1990-04-24

Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8) I have the honour to table, in both official languages, government responses to 163 petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE


Mr. Garth Turner (Halton-Peel):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Government Operations.
I am pleased to table this report entitled Moving the Mail, concerning Canada's postal service in the 1990s. It is the result of extensive study of postal operations by the committee which were begun in October, 1989. Members of all parties worked very hard on this report and we heard submissions and witnesses from across Canada.
Our mandate was to examine the current operations of Canada Post with a view to recommending improvements for the future, improvements in operating efficiencies for Canadians. We had substantial agreement among all three political parties on this report. Out of 39 recommendations we had agreement on approximately
30. The report does include minority reports on those areas where we did not find unanimous agreement.
We found that Canada Post works well today and the more it acts as a private sector corporation the better and more efficient it has proven itself for Canadians. Therefore, we are recommending the eventual privatization of Canada Post. We are recommending a share offering to both Canadians and to employees of Canada Post.
Privatization must be done in an atmosphere of regulation, therefore, we also recommend that Canada Post operations be tightly regulated so that the needs of all Canadians for efficient and effective postal services are maintained.
We also recommend that Canada Post rely on its strengths and put more effort into the sorting and distribution system.
Pursuant to Standing Order 109-


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Point of order. The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.


Mr. Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Madam Speaker, as I understand it, we are in Routine Proceedings on presentation of reports of committees. The hon. member is making a speech. Either he presents his report and gives a very brief summary of what it is about, or he does not present it. If he is going to present it, present it. If he is not, then he can sit down and say nothing.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The hon. member has almost finished his statement. The hon. member for Halton-Peel.


Garth Turner: Madam Speaker, perhaps some members do not like the content of the report but nevertheless the committee does recommend that under Standing Order 109 we request that the government respond to our report. I thank the House for its indulgence.


Mr. Len Taylor (The Battlefords-Meadow Lake):: Madam Speaker, in looking at the presentation of reports section which you have called, the Standing Committee on Consumer and Corporate Affairs and

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Government Operations just tabled its report on the postal system.
My dissenting opinion is included in part in that document which has just been tabled. I wish to ask for the unanimous consent of the House to table the entire report that I have written as a dissenting opinion.


Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Madam Speaker, there was discussion at the committee level, and it was agreed by at least a majority decision that the opposition parties would be limited to a certain number of pages. I managed to live within the constraints given to me by the committee and I do not see why others cannot do the same.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: My first remark would be to the hon. member for The Battle-fords-Meadow Lake. When reporting to the House from committee the hon. member who presents the report is allowed to make a succinct explanation of the subject matter of the report. Normally nobody else should be presenting any reports.
Should there be unanimous consent in the House for the hon. member to present his opinion I would be ready to accept it but I already have someone who has refused that possibility and henceforth we will be continuing.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


PRIVILEGES AND ELECTIONS
Mr. Gabriel Fontaine (Levis):: Madam Speaker, today I wish to table a motion for reference to the Committee on Privileges and Elections of a petition for a private bill that was filed late. The motion reads as follows:
That pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 140, the petition of Desjardins Mutual Life Assurance Company, filed after the time limit specified in Standing Order 132, and the Seventh Report of the Clerk of Petitions, tabled in the House on Thursday, April 5, 1990, be referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections for appropriate recommendations by the committee.
Madam Speaker, there have been discussions with the other two political parties, and it seems that there may be unanimous consent this morning for concurrence with this motion by the House.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Shall the hon. member have the unanimous consent of the House to introduce his motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Madam Speaker, I have the duty to table a petition which has been found correct and certified as to form and content.
The petitioners, who are numerous, would like to humbly submit to this House that the imposition of another tax on Canadians, in particular the goods and services tax of 7 per cent, will be strongly opposed by the majority of Canadians. This tax will cause serious and unfair hardship for low and middle-income Canadians. They say further that the imposition of this tax will create an onerous burden on small business.
They strongly oppose the imposition of the goods and services tax, which in their opinion is an unprecedented tax grab from the pockets of Canadians and will hit us all not only with higher taxes but with higher inflation, higher interest rates and unemployment. The petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to reject the proposed goods and services tax and hope the Senate will do that.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure as well to present a petition pursuant to Standing Order 36 from a number of petitioners from the constituency of Kamloops who point out their concerns with the goods and services tax.
They feel that this is a very unfair tax which permits people to be subjected to taxes on reading, diapers, coffins, home heating fuels and so on. At the same time they point out that there is no effective minimum tax on large profitable corporations. They are asking the Parlia-


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ment of Canada to cause the government to cease with this proposal, which they say will shift the tax burden on to ordinary Canadians with a very regressive consumption tax instead of through real tax reform policies. The petitioners hope that the Senate will stop this tax, although I do not know if they have confidence that that will actually take place.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, I have another petition that points out that the number of children living in poverty in Canada is actually increasing. The petitioners ask the government to consider introducing a comprehensive bill of rights for children, since they have already opposed the initiative introduced by a private member in Motion M-254.


Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-TVinity-Conception):: Madam Speaker, I wish to present a petition on the goods and services tax. It is signed by 35 Canadians, some of whom are members of the Canadian Teachers' Federation.
They are very concerned about this goods and services tax. They feel that the tax is regressive, inequitable, and threatens the already precarious financial stability of our public schools and other social services. They feel it is not acceptable to them as a special segment of our society and that is the teaching profession.
They are also concerned about the effect it will have on the middle-income Canadians in my riding who are the parents of the students. On that basis and others, they are calling upon the government to reject this proposed goods and services tax.


Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour and duty, pursuant to Standing Order 36, to present to the House a petition certified correct by the Clerk of Petitions.
It contains the signatures of many, many Canadians who reside not just in my riding but in surrounding ridings. The petitioners request that the federal government immediately affirm the right of all Canadians to receive universal access to benefits of old age security
Routine Proceedings
payments by cancelling plans to introduce a clawback tax regime on old age security payments.


Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Madam Speaker, while I am on my feet, I also have the duty, pursuant to Standing Order 36, to present to the House petitions certified correct by the Clerk of Petitions containing the signatures of hundreds of Canadians who strongly oppose the new goods and services tax. In their opinion, it is an unprecedented tax grab from the pockets of Canadians and will hit them with not only higher taxes but higher inflation, higher interest rates, and higher unemployment.
Finally, Madam Speaker, I have the duty to present to the House petitions numbering literally in the thousands. The petitioners call upon the government to put a stop to the implementation of the goods and services tax. They strongly oppose the proposed goods and services tax. Unfortunately for the thousands of people who signed these petitions, the petitions themselves could not be certified correct and, therefore, I will take it upon myself to have them directed to the Minister of Finance as soon as possible.


Mr. Jim Karpoff (Surrey North):: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I have the privilege of filing a number of petitions concerning the goods and services tax containing 35 pages of signatures from residents of Surrey and other lower mainland municipalities. The petitioners point out that the proposed goods and services tax is an unfair taxation because it lacks regard for the taxpayers' ability to pay.
It calls upon Parliament to reject the present goods and services tax and to bring in true tax reform, including a minimum tax on wealthy individuals and corporations.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to table another petition. To some it may seem late. It is a petition signed by numerous residents of Kingston who are opposed to the goods and services tax.
The petitioners say that, while the tax has been passed in this Chamber against the wishes of the opposition and some of the members on the government side-now former members on the government side-they will, I am sure, place their hope in the unelected Senate in the expectation that it will return that bill to this House so

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we can have another vote on it and perhaps defeat the bill.
They call upon Parliament to reject the goods and services tax, and I urge hon. members opposite to heed the prayer of these petitioners.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Albert Glen Cooper: Madam Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Shall all questions be allowed to stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Hon. Marcel Danis (Minister of State (Youth), Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport) and Deputy Leader of the Government in the House) moved:: That with respect to Bill C-69, an Act to amend certain statutes to enable restraint of government expenditures, one day be set aside for the consideration of the second reading stage; and
That fifteen minutes before the end of the period provided for Government Orders, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required, for the purpose of this order and, in turn, every question necessary in order to dispose of the second reading stage shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: This is unacceptable, Madam Speaker!


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Madam Speaker, I have the questionable privilege of rising in the House today to speak to the motion moved by the Deputy Leader of the Govermment in the House of
Commons, and once again, it is a mistake on the part of this government to introduce such a motion.
Madam Speaker, it is the sixth time the government has moved a motion for time allocation in this House, in this Parliament, and it is a dreadful thing because it indicates that the government has lost control of the House and that it does not have the slightest idea how it should introduce bills and motions in this House and deal with public matters that are so very important.
In addition to its sixth motion for time allocation, the government has imposed closure thirteen times during this Parliament, more than any other government in Canada's history. I say that this is the worst government Canada has ever had, because of its failure to deal with the business of this House in a simple and orderly fashion. I say that this government should be deeply ashamed of its failure to accomplish anything important in this House and its failure to deal with government business. Closure thirteen times, time allocation six times and now the seventh time during this Parliament. This is going too far!
The Leader of the Government is not in the House today, but his deputy who is here should be particularly ashamed of the government's decision to table this motion today.

I have spoken many times on the evils of closure in the House, and the way the government treats this Parliament with contempt. I regret that I have to make a similar address today because what we are witnessing in the House is a complete violation of the principles of parliamentary procedure. One only has to look at the rules to see what it is that is contemplated on second reading of a bill.

At the second reading stage, the Standing Orders provide for eight hours of debate after the first three speeches by the minister who introduced the bill, the Official Opposition spokesman and the spokesman for the third party in this House. These three speeches, each of which may last forty minutes, are not included in the eight hours of debate. Subsequently, eight hours of debate are provided: twenty minutes for each speech, plus ten minutes for questions and comments. We now have a situation where there have been practically no bills on which the government has allowed eight hours of debate during this Parliament. Perhaps on the abortion bill, but otherwise, practically no bills had eight hours of debate before closure or time allocation was imposed.
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After those eight hours, what do the Standing Orders say? Ten minutes for each speech, and we have not had a single ten-minute speech on this bill. We have had only two hours and twenty-one minutes out of the eight hours provided by the Standing Orders for each bill considered by the House. And before those two hours and twenty-one minutes were up, the government gave notice of this motion for time allocation.
[English)
It is a shocking outrage that the government would proceed in this fashion. It is unable to come to negotiate any arrangement with respect to public business. It does not seem interested in negotiations and is interested only in allowing the bill through.
The approach of the government to this House is: "We don't want to hear your debate on this bill. We just want to know when you're gonna pass it. It is adopted as is. Pass it as is and, if you don't want to pass it, then we'll just impose closure and get it through anyway." There is no desire to listen to the opposition.
I was elected to represent Canadians in the House, as was every member of the opposition. We have a right and a duty to discuss bills in the House and to point out their shortcomings and their failures to the government. Yet, the government's expectation is that we will do that in three or four speeches, and then allow the thing through. That is the expectation.
I can think back to Parliaments in years past when I followed the proceedings of the House-not as a member-either from them galleries or by reading the debates. Many debates on many bills went on for a week or two weeks at a time. We have not had the luxury of any such debate in this Parliament. What is the urgency? There is no urgency. The government lets us go on extended breaks from sitting here. When we come back, it says: "We want this bill through in two days, one day or three days." Three days is usually the maximum.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Or two hours.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Or two hours. The government says: "We'll cut off debate whenever it is finished."
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As the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier says, two hours is generous in the government's view for debate on particular bills.
I say this is not the way Parliament works. This is an institution for debate, not an institution for passing bills just because the government says it has drafted the bill and it is ready to pass it.
I can understand how government members in the House must be bored with a bill by the time it comes to the House of Commons. I am sure they have had extensive debates on most of the bills in Cabinet. That is what goes on.


Mr. Mills:: They're nervous about defections.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: They are nervous about defections, as the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood points out. The government has had two defections already and I hear there is going to be a flood of them coming up. Rats off a sinking ship!
Aside from that, they have clearly had to debate these bills for so long in cabinet that they are bored with the debate. They say: "We've heard it all now. We don't need to listen to members of the Opposition on this bill." Their cabinet obviously is badly divided on these issues. They cannot make up their minds. They finally do long after the bill should have been introduced. They come waltzing along to the House, drop the bill onto the table, and say: "Pass it now."
That is the attitude of the government House leader. It is a bad attitude. I hope the new deputy government House leader will avoid that attitude, will chastize his boss, and try to get it changed. It is the wrong approach to the operations of a parliamentary democracy.
This Parliament exists to debate these bills, to point out their shortcomings, and to give the people of Canada who are opposed to some of these measures the opportunity to express their opposition and disapproval.
The government feels, probably because the bills are so dreadful, that, rather than listen to the people, it is simply going to cut off debate at every opportunity. We have had it cut off, as I have indicated, so many times. There have been 20 times now in this Parliament by either closure or time allocation. It is too many. It has gone on too long, and this debate has not gone on long

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enough. Yet, here we have the government trying to silence the people of Canada.
I challenge any one of the ministers who was elected to serve in the House to stand on his feet to participate in the debate on this bill and allow the debate to go for more than one more day as proposed by the deputy government House leader. They, too, were elected by their constituents.
The people of Kingston and the Islands had enough of this government in the last election campaign in 1988. They wanted representation in this House that was effective, that would be a voice to speak up for their rights that were being violated by this government by the passage of the kind of motion that is being introduced here today. They did not expect to have a member of Parliament whose views would be stifled by continuous application of closure and time allocation such as has gone on in this House 20 times already in this Parliament, and we have not yet sat two years.
Never before has a Canadian Parliament been treated to this kind of abuse. It constitutes an abuse of the rights of all parliamentarians and a contempt of this House of the worst kind. The Deputy House Leader should have the rummel gumption to stand up and withdraw this motion at once and apologize to the House for having introduced it.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, to echo my colleague's last words, I wonder if the Deputy House Leader would not want to resign from his position, because I cannot imagine that the Deputy House Leader is serious when he says that we have had enough time for debate on Bill C-69. After all, Madam Speaker, this is a bill that is going cap federal government support for post-secondary education, for health and hospital care and for social services and social assistance in the provinces. In other words, this bill goes against the very grain of what a Canadian and what Canada is all about. Yet the government says we have had enough debate.
Madam Speaker, we have only started the debate. Once again, we have only had less than three hours of discussion on this most important piece of budget legislation that we are going to debate in the next number of months and after two hours and 20 minutes of debate the government says: "We have had enough, we do not want
to hear any more dissent, we do not want to hear any more opposition voices. We do not want to be reminded of what it is we are doing; we do not want the people of Canada to understand what the government is doing".
This comes at a very interesting time. In another part of the world, in some of the communist countries in eastern Europe, the governments are opening up their Parliaments; they are saying that they are prepared to listen to a dissenting voice. They are prepared to recognize that the opposition has a role. They are prepared to listen to voices that criticize what the government of the day is doing.
That is going on in eastern Europe, and the world rejoices at that. Yet in our own country, with the Progressive Conservative government, time after time after time the government says it is not going to permit those people who were elected by the people of Canada to express their views in the House of Commons that opportunity.
Look at the benches today. The benches on the opposition side are filled today. I suspect that all of us on the opposition side want to speak out against the government's cuts to post-secondary education and to health care. Yet the government says it is not going to permit the House of Commons to function as the House of Commons is supposed to function. It is not going to permit members of the opposition to express their views on this legislation. It is not going to permit the democratic system to work in the country.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: On a point of order, the hon. member for Surrey-White Rock.


Mr. Friesen:: Madam Speaker, the member for Kamloops has just said that all the opposition benches were filled. I would ask him to list the names of the four NDP members who are here today.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, that is the usual inane comment that we would expect from that member. I am not even going to refer to what is sitting across on the government side and be caught in that same nonsense. But you will see, Madam Speaker, that he will not participate in this debate because he is embarrassed and the best criticism he can make is to rise in his place and make a nonsense comment about attendance in the House of Commons when it is his government that is forcing the goods and services tax down the throats of every Canadian against their will.
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Eighty per cent of Canadians say that they oppose this legislation; 80 per cent say: "Do not proceed". Yet this government says it is the big brother government, it is hiring thousands of tax collectors. The government says that it knows what is best for Canadians, it does not listen to any alternatives. It is the big brother of the system now; it has the majority; it is arrogant. It can do anything it wants to the people of Canada, including jamming this tax down their throats.
That is the kind of government we have-an arrogant government, a government that is undemocratic, a government that has contempt for the House of Commons, a government that has no respect for the parliamentary traditions of this country, because if it had it would permit debate on one of the most important pieces of budget legislation before the House.
But it does not and the point I was making is that, as you can see, there are opposition members here who were elected to represent their constituencies. They were elected to speak out on legislation that is before this House and this government will not allow the opposition to do that. This government will not allow the people of Canada to be heard.
That is why I say that there is the sound of jackboots in this building at the moment. You can hear jackboots crashing across on the government benches as their dictatorial, totalitarian ways are perpetuated time after time.
I ask my friends opposite whether they can remember a government in the history of Canada that has used closure so many times to muzzle debate in the House of Commons. There has never been a government that has used the heavy hand of muzzling Parliament time and time and time again. As a matter of fact, just in this short Parliament it has been used 13 times on legislation on which the government has refused to allow proper debate.
You know as well as I, Madam Speaker, that we only allow eight hours of full debate and after that we get into 10 minute speeches by members. That curtails debate after two or three days normally. After only one hour of debate the government gave notice that it has had enough. I say that that is not the democratic tradition that people in this country have fought to uphold for generations. This government has said to the people of Canada: "We have the majority now and we are going to
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do whatever we want, including making the Parliament of Canada irrelevant".
I still cannot believe that my hon. friends sitting across the way are so determined to jam this goods and services tax down the throat of every Canadian because they actually support it, and yet it seems that they do because they vote time and time again in support of that legislation.
We have a job to do, and our constituents expect us to do that job. The job of representatives of the opposition parties is to offer criticism to the government's legislation when it is brought forward. If it is good legislation, we support it. We have, on many occasions, with very little debate and on occasion with no debate, simply passed good legislation.
But when we see a bill like Bill C-69 through which the government is going to essentially abandon the support we in this country have known for post-secondary education, naturally a number of us want to speak against that particular initiative. After all, the young people in this country are the lifeblood of the country. They are the most important resource we have in Canada. Our young people are pursuing post-secondary education so that they can play their rightful roles in an information-based economy of the 1990s and beyond. Yet this government says, presumably, that it does not believe in young people. It does not believe in funding post-secondary education. It does not believe in doing what virtually every other western industrialized nation is doing, that is investing in our most important resource which is the young people of our country.
The government is going to cap support for post-secondary education. Can you imagine anything more regressive, more thoughtless than that? If the people of Canada knew what the government is doing, if they understood that this government is not going to continue funding the hospitals of Canada, is not going to continue supporting health care and medicare in this country as we have known it in the past, is not going to support our universities, vocational schools, technical schools and colleges as it has done in the past, the people of Canada would be even more cynical of the role the government is playing.
To stave off this opposition the government is going to try to keep the people of Canada from knowing what it is doing. The best way it can do that is to silence the House of Commons, to silence the opposition benches from exposing what this government is attempting to do in these critical areas of health care and post-secondary

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education. The government has announced now that it is going to close off debate, that it is not going to allow members of the opposition, or perhaps even members of the government, to express their views.
I submit that that is undemocratic, that it goes against the very parliamentary traditions that we have upheld and felt so strongly about in our country for generations, and that it adds to the dislike of the people of Canada for this government. How can you, Madam Speaker, respect a government that is anti-democratic? How can you respect a government that is totalitarian in its approach to the House of Commons? How can you respect a government that is anti-democratic day after day by muzzling the members of the House of Commons?
The fact that only 16 per cent of the people of Canada now reluctantly support this government-and that number is probably dropping-is no surprise.
In closing, I suggest that if this government continues to be so anti-Parliament in its process, to be so antiHouse of Commons, to be so anti-democratic, not only will it lose the 16 per cent of the support of the people of Canada, it will erode even further and this government deserves the erosion of that support.


Hon. Paul Dick (Minister of Supply and Services):: Madam Speaker, I could not help but listen to the rather ridiculous, I feel, speeches made by the member for Kingston and the Islands and the hon. member for Kamloops. As a matter of fact, the member for Kingston and the Islands did not spend any of his time dealing with the substance of the legislation and went on dealing with the motion for time allocation.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Madam Speaker, I am sure the minister knows we are dealing with the time allocation, the guillotine of time allowed on a bill, not with the substance of the bill. So he should address the subject that is before the House, that is the procedure, not the substance of the bill.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Madam Speaker, if they want to they can talk about the substance of the bill at the same time, but of course they are going to use the two hours to rail away. My hon. friend from Kamloops actually spent two minutes of his time talking about the substance of the
bill. For the other eight minutes he talked about jackboots.
Take a look at the press gallery. There is not even the lone sentinel from the Canadian Press who is usually up there. The press is not even interested in what the opposition is doing.


Ms. Clancy:: So you debate for the press, do you?


Paul Wyatt Dick: Thke a look at the democratic institutions in this world and you will find that we are the longest winded legislature in the democratic free world. We sit more days, talking longer. There have only been two debates since 1950, at second reading, that have gone longer than two days in the British House of Commons. Debate went six days when they entered into the European Economic Community and three days when they got rid of the Greater London Council.
I had the opportunity of sitting on the opposition side for 12 years. I know how it used to be. The idea is to talk, talk, talk, to try to force the government to bring in closure or time allocation. I know it is a tactic which is used.
I really think that we in the House of Commons are on the edge of talking ourselves into irrelevancy. I think we should sit down and modernize what we are doing in this place. We should come in tune with the times. The member for Kingston and the Islands was talking of a week or two weeks for debate at second reading stage, yet they go for a maximum of two days in England on second reading.
There is lots of time. We are going to have another six hours of debate on this. There is going to be a chance for more discussion.
We really have to look at the fundamental way in which we run this place. Instead of always just opposing, getting counteracting ideas from the government side and then comments from the opposition, I think we should sit down and fundamentally look at how we run this place.
For example, I know the stall tactics of putting up petitions. In England every petition gets filed with the Clerk. They respond to them. We can file with the Clerk here. We do not have to stand up and spend hours of House of Commons time reading them. Nobody ever watches it on TV and nobody reports them in the paper. They are reported in the Order Paper when they are
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filed so you get as much printed press as you do when you stand up and talk about them.
We can make some observations of how other Parliaments run their affairs. Instead of becoming irrelevant and wasting time, I think we should try and organize ourselves. Perhaps on an all-party basis the House Leaders would want to sit down to organize ourselves in a better way, instead of talking about such ridiculous stuff as jackboots.
You have to admit, when you get that sort of trash introduced as a speech in the House of Commons you have to question why we are standing here taking up time, why we are spending the money, why we are being so foolish.
So let us become a little more sensible and more realistic in the modern day. Let us use Parliament to debate matters and move on. We do not have to drag them out for a week or two weeks at a time. We have to move them along. I do not think we have to hear such trash as having two weeks debate on this, that and the other thing, or that it is a place of jackboots.
Closure and time allocation has been around for a long time. You can count the number of times the Liberals used it in the last Parliament before they turned the reins over to the Conservatives. They used it many times. We used it many times in the last Parliament. The pressures of the times are going to be realized. Nobody even comments on it any more in the press because it is used so regularly and they know it has to be, otherwise the opposition will just hold things up.
We saw what the NDP did on the goods and services tax. The very party which agreed with the goods and services tax in 1987 is now trying to talk it out at committee and in the House of Commons, through all kinds of procedural tactics, rather than getting on with it.
The government has the right to propose things. The House of Commons should dispose of things. The opposition may wish to oppose on certain occasions, it may wish to agree on certain occasions. If we oppose on all occasions and try to hold up the disposition of things for one week, two weeks, or three weeks, we become irrelevant here. I think we should look at the fundamen-
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tals of the system, otherwise it is going to become a jackboot and irrelevant place.


Mary Catherine Clancy: Madam Speaker, I rise to express my disappointment at the cutting off of debate and the use of time allocation on a very important topic for the people of my region and the people of my city.
I cannot believe that in the alleged interests of modernizing this place, we as members of Parliament should choose our topics for debate and decide the business of this Chamber on the basis of whether the press gallery is empty or full. Even to suggest that is to denigrate the work that is done here and done ably by members on both sides of the House.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Not always.


