1990-11-27

Mr. Cooper:: Mr. Speaker, you will find, I believe, that there is unanimous consent for the House to waive the 48-hours notice required to debate the following motion in the name of the Secretary of State for External Affairs on Wednesday, November 28, 1990:
That this House, noting that the Government of Iraq has not complied with the United Nations Security Council Resolutions concerning the invasion of Kuwait and the detention of Third Country nationals, supports the United Nations in its efforts to ensure compliance with Security Council Resolution 660 and subsequent resolutions.


Mr. Gauthier:: Mr. Speaker, due to the exceptional circumstances, having knowledge that the government wanted to table with the Clerk that motion yesterday so that we could comply with the 48-hour notice, and given the circumstances of the Secretary of State for External Affairs being outside the country-there was a relapse of time between our time and the time in Jerusalem-we would certainly accept that we waive the Standing Orders requiring the 48-hour notice in order to have this debated tomorrow.


Mr. Axworthy (Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing):: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the New Democratic Party, we are in accordance with the suggestion made by the parliamentary secretary to the House leader.


Mr. Speaker:: The House has heard the motion and the expressions of consent.
Motion agreed to and so ordered.
The hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: On that same point, Mr. Speaker, it would be helpful if the government could indicate if we could agree also to possibly extending the hours to allow
for more members to participate in this debate, and if so, to set a time for tomorrow night, perhaps 11 o'clock or midnight, for the debate to last.


Albert Glen Cooper: I want to indicate that we on this side are more than willing to co-operate in any way that we can. May I just apply a couple of caveats. One is that we have a House leaders' meeting at 3.30 p.m. today which would allow us to discuss this in detail. Second, we could have a discussion, perhaps, of voting that may come out of the motion and how we would handle that. I would like to signal our co-operation, but to leave the final discussions of that to 3.30 this afternoon when the House leaders meet.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS

[Stage Direction]


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table in both official languages, the government's response to 78 petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



INTERPARLIAMENTARY DELEGATION


Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to present to the House in both official languages, the report of the Canadian group of the Interparliamentary Union which represented Canada at the 84th meeting of the Interparliamentary Union in Punta del Este, Uruguay, on October 15-20, 1990.

November 27, 1990
Routine Proceedings


PRIVILEGES AND ELECTIONS
Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the Twentieth Report of the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections, concerning procedures and practices relating to the conduct of Private Members' Business, in both official languages.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


PETITIONS
Mr. Derek Blackburn (Brant):: Mr. Speaker, I rise pursuant to Standing Order 36 to present a petition signed by several persons from Nova Scotia.
They call upon the government to cease with its proposed shift of the tax burden on to ordinary Canadians through a regressive consumption tax instead of through a real tax reform.
In other words, they call upon the government to withdraw the GST legislation.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to table two petitions that add to the former petitions dealing with the imposition of the new sales tax on reading.
These petitioners take strong exception to the government's intentions to impose a GST on books. They state clearly that since Confederation no government has dared do this. This government is certainly to be condemned for its measures.
The petitioners say that the uninhibited dissemination of the printed word as a corner-stone of democracy, culture, education and a literate and productive society will be negatively affected by the GST applications.
The undersigned pray and call upon Parliament to re-affirm the historic principles embodied in the free status of all taxes for the printed word by retaining the zero rate applied for years to books and publications.


Mr. Vic Althouse (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition duly certified from members of my constituency in Punnichy, Saskatchewan.
They call upon the government and Parliament to reject the current proposal for a goods and services tax, to reform the taxation system so there is an effective minimum tax on wealthy individuals and corporations, in short, to engage in real tax reform instead of the regressive reforms proposed by this government.


Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I wish to table a petition from residents of Senneterre, in Abitibi, who call upon the Government of Canada to scrap the so-called Hill project, which, at a cost of $68 million, would provide for the construction of an underground parking garage and shopping mall under the Parliament Buildings. Your petitioners recognize the need to preserve the environment and historic character of the Parliament Buildings and Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
Your petitioners also maintain that members should continue to park in the spaces behind the Parliament Buildings, and park outside like our factory workers in this country, and that the Government of Canada has better things to do than to provide an underground parking garage and shopping mall on the Hill for members of Parliament.


Mr. Robert E. Skelly (Comox-Alberni):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to file a petition with the House, under Standing Order 36, from the people of Port Alberni, British Columbia.
The petitioners say that they are fed up with the service cutbacks at Canada Post and fed up with management and direction by government that places customer service at the bottom of the priority list. In particular, they request of Parliament that Canada Post reopen the drive-through postal drop-off service at Port Alberni, and also that Canada Post Corporation be instructed to keep existing outlets open, to operate longer hours, to expand revenue generating services, to stop privatizing,

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and to start increasing services in order to retain revenues.


Mr. Ian Waddell (Port Moody-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from the residents of Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, and Port Moody, British Columbia in my riding. As you know, Mr. Speaker, I have been fighting a battle to get cable companies regulated.
These petitioners say that cable companies are making an average 32 per cent profit on fixed assets, whereas phone companies are making half that. The petitions humbly pray and call upon Parliament to adopt Bill C-284, which is my private members' bill, to apply rate of return regulations so that the cable industry will be regulated like the phone industry and Canadians will have lower cable rates.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to present a petition signed by numerous residents of the city of Toronto who are opposed to the goods and services tax and particularly to the tax on books and the printed word.
These persons would be outraged, had they been in the Senate the other day, to witness the spectacle of the Conservative majority in that body vote down a sensible, sound amendment proposed by my colleagues there which would have scrapped this aspect of that tax. Unfortunately, these senators, under instructions from the government, felt that they had to vote down this very reasonable amendment.
These petitioners call upon the government to reject the goods and services tax.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, if Question No. 369 could be made an Order for Return, this return could be tabled immediately.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is it the pleasure of the House that Question No. 369 be deemed to have been made an Order for Return?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Mr. Berger: Since January 1,1989, what is the number of deportations to the United States of non-U.S. citizens by (a) country of origin (b) province from which they were deported?
Return tabled.


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Shall the remaining question be allowed to stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Thursday, November 1, consider of Bill C-40, an act respecting broadcasting and to amend certain acts in relation thereto and in relation to radiocommunication, as reported (with amendments) from a legislative committee; and Motions Nos. 12 to 15 of Mrs. Finestone (p. 14979); and Motion No. 42 of Mr. Edwards (p. 14979).
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, as you have just indicated, we are resuming debate on motions which include the excellent motions of the hon. member for Mount Royal which are before us for discussion. The motions presented by the hon. member for Mount Royal reflect, in essence, the deep dissatisfaction with the substance of Bill C-40. We have to register such a feeling in the context of report stage.
The dissatisfaction flows from the key issue of the removal from the 1968 mandate given to the CBC to contribute to the development of national unity and to provide for a continuing expression of Canadian identity.
The removal of a national unity reference in the CBC mandate was recommended by two initiatives. One was the Caplan-Sauvageau report in 1986 and the other

