1990-03-27

Hon. Marcel Danis (Minister of State (Youth) and Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport) and Deputy Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing 36(8) I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to a substantial number of petitions.
[*Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



WILDERNESS PROTECTION ACT


Mr. Robert Wenman (Fraser Valley West) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-292, an act to provide for the protection of wilderness areas and to amend the National Parks Act.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Shall the hon. member have leave to introduce the said bill?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Robert Lloyd Wenman: Mr. Speaker, the intent of this bill is to recognize the particular ecological value of wilderness. Current criteria is too demanding and cumbersome and further legislation needs to be developed to give full protection and preservation to smaller unique wilderness ecological treasures, treasures like the giant Sitka spruce
of the Carmanah Valley or smaller wilderness areas in proximity to and accessible to major population where such wilderness areas, particularly old growth forests, have almost become extinct.
The bill will accommodate the concept of smaller wilderness pocket parks and is modelled after legislation in Australia and the United States.
The legislation would allow the federal government to move quickly to establish low maintenance, wilderness parks that would be left largely undeveloped.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the first time and ordered to be printed.
*	* He

Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36,1 am today tabling a petition from Chibougamau, in the riding of Roberval, Quebec, further to the recommendations of the task force on tax benefits for northern and isolated areas.
Chibougamau is undoubtedly an isolated community and for this reason, the petitioners consider the Brunelle recommendation to be discriminatory, unfair and inappropriate for the purpose of the northern tax benefits plan. It does not encourage settlement in the North and resource development there.


Mr. Reginald Belair (Cochrane-Superior):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to present a petition under Standing Order 36 in which the petitioners call upon Parliament to reject the report of the task force on tax benefits for northern and isolated areas. The petitioners are residents of my riding of Cochrane-Superior, mainly from the town of Manitouwadge in Ontario.

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Manitouwadge is situated 75 kilometres north of Highway 17, over 350 kilometres from the town of Thunder Bay. Along with Hornepayne, it is the most isolated community in my riding below the 51st parallel. On average, food and gasoline prices are 25 per cent higher than any heavily populated area. This tax benefit is the only compensation that they have. It should not be taken away.
On behalf of the 402 petitioners who rely on this tax benefit, I must reiterate the importance of this deduction to northern communities. The government is presently studying the report and it is imperative that it reject the recommendation presented in this report.


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by students at the University of Ottawa in my riding who, as debate on Bill C-69 begins today, want to express their disagreement with the proposal to reduce federal transfer payments for education and to urge the government to stop eroding the quality and accessibility of our universities, colleges and post-secondary educational institutions in Canada.
These students say that tuition fees and other costs, which are already high, will continue to increase because the federal government will no longer contribute its fair share to the financing of post-secondary education.
For these reasons, the students ask the government to hold a federal-provincial conference at the highest level to establish the financial responsibilities of both levels of government for post-secondary education and to end the shameful neglect of higher education in Canada.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, it is indeed an honour this morning to rise to present two different sets of petitions on the goods and services tax, one from a group of citizens from the great province of Saskatchewan and another petition from the great community of Kamloops, British Columbia.
Both groups are pointing out their concerns for the government's goods and services tax and by and large make a case that this is probably one of the most unfair
forms of taxation in that it takes in no consideration as to the taxpayers' ability to pay a national sales tax, and they ask that the Parliament of Canada reconsider its earlier decision and rescind the legislation.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I wish to present a petition on another topic. A number of citizens from British Columbia point out that since one-sixth of all of Canada's children live in poverty and the numbers in many respects appear to be increasing, they ask members of Parliament to support the private member's motion No. M-254, calling upon the government to negotiate with the provinces to provide a comprehensive bill of rights for children.
This is very topical because, as you know, Mr. Speaker, that vote comes up later today asking members of the House of Commons to support a comprehensive bill of rights for children. I assume that that will be done unanimously. I cannot imagine members of Parliament saying that they do not want a bill of rights for children. However, there are surprises in this institution and we will see later today if there are any. I hope not.


Ms. Joy Langan (Mission-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today with over 1,000 signatures of people, not only from my constituency of Mission-Coquitlam but from across the country, who have written and signed this petition in support of the children's bill of rights which is coming before the House today under Private Members' Business for a vote.
These people point out that although the over-all child population fell by almost 4 per cent between 1980 and 1986, the number of children living in poverty has increased by 13.4 per cent. The petitioners are calling upon the government and urging the government to support this bill which is supporting the United Nations bill and are calling on the government and the opposition to support it.


Mr. Ray Funk (Prince Albert-Churchill River):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a number of petitions with many hundreds of signatures from people around the country who are also supporting the private member's motion No. M-254 which we will vote on later today.
They too are concerned with the rising incidence of child poverty which shows that one-sixth of all children in this country live in poverty and the rate is rising. It is a national disgrace. The petitioners also feel that it would
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be a disgrace if all members of Parliament did not support this motion later today.


Mr. Ross Reid (St. John's East):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I have the duty to present a petition on behalf of people from all across my province of Newfoundland and Labrador calling upon this House to enact legislation that will make deliberate abortion, at any time during pregnancy for any reason whatever, an offence.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Marcel Danis: Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions stand.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is it agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Finance) moved: 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.


Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, when this bill was introduced at first reading, I gave notice of my intention to rise on a point of order before the bill was called again to argue with Your Honour concerning the procedural admissibility of the royal recommendation that is contained in this particular bill. I would like to do that now, before Your Honour puts the question on second reading of the bill.
I am concerned, Sir, that this bill contains a royal recommendation and that such is not required and
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should be struck out of the bill as being unnecessary. I suggest to Your Honour that we perhaps ought to use the opportunity to take a look at the propriety of using these royal recommendations because in my submission, they are included in these bills in an attempt by the government to stifle amendment by members of the opposition, amendments which members, in my respectful submission, are entitled to put.
The basis for the principles which apply to royal recommendations is to be found on page 183 of Beau-chesne's, Sixth Edition, citation 596, which states:
596. The guiding principle in determining the effect of an amendment upon the financial initiative of the Crown is that the communication, to which the Royal Recommendation is attached, must be treated as laying down once for all (unless withdrawn and replaced) not only the amount of the charge, but also its objects, purposes, conditions and qualifications. In relation to the standard thereby fixed, an amendment infringes the financial initiative of the Crown not only if it increases the amount but also if it extends the objects and purposes, or relaxes the conditions and qualifications expressed in the communication by which the Crown has demanded or recommended a charge. This standard is binding not only on private Members but also on Ministers whose only advantage is that, as advisors of the Crown, they can present new or supplementary estimates or secure the Royal Recommendation to new or supplementary resolutions.
The requirement for royal recommendations for bills that involve a charge on the public revenue is not in question. It is included in Section 54 of the Constitution Act, and I am not disputing that.
I am disputing the requirement for a royal recommendation to Bill C-69, and I believe there is good reason to doubt that a royal recommendation was in fact required on this bill.
I am not going to take Your Honour through each of the clauses. Not only are they tedious reading, but I suggest that they are very difficult reading. There appear to be all kinds of formulae that I do not understand in these clauses, and I have had some legal training. I do not know how a non-lawyer is supposed to understand these either. I suppose some economists might.
As my colleague from Gloucester says, the provisions of this bill are not meant for comprehension, they are meant to confuse and I am inclined to agree with him. In any event, we can glean something of the meaning of

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these clauses if we look at the budget presented by the Minister of Finance. Page 77 of "the Budget" states:
Based on projections, this measure -
That is the cap on the Canada Assistance Plan,
-is expected to contribute $155 million to expenditure restraint over the next two fiscal years. The actual savings will, of course, depend on actual growth rates in the provinces affected by the 5 per cent ceiling.
That is one statement and on page 78, he states:
For 1990-91 and 1991-92, the per capita EPF transfer will be held to the 1989-90 level. This means it will grow with the population increase of each province, or about 1 per cent nationally. Federal cash expenditures will be reduced by about $870 million in 1990-91 and $1,540 million in 1991-92. In 1992-93, EPF growth will resume 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 1992-93, will not fall below the rate of inflation.
I realize that even reading this budget is a lot of economic gobbledegook, but we have said that in respect of the minister's statements before. We realize that the budget documents are an attempt to cover up the slashing and cutting that this government has indulged in with this budget, but even reading that it is possible to glean from this that these provisions in the budget, and contained now in Bill C-69 which is before us, which is the budget implementation bill in part, are reductions in the charges on the public revenue of Canada, not increases.
The minister has trumpeted in this document his savings to Canadian taxpayers by reason of the wonderful changes he is proposing in this bill. And yet this bill has attached to it, in spite of those savings and reductions, a royal recommendation. It is that that I object to. I have some authority in my submission for suggesting that this royal recommendation is, in fact, unnecessary.
I would like to turn to May's twenty-first edition at page 716 where it reads as follows, and this of course is the English authority on this point. The learned author writes:
No special form of procedure applies to proposals to reduce existing charges, and they may be moved in the House or in Committee without the royal recommendation.
A proposed reduction of a charge may consist in reducing its amount, or restricting its objects, or inserting limiting conditions, or shortening the period of its operation. The transference of a charge from the Consolidated Fund to 'moneys to be provided by Parliament', ie its transformation from an indefinitely continuing to an annually renewable charge-may be regarded as an instance of reducing the duration of a charge.
The same principle applies in the case of amendments moved to a bill which abolishes or reduces a charge authorized by existing law. Amendments to such a bill, which are designed to restore a portion or the whole of the charge which the bill proposes to reduce or abolish, are in order without the need of a preliminary financial resolution.
That last paragraph was illustrated in the debate on Bill C-21 on the Senate amendments to Bill C-21 which simply reinstituted a charge on an existing bill. I do not need to go into that one again but the fact is that May supports the proposition that a royal recommendation is not required for bills that propose a reduction in the charge. In other words, a private member in this House could have introduced this bill quite properly in this House without a royal recommendation. I suggest that if it was in order for a private member to introduce such a bill then a royal recommendation is not required on that bill simply because a minister of the Crown has chosen to introduce it in this House.
Further, Beauchesne's sixth edition at page 185 confirms May's statements and states:
608. The previous recommendation of the Crown is not required for the introduction of a bill consolidating or amending revenue laws when the imposition of new burdens is not contemplated.
Again we have the support for this proposition in all of the authorities. Indeed, Beauchesne's refers to a decision cited in the Journals in 1908 and I have before me the ruling of the Speaker of the day on a question concerning the amendment of certain acts and clauses in a bill which reduced charges on the public expenditure. Page 608 of the Journals for July 8, 1908 states:
A question has arisen as to whether, in view of certain clauses in the Bill, a previous sanction of the Governor General should not have been obtained and announced to the House, before its introduction, and such introduction preceded by a resolution.
Having regard to the precedents in the House, I find that this has not been considered necessary. In the year 1883 a similar Bill was passed, and which now appears in the statutes for that year as Chapter 17, intituled: 'An Act further to amend and consolidate, as so amended, the several Acts respecting the Public Lands of the Dominion therein mentioned.' This Bill was introduced by Sir John A. Macdonald. No

consent of the Governor General was announced at any stage nor was any resolution passed previously to the introduction of the Bill. This seems to be a precedent exactly in point.
The Bill is a consolidating and amending Bill, and, in the case of such Bills, it is only when there are clauses imposing new burdens that it is necessary to consider those first in a Committee of the Whole. The object aimed at in such Bills is to give the old law a new and more convenient form.
Therefore, this is not a new proposition that I am putting forward. I suggest that it is one that is well rooted in our parliamentary practice and tradition. The fact is that the procedure has changed over the years and perhaps I can turn briefly to that procedure to mention certain of the changes that have taken place.
I am assisted in this by an excellent study done by the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance, to which I have referred the Chair previously, and certainly I have referred to it for my friend, the hon. government House Leader who could do some reading on this, I think, to advantage.
This ninth report of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance presented on February 13 of this year to the Senate outlines in some detail the history of the royal recommendation as it applies to government bills in this House.
Your Honour will recall that in the years prior to 1968 the normal practice in dealing with the royal recommendation was to have a resolution introduced in Committee of the Whole that was recommended to the House by the Governor General. The debate proceeded on the resolution and Committee of the Whole and only after adoption of that resolution was a bill allowed to be introduced in this House. Indeed, just last evening Your Honour will recall we followed a very similar procedure in that prior to the introduction of the supply bills, the two of them that were introduced and passed through all stages last evening, there was a resolution first adopted by the House prior to the introduction of those bills.
Those resolutions had been recommended to the House by virtue of the messages which His Excellency had sent to this House recommending the Estimates to the House. We have the case of the royal recommendation and resolution followed in respect of those appropriation acts.
In 1968 the procedure in respect of public bills was changed. Instead of having a resolution, the royal recom-
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mendation was attached to the bill itself and the bill was introduced at first reading with the royal recommendation attached. The resolution stage and the preceding debate in Committee of the Whole was abolished as being unnecessary and a duplication of effort.
In this case, as now is the practice with royal recommendations, the recommendation is attached but it does not say which clauses if any of the bill impose a new tax or impose or a new charge on the public revenue. In the absence of a statement of that, I suppose it is fair game to stand and ask the minister to explain where the new charge is. But we have had all these denials of new charges; indeed, Your Honour will recall that the Minister of Finance had the nerve to stand in this House and tell us there were no new taxes in the budget. It is safe to say that in the course of that silly statement he got all kinds of applause from the other side of the House.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: I am glad to see they are still applauding, Mr. Speaker, but the people of Canada did not believe him; neither did we.
Since he made the statement that there were no new taxes, why is there a royal recommendation in this bill? If this bill is reducing the charge on the public revenue, as the minister said in the budget that it is, why has he attached a royal recommendation to it? Either it is because there are new taxes or charges included in this bill, or it should not be there.


Mr. Young (Gloucester):: It is because there are new taxes.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: My friend from Gloucester says that it is new taxes. I have no doubt there were new taxes in the budget. The question is whether there are any new taxes in this bill. I have examined the bill, Your Honour, and I have tried to understand it. It is clear that it reduces the increase in the charges that are already authorized by an existing law.
The Minister of Finance stated that repeatedly in his budget. I am not a gullible person and I do not swallow everything the Minister of Finance says, but it is in print in the budget that this is intended to reduce the payments by the Government of Canada.
The minister says this bill does that and it is intended to implement the provisions of the budget. If that is the case, and I invite Your Honour to read it with that in

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view, then I would ask Your Honour to strike the royal recommendation from this bill as being irregular, or, alternatively, have the minister stand in the House and explain to the House that if this is to remain on the bill why it is there. If it does represent an increase in taxes the Canadian people have a right to know. Indeed they should have been told about the taxes that they are having imposed on them through this budget, which the minister covered up when he presented the budget a few weeks ago.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my hon. colleague from Kingston and the Islands point out once again an inconsistency in terms of what the government is doing with the royal recommendations.
The hon. member has raised some interesting questions. Why do you have royal recommendations attached to legislation? It is primarily because you are going to increase taxes. We see that there is a royal recommendation attached, and that is why you attach royal recommendations, so one assumes there must be a tax increase in this legislation some place although we have not found it yet. Or, the government has simply erred and has proceeded in using the royal recommendation in an inappropriate fashion.
I would be curious to listen to the government explain why it has done this. Although the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands has been persistent in raising this question in the House, the government either fails to listen or fails to understand the point that he is making.
I wonder if it would not be appropriate to stay deliberations on Bill C-69 until the Speaker makes a ruling. That will settle it because again the point is that it is inconsistent with practices of this House. It does not make sense in terms of the traditions that we have followed over the years.
I notice the minister plans to intervene in this discussion. May I offer the suggestion that if the minister is unable to explain why this unusual use of the rules has been pursued, Your Honour in fact stay deliberations on Bill C-69 until a ruling has been made by yourself.


Hon. Gilles Loiselle (Minister of State (Finance)):: Mr. Speaker, I am sure that in your wisdom and knowledge you have already realized that both the member for Kingston and the Islands and the member for Kamloops
are totally wrong. They are imputing to us very dark motives. No minister on this side of the House would even think of such dark actions.
Not being hindered by any legal knowledge, maybe I can explain in veiy simple and clear terms why there is a royal recommendation in Bill C-69. There is indeed a royal recommendation on Page la of Bill C-69. It is there not because of the desire or request of the government or ministers but on the advice of the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel because it felt that Bill C-69 and some provisions in it widen existing conditions.
According to Beauchesne's sixth edition to which the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands has referred, when such things occur a royal recommendation is necessary. These changes in the bill take place among other areas in article 2.5 (1) where conditions of previous bills are being changed. This is the very simple, clear reason why there is a royal recommendation in Bill C-69.


M. Douglas Young: I rise on just a very brief point of order, Mr. Speaker. In listening to my friend I was surprised that the government did not explain why there was a royal recommendation on the basis of increased taxation and increased revenues.
I am sure when there is a review done of the interventions made by my friend from Kingston and the Islands and the NDP House leader, the member for Kamloops, it will become clear to the Chair that not having a royal recommendation on this bill, because we all know what the government's motives are here, would be like asking a pickpocket to walk around with mittens on.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I want to thank the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands for his well researched intervention, the hon. member for Kamloops, the Minister of State for Finance and the hon. member for Gloucester.
I will reserve my decision, but until I rule I will allow the debate to proceed.
[Translation\


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I would like to move second reading of Bill C-69, the Government Expenditures Restraint Act. In opening debate on this BUI, Mr. Speaker, I feel it is important that Parliamentarians have a clear under-
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standing of the broader perspective within this initiave must be considered.
We are taking hard but unavoidable decisions to get our financial house in order. We are dealing squarely with the closely-linked problems of the deficit and inflation-the two problems we must resolve if we are to build a secure and rewarding future for ourselves and our country.
As Canadians, we have every reason to regard our future with confidence. But we cannot expect to secure our future if we carry into it an increasing burden of debt, and increasingly heavy interest payments on that debt.
Since November 1984 the government has pursued a coherent and comprehensive plan to build a solid foundation for Canada's economic future. That plan was designed to put Canada and Canadians in a position to meet the challenge of a changing world in a stronger and more flexible way. The plan has two main thrusts. The first is to put the government's financial affairs in order, so that we can reduce and ultimately eliminate the federal deficit. The second is to put policies in place that free the creative energies of the private sector, so that it can meet the competitive challenges and opportunities of the new world economy.
Today I will be speaking about the first of these thrusts. In 1984 when we came to office-and the hon. member for Gloucester will remember-the federal government's spending was out of control. After 15 years of living beyond its means, the government had accumulated a national debt of $200 billion.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: What is it now?


Gilles Loiselle: I will explain to you in a minute.
As a result, in a very real sense Canada was saddled not with one deeply ingrained federal deficit, but two. The government was spending $16 billion more on programs and services than it collected in revenues and had to borrow the difference. That was the first deficit, the operating deficit.
The government was also spending-and that was before our time-another $22 billion in interest charges
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on its mountain of debt and had to borrow that amount too. That was the second deficit. Together they added up to a crushing over-all deficit of more than $38 billion.
Hon. members will be aware and will recognize that before we could begin to do anything about the second deficit we had to tackle the operating deficit and its root causes-overspending and eroding government revenues.
On the spending front, we looked first at the overhead cost of running the government itself-salaries, travel, equipment and the like-to see where we could make do with less. We looked carefully and we took action. We have reduced the number of public servants by more than 12,000. Today the Public Service is the same size as in 1973 and carrying a larger workload. The cost of running the government is less than in 1984. We have reduced the number of Crown corporation employees by
75,000,	partly through privatization and partly through rationalization and by the elimination of waste and inefficiency, repairing the damage done by the hon. gentlemen on the other side. We have paid their debts.
We have brought the same discipline to spending on government programs and services. By 1987-88, through rigorous management and realignment of programs, we turned the first of the two deficits, the government's operating deficit, into a surplus. Today, instead of spending $16 billion more on programs than we take in, we are spending $9 billion less, a $25 billion turnaround in just five years. This is the work of an excellent government. If it were not for the interest we pay on the public debt left by the former administration, we would not be talking about deficits at all. We would be in the black.
About 70 per cent of this progress results from expenditure restraint and to achieve it we have reduced program spending as a share of the economy to its lowest level in almost 20 years.
Since 1984, as a result, we have slowed the annual growth of the public debt from 24 per cent to less than 10 per cent this year. Yet, for all this progress, the debt is still growing faster than the economy, faster than our ability to pay the rising interest charges on it.
The reason for this is compound interest: the interest paid on interest. If you are a saver, compound interest has a touch of magic to it. Money invested and left to grow at the rate of 10 per cent doubles in about seven

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years. But, if you are a debtor, the gold turns to dust and you have to keep borrowing to pay interest on interest.
This is precisely what is happening in the case of our public debt. It has grown from $200 billion to $350 billion in five years. Fully $120 billion, or more than 80 per cent, of this increase consists of the compounding interest on the original $200 billion.
These stark figures help to explain why the government's deficit for this year is still $30.5 billion despite the spending cuts and the tax increases we have brought in. They also explain the urgency of breaking the vicious circle of growing debt and debt service costs.
[ Translation \
There are those who say we shouldn't worry about getting our deficit down any further. I say to hon. members that I don't accept this position, for several reasons. This year alone, interest payments will cost us $40 billion-equal to $1,500 for each and every Canadian. This amounts to 35 cents for every dollar the government collects in revenue-money we could otherwise use to get taxes down, maintain existing programs and meet new priorities such as environmental protection, research and development and skills training. By reducing the deficit, we can get that 35 cents down and gain much greater control over our destiny.
Another reason is that, having turned the comer with our operating surplus, we are already a good part of the way there. Now is not the time to back off. We have done well. We need to keep on. Let's look at our record compared to other major industrial countries. In 1984 Canada's deficit on a national accounts basis was 6.8 per cent of GDP. That was 2.4 percentage points above the Group of Seven average. This country was definitely in trouble.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: That's nonsense.


Gilles Loiselle: Now it is down to 2.8 per cent of GDP, or seven-tenths of a percentage point above the G-7 average. So we dropped from 2.4 above to seven-tenths. On the expenditure side, our performance in reducing program expenditures is better than that of both the U.S. and the United Kingdom. Achieving an operating surplus is a considerable milestone. It marks a fundamental structural change in the balance of spending and revenues.
In 1991-92, we will reach another milestone when we stabilize our debt-to-GDP ratio-our debt will no longer be growing faster than the economy. We're doing well. We know we must go further.
The government's new expenditure control plan will ensure that our operating surplus continues to grow. It must, to offset the growth of the debt. And to ease the burden that interest payments impose on our freedom of action, we must continue to deal firmly with the greatest single threat to our continued fiscal and economic progress. That is the threat of inflation.
As Canada's strong economic expansion of the last seven years has matured, demand has increasingly outstripped the economy's productive capacity. This has fuelled inflation. A slowing economy is helping to ease the strain, but underlying inflationary pressures remain too high. Only by lowering inflation can we get interest rates down, keep them down and put the economy back on the path of sustainable expansion.
The prospects for lower inflation and interest rates depend crucially on responsible price and wage behaviour. Prices have consistently been inching upward. The consumer price index, or CPI, rose from 4 per cent in 1988 to 5 per cent last year to 5.5 per cent in January. The appreciation of the Canadian dollar in 1989 restrained inflation. Without it, the CPI would have been above 6 per cent.
On the wage side, federal government wage increases have been below the inflation rate and below the pace of wage increases in the private sector since 1984. In 1989, federal wage settlements averaged 4.2 per cent. However, the combined settlements of other levels of the public sector averaged 5.6 per cent.