Mary Catherine Clancy: Definitely not always, and I am glad the member recognizes that. However, the question of time allocation on this particular bill is one that cannot be allowed to go by without strong protest from elected members of Parliament.
What we have here is time allocation on cuts to post-secondary education. What we have here is time allocation on cuts to health care. What we have here is time allocation on capping the Canada Assistance Plan.
In my region in the Atlantic people depend very much on funding such as this to maintain some sort of level playing field with the rest of the country. The people in the Atlantic region, the strongest supporters of post-secondary education in this country, see, along with all of the other things that have been thrown at them by this government in the past five years, the almost total erosion of federal funding for absolutely necessary services.
Are their elected representatives, the majority of whom sit on the opposition side of the House, being given a fair amount of time to put forward their views? No, they are not. The government has used its garotte and time allocation has been brought in for the twentieth time in the young life of this particular session.
When the universities in Atlantic Canada see that they can no longer offer the number of programs that they offered before these cuts were made, when those same universities see that they cannot pay their faculty and their staff according to the levels that are paid in the rest

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of the country, they are going to remember that their elected representatives were cut off in debate and not permitted to put forward the views of the people of the Atlantic region.
When health care cutbacks seriously affect the quality of life of Atlantic Canadians, Atlantic Canadians are going to remember that this was the twentieth time in a Parliament that commenced sitting in December, 1988, that this government said that it does not matter what the opposition thinks, it does not matter what the people represented by opposition members want to say and want to have said on their behalf, all that matters is that this bill gets tabled and gets passed as fast as humanly possible.
This chamber is an historic and almost mystical place for those of us fortunate enough to come here to represent our fellow Canadians. If we do not give this chamber and all its works the respect and time due to it, then we create in those people whom we represent from the Atlantic to the Pacific a sense that we are useless, that we are not here for any purpose. I do not believe that, you do not believe that, Madam Speaker, and neither, I believe, do the members opposite believe that.
But perception in politics, perception in government, means a whole lot more a great deal of the time than actuality. To use this Draconian measure 20 times is something that Canadians are not going to put up with.
I realize that the government has a fear of having a long drawn out debate on this because it is unfair. I realize that the government will do anything to avoid long discussions on the fact that it is cutting back on programs that mean survival to institutions and to health care programs, to child care programs and to various other social institutions in this country without which the lives of individual Canadians are going to be bleaker and more difficult with a loss of hope and, sadly, a loss of interest in how this country works.


Mrs. Finestone:: And service.


Mary Catherine Clancy: And yes, service as well, absolutely.
I suppose, after listening to my learned colleague from Kingston and the Islands, my distress and upset at what this government is doing in this particular case is tempered, again sadly, with a sense of cynicism that it
does not matter what you do, whether it is good or bad, as long as you do it quickly so people will forget.
So we will do these things that are counter-productive for Canadians, we will do these things that are going to close hospital beds all over Atlantic Canada, that are going to shut down university classrooms all over Atlantic Canada, that are going to cut out of much needed day care spaces in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. We are going to cut back so that the university education, of which Canadians have long been so rightly proud from coast to coast, is no longer an asset that Canadians can put on the international market and say: "Here we are. We can hold up our educational backgrounds and our training with anyone", so that the government can sweep yet another massive whiplash attack on its citizens under the rug of parliamentary procedure.
For 20 years I have watched and studied the Canadian political system, going right back to the great pipeline debate of the 1950s when closure was introduced by a Liberal government, to its great detriment. Canadian citizens talk veiy little about the procedures that we go through in this House. Frequently they have neither the time nor the inclination to watch what we do in this House. But closure is something that Canadians do understand. They do understand the stifling of debate and they do understand what it means when their duly elected representatives are precluded by the government from doing the job that they were elected to do. Certainly, Madam Speaker, they do understand that when these things are said by members of the government, and when opposition members are told that the importance of their work here in this Chamber can only be gauged by whether or not it makes the national news, the national newspapers or the early morning radio, then I think Canadians have a right to stand together and cry "halt".
This bill that is being cut off from debate deals a blow to the citizens of my region and to the citizens of all the regions of Canada. It is wrong that the time for full debate and the time for full discussion of what Canadians want from their federal government should be shoved into some small comer of the parliamentary calendar and left again to be swept away because the government feels, in its bizarre and ultimate wisdom, that it knows what is best for Canadians, and that what is
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best for Canadians is not having elected members of Parliament stand and oppose, as they are constitutionally elected to do.


Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster-Burnaby):: Madam Speaker, I rise today to also speak against the time allocation motion on Bill C-69. I am disappointed that once again this government is thwarting the rights of the representatives of the people of Canada to be heard on an important issue.
Since I have been elected, time and again we have seen from this government time allocation motions, closure motions, the stifling of debate in the House of Commons. The attitude of this government appears to be to not bother with the democratic process, to not listen to the ordinary folks of Canada. We have even seen this government drag off Parliament Hill protesters who were peacefully protesting against this government's actions.
The Tories do not want to hear what the people of Canada, the Official Opposition, or the New Democratic Party has to say about Bill C-69. They have made that very clear.
Clause 2 of Bill C-69 limits spending under the Canada Assistance Plan to only 5 per cent for British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. This will affect social assistance, child care and shelters for battered women. That is the mechanism for funding those programs in this country between the provinces and the federal government.
Provinces and territories other than British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario are exempt from this capping for the time being. That does not mean that in the next round the government will not attack their social programs, their child care and their shelters for battered women as well.
The government is dismantling social programs. The government promised child care before two elections and then scrapped the plans for a child care program immediately after the elections. The government completely cut core funding to women's centres so that women's centres that provided referrals to shelters for battered women are closing. Already 10 centres have closed in British Columbia. Now the government is going even one step further and attacking the shelters them-
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selves, the child care programs that were already in place and the poor of those three provinces.
As my colleague, the member for Mission-Coquitlam, has already said, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia may be better off in this nation, but the poor in those three provinces are just as poor as the poor citizens in any other province. Approximately 46 per cent of all persons receiving assistance under CAP live in those three provinces.
The finance minister is predicting higher unemployment. At the same time his government is hacking at the unemployment insurance program. There will be nothing left for these people to live on but social assistance. Now the Tories are trying to restrict that too.
Some analysts say that the 5 per cent growth limit will only just cover inflation. It will not be anywhere near adequate enough to cover the increased need that has been created by Tory economic mismanagement.
What will it be next? The Tories have already attacked pensions. They have already attacked family allowance programs. What is left for this government to attack?
There is already a child care crisis in this country. In my province of British Columbia there are only 20,000 licensed spaces for the 300,000 children requiring care. British Columbia is one of the provinces that has been slapped with a spending limit on child care.
Violence against women in our society is a serious and an urgent problem. It is something we hear members on the government side mouth platitudes about, but what women really need is action to address this problem.
One in every two shelters for battered women must turn women and their children away because they lack space to house them. That is how it is right now. The Tories have chosen at this time to slap a spending limit on shelters for battered women in those three provinces. It is shameful.
In my province of British Columbia, the provincial government-the cousins of the Conservative government, the Social Credit Party-have already choked the poor. There are two food banks in operation in my constituency. Those food banks have been in operation for many years now. They have become institutionalized in British Columbia. This is not the time-nor is there

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any time-for the federal government to abdicate its responsibility toward Canadians.
In 1981, a parliamentary task force stated that the federal government has "a constitutional responsibility for programs of income redistribution, including social assistance programs paying money to Canadians anywhere in Canada".
This government has ignored the requirement in the Canada Assistance Plan to give the provinces one year's notice of any change in CAP funding. The federal government is currently being challenged in the courts by British Columbia as to its illegal and unethical practices concerning CAP.
The Canada Assistance Plan was first introduced in the 1960s as one of five measures to reduce poverty in Canada. Canadians know now-if they did not know before-that the Tories really only care about their rich friends, the friends and the insiders of this government. It proves it to us every day. It proved that it does not have an inkling of feeling, respect or of concern for lower and middle-income Canadians.
We have heard members on the government side talk about the savings from cutting the CAP. Who is saving? If the federal government saves, provincial governments have to spend more. It all comes out of the same taxpayer's pocket. It is ordinary Canadians who pay the bills in this country. There is absolutely no savings for the Canadian taxpayer. They only see their taxes going one way-and that is up. They pay more and more taxes and receive fewer and fewer services from this government. There is really only increased hardship for those at the lower end of the economic spectrum.
People who need jobs and food, children without anyone to care for them, battered women-these are the people who are paying for this federal government's imaginary savings.
This government is behaving in a disgusting way. We have the right to speak out. That is the democratic process. We have the right to speak out about what the Tories are doing to our country. We have the right to say that we have had enough of this government's economic mismanagement.
We want care for our children. Women want somewhere to turn to when they are battered. They do not
want to find the doors of women's centres locked. They do not want to go to a shelter when they have been abused and battered and find there is no space for them or for their children.
We want our children to have food to eat. Canadians do not want to line up at food banks, to be seen standing at the door of a charitable institution. They want a decent standard of care for themselves and for their children. They want decent jobs. They want to have a secure future for themselves and their families.
That is what Canada is about. Canada is about free speech, about a caring and a compassionate society. It is about good social programs and security for all its people. That is what this government is trying so hard to destroy.
We want the opportunity to express fully our opposition to this bill. I urge all members of the House not to support the time allocation motion on this important bill and, further, to vote down this unethical bill, Bill C-69.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Madam Speaker, we are witnessing today another sad event in the history of Parliament. This is the first time that a government has had to give notice of two measures to stifle debate, to apply the guillotine to parliamentary proceedings. To justify its ends any means is now to be used.
Indeed, a sign of a desperate government that does not know how to administer the House of Commons or how to manage the time of the House of Commons is when it has to throw the book at the opposition, as it did yesterday, and give notice that on the one hand it might use closure, but on the other it might use time allocation.
Those are the two measures at the government's disposal to cut off debate. This bill is a very important measure put forward to cut expenditures of the federal government in many important fields of Canadian systems and programs under the EPF dealing with health care and education. EPF is the program under which the government funds post-secondary education, health care and some of the Canada Assistance Programs.
It has been said before in this House, and I think it is worth repeating, that this is the twentieth time the government has moved such a motion in this Parliament. It is the thirty-fifth time that the Tory government has used either closure or time allocation since it took power
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in 1984. That does not say much for its capacity to administer the House.
However, it says much about the jackboot approach to the opposition in trying to prevent democratic debate on important matters. It says much about not giving the opposition a chance to explain to Canadians what is in the legislation. The government surely does not explain to Canadians what it is doing. That is possibly why today it is the least popular party in the history of this country. Some 15 per cent of Canadians, at best-according to the results of the latest Gallup poll-support the Tories.
In my view, it is a sign of a government in trouble, a government which is desperately trying to shut off debate to prevent Canadians from hearing the truth about its legislative programs. What does it do? It imposes the guillotine. It cuts off debate after less than two hours and fifteen minutes on a bill that is very important to Canadians which deals with programs to which we in Canada attach great importance. I am talking about programs which fund post-secondary education and health care-one of the best programs in the world-and the Canada Assistance Plan which has been capped in certain provinces.
It is as though the poor in Ontario, my province, were any different from the poor anywhere else in this country. The poor in Ottawa-Vanier are just as much in need of attention as any other poor people in this country. This Tory government is saying to the people of my riding of Ottawa-Vanier: "If you are poor, we are sorry, but you are going to have to submit yourselves to a system which is absolutely unable to respond with care, understanding and generosity".
I cannot understand why this government would use at this stage-as I said before, after less than two hours and fifteen minutes of debate-time allocation, a form of closure, on a bill of such great importance to Canadians. I cannot understand why it would allow one additional day of debate, which could possibly be tomorrow, a Wednesday, which is a very short day, giving us less than the normal eight hours allowed on second reading of a bill before we proceed to the 10-minute speeches. The 10-minute speeches are a way of getting more members of Parliament involved in debate. In that way we can hear
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from all the regions of this country, from all the people duly elected in this House.
A government which has by all accounts fewer friends than supporters than any party has ever had in the history of this country is indeed in trouble. With less debate on this important legislation-and I will address in a few minutes what it deals with specifically, because I think it is important that Canadians out there understand that what this government is doing is choking off debate on-


Mr. Crosby:: Oh, oh!


Jean-Robert Gauthier: I hear: "Oh, oh" from the member for Halifax West. Well, oh, oh, to him too. He should be ashamed to be a member of that crowd, that gang of people which will not let the opposition speak on this bill. It imposes its will on the minority. It calls upon its huge majority in this House to do so. By all accounts that huge majority will evaporate. It will become absolutely impossible to achieve in the months and years to come.
I hope that the member for Halifax West is not one of those who will vote for restricting debate, for putting closure or time allocation on this motion.

-because, Madam Speaker, this government measure, Bill C-69, is aimed at reducing transfer payments to the provinces for higher education, slashing health care programs, and capping funds paid to Ontario, my province, Alberta and British Columbia under the Canada Assistance Plan.
Since 1986, Madam Speaker, this is the third time the government has been gunning for Established Programs Financing. I have it here: total EPF cut-backs between 1986-87 and 1994-95 will amount to the astronomical sum of $31.1 billion, that is reductions of $22.2 billion which should have been earmarked for healh care, and $8.9 billion for higher education. Should the provinces decide not to raise their taxes they will have to force hospitals to close a number of beds or perform fewer surgical operations to make up for these cut-backs, or again require students to pay higher tuition fees, work in overcrowded lecture halls and probably abandon their studies because they will be unable to afford tuition fees for courses for which they would otherwise be entitled to register. And yet it was on March 24, 1982 that the same Minister of Finance who is sponsoring this measure and first presented it to Parliament in his budget said, and I

April 24, 1990
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quote: "Let us not make hospitals, universities and colleges a battleground between the federal government and the provincial governments. Let us solve those problems outside of that arena."
Madam Speaker, that is exactly what he is doing now. He has started a terrible debate between the provinces and the federal government. He is putting the future of our young people and the health of Canadians at risk. He is abdicating the role of the federal government, which is to redistribute, to help and to give each province the funds it needs, so that we can have a universal, non-profit health-care system open to all Canadians. There are the normal criteria for programs administered by the provinces, but one is absolutely essential, namely that a program is financed by all Canadians so that it is also available in those regions in this country which may not have enough resources to bear the costs of such a program.
This country will develop and will keep on being my Canada, our Canada, if he realizes that redistribution of our wealth, our joint assets, must continue and that it must be done by a federal government that does not abdicate its leadership role, be it in the financial sector, health care, education, constitutional or other matters. I must say that this government totally abdicates its responsibilities when it withdraws from shared-cost programs, when it decides to drop these programs and tell the provinces it is their constitutional responsibility and to get on with it! Madam Speaker, this attitude is very bad for our country. It is an attitude that should be condemned. And I again condemn the government for having introduced time allocation today, a measure that will prevent us, the Official Opposition, from informing Canadians of the serious and negative impact this legislation will have on the future of our country.


M. Jim Hawkes (Calgary West):: Madam Speaker, the hon. member mentioned abdication, and I say it is the Liberal Party and the NDP who are doing the abdicating.

What are they abdicating? Any sense of responsibility for the affairs of this nation and for the people of this nation. They do it consistently time after time in the Chamber. They did it consistently year after year as a
government with the aid and support of the New Democratic Party.
I remember being a brand new member in the House. I had the honour, on behalf of our party, to be the second speaker in a budget debate. The NDP moved a motion to get rid of that budget. The Liberals supported it. We were in a minority situation. The budget was defeated and we were gone.
What did they defeat? They defeated a budget that was acclaimed subsequently by analysts to be the fairest budget to the poor people of the nation in the decade of the seventies. Then they presume to stand in the Chamber again today and say they are standing up on behalf of ordinary Canadians from the provinces and regions.
The Liberal Party of Canada left us an absolute mess in the financial sense. We have stood up in the Chamber to present a simple piece of legislation that deals with the control of public expenditures, and that says this nation has gone on for far too long spending and borrowing. We have reached a point where 35 cents out of a revenue dollar simply pays interest on the public debt. Yet, members opposite stand up in the Chamber time after time and say: "That is not bad enough, let's make it worse. Let's spend, spend, spend. Don't raise taxes. Don't get any revenue. Just borrow, borrow, borrow."
Sooner or later $1 out of every $1 in revenue is going to have to pay the interest on the public debt. There will not be a penny for policing, there will not be a penny for the environment, and there will not be a penny for the senior citizens of the country, if we follow the advice which flows from across the Chamber to this side. The opposition says: "Don't cut your expenditures. Expand your expenditures. Don't raise revenue. Borrow, borrow, borrow". That is the mentality that sits on the other side of the Chamber.
They then have the gall to stand up in the Chamber to say that we are cutting off debate. That is the bunch- and I include both parties on the other side of the Chamber-which has refused time after time offers to extend debate in the Chamber, to meet later in the evening, to meet until midnight, or to meet on weekends to discuss a measure for an entire weekend. They say: "No, no, no, we want the House to shut down at the scheduled time. We want days and days of debate at second reading. This would give us the time to put our
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prejudgments on the table. We could put our philosophy on the table. But we would make no advancement on the passage of legislation which is designed to help the people of the nation."
We should take a lesson from Parliaments with, perhaps, more history than we have yet to offer-Parliaments that have been around for hundreds of years.
In those Parliaments, the normal time of debate at second reading is between one and two hours. Why? Because they have learned through experience that, when a bill passes out of the House at second reading and into committee, they can tap the expertise which exists in a nation to look at whether or not the fine print is right for the nation. The examination of a piece of legislation has to be done with the help of people knowledgeable in the field, people with more knowledge than we as individual members of Parliament in most cases bring with us to the Chamber.
We get the help of witnesses in committee to look at the fine print. We have an opportunity to study a piece of legislation for days, weeks, or months, depending on its complexity, its importance, and the willingness of Canadians who have the knowledge base to assist us in the fine-tuning of that piece of legislation.
After that, the legislation should come back to the Chamber where it should move rather quickly through report stage and third reading. If there are amendments members want to propose at report stage, then they should be considered. Short speeches should be made about them. The House is either persuaded or not. We should then vote on them, and they should be disposed of.
The entire process for second reading, report stage and third reading, in terms of actual time in the Chamber, should be no more than a day in almost every case, or a day and a half in the unusual case. Yet what do we find on this particular piece of legislation? Even after we pass the motion for time allocation today, it will have taken three days simply for second reading stage in the Chamber. It will have cost a minimum of $3 million of public time and expense. That is $3 million to listen to the kind of drivel that people watching television are
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hearing in the Chamber today. That is only through second reading.
After second reading, it has to go through committee and then comes back to report and for third reading stage. How many more days will the jokers on the other side of the Chamber want to spend on it? How many more millions of dollars of taxpayers' funds will they want to spend standing in the Chamber spewing rhetoric that is not based on reality? We should not be voting on time allocation today, we should be voting on the bill.
It is very, very simple. Does the House believe that the time has come to cut public expenditures? Or, does the House believe that we should continue to expand public expenditures?
The only thing at issue here today is whether or not there is a single, responsible individual on the other side of this Chamber-even one member of the opposition- who is not under their Whip's control and who has the courage to stand up in this Chamber and vote for this measure. Some of them come from backgrounds from which they know that you cannot continue to expand public expenditures and to borrow money without creating massive inflation, massive unemployment, and massive problems for the senior citizens and others in the country.
That is the prescription that was in place, basically, from 1972 through until 1984, which those two parties followed. Their philosophy was: "Spend, spend, spend. Don't raise money. Borrow, borrow, borrow."
What did that philosophy lead to? It led to the worst unemployment rates this country has ever seen. It led to interest rates of up to 24 per cent and inflation rates that were absolutely killing for people on fixed incomes, the seniors of this country. It created enormous problems of spousal battering resulting from family tensions and monetary tensions. Divorce rates were rocketing out of sight because of the same kinds of tensions. It was an absolute disaster for the country.
There were twelve years of gradually increasing disaster. Many of us in the Chamber watched it. Those of us who were not in the Chamber then were watching it from outside. Now, they want to go back to it. They want to stall the Chamber from taking the sensible steps which need to be taken.

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Looking down the hall to the other place, we see the legislation that is piling up. For example, there is a piece of legislation related to unemployment insurance that would enable us to provide training to Canadians. They need that training to be able to hold jobs, to make our industries more productive, and to make our economy better and our standard of living higher. Members opposite stalled it here for months and months, and then an unelected place down the hall stalls it for months and months. They then stand up here and say that we, on this side, are against democracy.
As you know, Madam Speaker, there was an election and we won it. We are responsible for our programs, but now they are trying to make us responsible for their obstinance, their obstructionism, and their waste of dollars in this Chamber. That is what they would like us to be responsible for. I say Canadians are too wise.
Canadians know that when they do not have the money in their family budgets they have to cut. Canadians know that it is the job of this Chamber, if it is going to act responsibly, to move quickly on those measures required to cut public expenditures and to get expenditures under control in the best interest of Canadians from one coast of the country to the other and from north to south. All Canadians will benefit from the passage of this legislation, an initiative whose time has come.
We have the obligation to get on with it, and to get on with it today as quickly as possible, and to get over this silly nonsense of obstructing things that are indeed in the national interest.


Mr. George S. Baker (Gander-Grand Falls):: Madam Speaker, I have just a few words to say concerning this particular motion before the House, and a few words concerning the address just given by the hon. member opposite.
There are two primary functions of this Chamber. One function is legislative. The other function is accountability of the Government of Canada to the people of Canada. Simply to say that there is only one function for a Parliament is to overlook perhaps the main function of legislatures throughout the world which have established their procedure under what we call the British parliamentary system.
The hon. member who just spoke went into some detail in putting forward the argument that other legislatures in other countries under the British parliamentary system have rules that mean, for example, that a motion must come to an end at the end of the sitting day. Instead of having this particular piece of legislation before the House for three days, as the hon. member said, it would go through in one day and then to a committee of the House. After careful examination in committee where the real work is done, it would then come back to the House.
However, what the hon. member is overlooking, of course, is that, although that may be one difference between the Parliament of Canada and the Parliament of Great Britain or Australia, there are other differences that make up for the loss of accountability that one finds in time limitation measures enshrined in the parliamentary rules of those legislatures. Most of the Parliaments that have built into their rules a time factor that a motion comes to an end at the end of the sitting day also have committees that originate their own terms of reference. In other words, the real accountability and the action in those Parliaments are in the committees. They are not in the Parliaments themselves.
You say that the legislature is separate from the Parliament. Even in Question Period notice is given of a question, but the committees originate their own terms of reference. They decide what they will do. That is where the accountability function has been established for those legislatures.
It is unfortunate that over the years the Parliament of Canada has lost that aspect of accountability. That is that the executive would be accountable to the people through the Parliament of Canada. That is the primary function of the Parliament of Canada. We have evolved our system to the point where if you examine the rules correctly, you find that no minister has to answer a question. If you examine the precedents of the Canadian parliamentary system, you find that no minister is held accountable for actions of his department or his officials. It is a far ciy from Erskine May and Beauchesne to what we have today. To remove the accountability factor and to keep bringing in time allocation or closure on legislation removes from the Parliament of Canada its most important function.
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The hon. member mentioned that three days of debate was long enough for second reading of this particular piece of legislation. I have to question that. The legislation that he was referring to puts a cap on and limits spending by the federal treasurer. I will use the transfers to the provinces for health and post-secondary education as an example. Once upon a time, Madam Speaker, we had what we called the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Care Act under which the Parliament of Canada had to pay to the provinces certain sums of money for the operations of hospitals. That changed a few years ago to block funding. The provinces do not necessarily have to spend that money on those particular operations but they certainly cannot afford in this day and age to have the Government of Canada saying: "Look, for the purposes of running hospitals and running your health care scheme in your province and in running your post-secondary institutions the Government of Canada is going to limit expenditures." It is not only that but it is even more serious when you consider what is actually taking place in those two areas. There were two areas that you would never touch if you had a choice and if you had a certain amount of money in the government treasury. The two areas that you should never touch should be health and post-secondary education. If there is an area that should be beyond the axe, it should be hospitals and health care.
In this day and age we have many new machines and inventions to be purchased and operated by our hospitals. Certain provinces in our nations do not have certain machines for health care and other provinces do have machines for health care. In certain provinces there are patients waiting in the corridors to receive medical treatment there instead of in hospital rooms. People wait in line for days and weeks and months for bypass surgery. When you have all of those things taking place, certainly the one area you would not dare touch-you would not think about it, you would not contemplate it and you would not dream about it-is health care. You would not touch that at all if you knew the facts and realized how important our hospitals are and how important our health care system is. That is what the Government of Canada has done. So when the hon. member says "Well, you know, it is going to take three days for second reading on this bill", the Canadian public is saying it should take three years.
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The Parliament of Canada is supposed to hold the Government of Canada accountable for the people of Canada. That is the function of this Parliament. It is not to simply legislate. If that is the sole function of Parliament then let us get rid of the opposition parties totally. Let us have only one system brought in whereby the government will only introduce the legislation and no one will say anything about it at all.


