.
We have heard the Secretary of State and the Minister responsible for the Status of Women say to us: "Don't worry, we are prepared to grant you project funding". But philosophically and practically, that is unacceptable.
April 10, 1990

We know the $1.6 million has been cut. Last year and in the years previous-ever since the Liberal government instituted these programs-women could look to core funding to keep their centres open and project funding to do the specific works they wished to perform. What has effectively taken place is that the government is asking these women and the women across Canada to share in a still smaller pot that relates to project funding, thus dividing and pitting women against each other right across this country.
I must say I am proud in the extreme of the women involved in these centres across the country. The Second Storey women's centre in my home province of Nova Scotia, in the riding of South Shore in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia was offered a cheque last Thursday. They have delayed its acceptance because they said they will not be used as a pawn, and compete with other women across this country for ever-decreasing funds.
There is a meeting this week with the Secretary of State when he will meet with representatives, as I understand it, of all the centres outside Quebec. That was not quite what the women were looking for. They wanted representatives from each of the affected centres. However, I suppose this meeting is better than nothing.
The problem is that we are not going to hear the answer that we need to hear, which is that core funding has been re-established.
In the 18 months since I have come to this Chamber, we have all heard and we all agree that there needs to be cut-backs in this country. No one disagrees that there is a need to reduce the deficit. But we are talking about $1.6 million. I must say that in my youth, growing up in Cape Breton and Halifax I never thought I could look at $1.6 million and say that it is peanuts, but in the grand scheme of things, it is not going to do a whole heck of a lot to help the government balance its budget. Yet it is going to do a whole lot of damage to a whole lot of women right across this country.
I know I have not much time, but I want to speak briefly about some of the things that I, in 20 years of working with women's groups like this, have seen in
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terms of what these centres do. These centres cover almost every possible crisis situation that affects women, much more so in rural Canada even than in the urban centres.
In the urban centres, although we are not terribly well off for support programs for women, there are places such as transition houses and emergency units of hospitals. There are doctors and legal aid centres and so on depending on what the problem is. There are universities which have certain programs. That is not enough and it does not cover it all but there is some recourse.
For the Canadian women living in rural areas, and I am thinking now particularly of Second Storey on the South Shore of Nova Scotia and the Antigonish Women's Centre, this is the only game in town. Women who are alienated and isolated do not know that they can get legal advice, medical advice, social work help or any kinds of help to pull them out of an untenable situation, whether it be an abusive situation physically, or a financial problem such as the inability to heat their homes or feed their children.
What they do know is that on the main street of the nearest town there is that place where women go, and they phone or drop in.
One of the groups I talked to yesterday told me that it had 400 phone calls last month and 200 drop in visits-600 women used one of those centres last month. With core funding gone those 600 women will have no place to turn. That 600 is multiplied by the 70-plus centres across this country that are in danger of closing down. The women of Canada do not deserve this. They deserve all the help they can get.
Why does the government not make it easier on itself and turn around and say: "We made a mistake. You can have your core funding back. We realize and we know how important women centres are to the full development of women in our society, to the search for gender equality"?
It is not a big request, but it will help so many women who are in situations where from their perspective there is no help or no way out. These are women who wake up in the morning and cannot see any future for themselves and for their children.

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Some people might accuse me of overdramatizing. I assure you, Mr. Speaker, that the women who came to see me in my office today, and those who saw the Minister responsible for the Status of Women and the Secretary of State, will be able to assure you that this is not excessive. It is the truth. We need an answer, and we need it now.