Hon. members will be aware that provincial finance ministers have been asked to join in a commitment to responsible restraint. I urge leaders of the business community to recognize this need as well in both price and wage policies. I urge labour to do the same. Quite simply, if we try to take more out of the economy than it is capable of producing, we will all pay the price of higher inflation.
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Hard experience makes clear what the inevitable cost of premature easing of interest rates would be. It would lead to an increase in borrowing and new demand pressures, leading in turn to more inflation and still higher interest rates. None of us wants to relive the nightmare of the early 1980s, the loss of confidence and the personal tragedies brought on by soaring interest rates and soaring inflation.
The budget will help-and I see that the hon. member is inclined to agree with me-


M. Douglas Young: That the budget will help? No, I don't agree.


Gilles Loiselle: -get inflation down. Our expenditure control plan, when combined with the cost cutting measures announced last December, will produce savings of $3 billion in the first year of application and almost $4 billion the following year. Over the next five years, the total savings will come to well over $19 billion.
We recognize that this restraint will require the patience and understanding of Canadians. This is why in the budget we have asked Canadians to join in a broadly based program over the next two years to reinforce our efforts to control government spending. We are doing so without raising taxes. We are putting a cap on the growth of spending for a number of major programs and freezing spending on others.
We will continue to privatize Crown corporations and sell investments where government ownership is no longer needed to meet public policy objectives. We have decided that the time has come to sell the government's shares in Petro-Canada and Telesat Canada, which will enable them to strengthen their roles in their two key sectors of the economy. The sale of these corporations will reduce the government's borrowing requirements. This in turn will reduce interest charges on the debt.
We are also continuing to move on business subsidies. Since we came to office a government priority has been to get out of the subsidy business, especially for business. We have reduced or eliminated a wide range of business subsidies. The Shipbuilding Industry Assistance Program, the Canadian Home Improvement Program, the Petroleum Incentives Program and VIA Rail subsidies all have been cut out or cut back. In the February budget we cut some more, including the OSLO oil sands project.
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As well, we have substantially reduced business subsidies conferred through the tax system, including reducing capital cost allowance rates, eliminating non-regional investment tax credits, eliminating the inventory allowance, and phasing out the earned depletion allowance, to name only a few.
There are still subsidies we do provide-subsidies for social housing, agriculture and transportation. But in this budget we have firmly committed ourselves to a more businesslike approach to business assistance. With limited exceptions, federal assistance will now take the form of repayable loans rather than straight grants or subsidies.

The restraint measures, Mr. Speaker, are tough but essential to restore the deficit to its downward path and hold the line against a resurgence of inflation. Taken together, they will hold the growth of federal program spending to 3 per cent next year, well below the expected rate of inflation. By 1994-95, program spending will fall to 14.2 per cent of national income, its lowest level since the late 1960s.
For this to happen, everyone must participate in restraint. The deficit is a national problem. It demands a national solution, and transfers to provinces must play their part. But that part should be kept in perspective.
Federal cash transfers to the provinces account for nearly one-quarter of all federal program spending. Over the past five years, while we have been holding the annual growth of federal program spending to 3.6 per cent, total transfers to the provinces have been growing at over 6 per cent.
They will continue to grow next year-but, under our expenditure control plan, no faster on average than our own program spending. Bear in mind, as well, that this means a reduction in federal transfers amounting to less than one per cent of provincial revenues. We have been sensitive to the financial circumstances of the provinces. Transfers to the low-income Atlantic provinces are expected to increase about 4 per cent annually over the next two years. Transfers to the wealthier provinces of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia should grow just over 2 per cent. I believe the people will agree that the provinces which are less well off should bear a lighter part of the national debt-reduction burden. What we are

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doing may not be welcome, but it is fair, necessary and reasonable.
And what, precisely, are we doing with the legislation under consideration today? Well, Mr. Speaker, we are giving force of law to four measures announced in the February budget. For 1990-91 and 1991-92, per capita Established Programs Financing, or EPF transfers will be held to the 1989-90 level. This means it will grow with the population increase of each province, or about 1 per cent nationally.
Federal cash transfers will be reduced by about $870 million in 1990-91 and $1.54 million in 1991-92. In 1992-93 EPF growth will resume at the rate of growth of GNP less three percentage points, consistent with the announcement in the April 1989 budget. This change to EPF represents less than 1.0 per cent of total provincial revenues in 1990-91 and just over 1.0 per cent in 1991-92.
In addition to EPF, the federal government also provides substantial additional assistance to the lower-income provinces to help them provide public services, including health care and post-secondary education, through the equalization program. Equalization transfers have grown strongly in recent years, from over $5 billion in 1984-85 to close to $8 billion in 1989-90. They exceed EPF as the largest form of federal support in the Atlantic provinces. Equalization transfers to the lower-income provinces are not affected by the Budget. They are expected to increase about 6 to 7 per cent annually over the next two years, roughly in line with the nominal growth of the economy. EPF and equalization transfers together are expected to amount to more than $27 billion in 1990-91.
For the next two years, growth in transfers under the Canada Assistance Plan, or CAP, will be limited to five per cent a year in the fiscally stronger provinces of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Other provinces-those receiving federal equalization payments- will be exempt from this ceiling on growth. They will continue to have open-ended access to federal dollars to meet any growth in expenditures eligible for cost-sharing under CAP. This measure will have a relatively small impact on the over-all support of $5.5 billion offered to provinces, and will affect only the fiscally stronger
provinces. The $3 billion flowing to those provinces will be allowed to grow by some $150 million per year. As you know, Mr. Speaker, these amounts continue to represent a major federal commitment, and a major federal expenditure by any standard. Implementation of this measure provides for resumption of the present regime on April 1, 1992.
The Canadian Exploration Incentives Program, or CEIP was cancelled effective midnight, February 19, 1990. The termination and grandfathering rules are being implemented through amendments to the CEIP Act and Regulations. Termination of this program, the last remaining federal subsidy to business that was demand-driven and open-ended, is expected to result in savings of $50 million in 1990-91 and $125 million in 1991-92.
Transfers under the Public Utilities Income Tax Transfer Act for 1990-91 and 1991-92 will not exceed the 1989-90 level. This is expected to reduce projected expenditures under the Act by $16 million in 1990-91 and $34 million in 1991-92.

These are all moderate and necessary actions. The expenditure control plan affects a wide range of programs.
Transfers to provinces are too large not to be included. This plan will help get us over the hurdle and keep us on track to reduce the deficit from $30.5 billion this year to $28.5 billion next year, or $26.7 billion if you exclude the start-up costs of the goods and services tax.
We will cut the deficit in half to $14 billion in three more years and reduce it to $10 billion in the year after that. This will mean that within five years the government will begin to buy back its bonds and treasury bills. The country will be on a clear path of substantially reducing its debt. The challenge we face in the current testing period for the Canadian economy is not to falter in dealing with the problems of debt and inflation.
Mr. Speaker, and hon. members, if we maintain our resolve, the prospect of lower inflation is within sight and we will have the deficit under control. By persevering we will attain greater control over our destiny and greater freedom to build the Canada we want for ourselves and future generations. Let us get on with it.
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M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the hon. member's speech, and I must say we can always count on Tory policy to be consistently inconsistent. The minister says that inflation will be kept under control if the government pursues its policies, but yesterday, the Governor of the Bank of Canada said he lost the battle against inflation with his high interest rate policy. The Minister of State (Finance) says we can expect hard times and tough decisions, which is really incredible when we consider what they said in the fall of 1988, when the deficit and the debt were very high. At the time, the Minister of Finance told us there was no problem, that all the programs being promoted by the Conservative party would be implemented and would not cost taxpayers a cent, or should I say a nickel, Mr. Speaker.
I find it very hard to understand how the government can expect us to believe what is being said today about Canada's economy and the way to deal with the deficit and the debt, when all this is being said by the same people who, five or six years ago, told us they had the answer, the solution to these problems.
Mr. Speaker, the bill before the House today is a devastating indictment of this government, because instead of shouldering their responsibilities, they decided to pass their problems on to the provinces. Of course, this means that in the final instance, the burden will fall on those Canadians who are most vulnerable in every single province in this country. The bill before the House today implements four austerity measures announced in the February Budget. These include a two-year freeze on federal transfers to the provinces for Established Programs Financing, including postsecondary education and health care; capping federal transfers under the Canada Assistance Plan to Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta at 5 per cent for the next two years; eliminating the Canadian Exploration Inxentives Program; and finally, a two-year freeze on public utilities income tax transfers to the provinces.
Mr. Speaker, the budgetary restrictions mentioned by the minister in his speech and included in the Budget and in this bill total $ 1 billion for 1990-91, $ 1.8 billion for 1991-92 and $ 8.4 billion over the next five fiscal years. This loss of revenue is unacceptable to the
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provinces and to Canadians. Perhaps I should explain these figures. We are talking about billions of dollars, and it is rather hard for the average person to understand.
But if we start with $1,000, usually people can easily understand what a thousand dollars is. It may be a little harder to talk about a million dollars because it is a fairly big number, one that most Canadians do not handle every day. But if, for example, Mr. Speaker, we talk about a thousand million dollars; in other words, if we break a billion into a million chunks of one thousand, that makes a billion. It is almost unthinkable to talk about removing that kind of support from the most disadvantaged in all provinces through this expenditure reduction bill.
Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party is opposed to Bill C-69 and I hope that the reasons will be clear when we have finished discussing this negative measure of the government. I know that my colleagues have several particular points to raise, but today I would like to take the time to give an overview, to discuss some points and also to summarize the Liberal Party's position.
Reduced transfers to the provinces for higher education and health care and reduced transfers to Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia for the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP) will no doubt force the provinces to raise their taxes, since the programs concerned are priorities. If all these cuts are made up for by taxes, Mr. Speaker, each citizen's provincial tax load will increase by $576 on average over the next five years, which means that the provinces will have to get the money to meet their citizens' needs, Mr. Speaker. And I would like to point out that this is happening at the same time as the federal government is getting into an area of provincial jurisdiction, namely retail sales taxes, which are traditionally provincial. The famous GST being brought in by the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister will further restrict the provinces' ability to meet their operating requirements and especially the needs of their citizens.
Now, Mr. Speaker, we must understand that this is the third time that the Conservative government has attacked established program financing, EPF, since 1986. The Conservative government came to power in 1984 and since then, on three occasions we have seen the

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Conservative approach in action. Total cuts in the EPF between 1986-87 and 1994-95, according to the projections quoted by the Minister, amount to an astronomical $31.1 billion, including $ 22.2 billion which should have been allocated to health care and $ 8.9 billion to higher education. It is still an incredible amount.
Mr. Speaker, should the provinces decide not to raise their taxes, they will have to make hospitals and the health care system absorb these cuts. They will have to close beds, reduce services or ask students to pay higher tuition fees and put up with overcrowded classrooms. The government does not seem to realize that it will cause all sorts of problems for the provinces. Even though the government may not be aware of these problems at the present time, such was not the case in the past. On March 24, 1982, the current Minister of Finance said in this House, and I 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." What happened in the meantime, Mr. Speaker, that would urge the Minister of Finance, who in 1982 was so concerned with the needs of students and the ill, to ask his Minister of State (Finance) to come and defend his budget cuts today?
As for the Canada Assistance Plan, Mr. Speaker, reductions in transfers to provinces such as Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, the richer Canadian provinces as you know, in a sense reneges on this government's commitment to helping those who are most in need, as I will explain this. The poor in those three provinces are just as poor, they are as much in need, they are hurting as much as the poor in other provinces. Moreover, and this should be emphasized, British Columbia and Ontario, supported by Alberta, are attacking before the Courts the legality of those cuts, even though they are the richer Canadian provinces because they realize what the implications are for their needs.
Let me now turn to the mining incentives program. The outright cancellation of that program less than two years after it was introduced reneged on another Government promise as the Minister of State (Forestry and Mining) stated on May 3, 1988, and I quote:
"That rate, 30 per cent, will be in force for two years, till the end of 1990. Mining areas in Canada, Northern mining areas of course will be the hardest hit by the cancellation of that program, as will small mining operations."
I know some of my colleagues intend to refer in greater detail to that program that is very important for them.
If we now look at the budget proposals, the Canadian Government put a two-year freeze on transfers to provinces under the Established Programs Funding. As we know, EPF helps provinces discharge their obligations concerning health and post-secondary education. If the Canadian Government pays an equal amount of per capita assistance to each and every province, as we know is the case, the freeze means that the funding will only increase in relation to the provinces' population growth, which is 1 per cent nationally, as the Minister of State mentioned.
Will Canadians who have personal health problems or who know people who must use health services in their provinces accept those cuts? I doubt it, Mr. Speaker. Again, my point is that the federal government has simply transferred the problems caused by its poor management to the provinces.
I said earlier it was the third time since 1986 that the federal government was reducing its contribution to financing for postsecondary education and health care. Before 1986, the value of these transfers was increased in direct proportion to per capita GDP growth, in other words, the economy's real growth plus the inflation rate times the population of each province. In 1986, the Tory government decided to deindex this formula by reducing the transfer growth rate by two percentage points. This is one of the deindexations they managed to get away with. There were others that failed.
In last year's Budget, the government announced it was reducing the transfer growth rate by another percentage point. This year's freeze means a further reduction of about three percentage points in federal transfers. This is intolerable, Mr. Speaker.
The freeze announced in the Budget will cause the provinces to lose about $7.4 billion in payments over the next five years. With the two cutbacks announced previously by the Tory government, the reduction in federal
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payments over the period from 1986-87 to 1994-95 will total, as I said earlier, an incredible $31 billion.
Mr. Speaker, one wonders what happened to the Minister of Finance, because in 1982, he objected strenuously to cutbacks in EPF transfers, saying that the federal government should not reduce the deficit at the expense of the provinces. On March 24, 1982 he said in this House that cuts in EPF transfers "could have disastrous effects on the universities and on the colleges, on the hospital funding and on the operations of the hospitals. Let us not make hospitals, universities and colleges a battleground between the federal government and the provincial governments."
How can the Minister of Finance show up in the House to defend this bill which clearly contradicts what he said not so long ago? Cuts undermine the Canadian health care system just the demand for these services is growing because of our aging population and the high cost of high technology medical equipment.
Once again, the Prime Minister will go back on what he said on post-secondary education. He promised high quality education for young Canadians. His about-turn makes a mockery of the national education task force he set up. As you probably remember, Mr. Speaker, at the Conservatives' general council meeting held on August 25, 1989 in Ottawa, the Prime Minister said this: "Our government will support its fair share of the burden to make sure Canadians get a high quality education enabling them to face international challenges."
Mr. Speaker, we wonder whether the government seriously intends to honour not only the commitments it made in 1982 when it talked about cutbacks and their effects on provinces, students and sick people but also the promises made by the Prime Minister as recently as August 1989.
The Canada Assistance Plan will also suffer drastic cuts under this budget. Established in 1966, it is the cornerstone of the Canadian social assistance program. Under this Plan, the federal and provincial governments each pay half the costs of social assistance and essential goods and services such as food, housing, clothing, public utilities and household items. Social assistance also includes dental care for the poor, aid for the disabled, help for abused children in foster homes and help for children in low-income families. These are areas that will be cut by the government, which tells us that these
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cuts are essential to balance our country's economic affairs.
Mr. Speaker, Canadians will have to decide whether this is a fair way to deal with the federal government's problem.
The 1989 budget speech defended the clawback of family allowances and old age pensions on the pretext that the primary purpose of social assistance is to help those who need it and not those with high incomes. Now the measures taken in the 1990 Budget attack the poorest Canadians, because the poor live in all provinces of Canada. We know that figures for 1987, the latest available, show that 49 per cent of poor families and 54.9 per cent of poor individuals live in the provinces of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. We must also remember that welfare payments are not always enough to enable families to escape poverty. They are just enough to survive on. And that is no doubt why British Columbia and Ontario announced after the Budget was tabled that they would challenge the CAP cuts in court. Alberta supports the action taken by these two provinces.
We know that the government wanted to try to give the impression that it was continuing to help the most disadvantaged provinces by attacking the poor in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. But I think that Canadians can easily understand that it is the beginning. In the same way that the government last year in the 1989 Budget wanted to claw back family allowances and old age pension benefits for some high-income individuals, it is the beginning of the end of the commitment the federal government has had for years to help the needy throughout Canada.

I listened, with a lot of interest, to my colleague the Minister of State for Finance, especially when he talked about the coherent and global plan that the government had to deal with the problems it encountered when it came to office in 1984.1 can only say that it takes a great deal of courage to stand in this House and to talk about what has gone on over the last six years as being part of any coherent activity.
For the record, when the Conservative government came to power in 1984, at the end of that fiscal year, in the spring of 1985, the public debt was at $200 billion. The public debt at the end of this fiscal year will be at

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nearly $400 billion. That is what a coherent policy has achieved, nearly a doubling of the debt.
Now, we hear talk about compound interest and about a lot of problems which the government has not been able to deal with because of this inherited problem. That was not the language we were hearing when this government spoke about its hopes for the country in 1984. But even had it encountered a situation that it could not possibly have foreseen, how can we justify what has gone on last year and this year in the light of what was said in the fall of 1988?
In the fall of 1988, the total deficit was approximately $28 billion. The deficit this year will be $28 billion. So what has happened? In 1988, the government told us that it had a plan, that it was providing good management, that we were on the right track and the economy was booming. It said it was addressing the problems of the country, yet in the year 1987-88 the actual figure for the deficit was $28.1 billion. For 1990-91, according to the Minister of Finance's figures, the deficit will be $28.5 billion. We are heading in the wrong direction.
The Department of Finance is asking Canadians to bite the bullet with this particular proposal to deal with the budget restrictions, while at the same time, it is saying that things will be better down the road. This is the same Minister of Finance and the same government who, last year during the budget, told us that interest rates over the year 1989-90 would be around 10 per cent. This year, the same minister tells us in his budget that for the year 1990-91, our average interest rate should be about 11.1 per cent. Unfortunately for the Minister of Finance, yesterday the Governor of the Bank of Canada said he cannot see any easing in interest rates at all.
Most analysts who looked at the budget when it was delivered in February said that the projections of the minister were completely off base, yet all of the conclusions in that budget are largely based on that particular projection of 11.1 per cent, and further that the interest rates would drop next year. Now, the Governor of the Bank of Canada is saying something quite different from that, which is something that we will have to pursue with the Minister of Finance at some other time in this place.
Although we are talking about an act to amend certain statutes to enable restraint of government expenditures, let us talk about some government revenues. For example, let us look at some tax increases that have occurred over this period of time. Since we are talking about restraint today, it might be interesting to see whether the government has been able to restrain itself in terms of tax increases. There have been 32 tax increases in the time since this government has come to office.
It has eliminated the registered home ownership savings plan. It has changed marital exemptions. It has eliminated the low-income federal tax reduction. I am sure you are aware of the temporary 5 per cent and 10 per cent surtaxes, Mr. Speaker. It has deindexed tax brackets, family allowance and tax credits. There is a permanent general 3 per cent surtax. There is the clawback of the family allowance and old age security being paid to families and senior citizens of this country. The general surtax has increased to 5 per cent from 3 per cent in 1989, added on to the one I mentioned earlier. The full 5 per cent began on January 1, 1990, but of course there are no increases in taxes this year. That tax was discussed last year but just came into effect January 1, 1990.
It has raised the federal sales tax. While we have been talking about restraint in money available to take care of low-income Canadians, sick Canadians and young Canadians seeking post-secondary education, the government raised the federal sales tax that it wants to replace now to 10 per cent from 9 per cent, to 11 per cent from 10 per cent, to 12 per cent from 11 per cent. It finally wrapped it up with 13.5 per cent last year.
We have had taxes on candies and snack foods. There has been a 10 per cent tax levied on long distance telephone calls and cable service. There is now tax on paint and wallpaper, and toys. It increased the taxes on alcohol and tobacco so many times I will not bore hon. members with the details. The tax on gasoline has been increased seven or eight times.
We have a situation in which the government has talked about restraining the ability of Canadians to receive services that not only they became accustomed to but which they believe they deserve and have a right to. The government has shown again and again in the past five or six years that it has no real understanding of what is taking place in the country. For example, how are
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Canadians to believe that the Minister of Finance and the government are serious when they talk about this restraint program having a salutary effect on the deficit or the debt?
The Minister of Finance predicted in his plans released in 1985 that right now the deficit in Canada should be below $20 billion. You cannot keep telling people one thing and producing another result and expect them to believe you.
I do want to point out why Canadians have every right to be cynical, particularly those Canadians who follow what the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister say. The Prime Minister said to Canadians several weeks ago that he believed, and he stated it as a bald fact, that interest rates would go down. The finance minister in his budget states without any equivocation that the projections for interest rates this year are 11.1 per cent. As a matter of fact, he suggests that next year, as I recall the number, it should be down below 9 per cent.
We have gone by St. Patrick's Day so we cannot talk about leprechauns and wee people creeping into the system and doing the kinds of things that are throwing the Minister of Finance off base. But we have to question where the Minister of Finance is going to go now with his ally, in part, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, who is saying very clearly in his report made public yesterday that he has to achieve price stability. For the Governor of the Bank of Canada to achieve price stability he has to keep interest rates up.
I think most fair-minded people would recognize that there is absolutely no way that we can get to an 11.1 per cent interest rate this year because we would have to believe, if that were to be the case, that at some point this year we will see interest rates in single-digit figures, somewhere around 8 per cent, to be able to average out to 11.1 per cent because we are already into the year. Why should Canadians in all 10 provinces and the territories believe that the government is serious when it is talking about financial restraint when it has been proven wrong time and time again in its projections? The only thing the government has been right about in terms of delivering is that Tory times are tough times and Tory times are taxing times.
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Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


M. Douglas Young: It has been absolutely right on in those kinds of projections. Tory times being tough times was said a long time before anybody ever dreamed the NDP would appear on the scene in this country. So it certainly was not taken from any one to my left.
Tory times are often tough times. One of the nice things about the opportunity we have today to discuss the presentation made by the Minister of State for Finance is that we can discuss credibility. We can look at where the government has been in the last five or six years.
I hope that as this debate continues, my colleagues on the government side will stand in their places and explain to Canadians why they should be punished for the mismanagement of the Mulroney government and the inability of the Minister of Finance to be able to project, based on his information and his own policies, the kinds of results that would give any confidence to Canadian consumers, investors or, for that matter, to people outside the country looking at what is taking place in Canada.
In closing, I want to say unequivocally that we in the Liberal party oppose Bill C-69. We believe that the government is going to have to recognize that it is getting into an extremely difficult situation with the contradictory signals that are coming out concerning its budget, particularly as it applies to interest rate projections. I do not believe that we are going to be able to look at budget restraint measures any more than we are going to be able to look at the very illusory conclusions that were drawn in that budget based on this 11.1 per cent figure.
I hope that the Minister of Finance, the Department of Finance and the government will consider seriously revising their projections and their conclusions. It seems to me that as we are asking Canadians and provinces to shoulder a burden based on incorrect information or improper assumptions that we are not doing anybody a service.
In light of what was said yesterday by Mr. Crow, let us hope that the government will recognize that interest rates are going to remain high. If the government continues with these policies, the great danger that is inherent in this bill is that it is going to create more unemployment. It is going to force more Canadians on to

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welfare rolls in provinces. Provinces are going to be less able to cope with those problems because of these cuts.
The Government of Canada is creating a vicious circle out of which no one can escape. The people who will suffer the most are those who all Canadians want to protect the most-the sick, the poor, the handicapped, the people who need the services that are provided by many of those programs that are being cut by this legislation.
We are also taking a vicious cut at the young people in this country who understand now just how difficult things are going to be for them with the cutbacks to support for post-secondary education, the kinds of cutbacks we have seen in the employment programs for young people in the summer and the kinds of attacks we have seen on young people attending post-secondary institutions when there is a 3 per cent administrative charge being levied on their loan applications and that kind of thing.
It is important for all members to understand that if it is the government's policy to push Canada into a recession to satisfy Governor Crow's obsession with zero inflation, then surely we must be aware that there has to be programs to protect those Canadians who most need our help.