An hon. member:: They would like that.


George Baker: On the other hand, look at the other thing the government is cutting back; post-secondary education.
Madam Speaker, you are telling me I only have one minute left. Let me say this in the one minute.
Post-secondary education. The present system that has evolved in this country is that only the rich can really afford to go to university and post-secondary education comfortably. Only the rich can afford it.
Today, this government has brought in a measure to charge for a student loan. Imagine not only paying the interest on a student loan which is hard enough to get now, but you pay a fee to get a loan, plus the interest. That is where the Government of Canada is heading.
The Government of Canada should be held accountable to the people and should not be bringing in closure. The people of Canada do not agree with this measure before us today.


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Madam Speaker, I find it ironic that I have more opportunity to rise in this House to speak on closure and time allocation motions than I do on the substance of bills. I think that is very indicative of the attitude of the present government that their idea is to make sure that matters cannot be put fully before the public. I keep wondering why, particularly with a bill like this, the government does not want full debate on this type of legislation? It has a tremendous impact on the provinces and therefore on local communities.
When I look at it from my community of Surrey, I realize why the government would not want a full discussion of this bill. I am surprised that my hon. friend, the member for Surrey-White Rock, is not demanding an opportunity to discuss fully before this Parliament what impact this legislation will have on our municipality-

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The premiers issued a statement at their annual conference stating that this unilateral changing of federal-provincial fiscal arrangements is detrimental, particularly for provinces like British Columbia where there is a growth in population. The impact is severe.
For municipalities with a very fast growth rate, the impact is overwhelming. Surrey has a dramatic lack of resources. It is faced with absorbing the fastest rate of growth in Canada. From 1979 to 1989 there was a 45 per cent increase in the population, which was 125,000 people. In the next 10 years the projected growth rate will be another 140,000 people. That is an 85 per cent growth increase in the number of people over the age of 70.
In terms of health care, those over 70 represent a seven times greater impact on hospital services than those aged 15 to 69. What we have is a crisis in health care in Surrey. The Surrey Memorial Hospital has 1.67 acute care beds per 1,000 population. If you take out those people who are stuck in acute care beds because there are not adequate long term care facilities, the elderly who should be in long term care seniors' beds, it is reduced to 1.3 beds per 1,000 population. That is compared with the B.C. provincial target of 3.3, the B.C. provincial average of 3.8 or the city of Vancouver, 6.4.
I am sure that the Tories do not want this information fully before the public. They do not want the public in Surrey to understand that through the curtailment of the federal-provincial funding, $7.3 billion is going to be removed. That is $250 million a year in payments to the province of British Columbia. What could Surrey do with an extra $250 million to meet its critical shortage of health care? The Tories want to limit debate. Certainly, they do not want a full discussion of the impact of the federal government pulling back from its responsibilities in health care.
The government keeps saying that the provinces can absorb it. That is all veiy nice, but in British Columbia we had a budget brought down last week that had a deficit of $650 million. Even the Socred governments could not cook the books to hide that deficit. It is there. There is not the ability for the provinces to simply pick up and
bring in that money to make up the reduction from the health dollar by this government.
Of course, the government does not want a discussion. It does not want a discussion on the curtailment of the Canada Assistance Plan. Canada Assistance Plan money is designed to alleviate poverty and to do away with the causes of neglect and abuse. That is what it is designed to do, to provide services to deal with poverty, to provide services to do away with the causes of neglect and abuse. British Columbia, and particularly Surrey, are in a crisis in our social service programs.
This government has simply said that it will simply not continue to support any expansion, regardless of the fact that there is a dramatic shift in population, regardless of the fact that there is a growth in our municipalities. What is it curtailing? What does it they want to make sure the public does not understand? It wants to make sure it does not understand that this Tory government does not support programs any longer that provide services to abused children. It will curtail them.
In the last three to four years, there has been increased awareness of sexual abuse in this country. What is the Tory response? In provinces like British Columbia, it says: "You cannot expand your programs any more." The fact that the public is finally realizing that sexual abuse is a major problem in this country means nothing. It simply means that what they are doing is saying: "We will not allow for any expansion of services." They do not care what the impact is on children, and the life long damage that is caused by sexual abuse.
Prior to being elected, I worked in Vancouver with one of the street programs that tried to work with street prostitutes, young girls and boys aged 13 and 14 who are on the streets.
They are involved in drug abuse and prostitution. The government simply says that it does not want an expansion of those programs for them. In Surrey in the last two or three months articles in the paper have talked about a growing street problem in Surrey. These kids are now being called the sidewalk kids because they are not, as yet, into the heavy drug scene and the heavy street prostitution like the street kids.
There is a need for expanded services, youth programs, counselling programs and drug counselling programs to ensure that these sidewalk kids do not become the street
April 24, 1990

kids in two years and in five years the ones who are occupying our jails and our mental hospitals.
The government is saying that it is going to curtail any expenditures and any expansion of programs to meet these needs. No wonder the government wishes to cut off debate. No wonder the government wants to make sure that there is limited time in the House where the impact of its cut-backs can be discussed and debated. As one hon. member said, we are not talking about philosophies or opinions. We are talking about facts. There is a critical shortage of acute care beds and increasing problems with street kids.
Hon. members over there may laugh, but come out to a municipality like this where, every weekend, there are problems with juvenile girls hustling on the street, problems with drugs and the increased use of cocaine. If you guys think that is funny, I am sorry. I and my colleagues in the New Democratic Party do not think it is funny.
In closing, an hon. member opposite said that Canadians are wise and they will not be fooled. Well, Canadians are wise and that is why this government is down to 16 per cent in the polls. In British Columbia it is down to 12 per cent in the polls.


Ms. Mitchell:: And going down, down, down.


Howard Edward Crosby: Madam Speaker, I want to take the opportunity to join in this debate in the hope that I can provide some semblance of reasonableness and common sense, in view of the disinformation, misinformation and delusionary thinking expended in this House by members of the opposition, both in the Liberal party and the New Democratic Party.
The issue is very simple. We are talking about time allocation on a matter before the House of Commons-


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Guillotined! Shutting down the House!


Howard Edward Crosby: Why would we do a thing like that? Well, let me tell you very briefly why. We are talking about Bill C-69 which proposes to enact restraints of government expenditures. Did this happen yesterday, the day before, or in the last week or two?


Jean-Robert Gauthier: After an hour and 20 minutes of debate!
Government Orders


Howard Edward Crosby: No, Madam Speaker, this was brought before the House of Commons in full dress on February 20,1990, as part of the budget of the Minister of Finance. He made all of these issues very clear and our system provides for six days of budget debate, three votes, three opportunities to express an opinion on the measures in the budget, on the whole of the budget, and this House voted affirmatively on all occasions to pass the budget. So, what we are talking about is a fait accompli.
The government has already made it clear-


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Any means justifies the end.


Howard Edward Crosby: -that it has embarked upon a program of expenditure restraint. The program has been outlined in the budget veiy carefully and prudently, and this Bill C-69 simply implements those measures. I am sure people are saying that if that is the case, if this is part of the budget, if it has already been decided by the government that this is the way we must control expenditures as part of government policy, why are we bothering to debate this minor aspect of the budget implementation?
I can tell the people of Canada why we are doing that. It is because the Opposition have embarked upon a program of delay, of harassment of government measures and so on. why? Simply to prevent the government from putting through its program.
I think they are afraid that the strong medicine that the government has recommended will work, that the economy will improve, that production will increase and grow, that jobs will be provided. The opposition does not want that to happen, and let me tell you why. If they really thought these measures were so harmful, if they really thought they were going to profit in terms of public popularity by the dangers of government measures, they would allow the measures to pass. Then the public would see the action that results.
Instead, knowing that there is a definite commitment to these measures, the opposition harasses the government and causes inappropriate if not improper delays in this House of Commons because they do not want the government program to be implemented, knowing it will work.

April 24, 1990
Government Orders


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: What about child abuse? What about child prostitution? What about health care?


Howard Edward Crosby: It is not arm-chair socialism; it is not deluded liberalism; it is hard-nosed economic fact. The government deals day after day with those hard-nosed economic facts.
Let me tell the member from British Columbia that there will not be any social program for street children; there will not be any programs to help children in the streets of Canada; there will not be any hospital care-


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Sixty per cent of the population can't get health care.


Howard Edward Crosby: -there will not be any educational programs unless we balance our budget and make our revenues concur with our expenditures. The basis for social programs is a sound economy, a national treasury that has sufficient money to pay for the programs that his party claims to want.
They are destroying the foundation of those social programs by standing in this House and prevailing against budgetary measures on the revenue side, on the expenditure reduction side, that will ensure the continuation of the social programs that we all need and Canadians have come to respect.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: You are mixing carrots and oranges.


Howard Edward Crosby: Madam Speaker, I want to expose the hypocrisy of opposing government measures to raise revenues and restrain expenditures because that is what will support social programs now and well into the future.
Let me talk a bit about the delays. We already have documented in the House of Commons in the word of the hon. member for Thunder Bay-Atikokan of the New Democratic Party, that he and his party have indeed embarked upon a program of delay. In fact on March 23, 1990, when he was defending this very action he said on page 9683 of Hansard:
You will find that in no way has the New Democratic caucus broken any rules of this Chamber. We have used the rules in order to point out our objections to a specific piece of government legislation, the goods and services tax. We have been thwarted in some ways in our attempts 1o frustrate the government by lack of assistance from the Official Opposition.


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Nobody wants the GST!


Howard Edward Crosby: Madam Speaker, the GST has been brought to the House of Commons as a financial measure to ensure the solvency of the government of Canada, to ensure that the national treasury has sufficient funds, not this year but for years in the future, to provide social programs, and members of the opposition say: "They are thwarting that measure." They do not want a balanced budget. They want expenditures to exceed revenues.
How can a member of the House of Commons possibly desire that end result? It is simple mathematics. If your revenues are not equal to your expenditures you incur a deficit. If you do not pay your deficit the national debt rises.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Because you are lousy managers!


Howard Edward Crosby: If you have to service the national debt you do not have money for social programs. Now how can a member honestly oppose revenue increases and expenditure reductions when he knows the ultimate result of that opposition is destruction of the social programs which those revenues support?
Let me give a concrete example of that. In 1984 when the present government of Canada took office the national debt was $200 billion. It rose in four years to $350 billion, a difference of $150 billion. Eighty per cent of that increase was compounded interest. In other words it bought Canadians nothing; it just satisfied the creditors of the government. Billions of dollars were literally thrown away, not available for street children, not there to help education, not there to provide medical services because we were paying it out in interest. Yet members opposite say, "continue that policy, carry on with that policy, pile up deficits".
As a result of the actions of the government over the last four years the expenditure program was reduced by $25 billion on an annual basis. In 1984 the expenditures of the Liberal government of Canada exceeded revenues by $16 billion. This fiscal year the revenues will exceed expenditures by $9 billion, which is an exchange of $25 billion. If we add that amount to the current deficit, already too high at $28.5 billion, it would be in an astronomical deficit figure of over $50 billion. What would that do to Canada? What would that do to social programs? What would that do to medical care and what would that do to post-secondary education? Yet that is what the members opposite advocate.
April 24, 1990

I am surprised that the people of Canada are taken in by this obvious disinformation by opposition members to people across Canada. Why are they taking it in? It has spread to other organizations like the Canadian Labour Congress which has 2.2 million members across Canada who are dependent on a healthy economy for their livelihood. It has joined the New Democratic Party in militating against financial responsibility at the national level. They are going to destroy the jobs of their members and sooner or later the members of the Canadian Labour Congress are going to see this point and ask what their leaders are doing to them. They are undermining their future.
If there is not a strong national economy there will be no jobs for Canadians whether they are trade unionists or otherwise. The only basis for a healthy economy is a balanced national budget and that is undeniable.
That is why on February 20, 1990, the Minister of Finance introduced his budget. That is why we took the measures that we feel are necessary with respect to transfer payments.
For example, Established Programs Financing is a program whereby the Government of Canada supports education and health care across Canada for all Canadians. The expenditures rose 6.3 per cent. What happens when expenditures increase by 6.3 per cent on an annual basis and the government of Canada is keeping its own expenditures increase at 3 per cent?
That is a great sacrifice, of course, to public servants and to all Canadians through the tax system because Canadians are paying more money for this financial responsibility. Public servants are receiving less in increases and that is their sacrifice.
The New Democratic Party does not want any sacrifice, just to carry on with the programs that have been enforced. The former Liberal government established a policy of buying votes with people's money and they do not want it to stop. They say that we do not need these measures.
Surely their conscience is telling them otherwise and surely they recognize that the rhetoric they preach in this House of Commons is destructive to the country. What does it take to bring them to their senses, if dollar bills on a chart do not tell Canadians exactly where we stand? Do they really want us to go down the road with Brazil?
Do they really want us to have 200 per cent inflation like Poland? Is that what they want for Canadians?
I tell members to be honest in the House of Commons and with the people of Canada. Join with us in letting the people of Canada know that we have a financial problem in 1990 and we can solve it. We can only solve it with sacrifice by Canadians in terms of revenues, contributions and returns of expenditure reduction. There is no other answer.
I ask members of Parliament in the opposition to come clean and admit it. Let us get on with the work of governing Canada for the benefit of all Canadians and our social programs.


Mr. Sid Parker (Kootenay East):: Madam Speaker, I realize that we do not have much time left but I am very pleased to be able to get up and speak on time allocation on Bill-


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: If there is consent I would call it one o'clock and then allow the hon. member to start fresh after Question Period.


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


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


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Mr. Joseph Volpe (Eglinton-Lawrence):: Mr. Speaker, when opportunity knocks, hesitation should not be our response.
What then should we make of the Tory government's navel gazing as Europe prepares for 1992?
The Tory putting of all eggs in the U.S.A. free trade agreement basket, their inability to obtain economic, let alone constitutional, co-operation among the provinces and their fear of initiating a European policy without

April 24, 1990
prior American or NATO consent is leading to a do nothing approach to Canadian-European relations.
Meanwhile, Europe's corporations are restructuring for growth. Pan-European investment is increasing sharply while Canadian banks languish in the stupor of indifference toward investment in Europe.
Almost perversely, the Tories' budgeted for a $1.9 million cut in estimates for international economic trade and aid for 1990.
Ironically, while Canadian corporations' expenditures on mergers and acquisitions in the European Community dropped by more than 75 per cent from $1.05 billion U.S. to $165 million in 1988-89, American corporations have doubled such acquisitions from $6.5 billion to $12.9 billion in the same period.
Why are we not following that lead? Are the Tories once again serving the dictates of their American masters?


THE CONSTITUTION
Mr. Peter L. McCreath (South Shore):: Mr. Speaker, Premier John Buchanan's offhand remark last week that joining the U.S. might be the best of a sad set of options for maritimers in the event of a separate Quebec set off a storm of predictable protests. Opposition Leader Vince McLean responded in a predictably partisan and hysterical manner.
In truth, Premier Buchanan has done Nova Scotians a useful service. As an MP travelling back and forth between Ottawa and Nova Scotia I find myself living two different solitudes. To date, Nova Scotians have not tuned in to the reality that things have changed in Quebec.
There is a new economic confidence, and on the part of many, there is a sense that the constitutional commitments of 1980 and 1982 were only fulfilled with the accord at Lake Meech. Now, that too is being rejected by English Canadians led in no small way by two Atlantic premiers.
Separatist strength and sentiment in Quebec cannot be dismissed as in the past. Should it ever come to fulfilment, the consequences for maritimers are too
horrendous even to contemplate. The maritimes should tune into the true Meech Lake debate. For us, there is simply too much at stake.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Rod Laporte (Moose Jaw-Lake Centre):: Mr. Speaker, rural Canada is in a state of severe crisis.
In western Canada seeding is just beginning, and in two weeks it will be in full swing. Not only are thousands of farmers facing the loss of their farms, but many are facing the prospect of being unable to put seed in the ground. Yet to date, there is nothing in place to assist farmers, and ensure that their crop will be planted.
In my riding of Moose Jaw-Lake Centre, like elsewhere, there are many farmers in severe trouble. One of them is Amie Taylor. Mr. Taylor lives near Kenaston and for almost 20 years has been operating a mixed family farm. However, this year the banks have refused to lend him any money to put in his crop.
Fortunately for Mr. Taylor, the Saskatchewan community spirit still exists and a local self-help group made up of clergy, farmers and business people has been formed to, among other things, ensure that all crops in the Davidson-Craik area are planted and harvested.
Mr. Jay lor is willing to take on his share of the problem, but like thousands of other rural Canadians, he expects the government to do its share as well. It is time the federal government took that responsibility seriously-


MOUVEMENT DESJARDINS
Mr. Charles DeBlois (Montmorency-Orleans):: Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of talk in the current debate on Meech Lake about the distinct identity of Quebec and about Quebec as a distinct society.
Tlie Mouvement Desjardins, an economic and social force that has been one of the principal tools of Quebec's economic development and the take-over of Quebec interests by Quebecers, is a good illustration of what is meant by Quebec's distinct identity. Over the years, with the savings of its Quebec members, the co-opera-
April 24, 1990

tive movement has managed to rank sixth among Canada's financial institutions.
Today I want to pay tribute to the President of the Mouvement Desjardins, Mr. Claude Beland, a friend of Meech Lake, who has the courage to talk to Quebecers and Canadians about the present constitutional climate and what the failure of Meech Lake would do to the future of Canada and Quebec.
Mr. Speaker, I also want to draw the attention of the House to the thirty or so directors of credit unions in the greater Quebec City region we welcome today in the House of Commons and who, with their president, embody the pride and courage of the people of Quebec.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


CONSUMERS WEEK
Mr. Russell MacLellan (Cape Breton-The Sydneys):: Mr. Speaker, this is consumers week across Canada. I would like to urge all Canadians to take advantage of some of the many activities planned across the country.
The goal of this public awareness campaign is to help Canadians to become better informed consumers. This is an admirable goal, but I would remind the government that what consumers really need is lower interest rates and a fair and just system of taxation. Consumer spending power is being rapidly eroded by Conservative policies and no number of public information campaigns will change this.
What Canadian consumers should be getting from their government is a commitment to protect their interests by lowering the bank rate, scrapping the GST and doing something about the looming recession which may soon be upon us.
It is indeed important that consumers be informed, but it is equally important that this government be informed.


ARMENIA
Mr. Bill Attewell (Markham-Whitchurch - Stouff-ville):: Mr. Speaker, last Sunday I attended a special service in Scarborough with over 1,000 Canadian Armenians to remember the brutal genocide which began 75
years ago today in which over one and a half million Armenians were massacred in the Ottoman Turkish empire.
There were several survivors who escaped the genocide at Sunday service. We owe it to these survivors and we owe it to those who lost their lives to officially recognize that a genocide did indeed occur.
Can you imagine the Jewish people of this world being told that the Holocaust of the Second World War during which six million Jews lost their lives did not occur? Can you imagine how soul-destroying this would be to Jews? The denial of the genocide for 75 years has been a soul-wrenching experience for Armenians around the world. Approximately five years ago a United Nations subcommittee report refers to the Ottoman massacre of Armenians.
In closing, it is time for Canada and other democratic countries around the world who value human rights to set the record straight and recognize the horrific genocide of one and a half million Armenians which began in 1915.


MOZAMBIQUE
Ms. Lynn Hunter (Saanich-Gulf Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to draw attention to the presence in Canada of Francisco Nota Moises, a prominent member of the right wing Mozambican organization RENAMO. Originally sponsored by South Africa, RENAMO is now financed by funds raised by Mr. Nota Moises from U.S. groups.
Granted refugee status in 1987, Mr. Moises has been actively soliciting funds from his Victoria residence to support an organization which has killed over 100,000 people, destroyed schools and hospitals and contributed to the creation of some three million refugees.
The brutality of RENAMO is legendary. The acts of inhuman torture and ritual assassination defy the imagination of civilized individuals. Yet, an active proponent of these atrocities has been admitted to Canada and remains here today with the tacit consent of the Government of Canada.
Efforts to have Mr. Moises' status in Canada reviewed has met with obstruction. It is appalling that an individual who is actively promoting the systematic and barbaric

April 24, 1990
destruction of innocent lives can be allowed to continue to reside in this country.
We are supporting development in Mozambique with much needed assistance while we house a major contributor to the agony we are trying to relieve.


ARMENIA
Ms. Barbara Greene (Don Valley North):: Mr. Speaker, today is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Armenian genocide. From 1915 to 1922 more than 1.5 million Armenians, half the population of Armenia, died in pogroms whose efficiency Hitler imitated.
Throughout history, and even today, Armenians have been subjected to racially motivated violence and murder. As part of their heritage language and cultural program, students are taught the importance of remembering and fighting for justice, freedom and democracy in Armenia and around the world.
In metropolitan Toronto and throughout Canada people have learned to appreciate the courage in adversity and leadership and industry of Armenians as well as the tragic human suffering and waste caused by racism.



Mr. Marcel Prud'homme (Saint-Denis):: Mr. Speaker, I know very well the Canadian Armenian community. For more than 26 years, relations of friendship and mutual understanding based on our common features have developed between that community and the rest of Canada.
I can assure you of the great loyalty of the Armenian community in our institutions in Montreal, Quebec, and in Canada as a whole. Today is a special day because we mark the 75th anniversary of the genocide of 1915, a day which reminds us of very painfull events.
Turkey should admit its responsibility in that genocide, just as the current leader of the Soviet Union recognised
the role played by his country in Poland and in other similar tragedies.
As always, we sympathize with our Quebec and Canadian friends of Armenian origin and we wish them a better future, while hoping that soon, Canada will submit the matter to the United Nations. Shenorhagalyem.


NATIONAL VOLUNTEER WEEK
Mrs. Edna Anderson (Simcoe Centre):: Mr. Speaker, this past Sunday was International Earth Day. We witnessed people all over the world demonstrating their commitment and concern for the fate of our earth. People participated in international events and they did so on a volunteer basis. They cleaned parks, sorted garbage, planted trees and did whatever it took to demonstrate their desire to be part of the solution.
This week is National Volunteer Week. It is indeed a good time to recognize the good work many volunteers contribute towards improving our environment. We encourage them for we need their help. We applaud them for they are the backbone of our communities.


CORPORATE TAXATION
Mr. John R. Rodriguez (Nickel Belt):: Mr. Speaker, the corporate welfare bum of the week award is back. This week's three nominees are Magna International, which got a tax credit of $8.2 million on profits of $19 million in 1988. The second nominee is PWA, which did not pay any tax on profits of $30 million in 1988. However, it did find $250 million to buy Wardair in January, 1989. The third nominee is American Barrick Resources, which paid no taxes in 1988 on a net income of $30 million. And the winner is: American Barrick Resources.
While it did not pay a single penny of federal income taxes, this large corporation did have $4.6 million to pay its chief executive officer, Mr. P. Munk. Mr. Munk obviously earned this huge salary for his accounting prowess and for helping American Barrick Resources to be the corporate welfare bum of the week.
April 24, 1990


PETROCHEMICAL INDUSTRY
Mr. Ken James (Sarnia-Lambton):: Mr. Speaker, petrochemical companies in Sarnia-Lambton continue to undertake initiatives which illustrate that the environment is rightfully becoming a number one priority.
In February, Nova Petrochemicals announced two voluntary improvements in its local manufacturing facility to improve its environmental performance. A new environmentally-friendly cooling water treatment process was initiated which virtually eliminates low-level discharges of chromium and zinc from its final effluent.
Also modifications to the flare stack have facilitated more efficient use of steam in the safety system and significantly reducing the amount of smoke emissions during flaring activities.
I applaud these efforts by Nova in its pursuit of environmental responsibility and consciousness. I strongly encourage other interests, private and public, to demonstrate a comparable commitment to our most valuable finite resource, our environment.