Mrs. Pauline Browes (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State of Canada and Minister of State (Multiculturalism and Citizenship)):: Mr. Speaker, in response to the hon. member's concerns conveyed on April 6, I can only reiterate that the Secretary of State expressed his commitment that day to the advancement of Canadian women and to organizations representing their interests.
Ours is a sensitivity balanced with the realization that all sectors in our society share a responsibility with us to put a sizeable dent into the crippling national debt which has become the legacy of our inheritance. We admit that we are asking a lot from Canadians. This is not a popularity contest, but a contest with time. The longer we wait, the less you and I will pay, Mr. Speaker, but it is our children and their children to come who will be stuck with our bills. We want to grant our children the financial security that the hon. member talked about.
It would actually be easiest to shield Canadians from the truth about the deficit. This government, however, does not subscribe to any blind eye school of accounting.
Our budget will reduce the deficit to $23.5 billion next year and cut it in half to $14 billion in three more years. We are bringing Canadians ever closer to the goal of cutting the deficit in half by 1993-94.
We are building an economy which will allow Canada to have the social programs and the opportunities needed truly to ensure equality for women, an equality backed with funding in the bank, not on credit.
The budget measures are not an abandonment of this government's promise to promote equality and justice for women. This government's record since 1984 is one of commitment to women. Funding reductions to the women's program of the Secretary of State do not break the promise to work for equality and justice for women. The women's program will still support more than 550 groups in this fiscal year.
The hon. member was quite correct in stating last week that the minister told us that women's groups now receive project funding. She even cited a women's centre, as she did tonight, in Nova Scotia that had just been granted $46,000 of project grants. If our colleagues on the other side do not listen to us, well maybe they will listen to the member for Halifax.
Let it be stated emphatically, and once again, that the women's program will continue to assist women's groups in Canada. Money is available for project funding for groups undertaking activities that meet the mandate of the program. An organization's overhead costs that are related to project activities can also be funded.
Clearly the Secretary of State will help the centres continue their activities and will be as flexible and as generous as possible in applying funding guidelines and eligibility to criteria.
During the four years that preceded our mandate the previous government spent $12 million on programs to assist women.
In 1984 this government decided that women's programs needed generous funding. Since that time we have more than quadrupled the amount to $56 million in the women's program support. We have added relevance to our partnership with women's organizations from coast to coast, and our partnership remains in place.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Philip Edmonston: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask the Minister of the Environment or his parliamentary secretary more questions about the famous Green Plan which was released a few weeks ago.
At that time, when I asked questions in the House, I even accused the government of talking a lot but doing little about environmental protection. I maintain the same accusation today because several weeks have passed since I last spoke in the House and I learned that not only does the 29-page Green Plan of fairly vague questions contain no financial commitment of the government, but in the last two weeks I also learned that many environmental groups have criticized the government very severely for its inaction.
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I am particularly affected by the government's inaction since I personally was evacuated from Saint-Basile-le-Grand because of the PCB fire that night in August 1988. It was a real disaster and in the weeks that followed, many people lost a lot of money. They were very anxious, but during that time, the government, through the Department of Transport, the Department of the Environment and even the Prime Minister, assured them that the government would look after Saint-Basile-le-Grand, would solve the PCB problem throughout Canada and really deal with environmental problems, if they were trusted and given a second mandate. That was in 1988.
Mr. Speaker, we in Quebec had a singer called Felix Leclerc. He is dead now, but one of his songs goes like this: "Before the election, the candidate called me son, but after the election, he did not even know my name." Quebecers and, I think, Canadians rather have the feeling that after campaigning for the 1988 election on an environmental platform, this government has forgotten its promises. That is the reason why, when I directed my question concerning the environment to the Prime Minister a few weeks ago, I blamed the government for being all talk and no action.
At the national level, several environmental protection agencies have blamed the government for its lack of action, but in my Chambly riding the Richelieu River is completely polluted. As I said we are still waiting for the Federal Government to show leadership with this matter of PCBs by perhaps working in conjunction together with the Provincial Government to rid Quebec of various toxic wastes.
I wish to emphasize a point which is very important these days in connection with the Meech Lake Accord and other constitutional issues. Quebecers want to have proof that federalism is a cost effective political system within which the Federal and Provincial Governments can work together to solve serious problems. So far, Mr. Speaker, there has been no evidence of it and this is a two year old situation.
Finally, I should like to tell you a little story. I have been here now for eight weeks as the member for Chambly I can tell you that I campaigned for two years in an effort to get elected to the House of Commons and one of the points I always tried to make was that the Government was not doing enough for the Chambly environment. Goodness gracious, I received a great many visits from all sorts of ministers, including some Environment Ministers, the Prime Minister himself
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twice, and various Provincial Premiers. All the Federal Ministers told me to trust them for a few more weeks, because the Minister of Environment was going to reveal a great plan to deal with our problems. Yes, you guessed right! Mr. Speaker, the Minister came out not so much with a Green Plan as with an Empty Plan. That is the reason why today I say again to the Government that as far as the environment is concerned, it is all talk and no action.


Walter Leland Rutherford (Lee) Clark: First of all, I wish to congragulate the Hon. Member for his by-election victory in the Chambly riding.

I would also like to welcome the hon. member to the House. This is the first opportunity I have had to do that and to say that I welcome his interest in environmental issues. I look forward to his participation in questions and debates during upcoming months and years.
The hon. member has made reference to the record of the government. I would like to make one or two points in return. Since the government was elected in 1984 there have been a number of very noteworthy achievements. Time does not permit me to be very extensive, but I would refer to two or three.
I would refer to the acid rain agreement by which the federal government and the seven most easterly provinces have agreed to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions by 50 per cent from 1980 levels by 1994. I am pleased that indeed we have made good progress in that regard.
I also look forward to the signing of an accord with the United States again with respect to acid rain abatement because I know that is vitally important to all of Canada, and I would suspect that it is of particular importance to the hon. member's constituency.
I would also make reference to the signing of the Montreal Protocol on the ozone layer. I think most of us in this House are very conscious of the fact that emissions of CFCs have proved to be extremely detrimental. The existence of the hole in Antarctica is well known. It is perhaps less well known that even if we take the kind of very substantial measures that are planned, that is the virtual reduction of CFC emissions by the year 2000, CFC residues in the atmosphere will continue to be a threat to mankind for the next 100 years. That is exceedingly chilling and only demonstrates how vital it is for Canada and all of the international communities to work together in furthering the achievement of that objective.
I also refer to the passage of the CEPA legislation in 1988 before the hon. member came to the House. I think

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Adjournment Debate
that he would agree, however, that that legislation has broken new ground in Canada. It is the most definitive piece of legislation that we have had in place. I believe it will prove to be quite effective in the time hereafter.
With respect to The Green Plan I would suggest that what is most important about it is not whether it was issued last month, two months ago, three months ago or whatever it may have been. What is most important is the fact that there is now in place a very substantial process for consultation with the provinces, because they have a vital role to play in protecting the environment; with industry, because we are going to need its co-operation if we are going to achieve our objectives; and with special interest groups and the public at large.
I look forward to being a part of that process during the course of the next three or four months. I would hope that the hon. member for Chambly is also a part of the process, because with his enthusiasm and his own
special interest in the environment I think he has a real contribution to make.
The hon. member referred to St-Basile-le-Grand. I would like to remind him that the federal government has agreed to be a part of the solution. We have agreed to pick up our share of the costs, but what we have not yet received from the province of Quebec is any final declaration on its part as to what the final bill may be. That is what we are waiting for. When that bill arrives there is indeed a formula by which the federal government will participate in the cost sharing. I know that will be good news for his constituents and for all citizens within Canada.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.31 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Wednesday, April 11, 1990