1990-06-18

["Madam Speaker, last week I was pleased and honoured to attend a ceremony transferring responsibility for family and children's services for native people in Nova Scotia from the province of Nova Scotia to the Micmac Family and Children's Services Organization.\nThis is the first time responsibility for family and children services has been turned over to native people in Canada and it is another important step toward self-determination. This is important because native adults will now be able to apply their standards and culture to family and children services. It is even more important to the children who see the adults managing the plan as role models and show at a very early age the responsibility for their futures is in the hands of native people.\nI want to congratulate Joan Gloade, Chief Lawrence Paul, the staff of the regional office of Indian Affairs in Amherst and all others involved with this exciting step forward on the part of native people."]
Hon. Bob Kaplan (York Centre) moved: that Bill C-255, an act to amend the Criminal Code (lotteries), be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee.
He said: Madam Speaker, I am very happy to have won the lottery which permits Bill C-255 to be dealt with at this time. I do not know how many Canadians are aware that the order in which bills appear for debate is chosen by lottery. It is something of an irony that the subject of the bill, which I am pleased to be able to address now, is lotteries, not the kind which chooses bills for debate in the House of Commons, but the lotteries which take a dollar or two away from ever-growing numbers of Canadian citizens with a very small likelihood of them winning or making any return at all.
I am not rising to oppose the principle of lotteries, although I do oppose them. All the studies show that lottery contributions constitute for the poorest in society a larger proportion of their income than of the average person or certainly of the well-to-do.
I have recently seen interesting studies which show that of all forms of gambling, including slot machines and horse racing, a person has the least likelihood of winning and the smallest return from a lottery. The provinces of our country and the states of the United States, where a lot of these statistics come from, take an
ever-growing portion of the proceeds, amounting on the average to 49 and 50 per cent of all the proceeds while administrative costs amount to 35 per cent.
I am not putting forward a bill to prohibit lotteries. The purpose of this bill is to prohibit the advertising of lotteries. I am hoping to be able to demonstrate to the House in the next few minutes that this second best way of dealing with the social problem would really go a long way to putting lotteries and gambling back into the place to which they should be limited to in our society.
There is no better way to tell the story than to tell the House about my own experience as a member of Parliament when I was first elected in the days when all forms of lotteries were illegal in Canada.

It was during the 70s. There were two kinds of gambling in our society, at a time when lotteries were illegal. There was the Irish Sweepstakes, which was very successful. We had a network of ticket vendors-at least one in each community-who sent the money to Ireland, and we had a percentage of the winners. It was common knowledge at the time that the Irish government used the money to finance hospitals in Ireland.

That was one of the great forms of gambling that we had in the days before lotteries became legal. The other is the illegal numbers racket which plays a very small part, if any part at all, in Canadian society today. I remember when I had something to do with policing in Canada, taking a more than average interest in how the numbers racket was progressing. I learned that organized crime no longer looked to it as a great source of funds any more. In other words, the introduction of the lottery had achieved two very good purposes which were the evils that I addressed as a legislator when I was persuaded to support the idea of a state-run Canadian lottery.

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Private Members' Business
Why should we export gambling money out of Canada for the purpose of building hospitals in other countries when the money could be kept in Canada and used for our own social purposes?
Second, knowing of a human weakness that leads certain people to gamble, why should we drive them to the underworld for the expression of that personal weakness, allow organized crime to profit from it and foster a criminal lifestyle for all the people who are involved in that illegal way of gambling?
I supported the bill which was presented to the House of Commons. There were lots of moral arguments for and against gambling. In the city of Toronto where I come from, I would say that most people, and I am talking now about a community which is probably more Christian than any other religion, consider gambling wrong. Yet there is no unanimous opinion about that even within the Christian faith.
Since my interest in this subject has come forward I have had arguments with Catholic theologians who want to make the point, if I get them correctly-and I certainly invite them to speak for themselves-that whether gambling is moral or immoral depends on what is done with the proceeds. If the proceeds are used for moral purposes, it is moral. If they are used for immoral purposes, it is not.
For me there is a larger question. In the culture of Toronto, there is a work ethic associated with earning and a sense, which I must say I share, that the best way to make money is to work for it. Societies where that is a value, benefit from the work ethic. In a society where gambling is an equally available way of making money, you find more and more, as I do in my own community, that if you ask the young kids how you can get rich nowadays, the only two things they will suggest are winning a lottery or becoming a rock star.
Part of that comes from the tremendous amount of advertising that lotteries now enjoy in Canadian society. I want to make the point that the level of advertising is just too high and invite the House, which enabled the provinces to run these state lotteries, to change the law so that they will no longer be able to advertise them.
I do not think it is the responsibility of the state to stop people from doing foolish things with their money. It is a free country. If people want to waste their money, if they want to gamble with it, it should be up to them. But I do not think the state should encourage people to do foolish things with their money.
I want to talk about some of the forms of advertising that I have seen. It becomes obvious that having the state encourage people to express a character weakness, encouraging them to spend money on lotteries which have odds that are not usually disclosed to the people who buy lottery tickets, there is really no other conclusion but to say that a small investment, a small gamble by someone who can afford it, is not a very big problem. But as we see the statistics which show who gambles, how quickly it is increasing, and how much is being spent on gambling, what a substantial percentage of some of the low incomes in Canadian society, I really feel we have a responsibility, not to stop people from foolishly wasting their money, but at least, as I have said, not to encourage them to do so.
The advertisement that inspired me to put this resolution together and bring it forward is one from my own province of Ontario. It is an advertisement which asks people who are thinking of gambling to always bet the same number. They tell you to pick your lucky number and run with that number. I have checked with the officials and apparently this works by encouraging people day after day, week after week to always pick their same lucky number and to bet it every time and that they will have a better chance of winning than if they just bet a different number every time.
A mathematician can tell you that the odds of any number winning are exactly the same, whether it is the same one you bet yesterday, or a new one. So in a sense it is a measure of false advertising to tell people directly or indirectly that they have a better chance of winning by betting the same number every single day.
The insidious purpose of having people pick a number and then bet the same number every day is that they then feel beckoned to bet every time a lottery comes along. The next phase of that advertising campaign was that now you have a number, don't let a day go by with a lottery for which you did not buy a ticket because that could be the day that your number came up. If you bet a different number every day, they would not have that argument. It is a powerful argument and one to which
June 18, 1990

more and more people are succumbing, even though the argument is totally illogical.
Last summer, there were a series of advertisements in the province of Ontario that led to this bill being drafted. The advertisements reminded people that even while they were away at their cottages the lotteries were being run. So, even while you are at your cottage, make sure that a day does not go by without you having bought a ticket that day because your lucky number may come up.
When I saw that advertisement, I thought that it just had gone too far. Surely there is a responsibility at the level where these lotteries were conceived, which was in this place, to examine the degree to which lotteries are being increasingly used. I would also like to see an examination of the amount of advertising money that is spent, the percentage of the proceeds that is used for good works, compared to the percentage that is used for ever-increasing amounts of advertising. I want to commend this bill to the House.
I can see by members opposite nodding that they would be prepared to give this bill all three readings today. I would be content simply to see the bill referred to a committee. I think it would be a desirable thing to do because when and if this bill becomes law, it imposes a sanction that applies only to provincial governments. Therefore, since only they are allowed to run lotteries in the country of the sort that I am proposing to limit advertising for, it ought to go to committee.
Provincial governments and their lottery corporations should be given notice of our concerns. We should have research staff and some studies should be done in a Canadian context which would show the extent to which gambling is increasing and the extent to which the advertising of lotteries is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the cost of the whole business.
Also I certainly think it would be worth while to study the impact of buying lottery tickets on the families and on the individuals who are buying lottery tickets.

Madam Speaker, I thank you, and I hope that this bill will at least be referred to a parliamentary committee.
Private Members' Business


Mr. Benno Friesen (Parliamentary Secretary to Solicitor General of Canada):: Madam Speaker, I am in a little jam on this one. I agree with much of what the member has just said about gambling per se, but I find it difficult to support his motion. I guess what bothers me is that he was part of the government that brought in Lotto Canada and now he wants to restrict the advertising of it. I find that a bit of a contradiction, particularly since the member bringing this measure forward was Solicitor General for about four years between 1980 and 1984 and had ample opportunity at that time to bring forth the kind of measure that he is talking about now. He could have encouraged it in the cabinet at that time. Maybe he did and was not successful, I do not know.
I remember when Lotto Canada was introduced with fanfare. It was our belief that the federal government should not be in the gambling business. I remember that you had to be very well connected to the Liberal Party to get a franchise for selling Lotto Canada tickets. I remember most of all how a colleague of mine whose wife was contacted to be an agent for Lotto Canada. Somehow the communications had got mixed up in the Liberal Party and they thought that she was connected with the office of one of the Liberal members of Parliament. After she had been offered the franchise, they found out much to their chagrin that she was not the person they thought she was. She said "Well, that's fine. I don't really need it. I have an appointment with The Globe and Mail anyway." All of a sudden the franchise was forthcoming. That is the first thing I remember about Lotto Canada. The second thing I remember was the time that boxes of Lotto Canada tickets were missing.
When we formed the government in 1979 we were convinced that the federal government should not be in the lottery business in the first place. We divested ourselves of that under the leadership of the Right Hon. Joe Clark. We divested ourselves of that business because we did not believe that we should be doing it. We turned it over to the provinces for their administration and for their financial profit.
I do not hold to the lottery business at all. I have to say to the member, who was a member of the government at that time, since his government brought the lotto business into Canada, how did he expect the business to be propagated, by word of mouth? You know "Hey, pal, I've

June 18, 1990
Private Members' Business
got a ticket"? No, no. There was going to be advertising, and there was. If you will recall, there was heavy advertising on television of Lotto Canada tickets at the time. There was no hint that we should not be doing it at the time. Now we have it under the jurisdiction of the provinces.
This is what bothers me most of all about his motion, that at one time it was in the federal domain and there was nothing in the legislation at that time to restrict advertising of the lottery system. Now that it is in the provincial domain, we are supposed to restrict advertising for lotteries. I grant him that particularly lifestyle advertising is injurious and leads people to believe in some fantasies that are unhealthy, and that is not good. Ele has just cited the reason for bringing in the legislation tabled, and it happens to be Ontario advertising, and it could have been any other province as well, but has he made any overtures to the Government of Ontario, who are his soul mates? Has he asked it about the advertising it is doing so that it does not propagate what could become a disease, a fixation in advertising?
Once one introduces a measure like lotteries-I would rather that it would not be here-and then tells the provinces: "Here is what you cannot do with it," there is an element of paternalism that enters into it. I cannot believe that the provinces are going to be happy with any kind of instruction from the federal government about what is or what is not acceptable about the way they promote what we have already given them the right to promote.
I cannot believe that the provinces think they are so immature in the whole area of ethics, morality and promotion of this that they need guidance from the federal government on how guidelines ought to be set up for the promotion of this industry.
The hon. member's other point is that low income people tend to use their disposable income, of which they have a restricted amount, to buy lottery tickets that they may not be able to afford. This hurts them. If that is the pattern, I agree that it does. Would he then also suggest that, for example, if there is a higher percentage of cigarette smoking among low income people that there ought to be a diminished amount of advertising toward them, or that we ought to take fewer tax dollars from them? Should we increase the taxes for them?
Once one gets into a kind of socioeconomic grouping, I think one runs into trouble. I wonder about penny stocks. If there is ever an arena for gambling, it is in the whole area of penny stocks. Maybe that should be included. I guess the biggest problem that I have is the serious degree to which legislation like this could antagonize the provincial governments. I do not think we need that kind of confrontation in federal-provincial relations.
Now that we have an industry that I do not support and that I do not think is good, but which is entirely within the domain of the provinces, we ought to let the provinces do it and not try to pass legislation that instructs them in a kind of paternalistic way on how to conduct their activities.


Mr. Doug Fee (Red Deer):: Madam Speaker, none of us in this House or anywhere in this country would want to support a vice that contributes to poverty or addiction, not even an addiction to gambling.
As we all know, this can very well lead to personal and social problems. This bill is just a little extreme. By legislating against advertising for provincially operated lotteries, we do not address the real concerns that I am certain lie behind this bill. Canadians allow a rather ironic situation to exist in the legal status of gambling.
As the hon. member for York Centre pointed out earlier, most Canadians look at gambling as morally wrong. At the same time, they are willing to accept it if the proceeds are used for socially acceptable uses.
The general approach toward gambling in Canada has been to prohibit all forms of gambling under the Criminal Code, except those that are specifically permitted under that code. At the same time, there are several forms of permitted gambling in Canada. Almost all of us are familiar with the betting that is permitted on games of chance and wheels of fortune at fairs and exhibitions across the country.
In the next few months-I am assuming we will get a parliamentary break and if we do-most of us will be visiting those fairs and exhibitions. We will see the games of chance. We will have our own opinions and moral judgments on whether they should be there or not. The fact remains that they are accepted as part of most of our summer fairs across Canada.
June 18, 1990

Most of us will also know that private bets between individuals who are not engaged in the business of betting are generally permitted. If I may offer a wager, I would wager that most members of this House participated in hockey pools during the recent Stanley Cup play-offs. Some of us will also have acquaintance with the permitted exception for paramutuel betting operated by race associations on horse races.
This latter permitted exception, as all members of the House will know, incorporates regulation by the federal Minister of Agriculture. These permitted exemptions notwithstanding, it is the permitted exemption for lottery schemes which has become the most well known form of gambling in Canada in recent years.
The Criminal Code creates a permitted exception to the prohibition against lotteries where a lottery scheme is directly operated by a province. As many of us will recall, in 1985 Parliament amended the Code to eliminate the permitted exception that had existed for the federal government to operate a lottery scheme.
Parliament has also enacted in the Criminal Code a permitted exception to the prohibition against lotteries where a province licenses a charitable or religious organization, the board of an annual fair or exhibition, or an operator of a concession, leased by a fair or exhibition board, to operate certain lottery schemes. These lottery schemes include bingos, certain types of casino games and what we would traditionally call a lottery or a draw. In very narrow circumstances, there is a permitted exception to the prohibition against lotteries where a province licenses an individual to conduct a lottery scheme. The cost of a chance to win in a licensed private lottery scheme must not exceed $2, and the value of each prize must not exceed $500.
It is only the permitted exception for a lottery scheme which is directly operated by a province that would be subject to the limitations in advertising contemplated in Bill C-255. If Parliament were to pass this bill into law, it would not affect any advertising that might be done for lotteries that are licensed by a province but which are not operated by a province. Should this bill pass, I fear that we would immediately throw the federal government into a pitched battle with the provinces. If it is passed,
Private Members' Business
any person who broadcasts, publishes or posts an advertisement for a lottery that is directly operated by a province, would commit a crime, with the exception of a person who posts an advertisement inside a retail establishment.
Bill C-255 would also apply to a person who causes these advertisements to be made. The crime would be a hybrid offence. That is, the Crown could elect to proceed by way of the more serious indictable offence, or it could prosecute the offence as a summary conviction offence.
One immediately thinks of the television, radio and print media as contemplated offenders. On a closer look, one might think of provincial government officials and ultimately one would have to think of elected provincial government leaders.
Given that the conduct of lotteries as a permitted exception to the Criminal Code's prohibition against gambling has emerged from federal-provincial consultations, one can expect that provinces would look to the bill as a direct and nefarious attack. Nor is it inconceivable that those members of the public who participate in provincially-operated lotteries would be perturbed by a paternalism that would deprive them of access to information concerning lotteries and prize offerings. Many persons would view this proposed legislation as an attack on freedom of speech that would be difficult to justify as a reasonable limit imposed by law under Section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
I would like to think that this bill is not a mean-spirited attempt to take a deep-cutting swipe at revenues generated by provinces. I remind all that provincial lottery revenues are often used to fund community and sporting organizations. It may well be that the thinking behind this bill centres upon those individuals who become addicted to gambling and suffer the personal, family and professional difficulties, including the commission of crime to finance gambling. I am not insensitive to these problems. However, if this is the thinking that has inspired the bill, it would seem to me that there are better ways to cope with these problems than by invoking society's strongest sanction, the criminal law penalty against the advertising of provincial lotteries. Such approaches would necessarily involve the provinces, academics and therapists in the treatment of gambling addiction.

June 18, 1990
Private Members' Business
If there is a need to address concerns of compulsive gambling or gambling addiction, then the groundwork of statistical and therapeutic research should be laid and strategies to address the concern should be developed in concert between the provinces and interested parties. For this, much persuasive effort may be required to convince provincial governments. However, a criminal sanction should not be invoked against advertising the provincially-operated lotteries in order to address gambling addiction. If I am wrong and the intent of this bill is to take a big bite out of the provincial revenues from provincially-operated lotteries, the only conceivable object would be to force provinces to look at other means of revenue generation to make up any shortfall from lottery revenue losses.
Under Bill C-255, provinces could raise revenue through lotteries. However, they would have their lottery income reduced because they could not advertise. The elected members of provincial governments would be told that for the provinces' own good, Parliament had decided that provinces must prefer other methods of revenue generation to lotteries. Without getting into a debate on the morality of gambling in provincially operated lotteries, I simply note that in a society that does not share a homogeneous set of values it is impossible to find a consensus or even a widespread view that the advertising of provincially operated lottery schemes is morally repugnant or individually and socially harmful to the point of requiring the creation of criminal law sanction against the advertising of provincially operated lotteries.
Certainly public participation in provincially operated lotteries could be characterized presently as enthusiastic. This enthusiasm is not novel or is it unique to Canada as government lotteries have existed and flourished for centuries in some European countries.
Unlike many of the arguments against casinos, criticism of the operation of what are traditionally known as draws or lotteries focuses on revenue debates and primarily upon who contributes the revenue. This area is entangled with debate making value judgments about lottery gaming which is attractive to low income persons. The income of the participants is seen by some as a reason to limit the lotteries. Others say that the low income person should have the freedom to enjoy his recreation. These ethical issues turn on the philosophical
debate about the individual freedom to participate in lotteries and considerations of government encouragement of consumption in the form of government operated lotteries. I doubt very much that Canadian society could find a consensus in this debate.
I do not feel that Bill C-255 should be supported. It wades into the heavy sea of ethics and philosophy to find a basis for criminal sanction against advertising provincially operated lotteries. Instead, the criminal sanction should only prohibit conduct which carries moral culpability or blameworthiness because it creates a risk of harm or because there is a need to express society's moral rejection of a conduct.
I do share the concern about gambling that was expressed by the hon. member for York Centre and reinforced by the hon. member for Surrey-White Rock, but I cannot support legislating restrictions against provincial advertising.


Mr. Jean-Pierre Hogue (Outremont):: Madam Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to rise in the House today to comment briefly on Bill C-255, whose purpose is to amend the provisions of the Criminal Code concerning lotteries.
With respect, I do not think this bill should be supported by the House. I do not question for a moment the excellent motives behind this bill. However, considering what is provided under the Criminal Code, the scope of the bill is such that it would practically wipe out what so far has been allowed. It would be like taking away with one hand what the other has given.
The purpose of Bill C-255 is to prohibit all kinds of advertising, except inside retail stores, for all kinds of lotteries which are authorized, in any case. Madam Speaker, perhaps I might recall for the benefit of hon. members what is provided in paragraph 207(l)(b) of the Criminal Code, to which the bill refers. This paragraph reads as follows:
207.(1) Notwithstanding any of the provisions of this Part relating to gaming and betting, it is lawful
(b) for the government of a province, either alone or in conjunction with the government of another province, to conduct and manage a lottery scheme in that province, or in that and such other province, in accordance with any law enacted by the legislature of that province-
June 18, 1990

This means that the advertising ban would apply to authorized lotteries operated by any of the provinces. Madam Speaker, I find it hard to understand why only provincial lotteries are covered by this amendment. Why not allow advertising when lotteries are operated at exhibitions or fairs? What is the difference? Is the basis on which a charitable or religious organization operates this kind of system so different that it should be not allowed to advertise but not the province? Madam Speaker, I do not agree. I think both should be allowed to attract the kind of people that are interested in this kind of activity.
In both cases, Parliament wanted to allow the provinces and these organizations to collect funds that in the end are used for the public good. Provincial lotteries enable the provinces to finance other programs for the benefit of local residents, while giving participants a chance to have some fun.
More than 15 years ago, some people called this a voluntary tax. In any case, authorized lotteries are a way for the provinces to collect funds without having to use other, less attractive means of collecting money. At least the customer gets something in return for his contribution!
Obviously, the purpose of advertising is to make people aware of the existence of these games. However, I think the ultimate objective is desirable, which is to let more people participate in order to collect more money for the government.
Madam Speaker, it is hard to understand why we must go after the provinces that are only trying to use one of the means at their disposal to lighten our fellow citizens' tax load. As far as I know, the provinces' use of lotteries has not yet led to such a storm of protest from the public that Parliament has to intervene by using its power under the Criminal Code.
On the contrary, from what I hear, people are telling us that they are pleased with the present arrangements and do not think that they constitute high-pressure sales. Madam Speaker, this means that the vast majority of our fellow citizens would be deprived of a way to find out about games or new games, which in turn would deprive governments of funds they need to finance and manage social programs in their province.
Private Members' Business
We must be, and of course we are, aware of the good intentions of those who favour such a bill: there is no doubt that they want to eliminate what they consider to be gambling binges. At least, that is what I hope is the purpose of this amendment.
Unfortunately, Madam Speaker, as you very well know, I really doubt that such an amendment could prevent someone who has a need or a compulsion to gamble and he or she will continue to do so in other ways that may be more underhanded and harmful.
It is well known that people who are compulsive gamblers will do what they must to satisfy their gambling addiction to lotteries and games. The absence of advertising on television and in other media will not stop those who are bitten by that bug from finding out about these games and spending money that others do not think should be spent on them.
Our fellow citizens who are filling a need will certainly not be cured by a ban on advertising for provincial government lotteries. Even a total ban on lotteries would do no good in such cases.
No, what must be done for these compulsive gamblers is to provide programs to help them break their habit similar to programs that exist to help alcoholics overcome their addiction.
To continue my analogy, Madam Speaker, what this bill proposes would be like authorizing the sale and advertising of liquor in retail stores while making it an offence to advertise elsewhere, the idea being that this would help alcoholics shake their habit. We know perfectly well this is wishful thinking.
In addition, when we consider that the provinces stand to lose revenue, just because some people hope to abolish what they see as disastrous, it is clear that any chance of success is practically non-existent, while the provinces would run a very real risk of incurring financial losses.
Madam Speaker, so far gambling, when properly managed as it is today, is economically useful to meet the provinces' real needs, while the provinces can then redistribute part of this money for the benefit of their residents.
Madame Speaker, Bill C-255 is a typical example of a piece of legislation that, presented in good faith, unfortunately misses the target and seems to create more problems than it solves.

June 18, 1990
It seems to me there are many drawbacks and that very few benefits would ensue as a result of this measure. No one is against virtue, nor will anyone criticize a measure to prohibit gambling because it upholds virtue.
However, this measure is faulty because it does not achieve what it was intended to achieve. In fact, it is a threat to a program that is eminently desirable-allowing the provinces to collect certain sums of money that are then put to appropriate use to meet local needs, as I said earlier.
All things considered, Madam Speaker, Bill C-255 should be rejected, while all the requisite programs for gambling addicts should be made available to those who want to stop gambling.
Madam Speaker, psychology teaches us about the risk concept, which covers a very broad area and has yet to be resolved. However, psychology also teaches us that individual needs must be met in some way or other, and advertising is not a factor that will affect the individual's impulse to gamble. These problems can only be dealt with through support programs and programs that promote individual responsibility.
As is always the case with legislators who are asked to approve measures designed for the good of the public, we are confronted with options that are well-intentioned but also have a negative aspect.
In the case of Bill C-255, we feel the negative aspects loom much larger than the positive impact intended by this bill. That is why the bill will not accomplish its purpose. It will not achieve its objective and, Madam Speaker, in that case, the bill should not be passed.


Mr. Dave Worthy (Cariboo-Chilcotin):: Madam Speaker, in that I do not have much time, I will try to make my points as quickly as I can.
I have several concerns with the bill. The principal one is my deeply rooted and very sincere belief that legislation should only be enacted when it is absolutely necessary. Many people in this country feel that laws are there to try to make people become something they are not. I am strongly convinced that legislation should only be
enacted when it is shown that there is a deep rooted need to have that legislation in place.
The intent of Bill C-55 is to restrict advertising on all provincially-


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but the time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired.
Pursuant to Standing Order 96(1), the order is dropped from the Order Paper.

It being 2 o'clock, the House will now proceed to Statements by members pursuant to Standing Order 31.



Mr. Guy Ricard (Laval):: This year, Madam Speaker, Laval celebrates the 25th anniversary of its founding. As a matter of fact. It was on August 6th, 1965, that the 14 municipalities of lie Jesus merged to become the city of Laval.
Since then, Ville-de-Laval has grown economically and seen its population increase from 196 000 in 1965 to nearly 300 000 in 1990.
It is thanks to the dedication of its founding father, Me Jean-Noel Lavoie, Laval's first mayor, and his successors, Mr. Jacques Tetreault, the current member for Laval-Centre, Messrs Lucien Paiement and Claude Lefebvre, as well as Mr. Gilles Vaillancourt, the current mayor, that Laval could experience such development and growth.
My thanks go to its founding father and its leaders! May this 25th anniversary become a comer stone for prosperity in the years ahead!
Finally, Madam Speaker, my colleagues Jacques Tetreault and Vincent Della Noce, join me in wishing all Laval citizens, men and women, a very happy twenty-fifth anniversary.
June 18, 1990


HEALTH AND WELFARE
Mr. David Berger (Saint-Henri-Westmount):: Madam Speaker, rumours have been circulating for several months and today we have confirmation from the Minister of National Health and Welfare that $4 million will be cut from the budget of the National Health Research and Development Program.
This program is the only source of research funding in Canada for public health, preventive medicine, health promotion, health education, and health services research.
I received copies of letters sent to the minister from disbelieving researchers who work in these fields. One such person works in environmental health studying the risk of cancer due to chemicals in the environment.
These researchers tell me that such a cut will have a devastating effect on their work. Some research teams will disband; new ones will be stillborn.
We hear every day about the need to control healthcare costs in an ageing society. Cutting funding for research in preventive health and public health research is not the way to do it. It is sheer lunacy. I hope that the government will reconsider this ill-advised decision which is sure to be counter-productive.