Joy Langan: Mr. Speaker, this government will be remembered long after it no longer occupies the benches on the opposite side of the House. This is a government that will be remembered for oppressing the poor, women, aboriginal people and workers during its two terms in office. This government will be remembered as the government that slapped the muzzle on everyone who cried out "Enough!"-even members of the opposition.
It will be remembered as the government that even when Canadians told it formally, using every vehicle open to them through petitions, rallies and legislative hearings, refused to listen. This is the government that will be remembered for saying: "We've heard from Canadians". But it will also be the government that will be remembered for not saying: "But we didn't listen".
This is the government that when elected in 1984 set out to implement George Orwell's predictions in his book 1984.
When the minister made his statement earlier he called on labour to exercise restraint in wages. He said that we do not want a return to the tragedies of the early 1980s. The tragedies in the early 1980s were not because of workers' wages. The tragedies in the early 1980s were because of poor economic policies on the part of both the Liberals and subsequently the Tories.
The early 1980s was when food banks started in this country-the first time since the depression. The early 1980s was when the labour movement had to develop unemployment action centres across this country to try and help working people, whether they were union or non-union, to struggle and survive because of bad economic policy. None of us want to go back to the early 1980s.
Mark my words, Mr. Speaker, the course on which the government has embarked is a sure blueprint to ensure that food banks will become the fastest-growing banks in the country, and that unemployment action centres will have to be revived and rebuilt to look after those who have been dispossessed and ignored by this government.
I would like to ask the minister-I am sorry he is gone-to point out to me one welfare payment that has increased the inflation rate of this country enough to have had an impact on the government's economic plan, or to have had an impact on the deficit. He asked Canadians to be patient. Then, in the next breath, he said that he would be putting a cap on government spending. I think that is shocking. It is shocking because the cap he is speaking of is the cap on funding for the poor. It is again the heavy hand of the government pressing on the poor, the unemployed, students, the sick and the elderly so that it can manage its budget and reduce the deficit in this country.


Mr. Parker:: Right-wing policies.


Joy Langan: The hon. member says that those are right-wing policies, and he is absolutely right. Rightwing policies are the kind of policies that ensure the government will help its friends at the same time as it screws the poor.
I would like to address the title of this bill. The act may be cited as the Government Expenditures Restraint Act. If I thought for one minute that it was a Government Expenditures Restraint Act and not an act to oppress the
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poor, I might not be so offended by the title. We must keep in mind, as we discuss Bill C-69, which is an omnibus bill, that it shows expenditures and restraint will take place only on the backs of the poor, students and the sick.
This bill is not designed to cut spending of the government in ways that are meaningful. This act is designed to take back commitments given to the people of Canada, commitments which this government has made for years to these people.
If we look at Clause 2 of the bill we see it refers to amendments to the Canada Assistance Plan. Let us talk about definitions. "Assistance" under the Canada Assistance Plan is defined this way:
- aid in any form to or in respect of persons in need for the purpose of providing or providing for all or any of the following:
(a)	food, shelter, clothing, fuel, utilities, household supplies and personal requirements ("hereinafter referred to as "basic requirements"),
(b)	prescribed items incidental to carrying on a trade or other employment and other prescribed special needs of any kind,
(c)	care in a home for special care,
(d)	travel and transportation,
(e)	funerals and burials,
(f)	health care services,
(g)	prescribed welfare services purchased by or at the request of a provincially approved agency, and
(h)	comfort allowances and other prescribed needs of residents or patients in hospitals or other prescribed institutions;
"Welfare services" is defined as:
-services having as their object the lessening, removal or prevention of the causes and effects of poverty, child neglect or dependence on public assistance, and, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, includes:
(a)	rehabilitation services,
(b)	case work, counselling, assessment and referral services,
(c)	adoption services,
(d)	homemaker, day-care and similar services,
(e)	community development services,
(f)	consulting, research and evaluation services with respect to welfare programs, and
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(g)	administrative, secretarial and clerical services, including staff training, relating to the provision of any of the foregoing services or to the provision of assistance,
but does not include any service relating wholly or mainly to education, correction or any other matter prescribed by regulation or, except for the purposes of the definition "assistance", any service provided by way of assistance;
That is a long explanation of what those three words "assistance" and "welfare services" mean. In fact, if one looks at what is contained in Bill C-69, one will see a total departure from what the spirit, the intent, and, indeed, the definition of assistance and welfare services is.
If we look under the Canada Assistance Plan at the content of the budget and therefore the content of Bill C-69, we see that the federal government has provided funds to the provinces and the territories on a 50-50 basis, cost-shared for social assistance and social service programs. Social assistance, as I said in basic terms, is income assistance such as welfare. Social services include counselling services, rehabilitation services, homemaker services and child care.
Until this budget, the program had been an open-ended one. There were no ceilings on the amount of shared dollars the federal government was willing to match. Indeed, the measure was need. It was hoped that the provinces with the incentive of 50-50 funding would in fact make sure that those people in each province who required these services would receive them. For every dollar spent by the provincial governments, the federal government would pony-up a dollar in kind.
With the exception of Saskatchewan, all provinces have increased their spending on Canada Assistance Plan cost-shared programs in 1988-89. A 5 per cent growth ceiling for the next two years has been imposed by Bill C-69 on the three wealthiest provinces-British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. All the other provinces and territories are exempt. A saving of $155 million is projected over the two-year period, but is dependent on the actual spending of the three provinces affected.
We have to think a little about what we mean when we say that we are capping the three wealthiest provinces. In fact, British Columbia, the province from which I come, is a wealthy province because, first, it has over taxed its

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citizens. Second, it has not spent the money that has been required to cover the intent of the Canada Assistance Plan, or the national intent of ensuring that people who are in need in fact will receive what they need.
Approximately 46 per cent or 861,000 people receiving assistance under the Canada Assistance Plan live in the three provinces whose payments are being limited to 5 per cent. Given the finance minister's predicted increase in the levels of unemployment-and we have to think about that-there is every reason to believe that these numbers will increase. We also have to think about Bill C-21 which is going to limit the number of people able to collect unemployment insurance.
Choices by these provincial governments will have to be made on how to handle the increased demand for welfare assistance and social services knowing full well that they will have to take on the full costs once they have reached their cut off.
Ontario has led the way in the average growth of spending under CAP at about 14 per cent, with Saskatchewan and B.C. at the opposite end of the scale at between 2 per cent and 3 per cent, hence my comments about the inadequacy of the welfare program in British Columbia. As the previous speaker said, the governments of British Columbia and Ontario have in fact taken this to the courts with the support of Alberta.
The way things stand now, Ontario will most likely be unwilling to expand existing services or increase its share of funding for native services without the matching federal dollars. Given the rate of inflation and a rise in the cost of providing welfare services due either to a greater demand or a greater delivery cost, these provinces will have to review the priority they give to these programs. They will have to decide if they are willing to increase provincial taxes to provide services at existing levels, or if they will reduce the social services they are providing. I hope, but I do not feel any confidence, that it will not be the second.
Obviously, this can be done in a number of ways. But the one which is likely to take place is the tightening of eligibility requirements, or reducing benefits.
While the government fails once again to introduce a national child care program, it is forcing Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta to choose whether to provide
programs and services to those in need or whether to provide child care. What a choice.
On the one hand we have single parent mothers desperate to get out of the welfare system. On the other hand, if that mother goes to work, there is no child care. What kind of trap is this person caught in? On the one hand, she is caught in the welfare cycle. On the other hand, she does not have the support of child care to get out of the cycle and into a decent paying job.
We feel expenditures for child care may be decreased to compensate for the 5 per cent ceiling. Again, the unemployed parent is caught in the squeeze.
Recently we have been bouncing Bill C-21 back and forth. In the study by the Canadian Labour Congress of the effects of UI changes under Bill C-21, it was found that 375,000 beneficiaries will have exhausted their claim before finding a job because of reduced entitlement under the new law. A provincial breakdown makes it even more shocking. Persons not qualifying due to higher entrance requirements and persons losing benefits due to reduced benefit periods in the three provinces are as follows: in Ontario, 117,360 people; in Alberta, 46,450 people; in British Columbia, 59,710 people. A portion of these people will seek social assistance from their province while another portion will find employment, most at low-paying jobs.
The finance minister's projection of increased unemployment levels in the next two years is true. He is predicting 8.2 per cent and 8.5 per cent unemployment in the next few years. Yet the rest of his policies is creating a tightening of the very programs these people will need.
More people will find themselves exhausting or not qualifying for unemployment insurance benefits. We can expect the demand on social assistance and the number of working poor families to increase, and increase dramatically.
While the government continues its crusade to erode Canada's social programs, at the same time it is bringing in legislation to disqualify Canadians from unemployment insurance benefits. It has not brought in child care. It has limited the ability of the provinces to cope with increasing demands for social services. This is not what one would expect when one talks about fairness, when one talks about the kind of Canada that is concerned with all people, the kind of Canada that ensures that everyone has an opportunity to survive.
March 27, 1990

Social assistance services cannot now meet the demands of low-income Canadians and their families. We have witnessed the rise, as I said earlier, of the number of Canadian families forced to go to food banks. Forty per cent of all food bank users are children-not your child or children, Mr. Speaker, not the children of the members opposite, not the children of members on this side of the House. Very sadly, 40 per cent of the users of food banks are children.
Why is that happening? It is happening because the responsibility of the federal government to provide enough assistance to the provinces is not being undertaken. In fact, the assistance is inadequate. This government has done nothing to help low-income Canadians and has, in fact, abandoned its responsibility to ensure that social assistance programs are available to all of those in need.
I spoke about the fact that welfare rates are not adequate in my home province of British Columbia. I also mentioned why, in my view, this is the case. The British Columbia government is strangling the welfare system and, therefore, is a have or a wealthy province.
I would like to read for the record some statistics that support my claim. In its 1989 report, the Social Planning and Research Council of British Columbia outlines that the shortfalls welfare recipients face each month represent the difference between welfare payments received and the amount calculated to enable an individual or family to fully participate in their community.
The first statistic is for a single male. The shortfall is 83 per cent. The person receives $430 but needs $787. For a couple with no children the shortfall is 59 per cent. The couple receives $732 in welfare payments. They need $1,164. For the single mother with one child the shortfall is 44 per cent. She receives $815, yet needs $1,176. For the single mother with two teenagers the shortfall is 66 per cent. She receives $986, but needs $1,633. For the couple with an infant and toddler the shortfall is 69 per cent. That couple receives $1,038, yet needs $1,753.
These examples are hypothetical, but they are based on provincial averages. They do not take into account the housing crisis in the lower mainland and many other
communities in British Columbia that make life for social assistance recipients even more difficult.
The Canada Assistance Plan represents the principle that regardless of where one lives in Canada, whether it is on Vancouver Island, in the lower mainland of British Columbia, in Fort St. John, Yellowknife, Whitehorse, Edmonton or a farm in the rural part of the prairie provinces, Regina-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member will have 20 minutes remaining in her speech should we come back to this bill after three o'clock.
It being one o'clock, I do now leave the chair until two o'clock this day.
At 1 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to point out the deplorable state of summer employment programs for our post-secondary students.
This government has cut funding to the SEED program, the summer employment program for students, to the tune of $41 million or 35 per cent for the next year. Since 1985 we have seen the government's contributions to this program steadily decline from $149 million to $71 million. The number of jobs created has declined from over 87,000 to 71,000 over the last four years. These further cuts will mean that another 24,000 students will be without a summer job this year.
All this seems rather odd when we consider that since 1985, tuition fees have nearly doubled and living expenses have skyrocketed. With the cut-backs to transfer payments, we can expect this trend to continue. Yet, the SEED program provides students with only 10 weeks of work when they are available for 16 weeks, at an average hourly wage of $5.73.

March 27, 1990
It is also disheartening to see that the Minister of Employment claims that the unemployment rate for these students is at 4.7 per cent when Statistics Canada tells us that it is at 10.2 per cent.
If there was any doubt that university and college students have the lowest disposable incomes of any segment of society, the government, through its actions has made this very clear. Students do not want handouts. All they want is a decent summer job.


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


FILM INDUSTRY
Mrs. Marie Gibeau (Bourassa):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to congratulate Montreal cinematographer Denys Arcand for the success of his latest production, Jesus de Montreal, which ranked him among nominees for best foreign film at the 62nd Oscar awards presentation last night in the United States.
After walking away with last year's Cannes Festival Jury and Ecumenical Prizes and recently receiving 13 of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television Genie awards, Mr. Arcand has gained international recognition as a result of his film being among finalists at the American Oscar presentation.
The competence, excellence and creativity of the artist extend beyond our borders. We stand very proud, as do all men and women who work in the Canadian film industry. These awards inspire young Canadian film producers and encourage them to strive for international appreciation.
Again, Mr. Speaker, my heartiest congratulations to Mr. Denys Arcand.


LITHUANIA
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg Transcona):: Mr. Speaker, I hope I speak on behalf of all members when I say that in Lithuania, President Gorbachev is teetering on the edge of forfeiting his most valuable asset, which is his reputation as a man of peace.
The people of Lithuania, in a free and fair election, elected a government, many of whom are communists,
that seeks to re-establish Lithuanian independence. Instead of calling this process invalid, which it is not, President Gorbachev should sit down with Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis and begin to negotiate the implementation of independence.
This will take time, and Lithuania should be prepared to take the time to accommodate Soviet economic and security interests in return for recognition. But they cannot negotiate with someone who does not recognize their right to declare their independence in the first place. Instead, they are forced to demonstrate rather than negotiate their independence, which only provokes the Soviet Union. Yet this provocation is of Mr. Gorbachev's own making by his refusal to negotiate.
I therefore call on the Soviet Union to negotiate, to respect the democratic will of the Lithuanian people, to renounce the use of force, to give full freedom to the international press in Lithuania, and to declare an end to arrests of Lithuanian deserters from the Soviet Armed Forces, as it is well known that Lithuanian conscripts were often in fear of their lives even before recent events, and would be even more so now.


REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, on the airwaves of Radio-Nord in Noranda, a journalist discussed regional development with the Liberal Member for LaSalle-Emard who was visiting Noranda on March 12 last. In reply to the journalist's comment: "When we are told that a lot of money is being spent in regional development, we remain quite sceptical'', the Liberal Member said: "You have every reason to be sceptical with Tory Governments which never keep their words."
Mr. Speaker, this Liberal Member is unaware of the progress made in the Canada-Quebec Subsidiary Agreement on Regional Economic Development which was signed on June 9, 1988. I should like to emphasize that on March 12, the Conservative members respected this agreement and that this Government had already spent under this agreement $259.3 million, or 58.9 per cent, and the Quebec Government $7.6 million, or 2 per cent. As to the Abitibi-Temiscamingue area, it has already received a portion of that budget.
March 27, 1990


THE ENVIRONMENT
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, today a delegation of Cree and Inuit from Great Whale River are in Ottawa. In a boat they built for the occasion, they will journey to New York City to protest the James Bay II hydroelectric project which would flood 5,000 square kilometres of land, contaminate water and fish with mercury, damage marine mammals and migratory birds, and hurt the economy and lifestyle of Cree and Inuit people in northern Quebec.
Following the federal court's decision on the Oldman dam, the federal government should exercise its powers and hold public hearings before it is too late. This government must start practising what it preaches on sustainable development. Federal public hearings to study the environmental and social impacts of James Bay II are a must!
We do not want to see the Canadian northern environment destroyed to feed the insatiable energy demands of south of the border.


SOVIET JEWRY
Mr. Bill Attewell (Markham-Whitchurch-Stouff-ville):: Mr. Speaker, today the Jewish Students' Network and NAHON, a group of 200 students from all across Canada are in Ottawa for their annual lobby day.
The group, led by Stephen Granovsky, Dan Ronen and Pam Scheininger are meeting with many members of the House of Commons. This year there is an urgent call for action due to the large backlog of Soviet Jews seeking to have exit visas and the recent rise in anti-Semitism.
Recently, we heard of the suspension by Hungarian airlines of all flights to Israel due to threats of terrorism by various extremist pro-Arab groups.
The Government of Canada has always supported the cause of Soviet Jewry and I, as chairman of the Canadian Parliamentary Group for Soviet Jewry, along with all members of this House, call on the Government of the Soviet Union to speed up the process of emigration by permitting direct passage of Jews to Israel and to exploit all possible safe exit routes to the Jewish homeland.
I commend the work of Network and NAHON for bringing this issue to the House of Commons and to the people of Canada and I join with them in renewing our pledge to the Jewish people of the Soviet Union.


FISHERIES
Mr. Russell MacLellan (Cape Breton-The Sydneys):: Mr. Speaker, the fish process workers at Cape Breton feel betrayed. They were told that the situation at the Cape Breton fish plants was not going to be that bad. First, they were told that in addition to the saltfish operation, North Sydney would have the overflow fish from Louisbourg. This was going to mean that the wet fish operation was going to be able to continue in North Sydney.
Now National Sea states that it is going to close Louisbourg from the end of July until November, three months. What overflow is there going to be now for the people in North Sydney? The fish plant operators in Cape Breton are very concerned about further lay-offs adding to the already bad work situation on Cape Breton Island. The fish plant workers are going to Halifax to protest and they ask the government to make it known to National Sea to come clean with the workers, to give them some security, to stand by their word and not change their minds from day to day and to provide the fish plant workers in Cape Breton with fair treatment so that they can get on with their lives and raise their families accordingly.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Saskatoon-Humboldt):: Mr. Speaker, prairie farmers are in a desperate economic plight. Their livelihoods are being ravaged as the result of unfair grain export subsidies by the Europeans and the Americans. Everyone agrees that an emergency aid package of at least $500 million is urgently required if farmers are to be able to seed this year's crops.
Yesterday, prairie agriculture ministers met to discuss this crisis. They indicated that the emergency aid package is a federal responsibility because the causes of the immediate problem arise from an international situation over which the provincial governments have no influence.

March 27, 1990
Prairie farm families are distraught. Their very survival hangs in the balance while the Deputy Prime Minister and his provincial counterparts continue to wrangle behind closed doors about who should pay what.
We call on the federal government to set aside its differences with the provinces over this issue and make an immediate payment before seeding to ensure farm families have a chance of survival.

[Translation)


LITHUANIA
Mr. Jean-Pierre Hogue (Outremont):: Mr. Speaker, the recent events in Lithuania are causing much anxiety and raising a great many questions among the Canadian people. The men and women of Lithuanian descent in my Outremont riding are no exception and they have asked me to appeal to the Canadian Government and people and urge them to support the stand taken by the Lithuanian Government over the past few days.
Apparently, the independence of the country is at stake.
Canada's recognition of that government will have a profound effect at this crucial time and will be fully consistent with Canada's proud international record.
[Translation)
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to add that the Secretary of State for External Affairs expressed the veiy deep concern of the Canadian people over the increase in military activity during the past few days in an official letter which was addressed and delivered today to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR.

In concluding his letter, Mr. Clark urged that a process of constructive and peaceful dialogue be established, one which would reflect the legitimate aspirations of the Lithuanian people.


MEECH LAKE ACCORD
Mr. Bob Corbett (Fundy-Royal):: Mr. Speaker, as a New Brunswicker and an Atlantic Canadian, I was pleased and proud that a fellow traveller, Premier Frank McKenna, seized the initiative to deal with the despairing difficulty of holding our nation together.
Premier McKenna understands full well the dangers currently besetting our frail confederation and the sickening consequences should the confederation crumble. It is unfortunate that another in the region is prepared to risk-for questionable motives-the country.
Surely all Canadians of good will, worthy of the name, will fervently pull together to ensure that the prejudice and intolerances of yesterday will be discarded and buried today so this magnificent country will continue to thrive, reinforcing our determination to honour the trust placed in our hands by our forefathers to pass on intact to our children and theirs.


VETERANS AFFAIRS
Mr. Joseph Volpe (Eglinton -Lawrence):: Mr. Speaker, this House and Canadians everywhere have been most critical of the government's job-creation policies, and with great justification. Now we have further proof of the illogic that is so pervasive in this Cabinet.
Over the next three years, 50 positions, primarily clerical, will be transferred from the Veterans Affairs office in Toronto to Kirkland Lake. The alleged reason is the difficulty in attracting qualified people to the Toronto office. But the only people who will qualify for those jobs in the north are precisely those people who occupy the jobs today. There are no new jobs being created. The people who hold them do not want to lose them.
New jobs are not created in town A by depriving people in town B. Equally important is what will happen to the level of service in the Toronto region office and the 87,000 veterans it serves. Many ask how their services will be maintained by an office that will now be several hundred kilometres away. Veterans will suffer extreme hardship.
March 27, 1990

On their behalf, I call on the Minister of Veterans Affairs to reconsider this regrettable decision to relocate.


PARKS CANADA
Mr. Peter L. McCreath (South Shore):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today, as I would have risen last week had I been here, to join with the Secretary of State for Canada, the Legislative Assembly of Nova Scotia, and others calling upon the minister responsible for Parks Canada to immediately rescind the policy that excludes those who are not white Caucasian males from participating in historical animations at Parks Canada sites, in particular at the Halifax Citadel.
One appreciates Parks Canada's commitment to accurate historical re-enactment, but surely it is a misguided interpretation of the concept to suggest that the ability to act should be assessed on the basis of the same discriminatory guidelines that existed in the British army a century and a half ago. Surely it is more appropriate to apply the values of 1990 and the employment practices they imply.
I would suggest that unless Parks Canada can arrange to bring back the original Highlanders and artillery men, they should recognize that substitutes are at best actors and that they should be fairly chosen.