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subsequently came from the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture the year after. Both were concerned that this particular mandate of contributing to the development of national unity might, and I quote from their report, "interfere with the CBC's ability to ensure that its programming reflects and interprets as fully and fairly and accurately as possible Canada's cultural, social, political, economic, linguistic and regional reality and diversity".
I submit that this is rubbish. It is unadulterated nonsense. It is an abandonment and almost a betrayal of the original purpose and mandate that appropriately was given to the CBC in 1968 when its linguistic, cultural and social role was given a modern interpretation and a badly needed one.
A former president of the CBC, Pierre Juneau, when he appeared before the Standing Committee on Communications said that the phrase "national unity" had not caused any problems during his years as president of the CBC. It is worth noting that the CRTC noted that its interpretation of the term never precluded a free political discussion from all points of view.
In that context, we are very distressed to see that the Minister of Communications, who is in the House today, also drank the same bathtub water produced by the Caplan-Sauvageau report and subscribed to that rubbish as well. I am very disappointed because I always thought that, in philosophical and political terms, he was very much in favour of developing and maintaining strong bonds across Canada.
It is not just the fact that the CBC's appropriation was cut by $240 million over the last six years by the government that is creating unhappiness on this side of the House. The motions before us surround this dissatisfaction. It is the dropping of the national mandate given to the CBC. There is no amount of outrage that can reflect sufficiently the profound distaste for this measure contained in the bill proposed by the Conservative government. However, it comes as no surprise, considering the composition of the caucus and the recent transfers across the floor of the House from the government caucus to the independent benches.
Evidently, their interpretation of national unity is a very shaky one. It is a very shaky political alliance anyway, and it has given in recent time indications of falling apart.
We believe, as it was very well put in The Ottawa Citizen in May of this year, that the CBC is an agent for Canadian unity and that it must remain that way, that it is a bulwark against various decentralizing forces. It was in September of this year put very well in the Globe and Mail by Steven Godfrey who, among others, wrote on the CBC that Parliament should reject this bill as the cynical piece of work it is, making specific reference to the question of the dropping of the national unity clause. It seems as though the government has abandoned the basic principles that have determined the action and the spirit of this very important institution.
I would like to put on record some of the principles as restated in recent weeks by the Friends of the CBC movement, which is a coalition of artists, writers and the like, and who have somehow pledged their commitment to the CBC in the following terms. First, they see Canada as a place for a lively broadcasting industry which should have a strong and healthy balance between the public and the private stations. They believe that the CBC, both radio and television, is the most important element of the Canadian broadcasting system, and so do we. They believe that the CBC must continue to be a public service broadcaster and a dynamic alternative to the commercial networks and stations. They oppose the introduction of advertising on CBC radio and stereo, and the recent trends of increasing publicity and commercialization on the CBC television network.
In addition, they believe that the CBC must provide a balanced program service, a service which informs, enlightens, entertains, and meets the particular needs of a variety of specialized audiences. They believe that CBC programming should reflect and serve all parts of the country. They support a level of funding for the CBC that permits it to carry out its statutory mandate and here, of course, we come to the question of cuts and, therefore, a requirement to increase its funding. It is, with regret, that we know that our network in Canada is lagging behind other national networks, particularly the European ones, where there is a network one, a network two, and a network three, which try to meet the needs of different audiences.

Finally, the Friends of the CBC support an increased Canadianization of the airwaves. This eight-point set of principles was produced and distributed by a well-known Canadian author and writer, Peter Newman.
At this stage, of course, it is late to reorganize and to modify appropriately Bill C-40. Nevertheless, it is important to put on record these views because this bill, if passed, will hopefully be proclaimed, implemented and enforced only for a short time, that is, between now and the next election. At the time of the next election, I am sure that an electorate, enraged for a variety of reasons to which Bill C-40 has to be added, will take care of the wrong directions in which the government is leading Canada. Then we will see to it that the CBC is restored to its original mandate.


Mr. Jesse Flis (Parkdale-High Park):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak to this Bill C-40, an act respecting broadcasting, especially at a time when major decisions are going to be made, within the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, that will drastically affect not only the quality of our programming but the variety of services that we have been proud of for so long. I refer, specifically, to Radio-Canada International. RCI has been in existence since 1942 and, although some changes have been made to the service, the principle remains the same. That is, and I quote: "to convey objective information and balanced comment, thus reflecting the fullest possible freedom of expression".
Motion No. 15, the motion of our Liberal critic, the member for Mount Royal, and Motion No. 42, the government motion, contained, if you will, the future of an effective service.
If the information regarding CBC's projected $100 million budgetary shortfall is correct, there is nothing in this act to protect Radio Canada International from being eliminated altogether. Under Bill C-40, CBC is not required to operate an international service. It may do so if it so desires.
Motion No. 15 would prevent that, and I would like to share it with the members in the House:
Motion No. 15
That Bill C-40 be amended in Clause 3 by adding immediately
after line 20 at page 5 the following:
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(m) the Corporation should provide an international service subject to such applicable statutes and regulations as the Governor in Council may deem necessary;
Since you, Mr. Speaker, have grouped Motions Nos. 15 and 42 for debate, I would like to make a few comments about the government motion.
The government motion says:
(2) The Corporation shall, within the conditions of any licence or licences issued to it by the Commission and subject to any applicable regulations of the Commission, provide an international service in accordance with such directions as the Governor in Council may issue.
It is not very often that I praise the government, but in this case, I do praise the government because its motion is even stronger. It said:
(2) The Corporation shall-provide an international service
Whereas the Liberal resolution says:
(m) the Corporation should
I think we should all support Motion No. 42 where it says:
(2) The Corporation shall,
In other words, it must provide such a service.
Mr. Speaker, before I forget, I do want to mention that I do not like the words at the end of the government motion which say:
-with such directions as the Governor in Council may issue.
I will bring in an amendment to that motion at the end of my debate.
Usually, when programs have to be cut or reduced, they are phased out over a period of time. RCI does not even have that protection. To protect our international image, if reductions have to be made, I hope RCI will play an integral role in the decisions, and that any decision will be allowed a period of three to five years to take effect.
Hopefully, we will not even need that period.
My other concern has to do with the risk inherent in RCI being funded from the cultural envelope. The priority for the cultural envelope is servicing Canadians.
The priority for Radio Canada International is to reflect the spectrum of Canadian life and opinion to an international audience, although RCI does provide some programming for Canadians abroad.

November 27, 1990
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I would suggest that the funding for RCI be left to those who understand what best serves Canada's national interest. I would not, however, go as far as suggesting that the Department of External Affairs manage the service, because it is the very independence of the service from the government that gives it the unique characteristics to make it as credible as the BBC.
I was impressed in the sixties when we had student exchanges with an American college, Alliance College in Pennsylvania. The president of Alliance College told us that he listened to nothing but CBC, Radio Canada.
I felt very good as a Canadian. Here is a president of an American college not listening to any American programs, but listening to our CBC.
I would suggest, however, that the responsibility for funding be moved to the external affairs and international trade envelope. This argument is especially important today. We are spending literally millions of dollars on trade delegations all over the world to make international markets more aware of Canadian trade opportunities, and millions on supporting trade with the Soviet Union and eastern Europe as encouragement in their struggle for democracy.
Yet, we are actually considering taking away one of the more effective and inexpensive means to reach and achieve exactly those goals.
I have on numerous occasions expressed concern about the government's commitment to following through with programs that it established. Just over three weeks ago, we debated the new and expanded role of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. We talked about the need to exchange technologies, information and the importance of discussing long and openly, if need be, to reach consensus among all countries involved.
We are still awaiting the return of Bill C-88, a bill that deals with Canada's contribution to the European Bank for reconstruction and development. Once again, they are the same concerns about the political will to follow through.
I do not think you would find too many objections to any of these initiatives if there was confidence in the motives for all these initiatives. But we keep seeing the
introduction of new ones, while others lay by the wayside, forgotten.
One way to show that the government is serious about all these endeavours is to commit directly to keeping Radio Canada International alive so that the people in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe know about our desire and our efforts to see them through these difficult times.
I broke away from a three-day conference held here in Ottawa. The name of the conference is "The Changing Soviet Union: Implications for Canada and the World". I was impressed how the organizers found funding in a very creative way. They did not have enough money in one envelope from one department, so they found money from National Defence Canada, Industry, Science and Technology Canada, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, External Affairs and International Trade, the Disarmament Fund, Parliamentary Centre for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, and the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security. So there are creative waves of coming up with funding. Maybe it is time that RCI be funded from the external affairs envelope, rather than the cultural envelope.
I cannot emphasize the importance of the free and independent Canadian international service. I stress "Canadian" because -although the way this government is going, I am not sure how long this will last-we may find that to tune in to Canadian opinion, one need only turn on Voice of America. Hopefully this will never happen again because to date there is still great affection and respect for a news service that is Canadian. It is still felt that a Canadian news service is impartial and by being impartial it is encouraging to those populations in countries where censorship and news are synonymous.
One of the more recent examples that typifies this particular situation is the events that took place in Tiananmen Square. We were able to reach the students and convey to them our reaction to the tragic events. We were able to let them know that Canada was not going to send Chinese students back to China, that we were going to offer them refuge.
You are giving me the signal, Mr. Speaker, that the time is up. I have a lot more to debate here, but I do want to table an amendment to Motion No. 42 which would read:
November 27, 1990

That motion 42 be amended by removing the period after the word
"issue" to be replaced by a comma and inserting the following:
provided such directions do not limit its journalistic, creative or programming independence.
I think the amendment is self explanatory. [Translation]


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The Chair will take the motion presented by the hon. member for Park-dale-High Park under advisement.
Resuming debate.