MEECH LAKE ACCORD
Mr.   J.W. Bud Bird@Fredericton-York-Sunbury: Madam Speaker, this week the fate of Canada's Constitution hangs in the balance. All reasonable Canadians share the aspirations and concerns of those who seek to advance the security of their respective rights and freedoms in our Constitution, be they men or women, French or English, aboriginals or of any ethnic origin.
In my view, opposition to the accord is not the way to achieve such goals. To the contrary, I believe that ratification of it is an absolutely essential prerequisite to advancing any cause for constitutional reform in Canada at this time.
We must all recognize that from the very moment our Constitution was patriated in 1982 without Quebec's participation there has been virtual paralysis with respect to any change or future development.
The Meech Lake Accord is designed to cure that paralysis and to make it possible for other issues to move forward constructively and to be resolved.
The best way to build our nation for every interest is to affirm the Meech Lake Accord now. The worst way for any interest will be to block it.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena):: Madam Speaker, the world, not just Canada, faces environmental catastrophes of a magnitude unknown to human existence.
Twenty thousand species will become extinct this year and half of all species on earth will become extinct over the next 50 years if we continue the human industrial assault.
Two acres of tropical rain forest are clearcut or go up in smoke every second. In Canada one acre is clearcut or burned every five seconds, every minute, every hour, every day of the year.
Our oceans are under assault. In recent days whales, seals, fish, even starfish by the millions, have been washing ashore dead from radiation in the White Sea north of Moscow. The hole in the ozone grows over the Arctic and now over Canada. Global warming continues despite the pleadings of scientists world-wide.
Today the environmental assessment and review legislation is to be tabled. It has long been promised. Consultations went on for a year back in 1987. In 1988 Tom McMillan promised on October 20, "We are prepared to subject every federal undertaking and every undertaking on federal lands to a thorough environmental impact study." Lucien Bouchard promised the same.
Since 1974 the EARP has been based upon a cabinet policy, solely an Order in Council.
Despite strong rulings by the Federal Court on the Rafferty-Alameda and a unanimous ruling by the Federal Court of Appeal on the Oldman Dam, both projects continue without completed assessments.

June 18, 1990
Assessments must apply to projects, to impacts, to domestic policy and to our international policy and projects as well.


SOFTWOOD LUMBER INDUSTRY
Mr. Len Hopkins (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke):: Madam Speaker, last week, the Secretary of State for External Affairs said sarcastically and arrogantly that "overstating a case does not make up for not having one". He was referring to opposition requests for action in cancelling the Memorandum of Understanding with regard to the softwood lumber industry in Canada.
When is this government going to realize that its policies are destroying what was once a healthy lumber industry?
The Memorandum of Understanding which slaps a 15 per cent export tax on softwood lumber, coupled with current interest rates and the artificially high Canadian dollar, has forced the closure of lumber mills throughout the province of Ontario. In a riding such as mine, where the lumber industry is a major employer, these job losses amount to a disaster.
I urge the government to take action now, before more lumber mills are closed and more people are forced into unemployment by the silly policy of this government.


OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY
Mr. Bruce Halliday (Oxford):: Madam Speaker, I am grateful to have this opportunity, coming as it does during Canadian Occupational Health and Safety Week, to recognize the role of Health and Welfare Canada in maintaining and improving the health and safety of federal government employees.
The department's responsibilities are carried out primarily through the Public Service Health Program, which provides high quality and comprehensive occupational and environmental health services to client groups. These services consist of health protection and promotion activities designed to support and enhance the physical, mental and social well-being of clients.
Current priorities of the Public Service Health Program include measures to increase the response capacity to post-trauma stress disorder resulting from serious accidents and incidents in the workplace, continuation of the hepatitis B vaccination program for high-risk groups and continued emphasis on investigating complaints about indoor air quality.


ATLANTIC FISHERIES ADJUSTMENT PROGRAM
Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-TVinity-Conception):: Madam Speaker, I have reviewed the Atlantic Fisheries Adjustment Program in detail and I am very concerned.
In general, I find that it contains many references to ongoing consultation and continuing discussions with respect to diplomatic talks on overfishing, the provision of assistance to individuals and communities, and the disbursement of assistance for diversification projects. What it does not contain are definite provisions for guaranteeing the long-term future of the fisheries or clearly defined action to assist individuals and communities.
A specific concern I and many of my colleagues have is that the inshore fishery in Newfoundland is particularly dismal and unproductive this spring. People who have been at it for years have never seen it so bad.
The Atlantic Fisheries Adjustment Program ignores those fishermen and plant workers who make their living from the inshore sector and the communities in which they live. They are understandably and genuinely worked up, while the situation is ignored by the government. They want the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to address this problem now.


LIBERAL LEADERSHIP
Mr. Ken Atkinson (St. Catharines):: Jean Chretien, where do you stand on the Meech Lake Accord?
Last week, Mr. Chretien issued a written statement saying: "I, therefore, will not be making any further statement on the subject at this time".
A Copps campaign spokesman said that his position is insulting to the intelligence of the Liberal delegates. I could not agree more. This week, Canada is at the crossroads; yet, the man who wants to be Prime Minister
r
June 18, 1990

is silent. Those who aspire to political leadership must stand up and be counted on the great issues of the day.
Mr. Chretien, where do you stand on the Meech Lake Accord? Yes or no, Mr. Chretien? Yes or no?


GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Mr. Lyle Dean MacWilliam (Okanagan -Shuswap):: Madam Speaker, tourism operators across Canada have complained that the goods and services tax will make it more difficult for them to compete with their American counterparts.
What about the American counterparts who own resort facilities right here in Canada? Canadian-owned operations right next door to American-owned facilities operating in Canada are stuck with the 7 per cent GST while their American neighbours get off scot-free.
Here is how it works. Many fishing and recreation resorts on the west coast of Canada are American-owned and offer U.S. customers package vacations paid for at their U.S. outlet. They even fly in all their supplies. Because the client pays the money at the U.S. office, he is exempt from the GST which must be paid by a Canadian firm. This puts legitimate Canadian resorts at a 7 per cent disadvantage and puts a lie to the Tory promise of a level playing field. Just like free trade, the GST is going to kill initiative and harm our tourism industry.


LIBERAL LEADERSHIP
Mr. Peter L. McCreath (South Shore):: Madam Speaker, the man who this weekend intends to become leader of the national Liberal Party, Jean Chretien, remains completely silent about the greatest recent national issue, the Meech Lake Accord.
Mr. Chretien, where do you stand? There will be no place in history for those who in times of great crisis strive to maintain their neutrality. Your leadership rival, the member for LaSalle-Emard, says there are 26 million Canadians who have an opinion on the accord and are prepared to express it. Mr. Chretien is the only
one who is not. Mr. Chretien, come out of the storm cellar. Do you support Meech Lake, yes or no?


GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Mr. Eugene Bellemare (Carleton-Gloucester):: Madam Speaker, I wish to congragulate the Consumers' Association of Canada for dissociating itself from the Government's blatant interference by quickly accepting Mr. Nickolas Murray's resignation as its president.
By appointing Mr. Murray as head of the new GST consumer information office without first asking him to resign his position, the government had created a conflict of interest situation with its underhanded interference with the affairs of an independent organization.

Not only did the government attempt to undermine the Consumers' Association of Canada's credibility, it also managed to embarrass itself once again by creating a legally impotent government agency. The Conservative government has once again deceived Canadian consumers by attempting to appease them rather than to protect their interests.


QUEBEC MINING ASSOCIATION
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Madam Speaker, the Quebec Mining Association's annual meeting has been going on in Montebello since yesterday, on the theme "Quebec's mines in their world and in the world".
Three major thrusts were defined for the future of the Quebec mining industry in the next few years.
Development of new gold mining techniques: the top priority will be the development of a veinstone mining technique.
Replenishment of reserves of common metals: the main resources that now exist will be depleted in the next three to five years and exploration must be undertaken immediately.
Major improvements must be made in the areas of health, safety and the environment. Although the Quebec mining industry is doing a great deal in these areas, much still remains to be done.

June 18, 1990
Oral Questions


CANADA POST
Hon. Ralph Ferguson (Lambton-Middlesex):: Madam Speaker, this Conservative government is intent on closing down rural Canada. Canadians in rural Canada are being treated as second-class citizens by Canada Post and this government. We now see their secret agenda.
The village of Newbury, Ontario, like many other municipalities across Canada, has asked to be given the right to run its postal service as Canada Post is closing down the local post office.
Canada Post wants these communities to buy the postal buildings but will not allow them a priority bid to continue to provide quality postal service. Why? Because Canada Post is afraid that once the municipalities provide first-class postal service to rural Canadians rural Canadians will rightfully ask why Canada Post could not.
I call on this government to reverse this unfair policy and to provide all Canadians with equitable postal service. I ask the minister today to allow municipalities like Newbury the opportunity to provide postal services to their citizens as an option, rather than go the route of privatization.


FORESTRY
Mr. Brian L. Gardiner (Prince George-Bulkley Valley):: Madam Speaker, the United Nations is sponsoring an international convention on proper forest policies to be pursued by member countries by the fall of 1991.
The need to recognize forest practices that allow for proper harvesting and the preservation of unique areas must be developed. In Canada, this policy can be developed if we have some signed forest agreements in co-operation with the provinces so that we can obtain and have a truly sustainable forest industry.
I call on the Government of Canada to announce its intention to participate in the development of these policies and hold full public hearings so that we can have a truly sustainable forest industry.


INDIAN AFFAIRS
Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland-Colchester):: Madam Speaker, last week I was pleased and honoured to attend a ceremony transferring responsibility for family and children's services for native people in Nova Scotia from the province of Nova Scotia to the Micmac Family and Children's Services Organization.
This is the first time responsibility for family and children services has been turned over to native people in Canada and it is another important step toward self-determination. This is important because native adults will now be able to apply their standards and culture to family and children services. It is even more important to the children who see the adults managing the plan as role models and show at a very early age the responsibility for their futures is in the hands of native people.
I want to congratulate Joan Gloade, Chief Lawrence Paul, the staff of the regional office of Indian Affairs in Amherst and all others involved with this exciting step forward on the part of native people.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Herb Gray (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Deputy Prime Minister.
I understand that this morning Senator Murray, the Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations, and senior officials of the government met with leaders of the Manitoba Assembly of Chiefs in Winnipeg.
It is reported that Senator Murray and officials presented a new series of proposals to the aboriginal leaders with a view to breaking the impasse over the 1987 constitutional amendment which currently exists in the Manitoba Legislature.
Will the Deputy Prime Minister tell the House what exactly was contained in these proposals and what has been the response of the leaders of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs to these proposals?
June 18, 1990


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Privy Council and Minister of Agriculture):: Yes, Mr. Speaker, if I am provided a certain latitude in the House, I could outline specifically six points that were made in the meeting that took place this morning. With the consent of the House, I would be prepared to table the letter.
Essentially, the undertaking by the federal government was to ensure that a federal-aboriginal process, which set the agenda for First Ministers' conferences, would be established, and that the First Ministers' conference with respect to aboriginal affairs, which was alluded to in the document of June 9, would be accelerated.
The second commitment by the Government of Canada was to full constitutional recognition of the aboriginal peoples as a fundamental characteristic of Canada.
Third, there is an undertaking to have representatives of the aboriginal peoples participate in any future First Ministers' conference held to discuss the recognition clause, or the Canada clause, as it has become to be referred.
Fourth, the Prime Minister would invite aboriginal peoples to further future First Ministers' conference where matters involving aboriginal concerns are directly affected. They would be able to participate at those conferences.
Fifth, a joint definition of treaty rights would be established. Finally, the federal government proposed to establish a royal commission on native affairs which would be broad and comprehensive in dealing with the various issues affecting the aboriginal community.
My understanding is that following this meeting, the chiefs met to consider the proposals. I understand that they are holding a press conference right at this very moment. Our preliminary indication is that they are rejecting this as a move to break the log-jam and they will be expressing a view that they are not interested in pursuing these discussions further.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: In the
light of this possible answer from the native leaders, I ask the Deputy Prime Minister what the government's next
Oral Questions
step will be, because it is a very serious situation, one that was created by the government, and the Canadian people are asking for a concrete response.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, if I were the Leader of the Opposition, I would not be so quick to level blame.
There is a process going on. The undertaking that was agreed to and signed by the First Ministers of June 9 indicated they would use every possible effort to achieve the passage of the Meech Lake Accord by June 23,1990. I should remind the hon. Leader of the Opposition that this is really a matter for the Manitoba Legislature to consider.
There is a procedural problem that is currently under way, and we hope that the Legislature of Manitoba will work towards the achievement of the undertaking that was signed by the premier of that province. I think all we can do is help and facilitate the Manitoba Legislature. That is precisely what we are doing.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, Canadians expect a more precise and meaningful response to the question as to exactly what the government intends to do if the concerns of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs cannot be met by the June 23 date. It is time for the government to become a lot clearer on how it intends to deal with this situation.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, any time an hon. member prefaces his or her question with the word "if", it becomes a bit of a hypothetical situation.
In fairness, given the delicacy of this particular issue, I think it would be most inopportune to speculate as to what might or might not happen. There is an undertaking agreed to by all First Ministers that they will use their best efforts in passing the Meech Lake Accord by the deadline. We can only assume that that commitment is still firm. We have every reason to believe that it is, and we have every reason and hope that that will be proceeded with.

June 18, 1990
Oral Questions


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Hon. Andre Ouellet (Papineau-Saint-Michel):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. Following Nelson Mandela's historic visit to this House, I wish the government would tell us whether it intends to make a positive response to Mr. Mandela's request that economic sanctions against South Africa be maintained, and second, could the government explain why, despite its statements on economic sanctions, the level of Canada's trade relations with South Africa still remains very high?


Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister for International TVade):: Mr. Speaker, I believe it has already been made clear by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for External Affairs that the Government of Canada intends to continue with the present economic sanctions until such time as there is a clear indication that the apartheid system in South Africa has been done away with. I do not think there is any doubt about policy in that regard.
With respect to the question of trade with South Africa, it is minimal with the exception of some very necessary material that we import for use in certain of our Canadian industries. There certainly has been no increase in trade with South Africa.


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, I differ with the minister because, according to the data that we have, despite all the reassurances given by the government, trade seems to be moving up. Therefore, there is a discrepancy between what the government is saying and what is actually taking place.
As a supplementary question, I would like to ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he is ready to ask his government to reconsider its decision to refuse to give direct subsidies to the ANC.
The government has instead recommended the creation of a solidarity fund. Through the auspices of Senator Graham, we on this side will participate with others in Canada to raise funds to help the democratic effort that will take place in South Africa. More particularly, we should help the political aspirations of the ANC.
Is the government ready to match dollar for dollar contributions given to the ANC by Canadian citizens?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, one of the constant principles of our foreign policy is that we do not provide financial assistance to any political organization overseas. That is a principle that has been endorsed by all three Canadian political parties and approved on a number of occasions when there has been a parliamentary review of foreign policy. We cannot provide funding for the political work of the African National Congress.
We have provided humanitarian education assistance to ANC members through NGOs here in Canada and international organizations were active in encouraging a funding dialogue between the ANC and other groups in South Africa. We are prepared to provide constitutional advice and assistance to them and to assist as they head into crucial negotiations. We have encouraged private fund-raising initiatives organized by the Nelson Mandela Fund, which is also endorsed by the three political parties in Canada.
The principle, as I say, is clear and accepted up to now by all three political parties that we do not provide financial assistance to any political organization overseas.


MEECH LAKE ACCORD
Ms. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. The Deputy Prime Minister said earlier, in response to a question from the Leader of the Opposition, that there is a procedural problem in Manitoba.
I beg to differ, Mr. Speaker. I think there is a very long-standing problem of lack of respect and consideration for aboriginal issues in the country which has culminated in the problem we see now regarding Meech Lake.
The government has said in its Throne Speeches, and in fact last week the Prime Minister said: "-the first victims of 1981-82 were not Quebecers. They were aboriginal peoples-"
The government has spoken very well about aboriginal concerns but has taken very little action, except the action taken during the budget to cut back on funding for aboriginal communications.

Given the concerns of aboriginal people and the little attention that has been paid to them by successive governments, would the Deputy Prime Minister immediately commit to re-establish the programs that cut back the aboriginal programs in order to demonstrate some good faith to aboriginal people in the country?


Hon. Kim Campbell (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, as minister responsible for the aboriginal constitutional process, I would draw the hon. member's attention to the fact that in the Meech Lake Accord, in the companion resolution, and in the proposals that the federal government has put forward just this week with respect to aboriginal leaders in Manitoba, the Government of Canada has taken the lead in trying to ensure that the underlying causes of difficulties faced by aboriginal people in Canada are addressed in a serious way through addressing the question of aboriginal self-government.
It is important for the hon. member to recognize that the failure of the Meech Lake Accord would deal a very serious blow to the aboriginal constitutional agenda. She should be supporting the ratification of the Meech Lake Accord and the companion resolution as the most significant key to the serious and long-term permanent resolution of aboriginal issues in the country.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister once again.
Can the Deputy Prime Minister explain to Canadians and to aboriginal people how cutting 100 per cent of core funding for aboriginal political organizations helps them participate in the constitutional process.
How does cutting 100 per cent of funding for aboriginal newspapers help them participate in the constitutional process? Will the Deputy Prime Minister commit to show good faith to aboriginal people to restore funding for aboriginal political organizations and for aboriginal communications?


A. Kim Campbell: Mr. Speaker, in the budgetary process all Canadians have been asked to participate and share in the challenge of reducing the deficit.
Oral Questions


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


S(1430 )
A. Kim Campbell: Don't do damage to your jaws over there, or your knees.
With respect to the aboriginal constitutional process, I have already made a commitment to aboriginal groups in this country to fund them in the process leading up to aboriginal constitutional negotiations. They have had that commitment from the Government of Canada already.
At a meeting last Thursday evening and at a previous one on May 28, that commitment was reconfirmed by myself and the minister responsible for federal-provincial relations.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, clearly the government does not want to show good faith to aboriginal people by restoring funding.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: I remind the government that 100 per cent of the core funding was cut for the Assembly of First Nations and 29 other Indian organizations, including the First Nations Confederacy of Manitoba.
My question for the Deputy Prime Minister is this. We know that there are only five days left until the June 23 deadline. In Manitoba, the legislation has not yet been introduced in the legislature, and there are 2,000 people on the waiting list who wish to appear at the public hearings.
The Prime Minister made it clear last Monday that he had a master plan. It was his master plan that created the events of the First Ministers' Conference.
Now that the master plan is unravelling and the Prime Minister is having to admit that he has to deal with those people who were treated unfairly in this process, can the Deputy Prime Minister tell us what this government's plan is for the Constitution?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I hope that the hon. member will have an opportunity to read the letter that the Prime Minister sent to Chief Fontaine, because I think it clearly outlines two things. First, there is our commitment and determination to deal with the problems of the aboriginal peoples.

June 18, 1990
Oral Questions


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: What about last year, the year before and the year before that?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: She asks what about last year. Included in here is our commitment and our follow through in negotiating an agreement in principle with the Dene-Metis on their comprehensive land claims, as well as with the Yukon Indians and the Nishga Tribal Council, comprehensive land claims with the Council of Yukon Indians, and negotiations that led to agreements in principle with the Inuit of the Northwest Territories on their comprehensive land claim.
There has not been this kind of progress made in the last 50 years.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Donald Frank Mazankowski: The efforts of the Prime Minister and this government in terms of moving toward self-government saw many First Ministers' Conferences held. Without Quebec sitting at the table, it was very difficult to proceed. That commitment is restated again in this correspondence to Chief Fontaine.
I am sure that when the hon. leader of the New Democratic Party reads the letter she will agree that there has been tremendous progress made. There is progress being made today, and there is that commitment for the future.


MONTREAL PORT CORPORATION
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. It concerns the administration of the port of Montreal.
Now that the government has had the weekend to look into the issue raised in the House on Friday, can the minister tell us by what strange, happy coincidence a Tory fund raiser and friend of the Prime Minister, Mr. Maurice Mayer, got the untendered contract for $225,000 to purchase properties for the port authority?


Hon. Doug Lewis (Minister of TVansport):: Mr. Speaker, I am advised that port of Montreal expansion has been talked about for several years, that the board of directors narrowed it down to 11 sites, decided upon one and then decided to hire one agent to do the land
assembly. My hon. friend will realize that you do not do land assemblies on the front page of the newspaper. You hire one person who is competent in the field to negotiate. Maurice Mayer was that one person competent to do it. He did it to the satisfaction of the board of directors which appointed him.
I would point out to my hon. friend that all transactions were within the range of the estimates of the Department of Public Works and that all Treasury Board guidelines were followed.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, what are friends for?

I have a supplementary for the Minister of Transport. Could the minister or his colleague, the Minister of Public Works, tell the House why Public Works employees were unable to do the work themselves? And is the government prepared to ask the Auditor General of Canada to investigate this matter?


Hon. Doug Lewis (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I will let my hon. friend in on a secret about assembling land. If you are a big owner you do not go out to try to do the purchasing. Anybody who has something to sell knows they are going to boost the price.
My hon. friend should check with some of his relatives. They know how to assemble land a lot better than he does-and she could tell him how to do it.


BILL C-69
Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Finance I will address my question to the Minister of Justice.
The Minister of Finance and the Minister of Justice will have heard of the decision of the Court of Appeal of British Columbia which ruled that the Government of Canada has no authority for capping its obligations under the Canada Assistance Plan Act as proposed in Bill C-69.
Will the government now do the honourable thing and withdraw this bill from consideration in the other place?
June 18, 1990


A. Kim Campbell: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I have heard of the decision of the B.C. Court of Appeal. The Government of Canada will be appealing the decision of the B.C. Court of Appeal.
It is important to point out that Bill C-69 contains not only provisions to limit the federal contributions to the provinces under the Canada Assistance Plan, but that there are other important fiscal restraint measures, including the two-year freeze on federal payments under the Established Programs Financing, which are in the bill. That alone will account for federal savings of $900 million this year and $1.5 billion next year.
Although the government will seek the view of the Supreme Court of Canada in relation to the CAP measures, we will in the meantime respect the views of the B.C. Court of Appeal. But we will consider means to ensure that other provisions in Bill C-69 are enacted as expeditiously as possible.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, Justice Lambert in the Court of Appeal said: "Honest self-assessment by honest taxpayers is the basis of raising revenue in Canada. The foundation on which that type of taxation rests would be removed if Canadians could not trust their government to keep its agreements. I expect that the overwhelming majority of Canadians would say that this country must be as good as its word".
Why will this government not act the way honest taxpayers do, honour its obligations and withdraw this bill?


A. Kim Campbell: Mr. Speaker, with all respect, the Government of Canada differs from the decision made by the B.C. Court of Appeal. But we will respect the decision until such time as the Supreme Court of Canada can review it.
I have made it very clear that the Government of Canada has always observed declarations. The decision is only a declaration; it does not strike down legislation or anything that serious. We will honour the spirit of the judgment of the B.C. Court of Appeal pending our own appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Oral Questions


Ms. Joy Langan (Mission-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to address a question to the Deputy Prime Minister regarding the Canada Assistance Plan.
If, as the Minister of Justice said, it is the intention of the government to respect the decision of the B.C. courts until such time as it is able to appeal, does that mean that this government believes that its commitment under the Canada Assistance Plan Act is not a binding commitment?


A. Kim Campbell: Mr. Speaker, I do not think that this is the place to relitigate the case that has been heard at some length in front of the B.C. Court of Appeal.
The Government of Canada respectfully differs from the conclusions drawn by a majority of the B.C. Court of Appeal and believe that the issues are sufficiently important to be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada.
We have already indicated that we will respect the spirit of the judgment of the B.C. Court of Appeal while we seek a review by the Supreme Court of Canada.


Joy Langan: Mr. Speaker, I hope the minister is not trying to say that we cannot discuss this matter because it is going back before the courts.
I would like to ask the minister or whoever chooses to answer this question-and it seems no matter who we ask we get a different respondent-this. Did the government not seek a reference from the Supreme Court before proceeding with Bill C-69? What advice did the government get before proceeding, before throwing this whole country into confusion and turmoil over what is going to be put forward to the provinces under the Canada Assistance Plan?


A. Kim Campbell: Mr. Speaker, obviously the government considered the legal implications of its action and was of the view that what it was doing was appropriate.
I do not mean to get into a long legal discourse here, but some of her hon. friends and colleagues in law could advise her that some of the issues raised in the reference by British Columbia in the B.C. Court of Appeal are novel and different. This is the first time an application of the principle of legitimate expectations has been

June 18, 1990
Oral Questions
heard with respect to government activity. With respect, we differ with the conclusions drawn by the B.C. Court of Appeal.


GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Mr. Douglas Young (Gloucester):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of State for Finance.
He will undoubtedly know that Air Canada employees have now joined thousands of other unionized workers across this country in protecting themselves against the goods and services tax.
Further, people are aware that the projections of the Minister of Finance that Canadian workers would lay down and not fight back against this attack on their disposable income has not worked.
Does the government now recognize that this government-fuelled inflation is going to continue to create havoc in the economy, with Governor Crow pursuing his high interest policies? Does it now recognize that that demand for wage and price moderation is not going to hold and that the goods and services tax should be withdrawn?