COMMUNITY AWARENESS WEEK
Ms. Catherine Callbeck (Malpeque):: Mr. Speaker, the week of March 25 to 31 has been proclaimed Community Awareness Week in Prince Edward Island.
This week allows individuals in their communities to reflect upon the importance of voluntary organizations and to recognize their significance.
Volunteer activity in my province is part of our way of life. This is why I believe our communities flourish. There are over 200 volunteer residents who serve on community councils in my riding of Malpeque.
Moreover, there are over 400 organizations, clubs and associations on the Island that promote volunteer activity and community awareness.
Oral Questions
Groups such as industrial commissions, community advisory boards, recreation and service organizations, to name a few, all share in creating communities that are unique.
I know that all members will join with me in commending my province for recognizing the services of those individuals and organizations during Community Awareness Week.


STATUS OF WOMEN
Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster-Burnaby):: Mr. Speaker, women in Newfoundland, who have had 100 per cent of the core funding of their seven women's centres cut, are still occupying Secretary of State offices in Newfoundland. They were there yesterday, all night, and they are still there. Women in Vancouver are holding a solidarity protest on the west coast. They demand, and the New Democrats demand, that core funding to all women's centres be reinstated immediately. They demand an immediate meeting with the Secretary of State and the Minister responsible for the Status of Women.
Why do women in this country have to occupy government offices day and night, from sea to sea, in an attempt to be listened to by this government? And why is the Tory government still ignoring them?
When will the Secretary of State meet with these women? When will the Minister responsible for the Status of Women meet with these women? When will this government stop trying to silence the voices of women in this country?



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. The Prime Minister recently said that interest rates in this country would be going down. The finance minister in his budget stated clearly that the rate would be reduced during this year. However, yesterday, the Bank of Canada Governor in his annual report indicated that he was totally committed to his high interest rate policy.

March 27, 1990
Oral Questions
My question to the Minister of Finance is very simple. Does the Minister of Finance still stand by the projections and conclusions contained in his budget in light of clear evidence that his interest rate projection was very unrealistic?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, the interest rate projection as it affects the deficit for fiscal 1990-91 relates to that fiscal year, and that does not start until this Sunday. We still have 12 months to go before we see what the impact of interest rates will be.
What the Governor of the Bank of Canada said yesterday is that he is totally committed to a policy which will reduce inflation in this country. Once we get inflation down, we will see reductions in interest rates. That is perfectly consistent with everything that I have said both publicly as well as in the budget documents.


M. Douglas Young: Surely he must recognize now that the outlook and economic indicators contained in his budget were obviously wrong. My question is this: In view of the fact that almost everybody agrees that his projections as far as interest rates over the next 12 months are concerned are not realistic, does he still claim that his budgetary conclusions are right and reflect the true reality?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Yes, I do, Mr. Speaker. I feel that the projections that we put in the budget were realistic projections. As I indicated at that time, they are consistent with the projections that a private sector economist group had put together. We monitor this group on an ongoing basis. Our projection for this year, as I recall, was one tenth of one per cent higher than the average of a group of private sector economists. As I indicated earlier, we still have the full year ahead of us. Let us not draw any sharp conclusions here.
I can remind the hon. member of 1986 when the same type of question was being asked by members on the Liberal side. We had an interest rate projection, I believe, of 9.5 per cent. Interest rates were about 12 per cent at the time. In fact, we came in with an average rate of 9.1 or 9.2 per cent. So we still have 12 months ahead of us.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, looking at the last 12 months, the minister at this time last year was telling us we should be enjoying interest rates at about 10 per cent at this stage of the game.
I want to ask the Minister of Finance, in view of the fact that the Bank of Canada Governor has stated that his high interest rate policy so far has failed to control inflation to the extent that he would like to have it controlled, in view of the fact that he is going to require high unemployment rates to be able to do better, as he has promised to do in 1990, and in view of the fact that in his own budget documents the minister has predicted higher unemployment in Canada in the next 12 months and a slower rate of economic growth, is his government going to allow the Governor of the Bank of Canada to continue his obsession with zero inflation and drive this country into a recession? Is that the policy of the government?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, if we on this side of the House have any obsession, it is an obsession with avoiding the problems that we got into in the late 1970s and the early 1980s.
I remind the hon. member that at that time, the government of the day, the party that he supports, ignored the problem of inflation and swept it under the carpet. It let inflation go from 5 to 6 to 8 to 10 to 13 per cent. That led to the high interest rates in early 1981 and 1982. It was that high level of interest rate that led to the depression of 1982.
We want to avoid that problem. That was a very difficult lesson for all of us to learn. That is the lesson we want to remember and stop the problem of inflation today so that we do not run into the problems that we ran into in the late 1970s and early 1980s.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Hon. Andre Ouellet (Papineau-Saint-Michel):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. The Minister knows how anxious Poland is to be a part of the coming discussions dealing in particular with Germany's eventual reunification. The Minister certainly will agree they have good reasons for that, because for too long a time, they had no say in their fate. Is the Canadian Government ready to
March 27, 1990

use all its influence to ensure that Poland's borders will remain inviolable?


Right Hon. Joe Clark (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has just held worth while discussions with Prime Minister Mazowiecki of Poland, here on an informal visit, and the matter of Poland's borders has been discussed.

We outlined very clearly the position of the Government of Canada that Poland should be able to live in the secure knowledge that the existing boundaries will be respected and that that reality should be expressed in an international legal instrument to be negotiated as early as possible. We also discussed practical ways in which Canada might contribute to that turn of events being achieved.


André Ouellet: I have a supplementary, Mr. Speaker. The Minister just referred to a meeting between the two Prime Ministers. Has the Prime Minister taken the opportunity of the Polish Prime Minister's visit to extend to that country a package of economic assistance greater still than the one that was announced? In particular, is the Canadian Government ready to grant Poland a special status among members of the Warsaw Pact? Is the Canadian Government ready to partially-and perhaps even completely-write off the debt Poland has accumulated over the years with our country?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, Canada already has acted to grant Poland significant debt relief. However, the two Prime Ministers have discussed other options open to us. Poland's Prime Minister has indicated he needs Canadian assistance in three areas in particular-technology, training, and of course the matter of debt. We have agreed to look at how Canada can develop a policy to reduce Poland's debt. The Deputy Prime Minister will be in Poland for a visit during the weekend-he is leaving Friday. Canada's Finance Minister will also go there in the coming weeks to hold detailed discussions on the debt matter with Poland's representatives.
Oral Questions


FISCAL POLICY
Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister of Finance. Yesterday, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, in tabling his annual report, warned that interest rates could go even higher in the months that lie ahead. That means that the deficit forecast of the Minister of Finance could be much higher than he predicted in his budget a few weeks ago in the House. In the recent budget, the minister in effect passed the buck to the provinces to pay for the increased cost of servicing the large debt.
When he meets with his provincial colleagues later on tonight, will the Minister of Finance be in a position where he will take on Governor Crow and say that the monetary policy he followed in the last year was wrong, it did not bring down inflation, and has got this country into more serious trouble than before he began with that policy, or will he once again submit to the wishes of Governor Crow and pass the increase in interest rates along to the provinces once again?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I think the Governor of the Bank of Canada and I are of the same view that we are both disappointed that there was a degree of increase in the level of inflation last year and that has continued on to this year.
We have tried over the past couple of years to contain the rates of inflation. If we had had lower interest rates and interest rates which were unnaturally lower, we would have had an even higher level of inflation today and that would have led to even higher levels of interest rates.
It is important for us to understand that this is the best way that we can get inflation under control, and as we get inflation under control we will be able to see interest rates down on a permanent basis.
The simple solutions that my colleague continues to propose simply will not work, because if interest rates are reduced in an unnatural way it compounds the problem and leads to a more permanent level of higher interest rates, a more permanent loss of our competitive position, and a more permanently higher level of unemployment.

March 27, 1990
Oral Questions


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, I will give the minister a concrete way that he can bring down inflation because he said he is of the same view as Mr. Crow. Yesterday Mr. Crow said that he is concerned that wage increases have escalated sharply and were inflationary. In the last two years they have averaged about a 5 per cent increase per year.
Would the minister not agree that it is terribly hypocritical or sets a bad example when the government has agreed to increase the salary of Mr. Crow as Governor of the Bank of Canada by as much as 21 per cent per year for each of the last three years. Doesn't that set a bad example in this country when Mr. Crow's salary goes up by as much as 21 per cent per year and the minister agrees with Mr. Crow that 5 per cent per year for ordinary Canadians is inflationary? Is that not a bad example?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I believe that the record of this government in controlling wage settlements and controlling the amounts of money that are paid to our senior public servants is a responsible one and one that is in keeping with our desire to keep inflation down. I have said on many occasions that if we as Canadians do not take more out of the economy than it is able to provide for us then we are going to be able to control inflation and as we do that we will be able to get interest rates down.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Nevertheless, Mr. Speaker, the minister has not answered my question at all. I have asked questions. Mr. Crow said yesterday that 5 per cent was too high a wage increase for the Canadian workers. However, Mr. Crow's own salary has gone up by maybe 21 per cent each year in the last three years. Does the minister agree that such a large increase in Mr. Crow's case is setting a rather bad example for the Canadian people? Does he approve of his government's policy in that field? If he does not, why is it then that the government has allowed, throught its policy, such a raise to be given to Mr. Crow? And why does he condemn modest salary increases for Canadian workers? Why indeed, Mr. Speaker?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member knows full well that we do not discuss the specific salaries of any of our senior public servants. The range of those salaries is established by a private sector advisory group. It is the responsibility of the government to apply those salaries within the range that has been provided to us by the outside advisors.


LITHUANIA
Mr. Jesse Flis (Parkdale -High Park):: Mr. Speaker, I understand that the right hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs will be meeting with the Canadian Lithuanian community right after Question Period today.
We also know from a press conference held this morning that the Canadian Lithuanian community will be presenting an urgent appeal to the Government of Canada, and I quote from the press release, "to recognize immediately the Government of Lithuania as the legitimate government of the independent republic and to offer to send diplomats there as observers."
Would the minister share with the House what response he will give to the Canadian Lithuanian community and to all of Canada, considering the threat of military intervention if such recognition by other countries is not given?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, my parliamentary secretary had an opportunity earlier today to meet with representatives of Lithuanian Canadians in Ottawa, and I hope to have the opportunity myself later in the day to meet with them.
As the hon. member and other members of the House know, it is the view of Canada, and I think a view broadly shared in the House, that we want to have the de facto independence of Lithuania established by negotiation. We encourage both the Lithuanian and Soviet parties to follow that course.
This morning I called in the charge d'affaires of the Soviet Union-the ambassador is out of town-to express to him personally our very deep concern about the events overnight in Lithuanian. I reminded him of the undertakings given to me and to the Prime Minister personally by leaders of the Soviet Union that there
March 27, 1990

would be no crackdown. I expressed concern that the actions of the Soviet Union recently seemed to indicate that its policy might be proceeding in a different direction and that if that were the case it would have very regrettable implications for the relations between Canada and the Soviet Union.
We hope that both sides will return to the pursuit of a solution to this situation by negotiation.


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, according to the news release circulated this morning at the press conference, which was supported by ten national ethnocultural organizations across Canada, the appeal of the Lithuanian community to the minister included a request that the Government of Canada demand that no Soviet forces be used to overthrow the legitimate government, that these forces be withdrawn immediately, and that Canada offer emergency supplies of food and fuel to Lithuania if the Soviet Government tries to starve out the republic.
Will the right hon. minister at least commit his government to these very reasonable requests for humanitarian aid?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I believe that the responsible course for the government and Parliament of Canada is to encourage both the Soviet Union and the elected leaders of Lithuania to proceed by way of negotiation.
We are very troubled by the events that have occurred in recent hours-overnight and this morning-in Lithuania. We have made that concern clear to the Soviet Union. We hope that our concern and influence, coupled with that of other nations which have encouraged with such determination the processes of perestroika and glasnost in the Soviet Union, may cause the Soviet Union to return to a course of negotiation which would mean that we would not have to contemplate the kinds of steps that were referred to in the press release quoted by the hon. member.
I have had discussions with members of the House privately with regard to steps that Canada might take to contribute constructively to the situation. I hope to continue those consultations, and I give an undertaking
Oral Questions
to the House that Canada will continue to respond to this situation in a responsible way.


EMPLOYMENT
Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for International Trade and it concerns yesterday's closing of the South-am-Murray printing plant in my riding which employs some 500 people. In eliminating these jobs the company cited "the new North American market" as one factor.
Given that no new adjustment assistance program has been introduced since the free trade agreement, will the government now honour the commitment of the Prime Minister who promised Canadians three days after the last federal election that his government would "ensure innovative and generous adjustment and retraining programs for individual Canadian workers"?
Will the minister now offer that generous assistance to the 500 employees in my riding who have just lost their livelihood?


Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister for International TVade):: Mr. Speaker, the graphics arm of Southam announced that it plans to restructure its web printing operations and to shut the aging Weston plant which affects some 500 employees. Some 280 of those employees will lose their jobs while the remainder will retain their jobs in the Toronto area.
At the same time the hon. member forgot to mention that the company announced that it was expanding and modernizing its operations in Orillia, Ontario and in Candiac, Quebec and shifting Toronto area production to those facilities. That will result in the creation of 160 jobs at the Orillia plant and another 60 in Candiac.
There is a net loss of 60 jobs which is unfortunate, but this is because the company has not been doing well in its printing operations and therefore is consolidating and attempting to unload lower profit operations. The situation is not as bad as it has been painted.
I might say that the Canadian printing industry association is indicating that the industry is getting itself in a position so it can compete not only in the United States but internationally. The industry itself is already attracting business from major centres in the U.S., including

March 27, 1990
Oral Questions
New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In the meantime, all regular adjustment programs will be applied to the 60 jobs affected and to those who lose their jobs in Toronto.


Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister.
The closing of this plant is not an isolated incident in the printing industry. Photo Engravers of Toronto, 450 jobs; Novalis of Ottawa, 41 jobs; Le Droit Groupe in Montreal, 63 groups; Transcontinental of Winnipeg, 50 jobs; and now the Southam plant in Weston, Ontario will be cutting 500 jobs in my riding.
Why did the government not heed the warnings and concern of the printing industry in regard to the job displacements resulting from this government's FTA?
When will this minister and this government have the decency to come to the aid of workers who have been displaced through no fault of their own, as was promised by the Prime Minister three days after a general election fought on the FTA?
He promised displaced workers that he would come to their aid with a generous package. Where is that package? Where is the commitment? Will this government come clean with displaced workers in this country?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, it is very regrettable that intellectual honesty is not a characteristic of the Official Opposition.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Allmand:: Come on. That is why you're at 17 per cent, John.


John Carnell Crosbie: There is no honesty, intellectual or otherwise, in the Official Opposition, Mr. Speaker.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


William Warren Allmand: How would you know? Try for 15 per cent next week.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. minister has not singled out any one member but seems to have included them all. That is not appropriate. Would the hon. minister put his answer in more civil terms.


John Carnell Crosbie: I withdraw the remark. I know all hon. members opposite are honest.
From the end of December 1988 to the end of December 1989, 258,000 jobs were created over all in Canada; a net increase. In January another 65,000 jobs were created; a net increase. This comes from Statistics Canada's seasonally adjusted series.
When the hon. gentleman cites these cases he is being completely misleading. There has been a magnificent increase in jobs in the last 13 months.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of the Environment and is with regard to the James Bay II hydroelectric project.
As the minister knows, this project was discussed by the energy panel at Globe 90 in Vancouver last week, where it was revealed that the potential energy savings in the Quebec hydro system are larger in volume and in value than could be provided by the James Bay II project. This means that Premier Bourassa is asking Quebecers to accept billions in hydro debt and severe environmental damage when an opportunity exists for direct benefits to individual Quebec consumers of hydroelectricity.
Since the minister knows all of that, will he demonstrate leadership this week and subject the entire project to a full environmental impact assessment which includes an evaluation of the cost benefits of energy options to the project?


Hon. Lucien Bouchard (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, we all know that this project is very important for the development of the economy of Quebec and Canada. That being said, the government has made a public commitment to apply extensively the requirements of the EARP process and make sure that there will be a full public review and public hearings on this project.
We are currently discussing with the Quebec government and Hydro Quebec the possibility of entering into an agreement to set up a joint process of assessment which will avoid duplication and allow a full and efficient assessment of the project. This joint process will be more or less tailored on what we did in the Al-Pac case in Alberta.
March 27, 1990


Mr. Robert E. Skelly (Comox-Alberni):: Mr. Speaker, I think the minister has already prejudiced the public hearings by saying that this is an important project for the province of Quebec and suggesting it is going to go ahead.
The James Bay project has already affected Cree and Inuit communities. As a result trap lines have been flooded, migratory birds have been diverted, fish have been poisoned with mercury, and even the beluga whales in Eludson Bay have been affected.
If a dam project like this had been built with the same impacts on Montreal or Quebec City, the minister would be responding to voices of outrage across Canada and cancelling the project even before an environmental impact statement had been drafted.
Given the serious known impacts of this project, will the minister use his power to have the Great Whale project stopped even before it goes to an environmental impact process?


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, there are people who are biased and prejudiced against the environment. Others are biased and prejudiced against development and job creation. My honorable colleague is one of those who have something against job creation in Canada and against the development of this country. Mr. Speaker, it is the policy of this government to endorse sustainable development, which means that we will be harmonizing the development of the country with the promotion of the environment. That is what we are doing throughout the country and we are confident that we will have to take steps and will take steps so that, in the case of the Great-Whale project, the federal government will exercise its powers and jurisdiction fully to ensure that all environmental factors will be thoroughly evaluated against its requirements.


FORESTRY
Mr. Dave Worthy (Cariboo -Chilcotin):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Forestry.
The minister knows, as do most Canadians, that the original FRDAs negotiated with the provinces showed a
Oral Questions
lot of foresight. The agreements have demonstrated irrefutably that they have been of value to the environment as well as to the economy. People across Canada want to see a renewal of these agreements. The agreement is going to expire in B.C. at the end of this week. It would be inconceivable if it were not renewed.
Would the Minister of Forestry give us his assurance that he and this government are committed to the renewal of that agreement?


Hon. Frank Oberle (Minister of Forestry):: Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question draws attention to the impressive results that have been achieved, as he mentions, with the first generation of Forest Resource Development Agreements, not only in terms of the jobs they created but the rehabilitation of our commercial forests. A lot of people have looked at these FRDAs as perhaps the largest environmental rehabilitation program the country has ever undertaken.
Unfortunately I am not in a position today to announce the renewal of the agreement in British Columbia, but my hon. friend knows that the agreement with New Brunswick has been completed, the agreement with Nova Scotia has been completed, and discussions are going very well with the other provinces. There still remains a very strong federal commitment to the renewal of these agreements.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment. Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come of the Grand Council of the Cree of Quebec said today that the Canadian environment cannot be destroyed to meet the insatiable energy demands of New York.
We have heard repeatedly for over a year about an environmental assessment of the James Bay II project. Will the minister now give his personal assurance to all Canadians that no part of the James Bay II project will start before the full environmental impact is tested by the federal government independently, thoroughly, and openly?


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I can and I will reconfirm the commitment of this government to apply fully the requirements of the EARP process.

March 27, 1990
Oral Questions
As we know, the scope of the EARP is very large and has sweeping effects. We will use it extensively because we think that the Quebec government has almost accepted the principle which will be the base or the foundation of the joint process we are to set up.
I can assure our colleague whose concerns are quite legitimate, because this is a huge project with large environmental impacts, that they will be fully assessed before the project is proceeded with.


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, I seem to hear an echo of things I have heard many times.
All people who truly believe that we have borrowed this earth from our children join with the Cree and Inuit people of Great Whale River in their journey to stop the devastation of their lands. No one more than the Minister of the Environment has a responsibility that we pass on a clean and fruitful earth to the next generation.
I ask again: When will the environmental assessment review process start? When will the minister take an unequivocal stand on behalf of the Canadian environment?


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member had the impression that my answer to her question was some kind of echo. It is simply because we give the same answers to the same questions. So, the question that was just repeated, Mr. Speaker, is: "Is the federal government conscious of the tremendous environmental impacts of the James Bay project? Will the federal government assume all of its responsibilities?" The answer is yes, and I am sure that we will soon be in a position to announce that, in conjunction with the Quebec government, or alone, if need be, we are starting an environmental impact assessment process.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


PEARSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Transport.
Pearson International Airport is simply not working efficiently. It can only handle safely 70 flights an hour, which is grossly inefficient considering its vast equipment.
The air space around Pearson is congested because of the government's policy of deregulation. Security is weak, and this at the busiest airport in Canada; in fact one of the busiest airports in the world.
What is this minister going to do to correct this unacceptable and potentially dangerous situation?


Hon. Doug Lewis (Minister of TVansport):: Mr. Speaker, my friend will be aware that during the 17 years that the Liberal government was in power there were no changes to the facilities at Pearson.
However, since 1984 we have commissioned Terminal 3 at no cost to the taxpayer. I toured it on Saturday. It should be ready on schedule in September. We have commissioned the Environmental Assessment Review Panel for new runways, and all of the other problems that we can tackle are being tackled.
This is part of a southern Ontario strategy which we are working on. We have not finished it, but it is entrain.


Joseph R. (Joe) Comuzzi: Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for those answers, but those solutions are long term. Last year the near misses at Pearson increased by almost 66 per cent over 1988.
Recently, while you and I, Mr. Speaker, were sitting in a secured area, an alarm went off. It was over 15 and a half minutes before somebody responded to this breach of security in a secured area at Pearson Airport.
Pearson Airport is simply not efficient. It is not working on the inside. It is not working on the outside. We are still playing Russian roulette with the air traveller in Canada.
When is the minister going to do something about these situations?


Philip Derek Lewis: Mr. Speaker, the system is working and it is working safely. The facilities that you let lapse-


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!
March 27, 1990


Philip Derek Lewis: The airport processed 14 million passengers in 1984 and 21 million passengers in 1989. I think it is doing a good job.


URANIUM INDUSTRY
Raymond John Funk: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources in his capacity as the minister in charge of the Atomic Energy Control Board of Canada.
Evidence is mounting daily all around the world, including the recent Gardner report in Britain and the BEIR V report in the United States, that what had previously been thought to be acceptable radiation levels in fact constitute a real threat to the public and workers in the nuclear industry.
I am sure the minister is aware that, as a result of this evidence, the International Commission on Radiological Protection has recommended drastic cuts in the allowable limits world-wide, recommendations the AECB has basically scoffed at.
Will the minister listen to Canadian workers who today called on him to respond publicly to the BEIR V report and the Gardner report, to cut drastically those limits for workers in the public immediately, and to convene a national public inquiry into the occupational and environmental safety of the uranium mining industry?
Is the minister prepared to take action on these very legitimate requests now?