Is the House ready for the question?


Jesse Philip Flis: A point of order, Mr. Speaker. Can I give the rationale behind my amendment?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Yes.


Jesse Philip Flis: The rationale is that the members of the Liberal Party are concerned that the words "such directions as the Governor in Council may issue" are too broad and inconsistent with clause 35, subclause 2. This provides and enhances the freedom of expression and the journalistic, creative and programming independence enjoyed by the corporation in the pursuit of its objects and in the exercise of its powers.
Canada has shown through Radio Canada International that it has a dramatic role model to the world and in particular to those countries where democratic institutions are developing. Because of this role it is crucial that Radio Canada International not be seen as a tool manipulated by the Canadian government.


SPEAKER'S RULING
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Upon brief consideration, the Chair has concluded that the motion presented by the hon. member for Parkdale-High Park is in order.


MEASURE TO AMEND
Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to participate in this very important debate at report stage of this very important Bill C-40.
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I want to keep my comments to a number of the proposed amendments, the motions before us in the grouping. There are five motions in this grouping, three of which I want to speak to in particular.
At the outset I should say that I support each of the amendments in this grouping.
The first one, Motion No. 12, deals very specifically with the parliamentary service. In a modem democracy, especially when we look at what is happening around the world, countries such as Yugoslavia, which I visited recently with some other parliamentarians, are experiencing for the first time a multi-party democratic election. We see that all over eastern Europe. Countries have to work as best they can to deliver the institutions to the people. What I mean is that in a place like Canada, this body here which is the highest court in the land, the Parliament of Canada, must take every means possible and use everything at her disposal to ensure that the people of Canada have access to their parliamentarians and can watch Parliament in action.
One way that that can be done, very clearly, is through the parliamentary channel. The parliamentary channel has been a great experiment in Canadian politics. I think now we have over 440,000 households on average watching Question Period every day of the week that this place sits. That is important because in a modem democratic state, televised proceedings of the legislature of the Parliament is a check on abuse by governments. It means that the people of Canada can watch their parliamentarians in action and when governments choose to abuse or override the rales or have the tyranny of the majority- which happens many times in this place-the people of Canada can tune in on their television, unobstructed, without editorial comment, without filtering by a news agency, and watch Parliament in action. That is very important.
The motion that we have before us, Motion No. 12, is very important because it would mandate CBC under this legislation to provide a parliamentary service. I know there is a committee of the House that is looking at better ways to deliver the proceedings of this place and of the committees of this place via the air waves. At some point it will make a report and the report will be debated. But I would hope that we understand that the CBC has a mandate and it is a mandate of national unity. Part of its new mandate, I believe, is to ensure that

November 27, 1990
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never, ever, will commercial considerations or time considerations between conflicting priorities of the cable company overtake the ability of the Canadian public to watch Parliament in action. The CBC is such a body. The CBC is the vehicle that should be mandated specifically by statute to ensure that Canadians everywhere have a right of access through their televisions to what happens in this Parliament.
We know that many times a government, not just this government but more particularly this government, would like to ensure that the record of the House is not properly distributed to everybody in the country because sometimes governments make mistakes.


An hon. member:: Especially this government.


Ronald MacDonald: Especially this government. It is notorious for it. A parliamentary channel mandated through a vehicle of national unity like the CBC is the way to ensure the independence and access of every Canadian to the proceedings of the highest court in the land, the Parliament of Canada.
I would like to address Motion 14 because it really concerns me. This motion is one that I really hope all members in this House will support. It is an important motion. I come from Atlantic Canada. Unfortunately or fortunately, we have had to grow up watching the reporting of what goes on in this great nation from a central Canadian bias. The CBC, Global, and CTV obviously have to play to the ratings. They have to pay the bills at the end of the month. Those news organizations have mastered and got into the five-second or the ten-second clip, the sound bite, for the evening news because they only have a fifteen-minute or half-hour newscast.
What happens perhaps in Cape Breton Island or Newfoundland or Fogo Island may not be of such national importance in the view of the editors of those newscasts that it is going to show up on a national news report that evening. I do not fault them for that. That is the reality of the modem world. They have to pay their bills. If they are broadcasting news that does not appeal to the millions of people who live in this unbalanced country, because too many people live at the centre and too few outside the centre, they are not going to get their rates for their advertising and therefore they are not going to be competitive.
All of a sudden what appeared on the scene was CBC Newsworld in English. CBC Newsworld in my view-and I have said this to the director out of the Halifax operation-has provided a tool for national unity and understanding in this country. CBC Newsworld does not have to master the 15, the 10 or the 5 second clip for a 30-minute newscast. The mandate of CBC Newsworld is to report the news from around the world but, more particularly, from around this country.
I have learned more about Alberta from watching CBC Newsworld than from reading any newspaper in this country or any combination of newspapers. I have learned more about the problems of the farmers in Saskatchewan by watching CBC Newsworld because its mandate is different. Its mandate is to try to give a balanced view of news from across the country; not a biased view focused toward the centre, which is Ontario and Quebec, where most of the people live. It has done something different.
It started out as perhaps a Canadian version CNN, that great American all-news network that gives us a great American slant on every piece of world news, national news, or local news that it puts out. However, it has developed into something much more than that. It has developed into a piece of national infrastructure that promotes national unity and understanding in this country. I do not think anybody in this country or on any side of this House who has watched that service would disagree withjne. It has been a refreshing break from the divisiveness and the isolationism that are all too often practised by Canadians in their regions and in their local areas. It is something that absolutely must be protected.
Motion No. 14. which says that there should be a French CBC all-news network is something which is very important. Nobody in this House has to be reminded of the difficulties we have between English Canada and French Canada. They are real and they are severe. Any vehicle that can appeal or deliver itself to the masses, which will increase the level of understanding between English Canadians and French Canadians, should be something that we should support whole-heartedly. We should find the money, no matter where we have to scrape it up, because it is an instrument of national unity.
This motion makes sure that at some future point, because of economic considerations, CBC Newsworld does not have to go out of business. This motion makes sure that CBC Newsworld does not have to alter its
November 27, 1990