Hon. John McDermid (Minister of State (Privatization and Regulatory Affairs)):: Mr. Speaker, the short answer is no.
The tentative agreement that was signed by Air Canada and its employees was nothing more than a COLA clause. COLA clauses have been negotiated for a number of years. There is nothing new in this.
Bob White is putting a new name on COLA clauses. He should be given an E for effort in public relations, but it is nothing new.
We still believe, and we have been backed up by three independent organizations, that the inflationary impact of the GST will be somewhere in the 1 per cent to 1.25 per cent range, a one-time increase in the cost of living. That has been admitted from the beginning by the government. It is nothing new.
No, we are not withdrawing it. We are proceeding with the goods and services tax because it means more jobs and more productivity for this country. It is important for Canada.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the minister just for clarification because I think he has made a very important point. I want to make sure that Canadian workers understand exactly what the minister is saying.
Is the minister saying that the government understands that Canadian workers will have to go out and pursue these kinds of adjustments in their wage settlements to make sure that they can protect themselves against the inflationary impact of the goods and goods and services tax? Is that what the government is recommending?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, the government is recommending to all union and non-union employees to moderate their wage demands because increased wage demands are one of the factors forcing inflation up. That has been repeated many times in the House not only by the Minister of Finance and by myself but it has been repeated outside by many economists. The latest remarks were in the paper the other day. Economists stated that, yes, high wage demands do cause inflationary pressures, and that if we are going to wring inflation out of the economy we have to moderate our wage demands. This will ensure that we can wring that inflation out and get interest rates down on a permanent basis. That is the goal.


REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
[Stage Direction]
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands-
Canso): Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to whoever is responding for the Minister of Employment and Immigration.
In January of this year the Minister of Employment and Immigration announced that two areas in my constituency had been designated Community Futures zones. Five months have passed since this announcement and the decision with respect to who will sit on the Community Futures committee has not been made.
Until these committees are established, the program cannot go forward. This has been happening across Atlantic Canada with other Community Futures committees in hard hit areas of Atlantic Canada.
June 18, 1990
[Stage Direction]
Why has the minister failed to designate these committees so that jobs can be created in communities devastated by fish plant closures?
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):: In the absence of the Minister of Employment and Immigration, Mr. Speaker, may I be permitted to answer? The minister is not here today for personal reasons.
The minister of course has always been very concerned with the development of Atlantic Canada. The best thing that members of the opposition could do with regard to the Community Futures Program or job training moneys for Atlantic Canada would be to suggest to their colleagues in the other place that they pass Bill C-21.


Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands- Canso):: Mr. Speaker, the program was announced in January, at the beginning of the year. Surely the minister and her department had the resources then to finance the project. If they did not have the resources, why was the program announced?
There is a procedure available which is known to the government for resolving the impasse over Bill C-21. The government knows how to use it.
When will the government stop holding Atlantic Canadians hostage over Bill C-21 and live up to its promises?


Marcel Danis: Mr. Speaker, if I were allowed I would put the question another way. When will the other place stop holding Atlantic Canada hostage and pass Bill C-21? This is the place where people are democratically elected, not the other place.
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MEECH LAKE ACCORD
Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.
Oral Questions
In light of the comments of the Deputy Prime Minister about the offer made to the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs apparently being turned down, will the Deputy' Prime Minister inform the House what the government's plan is now?
There is a lot of concern in the country about the secrecy of the talks two weeks ago and about the process two weeks ago. In order to alleviate the concern that Canadians have about where this government is going with constitutional talks, will the Deputy Prime Minister tell the House what the plan is now that the Assembly of Chiefs in Manitoba has turned down the proposal?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I have not had the benefit of listening to the statements at the press conference made by Chief Fontaine or other spokesmen on behalf of the Assembly of Nations. Thus it would be very difficult to determine at this point in time whether in fact there is any hope for further discussions. Perhaps there is.
The Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations is there along with senior officials who are ready, willing and able to sit down to engage in discussions, as well as to engage in further discussions with the Government of Manitoba in trying to break the log-jam.
I am sure the hon. member realizes that this is a very sensitive and delicate stage in the proceedings. I acknowledge his co-operation and support throughout the whole process.
I can assure him and the hon. members of the House that as soon as anything further develops I will certainly be very pleased to take him into that confidence.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, in that regard, I wonder if the Deputy Prime Minister can make a commitment today that the Prime Minister will come to the House either later on today or tomorrow to make a full statement to the members of this House as to what the plan is in terms of the impasse we appear to be in right now.
I think it is very important that the Prime Minister is as open as possible during this delicate time in negotiations.

June 18, 1990
Oral Questions


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows, the Prime Minister is engaged with the visit of Mr. Mandela, and he will be with him most of the day.
I have attempted to be as forthcoming as I possibly can in my willingness to table the letter outlining all the conditions and the proposals that were put forth.
The Prime Minister has always sought the earliest possible opportunity to come before the House to explain the proceedings. I have no doubt that he will be prepared to do that as well.
I can give the hon. member the assurance that at the appropriate time the Prime Minister will come to the House and advise all hon. members as to the details of the discussions and what may be proposed for the future.


NATIONAL REVENUE
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue. The federal government has closed the Canadian Forces Base in Senneterre, and the mayor, Mr. Gerard Lafon-taine, has asked the government to establish a regional administration centre on the premises, since the government will save Canadians $600,000 by locating these offices in Senneterre. The question is as follows: Is the minister or the government prepared to consider seriously this free offer by the town of Senneterre?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I have been advised by the Minister of National Revenue that he discussed this matter with the hon. member before.
On the minister's behalf I can inform the hon. member for Abitibi that the Department of National Revenue is continuing to review this matter, taking both the important representations of the hon. member and the mayor of Senneterre into consideration. He hopes to have an answer for him in the not too distant future.


ROUTE CANADA
Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, last Friday the Minister of Transport said that the records of CN Route are with the trustee in bankruptcy. After Question Period I went to Toronto and visited with the trustee in bankruptcy. I am informed that not all the records that I had asked to be tabled are with the trustee in bankruptcy.
I am more convinced after spending at least three hours with the trustee that the 1,900 employees of CN Route never had a chance. They were doomed from the day the deal took place.
How could this government which had to sign and give its consent to every transaction concerning the sale of CN Route not look after the best interests of those employees?


Philip Derek Lewis: Mr. Speaker, as has been read into the record on several occasions, including the two letters that I have tabled, the Route Canada situation was this. The company had been losing between $40 million and $50 million a year. You can only go on doing that for so long before you run out of money.
CN had a decision to make. It was either to shut down the company and terminate the jobs of all the employees or to sell it as a going concern to the Fingold brothers in an effort to help the employees maintain their jobs. That was the decision taken by the CN board of directors. I think it acted in all good faith on behalf of the employees who thus retained their jobs.


Joseph R. (Joe) Comuzzi: Mr. Speaker, we had some discussion in this House a short while ago about the bonuses paid to all of the CN executives. I wonder if those CN executives who were running this company at a $40 million and $50 million a year loss were paid bonuses for running the company so well.
The supplementary that I want to ask is this. How could the government allow the real estate and the equipment, the most valuable assets of CN Route, to be sheltered from bankruptcy so that the employees had no chance of ever gaining their severance pay, their vacation pay and their pension benefits?
June 18, 1990


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend knows that the company mortgaged the assets in an effort to get some cash flow and pay for the business. That is one form of a shelter.
If my hon. friend knows where he can get $29 million without putting up that kind of security, I think there are a lot of people out there who would like to know where it is.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Mr. Speaker, I have an article here from The Leader Post of Regina that states: "Former PC minister decries Rafferty work".
Why does the construction of the Rafferty-Alameda dam continue in spite of the fact that the licence to build that dam has been revoked by the courts? What is the federal government prepared to do to stop the construction until we have the results of the environmental impact assessment?


Hon. Robert de Cotret (President of the Treasury Board and Acting Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member well knows, we have a panel that is conducting the review. We have made our position very clear to consider only construction for safety reasons. We are talking with all those who are involved in the project to ensure that any construction being done at the moment is related to safety measures. We are awaiting the panel report.


Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister.
Is there not a great danger that the work begun is so advanced that the provincial government will ignore the results of the federal environmental assessment? In that case, what will the federal government do to ensure that its recommendations are respected and what will it do if they do not take these recommendations into account?


Robert René de Cotret: Mr. Speaker, the environmental review process is well under way. This process is continuing and we await the report. It has been clearly indicated that the only work that was to be done is safety-related.
Oral Questions
I think that my hon. colleague will understand that in such a project, some work related to safety must still be done and completed.
So we are maintaining our positions, we are waiting for the report and then I will be able to answer my colleague and let him know what action the federal government intends to take.


SALMON RIVER BRIDGE
William D. (Bill) Casey: Mr. Speaker, I have another question for the Minister of Transport about the Salmon River Bridge.
For the past one and a half years the county of Colchester, the province of Nova Scotia and yours truly have been trying to convince CN to replace a badly deteriorated and dangerous bridge near Truro, Nova Scotia.
During that time we have seen CN disregard direct NTA orders, juggle numbers to reduce its portion of the reconstruction costs, stall and delay, and not meet its commitments and obligations with respect to this bridge.
Will the Minister of Transport step in and apply the necessary pressure to get on with this bridge and bring this four-year old soap opera to an end?


Philip Derek Lewis: Mr. Speaker, independent of my hon. friend's inquiry today, I have already asked CN officials to honour the obligations that it is under as quickly as possible in order that this particular bridge may be repaired as soon as possible.


GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Mr. Ray Funk (Prince Albert-Churchill River):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct my question to the Deputy Prime Minister in the absence of the Minister of Finance.
I hope the minister is aware that the co-operative sector, representing 12 million co-op members in this country, has been informed that co-op members face paying the GST on their share capital. As the minister knows, the share capital of other businesses will not be

Oral Questions
subject to the GST. This places co-operative businesses at a serious competitive disadvantage.
Has the minister considered the serious implications of such an unfair and discriminatory practice? If he has, what does he intend to do about it?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to inform the House that officials from the Ministry of Finance met with the co-op organization on June 6, I believe.
At that time we listened to their representations and asked them to put their concerns in writing. They agreed to do so. We have not received those as yet.
I can assure the hon. member that when we receive them they will be studied very carefully. We will co-operate-if I can use that word-with the co-ops in trying to solve any concerns they may have with the goods and services tax.


Raymond John Funk: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct my supplementary question to the Minister of Agriculture.
The Minister of Agriculture must know that co-operative businesses are a very important factor in the rural areas of this country which are particularly hard hit in these economic times.
Will the minister guarantee today that co-operative share capital will not be treated the same as memberships in a golf and country club? In other words, will the minister guarantee that the GST will not apply to co-op membership and co-op shares?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, not only is the co-op movement very important to the agricultural industry, but the GST is very important to the agricultural industry. I hope the hon. member will get on the bandwagon and start supporting it because it means a savings of a quarter of a billion dollars in farmers' pockets on an annual basis. Why does he not stand up for farmers for a change?


CANADA POST
Leonard Donald Hopkins: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the minister responsible for Canada Post.
Tenders are now being called to contract out postal service to 681 homes in the Renfrew-Dacre areas. This enlarged rural route is almost 400 kilometres long and is the result of the consolidation of five present rural routes. Considering the distance to be travelled and the number of customers, this arrangement is just plain silly.
What does Canada Post expect the mail contractor to do: use a CF-18 jet fighter to ensure that all the mail is delivered on the same day? Is Canada Post really committed to providing good service to rural communities? Or, is it simply going to continue to jerk people around?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, Canada Post is managing its operations in a way to ensure that the service continues to improve as it has, to ensure that stamp prices rise less than inflation, which they have, as well as to return to the taxpayers of Canada a dividend on their operations which I will announce shortly.
The reality is that the kind of political interference the hon. member is talking about was the way it used to be under the Liberal administration. In those days Canada Post received a subsidy from the taxpayers of up to $500 million a year. It is now providing those same taxpayers with a dividend because we let it manage.


Leonard Donald Hopkins: Mr. Speaker, Canadian people are well aware of the kind of political interference that this government has afoot for rural mail carriers in this country.
Canada Post has said that over 5,000 rural post offices are scheduled for closure across Canada. Groups such as the Canadian Federation of Municipalities and others concerned with postal service in Canada have strongly advised against taking this course of action.

This being the case, why is the government insistent on paying no attention at all to Canadians who are affected by the policy imposed from on high by the ministry of this government and Canada Post?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, Canada Post is going from 12,000 to 18,000 outlets. It is not closing down. It is reorganizing its delivery system to improve service.
Service has been improving. Post change surveys of people affected by these changes have indicated their approval. Perhaps the people in the hon. member's constituency or the drivers who feel they cannot make that distance every day need not apply for the right to do that route, but there are people who will apply.
The service will continue to improve. We will not follow the hon. member's suggestion to butt our noses into the management of Canada Post.


POINTS OF ORDER
Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order today to wish a very happy eighty-second birthday to Stanley Knowles who was elected 48 years ago and who has sat as a permanent officer of this House for over 5 years.
On behalf of my party and I am sure on behalf of all hon. members, I would like to wish Mr. Knowles many more happy returns.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the government and the Progressive Conservative Party I would join with the Leader of the New Democratic Party in extending our sincere best wishes and congratulations to the Hon. Stanley Knowles.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my party I want to join in the birthday wishes extended to the Hon. Stanley Knowles.
He has been a luminary of this House for many years. We are veiy pleased that he continues his service to this House and to Canada as an honorary clerk at the table. We wish him many more happy birthdays in his seat as honorary clerk.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear.
Routine Proceedings TABLING OF DOCUMENT


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, with the unanimous consent of all members I would be pleased to table, in both official languages, the letter that the Prime Minister sent to Mr. Phil Fontaine, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, which outlines many of the proposals that I quoted from in answer to questions advanced to me earlier this day.


Mr. Speaker:: Is that agreed?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, under the provisions of Standing Order 32 and according to Section 125 of the Financial Administration Act, I would like to table two copies of the summary of Canada Post Corporations 1990-91 to 1994-95 corporate plan, the 1990-91 capital budget, as well as two copies of the 1989-90 annual report.


ACCESS TO INFORMATION ACT AND PRIVACY ACT
Robert René de Cotret: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 32(2), it is my pleasure to table, in both official languages, the second comprehensive annual report on the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act.


NATIONAL DEFENCE
Robert René de Cotret: Mr. Speaker, I would like to table, under Standing Order 32(2), the report submitted to me by the Comptroller General regarding accounting for adminis-

June 18, 1990
Routine Proceedings
trative flight service provided by the Department of National Defence. The report is being tabled in both official languages.


PETITIONS
Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both officials languages, the government's response to 107 petitions.
[.Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE


Bruce Halliday: Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege to present reports from two standing committees today.
The first is from the Standing Committee on Human Rights and The Status of Disabled Persons. Our second report is in both official languages and is entitled A Consensus for Action, the Economic Integration of Disabled Persons. This will be followed by a further study in more detailed fashion in the future.
Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests a comprehensive response to this report within 150 days.



HEALTH AND WELFARE, SOCIAL AFFAIRS, SENIORS AND STATUS OF WOMEN-FIRST REPORT OF STANDING COMMITTEE

['Agreed.']
Bruce Halliday: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the hon. member for Medicine Hat, chairman of the Standing Committee on Health and Welfare, Social Affairs, Seniors and Status of Women, I have the pleasure to present its first report regarding a study on the national health care system in Canada.



Hon. John Bosley (Don Valley West):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the fourth report of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade entitled Report of the Committee on its Visit to the Soviet Union and the Germanies from April 20 to May 5, 1990.

I also have the honour, Mr. Speaker, to present the fifth report of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade entitled, "The Future of the World and Canada's Interest in Third World Indebtedness".


HUMAN RIGHTS AND STATUS OF DISABLED
Mr.   Maurice@: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the third report of the Standing Committee on Human Rights and the Status of Disabled Persons, which is also the third report of the Sub-Committee on International Human Rights which reviewed Canada's policy regarding human rights vis-a-vis international financial institutions, international trade including military equipment exports.
Pursuant to Standing Order 109, your Committee requests that within 150 days, the government table a comprehensive response to this report.


CONSUMER AND CORPORATE AFFAIRS AND GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS-THIRD REPORT OF STANDING COMMITTEE
Mr. Garth Tbrner (Halton-Peel):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the third report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Government Operations entitled Living with the GST.
This is an examination of the effects of the GST on consumer prices and the appropriateness of the government's response.
The committee found that an informed consumer is the best protection against market-place abuse. This report addresses several means that the government might take to inform consumers.
June 18, 1990

Pursuant to Standing Order 109 of the House of Commons, the committee requests the government table a comprehensive response to this report.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings. [


CANADIAN ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT ACT
Robert René de Cotret: for leave to introduce Bill C-78, an Act to establish a federal environmental assessment process.


Mr. Speaker:: Shall the minister have leave to introduce the bill?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Robert René de Cotret: that the bill now be read the first time and ordered to be printed.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the first time and ordered to be printed.
Mr. Speaker:: When shall the bill be read the second time? At the next sitting of the House?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


LOBBYISTS REGISTRATION ACT
Mr. Francis G. LeBIanc (Cape Breton Highlands- Canso) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-319, an act to amend the Lobbyists Registration Act (financial statement).


Mr. Speaker:: Shall the hon. member have leave to introduce the bill?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.
Routine Proceedings


Derek Vincent Lee: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to introduce an act to amend the Lobbyist Registration Act.
The purpose of this bill is to strengthen the regulatory regime for lobbying at the federal level. This bill would require that Tier I lobbyists submit to the registrar each year in addition to their name, address, employer, and subject matter a detailed audited financial statement, including fees, expenditures, and related particulars.
I hope all members of the House will support this bill which will provide a real discipline to the activities of a very powerful group of actors who since this government has been elected has acquired great influence with little public accountability.


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

Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace) moved: that Bill S-17, an act to amend the Unemployment Insurance Act, be now read a first time.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.


Mr. Speaker:: All those opposed will please say nay.


Some Hon. Members:: Nay.


Mr. Speaker:: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


Mr. Speaker:: Call in the members.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I declare the motion lost.


M. Bob Kilger (Stormont-Dundas):: Madam Speaker, on a point of order.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member for Stormont-Dundas (Mr. Kilger), on a point of order.


Mr. Kilger:: Madam Speaker, I was late, and I simply wanted to inform you that if I had been in my place, I would have voted with my party in favour of the bill.


PETITIONS
Hon. David MacDonald (Rosedale):: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to present this petition signed by over 1,300 people calling upon Parliament to recognize that abortion is a medical decision to be made by a woman in consultation with her physician and does not belong in criminal law, and to ensure good access to this health service in every province.
, GOODS AND SERVICES TAX


Fred J. Mifflin: Madam Speaker, I have the privilege to rise and present a petition from 90 of my constituents in Gambo, New Chelsea and Trinity Bay. These people are very upset with the goods and services tax. They are worried about the 31 taxes that have been imposed in the last six years and they are concerned about what this 7 per cent tax is going to do to them. They are also worried about the burden on small business and they are worried, with unemployment and the fisheries the way they are, that this is another nail in their economic coffin.
Your petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to reject the proposed goods and services tax.


Mr. Russell MacLellan (Cape Breton-The Sydneys):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to table a petition from members and friends of Branch 8 of the Royal Canadian Legion in Sydney Mines and the Army, Navy
June 18, 1990

and Air Force Club in Bras d'Or. There are approximately 150 signatures on this petition.
In part it states that the Government of Canada has introduced changes that will reduce homekeeping services to veterans and substantially increase the cost of long-term care. Whereas the veterans have already given service to this country and should not be targeted by those measures, the petitioners call upon Parliament to reject those budget measures which deprive veterans of proper services and increase their financial hardships.
The Minister of Veterans Affairs has made some movement away from this very draconian position, but he has not gone far enough. The petitioners believe this is grossly unfair to the country.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member was getting into debate and not reading a petition.


André Ouellet: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to table a petition today on behalf of many Canadian voters who are opposed to the goods and services tax. In spite of the government's explanations, these people find this tax unfair, unacceptable and especially bad for seniors.


Mr. Jim Jordan (Leeds-Grenville):: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to present petitions from Legionnaires, both men and women, in my riding in the areas of Kemptville, Brockville, Gananoque, Prescott, Cardinal, Spencerville, Lyndhurst, Westport and other communities, all objecting to the cuts the government has proposed to veteran's services, particularly to housekeeping costs for veterans and additional charges for long-term care.


Mr. Les Benjamin (Regina-Lumsden):: Madam Speaker, I have a petition regarding the cut-backs in veterans' benefits. There are some 1,042 names on three petitions from Cloverdale, White Rock, Surrey and other places and Legion branches in the Fraser Valley. I also have two petitions from the city of Yorkton, Saskatchewan, which includes the signature of the hon. member
Routine Proceedings
for that riding. In addition I have almost 1,000 signatures from people in the city of Ottawa and district.
The petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to maintain the current level of services provided to veterans through Veterans' Independence Programs and to ensure that there is no increase in charges to veterans for board and lodging in institutions of long-term care.
Madam Speaker, the one thing you do not do is cut back on veterans.


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Madam Speaker, I want to table a petition today pursuant to Standing Order 36. This petition follows closely a vote by this government when it refused to recognize the importance of unemployment insurance to eastern Canadians and, in particular, turns down the variable entrance requirements that were proposed in that bill. We regret the position of the government. These people petition the House of Commons and Parliament that whereas the unemployment insurance system is vital to the well-being of Canadians in providing temporary income protection to unemployed Canadian workers; whereas the Government of Canada is proposing to drastically cut unemployment insurance benefits by making it more difficult to qualify and reducing the number of weeks covered; whereas the Government of Canada is withdrawing its contribution of $2.9 billion to the unemployment insurance fund and leaving the financing to workers and employers, these people reject these cuts to the unemployment insurance system and propose more meaningful reforms that should concentrate on labour force development strategy combined with a full employment policy and effective regional development policies.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Madam Speaker, like my colleague, the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier, I am pleased to present a petition signed by numerous residents of Newfoundland who oppose the government's proposals to cut the Unemployment Insurance Act. The unemployment insurance scheme was adopted by past Liberal governments and, I may say, Madam Speaker, I am sure these petitioners would be horrified to witness the vote we have just been through in which this heartless government rejected the Senate's

June 18, 1990
Routine Proceedings
efforts to rectify a disastrous situation for them as the petition itself says-


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member knows better. Does he want to conclude?


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: As I was saying, Madam Speaker, the petition urges Parliament to reject the cuts to the unemployment insurance program, and the petitioners are obviously supporting the Senate's amendments to Bill C-21.


Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby-Kingsway):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to rise and present a petition signed by hundreds of residents of British Columbia and, in particular, residents of my constituency of Burnaby- Kingsway, who continue to express their anger at the government's proposal to push ahead with the proposed goods and services tax.
They point out that the government has not addressed the unfair taxation system currently in place which permits wealthy individuals and corporations to pay little or no federal tax while forcing lower and middle income taxpayers to bear more of the national tax burden.
Therefore, Madam Speaker, the petitioners call upon Parliament to reject the current proposal for a goods and services tax and to cause the government to cease with a proposal which will shift the tax burden on to ordinary Canadians through a regressive consumption tax instead of through real tax reform. Obviously, in calling upon Parliament, they are calling upon the Senate to kill the goods and services tax.


Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to rise pursuant to Standing Order 36 to present a petition signed by hundreds of Canadians in the riding of Hamilton Mountain. This petition is against the goods and services tax.
The petitioners strongly oppose the goods and services tax and feel it is an unprecedented tax grab from the pockets of Canadians that will hit them not only with higher taxes but with higher inflation, higher interest rates and higher unemployment.


Ms. Margaret Mitchell (Vancouver East):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present three different petitions. The first one is a petition in Chinese and
English. It is from many persons from the Chinatown area of Vancouver East, both store owners and some of their customers.
The petition states that the 7 per cent goods and services tax will hurt small businesses; costs will go up, incomes will go down and it will be an accounting nightmare. The tax will hurt consumers as the prices of thousands of items and services go up.
Therefore, the undersigned petitioners call upon Parliament and the Government of Canada to withdraw the goods and services tax.
Madam Speaker, I have a second petition which is much longer, and I will summarize.
The petitioners ask that Parliament reject, and this includes the other place, the current proposal for a goods and services tax, reform the tax system so that there is an effective minimum tax on wealthy individuals and corporations, and ensure that if and when there is a broad public consensus on a sales tax measure, that this reform not be an opportunity for the government to impose a massive tax grab and causes the government to cease with-


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I thought the hon. member said she would summarize the petition.


Margaret Anne Mitchell: Madam Speaker, that was only half of it. The final petition that I have is on a different subject.


Margaret Anne Mitchell: Madam Speaker, the final petition calls on the government to use every means possible to stop the use of pelagic driftnets in the north Pacific Ocean, including the institution of economic sanctions against the offending countries and the placing of prohibitive tariffs and duties on imports to Canada from those countries. There are quite a number of people, again from Vancouver East and the Vancouver district, who have signed this petition.


Mr. Vic Althouse (Mackenzie):: Madam Speaker, I have two petitions dealing with the goods and services tax, each in a different form but each have been approved under Standing Order 36.
One calls on the government to abandon the goods and services tax and to review the manufacturers' sales tax and ensure that there is real tax reform of the tax
June 18, 1990

Routine Proceedings
system to provide a healthy climate for small business in Canada.
The other takes the point of view of all taxpayers and all consumers and makes similar requests to the government to abandon the goods and services tax because it is a regressive form of tax and calls on the government to set up a commission to make certain that we have real tax reform.


Brian L. Gardiner: Madam Speaker, I have the pleasure to rise under Standing Order 36 to present a petition on the goods and services tax. These constituents express concern about the tax. They are petitioning Parliament to see that the tax is removed, and that of course includes the Senate where they fear that the Liberals will just pass the GST anyway.