Hon. Jake Epp (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, obviously the safety of workers and the safety of the Canadian public are paramount in the government's considerations. I will take a look at the requests that have been made which were conveyed by the hon. member.
AECB guidelines and regulations are very strictly enforced. If they need to be changed, that can be examined through the due process by which changes have been made in the past.


Raymond John Funk: Mr. Speaker, AECB's record in making changes and looking at evidence has been abysmal, going all the way back to
Oral Questions
what has happened at Elliot Lake through the years, and certainly what we saw happen at Wollaston Lake.
Does the minister intend to take seriously the demonstrated need for reduced radiation limits and an inquiry into the uranium industry now or after thousands more Canadians are needlessly exposed to dangerous radiation levels?


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: Mr. Speaker, comments like that by the hon. member are neither substantiated nor should they be made by a responsible member in the House of Commons.
First, Canadian standards meet world levels. Second, we are a member of the International Energy Agency which is headquartered in Vienna. We are members of that international organization.
In principle members of the NDP are opposed to nuclear energy. Second, including the hon. member, they want the jobs in their backyards, namely in uranium mining. Third, they get up on their hind legs when there are closures at Elliot Lake. They want all that, but in the meantime they also want to deprecate the position of nuclear energy.
Nuclear energy is a valid option for energy in Canada. It has to be met with the strictest regulations which are enforced by the AECB.
Maybe the hon. member should go back to his riding and talk to some of the workers about the jobs and the safety standards the AECB is enforcing. His charges today were unfounded and dangerous.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mrs. Gabrielle Bertrand (Brome-Missisquoi):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. When Romanian Bishop Laszlo Tokes met with the Prime Minister last week he asked that Canada send neutral observers to monitor the elections in his country on May 20 so as to make sure that they are carried out in a free and democratic manner. As a matter of fact, this request will be echoed tomorrow in a document bearing 5,000 signatures which is to be presented to the Prime Minister by Canada's Romanian communities.

March 27, 1990
Oral Questions
Would the minister tell us how the Canadian government intends to handle these requests?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, elections are to be held in Romania on May 20, and Romanian government officials have indicated that they are prepared to play host to foreign observers.

As the hon. member has indicated, there was a request made of the Prime Minister. As a result, Sir, of a meeting which you convened last week, there have been discussions among the three parties regarding the composition of an all-party delegation that might go to Romania in advance of the elections and stay there through the election period.
We think that would be a useful contribution that Canada could make and are looking forward to working with members of the House to ensure that that Canadian parliamentary delegation is able to function effectively in Romania.


FISHERIES
Hon. Roger C. Simmons (Burin -St. George's):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the right hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs. He will know that last Friday the Fisheries Council of Canada released a report prepared by the Oceans Institute on the subject of overfishing in the north west Atlantic.
The report said something that we have been saying for a long time, that the time has come for the Prime Minister to demonstrate some leadership on this particular issue, make it a priority, and take it to the highest diplomatic levels.
Does the right hon. minister accept one of the recommendations of the report, namely that the government ought to convene this year an international symposium in an effort to resolve the serious problem of foreign overfishing beyond the 200-mile limit?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, to give the whole story of the report of the Fisheries Council of Canada, it also commended the government for taking very seriously the
threats to the Canadian fishing industry that were posed by foreign overfishing.
The Prime Minister has been in touch with leaders of the European Community. My colleague, the Minister for International Trade, the former Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and I have been involved actively on the file. The Minister for International Trade and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans will be meeting with leaders of the European Community in Dublin, Ireland, next week.
With regard to the specific proposal, that is a matter on which we have already begun action. We have had discussions with other countries that are interested in the Law of the Sea with an eye to beginning the kind of preparations that may lead in an international regime that will achieve the results sought by the Fisheries Council.


Mr. Speaker:: The member for Burin-St. George's on a short supplemental.


Roger Simmons: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to see the minister has some familiarity with the report.
Would he comment on the suggestion in the report that some drastic measures are required to deal with this issue, including, if necessary, arrest and prosecution; in other words, unilateral jurisdiction of the 200-mile limit to give Canada functional control of the transboundary stocks? Does he agree with that recommendation and what in particular is the government doing to achieve that extension?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, in effect I have answered that question with regard to the discussions that Canada has initiated-and I underline "that Canada has initiated"- regarding extending international regimes that are in place.
The hon. member will know as well as anyone in the House that there is no point in Canada taking unilateral actions which will either have no standing in international law or will not have effect in the circumstances. What needs to be done, on the one hand, is to persuade the Europeans to begin to respect the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization regime and, on the other hand, to try to enlarge the effectiveness of international law. That is what we are doing.
March 27, 1990


RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Mr. John Manley (Ottawa South):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Acting Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister himself has said that research and development and the resulting innovation are the lifeblood of a successful economy and country. Yesterday in his absence his government defeated a motion that would have recognized the need for Canada to increase its level of research and development.
Will the government now admit that it has given up any hope of increasing Canada's research and development performance?


Hon. William C. Winegard (Minister for Science):: Mr. Speaker, the answer is no, we have not.


John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, the people of Canada and the scientific community have the right to expect the government to show leadership in scientific research and development. Yesterday the Minister for Science refused to repeat the Prime Minister's commitment to boost research and development to 2.5 per cent of the gross domestic product. Is the government prepared to show some leadership and, if so, what is the specific objective of its science policy?


William C. Winegard: Mr. Speaker, the concrete goal of our policy is really very clear. It is our intention-


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


William C. Winegard: It is our intention to make this country competitive, and to do that, you not only need a significant R and D effort, you also need to look at all those issues which make us non-competitive, something that previous governments never thought of.
We intend to look at these issues, sector by sector, industry by industry, and ask them what is wrong and why can't they increase their amount of R and D. When we have the answer to those issues, we will know what to do. We will not be just throwing money at the problem, which is always the hon. member's solution.
Government Orders


Mr. Speaker:: Orders of the day. The hon. House Leader.


Mr. Andre:: Mr. Speaker, I beg the indulgence of the House for a moment or two. It is the intention of the Prime Minister to lead off the debate, but the Prime Minister has been meeting with the Prime Minister of Poland who is visiting Ottawa this day. I am informed that the Prime Minister will be here in a moment or two. Perhaps we could suspend until the Prime Minister arrives.
I have just been informed the Prime Minister will be here in five minutes. With the indulgence of the House, perhaps we could suspend the sitting until he is here. Or I will answer any questions hon. members might have, in the meantime!


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: That is an invitation that may be taken up.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I am certainly prepared to recognize that the Prime Minister would want to lead off this important debate. Since we are waiting for a few minutes, I wonder if we could have unanimous consent of the House to continue with Question Period until the Prime Minister arrives.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. House Leader of the New Democratic Party will give us some assurance that these will be reasonable questions, of course, I have no objection.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I think I have a very constructive suggestion to make to the House. Maybe we could have a period of answers, good answers.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
REFERENCE TO SPECIAL COMMITTEE Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister) moved:
[Stage Direction]
March 27, 1990
Government Orders
That a Special Committee of the House of Commons to Study a Proposed Companion Resolution to the Meech Lake Accord be appointed to consider the document annexed hereto;
That 15 Members of the House of Commons be appointed to serve on the Special Committee, to be appointed no later than 3 sitting days after the adoption of this motion, upon report of the Striking Committee;
That the Committee have the power to appoint from among its members such sub-committees as may be deemed advisable and to delegate to such sub-committees all or any of its powers except the power to report directly to the House;
That the Committee have the power to sit during sittings and adjournments of the House of Commons;
That the Committee have the power to send for persons, papers and records, to examine witnesses and to print such papers and evidence from day to day as may be ordered by the Committee;
That the Committee be empowered to authorize television and radio broadcasting, as it deems appropriate, of any or all of its proceedings or the proceedings of its sub-committees, pursuant to the principles and practices governing the broadcasting of the House of Commons, when in the parliamentary precincts, and to the extent possible when outside these precincts;
That the Committee have the power to travel within Canada;
That the Committee submit its report no later than May 18,1990, provided that, if the House is not sitting, the report will be deemed submitted on the day such report is deposited with the Clerk of the House of Commons, in which case the Clerk shall immediately notify each Party Leader of the receipt of such report;
That substitutions be authorized according to normal procedures for Legislative Committees; and
That the quorum of the Committee be eight Members, whenever a vote, resolution or other decision is taken.
[Stage Direction]
The (Senate) (House of Commons) (Legislative Assembly) resolves that amendments to the Constitution of Canada be authorized to be made by proclamation issued by His Excellency the Governor General under the Great Seal of Canada in accordance with the schedule hereto entitled Constitution Amendments or any provision thereof, on the adoption of the resolutions required for such amendments, but only after the Constitution Amendment, 1987, comes into force.

[Stage Direction]
CONSTITUTION AMENDMENTS Constitution Act, 1867
1.	(1) Subsection 2(1) of the Constitution Act, 1867, as enacted by section 1 of the Constitution Amendment, 1987, is amended by adding the word "and" at the end of paragraph (b) thereof and by adding thereto the following paragraph:
"(c) the recognition that, within New Brunswick, the English linguistic community and the French linguistic community have equality of status and equal rights and privileges."
(2)	Section 2 of the said Act, as enacted by section 1 of the Constitution Amendment, 1987, is further amended by adding thereto, immediately after subsection (2) thereof, the following subsection:
"(2.1) The role of the Parliament and Government of Canada to promote the fundamental characteristic of Canada referred to in paragraph (l)(a) is affirmed."
(3)	Section 2 of the said Act, as enacted by section 1 of the Constitution Amendment, 1987, is further amended by adding thereto, immediately after subsection (3) thereof, the following subsection:
"(3.1) The role of the legislature and Government of New Brunswick to preserve and promote the equality of status and equal rights and privileges of the two linguistic communities referred to in paragraph (l)(c) is affirmed."
2.	Section 25 of the said Act, as enacted by section 2 of the Constitution Amendment, 1987, is amended by adding thereto, immediately after the word "province" wherever it occurs therein, the words "or territory".
3.	(1) Subsection 101C(1) of the said Act, as enacted by section 6 of the Constitution Amendment, 1987, is amended by adding thereto, immediately after the word "province" wherever it occurs therein, the words "or territory".
(2) Subsection 101C(4) of the said Act, as enacted by section 6 of the Constitution Amendment, 1987, is amended by adding thereto, immediately after the word "province" where it occurs therein, the words "or territory,".
Constitution Act, 1982
4.	Section 36 of the Constitution Act, 1982 is amended by adding thereto the following subsection:
"(3) The Senate shall, in 1991 and every five years thereafter, carry out an assessment of the results achieved in relation to the commitments of Parliament, the legislatures, the government of Canada and the provincial governments set out in this section and a report of every such assessment shall be presented to the conference next convened under section 148 of the Constitution Act, 1867 after the assessment is completed."
5.	Section 43 of the said Act is renumbered as subsection 43(1) and is further amended by adding thereto the following subsection:
"(2) An amendment to the Act of the Legislature of New Brunswick entitled An Act Recognizing the Equality of the Two Official Linguistic Communities in New Brunswick, chapter 0-1.1 of the Acts of New Brunswick, 1981, may be made by proclamation issued by the Governor General under the Great Seal of Canada only where so authorized by resolutions of the Senate and House of Commons and of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick."
March 27, 1990
[Stage Direction]
6.	The said Act is further amended by adding thereto, immediately after section 43 thereof, the following section:
"43.1 Notwithstanding paragraph 41(i), an amendment to the Constitution of Canada in relation to the establishment of new provinces in the territories may be made by proclamation issued by the Governor General under the Great Seal of Canada only where so authorized by resolutions of the Senate and House of Commons."
7.	The said Act is further amended by adding thereto, immediately after section 46 thereof, the following section:
"46.1 No measure relating to an amendment to the Constitution of Canada may be adopted by the House of Commons or the legislative assembly of a province pursuant to section 38, 41, 43, 43.1 or 46 unless public hearings in relation thereto are first held by the House of Commons or legislative assembly, as the case may be. "
8.	Subsection 47(1) of the said Act, as enacted by section 12 of the Constitution Amendment, 1987, is amended by adding thereto, immediately after the reference to section 43 where it occurs therein, the following: "or 43.1".
9.	(1) Subsection 50(2) of the said Act, as enacted by section 13 of the Constitution Amendment, 1987, is amended by adding thereto, immediately after paragraph (a) thereof, the following paragraph:
"(a.l) constitutional matters that directly affect the aboriginal peoples of Canada, including the identification and definition of the rights of those peoples; "
(2) Section 50 of the said Act, as enacted by section 13 of the tConstitution Amendment, 1987, is further amended by adding thereto the following subsections:
"(3) The matters referred to in paragraph (2)(b) do not include issues relating to jurisdiction and are not required to be included on the agenda of conferences convened under subsection (1) after the first such conference is convened.
(4)	The Prime Minister of Canada shall invite representatives of the aboriginal peoples of Canada, and elected representatives of the governments of the Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories, to participate in the discussions on the matters referred to in paragraph (2)(a.l) at the conferences convened under subsection (1)."
Constitution Amendment, 1987
10.	Section 16 of the Constitution Amendment, 1987 is amended by adding thereto, immediately after the reference to section 27 where it occurs therein, the following: "or 28".
Government Orders Citation
11.	This schedule or any provision thereof may, if proclaimed, be
cited as the Constitution Amendment, (year of proclamation) (number;
if necessary).
He said: Mr. Speaker, in my speech to the nation Thursday evening, I announced I would introduce a motion in the House of Commons to refer Premier McKenna's companion resolution to a special committee of the House. I rise today to fulfil that commitment.
The matter is urgent. There are now fewer than 90 days to ratify the Meech Lake Accord.
It is worth recalling that 10 provincial Premiers, representing four political parties, and the leaders of the three federal parties here in the House of Commons, endorsed the Meech Lake Accord; that eight provincial legislatures have already ratified the Accord and that this House of Commons has twice passed it with overwhelming majorities.
It may be helpful, Mr. Speaker, to briefly recall how we as Canadians and as Parliamentarians got to this particular point.
In 1980, Quebecers were promised a renewed federalism if they voted against sovereignty association in the referendum. In November 1981, the then Prime Minister and nine premiers signed a Constitutional Accord. Only Quebec was left out.
The Government of Quebec, as a consequence, did not participate actively in Constitutional reform and systematically invoked the notwithstanding clause to exempt all of its legislation from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In 1985 a new government of federalist persuasion was elected in Quebec, led by Mr. Robert Bourassa of the Liberal Party of Quebec. Its premier set out a position based on five moderate proposals which, he said, were a basis for Quebec's finally endorsing the Constitution.
In August, 1986, a few months later, the ten premiers met in Edmonton for their annual conference. They declared in a communique-and I quote, because it is of particular importance-that they:
- unanimously agreed that their top constitutional priority is to embark immediately upon a federal-provincial process, using Quebec's five proposals as a basis for discussion, to bring about Quebec's full and active participation in the Canadian Federation.
[Stage Direction]
March 27, 1990
Government Orders
The Edmonton Declaration then went on to say:
There was a consensus among the Premiers that then-
The reintegration of Quebec having been achieved.
-they will pursue further constitutional discussions on matters raised by some provinces, which will include, amongst other items, Senate reform, fisheries, property rights, etc.
Nine months later, after extensive negotiations and consultations, the First Ministers met at Meech Lake and worked out an Accord which was subsequently formalized on June 3, 1987, with the Langevin Agreement.
The Meech Lake Accord makes good the promise to Quebecers in 1980, delivers Quebec's full endorsement of the Constitution Act 1982, including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and fulfils the commitment made in Edmonton. Those are major achievements, Mr. Speaker. Those are historic achievements that have been endorsed by this House in the past and I trust will be endorsed by the entire country in the future.
The Accord recognizes what has been fact for centuries. Quebec is a distinct society "within Canada", as the Accord duly notes. Commentators often forget the words "within Canada".
Indeed, in 1865 in the Confederation debates, Sir John. A. himself referred to respect for Quebec's "individuality" as being a key component of acceptance of the BNA Act, which led to Confederation two years later. In fact, Sir John. A. made it very clear that if that individuality, call it distinctiveness, were not accepted and recognized by the other partners, there would be no confederation in 1867.
That is the manner in which the importance of the distinctiveness and the individuality was regarded by the Fathers of Confederation. Beyond that, Quebec's full and willing participation in the constitutional process makes other and quite necessary reforms possible. I think it is generally acknowledged that without Quebec at the table the constitutional reform process has been effectively paralysed.
The Accord brings Quebec back into the constitutional family and at the same time it strengthens the unity of all of Canada.
[Stage Direction]
With the Meech Lake provisions, there is only one class of province in Confederation; all provinces have an equal role with respect to constitutional amendments affecting key national institutions. Mr. Speaker, I find it fair and appropriate that provinces should be given a say in whom the federal government appoints to the Senate and the Supreme Court. The final decision remains with the federal government. Also, I think it reasonable that provinces have a say in the development of new national shared-cost programs in areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction. That seems quite normal to me. That seems quite normal to me. I think it makes good sense for government leaders to meet annually to find ways to strengthen our economy and to increase prosperity for all Canadians. Co-operative federalism, not confrontational federalism, is the only way our large, diverse country is going to make its way in a rapidly integrating, highly competitive, opportunity-filled world. The Meech Lake Accord is indispensable to our ongoing unity and strength.
Mr. Speaker, especially in light of the developments since, it is worth recalling the immense joy we all felt on June 3,1987, the day that the ten provincial premiers and I reached unanimous agreement on the Meech Lake Accord.
[Stage Direction]
At the signing ceremony in Ottawa Premier Vander Zalm said:
Today, as Canadians around this table, there are no losers.
Instead, Canada is a winner.
Premier Buchanan stated:
This Accord -has healed a wound, it has brought Canada to
whole nationhood, to whole maturity.
Noting that the Accord began with the Edmonton Declaration in 1986, Premier Getty said:
- throughout this journey, Alberta's objective- has been a strong
Canada - made up of a partnership of strong equal provinces with a
strong federal government.
Premier Pawley of Manitoba, stressing the unifying value of the Accord, said:
Are there risks in what we have undertaken? Yes, of course. Are
those risks worth our taking? Yes, by all means, they are.
March 27, 1990
[Stage Direction]


For his part, Premier Bourassa declared: "It is with great pride as a Quebecer and as a Canadian that I express my deep satisfaction today with Quebec's return to the Canadian Constitution."
Nor was the mood of elation and hope restricted to First Ministers. I remember the reaction in the House of Commons very well. The headlines echoed the mood of those optimistic days. Le Devoir's headline was "Canada has said yes to Quebec"; "A real tour de force" according to Le Droit; "Equal partners at last" said the Calgary Herald; "The welcome pact" was how the Globe and Mail described it. The joy felt across Canada sprang from a simple emotion-love of country, love of Canada.
The Meech Lake Accord is the product of 19 years of comprehensive constitutional review and of extensive commentary in learned journals and the media. But in the three years since the Accord was signed, three provincial governments, all original signatories of the Accord, have changed and their successors have raised concerns about it. And, regrettably, the complexity of the Accord has been reduced to symbols and code words that have distorted its intent as an instrument for unity.
Premier McKenna is saying that the Meech Lake Accord can be improved by adding to it and without subtracting from it. He is the first of the dissenting Premiers to recognize that Meech Lake cannot be reopened without losing the achievements and progress of the last three years in terms of consensus-building and momentum on one of our gravest constitutional problems.
[Stage Direction]
By choosing to table a companion resolution Premier McKenna is acknowledging that Meech Lake cannot be opened and amended directly because to do so would mean eleven legislatures starting over from the beginning.
Premier McKenna's initiative endorses the major elements of the Meech Lake Accord. It recognizes that the distinct society clause works with and not against the Charter. It acknowledges that no new powers are conferred by recognizing the role of the National Assembly of Quebec in promoting Quebec's distinct identity.
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It supports the spending power clause by providing an appropriate balance in a federal system. But it also has the virtue of moving the debate beyond symbols to ways of meeting the remaining concerns of Canadians.
By ensuring that each of the elements in his resolution can be judged on its own merits and that amendments can be proclaimed when the necessary level of consent has been reached, Premier McKenna has introduced welcome flexibility on the substance of the issue.
In leaving open the timing of the eventual proclamation of amendments, he has introduced as well flexibility on procedures, subject to the proviso that the Meech Lake Accord would have to be part of the Constitution before additional amendments to the Constitution were made.
By leaving open the possibility that other amendments could be added to the companion resolution and that existing provisions could be altered or even deleted, Premier McKenna has provided still another element of flexibility.
We, in Parliament, in convening national public hearings on Premier McKenna's companion resolution by a Special Committee of the House of Commons, will introduce a further element of flexibility.
This differs from the process followed to achieve the amendment on aboriginal rights in 1983 and the Meech Lake Accord in 1987, whereby governments concluded an executive agreement and agreed to have it adopted, as is, by their respective legislatures.
Parliament will not be asked to debate or commit itself to the text, or an amended version of it, until the people themselves have had a chance to speak to the issues involved and the committee has reported.
Today's motion therefore triggers an important stage of consultation among Canadians. Further action, if appropriate, however will be specifically referred to Parliament pursuant to a decision made at that time.
[Stage Direction]
Mr. Speaker, in referring the New Brunswick resolution to a special committee, the House of Commons is inviting Manitoba's leaders to build on Premier McKenna's initiative set out in the second, companion resolution. We are inviting Premier Wells to do so as well-to come before the Parliamentary Committee and to put forward his constitutional proposals for consideration. Mr. Speaker, this would be a positive, constructive way
[Stage Direction]
March 27, 1990
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for Premier Wells to put himself in the same position as Premier McKenna is. We make this request because it is not our intent to isolate any province, be it Newfoundland or Quebec. The isolation of a province once in the life of a nation is once too often.
The special committee we propose to be created might wish to consider carefully, proposals put forward by Manitoba and Newfoundland to add a "Canada Clause" to the Constitution which would set out the key elements of our national identity, without deleting any of the elements already entrenched in the 1982 Constitution or to be entrenched by Meech Lake in interpretive clauses. Hon. members will recall that a constitutional preamble had been examined in 1980, but that it was viewed as premature, in the absence of a full consensus on constitutional renewal. Instead, two elements of it-aboriginal rights and the multicultural heritage of Canadians- were included as constitutional interpretive clauses in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but Canada's linguistic duality and Quebec's distinct society were left out.
The resolution that I propose be referred to a special committee is sensitive to the fact that a complex accord was developed and approved by Parliament and eight legislatures, including the National Assembly. It recognizes that if Quebec's fundamental needs are set aside, the whole Accord will collapse. In such circumstances, Canada's constitutional development, including Senate reform, will stop and the issue of Quebec's constitutional isolation will remain.
[Stage Direction]
Premier McKenna, in drawing on the public hearings across Canada and the concerns raised by Canadians, has restricted himself to matters which, in his judgment, might attract a national consensus, with support in all regions.
Where, in his view, it is clear that there is a strong national concern, but that a broadly-based national consensus on an idea has not yet emerged, he has called for a guarantee that the issue be addressed during the next round of constitutional negotiations. It is for that reason that he wishes to place aboriginal constitutional
issues on the permanent agenda of the First Ministers' Conference on the Constitution.
The agenda included in Meech Lake already covers Senate reform. In fact, at the last First Ministers' Conference in November, it was agreed that a First Ministers' Conference on Senate Reform would be held in western Canada in November of this coming year. As Prime Minister of Canada, I have stated that I would table at that conference a comprehensive proposal for an elected Senate on November 1, next in western Canada.
Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Mulroney:: For its part, the Government of Canada also wants to make progress on aboriginal issues, as set out in the Throne Speech of April 3, 1989.
In this context, I should also remind the House that the government announced in the same Speech from the Throne that it would attach priority to linguistic rights and to ways to strengthen the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as Senate reform and aboriginal rights, after proclamation of the Meech Lake Accord.
The government will be looking to the proposed Special Committee of the House of Commons for advice on how and when these matters should be addressed. In short, while the companion resolution is intended to address some immediate constitutional issues in the context of the Meech Lake Accord, it is not intended to resolve all of Canada's outstanding constitutional questions here and now and for all time. This, I think, is one of its strengths.
If the Fathers of Confederation had set as rigorous tests of perfection for Confederation as are now being set by some for Meech Lake, the noble idea of Canada would never have seen the light of day.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: It was only because the Fathers of Confederation recognized their own imperfections, respected each other's differences and acknowledged the fragility of their endeavour that Canada emerged through patient and generous compromise into greatness, and it is only in that spirit that Canada will continue to grow and prosper into the next century as a strong and united nation.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!
March 27, 1990


Martin Brian Mulroney: Canada has always been known as a nation of reasonableness and compromise, of mutual respect and understanding. Canada has especially been known as a nation whose people and whose institutions have given sensible meaning and compassionate interpretation to all of the legal underpinnings of our democracy.
Why should we change today? It is the people of Canada who have given sense, leadership and vision to this country for 123 years, and if we listen and we maintain that elevated view of nationhood, it will be the same for another 123 years, and then on into the future.