format because of commercial considerations, because it has to make a profit. This motion ensures that CBC Newsworld and the benefit that we get in English Canada where it is shown of understanding the diversity and the richness of this country in its cultural, ethnic and regional diversity, are also available to people of the French language who live in Quebec and in other parts of Canada. Examples are the Acadians in Atlantic Canada and the French in the west.
I would hope that this motion in particular be really seriously considered by members opposite. I know that all too often in this House we vote strictly along party lines. If there is an amendment to the government bill, government members opposite think: My God, the House is going to come down on top of us if we agree that an opposition motion makes the legislation better. This is one of those cases where it not only would make the legislation better, but it would make the nation a more tolerant, hospitable and unified country in which to live.
In closing, I would just like to say that these motions that were put forward by my colleague from Mount Royal are thoughtful motions. They have been put forward in the spirit of keeping a national institution a national institution, and that is the CBC. Instead of shrinking its mandate to expand it by statute to ensure that when budget considerations come, as they currently are right now with massive cuts at CBC, some of the important aspects of Canadian unity and Canadian unity infrastructure such as the CBC are not tampered with by a budget axe but are mandated by the Parliament of Canada.
I would hope that members on all sides of the House would see fit to support these motions.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I have already spoken on this group of amendments, but the Liberal Party member has seen fit to amend one of the amendments, so therefore I am entitled to speak again. It is very interesting what has happened here, because the amendment was originally a government amendment, subamended by the Liberal Party. The government amendment states:
Government Orders
The Corporation shall, within the conditions of any licence or licences issued to it by the Commission and subject to any applicable regulations of the Commission, provide an international service in accordance with such directions as the Governor in Council may issue.
What the government has put in the bill is to guarantee really an international service. We have just heard this week that the government proposes to cut Radio Canada International. I say to the minister that he cannot put that in the bill and at the same time turn around and eliminate Radio Canada International.
Why does the government want to cut Radio Canada International? It is part of a pattern to cut back and to threaten not only the independence but the very existence of the CBC. We have seen throughout the Mulro-ney government's mandate the systematic attack on the budget of the CBC. I have said it has leeched the CBC. It has also meeched it too, but we will come back to that when we debate the national unity clause.
The CBC has cut back its regional programming. It has been forced to behave like every other private broadcaster with an eye to the bottom line. The CBC has been stripped of its ability to do good regional programming. Now it will be stripped of its ability to do international programming. We will get a CBC, at least for English television, that is concentrated in Toronto. All the money will be in the Peter and Wendy and Barbara show and so on. I suggest that members might want to read Rick Salutin article in Saturday Night magazine. It is a devastating criticism of what is happening to the CBC.
I want to focus on something else when I see the minister here. I want to focus on real dollars. What I have done is have had a look at what has happened to the CBC's finances, and I just want to go over that. I am talking about allocations in 1988 dollars. I am going to give some figures for appropriations for operations and for commercial revenues, because my submission is that the CBC is becoming more and more commercial, becoming more and more like any other network. Therefore, when we see the CBC logo on television, it just becomes like any other station, and it is not distinctively Canadian.
The CBC, for example, has been forced to abandon its goal of having 95 per cent Canadian content in prime time. It has been forced, as I have already said, to

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abandon its goal of having regional programming, which has been cut back 30 per cent.
I remember that years ago the CBC used to reflect Canadians to Canadians all across the country. Ten or fifteen years ago, we could see on prime time television The Plouffe Family, a family in Quebec. It was reflected to those of us who live in western Canada. We could see western Canadian programs that were reflected to other aspects of the country. We could see Don Messer's Jubliee from the Maritimes, which took some of that culture and reflected it across the country. There were four, five or six prime time shows from different regions in Canada that reflected the regions to Canadians. Now we do not have anything like that, and I will tell the House why.
In 1984 to 1985, the appropriations budget-and I am doing this in 1988 dollars-was $943.3 million and the capital budget was $93 million, for a total of about $1 billion. The commercial revenues were $265 million. That was 20 per cent of the budget. In 1985 to 1986, the appropriations operations go down to $879 million and commercial revenues go up to $268 million, some 22 per cent. In 1986 to 1987, $849 million for operations and revenues of 23 per cent. In 1987 to 1988, $828 million with revenues of 26 per cent. In 1988 to 1989, $814 million with revenues of 28 per cent. In 1989 to 1990, $812 million and commercial revenues of $374 million. Almost 30 per cent of the CBC budget is now in commercial revenues.
The minister over there just put everyone in a panic when he came before the committee and said: "Maybe we should get rid of ads". If we got rid of ads, the CBC could not even operate at all. Now the government has backtracked. The Toronto Star has quoted a policy proposal that in fact advertising come to CBC Radio. I like CBC Radio. I like listening to the Gzowski Show and the other shows. I like the fact that it is not beholden to commercial revenue. Leave that for the private sector and keep the CBC unique. This government is meeching and leeching the CBC. The radio network has been especially hurt.
The CRTC said in its most recent licence renewal that the CBC could not fulfil its mandate at current funding levels. Since then funding levels have declined further. In response to the questions before the standing committee on broadcasting last May, CBC Vice-President
Michael McEwan said: "You are right. We are getting squeezed and each year. We have to factor in how we are doing to do that. This year, 1989-90, they lost a 1 per cent real cut across the radio system". They managed to sustain their activity for one more year. As the president, Mr. Veilleux, said: "If we keep going, something is going to have to give, and then you start talking about making decisions. Do you change the nature of how you express all your services? Do you lose some service? Do you lop off an arm rather than deleting the whole thing? These are the issues we are going to have to deal with if we keep heading down this road".
The government is sending contradictory signals. In its broadcasting policy Canadian Voices, Canadian Choices, the government said: "To capture an audience share consistent with the size of its parliamentary appropriation and to be able to generate sufficient commercial revenues, the CBC needs to reach large audiences". Yet, at the legislative committee, the minister emphasized CBC's cultural role and, as I said, he caused a near panic by suggesting that the commission might give up its commercial revenue.
The government has got to get a consistent policy. It has brought in an amendment to the bill to say that it is going to institutionalize Radio Canada International. Then it announced a couple of weeks later that it was thinking of cutting Radio Canada International.
It says it wants a national system; then it cuts regional programs. The minister says: "Maybe we should cut commercials". On the other hand 30 per cent of the CBC budget, as I have shown by figures, is in fact through commercial appropriations. This government has no consistent policy. I am glad the minister is in the House today, but it is about time that he paid some attention to what is going on in communications. I call him Oscar Masse, accepting Oscars in Hollywood or jetting off to Rome.
I am glad the minister is here so he can deal with the real question of communications policy. The role of the CBC in international, national and regional programming is absolutely vital in this country. This is part of the glue that keeps Canada together.
That is why we, in the NDP, have proposed amendments with respect to national unity, the make-up of the
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CBC, keeping the CBC independent, getting it well funded and putting it in the right direction.
In the next year, we are facing a constitutional crisis in this country. We are going to need a strong CBC that reflects fairly the major issues in this country. We are going to need to reflect Canada to the world. That is why I am glad the government has brought in this amendment.
I say to the minister that he should not be inconsistent. Do not bring in this amendment and then turn around and cut all the funds in the CBC, especially the funds for the international service.


Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to take part in today's debate, and I am delighted to see the minister in our midst. Some words of welcome are in order, and it is a great pleasure to see him back in the House. I must say we missed him, and it is indeed a pleasure to see him here today.
Mr. Speaker, I am sure the minister has had time to read the amendments with the requisite care, especially those put forward by our colleague, the hon. member for Mount Royal. The hon. member put a great deal of time and effort into these amendments and came up with some excellent ones which I will now mention, if I may, Mr. Speaker.
The hon. member for Mount Royal wants the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to provide an all-news service in French and English, a service that is badly needed. There is, of course, Newsworld on the English network, which I think is very good and which provides a 24-hour service. However, although this is excellent for Canadians, at the present time we do not have a similar service in French, although the need is there.
Mr. Speaker, during the crisis at Oka last summer, for instance, we could get a steady stream of information on the English channel, while no similar service was available in French. I think Canadians, whether they are French-speaking or English-speaking, had the right to be informed about a matter of this importance, whatever their position happened to be on this question.
The fact remains that we had the right, as I see it, to be better informed on this question, and when I say we, I
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mean the French-speaking population. In fact, we were not getting the same level of service in French as we were getting in English because of the lack of a 24-hour tv news channel.
Mr. Speaker, I am one of the members in this House who had the privilege of learning both official languages of our country at a very early age, and I regularly watch the news on television in French and in English. I often wonder whether several times a week, we could perhaps translate the French news on Radio-Canada into English and take the English news on the CBC and translate it into French, so that Canadians would know what is happening on the other network, because the news we get on the English network is often quite different from the news we get on the French network, reflecting a different perspective.
As far as the regional question is concerned, I think the French network concentrates far too much on central Canada and tells us very little about remote areas, unlike the English network which does a better job.
I think it would be an interesting exercise to let French-speaking Canadians see the English news, translated into French of course, and vice versa, as I said earlier. I think Canadians need more exposure to the news broadcast in the other official language.

Mr. Speaker, I think we should also compliment the hon. member for Mount Royal for proposing to this House that there should be an inclusion in the bill regarding northern service and, of course, regarding Radio Canada International. When we speak about the northern service, again we are talking about an amendment that was proposed by our colleague from Mount Royal who, very thoughtfully, proposed that there be such a reference in the bill. I say to the minister, across the way, that he should stop being so partisan and look at things objectively.