Joseph R. (Joe) Comuzzi: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 I am pleased to present a petition on behalf of my friend from Bonavis-ta-Trinity-Conception who happens to be the only retired admiral on this side of the House. His constituents humbly pray that the restrictions placed on unemployment insurance be withdrawn by the government.


Eugène Bellemare: Madam Speaker, I have in my hand a petition signed by many Canadians, pursuant to Standing Order 36.
I shall tiy to summarize the petition very briefly in French. These people are against the over 31 tax increases of various kinds. The manufacturers' tax has gone from 9 per cent to 13.5 per cent. They think that the new 7 per cent GST which is now proposed will be a hidden tax. It will have a serious negative impact on buyers and will strike a heavy blow to small businesses.
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to present this petition.


Ron J. Duhamel: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to present these petitions in accordance with the Standing Orders.

The first petition rejects the $2.9 billion cut to the unemployment insurance, and asks for meaningful reform for a labour force development strategy that is comprehensive and for a full employment policy.


Ron J. Duhamel: I also have a petition condemning this nefarious goods and services tax, the thirty-second Tory tax increase.


Ron J. Duhamel: I have another petition which condemns the brutal and insensitive cuts to our veterans.


Derek Vincent Lee: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to present to the House 38 separate petitions containing some 2,500 signatures gathered through the good offices of the hon. member for York South-Weston.
The petitioners note that June 23 next will be the fifth anniversary of the tragedy of Air India flight 182 in which 329 people were killed. While recognizing that the investigation is continuing, the relatives of the victims and all Canadians have not yet been told of all the facts and causes of the tragedy. The petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to institute a royal commission of inquiry to make these facts known and put in place the final chapter of this most sorrowful event in Canadian history.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Madam Speaker, it is my honour to present a petition of many pages signed by hundreds of petitioners in Dawson City, Whitehorse, Sioux Lookout, Dryden, Kamloops and Prince George which reminds the House that the government has eliminated funding for the native communications program which eliminates 11 aboriginal newspapers, two magazines and the National Aboriginal Communications Society. It also eliminated radio maintenance funding for native community radio stations, as well as a life-saving high frequency radio used by aboriginal trappers as a lifeline to local communities. It also reduced funding for the Northern Native Broadcast Access Program.

Routine Proceedings
The petitioners point out all the cuts or reductions in support for aboriginal programs and call on Parliament to consider the advisability of reinstating both the Native Communications Program and the Northern Native Broadcast Access Program at full funding levels.
Further, they humbly pray that the Department of Secretary of State conduct consultations with the groups funded under the said programs in order to devise plans for the future that will serve the needs of the department as well as aboriginal peoples and their media programs.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, on another matter, it is my honour again to present a petition on behalf of a number of constituents in Kamloops, British Columbia, who are opposed to the government's goods and services tax.
They point out that it is a very regressive tax. It is an unfair and cruel tax. They ask the government to drop the tax as soon as possible and begin real fair tax reform.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Albert Glen Cooper: Madam Speaker, Question No. 278 will be answered today.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The question enumerated by the parliamentary secretary has been answered.


Mr. Comuzzi: For the fiscal year 1990-91, were government funds allocated through the Department of (a) Transport (b) Environment (c) Fisheries and Oceans (d) Agriculture to address the infestation of zebra mussels in the Great Lakes System and, if so, in terms of (i) dollars (ii) person-years (iii) percentage of total for research (iv) percentage of total for prevention of further spread (v) percentage of total for cleanup, what total amounts?


Albert Glen Cooper: I have been informed as follows:
(a)	None for the Department of Transport.
(b)	(i) The Department of the Environment has earmarked $100,000 for fiscal year 1990-91 from the Great Lakes Action Plan to supplement the biological impact studies of Fisheries and Oceans.
(ii)	No person-years have been allocated.
(iii)	$100,000 (100 per cent) is slated for research.
(iv)	Percentage of total for prevention of further introductions of exotic species 0 percent.
(v)	The Great Lakes Action Plan will consider zebra mussel control proposals eligible for support from the Great Lakes Clean-up Fund.
(c)	(i) Total expenditures of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on zebra mussels including salaries, operations and incidental expenses for 1990-91 fiscal year is $230,000. This includes $100,000 from Great Lakes Action Plan transferred from DOE (see Part b (i)) and $20,000 salary dollars DFO, P&FF (Pacific & Freshwater Fisheries) Headquarters.
(ii)	Total person-years 1.75 (1.55 Science, 0.2 P&FF Headquarters).
(iii)	Percentage of total for research 91 percent (administration 9 percent).
(iv)	Percentage of total for prevention of further spread 0 percent.
(v)	Percentage of total for cleanup 0 percent.
(d)	None for the Department of Agriculture.


Albert Glen Cooper: Madam Speaker, would you be so kind as to call Starred Question No. 274.
Due to the length of this response, I ask that it be made an Order for Return. This return would be tabled immediately.
June 18, 1990


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House that Question No. 274 be deemed to have been made an Order for Return?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Fulton: 1.	For each fiscal year from 1984 to the present (a) what was the total number of airline flights taken inside and outside Canada by all government representatives and employees (b) what was the total for each department and agency and for the House of Commons (c) what was the cost for all tickets (d) what was the (i) total number of "bonus points" accumulated through such flights (ii) policy on use of these points by individuals or departments (e) what is the total flight distance that such "bonus points" would provide if they were pooled for re-use on government, rather that private, business?
2.	For each fiscal year from 1984 to the present (a) what was the (i) total amount spent on bus and train travel inside and outside Canada (ii) total of such expenses for each department and agency (b) what was the total (i) number of "cab chits" provided to departments and agencies (ii) cost of these cab fares for each department (c) what was the total cost of (i) accommodation and meals (ii) per diems for each department and agency?
Return tabled.


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


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions stand?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House proceeded to consideration of amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-28, An Act to amend the Income Tkx Act, the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements and Federal Post-Secondary Education and Health Contributions Act, the Old Age Security Act, the
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Public Utilities Income Ihx Transfer Act, the War Veterans Allowance Act and a related Act.
Hon. Gilles Loiselle (Minister of State (Finance)):: Madam Speaker, today, when tabling their petitions, a number of my colleagues opposite embraced the position of the Senate. I have nothing against the Senate, a Chamber which no doubt has its purpose in life, but I hope that in future we will be able to improve on that purpose. Meanwhile, the Senate remains a non-elected chamber, and it was very surprising that, in our own democratically elected House of Commons, we should see colleagues turning to the Senate to try and amend decisions made in accordance with rules that have been in effect in this country for more than a century.

Madam Speaker, today I would like to raise two major issues with the actions of the Senate in returning Bill C-28 to this House. First, I would like to discuss the role of the Senate in proposing amendments to income tax bills. Second, I would like to take this opportunity to comment on the amendments themselves.

Madam Speaker, I would like to comment briefly on the role of the Senate in proposing amendments to income tax bills.
Section 53 of the Constitution Act, 1867, one of our fundamental laws, provides that bills to raise taxes must originate in the House of Commons.
Madam Speaker, I think I can say this rule is well founded. Tax legislation is one of the government's basic instruments for regulating the economy and financing its operations. What we have here is a basic tool the government can use to regulate the economy and finance its operations, on which all successive governments have been dependent. Therefore, the government's prerogative to determine the content of tax bills, based on its majority in the House of Commons, reflects the clear mandate the government received by being democratically elected.
Consequently, Madam Speaker, any attempt to amend the provisions of a tax bill passed by this House with a view to reducing the amounts the government expects to collect under those provisions, any attempt by the Senate

June 18, 1990
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to amend those provisions will weaken and undermine the scope of that mandate.
In his ruling of May 31,1990-a very recent ruling-on the amendment concerning indexation, the Speaker of the Senate, your colleague, Madam Speaker, says in fact that the Senate may amend a tax bill as long as the amendment does not increase the amount or the scope of a charge.
Nevertheless, I maintain that even if the Senate has the power to propose amendments to tax bills, it would be more in keeping with the spirit of sections 53 and 54 of the Constitution Act, 1867, our basic statute, if the Senate refrained from exercising that power. The Senate may draw attention to aspects it feels could be improved-in that case the government has the option of either ignoring or acting upon the recommendations by tabling amending legislation-but the fact that it should demand the power to make its own amendments constitutes a serious transgression of the government's financial prerogatives.

Thming now to the substance of the amendments proposed by the Senate, Bill C-28 implements the changes to the Income Tax Act announced in the April 1989 budget by the Minister of Finance. The major goal of that budget was to reduce the deficit. Accordingly the measures in this bill must be viewed in the context of that goal and the fact that in introducing the budget the Minister of Finance emphasized the need to bring Canada's large and growing debt under control. This is the environment in which this bill was introduced. Bill C-28 is indeed a major contributor in this regard.
I would like to stress that controlling the growth of the debt is not some abstract crusade that has no real meaning for ordinary Canadians. Rather, it is essential if we as a nation are to be able to maintain social programs, achieve lasting economic growth, create jobs, and remain internationally competitive.
Let me remind hon. members of the serious problem our large and growing public debt represents. Only 20 years ago there was no deficit. Only 12 cents of every dollar in taxes went on interest payments. The total accumulated public debt was $18 billion. By the time this government came to power in 1984 this debt had risen to $200 billion. The annual deficit was $38 billion, and 32
cents of every dollar of taxpayers' money went to pay interest on the debt. We could not start to pay back the debt because we had a current account deficit as well; that is to pay our current accounts we needed to borrow an additional $16 billion.
It has taken us some years and we have achieved our objective of turning around by $25 billion the spending of the government, and now we have a surplus in the current account that we can apply to the debt.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: That is rubbish.


Gilles Loiselle: You don't like facts. There is a $25 billion turnaround from a current account deficit of $16 billion. Of course the hon. gentleman does not understand these things. That is why his party put us in the position we are in today.
When we came to power the current account deficit apart from the debt was $16 billion. We could not start paying back the debt. We had to make up this deficit. We now have a surplus of $10 billion, and now we can start repaying and catching up. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Obviously, Madam Speaker, the deficit situation could not endure. Having decided to put an end to it, the government was forced to make difficult decisions concerning expenditures and taxes. Some programs have been cancelled. Waste and inefficiency have been curtailed. Tax loopholes-a considerable number of loopholes indeed-have been eliminated.
These measures enabled us to make a sizable dent in the deficit, but it is not enough. Bill C-28 is a major lever of our deficit-reducing efforts, implementing as it does a number of changes to tax regulations governing individuals and corporations. However, public attention has been focused sharply on the recovery of social transfer payments, specifically family allowances and old age benefits.
I want to indicate that this measure is fully consistent with the role of the personal income tax system with respect to ensuring that government assistance be properly allocated. Family allowances and old age benefits are already taxable, and their recovery does nothing more than extend current practices.
June 18, 1990

Madam Speaker, the Senate made two recommendations with which I should like to deal briefly. The senators suggest that the income threshold be fully indexed to the cost of living, and that the OAS benefit repayment be reduced by $75 for ten years.
Concerning the indexation of the threshold, the Minister of Finance did say that the decision will be monitored and changed as needed. This flexible approach has been used in other circumstances -I will get back to that later on-to soften the impact on individuals and households.
For instance, when the refundable sales tax credit was established the threshold for maximum benefit eligibility was $15,000. It has since been raised twice, to $16,000 in 1988 and to $19,000 this year. Had it been fully indexed as suggested by the Senate, it would now be about $17,800 instead of $19,000. In other words, the government did better than full indexation when it chose to adjust the transfer payments.
Although it is indexed to the consumer price index less 3 per cent, the refundable child tax credit has been increased periodically and today it is $575 per child, compared to $474 if it had been fully indexed; in other words, the government has given over $100 more than indexation. It is therefore obvious that a flexible approach is more beneficial than the automatic indexation proposed by the Senate.
[English\
The facts on the incomes of the elderly also suggest that there is little to fear from the fact that the threshold is only partially indexed. Just over 4 per cent of seniors have incomes in excess of $50,000. However almost 90 per cent of them have incomes below $30,000. Thus, even if a flexible approach were to result in no increases in the threshold, it would be many, many years before the vast majority of seniors would become subject to recovery.
Therefore, for those who are concerned at the eventual outcome of partial indexation, there are two assurances. First, this government's record, which I have just illustrated. These are facts again. Second, the fact that the threshold has been set at a level where very few seniors are affected now or are likely to be affected in the foreseeable future.
The second recommendation from the Senate is that the amount of OAS to be repaid should be reduced by
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$75. This is what the senators propose. This, they argue, recognizes that Canadians contributed to the old age security fund between 1952 and 1972.
Let us look at that. It is true that such a fund existed and earmarked taxes were paid. However during the period 1952 to 1972 old age security benefits were improved significantly, but the earmarked taxes were not increased to fund these increased benefits. As a result, the fund operated at a deficit on an annual basis so that when it was eventually wound up in 1976 the accumulated deficit was $121 million. Thus, during this period, OAS did not operate like an insurance scheme where benefits were based directly on individual contributions.
Indeed the Debates of this House when the fund was introduced make it clear that the intention was simply to make the cost of OAS clearer to taxpayers, not to have an insurance program like the Canada-Quebec Pension Plan.
In summary, the flexible approach to indexation has actually resulted in a greater increase in benefits than if automatic indexation had been in place.
Consequently, I would argue that this government's record is a sufficient guarantee that the $50,000 threshold will not erode over time.
In addition, the argument that the existence of an OAS fund at one time means that there is a moral obligation to recognize this in designing the recovery of OAS is based on a false premise. That premise is that the OAS fund operated like an insurance scheme. It would be very costly to these people to have to pay back this $121 million. In fact it did not.
Finally I would like to point out one consequence of the way in which the amendment to clause 48 has been drafted. This is not without its importance.
The Senate version would split what is now found in Bill C-28 in proposed subsection 180.2 (1) of the Income Tax Act into two new subsections: subsection 180.2 (1) which would impose a tax to recover federal family allowances and subsection 100.2 (2) which would impose a tax to recover old age security payments. Consequently, the Senate amendments would apply the income test separately for family allowances and Old Age Security. By contrast, Bill C-28, as originally proposed, applies the income test against the total of family allowance payments and Old Age Security. As a result, the Senate

June 18, 1990
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amendment could lead to an increase in tax payable in cases where someone receives both allowances.
For example, suppose an individual received $300 of family allowance payments and $600 old age pension payments in 1989, and that the individual's net income is $53,000. Under the existing provisions of Bill C-28, the total tax payable as a recovery of family allowance and old age security would be $150. Under the provisions proposed by the Senate, the total tax payable would be $175. Thus, as this example demonstrates, the Senate proposals could actually increase the amount recovered. For this reason, they should be regarded as being out of order under the criteria set out by the hon. Speaker of the Senate in his ruling on May 31, 1990.
Under the criteria signed by the Speaker of the Senate in his ruling, the amendments should be regarded as being out of order. According to his own criteria, they are out of order.


An hon. member:: I thought they were in order.


Gilles Loiselle: According to his own criteria, they are out of order.


An hon. member:: But he said they were in order.


Gilles Loiselle: That is not what he said. He did not say that. He ruled differently. His criteria does not allow for this picture. There was some confusion there. If you look at it, indeed the amendments do not apply.

In conclusion, Madam Speaker, the proposed amendments are inappropriate to the Senate's legislative authority to propose amendments for tax bills. Therefore, Madam Speaker, I do not think that this House should accept such an attempted exercise of legislative power by the Senate.

In conclusion therefore, I move:
That a message be sent to the Senate to acquaint Their Honours that this House disagrees with amendments numbered 1 and 2 made by the Senate to Bill C-28, an act to amend the Income Tax Act, the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements and Federal PostSecondary Education and Health Contributions Act, the Old Age Security Act, the Public Utilities Income Thx Transfer Act, the War Veterans Allowance Act and a related act, because the amendments
violate the traditional legislative role asserted by the Commons in fulfilment of its obligations under Sections 53 and 54 of the Constitution Act, 1867, because the amendments contradict the principles of the bill by generally decreasing the amount of revenues to be raised by the bill, and because amendment numbered 2 in some cases increases the amount of the charge.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Madam Speaker, the speech by the Hon. Minister of State for Finance is simply incredible. I think that in preparing for today, he looked for his old speech on the 1989 Budget and he gave almost the same speech, with changes to reflect the amendments proposed by the Senate.
I must therefore make a few comments on his speech in particular and then on the amendments proposed by the Senate.

In dealing with Bill C-28, the government has repeatedly tried various tricks. It has had difficulty with this bill in the House. I could go through its legislative history in the chamber, but hon. members are well aware of that history. It is a bill that we in the opposition have consistently opposed.
The government has rammed it through the House. It was debated in this chamber on second reading on October 11, 17, and 18, and on November 20 the government brought in closure and forced the bill from the second reading stage to committee. It was reported back to the House and debated at report stage on December 15. On December 18, the government moved a time allocation motion. Allocation allowed for one additional day for report stage and one day for third reading. The debate at report stage was concluded on December 19 and third reading on December 20, and the bill was sent on to the Senate.
There was very limited debate in the House on this measure, which was one of the principal measures contained in the government's budget of 1989. We are still discussing it today. I know the popularity of this measure has not increased, either here or anywhere in the country.
Seniors groups throughout Canada are outraged at this clawback. I have filed if not in the hundreds, certainly dozens of petitions, in this House in opposition
June 18, 1990

to this clawback. It is widely opposed by seniors groups across Canada.
Social workers regard it as a threat to the universal social programs that Canada has enjoyed as the result of enlightened administrations-and I may say they happen to have been Liberal administrations over the years.
What the minister and the government are now doing is destroying the universal principle in these social programs through the back door. In the 1989 budget papers that describe this clawback tax, it is not even referred to as a tax, it is called transfers to persons, and appears under the rubric "repayment of social transfers". So, it is not considered a tax increase in the budget papers. It is referred to as a repayment of social transfers. No one in Canada regards this as anything but a new tax, an unfair tax, and one the government should be ashamed to support in the House.
We have been through this debate before. The House has dealt with the issue. Fortunately we have an opportunity today to revisit the issue since the Senate, which I know the New Democratic Party has taken to supporting, is now sending this bill back with modest amendments. I am disappointed they are not more drastic amendments, but the fact is they are modest amendments with which we have to deal.
In speaking in support of the Senate today, I do so, not out of any great sense of pride, but I am glad that at least somebody in this country is taking some steps, as we took and were outvoted, to support the seniors of this country who are having their rights chiselled away by this government and its policies.
In going back to the earlier part of the minister's speech, which as I said was unbelievable, he spoke about the public debt in 1984 when his government took office. He will correct me if I have his figure wrong, but I think he indicated that the public debt when the government took office was $280 billion. That is not accurate. The minister knows that is inaccurate. That was the figure at March 31, 1985 after six disastrous months of Conservative rule. The minister knows, as well as I do, that what the government did in those six months was spend, spend, spend.
For the first time in office for years since the nine-month Clark government, the Conservative Party de-
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cided that the best thing to do was to spend the taxpayers' dollars with what could only be described as gay abandon. It went handing out money right, left and centre, spending like crazy. It ran up the national debt to $280 billion by the end of the year from $252 billion in September of that year. My hon. friend from Ottawa South is more knowledgeable in the figures than I am, but I believe that was the figure when the Conservative Party took office.


Mr. Manley:: We're off by $100 billion.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: It was $180 billion, I am sorry. It was $180 billion and $150 billion, because it is about $300 billion now.
The Minister of State for Finance may not have been in the cabinet at the outset of that period, but in any event he is supporting that lavish spending. The government tries to blame the $38 billion deficit that was run up during that year on the bad, old Liberals. The Liberals were out of office for six months of that year, and it was during the last six months that spending went right out of control. The hon. Minister of State for Finance knows that full well. He knows that his colleague, the Minister of Finance, is fully responsible for that absolute orgy of public spending that was precipitated by the election in 1988.
The Minister of State for Finance laughs, but that is the fact and he knows it.
The motion which he proposed in the House today deals with the Senate amendments. I am concerned that his motion states that one of the reasons this House ought to reject the Senate amendments is that the amendments, "contradict the principles"-and I stress the word principles-"of the bill by generally decreasing the amount of revenues to be raised by the bill".
Everyone who has studied parliamentary procedure knows that bills do not have principles. They have a single principle, one principle. And Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules & Forms, Sixth Edition at citation 659 reads:
The second reading is the most important stage through which the
bill is required to pass; for its whole principle-
Singular "principle".
-is then at issue and is affirmed or denied by a vote of the House.

June 18, 1990
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I do not need to go into the rest of the citation, but every citation that Your Honour will find in Beau-chesne's dealing with bills and the procedure for dealing with them in the House of Commons refers to the principle of a bill, not principles.
Yet, this government has taken into its head that every policy that it puts into a bill somehow becomes one of the multitude of principles in every one of their bills. We have this nonsense in the motion today saying that this amendment contradicts the principles of the bill. The government clearly does not know what the principle of this bill is. It think it has more than one. It does not have one more than one. It can only have one under the rales. If it has more than one, it should have been divided into several bills.
We did not hear the Minister of State for Finance offering to split this bill into various categories. The bill has one principle, not violated by these amendments. What these amendments seek to do is modify the outrageous taxes that this government has sought to impose. I know the Minister of State for Finance finds this humorous. He thinks that the taxation of Canadians is funny, but I assure him it is not. Canadians do not think so. As my hon. friend in the New Democratic Party says, Canadians certainly do not think so.


Mr. Butland:: What friends?


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: My hon. friend knows, as well as I do, that his party is going to support us in our opposition to this bill. It has done so consistently so far, and I am sure the hon. members of that party are going to support the Senate, as they do now on almost every occasion, in rejecting government bills. I am delighted to see that they have had this change of heart, and I am delighted to know that we will have their support later today in the vote on this particular matter, should it come that soon.
I also want to deal with the minister's comments on the government's record of assurance. In discussing how seniors should look at the situation, he said: "Looking at the government's record, there need be no worry that the government itself would adjust the amounts of the base for the clawback purposes".
In other words, the government would adjust the $50,000 upward, to keep pace with inflation. That had to be one of the most bold-faced statements I have ever
heard. There is not a senior in this country who will trust this government with his or her money. This is the government that proposed deindexing their pensions. This is the same government.


Mr. Kempling:: I am a senior citizen. I know.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: The hon. member knows perfectly well that it was his government that proposed to deindex pensions. The hon. members says no, he was here. He must have been ashamed of the way his cabinet carried on. Certainly it withdrew the proposal after the Prime Minister was called unparliamentary names outside the precincts. The fact is it had that proposal on the books. That is what the government wanted to do. If that was not enough, it indexed all the deductions for income tax, the sneaky, hidden tax that it has applied to every Canadian by taking away the indexing of the deductions under the Income Ikx Act.