Premier McKenna, in proposing adoption of the Meech Lake Accord and a companion resolution to be proclaimed subsequently, is adhering to the Edmonton Declaration of 1986 in which the Premiers agreed unanimously that Quebec's return to the fold would be the first constitutional priority. Premiers agreed then that this overriding priority should be unencumbered by other issues but that once this question was resolved, other issues would be promptly addressed.
Simply put, the New Brunswick resolution is intended to complete Round 1 so that we can get on with Round 2. It was spelled out in the decision made by all provincial premiers at Edmonton in 1986 and the Meech Lake Accord is consonant with their request. The resolution is not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. The dialogue with Canadians through a special committee of the House of Commons will allow us all to reassure ourselves that the Constitution will be an instrument of unity and, hopefully, a true reflection of our values.
The government will obviously wish to receive advice from the Committee not only on the content of the companion resolution but also on the timing of the adoption of amendments contained in it. The proclamation of the Meech Lake Accord is not contingent on the proclamation of the companion amendments, but Premier McKenna has said that there will have to be significant support for his companion resolution before he can pass Meech Lake. The work of the Committee will be particularly important in developing both a broadly based national consensus on the amendments and popular support for them.
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For this reason, we propose that the committee be empowered to travel within the time constraints for its report, consistent with the achievement of broad support. Creating such a dynamic is the best guarantee that amendments will, indeed, be made. But let us not lose sight of the most crucial issue, the one that was at the heart of the Edmonton Declaration, the one that was at the heart of all major interventions on the floor of this House of Commons, that the Meech Lake Accord must be proclaimed by June 23 or it will die.
We are at a critical juncture in Canadian history. For Canada, unity is an act of national will and purpose. Our unity was not created in violence against a common enemy, nor were the ties that bind us forged in the fires of revolution or civil war. In building this extraordinary country, man was not our constant challenge, but nature was.
Canada's unity deepened as generations of Canadians steadily surmounted difficulties of climate, geography and isolation to build a modem, prosperous and compassionate country that spanned the continent.
This time, the challenge is different. This time the danger comes not from an unforgiving climate, nor from a hostile world. This time the danger comes from within, from disagreement within our own hearts on how to make the extraordinary land that providence has given us better. It is worsened by a growing attitude of selfishness that is alien to our national character and mimical to our national interests.
The solution lies in our heads in recognizing the gravity of our dilemma, and in our hearts in drawing on the national values of understanding and fairness with which previous generations have built this country with their very hands.
The destiny of Canada is now in our hands. Let us recognize the dangers. Let us act in a spirit of generosity and tolerance. Let us remain true to the values of generations past. Let us guarantee that legacy for generations to come.
Let us make Canada one Canada, whole and entire again.

March 27, 1990
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The government and all Canadians everywhere will eagerly await the recommendations of the committee, and wish them well in their deliberations across the nation because the government genuinely believes that their option is an important one in bringing about the final resolution of making Canada one Canada with all provinces, 10 out of 10, as a firm and inalienable part of our national identity once and for all.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Hon. Herb Gray (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, for several months Canadians have watched as their political leaders have tried to deal with the difficult question of how to resolve the current impasse over constitutional change. Steps are now being taken by provincial governments and by the federal government which may lead to a solution.

First we had proposals from Premiers McKenna and Wells, followed by study groups set up by the Western Premiers, and finally, the tabling today of Premier McKenna's resolution in the House of Commons for consideration by a special committee.

We believe that constitutional change of a kind that is broadly acceptable to Canadians can only be achieved through dialogue aimed at reaching the widest possible consensus. We support efforts to resolve this situation through constructive dialogue. Therefore we will participate fully and actively in the committee that has been proposed.
We welcome the initiative of Premier McKenna of New Brunswick to advance the constitutional discussions. While it is not fully clear at this time whether or not Premier McKenna's proposal for a companion resolution will receive sufficient provincial as well as federal backing, I believe it is a constructive step.
At the same time I believe the proposed committee must also be a vehicle for studying other proposals for breaking the constitutional impasse. An example of what I mean is the proposal of Premier Wells of Newfoundland. For this reason I welcome yesterday's letter from the government House leader to our House leader in which he states:
The companion resolution sets out a number of proposed
amendments to the Constitution of Canada. It can be amended,
added to and/or subtracted from. In light of the above, I see no
constraint on any constitutional issue being raised and discussed by
the Committee.
We expect this to be the guideline for the Conservative majority and all the members of this committee.

However, Mr. Speaker, I deplore the fact that the Prime Minister did not act sooner to seek a solution. As I said before, the fact that he is now intervening in extremis may have disastrous consequences for constitutional reform. The proposals drafted by the Premier of New Brunswick might provide the basis for an expanded accord. With Mr. McKenna, I believe that many Canadians are concerned about the lack of flexibility in the constitutional debate we have had so far. Mr. McKenna's proposal is basically very close to the amendments to the 1987 Constitutional Accord proposed by the Liberals in Parliament. I think it is unfortunate the government did not accept those amendments.
Mr. Speaker, I say this because at the time, we tabled several amendments, aimed at strengthening and improving the accord, which dealt with many of the issues raised by Premier McKenna, including protecting women's rights, protecting and expanding Native rights, the creation of new provinces and regional equality, while seeking broader public consultation in the constitutional reform process.

We know that Premier McKenna does not consider his companion resolution to be a seamless web, and in fact expects further proposals. One important area which many Canadians would like to see addressed, and which we raised in our amendments is the matter of Senate reform. In that connection we specifically called for an elected Senate.
I believe that if the Prime Minister had accepted our amendments in 1987, we might well not be facing the current constitutional impasse.
We agree with the motion to set up the special committee. However, in spite of the Prime Minister's speech today there are still issues connected with the motion on which further and more complete answers are likely to be sought by Canadians, issues about which Canadians have a right to receive clear explanations of the thinking and the intentions of the Prime Minister. Not least among them is the process by which any final companion resolution produced by the committee and
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subsequently approved by this House could become part of our Constitution.
As the Prime Minister knows, there can be no constitutional amendment unless, in addition to being adopted by this House and by the provinces, the proposal is also considered by the Senate. Whatever the Prime Minister's views may be about the Senate, he cannot ignore its role in the process of constitutional amendment, especially if it is his desire to resolve more quickly the present impasse.
In short, I am saying it would be helpful if the Prime Minister spelled out more precisely than he has done today for Canadians the actual process and outcome of it that he has in mind. For example, he has said that he does not agree with my suggestion to call an immediate meeting of himself and all the premiers to discuss possible solutions to the impasse. Yet, as we all know, the Constitution makes it clear that the provinces, and therefore their premiers, have a pivotal role to play in most constitutional amendments.
Are we to take it that if there is passage by this House of a companion resolution, which may or may not be the same as that proposed by Premier McKenna, that the Prime Minister will then convene the premiers to discuss it? Do we have a commitment by the Prime Minister that he will in fact present such a resolution to the premiers and ask them to have it approved by their legislatures? What is the timeframe he has in mind for all this? How does he fit this timeframe into the deadline for the 1987 constitutional amendment which, as he has reminded us in his speech, is June 23 of this year?
Mr. Speaker, many Canadians who heard the Prime Minister's speech last week had the impression that he agreed with Mr. McKenna's proposals. Subsequently, the Prime Minister stated that tabling the McKenna proposals in the House did not mean that he agreed with and endorsed those proposals.
[English ]
As the Prime Minister said in his televised speech: "I believe it is possible to extend a hand to Canadians who feel they were overlooked by the Meech Lake Accord"
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and, with the process now before us, this House "can by such an initiative signal its desire to reach out to all Canadians to allay any concerns they may still have about the Accord".
Also in his televised speech last Thursday night, the Prime Minister stated that the 1987 Accord is "not perfect". Canadians will therefore expect the Prime Minister to inform the House and the proposed committee as to how he wants to respond to the concerns he agrees do exist.
We recognize that all of the premiers have not given strongly positive responses to Premier McKenna's proposals. However, at this stage, we continue to believe that we should give the proposed committee a chance to try to stimulate more dialogue and possible consensus on this crucial matter.
It is important to keep in mind that, as Canadians, we have achieved our goals of nation building only through dialogue leading to compromise and consensus.
The proposals before us today give us an opportunity to take a very positive step toward achieving greater national unity through the exercise of tolerance, goodwill and generosity. Therefore it is important that the Prime Minister undertake a dialogue between himself and all the premiers, but in particular with those who appear to be furthest apart, with the aim of achieving consensus.
I sincerely hope that the Prime Minister and the premiers of all the provinces will carry out such discussions in the spirit of compromise and conciliation which I believe is truly necessary.
As I have said, it is time to roll up our sleeves and get down to the business of negotiating constitutional change to make this country stronger and more united.
Canadians from all across this country must be active participants in the dialogue. We need the people of Quebec, just as we need the people of Atlantic Canada, just as we need the people of Ontario, of western Canada and of the north. They are all needed and valuable.
Canada is more than the sum of its parts. I believe Canada is worth preserving. I believe Canada must be preserved.

March 27, 1990
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We have a multicultural country, a country with two official languages, a country where all Canadians regardless of their backgrounds or origins, are free to pursue their own goals and seek their own fulfilment.

We are all Canadians, and the House of Commons brings together people from all parts of this country, English-speaking and French-speaking, people of various origins, and we must take this opportunity to build a country that reflects our common values.

As a nation, we have been able to respect one another's differences. Our remarkable tradition of tolerance and generosity is widely recognized around the world. It is part of what makes us who we are and gives us a foundation of mutual respect and understanding which is essential for building a stronger and a more united Canada.
The current impasse is no less important and no less real than other great challenges we have faced in the past.
Once again, we in this House, elected representatives from all across Canada, are now being asked to help meet this challenge. I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that I and my colleagues are committed to preserving this great country and strengthening our national unity.
The work of the proposed committee is important but, frankly, it is up to the government to give its work meaning and value. What the government does will be the test of the value of what this committee will accomplish.
All Canadians, particularly the premiers and the Prime Minister, must approach this challenge in the same spirit in which this country was founded. If we work together in this spirit-one of tolerance, goodwill and generosity-I am optimistic that we will meet the current challenge. I am optimistic that we will succeed. It is something that we must do.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Ms. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on the motion put forward by the government on the establishment of a committee to discuss the proposals put forward by Premier McKenna of New Brunswick on the Constitution.
It is a motion that I hope will finally lead to a constitutional process wherein the voices of Canadians can be heard and wherein those voices will count. To date, the people of Canada have too often felt excluded from this process. They have felt that constitutional matters were a dialogue among politicians rather than a dialogue among Canadians about the foundation of their country. Certainly Canadians cannot feel that their views are represented if they sense that their voices are not being heard.

First of all I would like to discuss the process followed so far and the results obtained. I will then talk about what we must accomplish in the coming months. In concluding, I would like to define the Canada we want to create for our children. Our party does not take the present situation lightly. It is true that progress was made last week, but the impasse continues. Every day, divisions are aggravated and antagonism is reinforced.
Mr. Speaker, the New Democrats do not believe that our country can adopt a Constitution that excludes Quebec. I also believe that our country cannot adopt a Constitution that fails to guarantee the rights of so many people across this country.
As I said before, Confederation will not be complete until the rights of women, native people and Northern residents have been recognized.
That is why, both personally and on behalf of my party, I am committed to keep working until we are out of the present impasse.

The Prime Minister said five days ago that he believes that Canadians want to participate themselves in the resolution of this great national issue. Exactly! I believe that if the Prime Minister had said those words two years ago, we would not be in the situation that we are in today.
Consistently, Canadians have felt, as I have said, excluded from the process and that their voices have not been listened to. Now we are engaged in an eleventh-hour attempt to salvage the process, a process that should have been instituted before.
A document was proposed which has profound implications for our country. From the beginning the Prime

March 27, 1990

Minister insisted that not one change could be made to that agreement, not one amendment would be accepted.
There were no public consultations prior to the signing of the Meech Lake Accord. There was no draft Accord put before the Canadian people for discussion. There was no effort to include the representatives of women, of aboriginal people, of ethnic minorities in the formulation of the Accord.
Government leaders from the Yukon and the Northwest Territories were literally left standing out on the sidewalk in front of the Langevin Block, while inside the premiers discussed the future of the north.
The consultation process which followed the signing of the Accord was not much better. A parliamentary committee was restricted to hearings in Ottawa for 15 days in the month of August. Canadians remained isolated from the dialogue and uninformed about the actual contents of the Accord.
Finally, on September 9, 1987, the final report was presented. Many excellent recommendations came from even those limited hearings. As a result, there were recommendations to improve and strengthen the accord.
The New Democratic Party put forward three amendments. One was to deal with the concerns of the northern territories. One was to deal with the concerns of aboriginal people. The third was to ensure equality rights for women. These amendments were rejected by the Prime Minister and his government. The amendments we proposed at that time did not detract from the five conditions that Quebec had put forward, but rather built upon them.
It is this fundamental disregard for the legitimate concerns of Canadians that has led the country to the very serious situation we are in right now. It is a situation that the Prime Minister helped to create. Therefore it is a situation that the Prime Minister must help to resolve.

A committee has been struck, and its mandate is to consider Premier McKenna's proposal. As Mr. McKenna said himself, this proposal is merely the beginning. The debate will not be restricted to his list of suggestions.
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We hope this is the spirit in which the committee will consider all reasonable suggestions and all recommendations it receives.
I also hope the Prime Minister is sincere when he suggests it is possible to redress the injustice to those who, for the time being, have been excluded. Obviously, conducting hearings is not enough. We must also listen and act accordingly. This government cannot afford to ignore the committee's recommendations.

In the government's motion, and in adopting the language of the McKenna proposal, it seems to indicate that any changes or additions would not happen until after the passage of the Meech Lake Accord. The Prime Minister confirmed that in his remarks today. This language obviously suggests that an agreement could not be achieved before or at the same time that Meech Lake might be ratified. Yet we are using terms such as "parallel accord". Parallel accord by its very definition would seem to mean an accord that goes alongside of the existing accord, not long after it.
Some people are referring to a "companion accord". To most people this would mean an accord which would accompany the existing Accord, not follow in some indeterminate time in the future.
I suggest to the House that we must be aiming for the best case scenario, not accepting a second or a third option before we have even begun.
If it is possible for the government on recommendation of this committee to devise a plan for implementation of a sound parallel or companion accord, which does not undermine the five conditions of Quebec, then surely we should leave the timing of that open. Let us not draw lines in the sand, but instead keep open minds and an open process.
We all want to work as quickly as possible to ensure the entry of Quebec into the Constitution, and ensure a constitution in which all of the people of Canada feel they belong.

The New Democratic Party believes in the importance of communities. It believes in equality. It believes in economic and social justice. We want our Constitution to reflect those values. It is because we believe in the importance of communities that we understand the distinct identity of Quebec. For years, our party has

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recognized Quebec's distinct identity. It is essential, because Quebecers have the right to protect their language and their culture. That is why we support Quebec's five conditions, and that is why we shall go on supporting them.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Quebecers have realized, thanks to the work of people like Therese Casgrain, Robert Cliche, Ed Broadbent and now the hon. member for Chambly, our new Quebec member, that we share the values that Quebecers hold dear. We believe in social and economic justice.

Because of our belief in equality, and social and economic justice, we also assert that the rights of other communities in Canada must be recognized in the Constitution. A constitutional agreement which fails to address adequately the rights of women, aboriginal peoples, multicultural groups and northerners does not reflect our vision of Canada.
We are particularly concerned about this, quite frankly, because of the attitude that this government has shown in the treatment of those groups, an attitude that has varied from indifference to contempt. For example, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, had its budget cut in half. Eighty-five women's centres across the country have been closed by this government's budget. Post-secondary funding for aboriginal people has been limited. Aboriginal communications programs have been devastated by budget cuts. The Assembly of First Nations, a key representative for the aboriginal community, has had its entire Secretary of State funding cut.
It is no wonder that these communities feel threatened. It is no wonder that they do not trust the government. It is no wonder that they seek constitutional guarantees.
The New Democratic Party is going to work in this committee. We are going to speak out in the House. We are going to fight to ensure that these Canadians get those guarantees.
We also look forward to addressing the concerns of westerners, Canadians from the Atlantic provinces and ethnic and visible minority Canadians in committee. With western Canadians, there are very real concerns about the institutions of Parliament and that they do not provide adequate representation from the regions. With
Atlantic Canadians, there are real concerns about justice and equity in the delivery of national social and economic programs.
As strong supporters of minority rights and the multicultural character of Canada, we will be raising, with Canada's cultural communities, their concerns and listening to their aspirations.
New Democrats believe that the rights of one community do not compete with another community; they complement each other. Just as Canada belongs to the people of Alberta, it belongs to the people of Quebec. Just as Canada belongs to immigrants, it belongs to aboriginal people. Just as Canada belongs to men, it belongs to women.
Canada belongs to all of us. It is a part of all of us. Our Constitution must do nothing less than reflect that reality.

In recent months, we have seen a growing wave of intolerance moving across this country. I find this disturbing and ugly, and the ugliness troubles me. The reasons behind this intolerance are many and varied. I believe one of the main reasons is a feeling of financial insecurity shared by many people across this country. Our responsibility as politicians is to help increase our understanding of others, both as individuals and as a community.
People in this country tend to forget their history, which prevents us from celebrating our successes or understanding the injustice committed against our Native people, against Quebec and against ethnic communities.

The political parties and political leaders of Canada have a crucial role to play in Canadians getting to know their history and one another. We have a crucial role, not just in moving from intolerance to tolerance, but to understanding and friendship.
One way of doing this is through the strengthening of our cultural institutions and programs. Now is not the time to destroy the CBC, as the government seems intent on doing. It is not the time to cut youth exchange programs, but to expand them. It is not the time to destroy the rail link that links this country. The value of friendship between our language and cultural communi-
March 27, 1990

ties cannot be understated. The diversity of our country enriches us all.
While we celebrate that diversity, we also need to recognize that we share a great deal. We have common problems, hopes, and aspirations and we must come together to meet the common challenges ahead.
The issue confronting us is not who loves Canada or who loves Canada more. It is about what kind of Canada we want to create. It is about creating a Canada of equality, harmony, and social and economic justice. Writing a constitution that reflects our values and corrects our historical injustices is a crucial element in the creation of that kind of Canada. It is, however, but one element and I say to the House today that, while we apply ourselves to this task of constitutional reform, we must work diligently with this committee to see if we can break this impasse. With the political will, I am optimistic that we can do that. With leadership by the government and by all parties, we can break this impasse.
We must not at the same time lose sight of other issues. We must put an end to poverty in Canada, put an end to food banks and soup kitchens. We must continue to work for real economic justice, jobs for all Canadians and fair taxation, to put an end to the violence against women, and for international development and peace. Finally, we must join together to ensure that the world we leave our children is a clean world and an environmentally sound world.
In my support of the Prime Minister's motion, I say to the House, let us write a constitution which reflects what Canada is all about. Let us move on to create a united Canada, a caring and compassionate Canada, a Canada for all Canadians.


Mr. Hawkes:: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry I have not had a chance to talk with my colleague across the way. It has been a pattern in many of our debates, including opposition days and many others recently, that when we come to the 20-minute speeches parties or individuals, if they would like, could indeed split their speech between two members for 10 minutes each, with a similar arrangement for the question and comment period which follows.
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I wondered if there might be a disposition in the House to follow that pattern. Therefore, each party, depending on their speaker, would be free to go the full 20 minutes or to split it between two people. If, indeed, there is that predisposition then our first two speakers would do the splitting.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, we would certainly concur with that suggestion since we started that some years ago. I would like to make sure that members splitting their times into two 10-minute speeches followed by five-minute questions would give notice when they start their speeches so that the Chair and everyone in the House knows that indeed we are dealing with a member who is splitting his time.


Mr. Speaker:: Agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: Mr. Speaker, of course, as-


Mr. Speaker:: In response to the comment made by the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier, could the Minister tell us whether he intends to speak for 10 or 20 minutes?