Mr. Karygiannis:: He is not listening.


Don Boudria: I know the minister is listening; he is listening attentively, I can tell. With the close attention that he is paying to this debate, I am sure that he will want to consider the amendments proposed by the hon. member for Mount Royal. I see him nodding, right now, in favour of those amendments. I am sure that that nod

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indicates that the minister wants to approve those amendments of the member for Mount Royal.
Now in the unlikely event that he is so biased that he refuses to consider those amendments, I will say that it is to the peril of this government. More importantly, I think we must entrench in legislation the need to have the CBC and Radio Canada not only transmit programming to Canadians but transmit information to Canadians which will assist the theme of national unity.
I know that will be addressed in a later amendment but I still wanted to take this very brief opportunity to raise it now because the need to promote national unity is an important component in the job of the CBC and Radio-Canada. I think it should be part of their mandate. I intend to support the amendments of my colleague, the hon. member for Mount Royal, to that effect and to support her tremendous initiatives in improving this bill.
In conclusion, we must not only continue to ensure that the CBC operates well and in the interests of Canada, we cannot take chances with the government across the way, and we must include in legislation some of the components of the CBC mandate to ensure that in a fit of privatization or cutting back, such as the Tories take from time to time, the government does not sacrifice some very valuable programming of the CBC.
I want to make one further point which relates to the parliamentary service. Again, that is set out in Motion No. 12, proposed by my colleague, the hon. member for Mount Royal. I know that the parliamentary service is available to a large number of Canadians at the present time, but access to the parliamentary service should be made even easier. I say this because a number of cable distributors have made it such that the parliamentary service is only accessible by means of a television converter. I cannot see why it cannot be one of the basic channels for at least one parliamentary service.
I would even go further and say that all three channels should be on the converter so that Canadians can listen to the House of Commons in the language spoken from the floor, as well as in their choice of English or French, but all three could be on cable and at least one of them should be available on the basic service without the converter.
I conclude with those comments and I ask the minister, across the way, to support the amendments of the hon. member for Mount Royal.


Mr. David Walker (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by following up on the comments of my colleague who raised a very good point about availability of the CBC Parliamentary channel on the regular service. Several cable companies have put it into a channel which cannot be reached by low-income Canadians.
I know in my riding where people have an older TV and cannot afford to buy a new TV they cannot watch the proceedings of the House of Commons when they are carried on a channel in the 20's. This coverage is one way we have of communicating with Canadians.
There are a whole range of problems. I wish the government, through the CRTC, would show more concern about this removal of service. It is not a small issue for Canadians, just one of those issues that gets lost in the shuffle. There are many low-income Canadians who wish the opportunity to participate in these debates through watching them and writing letters to the members when they agree or disagree with us. That simply is not available if it requires a new TV or a converter.
I would like to talk in this debate about the role of CBC in these particular areas. When I was listening to the debate a few days ago, I was struck by the number of members from all parties who stood up in support of the CBC and recognized that this government was not showing to Canadians the support that it has traditionally shown to the Crown corporation.
Throughout the last 50 years of broadcasting in Canada, the CBC has been a cornerstone of how we communicate. It has become a greater preoccupation as we enter into the debate on national unity. Every day the newspapers have one story after another about the near collapse of the country, the depression that we feel, our inability to communicate with each other. We realize that for any party to put this country back together, it must find the building blocks. The CBC, now as in the past, is one of those building blocks.
I know there has been a great deal of criticism, as alluded to by another member, and that journalists had been attacking the CBC, but that is part of the game. There are times when the CBC does a good job. There
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are other times, like any other Crown corporation, when it does not do such a good job. Nevertheless, taking an historical perspective, CBC is one of the few building blocks that we have for communicating among Canadians.
In order to begin to set out a national dream and find a sense of purpose for Canadians, we need a vehicle by which to to communicate. The drive behind that communication cannot simply be commercial interest. There also has to be a non-profit, public purpose organization which can drive us into a forum which allows us to communicate through the regular broadcast of news services and the specials that can be put on in the public affairs area give CBC a role to perform.
Perhaps one of the most important services that is provided to us is the CBC English and French radio services which provide a commonalty of communications through all the remote areas. It does not matter whether you live in Toronto, like my colleague, in my riding in Winnipeg, or in the Northwest Territories as other colleagues do, there is a commonalty there.
If you accept that CBC is one of the building blocks that we should be protecting and enhancing, we have to make sure that the CBC services which are of value to the country are protected. For example, the parliamentary service, which I already discussed, is considered to be a key window for Canadians to view Parliament. Canadians deserve access to its proceedings.
The challenge for us as parliamentarians is to ensure that the new legislative framework and funding arrangements will make adequate and appropriate provision for the full and effective use of the parliamentary channel. I think there can be a great deal of expansion if it is properly funded. That should not be left silent in the legislation. There should be an amendment to show our support for the parliamentary service.
In light of what is happening in the Middle East right now, one of the most important services is Radio Canada International. Our critic, the member for Mount Royal, yesterday asked the government if it was still supportive of Radio Canada International particularly in the Arabic services in the Middle East.
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When you see how quickly propaganda can be used to put us on the edge of war, a peaceful way of communicating to a captive audience-captive in someone else's hands rights now-is very important. Again we just cannot assume that the corporation will protect those in times of cutbacks. We have to say through Parliament that this is one of the services that we want it to protect and we are willing to pay for it.
Third, there is the all-news service. One of the great experiments in Canada in the last year has been the development of Newsworld. I can attest as a parliamentarian just how dramatically it has changed the coverage of Parliament and the coverage of other events.
Canadians now participate much more closely with world events because they are brought to us in an immediate fashion. It does not matter whether we are talking about the justice inquiry into aboriginal affairs in Manitoba or the inquiry into abuse in Newfoundland. No issue is too small and no issue is too big to be shared by Canadians.
What Newsworld does in terms of communications is that it pulls away the cost factor of big-time television and, more important, it removes the time factor to allow for the greater explanation of events and permit people to see things unfold, rather than be compacted into a 15-second clip, or compacted into a 90-second item. The subject can be expanded so that people who are really interested in an issue have an opportunity to see it take place.
For example, on Newsworld out of Winnipeg there is a call-in program on which Canadians have an opportunity at noon each day of the week, except for weekends, to phone in and to speak about issues of the day.
We as parliamentarians get a little lazy, I think, because we accept that we have an opportunity to stand up in the House whenever we want to express our opinions. For every one of us there are 80,000 Canadians who do not have that opportunity and it is our responsibility to give them every avenue possible so their views can be expressed. They have a way of talking about the problems facing this country without going through politicians. They should be able to do so just by picking up the phone and talking to people, or watching television to see somebody talking about Parliament, again not

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in a 90-second clip, but at great length and in great detail.
These are the sorts of services which are needed. In a country becoming as impoverished as Canada is becoming, mainly because of the laziness of the government in taxation issues, and its inability to manage the economy and where we are faced with such an overwhelming debt, people begin to feel that they cannot afford to do this or cannot afford to do that. They feel that maybe television and radio are not important. It is time to stand up right now and say that these services are important and that the purpose of Parliament is to protect those services from people who do not understand their importance.
Obviously, in this debate the government does not understand the importance of the CBC. Perhaps it is because the Liberal Party is so proud of its tradition of building national organizations, of supporting national institutions, that we naturally rise up to the occasion to defend the CBC. We are astonished by the silence in the other parties.
As I sit in the House today I cannot believe that the NDP cannot contribute more to this debate. They should be rising to speak on this issue too. I think the reason they cannot do so is because they do not know where they stand on national unity. They do not know what the role of a national institution should be. When we hear more from them we will begin to understand whether or not they want to be a national party of purpose or just some rump group sitting over in the comer of the House of Commons.
These are very serious issues, not partisan issues. They are issues that we should all be addressing and we look forward to their contribution and I am sure that sooner or later they will have something to say. I look forward to the government being receptive to the amendments being proposed by our critic who has done a first-class job of bringing to the attention of all Canadians the importance of the CBC.


Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, I return to the subject of Radio Canada International which I brought to the attention of this House yesterday. I know that the minister was not able to be present yesterday but I did ask for serious consideration of the assurance that Radio Canada International be maintained as an integral arm and a broadcasting voice to the
international community as a voice of reason, a voice of a middle-western power, and something that the world scene requires.
It is not enough that the BBC, which is an important voice, or the Voice of America be heard, this middle power which is Canada and which is so highly respected across the land must also be heard.
I pointed out yesterday that CBC is in a very serious and difficult position because it is constrained. It cannot deficit finance, as the minister knows, and it cannot borrow.
I addressed my comments to the President of the Treasury Board, because in the final analysis the money that is allocated to CBC is determined by Treasury Board jointly with the Minister of Communications.
It is through their allocation of funds-actually through the starvation that they have undertaken of CBC- that we are, at this point, concerned about the maintenance of Radio Canada International as a viable voice of Canada to Canadians overseas and to countries that are looking for this middle level, democratic voice, that expresses cultural values in the two official languages here in Canada, English and French, and close to 1,400 other languages, which is an absolutely important function.
I have added this amendment because of our experience with the newly emerging democracies, the newly emerging democratic societies of this world who look to countries like Canada to understand democratic process.
I think that this House and the general public should know that the Speaker of the House of Commons asked that Mr. Philip Laundy be named as one of the officers of the House to enable Canadians and the Canadian democratic process to be understood by these newly emerging democracies.
Radio Canada International is in a similar position as the Speaker-the new one who is sitting there right now-and the Table Officers, men and women who in a non-partisan way help the instances of democracy work.
Radio Canada International is in the same position. The problem, perhaps, is that society does not understand the key role that is played by this service at a cost of $20 million a year to Canadians.
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Not only does it bring a voice other than Saddam Hussein to Iraqis and Kuwaitis, enabling them to hear democratic views, it also brings the voice to our men and women who are soldiers playing a peacekeeping role on the front in many parts of the world.
I want to point out that 1990, which was a watershed year for freedom, came about in many ways because of the impact of voices like Radio Canada International.
I remember when we were discussing Tiananmen Square, we sat in this House until 3 a.m. Perhaps I was remiss but I thought it was very important to speak not only about the strength and the character of the young students who were in the square or the people's wish and hope for democracy. I spoke about the cameramen and the journalists who were in there bringing to the world a vision and a view so that we could understand what was going on.
At the same time, that voice-Radio Canada International-was bringing a picture of what was happening in that dynamism, in that moment of hope and then despair that was Tiananmen Square.
Mr. Speaker, the crumbling of the Berlin Wall and the changing dynamic in Europe did not happen without the voice of freedom that was heard on radio through short wave, through international voice.
It was very much the role of Radio Canada International. I wonder how many of us know that within days of the Tiananmen Square massacre, we began two daily broadcasts to China in Mandarin. We placed Radio Canada International material on local radio in three of the east European countries to which we broadcast already by short wave?
Through state broadcasts in Poland, Czechoslovakia and a private station in Hungary, all these countries were hearing the voice of freedom, the voice of democracy, the voice of a middle-sized nation, not one of the power brokers of this world, through Radio Canada International. These countries needed our voice. Now we are arranging training programs through Radio Canada International for nine broadcasters who are here from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary on topics that range from journalistic policy and freedoms to the administration and sale of commercials, on how to bring the concepts of a democratic and free society together with advertising as a means of income for these stations.
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We have had staff exchanges through Radio Canada International.
We have an incredible challenge through the international broadcasting voice in the Persian Gulf right now. I think many of my colleagues have alluded to what is going on in a very serious crisis that is at the flash-point in the Middle East. How can we hope that both sanctions will work and peace will come about because Saddam Hussein finally comes to his senses and realizes that you cannot just march in and repress another country? If his voice is the only one heard, how will the citizens start to react? Through the international broadcasting voice we can have an inside citizen understanding and we can work with the people of Kuwait and the people of Iraq and have them understand that our presence in that Persian Gulf is to enable a peaceful solution, not to become aggressors in war as a first step. If we do not sensitize, through a democratic voice, who else are they going to hear?
I am saying that when we put Arabic on the air in the Middle East we were rendering a very important service in the national interest. Although we contributed that $10 million to our forces, as our part of the $350 million that was being sought, we were still contributing to the development of the national interest and the national concerns of Canada and Canadians by explaining Canada's presence in the Gulf, by explaining the role of sanctions, by explaining why Saddam Hussein does not have the right to just walk in and trample on the people and the property of Kuwait.
Those are things that we can do so that we can emphasize the country's motivation in joining the multinational expeditionary force. We have made our airways available to Canadians so that Canadians could try to reach their families and friends in the Gulf area. We set up special telephone lines through Radio Canada International.
Radio Canada International has been very creative because it has not had the means needed to reach all these areas of the world. Although it does, with 14 languages through Montreal and then through their station in New Brunswick, broadcast to many parts of the world, in many parts of the world it has had to undertake joint contracts through Japan, through the BBC. It has been extremely creative.

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I would like to really plead with the minister and say to him that he may not want to accept my amendment on the parliamentary channel to ensure that there is always the decision of the Speaker and the decision of this House in a non-partisan way. He may not want to ensure northern services. I think he is wrong, but he may not wish to. He may not wish to ensure all news particularly in French as well as in English as part of the CBC services, but certainly the international voice of Canada should be maintained. I plead with the minister to accept the amendment which was proposed, by the way, by a member from his own side, the member for St. Maurice. I would hope that we can see Radio Canada International enabled to be present on the international world scene because it could eventually be an even more important voice in the international voice for democracy and understanding across the world.


Jim Karygiannis: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand in the House today to speak in the debate on report stage of a very important bill. The CBC has given this country the opportunity to reach across the globe for almost 50 years and convey to people what is happening in Canada and abroad. If I am not mistaken, I believe that we initiated CBC Radio International right after World War II. Our people in the Armed Forces were able to listen to what was happening at home and we were able to convey to them the message of support. We were able to convey to them that we at home are very supportive of their efforts and tribulations. Then, we went to the Korean War and our army overseas was again able to listen to the feelings of the people at home.
We have had peacekeeping forces for the past 25 to 30 years serving world-wide. In 1989,1 visited Cyprus where I had the opportunity to speak to a lot of our people who are there in peacekeeping forces. They related to me how important it is to be able to listen to Radio Canada International, the short wave of the Canada voice coming to them. It makes sure that we do not forget them, and makes sure that they can participate and be active Canadians while halfway around the world. They can understand what is happening here. The newspapers take about four or five days to reach there, but Radio Canada International can be there simultaneously, the same night.
We have something else which is important. That is parliamentary services of Canada. This government is notorious about a number of things. I say that, Mr. Speaker, n-o-t-o-r-i-o-u-s, "no Tory us". Why am I saying "no Tory us?" We have seen this government plummet to a 14 per cent rating. We are not sure if the government wants to chop off completely the parliamentary service because it does not want the rest of the Canadian people to watch what we are doing in this great House.
I have the opportunity from time to time to rise in the House and speak. My constituents come to me and criticize what I say or give me a pat on the back for what I say. I wonder if the minister sitting across-and I see he is nodding his head-also has the same from his constituents and most of his colleagues in government. We can see from the recent polls that at 14 per cent the government does not want this "no Tory us" nonsense broadcast. I would not be surprised for one single minute if over the next couple of months the proposals the government is putting forward to chop the budget, gut the CBC, is not done on purpose because and I quote: "476 Canadian cable companies have this as of March, 1989 and this is available to 7.7 million households".
My colleague from Glengarry-Prescott-Russell also pointed out that the parliamentary channel should not only be available with a converter, but should be on a regular channel in French and English so that if people who live in the west want to watch it in French, they have the opportunity, or people in Quebec, if they want to watch it in English, also have the opportunity, or vice versa.
It is very important that we keep this service going because we have noticed that this government from time to time to time does not want the public to know what is happening. It wants to hoodwink the public, so it sweeps it under the rug.
I come to the next issue. Why the changes? Are we losing so much money that we want the changes? Are we going to privatize the CBC? Did I hear someone say yes? The minister is sort of nodding his head.
I go back to what we did with CN Express when we privatized it and gave it to Route Canada. The government was going to guarantee three years of service to our people. Eighteen months down the line, bang, we privatized Air Canada and 2,900 jobs were lost. We are moving to privatize Petro-Canada. I wonder how many jobs will

be lost? We are moving to privatize everything. I wonder, is the CBC going to be privatized next?