William James Kempling: Senior citizens in Canada are better off than anyone in the world.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: The hon. member for Burlington thinks that seniors will be better off under this government and its rales. They are not better off. Their taxes have been increased 31 times. Their taxes have been sneakily increased by reason of the deindexation of their deductions and now they are being taxed by this Bill C-28 by having their old age security pensions taken away from them.
The hon. member for Burlington should be ashamed of his support of the government and so should the hon. member for Macleod whom I see grinning in the back. I will go on-


William James Kempling: I'm a senior citizen. I know.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: The hon. member for Burlington protests that he is a senior citizen and he knows. Well, he has not started paying this tax yet because the bill has not been passed. Wait until he starts paying the tax, then he will know differently.
The other point I wanted to make is that the minister says we should trust the government because after all their record has been so great. If the statements and facts that I brought to light are not enough to convince people that the government cannot be trusted in this, I do not know what more evidence we need.
June 18, 1990

It is not something that the Canadian taxpayer is willing to trust the government on and I would like to look at the budget papers presented on April 27, 1989. This was the leaky budget as I recall.
On page 9 the Minister of Finance penned these words. I assume he or someone under him wrote this. He certainly took responsibility for it once it got leaked. It says:
For 1990 and subsequent taxation years, the $50,000 threshold will be indexed on the same basis as other indexed brackets and thresholds in the tax system.
In other words, the rate of inflation minus 3 per cent.
The level of the threshold will be reviewed periodically and adjusted as appropriate.
What the Senate has done by one of its two amendments in this case is say to the minister and to the Canadian people that this thing should be adjusted automatically with the rate of inflation.
If the minister is going to fix the situation periodically, why will he not agree to this amendment which is so reasonable? All it does is say that the $50,000 figure will be fully indexed with the rate of inflation. It does not propose this 3 per cent extra tax grab for the government. Surely the minister is not trying to squeeze seniors out of another 3 per cent of their money every year. Yet that is what it appears from the way he has drafted this bill.
The Senate has said we would prefer to amend this. They have proposed a very reasonable amendment on that score and I invite the minister to read it again and see if he will not change his motion and agree with this very reasonable amendment. I stress the word "reasonable". It does not do anything that is drastic, it does not deprive the minister of a great deal of revenue, it is virtually revenue neutral. There is no reason why the minister for this class of citizens should not offer the full indexation that is fair.
In fact, as the Senate pointed out so ably in its report, the government itself appeared to support this whole old age security tax system. I would like to quote:
In January 1985, the Government released a Consultation Paper on Child and Elderly Benefits, which concluded that a special surtax on Old Age Security payments would "seriously disrupt our retirement income system" and "would unduly penalize those most affected by reason of retirement income resulting from private savings in earlier years." Thus, the provision for clawing back OAS benefits in Bill C-28 as the committee went on to say, represents not only a change from the
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policies of previous governments but also a direct repudiation of this
government's earlier position.
The minister talked about trust and how seniors should trust this government and yet, having stated in 1985 that a special surtax on seniors' incomes would seriously disrupt their income system and unduly penalize those most unable to afford it and most undeserving, the government now backs down on that promise by bringing forward Bill C-28.
When the other place comes forward with some amendments to try to ameliorate the dreadful consequences of this bill, the minister stands up and says the Senate is out of order, that the amendments violate our constitutional traditions, and that he will not have it.
Surely the minister has an obligation to consider these very reasonable amendments proposed by the Senate. Surely he cannot expect Canadians to believe the pious nonsense he uttered about the government's record being a firm indication of trust. The government's record, if anything, is exactly the opposite.
The Consultation Paper on Child and Elderly Benefits, published in January 1985-which the government is breaching by this bill that is being forced through this House and is now trying to get through the Senate and which, no doubt, it will force through this House later today-is an indication of a complete breach of faith with senior citizens in this country and frankly, with the parents of children who receive the child support payments under this act.
The other aspect I wanted to deal with is the unfair and secret tax increases that the government has already imposed by deindexing deductions. I mentioned that earlier. The government claims that there is no tax increase this year. Indeed, in the budget speech the Minister of Finance announced that there were, in fact, no new taxes. We all know that there are two ways the government has increased taxes on Canadians this year that I could name right off the top of my head. One of them is included in the 1989 budget and it is this very clawback provision.
As Your Honour knows, the clawback provisions go into force, one-third, one-third, one-third; one-third in the first year of operation which was last year, one-third this year and an additional third next year. If that isn't a tax increase, then I don't know what is. Yet, the Minister of Finance had the unmitigated nerve to stand in this House during his budget speech and say there would be

June 18, 1990
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no new taxes this year. Well, that was one. There is an extra third being taxed away from these people because of this bill.
Of course, the second, the sneaky, hidden tax increase is that the government did not index deductions under the Income Tax Act. Where the budgets, introduced by the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra, our former leader, indexed these deductions so that Canadians did not face an automatic increase in taxes every year if there was inflation, this government has done the opposite. It is proposing to take that right away for those who have to pay this clawback tax, this special tax on their pension income.
I submit that this is inappropriate and that the government ought to fully index this. The failure to index increases is an automatic increase in taxes every year for the person having to pay taxes under this kind of provision. While it may not be a tax that is obvious and there may not be an increase in the rate, by reason of the increase in the income of the taxpayer, additional taxes will be paid because of the failure to index these amounts.
The minister knows this and tries to pretend that it is not so. I invite him to have another look at the facts and see if he cannot change his attitude and support the amendment that indexes this part, at least. These people will pay enough additional taxes, in my view, since their basic deductions will not increase with inflation and we do not need to go through the additional tax imposed by reason of the failure to index the $50,000 threshold.
At the end of his remarks, the minister expressed surprise that this amendment was even before us. He seems to suggest that for some reason the Speaker of the Senate ought to have ruled these amendments out of order. I question whether it was even relevant for the minister to bring up such a silly argument in this House.
The Speaker of the Senate set out his criteria. He made it clear what he was going to do. He ruled one amendment out of order but he did not rule this one out
of order. For the minister to say he should have, is frankly ridiculous.
The Speaker of the Senate, as Your Honour knows, is appointed by the government. He is not elected as is the Speaker in this House, he is its nominee. His decision was not appealed, as it could have been in that House, and have the Liberal majority turn it down. The Speaker of the Senate made a ruling that, I submit, was correct under the circumstances, that met his criteria, and ruled that this amendment was in order.
The amendment is before this House. The minister has moved a motion that purports to suggest that the amendment is somehow improper. In this case I suggest what is improper is the government's unwillingess to consider changes in this legislation, changes that will make it more fair and equitable for the taxpayers of this country who are going to be burdened with additional taxes as a result of this government's short-sighted policy. I quoted from the Senate committee report that cited the government's consultation paper released in January, 1985.1 could go on with more statements from the report, but I think it fair, having regard to what the Senate said, to look at the last part of that report. I quote from page 2088 of the Senate Debates for last week.
The report is appended to the Debates, Madam Speaker. I would not want you to think I was reading speeches. It reads:
While the Committee does not favour the clawback in principle, nevertheless, it is reluctantly prepared to accept this provision in recognition of the serious fiscal circumstances facing the Government. This said, the Committee believes that there are serious deficiencies in the design of the clawback provision which must be corrected. We believe that our report's recommended amendments address the inequities contained in the legislation without substantially affecting the Government's budget deficit.
I submit the committee is right.
My hon. friend from Sault Ste. Marie persists in interrupting and suggesting that he does not agree with this part of the report. I regret it, too. The Senate could have, and perhaps should have, done more, although I am reluctant to say that. I would have liked to have seen them do more. I think the Senate takes a very responsible approach in these matters, and I invite my friend from Sault Ste. Marie to consider that.

!t
m

June 18, 1990

This is a money bill, and he knows as well as I do that under our Constitution the Senate has limited powers in relation to money bills, while perhaps not legally spelled out that way in the British North America Act or the Constitution Act, as it now is, at least based on the general practice under our law and Constitution.
In recognition of that fact, the Senate has said no, it has to approve the principle of this bill. It is a major bill coming from the House of Commons and has to be dealt with as such. The Senate is entitled to make some amendments to improve it, and I think that is what the Senate has done. I laud their efforts.
Like him, I would prefer that this bill not be introduced in the House at all. I would prefer to defeat it. Both our parties voted against this legislation, and I am delighted that the New Democratic Party supported us in that attempt. I would not want him to suggest that the Senate should be chastised for not having done more in the circumstances given the nature of the bill.
The point that we have to look at here is the other Senate amendment. I think it goes to the very notion of trust. The minister talked some time back about trust, how important it was, how seniors could trust this government, and their record was evidence of that trust. Let us look at the record again.
The government is preparing to impose a special tax on persons who have contributed to the old age security fund in Canada, many of them for a 20-year period. From 1952 to 1972 there was a special tax collected as part of the income tax, but labelled as an old age security tax. I can remember it. I remember seeing it on tax returns. That may seem odd, perhaps. If Your Honour does not, I am sure given Your Honour's age, it was long since abolished before Your Honour had to pay tax.
I might have filed a tax return before 1972, I am not sure. The fact is I recall the tax was there. It was a special tax levied on Canadians across the board. The money was put into the old age security fund. I am sure the minister remembers that fund. The money went into the fund and the old age security pensions were paid out of that fund.
If there were insufficient moneys in the fund it was replenished by the government out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund. If there was not enough the government paid all the pensions. The purpose of this was to make Canadians feel that they were paying for their pensions.
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That is why it was there. It was to drive the cost of pensions home to Canadians.
In 1972, the government did away with that. It said it would collect the money and pay pensions out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund. That was done and Canadians lost the notion that they were paying for their pensions because it was all paid in general tax revenue. Fine and dandy.
Now the government is saying, regardless of whether you contributed to that fund all those years, whether you paid in for 20 years or not, you now have to pay the money back when you get it if you make more than $50,000 a year. That is what it is saying.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but he would be the first one to say that I did not do what I should do before five o'clock.
It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Lambton-Middlesex, trade; the hon. member for York Centre, justice; and the hon. member for Burnaby- Kingsway, Meech Lake Accord.
I do apologize to the hon. member but the rules are the rules.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Madam Speaker, I fully recognize the need for Your Honour to interrupt for that purpose, and I am sorry that it interrupted my particular flow of reason. I know the Minister of State for Finance was hanging on every word and thought.
To go back to my notion of trust as I was discussing it, the fact is the government collected all these moneys in the old age security fund and paid the pensions out of that fund to Canadians. It now says that Canadians will have to give that money back when they receive it.
What the Senate did by one of the two amendments is to say that some recognition should be given to the fact that Canadians paid this money under the mistaken belief that they could trust the government to pay them the pensions, and let them keep the money.
The government talks about trust, saying seniors across Canada know they can trust us. On the other hand, the government says that the seniors who contributed to the fund for all of these years will now have to give the money back when it gets it out. It is a breach of trust. Any other government would be ashamed to bring

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in such legislation. It is taking money away from people who have paid for the privilege of receiving this pension.
The Senate proposed a special amendment to deal with those who contributed to this fund before 1972 so they will get an additional $75 break on the tax. I submit that that is fair, reasonable, and is a recognition of the fact that people contributed money on the understanding that they would receive money back in the form of a pension.
I cite the most recent example of abuse of trust by this government, Bill C-69, which we dealt with the other day, and which the British Columbia Supreme Court last week said is a breach of the government's obligations to the provinces. The provinces sign agreements, and the government comes along and unilaterally tears them up-just rips them up.
Can you imagine any citizen of this country behaving in this way? The hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie would not go and tear up an agreement he had signed, saying he was not going to honour it. The hon. member for Ottawa South or the hon. member for York Centre would not do that. I do not think the Associate Minister of National Defence, in her personal capacity, would even think of doing a thing like that. Yet, for some reason, when these members become ministers of the Crown, they run about gaily tearing up agreements right, left and centre saying: "We are not going to honour our obligations anymore. We do not have to, we are ministers. Somehow we are exempt from the law. We do not have to do this. We can just rip up agreements, willy-nilly, throw them to the four winds and ignore our contractual obligations".
I submit in this case the Senate has brought the government to account. It said that it will not let the government breach its obligation to the seniors of Canada, which it proposes to do. It will not let the government get away with this breach of undertaking. The government will have to pay back the money paid into the fund. It will have to make allowances for people to keep the money they contributed to the fund. They are entitled to receive the pensions and are entitled to keep the pensions, not have them taken away by the
whim and will of a government that ignores, and is bent on ignoring, public opinion in Canada.
The Minister of State for Finance in his consideration of these matters has put forward arguments to turn down the Senate amendment that are technical, narrow and highly procedural. He has not put forward substantive arguments to say these amendments are unfair and diminish the value of this legislation in any way. I suggest they are designed to improve the situation of seniors in Canada who are being forced to pay this unfair, regressive tax. It could be made fairer and less regressive, he threshold could be fully indexed to taxation and there could be an allowance made for those who contributed to the old age security fund for up to 20 years.
These are the amendments that the Senate, the other place that the government keeps saying is so undemocratic and so autocratic, has proposed to the bill. Surely the government should look at them and say that that institution is really something. It is doing something for Canadians. It is doing something for the taxpayers who are being treated unfairly in Canada. Instead of that, the government comes up with this motion that says the Senate violates the traditional legislative role asserted by the House in the fulfilment of its obligations under the Constitution Act, and say they contradict the principles of this bill. There is only one principle in the bill, the principle of which is to tax the subject. These amendments do not violate that principle, they lighten the burden and, as the minister said, in some cases they increase the burden.
The minister says they are spending money they are not authorized to spend. The minister should read this bill again because there is no expenditure of money contemplated in this bill. It is simply a reduction of taxes in these amendments. The bill itself does not authorize expenditure of money. It grabs money from Canadians unfairly, improperly, and, I submit, it should have been defeated when it was in this House. Like the New Democratic Party, we hope that the Senate might defeat this kind of bill but unfortunately, I am not sure it is something that it ought to be engaged in at least to that extent.
As I said, we in this party support the very logical amendments that the Senate has moved to this bill. We believe that the record of the government when it claims it has acted fairly and in the interests of all Canadians is wrong. We believe that the statement of the minister
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that the government has managed the financial affairs of this country well is wrong. We believe that the statement of the minister that it will make adjustments as appropriate to this threshold and that Canadians can trust them to do this is not accurate. We do not believe that Canadians can trust this government to do that and we do not believe it will do it.
I submit that the record of the government actions in proposing to reduce the indexation to cut the indexation of pensions, in proposing this very tax and in objecting to these amendments, in deindexing the deductions under the Income Tax Act and numerous other examples of unfair practices in regard to taxation in Canada, all indicate that the government cannot be trusted to do anything it says in relation to fairness or equity for taxpayers.
What the government has done, and I could go through a lot of figures but I am sure some of my colleagues are going to do that, is increase personal taxes on Canadians at an absolutely astronomic rate. For the government to talk about fairness in the tax system is completely ridiculous. It is not the government that should be discussing that. It has increased taxes 32 times since it took office. Many of them are enormous tax increases. I need only cite the goods and services tax as a perfect example of that which we complain about in this House on a regular basis.
As an example, and perhaps the hon. member for Burlington will be interested in this figure, personal taxes, sales taxes and excise taxes accounted for 67 per cent of government revenue in 1987 and 1988 while corporate taxes accounted for only 11 per cent of those revenues in that same year. I think it is an indication of the way the government has gone. It has reduced the taxes on corporations and increased the taxes on ordinary Canadians. This particular clawback tax, this unfair and very regressive tax, this treatment of pension income as something special and worthy of particularly high taxation, is an indication of the unfairness of the tax measures this government proposes.
I submit that the Senate amendments are fair and reasonable. They are not onerous on the government. The Minister of State for Finance should be supporting these amendments. I invite him to vote against the motion he has proposed so that the Senate amendments
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can be adopted in this House and we can proceed with the bill as amended.


Steve Butland: Madam Speaker,
I congratulate my friend from Kingston and the Islands. I think we agree, probably 90 per cent of the way, with what he has said. As far as bills having a principle or principles, he suggested that a bill can only have one principle. I suggest that the principals behind this legislation do not have the principles, not the bill.
It is quite an honour today to rise in the House, not because of Bill C-28, but because of the visit of Mr. Mandela. I think it was a moving experience for all of us. It is a privilege to be here to hear a remarkable individual with a great, great cause.
We in the New Democratic Party believe that freedom should be universal. We also believe that old age pensions and family allowances should be universal. Certainly fortuitously, last evening I went into a bookshop and picked up a book written by Susan Mann Trofimenkoff. It is a book about Stanley Knowles.
[DOT] (DIO)
Little did I know last evening that today is Stanley's eighty-second birthday. I could not put the book down last night. I recommend this as good reading for the government and the Official Opposition because it chronicles which party and which individuals, in particular Mr. Woodsworth and Mr. Knowles, championed over the years Old Age Security, Canada Pension and pensions that were escalated. The word at that time was escalated. They had to be escalated. They were not indexed, they were escalated at 2 per cent per year. I know know it makes excellent reading. I know the members here would bear with me for probably the remaining 15 to 17 minutes that I have because it shows without a doubt that this party in a minority government in the twenties pledged support to whichever party would come through with pensions for Canadians. Eventually the Liberals came through but they screamed all the way. Would you believe in 1926 the House of Commons passed a pension bill but it was defeated in the Senate. I just wonder, if bills could be defeated in the Senate in 1926, why bills could not be vetoed by the Senate in 1990.
Mr. Knowles suggests in his book that the Senate should be abolished and we certainly concur with his indication of what should happen to the Senate. We have difficulty, let there be no doubt, in our party with the Senate. It is some sort of three-headed beast but it is not

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a creation that we really know what to do with. There is no doubt that we are at cross-minds as to what do we support and what do we not support.
This time the Senate has made it quite easy for us through its amendments. The member for Kingston and the Islands said that they were not severe, that they were almost innocuous amendments. He said he wished they would have gone further. We, too, wish they would have gone further because it proves beyond a doubt that the New Democrats are the only party which stands for universality of social programs. The Senate has played its hand. Should this bill pass, God forbid, the Conservatives will end the notion of universality. The Liberals will be accomplices. The Senate will be partners with the Conservative government.
I am surprised that the member for Kingston and the Islands said: "We expected they would go further". I am told that they had a strategy meeting between the Liberal MPs and the Senate and they said: "What exactly are we going to do"? We now know what they did. They said: "Let's come through with some innocuous, not-too-severe amendments", knowing full well that the government would not accept them anyway. They should have played hardball with their friends and said: "Look, we are going to kill this bill". That is the least they should have done.
Poor Mr. Knowles, it is his eighty-second birthday. It took him 25 years to bring pension reform to this country and now, in 1990, the government is taking it back. The Minister of State for Finance has introduced a new term. It is called flexibility. The flexibility now is that you have a longer arm so that what you put into one pocket, you can take out of the other. I think that that is the only way that we can discuss what flexibility really is.
We had difficulty in our party trying to define what universality is because the government members never spoke of universality. I have heard the Minister of State for Finance speak three or four times. He very seldom talks about what is universality. I took the opportunity to go to the thesaurus, and the word "universality" means cosmic, global, infinite, pervasive, usual. Obviously what you give with one hand and take back with another is not universal.
The Liberals have defied the definition of "universality" as well by some of the amendments. They have pretended to defend this universality. I should turn to what the Liberals have said in this House to remind them of what they have said.
The hon. member for Halifax said: "A clawback is a clawback," and we agreed. With the amendments it is still a clawback.
The hon. member for Winnipeg North said: "I call on the government to exercise a conscience to withdraw this bill in the interests of all Canadians, in the interests of Canadian families, and in the interests of Canadian seniors." He should have called upon the Senate to do the same.
My good friend, the hon. member for Ottawa South, said: "There is only one solution for this bill and that is to remove the discriminatory tax." Remove it, the clawback tax; we agree whole-heartedly.
What did the senators say? Senator Kirby said: "I have become a little disturbed by the way a number of organizations are using universality as an emotional code word. I am not in favour of the clawback, but I am troubled by the argument that is used. As much as I dislike the clawback, I have difficulty with the argument that clawback is destroying universality." Also the Liberal senators cannot define "universality".
What the term means is very clear. It is very clear that Bill C-28 takes away the concept of universality for this country, one that we have enjoyed for so long and one that people have worked so hard to get. We are now repealing that right.
In this party we believe that it is a right of every Canadian. This is reverting to the means test: You don't deserve this because you have this much income. We believe that that is a demeaning exercise for any Canadian despite what that person may have as income.
One senator was responding to the statement of Jean Woodsworth of One Voice that as Canadians we should be ashamed of the clawback. We agree.
The Senate committee chairman says: "The government says it needs money. What it is doing in Bill C-28 is raising nearly $500 million through the old age security clawback and family allowances when the program is fully operative." That is a lot of money. It is half a billion dollars. For the most part, it is coming off the backs of senior citizens, which is part of the problem. We agree

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with that, but we do not agree that deficit reduction should be made on the backs of families and senior citizens.
This amount of money is a pittance. This amount of money could be raised veiy easily by increasing the upper margin on the income tax from 29 per cent to 32 per cent. This would raise more than the $500 million rather than use this discriminatory tax on seniors and families.
The final justification for the amendments from the Senate: "While the committee does not favour the clawback in principle, nevertheless it is reluctantly prepared to accept this provision in recognition of the serious, fiscal circumstances facing the government." The Senate has said to the government: "We agree with you. You have got a real deficit problem."
In principle we do not like clawback, but I think we are going to have to go ahead with many of the measures in Bill C-28. One could say that there might be some duplicity, but I do not accept that fact. I really do not.
One senator has been attributed as saying: "I passed around a copy of the amendments to the shareholders, the directors-I am sorry, I mean the senators." Surely at this point in time a Senate that spends $40 million per year could have done a bit better. It could have come forward with much more stringent and severe amendments to this clawback bill and we could have easily endorsed it.
We are the only party left that will defend universality in its totality. Those words are not necessary side by side because they are one and the same, but we are the only party that defends it.
Perhaps I am going backward because the member for Kingston and the Islands has already referred to it, but the chronology of this bill was an horrific experience for a new member and it would be an horrific experience for an experienced member. I will not bore the House with the details other than to say that no witnesses were to be heard. It was very important that we pass Bill C-28 before Christmas. Five witnesses out of a possible twenty-two were heard. Time allocation was used at committee stage and time allocation used in the House.
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I on behalf of the New Democrats introduced nine amendments, six of which were in order, I am proud to say, and none of which the government would accept. The government introduced 125 amendments to its own bill. This is unheard of; I could not find another precedent for it. The government said that it would introduce another bill in the new year and look after those amendments.


John Paul Manley: Were they in order?


Steve Butland: No, they were ruled out of order. My hon. friend from Ottawa South asks if they were in order. No, the government's amendments were ruled out of order. That is some indication that this bill was flawed from the beginning and remains flawed. I do not know where these amendments are, and I suspect the government does not know either.
This is destroying the vision of Canada as we on this side understand it: a caring, compassionate Canada. Although this is an almost trite expression now, but this is a change in the watershed of social policy for this country. It follows in the footsteps of the UI bill. We have grave reservations as to what may come in the future. We believe that big business is having its way. It wants to attack the social programs of this country in order that it can compete and that it will have a level playing field with the Americans. At whose expense will this be? This will be at the expense of seniors. This will be at the expense of young families.
The argument is always proffered that it will only affect 4 per cent. They have never extrapolated as to what will happen in the future. By the year 2000, we say that 25 per cent of seniors will be affected. It is not only the 65-year-old. We are talking about the 55-year-old. We are talking about the 45-year-old. We are talking about all Canadians who will be affected by this clawback.
I think I have given our party's position on this matter. I will conclude by saying that we are quite disappointed in the Senate that has the authority, we believe, to come back with a much stronger message. We do not agree with the Senate's presence. It is not one of us; there are none of us over there. If it is going to be there, it might as well do something and do it with principle and will. The Senate knew full well that it was only a delay and

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that this government would not accept any of the amendments whether they were innocuous or severe.


John Paul Manley: Madam Speaker, I would just like to ask the member, who has effectively pleaded with the Senate to take even stronger measures than it has in reviewing legislation such as that before us, if he does not think it is a trifle inconsistent for a party which has maintained the position that the Senate should be abolished to say that in light of the fact that it is there it should take stronger measures. Surely his theory for its abolition is based on the non-elected nature of the body. It would be therefore far more consistent for him to say that if it is not abolished the Senate should be careful not to interfere in any way with legislation that comes out of the House of Commons.
Does he not think it is rather inconsistent of him to recommend to an unelected and therefore unrepresentative body that it takes very drastic action and castigates its members for not having stopped the bill altogether although having recommended improvements?


Steve Butland: Madam Speaker, I certainly anticipated that question, but it does not make the answer simpler or easier. I said in my speech hat we are not too sure what to do with this beast, this three-headed monster, but we say that if you are there, for heaven's sakes exercise what you can do rather than bring forth wimpy, non-stringent amendments. They should make a statement. Let me assure you of our policy. I certainly agree with Mr. Knowles, who I am sure still believes very much what he said 40 years ago, although I am not supposed to do that, that the Senate has no place.


John Paul Manley: Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to take part once more in a debate on Bill C-28.1 believe that it is at least the second time I have spoken on this subject. I participated in the debate on third reading and on the legislative committee studying this bill.

I find it rather amusing, to say the least, to hear the NDP wax so eloquent about the pro-active role it sees for the Senate in dealing with this sort of legislation. I must say I could not disagree much more with the comments made by the member for Sault Ste. Marie.
Frankly I think that the Senate has demonstrated in the way it has dealt with this bill exactly what kind of role it should be playing: a very useful and thoughtful role without at the same time interfering totally with the government's mandate or plans.
In the case of this bill, in spite of the evidence it was able to hear in its legislative committee, which we were unable to hear in the House of Commons committee because of pressure from government members who are no longer government members, having left the governing party since then for other reasons, in spite of that pressure we had in the Senate committee the opportunity to have a very broad variety of evidence presented. The senators were able to hear the concerns of Canadians that should have been expressed to members of this House, but the government would not permit that.
The Senate then came forward with two very reasonable amendments to address two of the extreme problems with this bill. I agree with the member for Sault Ste. Marie that that does not address the essential iniquity of this bill which is to undermine the principle of universality in the most indirect, underhanded fashion.
The issue is simply whether or not Canadians should be given the opportunity to debate that fundamental principle of our social policy, universality, in a comprehensive way so that when we decide what kind of country we want to be, not just this year but this decade and the decades to come, we do so on the foundation of thorough debate in the House of Commons and hearing the views of the people of this country.
What we have in this clawback measure is a fundamental change in social policy disguised as an income tax measure. As an example of how devious the government has been in presenting this measure we had the Minister of Finance before the finance committee, not three weeks ago now, criticizing the fact that the Senate took time to study this bill and saying: "Look what they are doing. They are holding up the large corporations tax." The Minister of Finance had the nerve to come in and parade the fact that he was willing to tie together a fundamental social policy change in Canada, the end of universality, with a revenue-generating scheme, the large corporations tax, and then say that one was being thwarted by some effort at studying the other.
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I think it is a disgrace that we have reached the point in Canada where things that were described as sacred trusts by a man who wanted to be Prime Minister of Canada can be tied to measures like the large corporations tax and be made to look like they are mere fiscal measures.
The Minister of State in his remarks really admitted the idea of this measure has nothing to do with fairness or equality. It has to do with reducing the deficit.
Reducing the deficit is what drives the policy of the Government of Canada these days. It drives it in science and technology. It drives it in everything else. There is a failure to consider what is important, to consider what kind of country we want to have.
While there is money to spend on propaganda advertising, while there is money to buy food tasters for the Prime Minister, there is not money to spend on seniors.
As I say, the essence of this debate that should be had about universality is essentially this. If it is believed that the principle of universal pension payments for persons in their senior years should not apply to those in higher income categories, then that proposition is a simple one. It is very easily debated in this forum and other forums across the country. If that is the principle, why do we not say that and go forward and devise a social policy that meets the needs of the 1990s and beyond?
Instead, this tax is meant to disguise what it actually is. This tax is described as not affecting universality. The Minister of State says that himself. We are giving the money to everybody. They can pocket it. They can put it in their right hand pocket. What they do not realize is that there is another hand in there already waiting to take it back out. Is that universality? On the contrary, this is a tax measure directed at seniors.
Who else in Canada, other than senior citizens, pays an extra tax on old age pensions? No one. No one else receives it. It is simply a tax based on age.
Similarly, the tax back on family allowances is a tax based on family size, not on income. If it were on income, it would be subject to the usual marginal tax rates. No, these are tax measures directed at families and
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seniors. They have not been subject to debate on the basis of the social policy that underlies them.
The member for Sault Ste. Marie was right when he quoted me as saying that this provision should be deleted from Bill C-28. If the government wants to introduce this policy, it should be introduced as part of a new piece of legislation brought forward, probably by the Minister of National Health and Welfare, as part of the whole income security arrangement for Canada. Then let us debate it as a matter of social policy.
I remind the government that the previous Minister of National Health and Welfare back in 1985 introduced a discussion paper in which he said the clawback of old age pensions-he did not use that terminology of course- would not be acceptable. Why? Because seniors plan on this. They expect it. Therefore it would not be fair.
The senators have made two minor proposals. They did not undo the clawback, as maybe they should have, they proposed to mitigate its effects to some extent, with two measures. The first would index the threshold at which the clawback applies. That surely to goodness is the minimum.
The government says two things. It says: "Trust us. We have always raised thresholds before. Who is to say we will not raise them again?" If it is going to raise them again, then why not index them? It is as simple as that.
The government then says: "It only affects 4 per cent of seniors". Yet it justifies it on the basis of the deficit. If it only affects 4 per cent, then surely indexing it would not have that much impact on the deficit? Yet the measure of fairness that would be brought by indexation is well worth the modest cost involved.
What about the minor amount of tax credit that the senators propose to people who at least in their minds bought and paid for their old age pensions? Under the proposal from the Senate, qualifying individuals, that is, people who have reached age 65 now, or will between now and 2006, are going to get a minor tax credit that they can apply against the clawback. This reflects the fact that these people for many years understood that when they paid the Old Age Security tax on their tax forms they were going to get an old age pension. That is what they were paying for.