Bernard Valcourt: It is an interesting topic that could be discussed for hours, but I will only take 10 minutes, Mr. Speaker.
Of course, as Member for Madawaska-Victoria, in New Brunswick, as a member of the Acadian community in that province, as a francophone committed to promoting the growth and development of official language communities in this country and as a private citizen who favours a Constitution maintaining a balance between the need for a strong national government and the full participation of federal partners in national affairs, I am pleased today to support the motion before the House creating a special committee to return to the public domain the discussion generated by the initiative taken last week by New Brunswick's Premier, Mr. McKenna.
Mr. Speaker, I listened earlier when the Prime Minister referred to the current concern of so many Canadians now, including many young Canadian men and women. I was in the "Republic of Madawaska" yesterday, in Edmundston, Brayons country, and a 14-year-old girl told me about an assignment they had in their school on the issue of bilingualism, and she showed me her

March 27, 1990
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presentation. That child, a 14-year-old girl, was concerned with her country's fate. It is my belief that Canadian men and women are seriously worried.
When the Prime Minister earlier referred to this country's history, anyone looking at Canada's constitutional history will reach some inescapable conclusions. One of them is that our constitutional process is always based on political compromise. How could it be otherwise, in a country as large as ours, having to reconcile so many regions whose inhabitants trace their roots to so many different places? Our cultural and sociological heritage is a reflection and a proof of that diversity.
Now Canada was born out of political compromise, and at each and every turn compromise has been the basis of constitutional progress. Another conclusion to be derived from our constitutional history is that at no point have we succeeded in one fell swoop to set up a constitutional order or set of provisions that would automatically solve all the problem arising out of this country's development and progress. That historical reality must be kept in mind. It has never occurred that a cure-all was found. And some who are commenting on the situation today would have us in this generation solve all the problems outright, set up a perfect order.
As a number of members have indicated, Meech Lake is not a perfect document, but it is a serious, just and fair attempt at trying to ensure this country's continuance.
If we ignore Canada's historical reality, if we claim that everything has to be perfect, we face the danger that no further progress could be made for lack of a, perfect solution. But even if there is no perfect solution, clearly it is an ideal that we must constantly pursue. The constitutional history of Canada also reveals that the latter conclusion has a corollary, namely that failing to react to a problem of whatever nature inextricably leads to inflexibility, intolerance and confrontation between the federal partners. Recent Canadian history has confirmed that fact and it would be a grave mistake on our part to ignore this.
Like many Canadians, I found particularly unfortunate and dangerous the fact that unanimity was not achieved during the constitutional reform of 1982. What should have been acclaimed at the time as an important constitutional accomplishment, that is to say the repatriation of the Constitution as well as the adoption of an amending formula and of a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, will have been tarnished by the repudiation of that initiative by the Quebec Legislative Assembly. And that refusal on the part of Quebec to adhere to the constitutional pact reminded me of the difficult episodes of our constitutional development since the failure of the Victoria Conference in 1971. It also reminded me of the fact that the inability of the members of our Confederation to come to a compromise regarding the constitutional claims of Quebec over a period of almost 20 years, has nearly led to Canada breaking apart. However, the solemn promise of renewed federalism made to Quebecers in 1980 could not be kept. We can not lose sight of that, Mr. Speaker, because it is the backdrop of the Meech Lake Accord. The premiers of all the provinces had come to an agreement in 1986; that was not at our instigation. They nevertheless met on their own initiative to give themselves a mandate and to say:"Our priority is the repatriation of Quebec in the constitutional fold."
And today, because in 1982 we failed to reach a general consensus, we are blamed for taking care of Quebec only. To those who believe that this is a question for Quebec alone I say: certainly not. We are not talking about Quebec, we are talking about Canada. And Canada is Quebec, is New Brunswick, is Newfoundland, is Prince Edward Island, is all the provinces and territories. There are those who would like to see Quebec join, enter Confederation, but without conditions. Some say: nobody is against accepting Quebec, they may come! But they would like it to crawl through the back door. However, Quebec wants to join with dignity and, according to Robert Bourassa, this is what the Meech Lake Accord does.


Some hon. members:: Hear, Hear.


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, the Meech Lake Accord is an accomplishment which in my view is of the utmost importance. The world has witnessed from time immemorial the fearful effects of linguistic and ethnic tensions which can easily paralyse a nation and create a climate in which economic and social development is rapidly jeopardized. Therefore I believe that we must not permit any
March 27, 1990

complacency with respect to constitutional issues and the issue before us today.
The Prime Minister is asking members of this House in endorsing this motion to bring together Canadians who believe that for one reason or another their concerns have not been addressed. I think Premier McKenna's initiative will create the occasion for Canadians to come forth and see what Meech is really all about. It does not take rights away from any Canadian. No rights of any Canadian are taken away. Canadians will have an occasion to air their views about the kind of Canada we want. That is what is at the foundation of this Canada. If we want to save this country this initiative is important.
I understand my 10 minutes are up. Therefore, I move:
That the House continue to sit beyond the ordinary hour of daily adjournment for the purpose of continuing consideration of Government Order No. 4, a motion respecting the referral to a special committee of New Brunswick's proposed constitutional amendments.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: All those members who object to the motion please rise in their places.
And fewer than 15 members having risen:
[Translation)


Mr. Speaker:: Less than 15 members having risen, pursuant to Standing Order 26(2), I declare the motion carried.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Hon. Kim Campbell (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, as you will be aware and my colleagues opposite will be aware, I will speak for 10 minutes. I am just going to synchronize my watch with theirs.
I rise today to express my support for the motion before this House. The motion calls for the creation of a special committee of the House to study a proposed companion resolution to the Meech Lake Accord.
Our purpose, of course, is to contribute to a process that we hope will enable the Meech Lake Accord to be
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ratified by all governments in Canada to break what has been called a constitutional logjam.
On March 21, Premier Frank McKenna of New Brunswick tabled what he called a companion resolution. Contained in this resolution are proposals that would add to but not subtract from the Meech Lake Accord.
There were 11 parties to the Meech Lake Accord and there are those in the House who have raised the question of why their amendments to the Meech Lake Accord were not accepted at earlier times.
No single party can amend an accord between 11 parties unilaterally. This is something that Premier McKenna has recognized in the form in which he has put his companion resolution and that is what he suggests are additions to or clarifications to the accord that will make it possible procedurally for the accord to become law, but also to reassure those with concerns and would like clarification about its provisions.
The Constitution is the basic social contract of our country. It defines the terms of our living together and establishes the ideals we want to uphold together. It tells the world how we see ourselves. But a constitution, as the Prime Minister said in this House during the Meech Lake debate, is more than words on paper. It has to reflect the reality of the country or it simply will not work. Nor is the Constitution to be carved in stone for all time. It must be susceptible to amendment to reflect the evolution of a society and their people.
For example, the Constitution Act, 1867 outlines the relationship between governments in our federal system. The 1982 Act provides an amending formula and entrenches rights and freedoms in our basic national law.

The Meech Lake Accord will fill in a serious gap because it will mean that Quebec accepts willingly our Constitution. The Accord takes into account some basic realities of our country:
-Quebec constitutes a distinct society within a country where all provinces are equal.
-The linguistic duality of our two founding nations, the French and the English, constitutes a basic caracter-istic of our country.

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The Meech Lake Accord will bring Quebec back into the Constitutional fold under very acceptable terms.
Now, Quebec has willingly accepted the Constitution. It has recognized the legitimacy of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
But the process will go beyond that. Other Constitutional negotiations will take place, but before that, the present debate must come to an end.
Why, at this very moment, is the Meech Lake Accord of such great importance for the history of Canada?
In 1984, Canadians gave Prime Minister Mulroney a mandate to make sure that Quebec would sign the Constitution. In 1985, the Quebecers elected Premier Bourassa for the purpose of carrying out negotiations based on five points.
Later on, the Provincial Premiers agreed as a priority to bring Quebec back to the Constitutional negotiating table based on these same five points. The First Ministers had reached an agreement at Meech Lake in 1987; it was agreed that this Accord respected the principle of provincial equality.
The Meech Lake Accord recognizes the fact that Quebec is a distinct society. It grants a right of review to the provinces on such institutions of the Federation as the Supreme Court. It maintains the power of the Government of Canada to set up shared cost programs in the areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction and the right of the provinces to opt out of these programs against payment of a fair compensation so that they can implement their own programs in accordance with national standards.
Finally, the Accord recognizes the need to come to the second stage of the Constitutional reform by putting an end to the activities scheduled for the 1980's and then come to those scheduled for the 1990's.
Mr. Speaker, we have reached a crucial juncture in the ratification process. The stakes are high. This is a critical moment of our history. By starting a dialogue with the Canadian people through a special Committee of the House of Commons, we can assure them that their Constitution will faithfully reflect their common values.

In this process today with this motion to refer Mr. McKenna's motion to a committee, we are attempting to save the Meech Lake Accord. In his letter to the Prime Minister, which accompanied his proposals for saving the Meech Lake Accord, British Columbia Premier Vander Zalm remarked that what appeared to have been lost in the country since 1987 is what he called the spirit of Meech Lake. The only way we can save the Meech Lake Accord is to recapture the spirit of Meech Lake.
As the Prime Minister has said, this is the key. No law is unambiguous. The Charter of Rights has been hailed by many as an important legal development in Canada, but many Canadians have been disappointed by Charter decisions. As the Prime Minister said, standards of perfection are doomed to fail because there is no consensus on perfection.
The reaction to Premier McKenna's companion resolution has been positive and encouraging. Individual Canadians and interested parties will, as a result of the process we are putting in place with this motion, have the opportunity to address New Brunswick's resolution as well as other proposals.
Without this accord, I believe that our continued existence as a united country and our will to live together would be questioned. This is not the kind of future the next generation of Canadians expect to inherit, or has a right to expect. The Prime Minister said in his address to the nation:
This is not just a constitutional problem, nor is it a debate among politicians. This is above all a question of will-the national will to be true to the legacy of tolerance and generosity of spirit on which this country was built.
That generosity of spirit was characterized among the 11 First Ministers who met at Meech Lake. I believe that it will be characteristic of all those Canadians who take the opportunity set in place by this process to understand the Meech Lake Accord and to appreciate its significance in our constitutional development.
I am therefore pleased to support the motion to put Premier McKenna's resolution before the special committee of the House, and I would like at this moment to move that the question be now put.
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Mr. Speaker:: Is there further debate? The hon. member for Beaver River. I see the hon. member and will recognize him in a few minutes. The hon. member for Beaver River.


Miss Deborah Grey (Beaver River):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on this motion concerning the Meech Lake Accord. I have to say that I am opposed to proceeding in the manner that is proposed for four basic reasons which I will articulate.
First, regardless of the contents of this motion or the Meech Lake Accord itself, there is simply not enough time. The goal remains approval of the accord by June 23. Even if the approval of the contentious points could be reached, 89 days is simply not enough time for full public debate and reflection upon such permanent constitutional changes. The House will know that on June 27 of last year, I pointed out to the Prime Minister that approval was impossible without new initiatives. That was the time to act. No action was taken then and nine months have lapsed since that time.
Second, it has become clear that there is simply no common ground on which to build a consensus at this point. That is clear from the reactions of the governments of Quebec, Newfoundland and Manitoba. At this particular moment that reaction is likely to be even clearer from the public. Under such circumstances, it is hard to see how a game a charades between now and June 23 can lead to anything other than more stands-offs and heightened tensions.
Third, there remains a failure to recognize the fundamental flaws in the original deal. In this day and age, a constitution cannot be drafted by 11 men and approved without widespread public support, nor can a federal state allow any or all of its regions to have absolute vetoes on the constitutional aspirations of the others. That is a totally negative version of equality that entrenches blackmail as the primary mechanism of constitutional development.
Fourth, and finally, I believe the accord remains based on a false premise. That premise is that Quebec has been excluded from the Constitution. The House will know that Quebec is a full legal part of the Constitution. Its political exclusion is self-imposed, a tactic Mr. Bourassa picked up from the previous separatist Government of Quebec. The House will also know that the Prime

March 27, 1990
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Minister himself supported the patriation of 1982 at that time.
I say these things knowing full well the depth of feeling in Quebec and the possible consequences, but I also know the depth of feeling in my own area. It is understandable that Quebec will feel hurt at the failure of this deal after it had been signed by all provinces and the country appeared set for the period to follow. However, the deal has been rejected by every segment of society outside of Quebec and the opposition is not just trivial. As delays crept into the entire process there was a greater chance to see exactly what Meech meant and have it rejected on its merits.
There have been developments since the deal was signed. Three premiers who had signed it have been replaced. Indeed, these three will likely never be able to hold public office again and that same fate may await other Meech supporters as well.
There has been the obvious insincerity on Senate reform demonstrated by the outright rejection of appointing Stan Waters.
Albertans do not take kindly to this. They believe that a parallel accord, if you will a full draft amendment for Senate reform, a triple E Senate, is essential; not just elected senators but elected and having equal representation from each province across the country.
There has been the frenzy of the Prime Minister and other senior ministers to drive us to the brink, and the separatist threats of Mr. Bourassa which have only served to weaken the deal because Canadians know this deal cannot be signed since Confederation will not survive with a gun constantly at its head.
Of course Quebec feels it will have to re-examine its place in Confederation after Meech. I am convinced that Quebec can do this in a balanced, mature and intelligent manner without taking the kind of advice it gets from some other fellow Albertans opposite. There is certainly going to be bitterness in this re-examination, and there is no doubt federalism will be a tough sell if only because of leadership.
The strongest federalists are relics of the past. The current Prime Minister and the Premier of Quebec have inconsistent positions that are a credit to no one,
whereas the separatist leader, Mr. Parizeau, is intelligent, consistent and committed and I think at this point he is smiling because he knows he gains whether Meech is defeated or whether it passes.
Many English Canadians believe that the Meech deal itself contains little justification for separation. However, the Meech process has shown that Quebec will have to re-examine itself, to choose once and for all a permanent commitment to either a small but exclusively French state with all the symbols of nationhood, or else a French part of a greater nation from sea to sea more intimately connected with the continental reality.
I hope Quebec appreciates that the Reform Party admires the courage of Quebec to debate this range of options and of the many politicians it produces who represent and articulate clearly these choices, a quality absent in most of English of Canada I have to admit.
I also hope Quebec realizes it will remain only a French island on an English continent and there will be no easy deals or easy formulae for survival.
I am confident that Quebec and the other parts of Canada will be able to deal amicably and peacefully and prosper together, prosper together no matter what road is chosen. Quebec of course is more confident now than ever before, and Albertans especially admire its determination to engage the American giant head to head in healthy competition and to look at the future in terms of economic opportunities.
History will record the great failure of this government to bring a similar forward looking feeling to the constitutional agenda of Canada, as this government has encouraged Quebec not to look forward but to reopen past bitterness and defeats.
For the first time in Canadian history, a Prime Minister has been responsible for creating constitutional tensions and crisis. He resurrected Quebec nationalism for electoral success. He tried constitutional brinkmanship when it did not appear the accord would pass, and it unfortunately blew up in his face.
The Meech Lake deal is dead and a new deal should be struck with a new three-year deadline. This new deal should be evaluated on its merits again as to whether it passes or fails. By continuing to pass Meech, all that is being done is to heighten emotions and to raise the stakes.
March 27, 1990

We cannot ask Canada to base its constitutional future on an artificial deadline of only 89 days left when 1,007 days have passed already with nothing happening in this place. Even if a perfect deal is worked out, there is not enough time to evaluate it on its merits and ram it through Parliament. This is not some bill simply to raise taxes. This is a constitutional law we are talking about, the supreme law of Canada.
From the start, members of this government have shown themselves to be rank amateurs at constitutional negotiations. They have done everything wrong, and their irresponsible behaviour has certainly created a crisis of which we are all aware. I cannot support this motion or any constitutional agenda of this government because of their inability to deal with it.
Now rather than later, before there is another opportunity at constitutional negotiations and crisis, we need harmony; not just an if-then formula: You give us this, and then we will think about giving you that.
It is my belief that we need to grow together and that it is only possible through a triple E Senate where we would have equal representation from all provinces to address these regional concerns which will make all areas equal siblings in this family that we all call home: Canada.


Hon. Bob Kaplan (York Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I want to be very brief because we have said and my leader has indicated that we view the McKenna proposal as a constructive way of helping us to go through the constitutional impasse we now face.
As one who has been very interested in this initiative and who sat on the parliamentary committee that dealt with the Meech Lake Accord, I am looking forward to these committee meetings, as well, as a possibility of getting us through this stage of the constitutional evolution of our country.
The experience that I had with my colleague on the constitutional committee that examined the Meech Lake Accord was not a very happy one. We were whipped into holding all our meetings here in Ottawa. We were denied the opportunity to call witnesses from across the country who wanted to appear. We were pressed into holding our hearings in the month of August, and witnesses were not allowed the time that they required to prepare proper presentations.
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Nevertheless, my caucus was able to produce a minority report which is appended to the document. None of the amendments that we recommended, which I think would have improved the Meech Lake Accord and would certainly have increased its acceptance, were considered by the government and none were accepted by the government.
With the wisdom of hindsight, it should be obvious to the government that this was a tactical error. We accepted the Meech Lake Accord without our amendment package. We did so, not because we approved the tactics of the government but because we expected that it would be possible, with the kind of support that the House of Commons showed, to move our Constitution forward to begin considering concerns not only of Quebec but of many regions of Canada, of all regions of Canada, for the improvement of Canada's Constitution.
We support the reference of this resolution to committee, again in the hope that this will be a productive way of moving us forward so that we can achieve the Constitution for Canada that the Canadian people in all the various regions of our country, the ethnic groups and so on in particular want.
So far the Prime Minister and the statements that we have heard from members of the Conservative caucus give us no reason to be excessively confident that this process, that this set of committee hearings will be productive. I do not want to condemn the government at this point. I want to call on the government to put more on the table than the Prime Minister put on the table in the statement that he made today.
We need to know where the government stands on this package. We need to know what the government is prepared to do to try to achieve the kind of consensus that will make the Meech Lake Accord work and a commitment that something will be made of the McKenna proposals contained in the package that we have before us today, the additions that one can anticipate from other parts of the country and from the work of our committee and that they will not be treated with what I can only call the contempt that was given by the Prime Minister and by the government to the work that was done under very limited and tough circumstances by the parliamentary committee that met during the Meech Lake Accord process.

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I am looking forward to the committee getting started. I have a great deal more to say but will not say it today. I want simply to urge that other speakers who speak for the government make it clear that this will be meaningful, that this will not be simply a participation exercise, because if all it is is a chance for members and for interested Canadians to appear before us and to sound off, it will not take us through the constitutional impasse.
I can say for my caucus that we hope fervently that the government will make out of the work that we intend to contribute to this committee a useful and successful step in dealing with the constitutional unfinished business of Canada.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, it is with a mixture of pride and concern that I rise to take part in this debate on the motion introduced today by the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney). Of course, Mr. Speaker, you will not be surprised to learn that Mr. McKenna's initiative in trying to break the constitutional log jam was one of my concerns when I was a member of the McKenna's government, in the New Brunswick Legislative Assembly. But this issue is much more serious, Mr. Speaker, because there has never been a better time, in a very long while for politicians and Parlementarians to show their concern for Canada instead of the process and to consider the aspirations of Atlantic, Western and Central Canada, as well as Quebec. It seems to me that, on the eve of the June 23rd deadline, this is not the time to discuss in the abstract of a constitutional notion or ideology, Mr. Speaker, but rather for all Canadians to look for a way to live peacefully together, English and French, people from isolated areas and native people. This in no time for us to be thinking of our own little self, be we from Quebec or from New-Brunswick. The real question is how we are going to solve the problem.
Of course, it will not be easy. And I want to point out, Mr. Speaker, that the proposal put forward by the New Brunswick Premier is only the beginning of a solution and not, as he admitted himself, the final solution.

Because we do not often have the opportunity to do so, I want to congratulate the Prime Minister, the
Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the New Democratic Party for having set a tone which is very important, that we must in our own ways speak out very forcefully on whether or not we believe that we can solve the enigma that is Canada. It is not new and it certainly does not get any easier that tensions-regional tensions, in the past religious tensions, continually linguistic tensions and probably forever various types of tensions- will exist in this country because of the nature of its population, its size and its geography.
Surely this is not a time to be selfish or to start to point fingers as to who was right, who was wrong and who did what in 1980, in 1986, on the Plains of Abraham or in the settlement of the west. These are all very important things, but the challenge for Canadians, from what I hear from Canadians, is not to go on with political rhetoric or one-upmanship or who is going to be the political victor in this situation.
I believe today that every man and woman in this House would want to be on the parliamentary committee. It seems to me, as I stand in this House and look around and think of the men and women who have come before us-builders, people with vision, people with an understanding of what Canada could be and should be-that we had better be very careful because history is going to judge us very harshly if we pass up an opportunity to try to take every avenue open to us to make Canadians understand that constitutional processes are extremely complex, very difficult and can be divisive but should never be beyond the scope of our ability to deal with them.
Sometimes I make sure that in the final analysis I take the position that I misunderstood, because sometimes a person can be led to believe that somehow regional or personal perceptions are more important than Canada. People with very little understanding will say in an offhanded manner: "I understand the feelings of Albertans" or "I am very familiar with how the Quebecois feel".
We have difficulty in our own little communities and in our own lives dealing with family issues, with village, town and city problems, with relationships within our own small groups of people, associations, church groups and political parties. Yet there are people who would have us believe that they understand the complex problems that confront us.
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I hope the result of this process will be just part of many things that are occurring as Canadians of goodwill, generous of spirit, work toward trying to find a way out of this impasse. Each of us in our own way does not matter very much, but we in this place have been given a responsibility. How we deal with it is going to serve as an example in many ways to Canadians who do not have the kind of opportunity that is being presented to us.
There are some who say that time is too short. There are others who say the battle has already been lost. I do not know if they are prepared to accept the implications of what they say.
Is there anyone in this place, after we go through this exercise, who is prepared to walk out on to the streets of his or her hometown and say: "I didn't do every possible thing that I could do to make sure that this great country stayed together", not to hurt or take away from one group to give to the other and not to be proud and selfish and beat one's chest and say: "I came up with the solution"?
Certainly the Premier of New Brunswick, in the attempt that he and the Government of New Brunswick has put forward to try to find a solution to the impasse, does not see it as a personal solution and hopes that it just part of the building blocks that are required to get us out of this problem.
The worst thing that can happen to us as Canadians is to somehow think that somebody else is going to do it for us or that somebody else's attitude has to change in order to make it easier to find a solution. We have to start changing our own attitudes.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot emphasize enough just how important it is for all parliamentarians to realize, without going into all the details of the motion which has been presented to Parliament and to the House of Commons, that nobody will come up with a magic solution. The only way to solve this problem is to be generous, but more particularly to be committed to continue to build this country-difficult though it may be-which was bom under much more trying conditions than those we are facing today.
Mr. Speaker, again I repeat the challenge which I think is central to the motion. I hope every member of the House wants to say: I would like to be part of the parliamentary committee and to be part of the solution. I
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want to find a way to solve the problem rather than make it any more complicated than it already is, I want to find ways to suppress certain frustrations and allay certain fears. We have a few months or a few weeks ahead of us, Mr. Speaker, and I would not want to be too dramatic about this. It is not a matter of giving too much importance to what we are doing. We cannot overemphasize the importance of Canada, and this is why I hope that the work of the committee will produce the outcome which all Canadians are hoping for-a way of solving the constitutional dilemma which has endured for too long already.