Mr. Volpe:: The minister says yes.


Jim Karygiannis: Ah, so there lies the culprit. We are going to move into privatization. Shame on the government, real shame on this government.
The other thing of great importance is CBC News-world. In September, Toronto lost the bid to have the Olympics in 1996.


Giuseppe (Joseph) Volpe: It was a shameful decision.


Jim Karygiannis: My colleague from Eglinton-Law-rence says it was a shameful decision. I agree with my colleague because I am a Torontonian, but my heart also felt that the Olympics was eventually going to go back to its birthplace. It is something about celebrating the centenary. I was at a dilemma. What happened took me out of that dilemma.
However, it is important to note why the decision was made that the Olympics went to the United States. CNN was pumping directly into those peoples bedrooms and in their hotel rooms, scenes from where else? Scenes from Canada. Scenes about Oka and the turbulence with the Indians. It was also pumping into their hotel rooms the turbulence about Greece. We have seen how CNN effectively moved for them to get the Olympic games. Toronto lost and my city of birth also lost.
CBC Newsworld promotes national unity. There is no better means than having this opportunity for people, on channel 17 in Ottawa and on different channels across our country, to tune in through a converter box. Rather than requiring a converter box, this should be available on a regular channel so that Canadians can tune in and get more than a 20-second clip of what the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition said. I am sure they are not interested as to what the first said, but I am sure they are interested as to what the second said. Canadians have noticed that we go back to "No Tory Us." The people of this country are tired of listening to what the Tory government has to say. They tune in to CBC Newsworld and they watch with great importance. They look at the news that we have to provide. Yet this government, once it got CBC altogether in 1989-
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David Walker: Shame.


Jim Karygiannis: Shame, my colleague from Winnipeg says. In 1989, when the Tiananmen massacre broke, we were among the first nations to reach into mainland China with service in Mandarin and Cantonese and tell the people of China that we were supportive. We were among the first nations to reach and applaud the efforts of the students.
We are faced today with the situation in Middle East. We have approximately 2,000 servicemen in the Middle East. These servicemen watch with interest in what is happening in Canada. They watch and listen with interest to what we are doing.
I notice, Mr. Speaker, that you are giving me the nod that I have only a few seconds left. I am going to pose this question to the minister. I know it is going to fall on "No Tory Us" because of deaf ears.
Mr. Speaker, I ask through you, and I know the minister is not going to listen. Mr. Minister, what is your real purpose of this? Do you want to privatize CBC? Do you want to gut it, so it shows that it is making money, like you did with the post office and everything else? If that is the real thing, shame on them. This country wants no more "No Tory Us."


Mrs. Shirley Maheu (Saint-Laurent-Cartierville):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-40 which gives the government an opportunity to improve broadcasting services to the Canadian public and guarantee on-going parliamentary services of Radio Canada International, the Newsworld and the northern information services.
Our culture cannot survive without these services. Let us be mindful of the fact that Canada is not a uniform country but one where cultural, linguistic and geographical diversities play a very significant role. This is why the government cannot afford to miss this opportunity to maintain through legislation all the essential services of the all-Canadian CBC network. We simply cannot cut off the communication links which make it possible for Canadians to learn to appreciate their diversity.
Mr. Speaker, this government will be missing a great opportunity to enshrine in this legislation services that

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the Canadian public both needs and wants. That is why I support the changes so eloquently put forward by the hon. member for Mount Royal.
It is clear that the Conservatives are backing down from recommendations that their own members supported in the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture in 1987. Unfortunately for Canadians, it seems that this government refuses to listen to some of the progressive recommendations that come from the committees of this House. Mr. Speaker, as you well know, Canadians across this country have access to this place through one primary mechanism, the parliamentary service.
Canadians deserve a service to view their elected representatives in action. They deserve to have an unbiased and undisguised presentation of how their MPs perform their tasks. The challenge is to make certain that the new legislative framework and the funding arrangements will make adequate and appropriate provision for the full and effective use of the parliamentary service. Millions of Canadians who cannot come to Ottawa or who do not want to rely solely on media reports, tune in to watch us here in this Chamber. For more than a year, this service has been available to more than 80 per cent or 7.7 million Canadian households.
I firmly believe that it is worth while to legislatively ensure a continuation of this window on Parliament. May I add that I would be very interested to hear what objections the Conservatives have to this progressive amendment.

Mr. Speaker, this piece of legislation must cover Radio Canada International because its role has put Canada on the world scene. Other world countries have heard about us through this international network.
Radio Canada International came on the air in 1942 and the first network programs were heard in Europe in 1944. With respect to the international community, the RCI mandate is to reflect Canadian life and the various opinions which prevail in this country, not to mention various programs intended for Canadians overseas.
Mr. Speaker, Radio Canada International has a staff of 194 and listeners everywhere in Europe, Asia, the Caribbean Islands, Latin America, the Pacific, Africa
and the Middle East. At least 16 million listeners tune in to Radio Canada International programs on a weekly basis.
Nor can we ignore the fact that RCI promotes employment equity for linguistic minorities. Services in a wide variety of languages are a source of employmnent and contribute to promoting an ever widening multi-ethnic, multilingual and cultural society.

Mr. Speaker, this service has proved to be a beacon to countries which are emerging into democracy. Within days of the massacre in Tiananmen Square, when the Chinese pro-democracy protesters were suppressed, Radio Canada International began daily broadcasts to China in Mandarin. In October, the service switched to a full Chinese program service with two half-hour transmissions a day.
When a people are oppressed and when they do not have any source of information other than official government propaganda, services such as ours prove to be indispensable. They offer a ray of hope to a people who are starved for information. These people need to know that their struggle abroad is not forgotten.
I feel that this service deserves to be enshrined in the legislation.
It proves to be even more important now than ever. The situation in the Persian Gulf is critical. We have sent over 1,000 Canadians to a hostile area and have asked them to put their lives on the line for us. It is obvious to say that the need to have the service in the gulf is paramount. It is not only essential for our troops but for the people of the region to understand our true intentions.
For example, we should let the people of Iraq know that our quarrel is not with them but with Saddam Hussein. As we all know, effective propaganda on the part of the Iraqi dictatorship scewers the information that may be related to Canadian involvement in the region.
One must also remember that hundreds of thousands of Canadians at home listen to these broadcasts. They assist in promoting our multicultural and multilinguistic character. It provides a unifying voice for all Canadians, be they here or abroad. I respectfully submit that these
November 27, 1990

facts should help in convincing the government to accept Motions Nos. 12 through 15, as well as Motion No. 42.

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation brought in Newsworld to provide news with a uniquely Canadian perspective. This channel gives a detailed review of events affecting all Canadians. However, it is disappointing that the service is only available in English. As a Quebecer, I think we should have this kind of services in French as well. I am sure this would lead to a greater degree of tolerance.

Finally, we cannot forget the fact that Canada is an arctic country. Our northern service is important to Inuit, Indian, Dene, Metis, and non-native groups. This service provides our northern citizens with programs in seven native languages. All these essential agencies must be preserved and protected within the legislation.
Liberals are concerned that this government is missing a chance to protect and recognize CBC services in this bill. I sincerely hope that members opposite consider the motions put forward by the member for Mount Royal and support them before passing this bill.