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I have the 1971 T-l General Tax Guide in my hands. It states on page 17 under "Old Age Security Tax" that all taxpayers whose taxable income is over $500 are subject to the Old Age Security Tax. The tax is 4 per cent of taxable income, a maximum of $240.
That tax was in place since 1952. It was brought in for veiy good reasons. It was brought in to convince people that the Old Age Security measures introduced by the government were not some kind of charitable giveaway, or a gift to seniors who were poor. This was not some kind of hand-out. It was every senior citizen's right as a citizen of Canada, it came with their citizenship. Even today citizenship is a necessary qualification to receive the old age pension in Canada. It was part of the national fabric. It was part of what bound us together as Canadians.
The government wants to do away with that as a universal measure. We think it is wrong. What the Senate asks in its proposed amendment is simply that as a minimum, as a minor gesture to fairness, the government recognize the fact that seniors in this country paid for this over the years. They understood they were paying for it. Governments accepted the money on the basis that it was a contribution to the Old Age Security that that person was going to receive. Why not introduce this temporary measure? It has a sunset clause. It does not go on forever. It really only affects a small number of people, namely, those who contributed to the Old Age Security tax. Those people who are in the clawback category would receive some contribution from the moneys that they had put in previously to pay for this pension.
These are not unreasonable propositions that the Senate has sent back. They may be less than some of us would have liked, but I think they represent the very best that the Senate could offer, while still being very careful to exercise on itself constitutional moderation. It is a way to say to the government that they understand it will object strongly if they delete the clawback. They do not like it but propose these modest, reasonable measures to introduce an element of fairness. They are meant to introduce an element of confidence for seniors that the threshold will not be totally eroded by inflation, and to say to those who have paid in the past that we recognize that you thought you were getting a pension that you were paying for. We will help to compensate you for what you have lost by recognizing that through a tax
credit system. These are not large amounts of money, but they are very important amounts of money when we consider the importance of maintaining the integrity of the system that Canada has been built upon.
Surely, at a time in Canada's history when our national fabric is being strained as it is, this is not the time to turn to our seniors and say: "Whatever the government says to you, do not count on it. Do not count on it, because we will look to you, just as we will to everybody else, to pay more than your share. Don't count on promises. Don't count on sacred trusts. Don't count on Prime Ministers who are willing to display their mothers on election platforms in order to generate confidence among senior citizens. You cannot believe any of those things".
Is this the message that the government is trying to send out? If so, the government is doing a very good job at it. It has convinced Canadians that it cannot be trusted. This, of all times, is a time when national trust and confidence needs to be established. Canadians need to have a government they can believe in.
What I suggest is that the government reconsider the motion that it has put forward. It should reconsider it in light of what the Senate might have done with this proposal, in light of what it was justified in doing with it, and in light of the fact that the government has put before us the most major change of social policy in a generation in Canada and has sneaked it through as part of an income tax bill. The Senate let the government do it, reluctantly, but provided minor justifiable amendments to make the new system at least a modicum more fair.
Rather than the motion it has put forward, the government ought to be considering accepting these modest amendments and acknowledging that the chamber of sober second thought has looked at this, has found some reasonable way for it to regain some of the confidence that senior citizens in Canada ought to have in it. Therefore, in the interest of trust, in the interest of co-operation in Canada, the government should say it will accept those moderate changes and and will move forward on that basis.
That is what I suggest to the government. Now is the opportunity. Revoke this motion. We can have Bill C-28 through this afternoon by accepting the veiy minor amendments that have been proposed.

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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Richardson):: Are there questions or comments? The hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie.


Steve Butland: Mr. Speaker, I agree again with 90 per cent of what my hon. colleague said. He took the New Democrats to task for what appeared to be our inconsistency with the Senate.
He himself suggested that the Senate, and I will use his words, was an undemocratic body. I am just wondering how we are to take these amendments brought forward by the Senate. If he recognizes the Senate as undemocratic, then do we accept one amendment but not the other? I am not quite sure.
The basic logic here is that if you defend the actions of the Senate the corollary would be: Do the Liberals support the $153 per diem pay raise for the senators?


John Paul Manley: As always, Mr. Speaker, the NDP is long on rhetoric and short on thought.
It seems a very simple proposition to me. The Senate has sent us a proposal. Here it is. It has emanated from an unelected body. Therefore, I agree, it is not democratic.
As my friend knows, we also had proposals that came from various groups and organizations in Canada when the committee sat. They are not democratically organized groups. They represent interests.
Each one of us as members of the House of Commons can read what is proposed, evaluate its merits and say whether it is good or bad. I do not really care that the senators have done things now or in the past that I agree or disagree with.
My question earlier to the member for Sault Ste. Marie was based on his philosophical position that the Senate should be abolished. If it should be abolished, then why would he urge it to take stronger measures than it has already taken?
Rather what I am asking all members of this House to do is to say that, yes, we have a Senate. It has put something forward. I am capable of reading and understanding what it put forward. I know the member for Sault Ste. Marie is also capable of reading and understanding it. If it is good, then we should simply apply it. It is as simple as that.
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I do not think that it has to be implied that because it came from a body which is more largely one party than another that therefore you take these things totally on a partisan basis. I think that we should be willing to sit in this House and to say: "Let's look at the merits of the proposal".
The National Council on Welfare made propositions. I think some of them show great merit. I do not even know what political party that association may be affiliated with, if any.
It seems to me that the minimum we are called upon to do in this Chamber is to use whatever native intelligence we might have and evaluate proposals that come forward. That is the challenge I have, not only for the NDP, but in these difficult days for the government. If they would at least read them, then perhaps it would find them less offensive.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, first, I want to thank my colleague for the very eloquent remarks that he made today. Seldom, if ever, has such eloquence been heard in this House. We can really tell that our learned and distinguished colleague obviously knows this subject very well.
I want to ask my colleague about the old age security tax of which he spoke with such knowledge and eloquence and of its application in recent years.
Our equally eloquent colleague from Kingston and the Islands today in Question Period raised an issue which involves a court which has decided in relation to another bill that the trust of a government is so fundamental to our system that if Canadians do not believe that their governments can be trusted when they have made commitments, then, similarly, how can we ask Canadians to pay their taxes voluntarily based on the same kind of trust that should be there?
I think there is an analogy here. There is definitely a parallel. These are, in certain cases, the same people who are paying income taxes now from whom a number of years ago we collected moneys. At that time we promised them certain benefits under the old age security tax.
I want to ask my colleague who is so learned in the law if he will not agree with me that there is something inherently wrong from a justice point of view, as well as everything else, with a government that makes promises and does not keep them. I ask our colleague, the Minister of Health who is diligently taking notes of all of

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this as we are speaking, to listen very attentively to the answer of my colleague from Ottawa South.


John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that I am up to the standard of eloquence that has been requested of me.
I think the essence of this is the concept of voluntary compliance that really underlies our income tax system. What we know is that in Canada we have had a very successful history of encouraging our citizens to comply voluntarily with the income tax rules, which sometimes have been pretty complicated. But people have shown a willingness to pay their taxes.
However, what is happening now, this year, in this particular measure is a request to Canadians to comply not only voluntarily, but to comply voluntarily with laws that have not been passed.
We have been told that these clawback measures are going to be in effect for 1989, no matter when this bill is passed.
People had to file their income tax returns by April 30, 1990. Although we were under no legal obligation to pay the clawback, the government is going to come after us later and try to take it out of our pockets. I do not know how many people realize that that is going to happen, that that retroactive feature is in this bill.
Meanwhile we have the government saying: "Even though you paid us in advance for your old age pension benefits, we are not going to let you have them". Surely, with the layer of GST put on top of it all, at some point people will get fed up and say: "That's it. Voluntary compliance, out the window. If they can catch me, they can have me. Until then, I'm keeping the cash in the pocket". The danger that this government is getting into is the danger of undermining voluntary compliance.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Richardson):: Is the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands rising on a point of order?


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: I am
rising on a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
I have discussed this matter with the other parties. Because of my enthusiasm in preparing my speech this afternoon I forgot to serve notice of my intention to raise
a question on the late show at some future date with regard to a question I raised today in Question Period.
I wonder if the House would agree to allow me to file the application now. I apologize profusely to the House for having missed this very important point. I think that a seven-minute discourse on justice matters will be of interest to the House later.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, we expressed some amazement that that was a prepared speech and that it should be used as an excuse.
However, we felt that if our hon. colleague opposite is willing to admit that it was a prepared speech, then the least we could do is grant unanimous consent for his request.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Richardson):: Resuming debate with the hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam.


Joy Langan: Mr. Speaker, after the Minister of Finance introduced the clawback provisions in his budget I asked him during Question Period one day about what guarantee Canadians have that these clawbacks would not affect them in terms of the mounting cost of living, and that their pensions in fact would not be clawed back.
The finance minister said not only to me, but to all Canadians: "Trust us".
Canadians trusted this government on free trade. Look what we got. Canadians trusted this government on unemployment insurance. Look what we got. Canadians trusted this government on child care. Look what we did not get.
The Prime Minister said to us that his mother is proud of him, she is not worried, she trusts him. I can tell the hon. members here assembled and the Prime Minister who may some day read Hansard that there are an awful lot of moms and dads, in this country who do not trust him or his government. They do not trust anymore that their interests are the concern of this government.
We have had one piece of legislation after another come before this House that begs that trust. In fact that trust has been ignored. The government's actions have flown in the face of Canadians who not only trusted it
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but who voted for it giving its members a mandate to protect their interests.
When Bill C-28 was debated before it was sent off to the Senate, the Liberals in this House talked very eloquently and passionately about the sanctity of universality.
The member for Winnipeg St. James was very clear when he said: "This has been an attack on seniors". He said: "It is a betrayal of the senior citizens of this country. They do not deserve this kind of treatment. They deserve our respect. They earned the right to this pension".
The hon. member for Halifax said: "A clawback is a clawback".
The hon. member for Hillsborough said: "Parents and pensioners make a special invaluable contribution to our society in the past, present and future. These clawbacks imply that such contributions are unimportant and that some are worth even less than others".
The hon. member for Stormont-Dundas said: "I urge the government to rescind the clawback proposal contained in C-28".
The hon. member for Kenora-Rainy River said: "Canadians do not support the clawback and they will never accept it".
The hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell said: "For me as a Liberal that kind of thinking is wrong. There is no way that senior citizens should apologize to the members across the way and beg to get money from this government".
I am absolutely astounded with that kind of presentation from the hon. members on the Liberal benches that a Liberal-led Senate is indeed sending back to this House Bill C-28 with minor amendments that in fact still attack the universality of pensions and family allowances.
It is important to consider some of the things that senators said when the Senate was discussing this bill in committee. Senator Grafstein said: "I think the committee and the Senate has a responsibility to ensure that the Charter is maintained". This is in reference to Bill C-28. He continued: "If in fact this clawback runs afoul of Charter considerations because it discriminates on the basis of age, we should give it careful consideration. We
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are obliged to ensure that any laws that pass the Senate meet the contours of the Charter".
Senator M. Kirby said: "I should like to say at the outset that I think this is a fabulous brief". He is referring to a brief presented to the Senate committee hearing. He said: "You have summarized the objections to this part of Bill C-28 more clearly and more briefly than anyone else who has appeared before us and I congratulate you for that". It was a presentation and a brief from One Voice which categorically condemned the clawbacks in this legislation.
I could go on. I have a whole list of both Liberal opposition members and Liberal senators who have spoken very eloquently about the sanctity of the universality of social programs in this country.
We have before us two amendments sent back from the Senate. We have members of the government getting up and giving eloquent speeches about how fair this legislation is to seniors and to parents. They give us a whole lot of numbers and bafflegab like: "It is only going to hurt a little bit. The richer you are, the less it will hurt you".
If we were to look very carefully at the statistics as time goes on and as the clawback moves along, we would find that a mother today who is 20 years old and earning $20,000, by the time she retires would find her pension clawed back, assuming that everything else was equal and that she was in the same job. Is the minister over there agreeing with me?
No, he is not agreeing with me. Maybe we should put your statistics, Mr. Minister, and my statistics together and see if we cannot find out just who is stating the facts in this case. Maybe we could give them to the Senate and it could figure it out.
This clawback discriminates against one-earner families. It is both unjust and illogical. A one-earner couple at $56,000 will pay back all of its family allowance.


Mrs. Dobbie:: Are you suggesting we discriminate against married couples?


Joy Langan: The hon. member opposite will have her turn later. She can certainly get up and rebut what I have said to her heart's content when I am finished.

June 18, 1990
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A one-earner couple earning $56,000 will pay back all its family allowance. The two-income couple earning $80,000-$24,000 more than the one-earner family that I just spoke of-gets to keep over half of its family allowance. I would like to ask hon. members opposite how that can be considered fair. That is what the government introduced. It is still there with the Senate amendments. I would like to ask all hon. members assembled if they believe that that is fair. Not only have we abandoned universality, now we are creating inequities.
The clawback will add to the complexity of the child benefit system. After the clawback, there will be four types of families receiving family allowance: one, who will keep all of their family allowance because they are too poor to owe income tax. The second will be those who keep part of their family allowance, because they pay regular income tax on their benefits. The third group consists of those who keep part of their family allowance because they pay regular income tax and the clawback is going to take place on their benefits. Fourth, those who will pay all of their family allowance back because of the clawback.
Fairness and equity apply. As the hon. members on the government side of the House know, the clawback will not redirect benefits from the rich to the poor. That is the basis on which the government is trying to sell this bill. They are telling people in Canada: "We will take it from the rich people who make $50,000 a year and we will give it to the poor."
I have never ever believed and I do not think anybody in this House believes that the Conservative government from across the way is Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Never, never, never has this government taken from the rich and given to the poor.
The clawback on family allowance and old age pensions will save the government about $500 million a year when this game is fully in effect. When I finish speaking, I would like to have the hon. minister who spoke earlier tell us how that $500 million a year will be given to the poor in this country. I defy him to get up and tell us that that $500 million is going to go to the poor.
We believe that the federal government should abandon the clawback proposals in Bill C-28. There is no question that those clawbacks put an end to universality both in pensions and in family allowance.
The National Council of Welfare, a citizens' advisory body to the Minister of National Health and Welfare and appointed by the cabinet to advise the minister on matters of social policy, believes that this legislation should not have ever occurred. It believes that this legislation is putting the death stamp on universality in this country.
The other point is the absolute shock when one starts looking at where this government introduces its social policy. This government does not introduce social policy through the Minister of National Health and Welfare or through other ministers in this government. Where does it introduce social policy? It introduces it in the budget, buried in figures so that people have no realization of how bad these amendments are.
The Minister of National Health and Welfare does not stand up and say: "We are going to grab back part of your pension or part of your family allowance." The minister responsible for pensions does not jump up and say: "We are going to grab back part of your pension." Never. This government introduces it in a budget with figures that even the most astute people in the media and in this House along with their advisers take days and weeks to figure out.
The government expects ordinary, average Canadians to figure out that they are getting the shaft from this government. I have news for you, Mr. Speaker. The average Canadian could never figure out what is in those budget documents. It is absolutely shocking that this government hides its dastardly deeds in the confines of huge budgetary documents.
This country introduced universality in the family allowance, medicare, old age pensions, the programs that are so important to what makes our society special as caring Canadians. Nobody ever dreamed that we would find ourselves faced with a government that through the guise of trying to achieve a level playing field-and maybe that is the reason-gives us reasons for balancing budgets. Yet, it spends on the other end and takes it away on the social programs. We give it on the
June 18, 1990

other end. We give tax breaks to corporate friends. Nobody ever believed that this government-


An hon. member:: How about our co-operative partners?


Joy Langan: We can talk about that. Let's talk about that. You can ask me questions about that when I am finished speaking, hon. minister.
I do not have to make any apologies for the basic principles of New Democrats, nor will I make apologies. I would like to ask hon. members some questions about their basic principles, but this is not the place to do it.
The kind of thing we need to discuss in this House is how we find ourselves faced with a piece of legislation from a Tory government that supposedly grabs back from the rich today.


An hon. member:: That is right. Today.


Joy Langan: I have already stated, and I will state it again. If you are earning $30,000 today and you are 30 years old, by the time you retire your pension will be clawed back. If you earn $40,000 today and are aged 40, by the time you retire, your pension will be clawed back. Do not tell me that it is being clawed back from the rich. It is the well-to-do. Fifty thousand dollars is not rich today. It is the well-to-do today, and tomorrow it is the poor. Do not try to fool Canadians.


An hon. member:: That's who they are after.


Joy Langan: Do not try to fool Canadians by saying that you are taking this money from the rich. You are taking this money today from middle-income Canadians and tomorrow from the poor Canadians.
It is absolutely critical for Canadians to take a look at the fact that this Tory government has yet again tried to fool Canadians into believing that they are doing them a favour by taking from the rich when in fact their intent is to take from average and poor Canadians. At the same time we have a Liberal Senate that claims in the loftiest of terms to be committed to universality coming back with a couple of measly little amendments when in fact it has the power to stop this legislation.
There are those who have said to us: "Well, suddenly New Democrats are embracing the Senate". Not true. In fact, what we are saying is if there is a Senate there, let's put that Senate to work to protect Canadians. If there is
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any kind of heart in this government, if it can get its act together-and there seems to be a little bit of difficulty over there even figuring out what we will do from day to day around here-I would plead with it not to rely on the Senate to withdraw this bill, but to have the courage and respect for the Canadian people, the people who are building this country, the people who have indeed built this country in the name of our pensioners, and withdraw this bill.


Steve Butland: Madam Speaker, I congratulate my hon. colleague for her fine speech.
I do not think Canadians ever get tired of hearing what a heinous group this group opposite really is. When talking about unjust, iniquitous, obscene legislation, the member cited that one particular clause where a married couple, each earning $49,000 for a total of $98,000, will not be clawed back on their family allowance, but a single parent earning $50,001 will have his or her pension clawed back. Why would the government allow this obvious unjust legislation to come forward without an amendment of its own? Second, why would the Senate not introduce an appropriate amendment?


Joy Langan: Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question.
First of all, why would this government introduce such an unfair piece of legislation? God only knows why. This government is becoming infamous. It will go down in history as being the government that has consistently, time after time after time, introduced legislation that is not only outrageous and iniquitous and all of those things, but is indeed unfair.
As to why the Senate has not done something about it, I cannot speak for the senators, but I am quite surprised that the Senate, in its proposed amendments, has not addressed that subject. The most frustrating thing about all of this is that this government and this minister who is backing the motion not to support the amendments of the Senate would not, after all this government has heard about the inequities and the unfairness in this legislation, have addressed these inequities. I would hope that when I sit down the hon. minister would get up and do just that.


An hon. member:: He will.

June 18, 1990
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Gilles Loiselle: Madam Speaker, I would like to say that the greatest threat to the people the hon. member was referring to would be for us to run away from a very difficult responsibility, which is to bring the deficit and the debt down. Otherwise it is our very capacity to deal with our programs and to support our programs on a continuing basis that will be threatened.
It is all very nice to live in a land where these problems do not arise when you have access to any amount of money. We are dealing with a very precise situation where Canadians are contributing a huge amount of money to our programs. They want us to deal, and I am sure that every member in this House would like us to deal in a responsible way with the finances of this country and this is what we are doing. We are cutting and trying to make savings where we are spending.
The government, of course, spends in areas which are always of great importance. I do not deny that we do not live in an ideal world. We are trying to manage the finances properly and protect the capacity of the government. If we do not do that, in a few years time it will not be what the hon. member called clawback; it will be the disappearance of these programs. Money does not grow on trees. We have to work in a responsible way to make sure that these programs are preserved because they are important.


Joy Langan: Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the minister for commenting. I remind him that the term clawback is a term created and put forward by the finance minister, not by this hon. member.
The hon. minister says that the responsibility of the government is to reduce the deficit so that we can continue to have social programs. I suggest that if this government is serious about reducing the deficit, why are we reducing the deficit on the backs of seniors, on the backs of parents and on the backs of children in this country? Don't give me the argument that it is to protect our children's future. What about the present? Starve me today so I can live well tomorrow? Come on.
What this government needs to do is talk about taxing corporate Canada fairly. If we took all of those deferred taxes and put them in the coffers of the government, we would not have to tax from kids and we would not have
to tax from pensioners, like he is proposing. What about doing something about the artificially high Canadian dollar or the interest rates in this country? If we could get the finance minister to do something about the interest rates in this country, we could take care of that billion dollars that this clawback is going to grab for the government.


Mary Catherine Clancy: Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak on this bill and to speak on the issue of fairness. There has been a lot of back and forth about the provisions of the bill and the clawback and whether or not the government is Robin Hood or the Sheriff of Nottingham.
The question that we must deal with is strictly one of whether or not governments are supposed to be fair to the people they govern. The answer with regard to this bill, and with all due deference to the hon. minister opposite, is no. The answer is no.
We look at this bill and we see that those families which earn in excess of $50,000 a year will be clawed back on their old age pension and on their family allowance.
First of all, I am astounded by the insinuations of some hon. members opposite that $50,000 a year creates the aura of riches. If we are talking about a family of four or five, if we are even talking about two senior citizens with a pensionable income of $50,100 a year, we are not talking riches. I come from, admittedly the poorest region of the country, so there are not a whole lot of people in my region who fall into this category. Even I being from the Atlantic region know that $50,000 spread across the average Canadian family is not a huge amount of money.
In regard to the old age pension, many of the people who are going to be clawed back on their old age pension are not receiving it as some gratuitous frill. This old age pension was something that many of them contributed to in the beginning and middle years of their working lives, because this pension was a contributory pension. Consequently, when these people, as most of our senior citizens do, planned for their retirement years, they included at least in a ball park way the old age pension as part of the funds they would have in their retirement years and used them in planning how they would spend those years. What they are dealing with is a breach of trust by the government and a loss of income.
June 18, 1990

The same can be said for those families receiving family allowance. It is already taxed back on a reasonable level. People who make over a certain income will lose a certain percentage of their family allowance. That is fair. That is what we expect. That is what the program was meant to do.
I listened with interest to the hon. minister's comments about the deficit and the business that if we do not take care of the deficit now we will not have any money for social programs in the future. That is fine, but he has already received suggestions from my hon. colleague from Kingston and the Islands, my hon. colleague from Ottawa South, my hon. colleague from Mission-Coquitlam, and a host of other opposition members of other ways in which he can reduce this deficit and not to do it by a direct attack on the elderly and on children.
I can remember several years ago at a Liberal Party convention where some people, misguided though they were, brought forward a resolution to create a means test on the family allowance. I am happy to say that it was voted down in a social policy workshop by somewhere in the vicinity of 370 to 3, because we did not stand for means tests on social programs in the Liberal Party. We stand for universality and for universality that benefits everyone at least a bit.
I recall an hon. member of the other place, a very senior senator, who had been involved in the government of this country for a long time, standing and making an emotional plea in that workshop and saying that even in the dark days of the depression when the Liberals regained the government in 1935, when things were pretty hopeless in this country, we instituted social programs on a universal basis. We did not take them away.
That is what a government that is fair and a government that cares about its people does. It does not turn around and say to elderly people who have planned their retirement years that it is suddenly going to claw back their old age pension. I just ask members opposite how easy they think it is for one wage earner making $50,100 or whatever a year to provide for a family of two, three, or four children, to try to plan for the future, for the children's education, and to try to provide a few of the extras in life. We talk about taking back from the rich. We have already established that this salary level does not make one rich. I would suggest to you that most
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members of Parliament could attest to that. Is there some sort of method in the government's madness that, if this amount of money makes one rich or if it does not, somehow we should penalize people who have children? Effectively that is what this is doing.
There is a whole issue relating to the family allowance which gets passed over by certainly the government members and, to a degree, even by members on this side: that women receive the family allowance. It is money that comes to women. If the women are at home and are not wage earners outside the home but have husbands, the tax for that family allowance comes off the husbands' salaries.
Almost any woman in this House-certainly many women across the country-know for a fact that in every one of our cities, towns, and villages across the country there are women in distress, women in abusive situations, women in untenable situations who have saved those family allowance cheques month to month, year to year until they have enough money to make an escape. I have seen it. I suggest that many of us have seen it.
There is a fiction created that the clawing back of this benefit is not going to create a hardship. It is going to create a hardship. We know that abusive situations, wife abuse and family violence, are not limited to the homes of the poor. They are not limited to certain regions of the country. We know that the spectre of family violence raises its head in every possible socio-economic bracket in Canada. We know that.
Anybody who works in social work, in the legal profession, or in any of the social professions dealing with people on a day to day basis will say that women use this money for an escape hatch. For many women in this situation it is already difficult to hang on to this money because in spite of the income levels of many of their husbands the response is: "I am being taxed on this. It is my money. You give it to me." Many women are coerced into endorsing over the cheques.
I have seen situations where women have just been told: "Sign it and hand it to me or I won't be responsible for the consequences." Women already have a difficulty in maintaining that which is theirs. If an abusive husband is going to be taxed at a higher rate, how much narrower a window of opportunity is his wife going to have to hang on to this money?