FORESTRY
Mr. Len Hopkins (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke):: Mr. Speaker, the financial challenges facing resource-based industries today are appalling and almost insurmountable. One of the industries that is suffering the most as a result of the policies of this government is the forest industry.
The sad part is that today we have a government that is more interested in listening to its own rhetoric than it is in listening to small business and the people of Canada. The forest industry is suffering because of the 15 per cent export tax on softwood lumber. It is suffering because of the increased value of the Canadian dollar in relation to the American dollar. The forest industry, like many other businesses and consumers, is suffering because of high interest rates.
I call upon the government, and Canadians call upon the government, to get rid of the 15 per cent export tax on softwood lumber and to take growing interest rates and the value of our dollar seriously in order to put what once was a thriving industry back on its feet again.
Oral Questions
Failure to do so demonstrates in realistic terms that we have a heartless and inhumane government.


NATIONAL CONSUMERS WEEK
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, National Consumers Week is a way to ensure that the various market interests- consumers, companies and governments-become fully aware of its operations and their respective responsibilities. Indeed Quebec has given us an outstanding example of business and government co-operation designed to provide consumers with up-to-date information. The Montreal regional office of Consumer and Corporate Affairs has prepared a food labelling guide. With the support of Laval University and a number of private sector interests, Mr. Pierre Blais, Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and member for Bellechasse, has launched today, with participating companies, a campaign to distribute about one million copies of this guide.
Mr. Speaker, this is just one example of the way consumers, companies and the government join forces to promote a more active market place.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Herb Gray (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance.
Yesterday, John Allan, Chairman of Stelco, one of Canada's largest manufacturing firms, announced that his company is cutting 800 jobs across Canada. Mr. Allan said the impact of the Bank of Canada's high interest rate, high dollar policy is, and I quote, "adversely affecting our domestic markets for steel, while making it more difficult for the steel industry and its customers to export their products".
In light of this statement by one of Canada's key business leaders, is it not time for the government and the Bank of Canada to stop this high interest rate, high dollar policy which is so damaging to our basic manufac-

April 24, 1990
Oral Questions
turing industries and the people working in them? How many more thousands of jobs will be lost before the government comes to its senses and stops this policy of high dollar and high interest rates?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, I take no comfort in the announcements that the Chairman of Stelco made yesterday. I do not like to see people laid off. I do not like to see companies having difficulties doing business.
What I do understand is that, if we ignore these problems, companies like Stelco are going to have a much more difficult time in the future as they did in 1981-82. At that time the government ignored the seriousness of the inflation problem. The problem got out of control and led to the very serious difficulties that Stelco and others experienced at that time. That was a very tough lesson for us all to learn. We have learned from that lesson, and we are going to avoid that problem this time.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, obviously Mr. Allan does not agree with the minister. Yesterday, Mr. Allan, president of one of the country's major steel companies, also said, and I quote: "If the present monetary policy goes on for any great length of time, the tradeable goods-producing element of the economy will suffer very serious and permanent harm".
I therefore want to ask the minister why he insists on maintaining this monetary policy of high interest rates and a high Canadian dollar, when it proves to be a real threat to the health of our economy. Why?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I guess what the hon. member is asking me to do is to engineer a drop in interest rates. If we had a reduction in interest rates at this time, with the inflationary wage and price pressures we are facing today, that will lead to higher inflation down the road. That is the very thing that Mr. Allan is concerned about, which is, according to the quote of the hon. member, "a more permanent loss in their competitive position". We want to avoid that more permanent loss in the competitive position of Canadian industry by getting the inflationary problems under control now, so that we avoid the runaway inflation that we had when inflation was not 5.5
per cent in the 1980-81 period. It was 13 per cent. That 13 per cent led to interest rates of 20 per cent to 25 per cent.
Surely, this is something we should be trying to avoid. We are doing everything we can to avoid this problem right now with this government's policy.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, if the minister will not listen to me or Mr. Allan, one of the leading business people in this country, perhaps he will listen to his own colleague, a senior member of his caucus, the member for Mississauga South and Chairman of the Finance Committee of the House of Commons. The chairman said yesterday, and I quote: "I think the monetary policy is totally wrong." I repeat the quote: "I think the monetary policy is totally wrong."
If the minister does not want to listen to me and he does not want to listen to the leading business people in this country, why will he not at least listen to the Conservative Chairman of the Finance Committee and drop his high dollar, high interest rate policy, about which even that chairman says: "is totally wrong"? Why not?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, if my friend is saying that the member from Mississauga South is so correct in everything he says, why does he not accept the position that he has taken with the GST? My friend from Mississauga South said that is exactly what we should be doing as a government.
I listened to these self-righteous statements on the part of the member from Windsor West where he says we must be doing this. I ask him to consider back to what he said, as I reminded him again yesterday, prior to the 1980 election. He was put on the spot by Morton Shulman. He asked: "If interest rates go up after the election, what will you do? Will you resign?" The hon. member said that, yes, he would resign.
Mr. Shulman asked him a second time: "Are you sure you would resign?" The Hon. Member is shaking his head. I have the TV clip and I can show it to him sometime. Mr. Shulman asked: "Would you resign?" a second time. A second time, he said: "Yes." What happened when interest rates went to 20 per cent and 25 per cent? This self-righteous member sat firmly in his place, right there in the House. He did not resign.
April 24, 1990


STATUS OF WOMEN
Mary Catherine Clancy: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the President of the Treasury Board.
Yesterday's report, Beneath the Veneer, shows the inequities imposed upon women in the Public Service of Canada. The Canadian International Development Agency is a world-recognized authority in programs eliminating just such discrimination. Can the minister tell us when he will implement CIDA's Social and Gender Sensitization Program in Canada's own public service?


Hon. Robert de Cotret (President of the Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, first, I would like once again to thank very much Jean Edmonds, Edna Mackenzie and Jocelyne Cote-O'Hara for having done a very good piece of work in producing the report.
The report is the first of its kind, giving us very detailed documentation about some of the problems that exist and that we suspected existed when we appointed the task force. It defines these problems.
I can tell my colleague that the report is being acted on as of today. We are not going to hold up action on this report. We are making sure that senior managers are aware of the report, the recommendations and the problems. We will be giving a comprehensive response in a very short time.


Mary Catherine Clancy: It all sounds veiy pretty, Mr. Speaker, but CIDA has had something very close to the answer since at least 1986. It is a program that has been successfully implemented in India, in Nepal and in Australia. If it works in Australia, it should work here. There is even a handbook to implement this program, written at the Cote International Institute at the Prime Minister's own alma mater.
When is the minister going to use the solution at hand, and use a Canadian program to benefit Canadian women?


Robert René de Cotret: Mr. Speaker, I would like to emphasize the fact that this Task Force on Barriers to Women in the Public Service followed upon a number of initiatives taken by the government to improve career opportunities for women in the federal public service and to dismantle barriers.
Oral Questions
I would like to say that among positions directly controlled by the government-for example, in the deputy minister range-we increased the percentage of women in that group from 8.5 per cent in 1985 to 16.7 per cent. For the Governor in Council appointments, the rate of increase was from 21.8 per cent to 36.3 per cent. In the senior management category, from 1984 to 1989, we went from 6.7 per cent to 13.1 per cent. We will continue. We have been working on this issue for the last five years and we have been doing very well.


THE ECONOMY
Ms. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance who seems more intent on giving a history lesson than trying to explain to Canadians what is happening in 1990.
There are certain realities that the minister is going to have to face about his high interest rate policy. One of those realities is that we have lost 71,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector since November, 1988. Another one is that, with the cut-backs of 800 jobs in Stelco, business leaders increasingly are saying that the high interest rates are destroying business in the country.
This minister cannot deny that interest rates have gone up 20 times since the last election and that his interest rate policy is driving Canadian business into the ground. It is driving businesses into bankruptcy and putting workers on the unemployment line. Why does the minister not address his high interest rate policy and admit that it is not working?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I do point out to the hon. member that in the last three months employment is up by 64,000. That is the increase for the total in the economy. My hon. friend can be selective about her statistics, but those are the total economy statistics.
She asks why I am giving a history lesson. The only point I am making is that it is important that we learn from history. It is important that we look at what happened in comparable periods in the past, learn from the mistakes that were made at that time-and there were a lot of mistakes-and try to avoid making those mistakes now.

April 24, 1990
Oral Questions
My hon. friend says the anti-inflation policy is not working. I ask her to consider what the inflation rate would be if we had kept interest rates down and we had a lower level for the Canadian dollar. We would have inflation up in the 6.5 per cent to 7 per cent, or maybe higher, range. That is what we are trying to avoid with the policies that we are following.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, Canadians have no faith in the projections of the government, a government that projected an 11 per cent interest rate and had a budget based on that 11 per cent interest rate which had nothing to do with reality.
Last week, the Consumer Price Index indicated that inflation is increasing at least partly because of high housing costs related to the high interest rates. It is obvious that the government's high interest rate policy is increasing inflation, not decreasing inflation.
I ask the minister again: Will he admit that this high interest rate policy is, in fact, increasing inflation and not decreasing it?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, if we go back to projections, I remind her of the projections made by her predecessor in 1984 and 1985. When we brought in our economic policy at that time, the hon. member for Oshawa, Ed Broadbent, said we were going to see 150,000 to 200,000 job losses. In fact, it was quite the reverse. We saw 150,000 to 200,000 jobs gained as a result of the policies we had been following.
My hon. friend talks about housing starts. Housing starts over all in the country today are about 220,000, around the level they have been at for the last four or five years. We still have a good degree of strength in different parts of the economy.
My hon. friend asks whether the policy is working. If we had not followed the policy that we are following today, we most surely would have higher levels of inflation. It was those higher levels of inflation back in the 1970s which brought the 20 and 25 per cent interest rates at that time.
Is that what my hon. friend is calling for? Does she want to see 20 and 25 per cent interest rates again? That is what we are going to avoid as a government.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Minister of Finance. Canadians want to see some responsible economic management. Ask farmers, ask Canadian business people, ask consumers about the rate of interest and ask them what their faith is in this minister's policies.

The Minister of Finance is aware that every time interest rates go up, the deficit goes up as well.
With the kind of interest rates we have today, the deficit will increase by three and half billion dollars next year.
This country needs full employment, a lower deficit, a lower rate of inflation and social services. Will the minister finally admit that his interest rate policy defeats all those objectives?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend says she wants higher employment and lower inflation. I do not know how she is going to get that lower inflation if she wants lower interest rates. Lower interest rates are designed to increase inflation. That is the effect.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: So is the GST.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Now she is talking about the GST. Let me ask her this question. Why is it that the New Democratic Party is against the GST when it will lower the cost of doing business for the farmers in this country by $240 million? It will lower their cost of doing business and lower the cost of food that they will be able to sell to the wholesalers and the supermarkets.
This is what will bring about lower inflation as we get the GST into place. For the life of me, I do not understand why the NDP is against the farmers of this country.


LINGUISTIC MINORITIES
Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State and concerns a decision by the Government of Saskatchewan not to proceed with the federal-provincial agreement. This is a definite step backward for minority education, and I would like to ask the minister, considering the terms of the federal-provincial agreement that was signed, with $26 million over ten years, and the
April 24, 1990

government's decision not to proceed with the implementation of minority management and control of French schools in Saskatchewan, what he intends to do to help the minority in Saskatchewan.
I asked him a simple and specific question. An answer would be appreciated.


Hon. Gerry Weiner (Secretary of State of Canada and Minister of State (Multiculturalism and Citizenship)):: regret that the Government of Saskatchewan has decided not to proceed during this session. Last night I spoke to the Minister, Mr. Meiklejohn, and he again promised that his government would pursue the plan without further debate as soon as possible. And you also have this government's firm commitment, with the agreement that is in place, that it will continue to work actively for our Canadian family, the entire Canadian family.
We have here an official language community in a minority situation which must have a chance to develop and mature.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, we are talking here about a Supreme Court decision which ruled recently that language minority groups in this country have the right to control and manage their own schools.
Instead of talking to the minister of education, will the minister call the premier of that province and ask him to proceed with the agreed implementation of that program? If he will not proceed, what will the Government of Canada do to help minorities in this country get access to those constitutional rights which are theirs?


Gérard (Gerry) Weiner: Mr. Speaker, I indicated to the minister last night that while I regret his decision, I understand some of the problems he explained to me which are legislative and perhaps constitutional.
I have indicated that we would offer any assistance possible in helping expedite the matter and we look forward to them continuing on their full commitment to allow the governance and administration of the French
Oral Questions
language schools by the community itself. I believe that that commitment will be carried forward.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. The Minister of the Environment has said that he will not issue a stop-work order against the Oldman River dam even though the court cancelled its federal permit and ordered two federal ministers to carry out environmental assessments. The Minister of Transport is failing to enforce the Navigable Waters Act.
How can the Prime Minister let three of his ministers neglect their responsibilities and ignore the orders of the court?


Hon. Lucien Bouchard (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, I never said yesterday that there will be no stop-work order. I said that I will be pleased to announce today that this government has the intention to comply with the judgment so as to strike a full panel review of the whole dam project.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Lucien Bouchard: Would the Speaker think it might be helpful to spell the word?
We are in the process of selecting the people who will be appointed.
As far as the stop-work order is concerned, I have the transcript of my answer yesterday and I said that there are safety questions to be raised in relation to the completion of the work. We are being told that work must be completed to achieve a safety point. We do not know what exactly the safety point is. We are waiting for a report to determine that. This is the reason we have not yet made any decision in relation to the stop-work order.


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, since we cannot get any joint response on the responsibility of the government, my second question is directed to the Minister of Transport.
The permit issued under the Navigable Waters Act that allows the construction of this dam, which is a necessary legal requirement for the dam to be in progress, has been cancelled by the courts.

April 24, 1990
Oral Questions
It is now six months since that decision was made. Why is he not stopping progress on that work which is proceeding illegally?


Hon. Doug Lewis (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, safety may not mean much to somebody sitting in the middle of Ottawa, but it certainly means a lot to the people of Alberta.


STATUS OF WOMEN
Dawn Black: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the task force report on barriers to women in the Public Service was released. It documented the incredible barriers women face when they are trying to escape the pink ghetto.
Women who were sexually harassed were told that they had no sense of humour or they were given negative appraisals. A woman was told by her boss that if he were her husband he would beat her black and blue. A systems analyst was told: "You're not an engineer, you're just a stupid woman". A woman who had run her own electronics shop was asked in an interview: "Do power or hand tools scare you?"
My question is for the Minister responsible for the Status of Women. When will her government show the leadership that is necessary to change this situation? What is this government planning to do to eliminate these barriers to women in the public system and when will it do it?


Hon. Mary Collins (Associate Minister of National Defence and Minister responsible for Status of Women):: Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to extend my congratulations to the authors of this report, Jean Edmonds, Edna Mackenzie and Jocelyne Cote-O'Hara, and also to the Hon. Pat Carney who originally initiated the report and was involved in the writing of it.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Mary Collins: I know that my hon. colleague will have read this report. I would really like to recommend it to all members of this House. This is not just an ordinary government report. This is a report that is rich in the experience of women and some of the difficulties which they face in this Public Service.
The other issue which is extremely interesting in this report is that it points out that where there is commitment, action can follow. It specifically points out that where there has been political commitment, action has followed. Where the Prime Minister has made that commitment we have seen a three-fold increase in the number of women appointed through Order in Council. Where the Secretary of State for External Affairs-


Some hon. members:: Time.


Some hon. members:: Order.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for New Westminster-Burnaby.


Dawn Black: Mr. Speaker, we all recognize that it gives all the statistics, statistics we have actually known about before. This is not the first report. There was a report done by Nicole Morgan, "The Equality Game" of 1988 which documents many of the same problems. Specifically, both of these studies recommend prorated benefits for part-time public employees. Eighty-three per cent of the part-timers are women.
The government has had years to study this problem.


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


Dawn Black: When will the government commit to eliminating these barriers that women face in the Public Service? When will the government show leadership?


Robert René de Cotret: Mr. Speaker, in terms of showing leadership, since this government came into power we have started implementing employment equity programs throughout government. We implemented equal pay for work of equal value. We increased the number of women at the highest levels in the Public Service by doubling the percentage of women in its management ranks. In addition, we have more than doubled the number of women appointed to federal boards, agencies and commissions.
My predecessor, the Hon. Pat Carney, during the course of the activity, appointed this task force to go still further to allow us the means to have all the data to reach some of the barriers that were more subtle. That is
April 24, 1990

exactly what the report is allowing us to do today. We will continue the task that we started accomplishing in 1984.


FISHERIES
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands- Canso):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. Last Friday in Halifax he told the Fisheries Council of Canada that he did not want the Atlantic fishery to be used as a means of qualifying for unemployment insurance benefits. Yet in February his government worked out a deal with National Sea Products deliberately designed to give fish plant workers in Canso just enough weeks of work to qualify for UI benefits. That was this government's rescue plan for a fishing community that for years has provided stable, year-round jobs for its workers.
How does this minister justify the gross inconsistency between his government's actions and his rhetoric of last Friday?


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: Mr. Speaker, if that Liberal member of Parliament wants to take a shot at the government for trying to help people in Canso who have lost their jobs, he can do it. But go out there and brag about standing up in the House and saying that we should not be helping the people of Canso. Do it.


Francis G. LeBlanc: Mr. Speaker, the people of Canso are still waiting for the help which this government has not provided.
I would like to refer the minister to the testimony earlier in April of the former president of National Sea Products, Mr. Gordon Cummings, before the fisheries committee of the Senate. Referring to the Canso plant Mr. Cummings said, and I quote:
Canso in particular is a hell of a good plant. It has a good labour force and a high fishing plant and all of the things you could say that are good and positive about a plant. Canso is a fine plant-the people of Canso did nothing wrong.
Yet, this government, in the name of making the fishing industry viable, is presiding over the closure of a community and blaming the victims for their situation.
Oral Questions


Mr. Speaker:: Would the hon. member put his question.


Francis G. LeBlanc: Will the minister not admit to this House that all this talk about viability is nothing more than a con job on the fishermen and fishing communities of Atlantic Canada?


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, when I hear a Liberal talking about a con job it reminds me of one. The member likes to quote people. Here is one from those great Grits: "Guaranteeing people an annual income will stop Atlantic Canadians from cheating and being dishonest about the unemployment insurance system. A guaranteed annual income will stop the charade of UIC fraud in Atlantic Canada where people are playing the game when in effect UIC is an income supplement program".


Some hon. members:: Who said it?


Bernard Valcourt: John Nunziata.


SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Mr. John Manley (Ottawa South):: Mr. Speaker, at least we now know where the minister looks for advice.
My question is for the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology. Yesterday the minister told the House that Canada could do nothing about the indirect acquisition of Leigh Instruments by Siemens of Germany and General Electric of the United Kingdom. Since last November Investment Canada has been in receipt of an application for review of that takeover of Leigh as part of the purchase of Plessey.
Why did the government sit on this application for review of the takeover of Leigh Instruments when it should have acted to save 750 Canadian jobs?


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology):: Mr. Speaker, what I said yesterday still applies. The transaction with General Electric which resulted in the takeover of the British firm Plessey, owner of Leigh Instruments, took place in England, outside the country. I repeat, the Government of Cana-

April 24, 1990
Oral Questions
da has no say over an indirect transaction between two international companies that took place in London. Only when this foreign company advises Investment Canada of what happened last November, and only with respect to how Siemens and GEC will share responsibility for their Canadian operations, does Investment Canada proceed with its review. I repeat, Mr. Speaker, this was what is commonly referred to as a hostile takeover. Since the takeover took place outside the country, Canada could not take any direct action.


John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, Canadians who know the importance of science and technology for Canada's future are worried by the takeover of high-tech companies by foreign concerns as well as the loss of a well established company like Leigh.
My supplementary question is for the same minister. When is the government going to recognize that knowledge in Canadian companies and trained and experienced Canadian high-tech workers are a national resource for Canada that is need of protection?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, the member should be particularly proud of what we did for science and technology compared with what his party did for about 20 years. I think this government has done more than that government did.
In the case of Leigh Instruments, we are worried about the welfare of those workers and we are going to use all the programs, particularly with my colleague from Employment and Immigration.
My friend knows very well that Leigh Instruments is working in the defence industry which is facing some slow downs at the present time. For that reason and the reason that, as the president of Leigh Instruments himself said, there was a problem of management, we face what we face today.
Once again, I am proud of what we did for science and technology. The Prime Minister himself proposed an advisory board. We put $1 billion into that sector and we will continue to work with it. The member's party should have done that when it had the chance.


PRESENCE IN THE GALLERY
Mr. Speaker:: I wish to draw to members' attention of the presence in the gallery of Mr. Syed Kazmi, Minister of Health, Special Education and Social Welfare, Government of Pakistan.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-St. Clair):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology as well. As the minister knows, one of the centre-pieces of the government's research and development policy is the Centres of Excellence.
I ask the minister to confirm the fact that the University of Saskatchewan is unlikely to be able to fulfil its participation in six of the 14 centres because of inadequate funding to meet infrastructure and overhead costs. Would he also confirm that so far only two of the ten provinces have committed themselves to the necessary funding to permit the Centres of Excellence in those provinces to proceed?


Hon. William C. Winegard (Minister for Science):: Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt at all that all of those universities involved in the Centres of Excellence Program will proceed with the centres. The networks that are being developed are extremely important to this country. The funding is there on the federal side and I have no doubt that it will be there on the provincial side.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, this is a government that has cut EPF transfer payments to support university operational costs. This is a government that has not sustained an adequate level of general research support through the granting councils. This is a government that has ignored the Wright Report recommendations of long standing, that the government fund with its research grants overhead costs and infrastructure costs as well.
Will this government not finally admit that it has failed to fulfil its financial obligations to ensure that even this small contribution to national research will be able to proceed?
April 24, 1990


William C. Winegard: Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind my hon. colleague that the granting councils now receive some $700 million a year from the Government of Canada. I think that is a pretty fair record. In the coming year the granting councils' funding will increase by something like 8.6 per cent.
Do not try to tell us we are not supporting the granting councils. It is simply not true.


COMMUNITY FUTURES PROGRAM
Peter L. McCreath: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration. We were very pleased to receive a Community Futures Program last fall in Shelburne County, which provides an excellent base for economic diversification.
Could the minister tell the House what additional resources may be available in the future to allow this program and others like it to expand?


Hon. Barbara McDougall (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, it is not only in the hon. member's riding that the Community Futures Program has been helpful. The chairman of the Economic Recovery Commission in Newfoundland is quoted as saying that the Community Futures Program has been very helpful in rural development in Newfoundland. In the riding of Gander-Grand Falls, held by an hon. member across the House, the Central Newfoundland Community Futures Committee is working on a number of programs to bring about economic development.
Under our labour force development strategy, when we get our new legislation, which we would urge hon. members opposite to urge on their colleagues, it will be possible to increase by one-third, $50 million, this wonderful program for Canadians.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Rex Crawford (Kent):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment. The minister will know that the much heralded Environmental Protection Act is a shockingly poor example of action. Last year only a paltry 3 per cent of polluters were charged after being
Oral Questions
caught breaking the law. There is only one lonely inspector for all of Ontario, while this government will hire 4,000 people to make sure the ordinary Canadian complies with the tax rules.
How can the minister tell Canadians he is taking action on the environment when the facts prove otherwise?


Lucien Bouchard: First of all, Mr. Speaker, I do not think that environmental efficiency must be measured in terms of people being put into jail. We must do much better than that.
As we all know, the regulations enacted during the Liberal regime did not allow the government to lay charges under the legislation because it is said in the regulations that they do not apply to mills built prior to 1971 and more than 90 per cent of mills in Canada were built before that date. This means that we must update those regulations to be in a position to lay the charges where we have to.


Rex Crawford: Mr. Speaker, the International Joint Commission says that the health of kids is threatened by the toxins of the Great Lakes water. There were 5,000 chemical spills, three times the number made public before. The clean-up program gets only $25 million this year, while the GST gets $111 million of a $1.5 billion total.
How can the minister justify spending billions on taxing Canadians while the environment gets shafted?


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, this government shares the concerns of the hon. member. The Secretary of State for External Affairs met his vis-a-vis in the American government the day after the tabling of the report to discuss that. I met Secretary Reilly last week to discuss the same things.
We think we must upgrade the efforts of the two governments to deal with this great problem.