Mr. Francois Gerin (Megantic-Compton -Stans-tead):: Mr. Speaker, in 1980, when the Quebec government asked its question in the referendum, many of us-or more precisely 60 per cent of us-voted no. Many MPs from Quebec, from all three parties, voted no. Others voted yes. Those who voted no did so because they thought at the time that negotiations between Mr. Levesque and Mr. Trudeau could hardly be successful due to the intransigent attitudes on both sides. And we thought at the time that, since the issue had finally been resolved and the people had voted in favour of Canada, a constitutional accord could easily be reached. Were we ever surprised, a year and a half later, when the Canadian Constitution was brought back from England without Quebec's agreement.
I don't know if members of Parliament from outside Quebec, some of whom spoke today, realize what a referendum means in terms of discussions and fights between members of one family, of one community, of one village or small town. I don't know if you can imagine how traumatic that experience has been for many Quebecers, and how shocked they were when they suddenly realized that Ottawa had fooled them with fine promises concerning a future Constitution. In the following months, many of us decided to come to Ottawa, to try to repair this injustice, to show Quebecers, 40 per cent of whom had voted "yes", that it was possible for Canada to include Quebec as a distinct society as we know it, with a different language, a different culture, different traditions, a different civil code. So we came here. It seemed to me that 1985-86 was perhaps the ideal time for men like Premier Bourassa and Prime Minister Mulroney, people whose negotiating skills are well known, to reach some understanding. We had the Meech

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Lake Accord, signed by the 11 first minister from all of Canada-a rare feat.
We were so happy! It seemed to us then and in the following months that Canada as a whole suddenly realized that Quebec was a distinct society and that they were happy with it. When asked the question "What does Quebec want?" in 1980, we answered, "We want Canada." We got the feeling then that Canada was telling us, "Yes, we want you too, as you are." Then all of a sudden we realized that people were starting to raise questions. However, of the 35 conditions set by the Parti quebecois in 1981,1982 and 1983, Mr. Bourassa kept only a minimum of five.
We have noticed that the inflexibility showed by the Reform Party in the West is growing throughout the country except in Quebec. When I show these articles to my constituents of Megantic-Compton-Stanstead, you can imagine what they think. Can you imagine what they think of this Canada you are proposing, of the Confederation of Regions Party in the Maritimes, of the NDP's change of heart after approving the Meech Lake Accord, of the Liberal leadership race in progress? What do my constituents think of the language crisis and of all these Ontario municipalities declaring themselves unilingual English. What a joke! What do they think of Manitoba's, New Brunswick's and Newfoundland's attitude, of the other provinces' reservations, of this intransigence? Now that the deadline for approving the Meech Lake Accord is only some 90 days away, many Quebecers feel that the harm has already been done by these people I have just enumerated. Is it too late? I don't think so. When I was growing up, my mother used to tell me: "It's never too late to do the right thing." It's true, but we know it is late.
Quebec is still excluded from the Constitution. We have been excluded from this debate for nine years. A new resolution involving constitutional amendments to the Meech Lake Accord has been proposed today. Can we examine them without altering Meech Lake itself? I don't know. But one thing is for sure. I have always been extremely proud of my party's position, my leader's position, the Prime Minister's position on this, that never will there be any constitutional process in Canada without Quebec's presence. That was stated in 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, and now in 1990, and I am convinced this is just as true, it is a principle that cannot be changed. It cannot be changed for all the
reasons I stated earlier. There is nothing that can be done to change that.
The amendments now put forward by Premier McKenna of New Brunswick definitely stem from good intentions. I understood and listened to the speeches made by the Prime Minister, who spoke extremely well, and by the representatives of the Liberal Party and the NDP. Yes, there are good things to look at. Certainly, if Meech Lake had been signed two years ago, maybe we would now be in our second constitutional round. But the process now put forward, that of an official committee of the House of Commons, is an official process of constitutional negotiations or talks. And as I now speak, Mr. Speaker, Quebec is not a part of that process, because the position stated by Premier Robert Bourassa and his Minister of Interprovincial and Intergovernmental Affairs. Mr. Remillard, is quite clear: Quebec will not discuss any amendments to Meech Lake, any companion resolution, any parallel accord, until Meech Lake has been signed.
I see you are indicating my time is up, Mr. Speaker. I would ask you and hon. members in this House not to see the clock for the remaining two minutes I need to conclude.
\ English]


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is it agreed that we allow the hon. member two extra minutes?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


François Gérin: So we have this proposed process, a public consultation process which will allow all those Canadians, and particularly Canadians from provinces other than Quebec, I suppose, to come and express themselves in a formal forum. Discussions can take place, but I do not think that process should be given a formal status.
I heard the Prime Minister say that eventually, this committee report might be brought to a vote in this House. To me, this is a very formal step. But if at that time the Government of Quebec has not taken part in these constitutional discussions, I cannot see how we in this House of Commons could be called to vote on a such a matter. It is to us a most fundamental matter of principle. I think this House would never agree to a repetition of what was done in 1981 under the leadership of Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Chretien. I think that traumatic experience was so deep, we could never go through it again, so the process put before us today might go no further than discussions. It could perhaps stop at some
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recommendations or a list of recommendations. It could go as far as a precise recommendation to the House. It may come to a vote. I do not know how far the official process initiated today will go. At this moment when it is put under way, Quebec is not part of it. But the Government of Quebec did not officially object to its consideration by the House of Commons.
Editorial writers in Quebec are now divided on the issue of whether we should stay on that course or withdraw from that special committee or process.
So, personnally, Mr. Speaker, I will keep out of it. I want my non-participation to that proposed resolution to be clearly understood. Obviously, I could not vote on a resolution introduced in the House and I fail to see how Quebec members from all three parties in the House could do so. I would urge the committee to carefully examine Quebec's minimum demands and explain these demands to other Canadians, because I am convinced that these extremely minimal demands, once properly explained to Canadians across Canada, would break down the intransigent attitude that is doing so much harm to Quebec. In fact, recent public opinion polls have shown that today, a majority of Quebecers would say yes to sovereignty for Quebec yes, we want to separate. But it is not too late. Someone said it was the eleventh hour, but I would say, Mr. Speaker, it is five minutes to midnight.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is the House ready for the question?


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The question is on the motion of the hon. member for Vancouver Centre.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion (Ms. Campbell, (Vancouver Centre)) agreed to.
Private Members' Business


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The next question is on the main motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion (Mr. Mulroney) agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being 5.05 o'clock the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.


PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS-MOTIONS   BILL OF RIGHTS SUGGESTED CHILD PROTECTION COMMISSION
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Thursday, February 15,1990 consideration of the motion of Ms. Langan:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of negotiation with the provinces to provide a comprehensive Bill of Rights for children which would standardize laws throughout the country, and that this Bill of Rights include a child protection commission and an emergency hotline which children could contact in times of crisis.
Mr. Jack Whittaker (Okanagan -Similkameen-Merritt):: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today and speak in favour of this motion. I would like to set out the motion because I will refer to the motion later in my presentation. The motion reads:
That -the government should consider the advisability of negotiating with the provinces to provide a comprehensive Bill of Rights for children which would standardize laws throughout the country, and that this Bill of Rights include a child protection commission and an emergency hotline which children could contact in times of crisis.
First, I would like to point out to the House and to all people viewing today that in a recent news release it was announced that Prime Minister Brian Mulroney will join Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan in co-chair-ing the World Summit for Children to be held at the United Nations September 29 to 30. This was announced by the United Nations.
The summit will discuss policies to ensure the protection and development of children. This motion of my

March 27, 1990
Private Members' Business
colleague, I believe, furthers some of that which has been set out and will be discussed in September. It comes as somewhat of a shock that the members of the government side have spoken at length, essentially in opposition to various parts of this motion.
They have taken four positions which I will set out. The first is that the division of powers in the Constitution Act of 1867 gives the provinces jurisdiction over civil rights and children. The second argument against this seems to be that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides for the legal rights of children. Third is that the ratification of the United Nations Convention will necessitate harmonization of Canadian laws affecting children, thereby negating the need for a domestic bill of rights. Fourth is that the implementation of a Canadian bill of rights for children would limit the flexibility of governments in responding to the need of children. I would like to speak on each of those points individually in my presentation today.
First, while it is clear that Section 92(13) of the Constitution Act does give jurisdiction over property and civil rights to the provinces, and that the Supreme Court of Canada stated in 1938 that child welfare was a provincial responsibility, this does not preclude the federal government from action with regard to children. The criminal law and various programs administered by Health and Welfare, for example, the drug and alcohol programs, child sexual abuse programs, child care funding through CAP and others, affect children and are not regarded as an infringement on provincial powers.
In dealing with the second matter, the sections of the Charter do apply to children and action has been taken to ensure the legal rights of children. However, the UN Convention goes beyond defining legal rights for children to include social and economic rights, which are not covered by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A domestic bill of rights would make clear Canada's commitment to the social and economic rights of our children.
Dealing with the third matter, there has existed a federal-provincial-territorial committee examining the impact of ratification of the United Nations Convention and how it would affect existing and needed legislation by all levels of government. While ratification would indicate provincial and federal compliance with the United Nations Convention, without a domestic means of enforcing the convention, no remedy other than moral
suasion exists to ensure the rights are respected. Without a domestic bill of rights with a mechanism to seek redress and compliance, the United Nations convention remains largely symbolic.
Dealing with the fourth matter, once ratified the United Nations Convention requires that signators comply with it and that they report on action taken to implement the provisions of the convention. As such, rather than limit flexibility, a domestic bill of rights for children would set down enforceable guidelines which would allow for a wider range of policies than now exist to protect and provide for the welfare of children. That a bill of rights would restrict flexibility is a conservative argument that sees bills of rights as a ceiling of protection rather than a floor upon which rights can be expanded.
In short, what we are seeking is not an infringement on provincial jurisdiction any more than the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is an infringement on those powers. What we seek is a binding national statement of the rights of Canadian children in compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Our motion is explicit that consultation and negotiation with provinces be undertaken before such a bill of rights comes into force. That is the reason I read the particular motion. It is to be emphasized that consultation and negotiation with the provinces is to be undertaken before such a bill of rights comes into force. As such, what we are asking is what has already been started and will have to continue in order for ratification to come about.
What the United Nations has in mind for its children's bill of rights is that every child has the inherent right to life, and that the state shall ensure maximum child survival and development. It also states the following points. Every child has the right to a name and nationality from birth. Children should not be separated from their parents unless competent authorities forbid it for their well-being. The state should protect children from physical or mental harm and neglect. The state should ensure health care as provided to all children. Primary education shall be free and compulsory as early as possible. Discipline should respect the child's dignity. Children should have time to rest and play and have equal opportunities for cultural and artistic activities. The state should protect children from the illegal use of drugs. Children of minority and indigenous populations
March 27, 1990

shall freely enjoy their own culture, religion and language.
It seems to me that this is not too much to ask in a society such as ours where we are working hard at projecting what we want not only in Canada but in the rest of the world. It seems to me that the motion put before the House today is a motion that would protect those children and progress the arguments not only here but around the world. It should be a projection that will show the world that Canada is at the forefront, that Canada is willing to stand up for what we wish for others within their own country for their own children.
Many stories abound of children living in poverty, of children who are abused physically, mentally and sexually, of children who go to school without food and without adequate care. We in this party care for the children of Canada and are asking through this motion that something be done about that.
Today's children need to grow up in a secure, social and economic circumstance if they are to become full participants in tomorrow's society as productive workers, effective parents and responsible citizens. The social and economic costs of failing to provide these circumstances are exceedingly high. Hardship, ill health and educational failure are the daily realities faced by children who grow up in poverty.
In Canada, infant mortality among poor children is twice the national average. Twice as many poor children fall behind in educational achievement by the age of 15.
This motion is a small step to resolving these problems. I urge the House to accept and adopt this motion.


Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, I want to speak only briefly on this motion, Motion No. M-254. I want to speak in favour of it because, obviously, it is one which is very important. It is most important that the children of this country have a bill of rights which would strive to standardize laws throughout the country and to offer child protection, an emergency hotline and those other things that such a bill of rights would include.
Private Members' Business
At the time that we are meeting now there is an issue which is before the United Nations. We know that in 1959, I believe it was, the United Nations adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. That declaration at that time spoke of the rights of handicapped children and other children. Although I do not have the text in front of me, I remember a portion of the text, particularly the preamble which states: "Whereas the child by reason of his or her physical handicap requires special protection before as well as after birth-"
I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that you know what I am going to mention next. It is that I feel that this bill of rights, if and when we ever have one in this country, should include the rights of children before as well as after birth. It could be that the person who proposed this motion would not agree with me on that point, although I hope that she will.
That being said, I happen to believe that the rights of children 10 minutes before birth or 10 minutes after are, in natural law, identical. I think the laws of this land should give children equal protection before as well as after birth.
There is no mention of that in this motion. But, on the other hand, there is nothing that would exclude that possibility either. So I suppose the motion need not be amended because it certainly does not exclude the proposition that I make at this juncture.
However, if the government adopts the initiative put forward by my colleague, with which I agree, I hope that it sees fit to include those rights of children in that bill of rights, whether those children are born or conceived and not yet bom. As far as I am concerned those rights need to be recognized.
As a matter of fact, civil law does recognize the rights of unborn children. That is not a new concept. It is one that has been held constantly in this country and in others. The House will know of a number of cases where a testator has awarded his or her belongings to his or her children. The courts have always decided in such cases that a child conceived, yet unborn at the time of the death of such a person, was equally qualified to be a recipient of any belongings given in a testament.
That principle has always been held in civil law. So it follows, as far as I am concerned, that a bill of rights should give at least equal rights to a child yet unborn.

March 27, 1990
Private Members' Business
If such a bill of rights would not include the rights of the unborn child then there obviously would be a double standard, and the double standard would be as follows: A child yet unborn could be the recipient of the proceeds of a testament provided that someone did not kill him or her before birth. To me that would be a situation which is unacceptable in common sense as well as natural law.
So I would hope, if and when the government enacts or proposes to this House such a bill of rights as advocated by our colleague, the hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam, that the bill will include the provisions which I have just described.


Ms. Barbara Greene (Don Valley North):: Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure for me to speak during this fifth and final hour of debate on Motion No. M-254 with regard to a bill of rights for children. As a member of the Metropolitan Toronto Council for 11 years, the rights of children was an issue that I was certainly very concerned about. I spent 11 years as a member of the Children's Aid Society in Metropolitan Toronto and also served on a provincial children's services committee as well as on a committee of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. Certainly, this is a motion that greatly concerns me.
The motion reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of negotiating with the provinces to provide a comprehensive Bill of Rights for children which would standardize laws throughout the country, and that this Bill of Rights include a child protection commission and an emergency hotline which children could contact in times of crisis.
I want to thank the hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam for placing this motion before the House, a motion which focuses on protecting the rights of our children. No one can deny Canada's most important resource and, in my view, Canada's most important people.
If there is any one group in our society that is particularly vulnerable and in need of protection, it is our children. That being said, this government is responding by actively pursuing its commitment to ensuring the healthy growth and development of every child in Canada. Nevertheless, this goal represents a very challenging and complex task.
Since the hon. member tabled her motion last year, much has happened in regard to families and children. In particular, Canada and the world as a whole have witnessed the adoption of a major initiative, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. I would like to argue that, as a result of this change, the motion for another bill of rights may no longer be the most effective, appropriate route to address the needs of Canada's children.
The UN convention covers a wide spectrum on children's rights and, as such, fully satisfies the part of the motion before the House which speaks to the need for a comprehensive bill of rights for children. In this regard, this convention is intended to establish a modem, international standard for addressing the social, economic, political, religious, cultural and civil rights of children all over the world.
As well, the convention provides for the protection of children from abuse, neglect and exploitation, the protection of children with disabilities and the protection of children without families. The adoption of this convention will require the review of all our institutions and legislation to ensure that it conforms with the convention.
This could require amendments, not only to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms but also to other laws. I think about the incidents I personally have encountered in my constituency in regard to immigration and the refugee backlog. I think the adoption of such a convention would certainly have a major impact throughout our entire system.
The list of possible initiatives reflecting the convention are, therefore, endless and would include, for example, an emergency hotline for children, which was mentioned in Motion No. M-254 and which, in fact, has been the object of recent federal support. This could also possibly include a child protection commission, as the hon. member has suggested, or a secretariat for children, as has been requested by the Canadian School Trustees Association.
The federal government has already pledged $1.3 million towards an emergency hotline, the Kids Help Phone, which offers counselling, information and, if appropriate, referral services to Canada's seven million children. Since May of last year the Kids Help Phone has
March 27, 1990

received well over 70,000 calls, so it is certainly a great success and obviously meeting a tremendous need.
The convention, through Article 27, also speaks to the right of every child to an adequate standard of living and calls on state parties to take appropriate measures to assist parents in fulfilling this right. State parties will, therefore, have to examine issues like financial deprivation among children-something which we in Canada tend to call child poverty-and to assess the need for action. In Canada, of course, child poverty and the need to alleviate poverty among children is an issue which has drawn, and rightly so, increasing attention, including in this House.
As you will recall, last November the House addressed the important issue of child poverty and unanimously supported the motion by the former hon. member for Oshawa which focused on seeking ways to eliminate child poverty before the year 2000. As part of this debate, the remarks of the Minister of National Health and Welfare outline the government's support for efforts addressing the child poverty issue.
Furthermore, a House subcommittee, on which both the hon. member and I sit, as well as other hon. members, is now examining possible action plans for addressing child poverty. As part of its activities it is hearing from many of the key groups representing the interests of children and families.
Formalizing the convention in Canada, and thereby furthering the aims of the bill of rights for children, will require a co-operative effort between the federal government and the provinces, given that many of the obligations in the convention fall within provincial and/ or shared jurisdiction. To this end the federal government is now seeking the support of the provinces and territories for signature.
Efforts are also currently under way through federal-provincial consultations on the question of ratification of the convention. Given the broad scope of the UN convention, this government believes strongly that the convention is a much more potent and effective tool to support the rights of children. Moreover, given that the convention is already in place and Canada is now considering its ratification, we believe it also serves as a most timely vehicle.
So rather than starting down on a new track, I would like to ask the member whether she would agree to substituting the former recommendation of the government that we now endorse the UN convention, which will certainly lead to the implementation of everything in her proposal and, in so doing, have a unanimous motion of the House that we can all start work on today. I
Private Members' Business
understand that with unanimous consent this is quite possible. Consent would certainly be forthcoming from this side of the House.


Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today in this House to support this bill of rights for children. Certainly, the principles that are involved are among the noblest. Before I suggest a few refinements to what might be done, I want to review some of the statistics with respect to children in this country.
We have roughly five million children in elementary and secondary schools. We have approximately half that number at the preschool and kindergarten levels and, although we cannot call our college and university students children, there are over 500,000 young people in our universities and over 330,000 young men and women in our colleges.
We have talked about poverty in this House on a number of occasions. There are between three and a half to five million poor in this country, and over one million of those individuals are children. They are poorly fed and ill-housed. Often they do not have the basic supports that you and I would want for our own children.
It has also been indicated in the House that there are more soup kitchens or food banks in this country than there are McDonald's restaurants.
This is a relatively rich country. However, we have three and a half to five million poor in Canada, one million of whom are children. I ask you to pause for a moment and think of the plight of children throughout this world.
In spite of the fact that many of our boys and girls have a lot available to them, there is still much that needs to be done. Yes, we have impressive educational programs in place at the elementary, secondary and post-secondary levels, and yes, we have many other programs that are supportive and will help them develop and become the adults who will make significant contributions to their society. But there is still much abuse.

March 27, 1990
Private Members' Business
We hesitate often to mention sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, but it does exist. It hurts me, as I know it hurts many, many Canadians to acknowledge this reality. We must do everything in our power to eradicate this from society.

There are many programs in place to provide support for our young people. I find that very encouraging. However, I think what we need is an in-depth study not only of what is available today but of what we could and should be able to provide for young people.
I wish we could also give thorough consideration to the kind of support we should give parents in the home as well as working parents. To me, it would be hard to find a nobler cause than this one: to implement a policy or legislation that enables us to do everything we can to promote the well-being of all children, of all young Canadians. I think that if we do this, we would also be able to help children in other countries who are not as privileged as our own.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Before I give the floor to the hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam, I must inform the House that pursuant to Standing Order 44(3), the reply of the mover of the original motion will close the debate. The hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam.


Joy Langan: Mr. Speaker, we have had five hours of debate on this motion, a debate which has for the most part recognized the importance of enacting in law programs and policies which will protect and further the welfare of our children in Canada. I would first like to thank those members from all sides of the House who rose to speak to this motion.
We have heard support for this motion from all sides. Yet that support has not been without hesitation. Some members hesitate because they see technical or jurisdictional problems which would halt the development of this national bill of rights for children. They have brought to this place a list of the programs funded and administered by the federal government. They have noted the importance of provisions of the criminal law in protecting children and the advancements made. But
still they cannot fully support this motion. They do not want to infringe on provincial jurisdiction.
But that is exactly what this motion seeks to avoid. It calls for negotiations and consultation, not to dictate. It calls on the federal government to begin negotiations with the provinces to put into Canadian law the rights and ideals of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Without such a move, the 10 years of effort which Canada led, I might add, to bring this convention in at the United Nations to the point of ratification will be lost. Without a domestic law, Canadian children will be denied recourse and denied a voice in their own futures.
Many children in this country live in poverty. They are exploited in the workplace. They are the victims of sexual abuse. They fall prey to the influence of adults who would draw them into a world of crime, drugs and violence. They frequent food banks. They go to school hungry.
All members, both in the government and opposition, know this. In fact, a number of members cited many of these problems in their addresses to this House. Yet what we have heard is, "yes, but-".
That is not what our children deserve. Our children care not about the constitutional division of powers in this country. They want and deserve a secure future, a future which respects their rights as individuals of value, a future where hunger, poverty, abuse and exploitation are not to be tolerated but are to be eliminated.
We in this place have the responsibility to exercise our rights as parliamentarians, to take this small step to see that the future of our children is a better one than that endured by so many children today.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is the House ready for the question.


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.
March 27, 1990


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Call in the members.
Before the taking of the vote:


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
There is a special procedure for voting during Private Members' Business. I want to suggest, Mr. Speaker, that in order to allow all members to vote according to their own voting patterns, rather than doing it by party, that you proceed with the vote row by row, and not party by party.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is the House in agreement that the division should be taken by rows?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It is at this point that I would like to remind hon. members that the voting will begin by my asking those members who are in favour of the motion in the rows to my right to rise by row, and then with those members in the rows to my left. Later, I will ask those members who are opposed to the motion in rows to my right to rise and end with those members opposed to the motion in the rows to my left.


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


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.15 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Allmand
Arseneault
Belair
Black
Boudria
Callbeck
Duhamel
Fisher
Gagliano
Gauthier
Harvey (Edmonton East)
Hopkins
Kaplan
Kilger (Stormont -Dundas) Langan (Mission-Coquitlam) MacWilliam Manley
[Stage Direction]

Wednesday, March 28, 1990