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I reiterate that this happens in every comer of this country. It happens to women in tenements. It happens to women in mansions. It happens to women from coast to coast to coast. It is not something that we should be prepared to slough off or gloss over lightly. It is an important and frightening aspect of what this bill can do to worsen a situation for women who are already in desperate circumstance.
I know very well that the hon. minister is a compassionate man. I have heard him on many occasions. I know he cares about things like this, but I suggest that the government in its planning did not think of this aspect of what this bill can do.
I agree with my colleague from Kingston and the Islands; I very much wish that the Senate had sent back even tougher amendments. However I think the amendments that it has sent are eminently reasonable. I do not understand why the government sees fit to speak against them. What the Senate is effectively saying, if I may be so bold as to interpret it, is that this clawback should be indexed in such a way that within 10 years the level of clawback will not go to an income that is worth effectively $35,000 in today's dollars. By the way, may I add that I am delighted to hear the change of heart by my colleagues in the New Democratic Party with regard to the other place. Every year under the current legislation more and more people are going to fall into this trap, more and more people are going to be facing real hardship.
Everybody in this House who grew up since the inception of the family allowance has stories to tell as to what the money was used for. I recall as the only child of a widowed mother that the family allowance cheques which came to my mother for me were used to pay for insurance benefits.
I recall other friends whose parents in the pre-medicare days used the family allowance to pay for things such as glasses and shoes in many cases. That money that came in, even back in the days when it was $6 a month or $8 a month, made a real difference to families who were not considered to be poverty level. They were considered to be ordinary middle-class Canadian families. At $50,000 a year that is what we are talking about in 1990.
In the year 2000, if this bill keeps on, where do you think the poverty line will be, Madam Speaker? I suggest that it will be a lot closer to $35,000 than it will be to $50,000 today.
Let us look at the reasons that social programs were put into place. They were put into place because of the spirit that is Canada, because of the raison d'etre of this country.
Most of us in the House, with the exception of perhaps my colleague from Nunatsiaq, my colleague from the Western Arctic and another colleague from Alberta who is not here, came here through our parents, our grandparents, our ancestors, to live a better life. That is why we came here. Whether we came from eastern Europe, western Europe, from France, the British Isles, that is why we or our ancestors came to this country. We came because we wanted to see a system of government that was fair, equal and democratic.
We also knew that not everybody, in spite of the opportunities that Canada offers, can take full advantage of those opportunities. There are some people so caught in the cycle of poverty that without massive assistance they cannot break out. There are some people because of other socio-economic difficulties who cannot realize their full potential.
Consequently that was the reason in the dirty thirties the government of this country said that we needed social programs to assist, that we needed to ensure the elderly and families had something to help them along.
It was not considered-and certainly it has not been in my lifetime-a temporary measure to be thrown away because of economic exigencies in other areas of government delivery of services. That is the way, sadly, this government is treating social programs today.
The Prime Minister referred to universality as a sacred trust. It is a sad day for Canada that the words sacred trust have become base coinage.
The people of this country have a right to believe that the things they helped fight for, that they contributed to through their tax dollars, and that they contributed to through their building of this country would be there for them and for their children. The trust, sacred or otherwise, has been broken.
June 18, 1990

In the last election a number of my colleagues in the Liberal Party and I were faced with the accusation that we used scare tactics particularly when we talked to senior citizens about pensions.
If we used scare tactics, what is this but the realization of what we talked about? When I talked to senior citizens in Halifax in the 1988 campaign, we talked about how safe their pensions were and we talked about the old age pension. I did not ask every senior citizen who I talked to in the 22 senior citizens' complexes across the riding of Halifax or in the houses and apartment buildings where I met them door to door, what their income from all sources was and say that if they fell into this category they may lose something. Almost every one of those seniors to whom I talked had contributed to that old age pension. They felt that it was a part of an investment that they had made in themselves and in this country and they are angry and disappointed that the tables have been turned on them and that they are going to lose this money.
I began my remarks tonight by talking about fairness. It has been said before by practically everyone who has spoken this evening on this side of the House, but it bears repeating. Where is the fairness in a couple with a joint pension income of over $50,000 but individually of $26,000 a piece, for example, being exempt from this while another couple where one person has the income is getting clawed back? Where is the fairness in the family where there is one wage earner who makes in excess of $50,000 and therefore gets clawed back, while in a family where there are two wage earners whose aggregate salary reaches this figure does not get touched?
There just comes a point, Madam Speaker, where it goes beyond the question of fairness and becomes a question of common sense. Every member on the other side of the House has examples of this in his or her riding. Every one of them has people who are going to be distressed and upset about this. It does not seem to me to make any kind of sense either in the realm of fairness or in the realm of good policy or good politics. I guess in the long run it is somewhat akin to the commercial that says, "You can't fool mother nature", and mother nature is
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going to be a little upset when mother nature goes to the polls.
However, I think that there are so many reasons for upset at this point that it may well be that the government just figures there is nothing left to lose. Just as an aside, I must say I was happy to see that in the province of Nova Scotia-and I say this to make the members opposite feel better-the federal Conservatives are doing much better than the provincial Conservatives, the federal Conservatives being at 14 per cent and the provincial ones being at 13 per cent.


Ron J. Duhamel: What are the Liberals at, 68 per cent?


Mary Catherine Clancy: I think it was 68 per cent, it might have been 70 per cent.
We talk about fairness; we talk about families. I have listened to the members on the other side of the House who on occasion seem a little bit afraid of some of the developments of modem history particularly relating to the status of women. I can only say to a government that claims to be family oriented and claims to be in favour of the family, that if this is the way that it treats its friends, it is no wonder that it has so few.


Joy Langan: Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Halifax for her intervention. She made reference to 1935 when the Liberal government introduced universal programs. Is she was aware that in fact it was as a result of A.A. Heaps, J.S. Woodsworth and Agnes Macphail and others in the Ginger Group who forced the Liberal government, when they held the balance of power as CCFers, to introduce that legislation?


Mary Catherine Clancy: Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam. Liberalism goes back many generations in my family and we have never been averse to using other people's good ideas. We have never been averse to using those ideas for the benefit of the people of Canada. We have never been averse because, being a party that gets into power fairly frequently, it is lucky that somebody will use these ideas.


Ron J. Duhamel: Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her perceptive and insightful comments. There are three points I want to make.
You will recall the attempt on the part of the government to bring about deindexation. A lot of people are

Government Orders
saying that the bottom line is really the same when one looks at clawback and deindexation. I would like a comment on that.
A number of my constituents, seniors, have said that the old age pension that they paid into was really an investment, the point that the member made, and that if they had paid it to a private company and that private company were trying to claw it back now, it would be sued. Is that a possibility? Also this clawback affects women more than men because there is certainly a larger proportion of women who are seniors today.
I have just one final point with respect to the unemployment insurance bill. You will recall that during the election campaign a certain minister, who is not present in the House right now, checked with the Prime Minister with respect to whether or not there would be any kind of changes that would negatively impact upon Canadian workers. Does the member recall that conversation?
Is this then not a very misleading bill as a result of what occurred during the election campaign?


Mary Catherine Clancy: Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from St. Boniface. First, there is no question that seniors are again feeling absolutely betrayed. This did not work when it was tried by this government previous to 1988 because the seniors stood up and made it stop. But this time the government is coming at it through the back door and effectively, over time, unless this tide can be stemmed, it will achieve much the same result. Seniors are angry, upset, distressed. They know what the words "sacred trust" mean.
With regard to the question about the investment, suppose you put money in an RRSP at one of the chartered banks and then they said to you: "Hey, we are sorry, we told you that we would pay you 11 per cent interest but we have decided now we are only going to pay you 2 per cent interest". I think your cause of action, and I suggest the hon. Minister of Transport would agree with me, would be something that you would be fairly willing to take a run at.
The hon. member's third point was again on a question of trust, the fact of a minister, to whom he referred, checking with the Prime Minister about the UI bill in this particular case but about any changes that would go to the fabric of our universal social programs system. In response to that I can only say that Canadians sit back in holy horror and say: "How can we put our trust in people who say one thing and do another?"


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Is the House ready for the question?


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: All those opposed will please say nay.


Some Hon. Members:: Nay.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: In my opinion the yeas have it.
And more than five members having risen:


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Call in the members.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.
[Stage Direction]
++NAYS
Anawak
Axworthy (Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing)
Benjamin
Boudria
Caccia
Dionne
Ferguson
Foster
Gauthier
Harvard
Jordan
Karpoff
Kindy
Langan (Mission-Coquitlam)
Mifflin
Mitchell
Nystrom
Prud'homme
Riis
Robinson
Skelly (North Island-Powell River) Taylor
Young (Gloucester)
Members
Angus
Belair
Blackburn (Brant)
Butland
Clancy
Duhamel
Fisher
Funk
Grey (Beaver River)
Hopkins
Kaplan
Kilger (Stormont-Dundas)
Kristiansen
Lee
Milliken
Nault
Parker
Rideout
Robichaud
Rodriguez
Stupich
Whittaker
Young (Beaches-Woodbine)-46
['Hear, hear!', 'Tuesday, June 19, 1990']
Madam Deputy Speaker:: I declare the motion carried.


Albert Glen Cooper: Madam Speaker, may I call it ten o'clock?


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Madam Speaker, we would like to know from the government what it intends to call tomorrow morning at eleven o'clock when this House reconvenes.


Albert Glen Cooper: Madam Speaker, it is our intention tomorrow to deal with Bill C-54 and Bill C-55 at report and hopefully third reading stages.


Ralph Ferguson: Madam Speaker, in the absence of the Minister for International Trade on April 23,1 asked the Minister of Agriculture a question about the dumping of subsidized soybean oil from the European Common Market on to the Canadian market.
At that time it had been confirmed that a large Toronto based vegetable oil refinery had purchased 10 million pounds of subsidized soya oil from Spain. Spain imports soybeans from Brazil and the United States to crush and then exports the oil at a subsidized rate to protect its olive oil producers. At the same time they use a soybean meal as a livestock and poultry feed protein supplement.
Although I am disappointed to notice that while it appears as if the problem may be resolved the minister is not in attendance. I am sure there will be someone here to answer in detail the questions I raised that day.
At the outset I would like to remark that although the particular import question may not be repeated because of the promise of the company involved, the government has not yet provided any assurances that such an import will not be repeated by any other corporation. To that end, I look forward to seeing just what the minister proposes as a remedy and just what his investigation into this matter revealed.
I should point out that there was no shortage of soya oil in Canada at the time this import was made. It was definitely a subsidized import. This can happen to other commodities where a large company will bring in a shipment of a product that is not really needed, simply to break the price structure.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Shall I call it ten o'clock? I also noticed that the government has not undertaken
to decrease the tariff on soybean oil imports which are currently set a 7.5 per cent, a full 15 per cent less than


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.	U.S. tariff. This figure is ironic as the soya oil in question

Adjournment Debate
was produced from U.S. beans exported to Spain from the U.S., and possibly under a subsidy program, then crushed in Spain and exported under yet another subsidy program.
The export enhancement program, which is the United States' main but not only export subsidy program, funded U.S. agricultural products exports to the tune of $1.5 billion in 1988, $0.7 billion in 1989, and $566 million this year. In addition to those moneys, the U.S. proposes to spend over $900 million in the program in 1991.
The minister has indicated in the past that he may use the article 19 of the free trade agreement to challenge the United States export enhancement program. I wonder if the government's statement today will indicate a willingness to use that route in view of its investigation into the dumping of this oilseed product into the Canadian market. The Canadian market under this government has become a real dumping ground for subsidized agricultural products.
For example, according to industry sources, 1 million pounds of no-roll beef a week was imported into Canada from the U.S. last year, and it is expected to double to 2 million pounds a week in 1990. This is low grade beef that because of the government's refusal to change our import regulations competes directly against our high grade quality beef in Canada. This meat is not graded when it leaves the United States, and it is unacceptable that our exports have to be graded.
This beef is in addition to the influx of imported Nicaraguan beef being dumped into Canada at the present time. This in turn has impacted negatively on our beef industry. According to the latest published Statistics Canada information, in 1984 Canada exported 230 million pounds of dressed beef. We should compare that to 1988 when Canada exported only 181 million pounds of dressed beef, a decrease of 21 per cent. In 1984, 254 million pounds of beef was imported into Canada. By 1988 that figure increased dramatically to 345 million pounds, an increase of 35 per cent.
Further, in 1985 beef exports represented 34 per cent of all red meat exports valued at $218 million; in 1986, 20 per cent with a value of $198.8 million; in 1987, 25 per cent with a value of $198 million; and in 1988, the latest date for completed figures according to Agriculture
Canada, beef exports accounted for only 18 per cent of red meat exports at a value of $173 million.
For 1987-1989 the number of cattle on farms is currently lower than in any previous five-year average since 1970, and 632,000 head less than at the turn of the decade.
This is the net effect of such dumping in just one sector of the agricultural industry. The over-all effect of this government inaction has been dramatic.
The Canadian Wheat Board initial price for spring wheat in 1984 was $170 a tonne. The initial price recently announced by the government for 1990, in equivalent dollars, is only $126.73, a real drop of $43.27 a tonne, indicating that real incomes for 1990 will be considerably worse.
Producers of com in Ontario, the province's largest single crop, said the western grain farmers are not the only ones under siege. The income of Ontario com producers is now only 28 per cent of what it was prior to 1985.
The over-all effect of the government's polices or lack of policies is that in 1984 the average net farm income was $15,461 in equivalent dollars. The average net farm income in 1988 was only $13,224. On average since 1984 producers have seen their real incomes drop by 15 per cent.
Agriculture Canada optimistically predicts farm incomes will drop $2.77 billion this year from $4.33 billion last year, a 37 per cent drop in one year.
In spite of the incredible decline that these figures represent, I say optimistically as a report in this morning's Financial Post cites a U.S. agricultural analyst predicting a 20-year record low realized net farm income in Canada of only $1.85 billion, which would be a decline of 58 per cent.
The study finds that half of the decline is due to depressed prices for agricultural products. The other half is due, the analyst argues, to direct government action: the wholesale removal of agricultural support programs. That is the legacy of this government's agricultural program. Indeed, the government openly admits that it plans to cut government spending on agriculture to $3.2 billion this year from $5.6 billion last year and $6.1 billion in 1988, a 50 per cent plunge in two years.
June 18, 1990

I would like to remind Canadians just how many support programs for agriculture the federal government has removed in a simple budget in 1989: crop insurance, $200 million; rail branch line rehabilitation program, $48 million; grain crop advance payments, $54 million; dairy export, $12 million, commodity based loans, $15 million; Canadian Daily Commission, $10 million; grain and flour, the at and east legislation, Bill C-26, $60 million, for a total of $399 million. In fact, since this government came to power in September, 1984, the family farm in Canada has been under siege.
We have the most efficient producers in the world, but they cannot compete by themselves with the treasuries of the world, especially when the government allows other nations to dump heavily subsidized products such as soya oil on the Canadian market. The products are so cheap, as with soya oil, that they can cross the ocean twice and still be cheaper than the product produced here.
It is time this government presented some concrete plans to deal with this situation. I would specifically request the minister to take action, not just in the situation of the soya oil dumping, but also in other commodities that are being dumped on our market here and we have to compete against their export markets that are financed under the Export Enhancement Program.


Mr. Murray Cardiff (Parliamentary Secretary to Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Privy Council and Minister of Agriculture):: Madam Speaker, it is almost impossible in the time allotted to reply to the many concerns that the hon. member raised. We were supposed to be talking about soybean oil and and the importation of soybean oil.
But the member has touched on at least four or five different topics, such as the Canadian price for wheat, the initial price for wheat and beef, items like that. Those are all concerns of ours.
He also mentioned the cuts in payments to agriculture. I would not say that that is true. There has been a realignment in agriculture spending and we have to look over the last number of years at the amount of money with which this government has supported agriculture,
Adjournment Debate
the Special Grains Programs, drought assistance, and as recently as this year, the government's special $500 million program with which we are all familiar.
I do not think it is fair to say that we have abandoned the farmers in any way. We have fully supported farmers. I just wish that we had about half an hour to respond to the questions that the hon. member raised because I am sure we could have quite a good debate in that area.
The question the hon. member does raise about the trade practices of the European Economic Community illustrates an issue which causes a great concern to the government and the Canadian agriculture community. There is no question about that.
The EEC uses its export subsidies more than any other world trader to sell its agricultural commodities. The recent sale of that Spanish soybean oil to a Canadian company that the member spoke about, although not large in the over-all context to our Canadian market, is significant because it has caused concern within the Canadian oilseed industry.
Another important factor is that the 8 per cent tariff barrier imposed by EEC member states expires January 1, 1991. This will increase opportunities for Spain to dispose of surplus soybean oil within the European community.
Madam Speaker, this government is prepared to assist its oilseed producers. The industry stopped the countervail action after the importer of the Spanish oil stated publicly that they were unaware of the existence of this subsidy and promised not to make any further purchases of subsidized oil.
In the meantime our concerns were brought to the attention of the EEC and the Spanish authorities through our missions in Europe.
Before closing I want to address as well the question raised regarding the use of pesticides in imported soybean products. Maximum residue tolerances are established under the authority of Canada's Food and Drugs Act. I would like to make it very clear for the public that the same standards are applied to both Canadian and imported produce. However, the health and safety of Canadians is protected by the tolerance provisions of the Food and Drugs Act and through the monitoring by Health and Welfare Canada and Agriculture Canada.

June 18, 1990
Adjournment Debate
I want to say again that this government is totally committed to support of agriculture and will assist whenever, wherever, however we can.



Svend Johannes Robinson: Madam Speaker, on Thursday of last week my leader, the member for Yukon, the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville, and myself all urged the federal government to ensure the full participation of aboriginal peoples at the First Ministers' Conference in December during the discussion of the so-called Canada clause.
I said at that time,
- in view of the fact that an essential component of the Canada clause is the recognition of aboriginal peoples as distinct societies with distinct cultures and languages in this country, it is fundamentally unacceptable for First Ministers to sit around the table and discuss that issue without the participation of aboriginal peoples.
I called upon the Deputy Prime Minister to ensure that aboriginal peoples would, in fact, be at the table at the First Ministers' Conference in December. In his answer, the Deputy Prime Minister said that this would subvert the process. The Deputy Prime Minister talked about the leadership that the Prime Minister of Canada had displayed during the process of constitutional change.
This was the same Prime Minister who bragged in a display of breathtaking arrogance that he had manipulated the whole process. He said, "I told them when this thing was going to take place. I told them a month ago when we were going to start meeting. It's like an election campaign. You've got to work backward. You pick your dates and you work backward. And I said, that's the day I am going to roll the dice. It is the only way to handle it." Madam Speaker, that approach has been described eloquently by the Conservative member for Annapolis Valley-Hants as being "bluff, bluster and blackmail".
When the Prime Minister rolled the dice, when he played with the future of our country like a constitutional crapshoot, he forget one important element, one group of people who have historically been forgotten and betrayed in this country; the aboriginal people of Canada. In his cynical wheeling and dealing with the First Ministers at the Conference Centre, the Prime Minister
left aboriginal peoples feeling degraded and humiliated; reduced to the status of observers with their noses pressed up against the window of the Conference Centre.
It was not until the Leader of the New Democratic Party insisted some four days after the conference had started, that aboriginal people were even given a briefing by federal officials as to what was taking place inside the conference centre. It was not particularly surprising, when you look at the appalling record of this government when it comes to aboriginal peoples in this country.
The Canadian north is currently under massive assault from hydroelectric projects, oil and gas development and the military. I am thinking particularly of the assault on the Innu people of Labrador. Above all, there are the forestry companies. Subsidies for northern postal services have been slashed and education funding for native students has been effectively cut. This is happening at a time when a young native person has a better chance of going to prison than going to university.
Also, native communication funding has been slashed. Core funding to the Assembly of First Nations was eliminated. Organizational money for the James Bay Cree, B.C.'s Nishga, the Gitksan Wet'suwet'en and other vocal critics, was dropped; the Manitoba inquiry into aboriginal justice, the Marshall Inquiry and the Alberta inquiry into the Bloods has demonstrated that the justice system is steeped in racism.
Indeed, as a brief submitted by the Assembly of First Nations stated: "All of the institutions of our culture are under attack. Our languages are disappearing as our elders die. Our religions are disappearing with the spread of religions from other parts of the world. Our hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering lifestyles are disappearing with the wanton killing of animals, pollution, forestry clear cutting, encroachment upon wilderness areas and megaprojects all in the name of progress and development".
Given all of this, is it not surprising that aboriginal peoples are feeling betrayed by this process of constitutional change. It has left them out and they, and I, salute the courage, the dignity and the eloquence with which Manitoba Cree New Democrat MLA, Elijah Harper, has been forcing the Government of Canada, indeed, all
June 18, 1990

governments, to finally pay attention to the demands of aboriginal peoples for constitutional justice and respect.
On the weekend, the British Columbia Provincial Council of the New Democratic Party passed a motion announcing its full support for Manitoba native leader and New Democrat MLA, Elijah Harper, in his efforts to ensure that aboriginal people achieve full constitutional recognition. As the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs stated in their presentation before the Charest committee: "The Meech Lake Accord distorts historical reality in Canada by not affirming that aboriginal peoples are distinct societies that also constitute a fundamental characteristic of Canada."
We did not listen to the aboriginal peoples when they appeared before our committee. For example, Gary Gold from the New Brunswick Aboriginal Peoples' Council said: "We are being completely shut out of the process of consultations. We were promised by the federal government only three months ago that we would be consulted fully."
Ron George from British Columbia said: "We have shown good faith by developing the idea of a companion resolution approach. We must not be excluded from the process once again." They were excluded from the process. Northerners were betrayed. The north has a substantial aboriginal population. Once again, the process of constitutional change in Canada has left aboriginal peoples behind.
We could have done it right. We could have said "yes" to Quebec and said "yes" to aboriginal peoples. Indeed, aboriginal peoples have made it very clear that they share the concern about closing the circle of Confederation to include Quebec. In an open letter sent by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs to the premier of Quebec, they stated that:
Historically, the Aboriginal people in Canada and French speaking people have had close ties.
We want to make it very clear that we have chosen to oppose the passage of the-Accord: not to deny your position as a distinct society but to defend our right and to protest the lack of recognition of Canada's First Nations.
In closing, I want to quote briefly from the words of National Chief George Erasmus who said:
Adjournment Debate
We are tired of explaining to our children why we must continue to wait for a new dawn in white-Indian relations before we are treated with dignity and respect in our own land. We do not want to wait for our turn. When we wait, our turn never comes.
It is time for this government and for all governments to recognize that aboriginal peoples have been left out of the process, that their concerns must be addressed not in some distant future but now, and that they must be involved. If there is to be an extension of the deadline, they must be involved in the new process of constitutional change to ensure that they are there at the table when those concerns are being raised. It must be ensured that they are at the table, as my Leader and I called last week, at the First Minister's Conference in December.
Justice demands that we listen to the voice of Elijah Harper and of all aboriginal peoples and that we not once again betray them in the process of constitutional change.


Dorothy I. Dobbie: Madam Speaker, in spite of the political rhetoric that we hear so often delivered in this House, I am sure that the hon. member has the same interest that all Canadians have, that is to keep this country together so that we can, together, address the concerns of the aboriginal peoples and others.
In that spirit, today the Prime Minister wrote to Chief Fontaine, the provincial leader of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs in Manitoba, to respond to the concerns raised by him about the Meech Lake Accord and the Constitutional Amendment, the companion amendment.
In his letter, the Prime Minister made six commitments. First, he stated that he intends to invite representatives of aboriginal peoples of Canada to participate in any future First Ministers' Conference where there is discussion about the recognition of aboriginal peoples, the so-called recognition clause.
Moreover, the Government of Canada is committed to recognizing the aboriginal peoples as a fundamental characteristic of Canada in the Constitution. As hon. members are aware, the companion constitutional resolution agreed to by the First Ministers at the June 9 meeting would reinstate the process of First Ministers' Conferences on matters of interest to the aboriginal people of the country.

June 18, 1990
Adjournment Debate
These conferences, in which aboriginal peoples would fully participate, would entirely be dedicated to aboriginal constitutional matters. They would be convened every three years.
Further, the Prime Minister informed Chief Fontaine that the Government of Canada is prepared immediately, after proclamation of the Meech Lake Accord, to sit down with the representatives of aboriginal people and to set the agenda for these conferences.
Further, the Government of Canada is prepared to accelerate the timing of such a conference, which could be held as early as 1991, next year.
The Prime Minister also stated that, in addition to the First Ministers' Conferences on aboriginal constitutional matters, he would intend to invite representatives of aboriginal peoples to participate in all First Ministers' Conferences where matters are being discussed that directly affect the aboriginal peoples. This would include such things as the future provincehood for Yukon and the Northwest Territories. This represents a very significant commitment to address the constitutional concerns of the aboriginal peoples in Canada, in a manner that involves their full participation.
Recognizing that aboriginal peoples have other serious concerns, the Prime Minister also stated today that the Government of Canada is prepared to establish a major royal commission-and that is something that has been requested by native people-on native affairs. This commission would undertake a thorough and fundamental review of the relationship of aboriginal peoples with other elements of Canadian society. The terms of reference of such a commission would be drawn up in consultation with aboriginal peoples. The Government of Canada would be prepared to consider significant
native participation on this body and the appointment of a mutually acceptable chairman.
The Prime Minister noted the government's expectation that the impact of such a commission would be as far-reaching and beneficial as that of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism.
Madam Speaker, I am sure that members are aware that in 1981-82 significant constitutional changes took place, which included the recognition of the existing aboriginal and treaty rights set out in section 35 of the Constitution Act, and that this is of capital importance. Recently it has led to the far-reaching judgments of the Supreme Court of Canada. It has sharply influenced the actions of the Government of Canada in matters as diverse as fisheries regulation, the appointment of the treaty commission in Saskatchewan, and the design of our taxation systems. This will affect Canada's approach to land and resource management for the future.
The Government of Canada is committed to protecting treaty rights and stands ready to join the representatives of the aboriginal peoples in a joint effort to define those rights.
Once the Meech Lake Accord is ratified, the Government of Canada will be enabled to, and stands ready to act on and provide financial resources for these six commitments.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 11 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 7.48 p.m.