CANADA POST
Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister responsible for Canada Post. Earlier today the Conservative members of Parliament recommended in a report to privatize all rural post offices, to sell to the private sector all of Canada Post, and to increase prices and services to

April 24, 1990
Oral Questions
provide for a dividend of 40 per cent to the Government of Canada.
Will the minister stand in his place now, totally dissociate himself from those propositions and commit himself to a modem, efficient and publicly owned postal system for Canada?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand in my place and applaud the excellent work by this committee in recognition of the tremendous progress that Canada Post has gone through in the last few years.
I understand the rate of return recommendation to mean that the true costs of delivering the mail, including the cost of capital, should be borne by the users, 80 per cent of which are businesses.
Is the hon. member suggesting that it is a good economic and social policy to have these business users of the post office subsidized by the general taxpayer by providing for less than the real rate of return on the money invested by the taxpayer?


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is to the same minister.

The Postal Services Review Board, the consumer watchdog, was abolished in the last Budget, ostensibly to save $3 million annually. Since Canada Post spends $17 million eveiy year on advertising to convince us it delivers the mail, is the minister now prepared to allocate at least $3 million of this money to protecting the consumer?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, the protection of the consumer is well served by an efficient and effective post office that delivers the mail within the time limits that consumers expect.
It is obviously always difficult when you have to cut back on government operations, like the Postal Service Review Committee. It was difficult because we have this monstrous deficit which we inherited from previous governments and which we are trying to manage.
In a competitive world advertising is how you reach your customers. The post office has customers. It must advertise, along with its competitors, in order to serve its customers. The hon. member believes in state control in a socialist type of operation where advertising is unnecessary. We don't.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister who will know that less than two years ago Canada organized and hosted a major landmark international conference on the atmosphere, now known as the Toronto Conference.
During that conference international scientific consensus was achieved that we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent by the year 2005. Canada agreed to that. The scientists and politicians who were there realized and publicly stated that our problems with the atmosphere are just as serious, if not more so, than the threat of nuclear war.
Is Canada's word good, less than two years later, that we will reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent or more by the year 2005?


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, Canada's word is good. The day we make a commitment it will be fulfilled.
We must make a serious commitment to know to what we are committed, and to know what will be a burden on the citizens.
As the hon. member knows, we are waiting for the most important report of the IPCC, a UN body, which will be tabled in August. And there will be a major conference in Geneva in November.
After that, there will be targets and schedules for S02 reduction in The Green Plan for Canada.


Mr. Speaker:: A short supplemental.


James Ross Fulton: Just for absolute certainty for the Canadian public and for this House, Mr. Speaker, I would like to get an assurance from the Minister of the Environment who said that Canada's word is good.
When he says that Canada's word is good, does he and the Government of Canada mean that Canada will live up to a 20 per cent reduction of carbon dioxide emissions
April 24, 1990

based on 1988 levels by the year 2005? Is that what the minister meant?


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I would like the hon. member to listen to what I said.
I said that we are waiting for the most important scientific report ever seen on this matter, which will be published in August. He cannot pre-empt this report. He must wait, as we must, to know what will be in the report before making a statement and a commitment on precise targets.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Danis:
That, in relation to Bill C-69, an act to amend certain statutes to enable restraint of government expenditures, not more than one additional day shall be allotted to the further consideration of the second reading stage; and
That fifteen minutes before the expiry of the time provided for government business on such day, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required, for the purpose of this Order and, in turn, every question necessary in order to dispose of the second reading stage shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.
Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Kootenay East still has the floor.


Sidney James Parker: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak on this closure motion.
Once again the government has decided to use closure on an important piece of legislation, Bill C-69, a procedure that undermines the whole purpose of this institution and threatens the impoverished people of my province of British Columbia.
I would like to suggest that the use of closure is another sign of a scared government, a desperate government, a government with no direction and no future. Why else would it once again hide behind this motion
Government Orders
and allow no further debate? Only two New Democrats have spoken on this piece of legislation.


Mr. Della  Noce@: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. Yesterday, you handed down a decision regarding a question of privilege raised by the hon. member for Megantic-Compton-Stanstead. You said that today we would probably have a chance to discuss the hon. member's question of privilege about what was said by the hon. member for York South-Weston, and I would also have something to say about the Italian community which is very shocked at what happened. I would have liked to take part in the debate but, unfortunately, I will not be here tomorrow. I would like to know when and on what date the debate will take place.


Mr. Speaker:: I am sorry the hon. member did not understand the situation. I made arrangements with the hon. member's office so that he would be here in the House immediately after Oral Question Period tomorrow, Wednesday afternoon, when the debate will continue.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member may continue.


Sidney James Parker: Mr. Speaker, is it because members of the government consider cutting services to poor Canadians, to sick Canadians, to Canadians living on the streets and dependent on food banks to eat an issue of such principle that they refuse to debate it? Are they afraid to debate the cutbacks they have made to the provinces in our social programs, our hospital and medical programs and our post-secondary education? Doctors in the province of British Columbia are crying out for help. Patients are crying for help to be served within the hospitals.
I believe that closure is being used to rush yet another unpopular measure through this House. None of us should be surprised. This is the same government that kicks out its own members for speaking their minds.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Gave them the boot.


Sidney James Parker: That is right.
They are not fooling any of the Canadian people. The public knows the score with this government. They have been telling Angus Reid and Gallup what they think of this government for years.

April 24, 1990
Government Orders
I am sure there are many members opposite who read the polls that I have referred to who think that they are living a nightmare. I want to tell them they do not know what a nightmare is.
A nightmare is sleeping on a bench in Vancouver because you cannot afford to support yourself. A nightmare is lining up at a food bank to get the minimum amount of food to keep your family going for another day. A nightmare is not being able to receive basic health care or education because this government has cut transfers to British Columbia. Between this government and its counterpart in Victoria the people of B.C. have received a double whammy.
The nightmare of the people of B.C. and, indeed, all the people of Canada will end the day this government is tossed out of office. That is a day that I can assure members opposite is not that far off.
I want to talk a little about accountability. During the last election Progressive Conservative candidates talked about accountability. I would like to talk about that accountability now.
Between 1980 and 1984 when the Liberals were in power, the then Minister of Transport was trying to bring about some changes to passenger rail service and make cutbacks to those services.
I travelled across Canada at that time with the present Deputy Prime Minister. He sought to save the rail system then. Yet when this government brought forward a measure to cut VIA Rail services he never said one word to protect them.
Where is the accountability in this government when it comes to hearing what the people have to say? Where is the accountability when it comes to the goods and services tax? Where is the accountability when the cutbacks come?
During the last election campaign the Prime Minister said that our social programs would be well protected. Yet today we have a situation in which transfer payments to the provinces are going to be capped and cut back- when the Prime Minister stated that they would be protected.
There is no accountability on that side of the House. Canadians are sick of a government that subsidizes corporate entertainment to the tune of $1 billion a year
while the lines at the food banks continue to grow longer.
Canadians are sick of a government that asks lower and middle-income Canadians to pay for the debt that it has created. Canadians are sick of a government that would rather argue with physicians through multimillion dollar television commercials paid for by the taxpayers rather than on the floor of the House of Commons.
Literally millions of dollars are being spent to promote the goods and services tax which this government is trying to impose on the Canadian people. However, when we want to argue to protect the social programs, the hospital programs and post-secondary education programs in my province of British Columbia, we are not allowed even to debate them.
This government can continue to invoke closure. It can continue to cut programs to those most in need. I would like to leave the government with one thought. In 1992 or thereabouts, the Canadian people are going to institute closure on this government. I can assure you of that, Madam Speaker.


Mr. George Proud (Hillsborough):: Madam Speaker, we are debating a motion of time allocation concerning Bill C-69. Such a motion concerning other bills, as well as closure, has been debated more times since December, 1988 than almost any other issue that we have talked about in Parliament.
In his remarks this morning the member for Halifax West stated that we have known about Bill C-69 since it came forward in the February 20 budget. He said that because it was in the budget all Canadians know about it. As far as I am concerned, that is not the case.
As the member of Parliament from the riding of Hillsborough I believe that I and every other member of Parliament in this Chamber should have the right and the time to discuss the issues that are very important to their ridings and, indeed, to their country.
Under the EPF the federal government provides equal per capita financial assistance to all the provinces through the transfer of tax points and cash pay-outs. The transfers were to assist provinces in their responsibilities in health care and post-secondary education. Over time, and after many meetings with representatives in both health care and educational fields, the message that has
April 24, 1990

been reiterated is that the provinces need more money to function, not the same amount or less money.
Since the government came to power in 1984 it has on three separate occasions reduced the amount of federal transfers to the provinces for medicare, hospital services and post-secondary education.
The impact of these cuts on Prince Edward Island alone up to 1995 will mean a loss of $155 million. For every man, woman and child in that riding it means a cost of close to $2,000 each. In turn, the spin-off of these cuts once again enters the millions of dollars.
The government tries to fool the people by saying that the richer provinces of Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia will be receiving less funding, therefore leading us to believe that the poorer provinces will be receiving more funding. However, that is not the case.
Education is the lifeline of Canada's future. However, this government continues to cut back on funding to students and post-secondary educational institutions. Each year as the population increases and more students realize the necessity of an education the demand for classroom space is increased, while the number of instructors per students will decrease if the funding for the extended budget is not there.
As our health care system advances we find people living longer lives and the rising cost of high technology medical equipment placing a further burden on the system. Now what we have are two essential systems. As the member for Gander-Grand Falls said this morning, there are two systems in this country that should never be touched when we come to cutbacks, belt tightening and restraint. They are health and education.
Now, instead, we have these two groups pitted against one another for funding due to the nature of the allocation of the funds. If the provinces now decide not to increase taxes, they will be forced to make cutbacks. In turn, the hospitals will have to close beds, limit costly operations or find other reductions.
On the other hand, students will face higher tuition fees. In the outlying regions, the Atlantic region and other regions of Canada, not only will students face the high cost of tuition fees but in those areas where
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seasonal employment and low paying jobs are the norm the problem will be to find a job at which they can earn enough money to see them through their education. Now, with the costs being higher, this will be even much harder to do. They are going to face overcrowded classes, or other cost-cutting measures.
I now want to reiterate a statement made by the Minister of Finance on March 24, 1982, when he said: "Let us not make hospitals, universities and colleges a battleground between the federal government and the provincial governments. Let us solve those problems, not on the backs of the hospitals and the universities. Let us solve those problems outside of that arena."
We are all aware that the deficit is a very serious and a very real issue. However, the deficit cannot be passed from the federal government to the provincial governments, causing further burden on the various regions across the country. The Atlantic region, as we know, has seen tremendous reductions in federal government financing over the past year, and it will be particularly affected by these moves.
In my riding of Hillsborough, a great many people are on a fixed income or are seasonally employed. I would like to stress that they are seasonally employed not by choice or by laziness. Now they face the possibility of another burden around their necks, that of the GST in 1991.
With the government now transferring its debt we will see an increase in both municipal and provincial taxes, adding further insult to the injury of my constituents. Municipal governments are already facing increased burdens with the decline of municipal infrastructures across the country. They cannot afford to deal with the costs associated with the federal government passing the buck.
The government must begin to negotiate with all the provinces regarding regional planning and to consider the growth factor across the country and the need to upgrade all our facilities in all of the provinces. In doing so, it must propose a framework for the progress of the nation in order to ensure equal access for all Canadians to educational and health care institutions.
I would like to conclude by saying that Prince Edward Islanders are fully aware of the deficit problem Canada is

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facing. We are more than willing to do our fair share. But, as I speak, our share is growing.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: On debate, the hon. member for Kootenay-Revelstoke.


Mr. Lyle Kristiansen (Kootenay West-Revelstoke):: Could Madam Speaker advise me as to how much time I have?


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The hon. member has until 3.26.


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Madam Speaker, thank you very much.
Before rising to speak to Bill C-69, I checked a few figures. I found that the number of times the government has used closure is absolutely phenomenal. In the Thirty-fourth Parliament alone, we have seen some 17 times that the government has used closure, as well as an additional five times for time allocation. When we consider the number of sitting months we have been in session since the election of November 1988, that is approximately twice per sitting month since then. It has been invoked almost once every two weeks.
One begins to wonder just what kind of mind-set exists in the government. Maybe, in the beginning, in those cases when the government considered that members of the opposition were taking extra long lengths of time over some of the serious issues it had brought before the House in the last year and a half, it was necessary. But, it became a habit and the guillotine fell time and time again. I do not know how many times it has happened since the new government House leader assumed his role. He should have been watching the French Revolution on television recently. The use of the guillotine here and the axe falling again and again makes me think that the new government House leader is the Maximilien de Robespierre of the Conservative government and the Whip is Saint-Just.
The government should bear in mind what happened to those people. People who bring the axe down time and time again, in order to deny legitimate dissent, and in order to disallow legitimate dissent from having an opportunity to fully express itself, will end up being the victims of their own weapons.
Members of the government like to say-and I have heard several of them say it in this debate, the few of them who have spoken-that one has got to make hard political choices. They say: "We have to cut somewhere". They say that they have to make choices about what they are going to spend, what they are going to cut, and that there is only so much money going around.
I want to remind them that on the day prior to the last budget they brought in a bill-I believe it was Bill C-52-which was voted for unanimously by all members of the Conservative party and by all Liberal members of the Official Opposition. The supposed purpose of that bill was to reform registered retirement savings plans. But the effect of that legislation, supported by both the Liberals and the Conservatives, was to pass on large tax savings, totalling some $300 million to $350 million per year, to the sole benefit of Canadians who earn over $86,000 per year. That same legislation took away benefits from Canadians who earn under $40,000 per year. They made their choice then.
I mention this because the reasoning of some members amazes me. One of my Liberal colleagues, as reported in The Ottawa Citizen of Thursday, April 5, said: "Let us have no illusion about what this bill is about. It is a tax bill to help the rich". That was the Liberal member for Willowdale who, assuming he was here at the time, voted in favour of the legislation which he says is a bill to help the rich at the expense of the relatively poor.
The government has made its choice and members of the opposition made their choice. The government says now that we have to go along with cuts to women's programs, drastic cuts through tax increases to municipalities, and radio licence fee increases of up to 1,800 per cent in some instances in my own locality. It says that it must cap the Canada Assistance Plan to the detriment of people on social assistance, those who are at the bottom rung of Canadian society economically. It will hurt our health care system through cuts and the freezing of revenues under the Established Programs Financing.
For the government to claim that this is necessary, while just days before the last budget it handed over one-third of a billion dollars to those Canadians who earn $86,000 and up, is more than mischievous. It is a betrayal of the people it is supposed to represent, the majority of its electorate. Those people did not benefit
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by this action taken the day before the budget. Those people are going to be hurt by the legislation that is before us today.
It is no pleasure to take part in a debate like this. But it is a responsibility that we have to take seriously to point out to the government again and again that it must begin to be consistent. If it has to make cuts, then make cuts to those who can afford to be cut. Do not attack those least able to defend themselves, while at the same time rewarding those who do not need the help of any of us.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Is the House ready for the question?


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


[Stage Direction]
Call in the members.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I declare the motion carried.
It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Nepean, Goods and Services Tax; the hon. member for Ottawa West, The Environment; the hon. member for Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing, Regional Development.
The Chair is waiting for a little more calm and quiet in the House before recognizing an hon. member. Resuming debate. The hon. member for Halifax.



[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Monday, April 23, consideration of the motion of Mr. Wilson (Etobicoke Centre) that Bill C-69, an act to amend certain statutes to enable restraint of government expenditures, be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee; and the amendment of Ms. Langan.
Mary Catherine Clancy: Madam Speaker, I am delighted to be recognized. I rise today to speak on Bill C-69 and the disastrous effects that the cutbacks in established program funding will have on the various areas of Atlantic Canada that are concerned.
The two major areas of my own riding of Halifax, my own province of Nova Scotia and my region are of course those of post-secondary education and health care. I spoke briefly in the time allocation debate regarding the necessity of matters such as this having a full airing, and that the duly elected members of the opposition being permitted to do their job and represent the attitudes and the beliefs of their constituents in a debate as important as this one is. Consequently, I am delighted that I will be one of the few who will have the opportunity to make remarks in this particular area.
The government has launched a massive assault on funding for post-secondary education. The combined effect of the freeze, the 1 per cent reduction in the EPF funding after the freeze expires and Bill C-96 and Bill C-33 will result in almost $9 billion less in post-secondary funding by 1995. This is an estimate prepared by the Canadian Association of University Teachers.
Given the fact that education is the future and the hope of Canadians nation-wide, what we are seeing is a withdrawal from and a refusal to recognize the fact that this sort of program is the only sane kind of investment in our future that Canadians want to see, need to see and have a right to see. I speak from the heart when I talk about the plight of universities in Atlantic Canada. A number of my colleagues across the way will know that I speak correctly. I speak about universities such as Dal-housie, Mount Saint Vincent, Saint Mary's, the University of King's College, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, the Technical College of Nova Scotia, all of which are in or close to my own riding of Halifax.
I speak of St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, the alma mater of a number of members of this House, both past and present, not the least of whom, of course, is the Prime Minister of Canada. I speak of Acadia University and College Sainte Anne in Pointe L'Eglise in Nova Scotia. I speak of the other university that, although it is in New Brunswick, is considered under the funding rules to be partially Nova Scotian. My learned colleague from Cumberland-Colchester will know that I refer to Mount Allison University. And I speak of the University College of Cape Breton. All of these universities have a number of things in common. The first thing they have in common is a high standard of excellence in the training and education of students and in the level and devotion of faculty members. The second thing they have in common is a deteriorating physical plant and an inability to pay their faculty members up to the scale of other universities in this country. We are all aware that the farther west you go in this country, the higher salaries are for faculty and staff and the lower tuition rates are for students. Indeed, Nova Scotia boasts-if I can use that word-the highest tuition rates in the country and the majority of Atlantic students can ill-afford to pay those extremely high tuition fees.
These universities have in common the fact that their boards, faculty and students work in buildings that are long in need of major repair. They use laboratory facilities that are considerably behind those available to universities in the rest of the country. The fact that we can still compete at all with those researchers south of the border is absolutely amazing.
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The tradition of education in Nova Scotia is a long one. All of the people who make up the founding peoples of the province of Nova Scotia have had a long-time belief in education, in cultural pursuits and in developing the best possible technology to keep our province in the best possible industrial and developmental patterns.
I go back back to the habitation at Port Royal in 1605 of the first Europeans in Nova Scotia. They founded the first social club in North America of which we are very proud in Nova Scotia. The social club is known as the Order of Good Cheer. One of the things that is not known is that the Order of Good Cheer was one of the first play writing schools and theatrical endeavours in North America as well. Indeed, the settlers at the habitation were encouraged by Champlain, de Monts, and de Poutrincourt to produce plays that related to their own situation in Nova Scotia back in the early 17th century.
Madam Speaker, that is a proud tradition. I hope that sometime you will come to Nova Scotia and we will be able to bring you into the Order of Good Cheer.
I bring up this particular story to shed light on the things happening in our universities. They are happening nation-wide, but particularly in Atlantic Canada, because of the massive cutbacks. The universities are being forced to justify their existence in the light of technology, in the light of preparing people specifically for jobs which relate to the more technical side of education. As it is, with that change in direction, they are still hamstrung to a great degree by this cutback in funding, none more so than in the science, medical and engineering faculties.
On the other side in education, the humanities and arts side-and I know that this is something that is dear to you, Madam Speaker, as well as it is to me- is where we really see people losing out. We see those faculty members trained in literature, in theatre and drama, in music, in the lively arts. The money is just not there. It cannot be raised to keep those faculties going and to perpetuate a tradition of Canadian culture of fostering young writers, dancers, actors, directors, choreographers, and so on. All participants make our country and
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its cultural life such a tremendous mix of all the peoples who came to Canada and settled here. That is a tragedy.
Beyond that sense of funding for universities being cut off in the lively arts area-the theatre schools, dance schools and so on-we also have the other areas of the humanities.
I can remember finishing my first degree in 1970, an Honours BA in English, and being told quite rightly that I was fit for nothing. Nobody would be prepared to pay me for anything I had learned in the past four years, which was perfectly true. Fortunately, I went on to further education at that point.
We all know that the employability of the average arts graduate in the country today is probably comparable to that of a high school graduate 20 years ago. I do not think anyone would disagree that if our universities are being forced strictly into the technological mode, strictly looking at training people for the job market and for nothing else, we lose another major piece of our soul. I cannot think of another word for it. Those of us who spent the time studying the supposedly arcane areas such as literature, philosophy, languages, logic or whatever, may not have been able to come out and operate computers. We may not have had technology at our fingertips, and, indeed, as I was told, many of those people are being told: "You have no skill that is marketable."
Educating in that area keeps alive and vibrant, in a country such as ours, the spirit of all our various cultures. The fact that people still study and still want to go on and teach in areas that are not particularly lucrative and that are not considered the high point of the technocratic age, says something for the commitment that Canadian academics and Canadian students have to the other side and to the theory that a person-man or woman-cannot live by bread alone.
As we see the cutbacks to Established Program Funding, we are going to see that universities will just not have the luxury of expanding, let alone not cutting back on English, drama and philosophy departments. I have nothing against computers and there is no one in this Chamber who could survive without them. But young Canadians, when choosing career paths and given the choice between a degree in computer science and a

April 24, 1990
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degree in English literature, French literature or philosophy, are obviously going to say: "Computer science."
On the other side, the pure science side, our universities in the Atlantic are dealing with equipment and laboratories that are 20 years out of date. In my university, Mount Saint Vincent, the only women's university in the British Commonwealth, we have just recently, with the consent of the former Speaker of the House, Madam Sauve, established a Jeanne Sauve Chair for Women in Science.
From my years as a faculty member in that institution, I can tell you of the dedication of women and men in the areas of chemistry, physics, and biology, in particular, who laboured to teach and to teach to the maximum of their ability. They laboured to bring to their students the latest developments in a physical plant that again was 20 years out of date. With the establishment of the Jeanne Sauve Chair and with various other fund-raising techniques that are going on, that situation is being slowly changed. But the moneys that might have gone into improving the situation in science faculties at our only women's university, with the cutbacks to EPF, are probably going to have to be spread more thinly across the whole university. Indeed, there are going to many other shortfalls that will be found there, as at the other universities that I mentioned.
It is unfair and short-sighted that we take this cut. There is no question, and I am sure that many people will bring this up as we go on in this debate, that there is a deficit in the country and that the deficit must be handled. We have all discussed the varying ways that the deficit could be handled. My colleagues much more knowledgeable in the area than I am.
The hon. member for Gloucester, among others, has spoken frequently about what a 1 per cent drop in the interest rate would do to the deficit. We know that, by cutting back 1 per cent in Established Program Financing, we are saying to thousands of young Canadians: "I am sorry, but a university education, a post-secondary education, or a specific educational program that will make you a better trained Canadian and give you a better outlook on life and a better start when you come into the
workforce is not going to be available to you." Universities are going to have to close classroom space. They are going to have to let faculty members go and they are going to have to cut back. There is just no other way. The only other possibility from that is that tuition fees would reflect the actual cost of educating a university student.
The actual cost of educating a university student in Canada today is, at minimum, $10,000 per year. How many Canadians in 1990, parents or students, could look at the possibility of post-secondary education and say: "Yes, I can afford $10,000 per year for tuition." This is without talking about how much money it is going to cost for living that year in university, how much money will be needed for books and transportation. With the cost for books, one must now add in the 7 per cent GST as well.
If we do this, we again become closer to the so-called model for the government, that being the United States. The majority of universities in the United States do have tuition rates that high and even higher. They have a different system there. They have endowments and scholarship funds and they have a population 10 times the size of ours to draw on. Even with that difference, the ideal of a university education in the United States of America is still one that belongs almost exclusively to the upper middle class. In the supposed land of the free and home of the brave, south of the border, it is not an opportunity that every child has. Indeed, it is an opportunity that only belongs, in general, to the well-to-do or to those who manage to achieve an academic level that is probably beyond the vast majority of high school graduates.
In Canada, the children of fishermen, coalminers, steelworkers, prairie farmers, Ontario factory workers, Quebec factory workers and fishermen, and loggers in B.C. have always known, in the post-war society, that a university education was within their grasp.
I ask the government, as it brings this bill to the vote, is this what it wants? Is this the memorial to this government that it wants, along with the GST, the end of VIA and a variety of other perfidy? Does it want people to stand up and say: "It was the Mulroney government that ended the dream of post-secondary education for the vast majority of Canadians." I hope not, but I fear so.
April 24, 1990


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Madam Speaker, in her remarks, the member talked about the problems of university education. I want to ask her to expand particularly on one area.
We are facing a health care crisis in Canada, and part of that health care crisis is in terms of funding of health care programs. The other part is based on a lack of professional people being trained in the field.
In the last 20 years in Canada, we have relied upon immigration to fill the needs of our health care system with professionals, particularly doctors. Without the ability to recruit doctors from developing countries, Canada would have had a shortage of doctors. We would have had a shortage in the nursing field without recruitment from other countries.
Yet, when there is such a need, people in this country are unable to obtain employment because they do not have adequate training. At the same time, we are making university education and post-secondary education so expensive they cannot afford it. Why has the government not seen fit to put more money into the post-secondary education, particularly in some of the health care fields where there is a great need, and why it does not seem to put this as a priority?
I ask the member: What is her thinking as to why the government carries out this very short-sighted policy?


Mary Catherine Clancy: Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Surrey North for his question.
I have to say that if I could fathom the workings of the so-called mind-if there is a collective mind-set of the government opposite-I would probably go into the fortune-telling business. But that is the short-sighted and short-term answer.
The long-term answer and the serious answer is that the dearth of moneys for professional schools, particularly in the area of health care, has been a problem for a number of years. Cutting back in Established Program Financing is truly going to put a knife to the heart of the being that is left. The being that is left is very small.
I know, for example, in my own province of Nova Scotia, outside the Halifax-Dartmouth area, with a few exceptions of certain other rural areas or county seats and towns, there are counties that have no dental services. There are counties that have a very short supply
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of doctors. There are counties that have a very short supply of nurses. Because nurses are so low paid in this country as a general rule, they are all moving to the United States. Perhaps not all, but a very large percentage of them are moving to the United States. They are going to Texas, and so are doctors.
In every medical school graduating class from Dalhou-sie University, one of the oldest and most prestigious medical schools in this country, there is a significant number of medical graduates every year who leave to set up practice in the United States.
We are not producing enough medical personnel to begin with. We are not opening our immigration. That is a whole other story about the small-minded, shortsighted and bizarre immigration policies in this country. But even those medical personnel that we are training, we are losing to another country. It is all part and parcel of the same malaise in the country. The malaise is that the government is not committed to Canadians, it does not have an agenda which Canadians follow and believe. Canadians wake up each morning and say "I don't recognize this place".


Don Boudria: Madam Speaker, I want to start by congratulating my colleague for her excellent discourse. I am sure that all members of the House would support that proposition.
Having listened quite attentively to her remarks on post-secondary education, I want to fully concur with those remarks. I want to ask another question on a slightly different topic, the mean-spiritedness of the government in cutting back on certain transfers to the provinces in the area of social assistance under the Canada Assistance Plan.
As my colleague will know, the mean-spirited government across the way introduced Bill C-21 which will cut back on unemployment benefits to a large number of Canadians. These Canadians who are suffering from that mean-spiritedness of the government across the way will then be forced on to welfare rolls. At the same time the government will cut back transfers of funds which are utilized as matching funds for welfare.
I want to ask my colleague what effect that mean-spiritedness on the part of the government will have on her region and what she thinks of those particular initiati-

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ves-if I can call them that-of the Conservative party across the way?


Mary Catherine Clancy: Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Glengarry-Prescott-Russell for his question. Indeed, there lies the crux of the matter regarding how my region, his region, your region, Madam Speaker, the region of the hon. member for Regina-Wascana, how we are all going to react to this.
I was fortunate enough to attend a meeting of the Elalifax city council not too long ago. They met with a welfare rights group. The city council already had a massive cut in its budget from the province which in turn comes from the Canada Assistance Plan. It was looking at ways to keep from closing a shelter for homeless teenage boys. As it happened, by cutting, scrimping, saving and making do, and also by making a fairly major increase in property taxes in the city of Halifax, they were able to make up the shortfall in the social assistance budget.
The situation is bordering on the desperate in the province of Nova Scotia. Municipalities are hard pressed. The provincial government is hard pressed. If this government is successful, if it does not change its mind and withdraw the pernicious bill, UI will effectively disappear.
We are seeing cut-backs in transfer payments to the provinces. The money is not going to be there. I do not know what is going to happen. I know it is going to be terrible, but what the particular effects will be, I am not sure. We have families and children living in the streets in all of our cities, Halifax no less than any others. This is going to make it significantly worse. Everyone in this House who has sat on a municipal council knows what I say is true. Everyone in this House who represents an urban riding knows what I say is true. We are yet to see the devastation that these cuts will cause in our urban centres from coast to coast.


Don Boudria: Good answer.


Mr. Larry Schneider (Regina-Wascana):: Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me as well to be on my feet today to address the matter before us, Bill C-69.


Don Boudria: I hope the Conservative members are paying attention.


Larry Schneider: I could not help but sit in utter amazement and listen to some of the debate that preceded my opportunity to speak. I wondered if we were in the same room, the same country and talking about the same subject. I suppose that is the option of the opposition, and that is, of course, to interpret things in their own way.
Bill C-69 as we have it before us has been interpreted by many and much has been said. I would suggest that what has been said is wrong. We have heard that transfer payments have been cut and the government has attacked education and health. All these programs according to their impression, the EPF and the Canada Assistance Program, have seen a reduction in their budget and, of course, nothing is further from the truth.
To explain to someone in a hurry that there has been a reduction in the growth is a little difficult to comprehend-


Don Boudria: We will explain it later; explain it slowly.


Larry Schneider: -much more so than to understand if a member of the opposition, rightly or wrongly, says that there has been a cut. There has not been a cut. In fact, what has happened is that the rate of growth has not kept pace with previous expectations and the budget continues to grow in these particular areas. For others in the Canadian community to devoid themselves of the responsibility for the federal deficit, to complain that they are going to suffer any more than the rest of us, is of course not to carry their share of the load, and that is essentially what this bill does.
Perhaps a history of Bill C-69 and the matter we have before us would be of some interest to those who will some day read what we are discussing today. Bill C-69 was introduced in the House of Commons on March 15 of this year. Its purpose was to implement key aspects of the expenditure control plan affecting statutory programs proposed in the February 20 budget of the Minister of Finance.
Combined with the restraint initiatives announced in December 1989, this plan will reduce government spending by an estimated $3 billion in 1990-91 and $3.8 billion in 1991-92. The federal deficit is projected to decline from $30.5 billion in 1989-90 to $28.5 billion in 1990-91 and to $26.8 billion in 1991-92.
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This bill affects four programs: the Canada Assistance Plan, the Canadian Exploration and Development Incentive Program, the Established Programs Financing arrangement and the public utilities income tax transfer. I would just like to focus on a couple of these.
First, the Canada Assistance Plan. The federal government pays the provinces half the cost of eligible social assistance expenditures under the CAP. These transfers have grown from $4 billion in 1984-85 to about $5.5 billion in 1989-90, an average annual increase of 6.7 per cent. The amendments do not affect provinces which receive federal equalization transfers. The federal government will, therefore, continue to share half of all eligible expenditures incurred in these provinces.
For provinces not receiving equalization, the bill provides for a maximum of 5 per cent annual growth of CAP contributions for 1990-91 and for 1991-92.


Don Boudria: How do we know?


Larry Schneider: The provinces of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia are in a much better financial position than the federal government to finance expenditures beyond the 5 per cent growth rate. The implementation of this measure will provide for resumption of the present regime on April 1, 1992.
I would like to focus some attention on the Established Programs Financing. The EPF is the single largest transfer program to provinces and has grown from $14.5 billion in 1984-85 to almost $20 billion in 1989-90, an average annual increase of 6.3 per cent. Under EPF the federal government provides equal per capita financial assistance to all provinces through the transfer of tax points and cash payments. Historically these transfers were undertaken to assist provinces to carry out their responsibilities with respect to health care and post-secondary education. Since 1977 provinces have been able to use these transfers according to their particular priorities rather than in a more restrictive fashion required by the previous cost-sharing arrangements.
The bill will hold the per capita EPF transfer in 1990-91 and in 1991-92, to its 1989-90 level. However, total EPF transfers will continue to grow with the population increase of each province or about 1 per cent nationally. The bill provides for a resumption of EPF
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growth in 1992-93 at the rate of growth of GNP less 3 percentage points consistent with the announcement in the April 1989 budget. The growth of the total EPF transfer beginning in 1992-93 will not fall below the rate of inflation.
This change in the EPF will have exactly the same per capita impact on all provinces and represents less than 1 per cent of provincial revenues in 1990-91. Low-income provinces will continue to benefit from large and growing equalization transfers which have been exempted from the expenditure control plan.
Bill C-69 is a major component of the budget that was announced in February as we made earlier reference and I think it would be of some interest at this time to make reference to how the impact of Bill C-69 relates to the budget and more important how our budget affects our country.
Our budget is about building for the future, not borrowing from it. That is why our budget deals firmly with the major obstacle to that future, the problem of our growing debt. The measures in our budget reflect the seriousness of the debt situation we face and at the same time we have worked to ensure that the total package of measures is balanced, reflecting regional circumstances and placing the greater burden on those who are better able to carry it.
As a government we are acting with a resolve to reduce expenditures and to improve our own efficiency and operations. All Canadians are being asked to play a greater part in dealing with the debt problem.
Let me outline the actions we are taking to deal with this debt. We are reducing government spending affecting a wide range of programs from national defence to government operations. As a result of these and earlier actions program spending, relative to the size of the economy, will continue to decline significantly. By 1993-94, it will fall to its lowest level in a quarter of a century.
The budget measures will cut the annual deficit in half to $14 billion by 1993-94. As the deficit goes down the debt will shrink as a proportion of our national income. Interest costs will take less of every revenue dollar. Our healthier fiscal position will help to reduce inflationary pressures and thus create an environment favourable to lower interest rates. In this way the fiscal actions in this

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budget make an important contribution to achieving sustainable economic growth.
To achieve this goal a period of moderation and demand is also essential. Indeed, economic growth is expected to moderate and to average about 1.3 per cent at an annual rate for 1990. Employment will continue to grow during this period, however, but at a somewhat slower rate than labour force growth.
Over the medium term inflation and interest rates are expected to decline and the economy to resume growth at its potential rate, averaging about 3.5 per cent a year. If we had not acted, we could have faced a growing danger of higher inflation and even higher interest rates that could have led to a severe recession.
For the longer term we will continue to build a foundation for economic progress by moving forward with a balanced agenda of fiscal and economic action. The replacement of the existing federal sales tax is a key element of this strategy to safeguard essential programs and strengthen Canada's economy. The government will proceed with reform of the federal sales tax effective January 1,1991, certainly no surprise to you. This reform is expected to result in major gains in economic output in the range of about $9 billion a year, gains that will be felt in all sectors of the economy and in all regions of Canada.
I would like to comment about the effects that this program has in total for our federal government support for education. We deem education to be an important priority. That is why the Prime Minister and the provincial premiers agreed in a November communique that they would work together to examine ways of allocating resources more effectively with a focus on results through the proposed new task force on Canada's human resource development system.
On January 30 the Prime Minister told the National Advisory Board on Science and Technology that to improve Canada's competitive position and I quote: "We must control the deficit and the debt if we are to unshackle our hands". That is what the budget and Bill C-69 are all about.
Students of today are going to be major beneficiaries of the improvement in our fiscal and economic position in coming years. As part of our broad-based efforts to get us out from under a growing mountain of debt we have introduced Bill C-69. Among other things it will
hold constant for two years per capita entitlements under the EPF financing arrangements, which is the government's largest transfer to provinces. Historically, these transfers were undertaken to assist provinces to carry out their responsibilities in respect of health care and post-secondary education.
Since 1977, provinces have been able to use these transfers according to their own particular priorities rather than in the more restricted fashion required by the previous cost-sharing arrangements. In any case, transfers under EPF will remain large at over $20 billion in this year alone.
Together with equalization assistance to the lower-income provinces, the federal government will make available over $28 billion which provinces can draw upon. Federal support for education is broader than transfers to provincial governments. It includes many programs that are not affected by the Budget or Bill C-69.
These include research funding to granting councils of over $700 million this year. There is about $40 million for the innovative centres of excellence program and there is available funding of $17 million for the Canada Scholarships Program. There is about $250 million for the Official Languages and Education Program, almost $25 million for the literacy program, over $700 million for education services to native people and over $400 million for Canada student loans. There is also a large and growing amount of support for training and labour-market initiatives under the new labour force development strategy.
I would like to comment on the effects of Bill C-69 on my home province of Saskatchewan. The EPF financing transfer to Saskatchewan will be limited to the same per person levels as in 1989-1990 for the next two fiscal years. Equalization transfers, which are of great importance and in Saskatchewan are nearly 60 per cent of the size of the EPF, are expected to continue to grow with the national economy, which is much faster than other federal spending.
Growth of social assistance transfers to Saskatchewan under the Canada Assistance Plan will also be unaffected because the budget exempts provinces that receive equalization from the 5 per cent cap on the growth of these payments. The result is that transfers to Saskatchewan under these three major programs, which in
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1989-90 totalled $1.23 billion, are expected to rise in the next two fiscal years to $1.25 billion and $1.29 billion. While these increases are less than they were projected to be prior to the budget, they still represent average growth of about 2.4 per cent over the next two years. Federal support to Saskatchewan is going to continue playing a strong positive role in the provincial fiscal picture.
On a per capita basis, the federal transfers are expected to amount to $1,236 for each Saskatchewan resident in 1990-91 and $1,269 the subsequent fiscal year. The comparable figures for Ontario are $956 and $963.
One of the major criticisms that I have received with respect to the attainment of office is the fact that we as a government must continue to keep our shop in order, keep our program spending under control and in fact to effect cuts. There is a feeling that we are not capable of doing that but for the record I would like to go through as many of these as time permits to explain how this government has in fact responded. That response may not have been made with the bells and whistles that would attract the eye and the ear of the average ratepayer but nevertheless we have been quite effective.
We have provided three elements to approaching a program of fiscal management. First, the government has taken action to cut the growth in spending on government programs. Second, the government has acted to increase its revenues. Third, it has put in place a policy framework which is revitalizing the private sector and will permit sustained economic growth.
Economic growth is essential if the Canadian economy is to generate new wealth and new income. This includes, of course, the Free Trade Agreement, tax reform, deregulation in the energy and transportation sectors, privatization and measures to encourage new investment.
The government previous to our election increased spending by an average of 15.1 per cent a year. This was cut to an average of 5 per cent during our first four years. Excluding interest payments on the public debt, the previous government increased spending by an average of 13.9 per cent a year and we cut this to an average of 3.6 per cent a year during our first four years in office. After accounting for inflation this means that program
Government Orders
spending has fallen, on average, by half a per cent a year in real terms. In comparison, the previous administration increased program spending by an average of 5.2 per cent a year, and above the rate of inflation. Oh, but to have that freedom, that reckless abandon.
Spending has grown at a rate that is considerably less than the rate of the growth in the economy. As a result, expenditures have fallen from 24.6 per cent of GDP to 22.2 per cent last year. Spending will further decline to 20 per cent of GDP by 1993-94. Program spending has fallen from 19.5 per cent of GDP to 16.1 per cent and will fall to 15.2 per cent by 1993, back to the level of the late 1980s.
The cost of operating government, that is salaries, equipment, maintenance, et cetera, is actually less today than it was five years ago. But this does not mean the government has not acted to introduce new initiatives to meet new priorities or to deal with short-term problems such as we responded to with respect to the drought in western Canada. We continue to offer $.5 billion on a matching basis to assist the continuing dilemma that exists in agriculture today.
A further initiative we have undertaken is the privatization of 16 crown corporations. The government has improved its cash management and its use of resources. For example, the public service has been cut back to the size it was in 1973. Members of parliament have themselves set an example by receiving average annual salary increases of only 2.8 per cent over the past six years, a rate that has been considerably below the rate of increase in the average industrial wage and in the inflation rate.
Many projects have been cancelled, including the Canada Oil Substitution Program and the Canadian Home Insulation Program, a savings of $180 million and $315 million, respectively. The position of ambassador to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome was cancelled along with five other small posts. The $3.1 million Petroleum Incentives Program terminated in March 31, 1986, with an annual savings of some $600 million in 1986-87 and $1.7 billion in subsequent years. The list goes on. TV studio production services available to all members were discontinued with annual savings of some $300,000. AECL's two heavy water plants on Cape

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Government Orders
Breton Island were closed with savings of $115 million in 1985-86 and $100 million in subsequent years.
We have cancelled programs and projects in response to those people who have written to us requesting that in fact we tighten up on government spending, subsidies, and assistance programs which perhaps were not as readily available as at the time the programs were initiated.
In the area of privatization a number of crown corporations have been sold since 1984, generating revenues for the federal treasury and also producing savings on operating costs. The Northern Transportation Company is an example, saving some $27 million, plus another $26.7 in the form of repayment of debt and accrued interest owed to Canada. De Havilland Aircraft of Canada is an example, with some $90 million plus a further $65 million payable in successive instalments.


Mrs. Gaffney:: A giveaway!


Larry Schneider: Canadian Arsenals Limited, $92.2 million; Canada Development Corporation, another savings of some $361 million; CN routes, $29 million in savings; Canadair, a $120 million cash payment, and an estimated $173 million in royalty on future sales of Challenger aircraft and a $3 million dividend; Northern Canada Power Commission in the Yukon, with proceeds totalling $75 million; TeleGlobe Canada, $700 million. The list goes on and on.
In the area of management there have been several significant and rather innovative changes that have made a positive reflection upon what I deem to be fiscal responsibility in terms of responding to the will and the wishes of our Canadian taxpayers. Cost recovery is an item that time does not permit me to comment on but there are several areas where the federal government has provided incentives to workers to be more cost-conscious. This program has become more effective.
Some capital projects have been cancelled or deferred, something which is no at all popular with us. Many of these have involved constituencies represented by the government and one is liable to think that perhaps this government would favour our own constituencies over others. But I believe this government, in the final analysis, can be accused rightly of being fair. That is an
accusation that I will feel proud of and continue to take home with me.
Bill C-69 is a major portion of our federal budget. It is an attempt to further bring our economic house in order and while it is a tough measure in some quarters I think that if one wants to be fair one has to conclude that it is a fair measure.


Beryl Gaffney: Madam Speaker, I listened with a great deal of interest to the member from Regina-Wascana.
The member and I once both belonged to a national organization, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. I was the Director and he was the President of that organization. It strikes me as odd that when he ceases to be a municipal politician and becomes a federal member of Parliament, suddenly his opinion changes on the importance of transfer payments to the provinces. It is almost a bit of double speak. It is very confusing for the people not only in his constituency but also in mine, and equally so for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
The federation is saying that cutback in transfer payments to the provinces will have a tremendously adverse affect on the provinces and, in turn, the municipalities. It will affect their ability to cope with their infrastructure problems, the educational problems and the health problems that are affecting the municipalities.
Does the hon. member not feel that he is carrying a different message today than from what he carried for many years as the Mayor of Regina and through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities?


Larry Schneider: Madam Speaker, believe it or not I do thank the hon. member for the question. I know her well, and know the spirit in which the question was asked.
First of all to clear the record, I never was at any time President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. I should have been, I thank the hon. member. I did come very close to being on that elite group because I did sit on the executive.
The hon. member said that as a municipal politician I had a certain perspective and now that I am federally positioned, my position seems to have changed. She wanted to know how that happened. I would like to advise the hon. member and the House that my perspective has not changed a bit. During the time that I was the
April 24, 1990

Mayor of Regina it was our goal as dictated to us by the responses of the citizens of Regina to be fiscally responsible.
During the last three years that I was in office, we effected a zero per cent increase in the rate of our own financial expectations in that we made political heroes out of ourselves by having a mill rate increase of zero for some two years. Another year, it was below the rate of inflation.
We did that anticipating that we would receive continued growth from our other two favourite sources of funding, namely the federal and provincial governments. When that does not happen then we as municipal politicians have every right in the world to scream, kick, holler and blame others, because certainly we do not want to take the blame ourselves. Whatever our role, we fulfil a function that is rather infallible. Of course, as a result we would not take the blame.
With respect to Bill C-69 we as a federal government have simply followed the budget, and proceeded with an intense and serious program. It is an extremely difficult path to follow because we know it is not a popular one. On one hand we get reams of mail from people telling us to be fiscally responsible and on the other hand we have an opposition telling us how cruel we are because we are cutting funding.
We are not required to cut funding. We are not required to increase taxes. We are required to reduce interest rates and at the same time, keep control of inflation. If you put this entire collage together in the Mulligan pot stew I am afraid that it would not be palatable because one product would conflict with the other.
We are in a difficult position. I know the hon. member appreciates that, but given that she is a very patient person, she will wait until some day when she is in office when I will be able to ask the question. If I should have the patience that she has to be in opposition, should that period of time ever occur in the long life in which I wish to live, perhaps she will find the question as easy to answer as I did today.


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


PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS-MOTIONS   ABORIGINAL PEOPLES NEEDS OF YOUTH
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Thursday, April 5, consideration of the motion of Mr. Anawak:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider developing special initiatives, in consultation with aboriginal peoples, to respond to the serious employment, education and health needs of aboriginal youth.
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Madam Speaker, as you know, this motion calls on the government to develop special initiatives in consultation with aboriginal people-and this is the key subclause in the sentence- to respond to the serious employment, education and health needs of aboriginal youth.
This motion is extremely timely. It is one that deserves the fullest attention of the Government of Canada for a number of reasons. It is a well documented fact that aboriginal people have been mistreated in North America since Europeans came to this country.
In other words, aboriginal people have had a rough ride. No one can deny that historical fact. We know that in the early stages nations were massacred. We know that from time to time treaties were broken. We know that reserve lands, on some occasions, were poor in resource, poor in location and poor in size. We know that there have been cases of forced relocation. I know of the case of one band near Chicoutimi which, between 1920 and recent months, was relocated seven times to accommodate the exploration ambitions of a mining company.
We know that the earlier European settlers brought with them diseases, infections and certain social habits which proved to be devastating to the aboriginal people. We also know of denial of rights, the most recent one in the proposed Meech Lake Accord, which has been the object of persistent and consistent objections on the part of the native people, and understandably so. Meech Lake is not designed, structured and written in a manner that meets the approval of our aboriginal people. On the contrary, it has been objected to strenuously.

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Private Members' Business
We know also that there are certain parts of Canada, most notably British Columbia, where treaties do not even exist. We know also of megaprojects that were put in place in the 1970s, as in the case of James Bay, where development destroyed the native way of life.
Today, as we debate this matter, we know that a second James Bay project is being proposed which would have a devastating effect on the lifestyle of the aboriginal people, namely, their ability to live off the land if, as proposed, substantial tracts of land are to be inundated and removed from their use.
In addition to that, as we all know, when forests go under water they develop a form of insidious mercury poisoning which infects the fish. This, in turn, has negative impacts on the health of the native population which consumes the fish. In other words, to sum it up, the impact of the white population and the white civilization has had negative consequences on the wellbeing of our aboriginal people.
It is true that now we can point to some signs of hope and it is worth while putting them on record. For instance there has been the negotiation of South Moresby on the part of the Haida nation; the work by the Lilloet tribal council, not only to try to save the Stein Valley but also to save their culture; the recent progress that has been made with land claim negotiations in the Yukon and Northwest Territories; and efforts by individuals such as Tom Henley who, through his rediscovery program, has attempted, and quite successfully so, to teach again to native youth their roots and their old ways.
Nevertheless, if one looks at the statistics produced by the Canadian Institute of Child Health last year prepared by Denise Avard and Louise Hanvey entitled "The Health of Canada's Children" and looks to the native population you will find some elements which justify the validity of the motion of the member for Nunatsiaq. They also make his motion one of an urgent nature.
For instance, Madam Speaker, if you look at the age composition of the registered native population in relation to the total Canadian population, you find that in 1985 nearly 34 per cent of the native population was less than 14 years of age, that is, slightly over one-third was below the age of 14. That compares with some 22 per
cent in Canada as a whole. That means, therefore, that the native youth population is larger by 50 per cent roughly than that of the non-aboriginal population. That in itself is a figure that commands the attention of this House and that of the government.
Turning to page 112 of that study under the heading "Suicide", we come across another set of figures which makes you pause and think. In 1984, the suicide rate for registered native teenagers between the ages of 10 and 19 was about seven times higher than the total Canadian rate. Suicide, as a footnote, is indicated as being of particular importance as a cause of death among young Indian adults.
Madam Speaker, obviously you would know, as would many in this Chamber who are familiar with social studies, that the suicide rate is of course a reflection and indication of the well-being of a culture to which that person belongs. It is not to be considered simply a disease or a temporary aberration. It is a very serious matter when it occurs, even in small percentages. However, here we are talking of a rate that is devastatingly high, namely seven times higher than that of our non-aboriginal population.
I ask myself what is the root of this problem. You are indicating to me, Madam Speaker, that my time is up, therefore we cannot explore the possible answers to this question. I can therefore only stress to you, Madam Speaker, and to receptive members on the government side, the extreme importance and urgency of the motion by my colleague from Nunatsiaq and indicate to you that it would be extremely desirable that this motion be passed and made part of the policy of the Government of Canada because of its crucial and central importance.


Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Madam Speaker, it is a great privilege to rise in the House to speak on this issue. It is not the first time that the member for Churchill has had that opportunity. For a number of years I have risen in this House and talked about the very elements of this motion, the serious unemployment problem that is facing native people, the lack of facilities for education and the lack of real initiatives to provide adequate health care for native Canadians.
April 24, 1990

I wish to commend the member for moving this motion. It is a very important issue and it is good that this House is addressing it.
This is not a new problem. One of the things that has upset me about the debate in the last five years in this House is to hear Liberal members get up and pretend that the problems that native Canadians face are something new, that they are the result of Conservative government cutbacks, when that is anything but the truth.
We have had over 100 years of neglect of native Canadians. That neglect is coming home to roost. If you go into the communities of northern Manitoba, you see that they do not have water and sewage systems. If you go into some of the schools in those communities you will find holes in the floors. If you go into the nursing stations you will find that at any given time there is a 25 per cent shortfall in the required number of nurses for native communities in northern Manitoba.
That is something which can be found in all the remote areas of Canada. I am sure you will find the same thing in the Kenora-Rainy River riding, in the Territories, in northern Saskatchewan, in northern Quebec, in northern Alberta and in parts of B.C. So it is not an isolated problem. It is a problem that has resulted from years and years of government neglect.
The white paper of Jean Chretien of almost 20 years ago basically called for assimilation of the native people. It called for a cutback in direct federal government programs to native people so that they would be forced into the white society, forced to accept provincial government programs. The federal government program, the Buffalo Jump of the 1990s, was a restatement of that by the Conservative government of the day.
In this year's federal budget, money is being taken away from national spokesgroups of native people and those groups that have co-ordinated activities among natives such as the northern chiefs in my riding. If you take a look at those cuts you realize that the federal government is again going down the road of restricting the ability of native people to explain their needs to the Canadian population.
There have been years and years of neglect of government programs and now there is a concerted effort by
Private Members' Business
the government to make sure that the native groups cannot get their message across, not only to Parliament but to the Canadian population as a whole.
Let me give you an example of some of the problems that do exist. A study was done of the York Landing School in my riding. An engineer's report was prepared in March of 1988. There are 81 students in three rooms, three grades per room. The school is built of wood with no fire-retardant being added to the wood. Electrical panels are not covered. The fire alarm system does not work. The four-foot hallway between classes is used as a storage room. There is no library. There is no common meeting room. There are tools for a shop but no space to use them. There are no smoke detectors. The fire exit doors are stuck closed. That report was made two years ago. To date, there are no plans for a new school for that community. Each and every day, 81 students go to that school, a fire trap, a facility which should have been closed many years ago. That is not an isolated case. I can give you examples from throughout my riding, as I am sure can others in the House, of schools that are inadequate.
I see one of the former Ministers of Indian Affairs making a hasty retreat from the House. I can understand his need to do so.


Mr. Epp:: No, I was just apologizing to the Speaker for the fact that she had to listen to a Manitoban.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Perhaps if the minister had done something when he was the Minister of Indian Affairs, we would not need to have this debate in the House today. The member for Provencher should know of what I am speaking because some of the communities of which I am speaking used to be part of his riding but are now, happily, part of my riding. Unfortunately, when he was the minister, schools were being built with the knowledge that in four or five years those schools would be over-crowded. In other words, there were young children bom in those communities who would not have a place in those classrooms by the time they got into kindergarten or Grade 1. That was the deliberate government policy for dealing with the school shortage in native communities across the country.
If you have ever been into a native community and looked at the conditions of housing, you would realize it

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Private Members' Business
is appalling, Madam Speaker. We give money for native housing in remote communities that would not build a decent cabin for people in those northern areas. We expect them to live there with inadequate heating systems. We expect them to live in those communities, knowing full well that there are not proper foundations for their houses. We know the houses will start to rot in five to ten years. And that is what we call a housing program. One of the richest nations calls that an adequate housing program, and minister after minister of Indian Affairs has stood in the House and defended that type of program.
That same neglect and refusal to deal with the real problems can be found in each and every program that the federal government is responsible for with regard to native Canadians. We can talk about education, employment, economic development, medical services, water, and sewage. These are all important to native Canadians and we have a sad history of neglect.
Just this year, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal again condemned our country for our treatment of native people. Again, we were reminded that a native youth has more chance of going to jail than completing high school; a very sad statistic. We know from other studies that have been made in this nation that our jails have a very high percentage of native Canadians; much higher than the 4 per cent to 5 per cent that they make up of the Canadian population. In many facilities, in areas where the native population is between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of the population, the native population within our criminal institutions is over 50 per cent. In some cases, it is approaching 75 per cent of the total population within those institutions.
Why does that happen? It happens because there is a real system of neglect in this nation. The neglect is continuing. This summer there will be fewer native people taking advantage of federal government programs for job creation because there is less money provided for those communities. One-third of the native youth who used to be employed through federal government programs in the past will be employed this year. That is despite the fact that there is a growing native population. We are taking away their hope and, as long as we take away their hope, we take away their future and we taint our own future.


Mr. Gilbert Parent (Welland -St. Catharines-Tho-rold):: Madam Speaker, I thank you very much for recognizing me at this point. My colleagues, I am sure, will have other things to say as we go along.
With regard to the topic today, the report of the Special Senate Committee on Youth, tabled in 1986, states: "native Canadians have suffered from injustice for many decades". A separate chapter was devoted to native youth. It was found that unemployment among young natives was alarmingly high, as were pre-marital pregnancies, alcohol and drug abuse, suicide and problems with the law; in fact, more so than with other youth groups in our society. It became apparent that in order to address these problems the entire context of the historical and present status of Canadian native people has to be considered.
One of the basic needs which has to be addressed is health. It is true that our natives are entitled to special health and medical facilities and programs. The very isolation and remoteness of their villages greatly reduces the effectiveness of adequate care. In addition to this, there are often problems of language and a distrust brought about by generations of rejection and struggle.
The problem, of course, is tied to the requirement of adequate nutrition. Isolated areas find it difficult to avail themselves of fresh produce, to name only one element of proper nutrition. The February 1989 issue of Canadian Family Physician carried a special feature on the nutritional problems of native Canadian mothers and children. Deficiencies were identified in Vitamin D among toddlers who suffered from rickets. It was noted that fluoride is not present in the water supply of most native groups, thus requiring particular attention in order to prevent dental caries.
Research indicates that expectant mothers show a lack of sufficient intake of calcium and Vitamin D. It stands to reason that, if native expectant mothers are not healthy, babies will not be healthy, and the statistics prove it. Infant mortality rates among the Inuit for the period 1983 to 1985 are much higher than Canadians for almost all categories. Sudden infant death syndrome is an important cause of infant mortality for Indians, Inuit and all Canadians. However, the rates for Indians and Inuit are higher than the Canadian rate. For Indians and Inuit, the post-neonatal death rate is higher than the
April 24, 1990

neonatal death rate, whereas, for the Canadian population, the reverse is true.
Significant nutritional problems still exist in the native Indian and Inuit population of Canada. Since eating patterns have changed for the natives, as well as for everyone else in Canada, studies show that native adolescents are also prone to eating junk food high in calories, fat and carbohydrates. Here again, an iron deficiency is noted among teenage girls. Changes have been noted during the last four decades in the way native communities nourish themselves. Poverty also plays a big part in the poor nutrition of mothers and children.
Professionals treating natives must be aware of their particular traditions, evolutions and present-day problems. Nutrition counselling must be made available by fully qualified native people whose advice might be more culturally appropriate. At any rate, all professionals should be well versed in the special needs of the native Indians and the Inuit.
It is a sad commentary on Canada that a country as rich as Canada, as the hon. member for Churchill said, sees so many of its citizens suffer because of malnutrition. A healthy body will contribute to a healthy mind. How can we expect under-nourished students to progress, to learn, and to develop to their full potential? Discouraged at an early age, many will succumb to drug and alcohol abuse and, unfortunately, to an early death, whether accidental or by suicide.
A study done for Canadian Social Trends, in the 1988 winter issue, indicates that suicide rates in Canada during the 1980s have been the highest in the history of our country. During the last decade, the suicide rate has been about double what it was throughout most of the period from 1921 to 1961-that is 40 years-and all well about previous record highs during the depression of the 1930s.
Sadly, suicide rates are especially high among native people. In 1986, there were 56.3 suicides for every 100,000 native men, almost 2.5 times the rate for all men, which is at 22.5. At the same time the rate for native women, which was 11.8, was almost double the rate for all other women at 6.4. The incidence of suicide is particularly high among young native men. In 1986, there were more than 100 suicides for every 100,000 native
Private Members' Business
men age 15 to 29. What a waste, Madam Speaker. What a waste of potential for our country.
I spoke earlier of the need for good nutrition to ensure a healthy, inquiring mind, and the danger for young native men and women to get discouraged when faced with lack of opportunities with the added burden of ill health. Unfortunately, their despair quite often leads them to worse health through substance abuse.
While detrimental to their health, these abuses invariably lead them to problems with the law, and here again they become part of the very high suicide rate experienced in federal penitentiaries and provincial prisons.
I think the time has come to review in a very special way the needs of our native and Inuit groups. It is time to give them a greater role in their own health and welfare services. It is time to prepare professionals for service and work in remote native and Inuit communities. Improvements to health and medical services do not automatically mean that we limit ourselves to only one area. Rather, I see improving the standards of living for native groups as an attitude encompassing a broad variety of social needs-health, education, social services and transportation. Within these headings the government should look at the related services. For instance, while considering better health services, attention must be given to dental health, nutrition, pre-natal and post-natal services.
The parliamentary Special Committee on Indian SelfGovernment, which was prepared by Mr. Keith Penner and his committee in 1983, agreed that "-ill health is not an isolated issue that can be resolved with more and better medical facilities. Through the exercise of Indian self-government, Indian people will be able to control the other problems to which ill health is linked- Jurisdiction over such areas as education, child welfare, and health is considered essential. By exercising control over these matters Indian people could ensure future generations are able to preserve and enjoy their culture and heritage".
The issue of native control has received a lot of attention and I realize, Madam Speaker, that planning is ongoing. But in light of the preceding statistics are we not left with the feeling that we must do more, and we must do more quickly?

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Private Members' Business
Last year the Minister of State for Youth tabled a book entitled Hot-100 in which was listed an interesting array of programs for youth. Among the 100, several were designed for young Indians and Inuit. One in particular, the Indian and Inuit Health Careers Program, offers bursaries for those interested in pursuing a career in the field of health. I believe that this is a very worthy initiative, but maybe we could go a step beyond.
The criteria for the program says the program "will provide bursaries according to need". I would like to add to this that special funds should be put aside for visits to the student's community to relieve loneliness, to keep his or her interest current on local health issues, and to ensure that the students will not get discouraged and abandon their studies.
This is only one idea, Madam Speaker. As I mentioned before, The entire social fabric must be looked at. The entire needs and particular aspirations of the young Indians and Inuit must be taken into consideration.
My colleague from the Northwest Territories was not able to be here today to participate in this debate. I know that if he were here he would lend his voice to all hon. colleagues in this House.
He would be saying to all of us here that we must respond to the needs of our young native people. We must respond now if we are going to have any effect on their future well-being.


Beryl Gaffney: Madam Speaker, I, too, am very pleased to stand in support of the motion of my colleague, the hon. member for Nunatsiaq.
The question that begs to be asked is this. What does it mean to be young, aboriginal and living in Canada today? The government's own documents refer to the economic disparities endured by aboriginal people in Canada. For example, the Canadian Aboriginal Economic Development Strategy released by the government last summer states:
By all measures of socio-economic disparity, the 600,000 people who identify themselves as aboriginal continue to be the most disadvantaged group within Canadian society. Employment rates among the aboriginal working-age population have been about 45 per cent compared with 63 per cent for the non-aboriginal
population. Of those employed, incomes are up to a third lower than levels for employed non-aboriginal people.
Almost 30 per cent of aboriginal individuals aged 15 to 24 have less than a grade 9 education, compared with 7 per cent of their non-aboriginal counterparts. More than 76 per cent have neither completed high school nor pursued post-secondary education, whereas the corresponding percentage for non-aboriginals is 44 per cent.
The social costs of the high unemployment rates, and relatively low educational attainment levels, are enormous.
In the Canadian Human Rights Commission annual report for 1988 it was stated that Canada's treatment of aboriginal peoples is a national tragedy. In its 1989 annual report the commission said it had no reason to alter that judgment.
The government is simply not doing enough. Aboriginal issues should be a priority. A focus on aboriginal youth is critical.
According to the Canadian Aboriginal Economic Development Strategy:
For at least the next 15 years, the aboriginal share of the young labour force, which is 15 to 34 years of age, will be rising, reaching a level of 50 per cent higher by 1996. Most of this growth will occur in non-urbanized areas. Aboriginal people will account for 57 per cent of the increase in the labour force in northern Canada and 12 per cent in each of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
For every year in the next five years, more than 5,000 individuals will have to find and keep jobs to achieve a level of 50 per cent employment among young Indian adults living on reserves.
Despite the fact that the government knows that half of the aboriginal population in Canada today is under the age of 25, and that these young people will need jobs, the government has not focused on these needs.
It capped the Indian post-secondary educational assistance program, limiting its accessibility. There is no initiative developed to respond to the serious employment needs of aboriginal youth.
In the area of health, serious inequities continue to exist in the area of aboriginal health. A recent report by the Canadian Institute of Child Health confirms the continuing problems.
The aboriginal mortality rate from injuries and suicides, hospitalizations due to respiratory diseases and pregnancy complications remain much higher than the national average.
April 24, 1990

Life expectancy is still much lower than for non-aboriginal people.
Aboriginal children born today will live, on average, 68 years. Other Canadian children can expect to live 76 years.
The aboriginal infant mortality rate is double the national average. Aboriginal children have consistently higher death rates due to injuries.
Aboriginal teenagers have a suicide rate seven times higher than that of the Canadian rate.
Tuberculosis and other infectious diseases affect aboriginal people disproportionately.
The government must come to grips with the Third World conditions that face aboriginal people and aboriginal youth in this country.
The aboriginal health, education and unemployment statistics are not acceptable and cannot be tolerated any longer.
The aboriginal people of this country want to contribute. The aboriginal youth want to contribute, but they need a fighting chance.
The circumstances which are currently blocking the opportunities for young aboriginal people have to be addressed as a priority.
That is all the motion the hon. member for Nunatsiaq is requesting. He is asking the government to pay attention to these serious issues. The government will say that it is already doing a lot. Whatever it is doing it is certainly not enough.
The frustration level of young Indian, Inuit and Metis people is rising. Current conditions do not offer them much of a future. Without dramatic changes they can most probably look forward only to unemployment insurance, welfare and an early death.
These young people deserve more from the federal government. We urge this government to respond favourably to the motion of the hon. member for Nunatsiaq.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak in support of the motion presented by my colleague, the hon. member for Nunatsiaq. The motion states:
Private Members' Business
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider developing special initiatives, in consultation with aboriginal peoples, to respond to the serious employment, education and health needs of aboriginal youth.
My relationship with the aboriginal community began about two years ago when I was beginning my campaign in Broadview-Greenwood. Many people would probably be surprised to hear that there are a lot of native people in downtown Toronto. Because of the frustration that native people experience when they are living on the reserves, they come to the city. Inevitably, however, when they are in the city they experience all kinds of rejection and frustration. They do not get proper employment opportunities. Because of that frustration they end up finding themselves out on the street. Social services are overburdened and they do not get the proper care.
It was during this period that I ran into Chief David Youngwolf from the Toronto Urban Indian Council. It was Chief Youngwolf who would tell me repeatedly of the frustrations that his people were having. That was the beginning of my realization that the native community of this country for some mysterious reason has not been looked at and appreciated in the way it should be.
We developed our relationship. Of course Chief Youngwolf's plea to me was this: "We are all going through a period right now where we care about the environment". Native people are really Canada's first environmentalists.
He worked with me for many months as we organized together the First Peoples Summit on the Environment. He brought his people in from all over Ontario. They put on displays and taught the younger children who came to this event from across the metropolitan area how to treat the land, how to work with the land. It was not just Chief Youngwolf, but many of his associates taught the youth the importance of having a healthy environment.
It was at that point in time that I realized that if we really are going to be committed to this environmental movement, we are going to have to treasure the resource of our native peoples.
When I realized this as time went on I went to the Minister of the Environment's book, which is obviously going to be the bible for this government come September. It is called a framework for discussion on the environment, and is entitled: The Green Plan: A National Challenge. I looked in the document to see if the minister

April 24, 1990
Private Members' Business
had recognized that the real environmentalists of this country are our native peoples.
Sure enough on page 14 I read:
Today's youth are tomorrow's decision-makers. If they are to play a meaningful role in environmental decision-making and diplomacy, they must develop environmental literacy as well as leadership skills. The Government proposes to take measures to ensure that Canada's youth will have the opportunity to channel their energy and talents toward achieving environmental objectives.
The Minister of the Environment then goes on to state:
The Government plans to support summer employment, training and career development in environmental conservation and protection, and to support international youth exchanges and conferences. Options include a federal government summer employment program; a private sector co-op program; and a youth conference in preparation for the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Brazil.
Canada's aboriginal peoples are often the first to experience changes made to the natural environment by human activities. Those changes have sometimes threatened their traditional and close relationship to the land.
I must say that when I read this today I felt like I was reading my colleague's motion. You will see the similarity, Madam Speaker. There are not more than 8 or 10 words missing. The Minister of Environment states further:
The Government will also consult with aboriginal peoples about other possible initiatives, including measures to support activities of natives that enhance or protect the environment and a special native component of the government's youth employment initiatives.
My colleague's motion was introduced in this House on November 27, 1989. I read that the Minister of the Environment has picked up on this motion. I am happy to see that. We can only hope now that the government will take these words and put them into action.


Sheila Finestone: Madam Speaker, I am really very pleased to stand to add my voice to that of the member for Nunatsiaq, and all the other colleagues in the House who have spoken to the issue of his motion which reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider developing specific initiatives, in consultation with aboriginal peoples, to respond to the serious employment, education and health needs of aboriginal youth.
I think my colleagues have pointed out the serious situation that the aboriginal youth across this land find themselves in. Of course there are no magic solutions. It will take time.
There is no question that there must be a forwardlooking strategy. We must look at the kinds of issues that are ahead and ask ourselves: "Before we move to cut a program in this area, what are we doing to the lifestyle and to the future of the youth who are involved?"
It is really quite regrettable that with the challenges facing our young people in general, and our aboriginal youth in particular, that the government has chosen to cut community support programs that have often eased the struggle through these very difficult times. It has cut very important support mechanisms that we had built up in this country over many years which had helped the day to day realities of our aboriginal youth.
Far from enough, statistics indicate that we have done too little. Yet the little we have done has been cut. Once again, the government, unfortunately, has seen bottom line deficit reduction as the only yardstick of measure when looking out at society. If it had a constructive view of how to move forward, particularly in the area of our aboriginal youth who have serious educational and health problems, as well as serious problems with drugs and alcohol abuse, and in terms of the numbers in our jail system, I think the government would see that this is one area where we can ill afford to cut any funding or services.
I would say that I have been very privileged. I have attended the three First Minister's Conferences on Aboriginal Rights. I have seen outstanding leadership from the aboriginal communities, negotiating with the government in an effort to move forward their land claims concerns, to move forward their interest in picking up their society and their community and becoming more constructive and helpful in helping their own communities help themselves.
Those were very interesting but very frustrating conferences for aboriginal peoples. I appreciate their concern and their frustration in that regard.
April 24, 1990

I also sat on the legislative committee concerning Bill C-31 which looked at amendments to the Indian Act. It was very important at that time that we gave to Indian women equality of rights, the rights that their brothers and fathers enjoyed. I remember the argument in this House as we moved for assurances that money would be given for educational institutions when women and their children moved back on reserves. We sought assurances that more schools and homes would be built. In that way, their children would be assured of a better future. We all know that education is synonymous with an improvement of options and job skills training and an improvement in the future life of our children.
The statistics concerning youth in the aboriginal community are quite shocking. In that regard I would recommend to any one of my colleagues or people who are interested in the particular issue of the aboriginal peoples the speech of the hon. member for Nunatsiaq as reported in the House of Commons Hansard, Volume 131, No. 100, Second Session of the Thirty-Fourth Parliament of Monday, November 27, 1989. This is a subject that should interest us because the aboriginal people are the founding peoples of this country. Of any in our society, they are the distinct society. I think that this government has forgotten to include them in its major priorities.
The hon. member's speech is a most interesting, informative and somewhat sad critique of the way we have handled our responsibility as Canadians and as parliamentarians with regard to the place, role and importance of the Inuit and Indian people in the life of our country.
I would remind you as well, Madam Speaker, of when the annual report of the Canadian Human Rights Commission made those newspaper headlines with its grim statement: "An Indian youngster in Canada has a better chance of being sent to prison than of completing university". That is a statement that gives us food for serious thought and very serious concern.
In my critique portfolio of communications, one of most serious of the cuts comes to mind. I do not have to tell this House the importance of the communications media and how essential they are to the preservation of the cultural heritage of Canada's aboriginal peoples.
Private Members' Business
Broadcasting policy by itself, I acknowledge, will not ensure the survival of native language and native culture. But it can play a key role in helping to mitigate the threats that are commonly felt and the pressures that exist in a society. It can ensure a sense of belonging and participation. It can enhance that sense of roots that make people feel that they belong to a society and are reflected in that society.
That has an important role to play in the mental health and the well-being which comes with feeling that you have some knowledge of self, some place in your society, and that you are respected for the values that you have, as well as for the values that are promoted when one's image and one's place is acknowledged.
I believe -and that was certainly the view of the aboriginal leaders across this land-that the cuts put in place through the Secretary of State were unconscionable.
One of the things that I recall was that the then Secretary of State, the hon. member for Roberval, said: "It is particularly important that native people have access to communications, giving the aboriginal perspective during a time when such issues as self-government, aboriginal title and equality rights are being debated".
What did the government then do under the new Secretary of State, the hon. member for Pierrefonds- Dollard?
The Secretary of State cut the lines of communication to the people in their own language and in the manner which is important to the sense of importance and identity in terms of Inuit culture. I would say that the social culture and economic disaster that is brought about by the cuts to the native programs is totally unconscionable.
The CBC and native groups had begun to provide opportunities for aboriginal peoples to broadcast in their own languages. This came about, I would remind the House, through the establishment of the Northern Native Access Program in 1983, which provided support funds to stimulate the production of native language, radio and television programs. Outstanding programs have been produced.

April 24, 1990
Private Members' Business
When I was in Iqaluit I visited the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation. I saw incredible and creative programming. That is being cut.
All their newspapers are being cut.
If I had time I would list the areas of cuts that have left this native community in shock. I sincerely hope that serious reconsideration will be undertaken. The minister evidently set up a private task force, a hidden task force. Let him bring that task force report out into the open. It commenced at the beginning of March. Let him reinstate these programs which are fundamental to the well-being, both mentally and physically, of these societies.
I urge the government to reconsider its attacks against the native communications system which is key to their survival in their own society as well as to integrating them into the larger society, one which we then can appreciate as well.