,
June 18, 1990

[Stage Direction]
of

[Stage Direction]
to
Both Houses of Parliament in the
HOUSE OF COMMONS CHAMBER, OTTAWA on
Monday, June 18, 1990

[Stage Direction]
of

[Stage Direction]
to
Both Houses of Parliament in the
HOUSE OF COMMONS CHAMBER, OTTAWA on
Monday, June 18, 1990
Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Mandela were welcomed by the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney, Prime Minister of Canada, and thanked by the Honourable Guy Charbonneau, Speaker of the Senate and the Honourable John A. Fraser, Speaker of the House of Commons.
Hon. John A. Fraser (Speaker of the House of Commons):: Order, please. The Right Honourable the Prime Minister.


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, colleagues, mesdames et messieurs, we meet here today to mark the historic visit to Canada of Nelson Mandela. We know, Sir, that many challenges await you at home and we our honoured that you have come to Canada to speak to this Parliament about the heroic struggle of South Africans to achieve democracy.
For 27 years South Africa had been deprived of the full benefits of your leadership and that of many of your colleagues, such as Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki. But your compatriots Oliver Tambo, Thabo Mbeki, Archbishop Tutu, Reverend Boesak and so many others kept up the struggle. And your friends throughout the world kept faith with you and your cherished ideals, as you kept faith with them.
Your steadfast courage nurtured and strengthened everyone's resolve. For all who treasure freedom, your walk through the prison gates last February brought an unforgettable moment of joy and anticipation.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Because if Nelson Mandela was liberated, surely South Africa itself could not be far behind. But the celebration was also tinged with sorrow-sorrow
Adjournment Debate
that so much still needs to be put right, sorrow at the precious time that has been lost and the lives that were broken and wasted. Sorrow, too, that your own children grew to adulthood without the reassuring presence and the gentle guidance of a loving father. No one can ever repay such a deeply personal loss.
Being deprived of the affection and comfort of one's own family day after day, year after year, is another of the inhuman costs of apartheid-perhaps the most brutal one of all. Mrs. Winnie Mandela, then a young wife and mother, showed uncommon courage as she struggled, often alone, in the most dehumanizing of systems to meet both the obligations of her young family and the objectives of her cause. I offer on behalf of all Canadians a special word of welcome to Mrs. Mandela today.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Your presence here today, Mr. Mandela, is a tribute to the unbreakable spirit of man, and all Canadians join me in welcoming you warmly to Canada and to this, our own special chamber of freedom.

Canada's involvement in the struggle against apartheid has deep roots, extending far beyond the efforts of this government and this Parliament and encompasses a multitude of Canadians who have assisted the people of South Africa, individually or through churches, trade unions, educational institutions and non-governmental organizations.
For all Canadians, your visit here is a most gratifying confirmation that they were right to care, that they chose the proper course and that their efforts, so modest in comparison to yours and those of your colleagues, were not, nonetheless, in vain.
The fight against apartheid has long been a central element of Canada's foreign policy, both because the cause is so compelling and because we believe this is one of those issues where Canada can help make a difference.

I remember, Mr. Mandela, with pride, the stand taken by Canada's Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, at the Commonwealth Conference of 1961 which resulted in South Africa's withdrawal from that body. Prime Minister Diefenbaker brought the Commonwealth to declare unequivocally that racial discrimination was totally contrary to its fundamental principles and that, if South Africa did not change, Mr. Diefenbaker said, then South Africa must leave. He did so against some considerable
June 18, 1990

opposition, but with the strong conviction and the certain knowledge that it was right.
Mr. Diefenbaker's action marked the beginning of international pressure on the apartheid regime, pressure that was then sustained and intensified in Canada by the governments of Prime Ministers Pearson, Trudeau, Clark and Turner. And this, to the great individual personal credit of these leaders.
If I may be allowed a strictly Canadian note: outside South Africa itself there are few international leaders, in my judgment, who have made a more sustained and a more effective commitment to fundamental and beneficial change in that country in recent years than the present Secretary of State for External Affairs of the Government of Canada, the Right Honourable Joe Clark.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Almost a quarter of a century after Mr. Diefenbaker's stand, I had the privilege, along with Mr. Clark, to take Canada's seats at the 1985 Nassau Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting and at the follow-up meeting in London in 1987.
Again, the Commonwealth was determined to provide moral and practical leadership to the international community's campaign against apartheid. We launched an Eminent Persons Group, which included Archbishop Ted Scott of Canada, to determine whether Pretoria was serious about fundamental change. When the Group's comprehensive and thoughtful proposals were capriciously rebuffed by the Government of South Africa, all Commonwealth countries, except one, agreed to a common package of economic and other sanctions.
This action was later followed by the European Community, the United States of America and others and the screws on Pretoria were tightened as never before. That policy was reconfirmed and reinforced in subsequent Commonwealth meetings in Vancouver and Kuala Lumpur and Foreign Ministers' meetings under Mr. Clark's chairmanship in Lusaka, Toronto, Harare, Canberra and Abidjan.

The political changes those sanctions were designed to bring about have started to happen. Determined internal resistance, supported by international pressure, convinced the white community of the need for negotiations toward a new and democratic South Africa.
These are promising times in South Africa. The African National Congress and other political organizations are no longer banned. Less than two weeks ago President de Klerk terminated the four year old state of emergency everywhere in South Africa, except Natal. The Separate Amenities Act is slated for repeal in October. And a victory for all South Africans was achieved when your meeting early last month with President de Klerk produced a mutual commitment to a peaceful process of negotiations.
Mr. Mandela, I believe the world is remarkably fortunate to have a person of your rare qualities at the helm of the movement for equality in South Africa at this particularly crucial time in your country's history. To emerge from prison after so long an incarceration and to retain an understanding of the concerns of your jailers is truly extraordinary. To resume your life and your leadership with neither bitterness nor malice is a powerful compliment to the strength of your character and to the soundness of your values.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Likewise, I think it is pretty clear that President de Klerk has demonstrated both leadership and courage by recognizing the need to come to grips with the crucial issue of the equality of all people before the law.

In reflecting on the momentous changes of recent months, however, it is important at the same time to recognize the realities on the ground and the challenges ahead.
Apartheid in all its repugnance is still the law of South Africa. And violence from different quarters-white and black-threatens the movement towards a peaceful settlement.
No one should underestimate the difficulties ahead. The time will no doubt come, sooner rather than later, we hope, when clear and hopefully irreversible change has occurred and it will be appropriate to ease some of the pressure that has helped bring it about.

But at this crucial juncture, the Government of Canada, and I believe all members of the House of Commons, believe that the way to advance the process of democracy in South Africa is to maintain the existing economic sanctions which have contributed substantially to the advancement toward social justice in South Africa thus far.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!

June 18, 1990


Martin Brian Mulroney: The ultimate goal is negotiations resulting in an end to apartheid and the creation of a pluralistic non-racial democracy. No one knows better than Canadians these days that constitution-making is complex and requires enormous measures of creativity, tolerance and trust. We wish you well in your own most challenging constitutional endeavours.
The thirst for democracy now being slaked in eastern Europe and Latin American is spreading to other parched areas of the world. Pluralistic democracy is a stepping stone to economic prosperity. You cannot have one without the other. Fundamental rights and freedoms, including free economies, are universal concepts with universal validity irrespective of continent and irrespective of culture. South Africa is no exception.
And so, Sir, we take your presence here today as a signal of the freedom and the democracy that we know will soon grace your majestic land and brighten the future of all of South Africa's children. A free and a democratic South Africa will find in Canada, will find in members of this House of Commons, a true friend and a committed ally whose fundamental goal is the peace and the well being of all of your people irrespective of colour or creed.
Mr. Mandela, it is with special joy that I, as Prime Minister of Canada, now invite you to address the Parliament and the people of Canada.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Nelson  Mandela@Deputy President of the African National Congress: Mr. Speaker, honourable Prime Minister, distinguished leaders of the opposition parties, representatives of the people of Canada, ladies and gentlemen, we would like to thank you most sincerely for granting us the honour and privilege to speak from the podium of the House of Commons of Canada, an eminent example of the democratic perspective toward which our people aspire.
The fact that we have not had the opportunity to do the same thing in our own country, even as guests, emphasizes the inequity of the apartheid system which we are all determined to abolish without delay.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Nelson  Mandela@Deputy President of the African National Congress: Like young people everywhere, as we grew up in South Africa, we embarked on an exciting voyage to discover the world. We were driven by a consuming desire to know the truth about people, about
society, about the world of nature and always centred to that search was the need to find out whether there was anything in human nature and society, and whether there was anything in the universal order of things which predetermined the place of a black person and the African in society. Instinctively we embarked on this inquiry because we felt that there was something in our society which was wrong, unjust and unacceptable.
We had, after all, listened to and responded with warm hearts to passionate sermons which proclaimed that God made man in his image. We had observed and were moved by school lessons which spoke of men being created equal. We had searched, as in a trance, as we learned of white men and women who had fought tyranny in order to establish societies based on the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.
Our own life experience and that of all other black people around us and beyond the borders of our country told us that all these precepts and experiences were not meant to refer to or include men and women of colour. Whatever God's purpose might have been, it seemed clear that the white race had decreed that only its members were fit to assume the image of the Creator. Such liberty, equality and fraternity as there were, were but bonds to unite the white people around the common purpose of denying the black majority these privileges.
That youthful inquiry into the essence of social reality was, at the same time, the spark that came to the fire of rebellion in many a heart among our peers. And life, this scorching heat of soldering iron, bonded the rebels together as in a fist of steel. Where an oath was sung, it was simply said that men would rest and none would spare their lives until the people had regained their liberty, equality and fraternity. Many have died in the effort to honour that commitment.
For three and a half centuries, each generation of our people has supplied its due share of matters. An entire people has learned not to mourn the death of heroes and heroines but to steel itself for new battles. An entire people has known what it is to recognize the fact of defeat while rejecting the demand that it should surrender. So it came about that even those who had not even reached puberty knew that they, too, had a place in the ranks of those who challenged the hypocrisy of a degenerate system which claimed the part of western civilization while its very existence was predicated on the repudiation of everything to which attaches the word civilization.
June 18, 1990

Today the hope is abroad among our people, that those in our country who saw themselves as the master race have learned the error of their ways. There is hope that perhaps at last they have seen that injustice will not triumph. There is hope that perhaps at last they have realized that tyranny is part of the progenitor of the forces of its own destruction. There is hope that perhaps at last those who sought to deny the humanity of others have understood that by that act they also dehumanized themselves.
If indeed these are the results that have been achieved, a salute is due to those who struggled in the name of all humanity to ensure that the noble vision of liberty, equality and fraternity, includes all and excludes nobody on any basis whatsoever, be it race, colour, creed, or sex. Therefore, as we stand here today, Mr. Speaker, and acknowledge the priceless honour you have accorded us in person, we know that we are merely representatives of a people that can truly be called heroic. We come from a people who, because they would not accept to be treated as sub-human, redeemed the dignity of all humanity, everywhere.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Nelson  Mandela@Deputy President of the African National Congress: We represent countless matters who have walked into a hailstorm of bullets, not because they wanted to die, but because they wanted the millions of our people to live. We have sat in prison with great African patriots and noble examples of the human race, who faced torture and did not flinch, who met the hangman's noose with songs of freedom, who accepted their affairs as but a school out of which they would emerge with their convictions, their determination and their willingness to sacrifice immeasurably strengthened.
We are deeply moved that today you honour all these noble offspring of our people by allowing us, who were outcasts only yesterday, to experience, if only fleetingly, what it means to stand and speak at a place whose existence is based on the recognition of the right of all the people to determine their destiny and whose purpose is to ensure that the right is guaranteed in perpetuity. We are made better human beings by the fact that you have reached out from across the seas to say that we too, the rebels, the fugitives, the prisoners, deserve to be heard.
Our message, for whose propagation and realization so many have suffered so much, is indeed simple. It is that South Africa should be transformed into a united, democratic and non-racial country. We wish to see every adult South African enjoying the right to vote and having the possibility to be elected to all organs of government, without discrimination on grounds of race, colour or sex. Its Balkanization into Bantustan, the so-called homelands and group areas, has to end. Given our bitter experience of oppression and repression, we are determined that our country should be a truly thorough democracy in which the rights of all its citizens will be inviolable and in which all will be equal before the law.
Accordingly, in addition to a democratic constitution there should be an entrenched and justiciable bill of rights fostered by an independent judiciary.
As reflected in our historic document, the Freedom Charter, we are committed to ensure all our citizens enjoy equal rights to their languages, culture, and religious freedoms. These provisions among others will address the issue of so-called white fears while meeting the aspirations of the people of South Africa as a whole.
We also visualize an agreed constitutional arrangement whereby there is devolution of power to regional and local levels of government to ensure the broadest possible participation of the people in government themselves.
At the same time we are opposed to the idea which some in our country advance that we should opt for a federal state. We believe that there is nothing to federate. Certainly we do not accept that we should accept the fragmentation of our country as a given fact on which we should try to build the new reality.
Any attempt to do this would merely perpetuate the racial and ethnic divisions whose abolition stands at the core of our struggle. We cannot seek to end apartheid by continuing to maintain the structures of the apartheid system under any guise whatsoever.
We know that you have just completed a gruelling round of negotiations dealing with constitutional reform in this country. We are inspired by the fact that you were able to find compromises which make agreement possible. We believe that we too must be inspired by this manner of proceeding so that we also reach agreement

June 18, 1990
about our own constitution as speedily as possible in the interest of all the people of our country.
We are convinced that as part of this process in South Africa there will have to be elected a constituent assembly to draw the new constitution as happened in Namibia. This will ensure that we use democratic means in our search for a democratic result. It will also create the situation whereby the result of the negotiations enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of the people, to the extent that they would have chosen the representatives to whom the task of drawing up the basic law of the country would be entrusted. We are also determined that the political freedom of which we have spoken should go side by side with freedom from hunger, want, and suffering.
It is therefore of vital importance that we restructure the South African economy so that its wealth is shared by all our people, black and white, to ensure that everybody enjoys a decent and rising standard of living.
We do not seek to impoverish anybody or to redistribute such poverty, but the new democratic society will obviously have to address the issue of the impoverishment of millions of our people as a matter of urgency.
It is also clear that the issues can only be properly tackled in a situation in which the economy is growing and producing more wealth at a rate higher than the growth of the population. In this respect we should make the important point that once the democratic transformation has taken place we will need your assistance to achieve these economic results.
We believe that we can and should build on the bonds of friendship and solidarity that we have built up in the course of the continuing struggle against apartheid to build a partnership for the reconstruction of both our country and our region which have been devastated by the apartheid system.
Southern Africa has the human and material resources which will combine to give millions of our people a bright future and which will make it profitable and worth while for the rest of the world to enter into a mutually beneficial system of co-operation.
For many decades the ANC sought a peaceful resolution of the problems facing our country. In the period since 1986 we redoubled our efforts to persuade the South African government to enter into negotiations with us. We consider it a victory for all South Africans that a meeting between ourselves and the government took place in Cape Town at the beginning of last month. As you know, we agreed to remove the obstacles to negotiations which the ANC had identified. We are determined to ensure that this agreement is implemented and believe that the government is of the same view as well.
It is only fair that we indicate to this august assembly that we see President de Klerk and his colleagues in the leadership of the National Party as men and women of integrity. We believe that they are honestly committed to participate in a peaceful process which should result in the fundamental political transformation of our country.
The effect of our agreement to remove the obstacles to negotiations has thus also served as a demonstration of the bona fides of the de Klerk leadership. Yet the progress achieved, including the unbanning of the ANC and other organizations, the release of some political prisoners, and the lifting of the state of emergency over the greater part of our country, should not lead us to conclude that the apartheid system is ended. It should not lead us to believe that fundamental and irreversible change has taken place leading to the emancipation of our people.
The fact of the matter is that the apartheid system is still in place. The state's instruments of repression, in particular the police, continue to kill and maim the opponents of this system. In defence of an apartheid law and order, many among our white compatriots are armed and are forming themselves into commando groups with the stated aim of physically liquidating the leaders and members of the ANC. They are joined by similarly armed black vigilante groups which are ready and willing to serve their white paymasters.
Therefore we still have a struggle ahead of us. The situation requires that both you and ourselves should not relax our vigilance. As a result of continuing struggle, we must ensure that the movement forward toward the final abolition of the apartheid system is not interrupted. It is in this context that we have raised and emphasized the importance of maintaining sanctions.
June 18, 1990

Sanctions were imposed to help us end the apartheid system. In the light of what we have, it is only logical that we must continue to apply this form of pressure against the apartheid system. Any move at this stage toward lifting or relaxing international pressure would create a situation in which white South Africa would feel comfortable with the minimal changes that have taken place and once more regress into their opposition where they felt that possible pressure had not reached sufficient strength to oblige them to move forward.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Nelson  Mandela@Deputy President of the African National Congress: I would like to take this opportunity to salute the great Canadian people whom you represent and with whom we believe you are in full accord on the question of South Africa. They have proved themselves not only to be steadfast friends of our struggling people but great defenders of human rights and the idea of democracy itself. They are to us like brothers and sisters from whose warm embrace we shall never be parted.
We salute and thank them all: political parties, the anti-apartheid movement, the trade unions, the churches, the native people of this country, non-governmental organizations, students and intellectuals, elected representatives who serve in this Parliament and elsewhere, the press, the children and many others who raised the flag of solidarity because they knew that the absence of freedom for ourselves reduced their own liberty as well.
In this context, I would also like to pay special tribute to the Prime Minister of this country, Brian Mulroney, who has continued along the path charted by Prime Minister Diefenbaker who acted against apartheid because he knew that no person of conscience could stand aside as a crime against humanity was being committed.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Nelson  Mandela@Deputy President of the African National Congress: Mr. Prime Minister, our people and organization respect and admire you as a friend. We have been greatly strengthened by your personal involvement in the struggle against apartheid tyranny and the leadership you have provided within the United Nations, the Commonwealth, the Group of Seven and the francophone summits. We are certain that you will, together with the rest of the Canadian people, stay the course with us, not only as we battle on to end the apartheid system but also as we work to build a happy, peaceful and prosperous future for all the people of South and southern Africa.
Mr. Speakers, that future is still ahead of us. As for now, and to make certain that our common hopes are realized, we must together continue to struggle. We seek your support to sustain the international pressures which you in this country and others in the rest of the world have imposed. We seek your agreement that Canada and the rest of the international community should abide by the perspectives contained in the Harare and United Nations Declaration on South Africa, including the vision of a truly democratic, non-racial and united South Africa.
In the aftermath of the agreement we reached with the government at the beginning of last month we also require your support to help us repatriate and resettle those of our compatriots who were forced into exile by the apartheid system. We require your material assistance to help us conduct the extensive political work among the 38 million people of our country which is such a vital and central part of the process of drawing these millions into the common effort to arrive at a just, permanent and negotiated solution of the South African question.
We trust that among other things you will do everything in your power to encourage the people of Canada to contribute to the solidarity fund which has been set up under the leadership of His Grace Archbishop Ted Scott, a great friend of our people and a man I am proud to know.
Mr. Speakers, distinguished representatives of the people of Canada, it has been given to us to be present and to participate in the final struggle to end the evil system of apartheid. An historic moment is in sight. It will not be long now before we, as South Africans, stand up to proclaim that the apartheid fountainhead of racism throughout the world is no more and that political power has passed into the hands of the whole people. These masses must and will exercise this power with all the sensitivity that is due in our situation.
In this context certain matters are as clear as the light of day. Never should racism in our country, from whatever quarter, raise its ugly head again. All of us as South Africans, both black and white, must build a

June 18, 1990
common sense of nationhood in which all ideas of vengeance and retribution are impermissible.
Our country must, by its deeds, take its place among the nations of the Earth as the champion of peace, a defender of freedom and democracy, an enemy of poverty and human degradation.
You have been and are with us as we struggle to end the system of white minority domination. As an expression of our common humanity, and not an act of charity, we ask that you continue to walk the last mile with us. As your future partner, you will have a society whose hallmarks will be tolerance of all views and respect for the life and dignity of every person, both young and old.
We thank you that you bent every effort to secure our release from prison. You gave us the possibility, whose importance to us is without measure, to join hands with our own people, with you and the rest of humanity to bring about the change in our country and our region which even the mute but blood-stained stones in the killing fields of southern Africa demand must come and must come now.
We shall forever be obliged to you for this and for this unforgettable moment you have given us to speak to you about our dreams and to contribute a little to the everlasting friendship between the Canadian and South African people.
Our common victory, the victory of democracy and non-racialism, is within our own grasp. Liberty, equality, and fraternity shall reign supreme in our country as well. Thank you.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Hon. Guy Charbonneau (Speaker of the Senate):: Mr. Mandela, Madam, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Prime Minister, distinguished guests.

On behalf of my colleagues in the Canadian Senate, I want to thank you, Sir, for honouring us with your presence and addressing this joint assembly, despite your busy schedule.

You are a constant amazement to the world. Hardly had you tasted the joy of liberty when you resumed your struggle to win for your victimized fellow citizens their full entitlement of rights.
To hear the words of a leader who has had his convictions tested by the fire, as yours have been, is an extraordinary and, indeed, humbling experience.
Your message touches us deeply because as we listen to you we hear the voice of a pilgrim of freedom, an inspired evangelist who has been physically imprisoned and morally banned from his belief.
It was for justice and morality that you undertook the campaign against the evil of apartheid, a fight which seemed to us all the more arduous and courageous because at the start it was against the fanaticism which claimed devine sanction.

To fight the doctrine of racial segregation, it was necessary to stand firm, both morally and intellectually. When your detractors sounded off their dogmas, you reacted by revealing the truth. When they tried to gag you, the truth you revealed was echoed throughout the world.

We have followed with anguish your implacable fight for justice, truth and humanity which you conducted with such courage, patience and self-denial. As you have pointed out, it is a fight which must be won. Those who would have us believe in biological pollution must be brought to see that biology is a science, not an obsession with race or skin colour.
Your endurance has proved to be the most effective of exorcisms. The imminent victory of the cause for which you and others have fought so hard and so long is a vindication of your convictions and resolution, and one in which all who love liberty will rejoice.
In your wisdom you are ensuring that the gains so hardly won will be consolidated and built upon. The signs of progress are encouraging. Reason seems at last to want to play a role in the politics of your country.
For the free world, and especially for the South Africa that is coming to birth, you are one of the standard bearers.
June 18, 1990

We are with you in your progress toward hope and fulfilment for your people, and we thank you for your inspiring words today.

On behalf of the Senate, I wish to thank you for your visit.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Speaker Fraser:: Mr. Mandela, Madam, members of the House of Commons and the Senate-

-very distinguished guests.
Mr. Mandela, on behalf of my colleagues in the House of Commons and other honoured guests presents, I wish to thank you for your speech and to extend warmest greetings to you and your compatriots.
It is indeed a great honour for us to have in our midst a man whose courage and dedication has won the admiration and respect of people young and old throughout the world.

Canadian parliamentarians and the people we represent have for many years demonstrated their strong opposition to the system of apartheid in South Africa and the enormous suffering that it has caused.
Canadians and others urged your release from prison. We rejoice at the fact that you are here with us today. Your presence here is tangible evidence that there have been positive developments in South Africa and that there is now more than ever real hope for a peaceful transformation of South African society which will guarantee racial equality and justice for all South Africans. This is, to many of us, crucial because, unless there is justice for all, there is little chance of justice for anyone.
At a time when the human race is more and more aware of the fragile nature of our planet's environment and of the necessity of working together to ensure our survival, the need to resolve our differences without bloodshed and to guarantee the respect of the basic
human rights of all individuals should be clear to all men and women of intelligence and good will.
We have seen the democratic ideal become stronger than ever, even in regions where until recently there appeared to be little chance that it would flourish in our lifetime. Thus, we are approaching the end of the 20th century with some quiet optimism which not so long ago might have seemed out of place.
However, this by no means implies that every problem will now be resolved with little difficulty and we listened carefully, sir, to your remarks in this regard. We are not ingenuous here. We have watched your struggle for many years and we know how much of a struggle lies ahead.
Much more will need to be done before apartheid is finally abolished, and much more will need to be done before equality is established for all people in your country.
These negotiations toward the creation of a non-racial democracy will be complex and arduous, but we are encouraged by the progress made in talks between the government and the African National Congress toward the removal of obstacles to formal negotiations.

We are certain that your contribution to these negotiations will be central in keeping with the significant role your have already played in South Africa's march towards a non-racial, free and democratic society.
Rest assured that we will follow the course of the negociations with great interest and that our wish is for successful negotiations which will transform South African society and do away with the evils of apartheid.

As you enter the most important phase of your illustrious life, sir, we convey to you our best wishes for success in your mission and confirm our admiration for your courage and dedication.
We ask you, sir and madam, to return and take our prayers with you. God bless you.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!

Tuesday, June 19, 1990