Don Boudria: Madam Speaker, I wanted to say a few words but I did not want to do so without first determining whether I would be in that case preventing another member from speaking. But seeing no one else rise I want to take only three or four minutes before we adjourn to say a few words on this very important issue.
Madam Speaker, you know that I represent the native community of Cornwall Island, the Aquasasne Community No. 59, which is located in the great constituency of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell. I thought I would take a moment to bring a few issues to the attention of the House in relation to the motion that was placed before us by our colleague from Nunatsiaq who moved the very constructive motion which states that the government should consider developing special initiatives, in consultation with aboriginal people, to respond to serious employment, education and health needs of aboriginal youth.
What is important in this motion, apart from everything else, are the words "in consultation with". The reason why I say that is because there is too much of what my colleague from Nunatsiaq has referred to as "big brotherism". That means that someone here in Ottawa designs programs for natives, as if all native Canadians live in similar conditions on reservations that are similar to one another and that they are all in climatic conditions which are similar to one another.
Of course, a native Canadian living in Tuktoyaktuk does not experience very many conditions that are similar to those natives living in the constituency of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell on Cornwall Island. That is important for all of us to remember.
I hope that through whatever program the government establishes, once we adopt the motion that is before us today, hopefully, we will ensure that we have this good and appropriate consultation, not just at the regional and national level with native Canadians, although we need that too but, indeed, at the local level so that programs are designed in such a way as to accommodate the various situations right across the country under which many of our native citizens live.
Needless to say, I have identified that a native Canadian living in the constituency of Glengarry-Prescott- Russell lives under very different climatic and other conditions than others do in certain other areas. But the social conditions and so on are very different as well.
We know of course that that particular community is located roughly one-quarter within the province of Quebec, one-quarter in the province of Ontario and one-half in the United States of America.
If you can, picture the following situation, Madam Speaker. Imagine that you are a citizen of that community and you travel between St. Regis, Quebec and Ho-gansburg, New York, and there are no Customs. If you travel between one country and the other there are no Customs duties, no Customs officers-no Customs anything.
On the other hand, if you live in another part of the same community on Cornwall Island and you go from there to Massena, New York, then there are Customs officers. That would be the same situation, Madam Speaker, if you were to leave Centre Block to go to the West Block and there were Customs, and there were no Customs if you went to the East Block and the East Block and the West Block were in the same country.
That is totally illogical in terms of conditions that people have to live under. It is only one element of conditions that my constituents live under which would appear to many of us as being not only very peculiar but in some cases nonsensical.
It creates various situations. We know that there is a problem with the illegal smuggling of goods through the reserve from the United States to Canada going through the American and the Canadian side of that community. That of course is most unfortunate. The Grand Chief of the Aquasasne reserve on the Canadian side has done his best and so has his council to eradicate this problem,
April 24, 1990

but it is very difficult. It is very difficult when you look at the high unemployment and the attractiveness that some might see in making a quick dollar that is otherwise not available.
When there are so few opportunities for those people one can see how some people could unfortunately be attracted to living off the avails of this kind of activity. It does not make it appropriate of course, and obviously the chiefs are very concerned and they are doing their best to stop it.
If we want to give other opportunities to those young people in Aquasasne, and elsewhere for that matter, we have to provide the necessary funding for a better education and better conditions.
It is my hope that we will adopt this motion today. I will leave enough time for us to be able to vote on this item.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Is the House ready for the question?


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

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

Beryl Gaffney: Madam Speaker, I am standing here in the House today because a few weeks ago because I was not satisfied with a response to a question on veterinary services, the GST and how it would affect veterinarians.
Adjournment Debate
The Canadian Veterinary Medical Association and the Canadian Animal Health Institute both state that the proposed goods and services tax will have a drastic effect on veterinary services. In fact the firm of Deloitte and Touche on behalf of the CVMA studied the possible effects of the proposed GST on veterinary services and proved that small animal practices will face an increase in operational costs of more than 6 per cent. In some instances, due to administrative costs and cash flow problems, consumers may face up to a 12 per cent increase in veterinary care and drugs.
Because of these increased costs and cash flow problems, consumers may face up to a 12 per cent increase in veterinary care and drugs. Because of these increased costs, animal control programs will face a dramatic setback since spaying and neutering of small animals will inevitably decrease dramatically. Furthermore, we will see a decrease in health care provided to small animals, since consumers will not want to cover the increase in costs. This can have a drastic impact on not only the health of small animals, but also on humans because animals are carriers of many diseases that can be transmitted to man.
More than 50 per cent of Canadians have cats, dogs or other pets. Even if someone does not have a cat or a dog, one might be exposed to diseases such as rabies. One could be exposed to toxoplasmosis, which is transmitted through meat and cats and causes birth defects to the human foetus. One could be exposed to psittacosis, which is transmitted by birds and which can cause fatal meningitis. Therefore, the need to protect Canadians against parasites, fungi, mange, et cetera is essential, and an increase in the cost of veterinary services and drugs could deter many Canadians from making sure their pet is protected.
When I asked the Minister of State for Finance how his government could possibly justify putting the health of animals, and ultimately humans at risk, his response was: "The inputs presently paid by the veterinarians will no longer be paid after the GST is implemented. This will constitute a considerable diminution of the prices." This was said by the minister.
The CVMA and the CAHI both disagree with the minister's statement. In fact, Deloitte and Touche's study states that veterinarians presently pay the federal sales tax and also the telecommunication and program-

April 24, 1990
Adjournment Debate
ming services tax, at a rate of 11 per cent. Deloitte and Touche point out: "However, the removal of these two taxes will reduce the costs of operating veterinary clinics only marginally." This reduction in cost is estimated at less than 1 per cent.
Thus the minister is wrong. He is misleading Canadians. If the minister still stands by his statement, then where are his studies? Why not table them in this House?
The Deloitte and Touche report went on to state that there is no doubt that the costs of veterinary services and animal drugs to pet owners will increase under the GST as much as 12 per cent.
On a larger scale, veterinary services are essential to dairy and beef cattle breeders who have to resort to these services in order to keep their animals healthy and to protect them from contagious diseases. If this government taxes these services, it risks taxing the quality of food.
Veterinary services are essential to human health because in Canada there are veterinary inspection services in over 500 slaughterhouses and in food processing plants. As Mrs. Christiane Gagnon, President of the CVMA, told the finance committee last October, food such as pork, poultry, beef and eggs are checked by veterinarians, thereby ensuring the quality of safety of the food that we consume. Therefore, taxing those services boils down to taxing Canadian health.
In an August 1989 GST technical paper, the government stated that all health care services funded, in whole or in part, by health insurance plans in two or more provinces will be exempt under the GST. Even though governments in more than six provinces have established an animal health insurance plan, therefore meeting the stated criterion, the government has decided to overlook these facts.
Veterinary medicine is a medical profession and provides essential services to Canadians. Provincial governments and the federal government, have consistently recognized that animal health is essential to the health and well-being of all Canadians.
Furthermore, as I pointed out in my question to the minister, veterinary drug manufacturers were literally forced into complying with the Patent Act under which the whole pharmaceutical industry is regulated and under which no differentiation is made between human and veterinary pharmaceuticals. Nor has there been any
difference made between the two under the Excise Tax Act or under the Food and Drugs Act.
Now, under the proposed GST, human pharmaceuticals are zero rated while veterinary ones will be taxed, another prime example of this government's willingness to contradict itself over money. The CVMA points out that the inclusion of GST on veterinary pharmaceuticals will increase the costs of providing human health care and food products to the Canadian public as well as to the animal health care.
There will be both a direct and an indirect impact. Regardless of the fact that farmers can apply for refunds, they will be burdened with an increase in administration and financing costs. They could also experience increased product costs as manufacturers, distributors and veterinarians pass on their increased administrative or GST costs, through price increases.
The equal treatment of veterinary and human pharmaceuticals would ensure that price differentiation, due to the GST, would not promote the use of human pharmaceuticals and that adequate research and development continues on veterinary medicines.
The Canadian Animal Health Institute believes that the level of animal health care impacts directly on the level of human health care. Therefore, the differentiation of human and veterinary pharmaceuticals compromises the health of Canadians.
In conclusion, the statements made by the minister in reference to my question were unacceptable. The Canadian Veterinarians Medical Association, the Canadian Animal Health Institute and Deloitte and Touche have all refuted what the minister said in this House. They also refute comments by the member for Perth-Wellington -Waterloo.
When will the government listen to Canadians and scrap this unfair tax? Not only is the government grabbing money from Canadians, it is also risking the health of both animals and humans to do so. It is not too late to stop this madness and to scrap this tax grab.


Mr. Murray Cardiff (Parliamentary Secretary to Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Privy Council and Minister of Agriculture):: Madam Speaker, I want to point out that, unlike the existing federal sales tax which applies to only one-third of all goods and services consumed in Canada, the GST will apply to most goods and services. This means that sectors across the economy will be treated more equitably, and that consumer
April 24, 1990

decisions will not be distorted as they are by the current system.
Consistent with this principle, veterinary pharmaceuticals will be subject to the GST. However, under the new system, all vendors of goods and services who charge GST on their sales will be entitled to claim a credit for GST paid on their businesses and inputs, that is, the goods and services acquired for the purpose of conducting their businesses.
Vendors of zero rated goods and services will not charge tax on their sales, but will be allowed to claim full input tax credits. In both cases, only the difference between total GST charged on sales and total GST paid on business inputs, will be remitted to the federal government. Moreover, when GST on purchases exceeds GST on sales, in the event, for example, of a large capital purchase, the difference will be refunded.
As a result of this approach, veterinary pharmaceuticals acquired by farmers and other commercial users will not be subject to the tax. This is because the GST they pay will be fully recoverable as input tax credits. Consequently the GST treatment of most veterinary pharmaceuticals will be effectively identical to that afforded prescription drugs for human consumption.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Marlene Catterall: Madam Speaker, I rise to pursue several questions I have placed in the House concerning the court decision on the Oldman River Dam, but more broadly, on the implications of that decision and the ability of the government to exercise some genuine leadership and control over the environmental degradation of Canada's natural resources.
It is more than six weeks since that decision came down from the courts. It was a very strong decision. It made it quite clear that the federal government has not only the right but the responsibility to carry out a full environmental assessment of any project which impacts on an area of federal responsibility. It is unfortunate that it was not the Government of Canada that went to court seeking clarification of that right and that responsibility, and was testing the strength of its legislation to determine how far it could go in meeting the new imperative
Adjournment Debate
of Canadians to protect their own health and the health of their environment, through government action and government leadership. It was not in this case and the case of the Rafferty-Alameda Dam. It was private, independent, non-profit organizations that chose to stand up and fight for what the government refused to fight. It was a decision I thought the government and the minister would welcome as a green light to assume full responsibility for promises made to Canadians, and indeed to the world, at numerous international conferences, through protocols and press conferences. That is not what is happening.
The court stated very clearly and directly that the Minister of Fisheries shall carry out an environmental assessment, that the Minister of Transport shall carry out an environmental assessment. The federal permit to proceed with this project is cancelled. The government has chosen not to act on any one of those very direct orders from the court. It has chosen for over six weeks to answer repeatedly in this House that it is thinking about it. It is considering the implications and suggests that opposition members who raise the issue really do not understand the implications. Of course we understand the implications.
The first implication we understand is the contradiction between the words and actions of the government, which on the one hand states that it wants to act on the environment, but on the other hand not only fails to act, but refuses to act.
The government has several other challenges before it on which to take action. One of these is on the Point Aconi power plant in Nova Scotia. Again, it has been aware for some time of serious problems to the environment arising from this plant. It has simply sat back and let the process take its course. It has exercised no leadership on behalf of the people of Canada or on international commitments made on behalf of Canada to set targets for the reduction of emissions into the atmosphere.
The government has let the project go to the eleventh hour. It has allowed large amounts of money to be spent on preparing the project. It has not done what the legislation and the order in council states it must do, that

April 24, 1990
Adjournment Debate
is, carry out an environmental assessment early in the project, so it will know the environmental impacts and any mitigating measures can be taken. Once the project is approved, the design need not be changed, the project need not be interrupted and millions of dollars of investment need not be disturbed because work the federal government should have done in the first place was not done.
We face projects right across the country which clearly impact on federal responsibility. The government will have to decide to act. In Point Aconi, there is a request from the Coalition on Acid Rain for an environmental assessment. Will the government do as it did at the Oldman Dam and the Rafferty-Alameda Dam and refuse to carry out an environmental assessment which the order in council under that legislation mandates and, in fact, directs it to do? If it does, it is simply abandoning its responsibility.
It is now nearly two years into the discussion around the Carmanah Valley. The government has taken absolutely no action to examine the environmental asset of Carmanah, to determine what can and should happen to that environment in order to protect not only a unique Canadian resource, but in fact a unique world resource.
We hear the government talking about introducing its environmental assessment review legislation within a matter of weeks. I wonder how much effect that legislation will have, however weak or strong it may be, if the government refuses to implement a direct order of the courts to carry out environmental assessment. Will it in fact even obey whatever legislation it brings in? If it refuses to use the environmental tools now at its disposal, what hope is there that a new piece of legislation will make any difference? If the Minister of Transportation sits in the House as he did today and refuses to account for why he is allowing the project to go ahead without the federal permit that it legally requires under an act that is under his jurisdiction, then what hope do we have that environmental assessment review legislation will have any affect?
The minister knows perfectly well that a federal permit was issued for the dam to proceed and that that
permit has now been cancelled. For six weeks now that project has been proceeding illegally. Once again we are relying on private non-profit organizations to hold bazaars and fund-raisers to go to court to defend the laws of the land and not the Government of Canada. Yet the minister continues to ignore an illegal act.
If the minister is concerned about the safety of the project he has every opportunity to make public, as the environmental assessment review process requires, the safety implications. He has chosen not to do that so the public and members of the House can only question whether indeed, and what indeed, the safety factors are that allow and encourage him to over-ride the law of the land.
If he is concerned about safety factors he has the mandate under the act to determine how and under what conditions to meet those safety factors, He might issue a permit for the project. He has chosen not to do that because that, too, would be subject to public scrutiny.
We had the recent announcement of The Green Plan. The Green Plan was full of questions that I thought were answered a long time ago. The Prime Minister and other ministers of the government had this great Montreal-To-ronto conference and agreed to a 20 per cent reduction. However, that is not what is happening.
I simply call on the government to answer these questions for members of parliament and for the public. Are you serious about the environment or not?


Mr. Michel Champagne (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State (Forestry)):: Madam Speaker, the hon. member raised a number of questions about the way the present government deals with its environmental responsibilities, and I would like to give a specific example to demonstrate that this government's activities are sensible and consistent. The Great Whale River project is a case in point. As you know, there is a serious problem, but for several months we have been talking to the Quebec government about ways of harmonizing this environmental review, since the project is subject to the environmental review requirements of both government.
April 24, 1990

Furthermore, considering the rights and privileges conferred under the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement on the Cree and Inuit people who live in this region, we intend to associate them directly with any process that will be put in place.
I must admit that we are currently up against some major obstacles to developing a completely integrated review process. The process itself must be independent and rigourous to be credible, a requirement that is difficult to reconcile with Quebec's exclusive jurisdiction over the project itself and with a project schedule that leaves little time for completing the required studies and reviews.
Nevertheless, recent Federal Court decisions leave us no choice. In fact, in addition to our own desire to apply sound environmental planning to the Great Whale River project, the Federal Court has handed down decisions that affect federal areas of jurisdiction involved in this project. Recent judgments in the Rafferty-Alameda and Oldman River cases stated that the court order on the guidelines for the federal environmental assessment and review process has force of law.
The court stated that a project is subject to public review under the guidelines whenever the federal government has decision-making power over environmental impact deemed to be non-minimal.
The court also emphasized the arm's length character of a public review board and the need for informing the public and providing the means for the public to participate and make its views knows in the course of the process.
The project is already subject to environmental assessment under the provincial processes provided by the agreement. The question arises whether these processes would not suffice. However, the emphasis on public participation and on the independence of review boards created under the federal order does not appear in the James Bay Agreement. Consequently, the Federal Court's decisions would seem to limit the possibility of using the agreement's processes while observing the requirements of the court order. If we want to meet the requirements of the order, we will have to set up a separate board, created under the order, or persuade the
Adjournment Debate
other parties to the agreement to accept a joint assessment process that maintains the essential elements of the order.
Our room to manoeuvre has shrunk considerably in recent months. This partly explains why it took so long to set up the requisite mechanisms, since we want to respect Quebec's requirements and harmonize existing processess in order to avoid duplication and be as effective as possible. However, we will have to do so in a way that is consistent with recent judgments by the Court.
If we are unable to reach some kind of agreement with Quebec, we will have to create an environmental assessment board under the federal order. The board would consider the concerns of Native people in relation to the Great Whale River project. In fact, we are convinced the Federal Court will force us to do so if we fail to meet our obligations under the court order on the guidelines.
In concluding, I repeat it is our intention to protect the environment of Arctic Quebec as well as the way of life and the rights of the Native people concerned, while respecting the legitimate desire of the Quebec government to develop responsibly its natural resources.
Madam Speaker, that was a good example of how the government and the Minister of the Environment see their responsibility with respect to environmental projects.


REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Mr. Chris Axworthy (Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing):: Madam Speaker, on April 6 in response to a question I raised concerning the impact upon the province of Prince Edward Island of changes the federal government has undertaken in its equalization payments which will cost the province some $18 million, the Minister of State for Finance told the House that:
The record of this government stands for what we think about the
poorer regions of Canada.
What has that record been? In terms of assisting the Atlantic fishery on December 13 of last year and again on January 22 of this year, the Prime Minister made some very specific commitments to Atlantic Canadians:
I have already indicated to my right honourable friend that the
government of Canada will act in respect of the Atlantic fishery with

April 24, 1990
Adjournment Debate
exactly the same kind of generosity and enthusiasms that we brought to resolving the problems of the prairie farmer.
That commitment was repeated on January 22 of this year. However, here is what the Minister of Fisheries told an audience of fishing industry representatives in Halifax on April 19 of this year. He said:
We are developing an adjustment, not an aid package for Atlantic Canada.
It is clear that Atlantic Canadians have been misled by this government. There is no aid package which will help communities to weather this crisis. The only thing the federal government intends to do is to provide Atlantic Canadians who have relied upon the fishery for generations a bus ticket to Toronto.
In two recent reports prepared by the Canada Employment and Immigration Advisory Council, a group which reports to the Minister of Employment, the impact of the government's policies toward Atlantic Canada were criticized.
In December of last year the council released a report on regional unemployment in Canada in which it stated:
For many regions, (he recession and its debilitating effects on individuals and communities is continuing to persist and some regions are still struggling to regain their pre-1981 levels of employment.
Later the council indicated that:
Among those involved with the problems currently being experienced in some regions, there is concern that Canada may actually be evolving into a two-tiered society-the prosperous industrial heartland and the depressed outer regions.
It should be kept in mind that this was a report written by an advisory council appointed by the federal government and is reporting on the situation it has found to exist five years after the Conservative government has been in office.
Contained in the same report is an assessment of the federal budget of April 1989 and the same comments with regards to cuts in the budget of 1990. That report states:
It appears certain that major negative effects will be experienced in some regions as a result of the following federal decisions: cut-backs in regional development funding, commitments for business development, forestry agreements, mineral exploration, transportation infrastructure, and oil industry megaprojects,
reductions in the growth of transfer payments to provinces for health, social welfare and education, changes to the UI program, closures of Canadian Forces bases, and lower subsidies for VIA Rail.
The Minister of State for Finance also told the House: "The unemployment statistics are the lowest they have been since 1981".
Again, the Advisory Council to the Minister of Employment stated:
'As far back as 1977 the Economic Council of Canada stated that 'Unemployment in some areas of Canada continues to be a national disgrace.' Now 12years later, this situation has not improved. In fact, it has become worse in many regions".
On March 28, 1990, the council issued a policy paper on the Atlantic fishery and the crisis which the collapse of much of it means. It stated:
Hundreds of Atlantic communities will lose their only industry. Predominantly in Newfoundland, there are few other jobs in these isolated settlements. Thousands of families, left without adequate incomes, will be forced to rely on welfare, or to uproot their lives for the dubious promise of mainland wealth.
The Minister of State for Finance said the record stands for what the federal government thinks of the poorer regions. It is obvious the government does not think very highly of those regions.
And what of the future? The Minister of Fisheries believes the best way to save the fishery is to destroy the lives and communities of many of those involved with it. Again, here is what the advisory council to the federal government says with respect to this attitude:
The unimaginative solution to over capacity and excess labour supply is to eliminate it. Reduce harvesting and processing capacity, and allow/force workers to move away. Additionally the cliche of diversification is trotted out as the ultimate solution. The result of these solutions would be the disintegration of the fishing industrial structure, especially in economically non-diversified areas, with chronic unemployment and the turning of many fishing communities into ghost towns".
Considering the vital importance the fishery has to the economic viability of the entire Atlantic region, how the federal government responds to this crisis will determine the future of the region.
If the indications given by the Minister of Fisheries in his Halifax speech are reflected in government initiatives, the future of many Atlantic communities and countless families will be placed in jeopardy.
April 24, 1990

Madam Speaker, in closing I have four brief suggestions that the government might follow to effectively deal with the problem of the Atlantic fishery and in fact would be a solution to put people first. This would resolve the problems faced by those who presently live in Newfoundland and who wish to. First, the federal government could begin to bring forth proposals to take control over the area of the nose and tail of the Grand Bank and the Flemish cap slightly outside the 200 mile limit.
Second, given the current crisis in the Atlantic fishery, they could intervene to ensure that a community based quota structure be put in place, even if only on a temporary basis to ensure that the fishing communities presently involved in the fishery can survive.
Third, the federal government must begin to enforce or take seriously its responsibility for the management of the fisheries and accept the financial responsibility of in fact mismanaging that resource over the last years and provide financial assistance to help people and communities survive the present storm.
Last, they might undertake in consultation with the industry and representatives of the workers a full environmental impact assessment of the technology presently used in both the deep-sea and mid-shore fishery with a view to seeking an effective determination of what is necessary to ensure sustainable development.


Murray Cardiff: Madam Speaker, the federal government has been providing strong and growing support to the financially weaker provinces through regional assistance.
In the case of equalization, entitlements have increased by over $3 billion in the past five years from $5.1 billion in 1985-86 to an estimated $8.2 billion in 1990-91.
These increases have occurred in every single year. In 1986-87 there was an increase of $632 million or 12.3 per cent; in 1987-88 an increase of $813 million or 14.1 per cent; in 1988-89, $661 million or 10 per cent; in 1989-90, $511 million or 7 per cent; and in 1990-91, $449 million or 5.8 per cent.
Adjournment Debate
These increases have been substantially higher than those for federal program spending as a whole and strong increases have applied to all provinces.
Prince Edward Island provides a typical example of the pattern of increases with its entitlements having increased from $134 million in 1985-86 to $203 million in 1990-91. The annual increases to this province have been $4 million, $15 million, $15 million, $15 million and $11 million for this five-year period. These are not cuts. What does happen for any given year is that successive estimates of entitlements are made and sometimes a province's entitlement for a given year will be lower than in the previous estimate for that year.
This happened for some provinces in the case of recent estimates carried out in March and covering a period of four years from 1987-88 to 1990-91.
The important thing to note is that on a year over year basis there was not a single province that had a reduction in this entitlement during the four-year period. The year over year growth rates were in almost all cases about 5 per cent and in many instances well above this level.
We would also like to refer to federal spending on regional development. This includes expenditures funded through the new regional development agencies, the regional program activities of industry, science and technology and the expenditures of other departments under federal-provincial regional development agreements. This has also increased strongly under the present government, thus average annual expenditures for these programs or their predecessors have increased from $558 million for the period from 1979-80 to 1983-84, to $832 million from 1984-85 to 1988-89 and to $1,107 billion from 1989-90 to 1994-95.
The Atlantic provinces' share of these totals increased throughout this time frame from 33 per cent for the first period to 34 per cent for the second period to an estimated 38 per cent for the last period.
These and many other examples all illustrate the high priority given by this government to the needy provinces.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: 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 6.32 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Wednesday, April 25, 1990