Mr. Guy H. Arseneault (Restigouche-Chaleur):: Mr. Speaker, I thank you for providing me with this opportunity to speak on a bill which threatens to do irreparable damage to our country's public broadcasting system.
Canada's history is rich and it is testimony to the strength of character and determination of our forefathers. In fact, without such a determination to be Canadian, combined with the guiding hand of government participation in a variety of sectors, Canada would definitely not have thrived nor asserted its national identity so strongly on the world stage.
This country is the fruit of the efforts and the will of our forefathers to build a nation east and west, to unite the land. Successive governments gave us a national railway system, a post office, a national radio and TV network, a national airline, as well as a variety of measures to help develop Canada as we know it.
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If you look at what the Tories have done to the institutions I have just mentioned, you will be well on your way to understanding why the country is experiencing such an identity crisis and why so many Canadians have become so cynical about their government.
The privatization of Petro-Canada, the gutting of VIA Rail, the auctioning of Air Canada, and now the undermining of our national broadcasting system. All these policies were designed by a government seemingly intent on turning our country into an empty shelf. Frankly, I do not know how much more of this kind of mindless treatment our Canada can endure.
On a more positive note, Canadians have always been leaders in the field of communications, not only in telecommunications, but we have actually produced two world-class thinkers in communication theory. Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan have set the standard as far as the study of communications is concerned. It would be an understatement to say that these two men contributed significantly to the affirmation of Canadian identity on the world stage.
It would be sad to see the progress we have made in this area come to nothing. I am amazed that the Conservative government has taken steps to undermine one of the pillars of of nationhood at a time when Canada is seriously questioning its raison d'etre.
As you are aware, Mr. Speaker, the 1968 Broadcasting Act required that CBC contribute to the development of national unity. Unfortunately all reference to this has been eliminated from Bill C-40.
Moreover, the government's proposed broadcast policy stipulates measures which could, as the hon. member for Mount Royal has said, cause the disintegration of the national broadcasting system. The shortcomings of Bill C-40 which include the creation of two separate standing committees for English and French language broadcasting at the CBC, the failure to recognize various CBC services specifically, the regionalization of the CRTC, and the potential loss of federal jurisdiction will seriously undermine a system which has helped unite our country from sea to sea.

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Although Bill C-40 is flawed, I believe that the amendments proposed by the member for Mount Royal go a long way in addressing and correcting its shortcomings.

Mr. Speaker, the amendments proposed by the Liberal Party, contained in motions Nos. 12,13,14,15 and 16, are aimed at ensuring the integrity of our broadcasting system. First of all, they would help the Corporation maintain its role of contributing to national unity and being a permanent expression of Canadian identity. Second, they would ensure recognition for and continuity of the following elements: the Parliamentary Service, Radio Canada International, the all-news service in English and in French and the northern Service. Motion No. 42 further refines the provisions concerning Radio Canada International.
Unfortunately, if the government does not act wisely and fails to approve the amendments we are proposing, Canadian broadcasting will be severly affected. And what about the unity of our country? If the Corporation is denied that part of its mandate which is to contribute to the development of our Canadian identity, one of the pillars of our collective consciousness will have ceased to exist.
Mr. Speaker, you will agree this is not the right time to approve such a policy. According to the government, this change in the 1968 Broadcasting Act is justified because the national unity clause would handicap the Corporation's ability to encure that its programming fully, fairly and accurately reflects and interprets the cultural, social, political, economic, linguistic and regional realities of Canada.
This does not stand up under analysis. In fact, Pierre Juneau, former President of the Corporation, stated before the Standing Committee that the phrase "national unity" did not cause him any problems during his mandate. In fact, the CRTC made it clear that its interpretation of this term had never hindered free political discussion.
The Liberal Party feels that the Corporation must maintain its contribution to developing national unity, especially at a time when Canada seems so divided. If Canada is to have and maintain a national identity, we must bring all regions of this country together and create
a feeling of belonging, and we can do through a well-shuchired broadcasting system.
Interestingly, even the chairman of the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture supports the principle that the Corporation must maintain its mandate in this respect.

The minister has dismissed the CBC's 22-year old national unity mandate as intolerant interference, because the agency was maintaining this political value artificially and it was a constraint on freedom of expression.
I would like to bring to your attention, Mr. Speaker, one of the more serious shortcomings of the bill. As we mentioned earlier, it fails to recognize various CBC services. If you will permit me, Mr. Speaker, I would like to mention some of these services and highlight their importance.
The failure of Bill C-40 to recognize the CBC's all-news network in either English or French is extremely unfortunate, since we have seen that the corporation has made incredible progress in this area. I believe that this extremely innovative undertaking ought to be officially recognized.
As you are aware, Mr. Speaker, I come from New Brunswick which is the only officially bilingual province in the nation. English and French citizens have learned to live together in my home province. In many ways we have demonstrated to the rest of the country what biculturalism is all about.
It seems to me that the recognition of the CBC all-news network would be important and that it would help create and foster a sense of nationhood. Moreover, the development of a French all-news network would go a long way toward helping relieve some of the tensions which our country now faces.
As for the other services including the parliamentary service, Radio Canada International and the CBC northern service, I believe that the government should heed the advice contained in the 1987 sixth report of the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture. It should provide these services with legal recognition in order to help forestall the possibility of abolition in times of budgetary restraint.
November 27, 1990

CBC is in a very difficult position at this time, as it can neither operate with a deficit nor can it borrow money. The minister well knows this. It is very important that the government and the minister put in this bill the power to guarantee the place for CBC and to guarantee its future budgets.


Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I can see that it is approaching 12.56 p.m. I know that I will be stopping at 12.58 p.m. and will be speaking on this legislation after three o'clock.
I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the hon. member for Mount Royal on her amendment to the legislation, an amendment that we support whole-heartedly. We believe that those amendments are fundamental. They are very important amendments made in good faith. It is our hope that the government will take those amendments to heart and will deal with them accordingly-
As it has indicated before, the CBC is a must. It is not a luxury. It is not something that our society or our country can live without. CBC is a necessity for our society. It does not matter how we look at it, whether we are talking about our culture, Canadian unity, our history, the Canada that we want to build and see 15, 20 or 100 years from now, CBC always has been in the past and still is on the leading edge in promoting Canadian unity and culture.
We only have to look at Newsworld, as one example as my colleagues indicated a little earlier. That is one of the very few broadcasting institutions in our country where 90 per cent of its broadcasting is purely Canadian. That is something we have to pride ourselves in and to commend CBC on providing.
The second service is the parliamentary channel. I have been informed that over 7.7 million Canadians listen to the parliamentary channel on a regular basis. That is another very important service that is provided by CBC.
Of course that is not to mention Canada International, the international news system which we have in place. Nowadays, when Canada has an incredible, excellent and great reputation internationally, I think to turn around and shut down such an institution internationally would not serve our purpose or our country.
As many of my colleagues have indicated, we do support the amendment. I can see the clock approaching
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1 p.m. At this point in time, I would like to commend my colleague on introducing those great amendments. I will be speaking on the bill a little later.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: We are voting on Motion No. 12, in the name of Mrs. Finestone. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: All those in favour will please say yea.


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 76(8), the recorded division on the motion is deferred.
The next vote is on Motion No. 13, in the name of Mrs. Finestone. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: All those in favour will please say yea.


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 76(8), the recorded division on the motion is deferred.

November 27, 1990


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The next vote is on Motion No. 14, in the name of Mrs. Finestone. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: All those in favour will please say yea.


Some hon. members:: Yea.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: 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:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 76(8), the recorded division on the motion is deferred.
The question is on Motion No. 15 standing in the name of Mrs. Finestone. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: All those in favour will please say yea.


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 76(8), the recorded vote on the motion stands deferred.
The question is on the amendment to Motion No. 42. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: All those in favour will please say yea.


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 76(8), the recorded vote on the amendment stands deferred.
It being one o'clock, I do now leave the Chair until two o'clock this afemoon.
At 1 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday Canada Post announced that it is going to be closing the Yorkton post office on March 1, 1991.
Yorkton is a city of nearly 20,000 people, a trading area of some tens of thousands of people, and despite that this callous government across the way wants to close the post office.
I want is a justification from the government across the way as to why they it is doing it. I also want it to reverse that decision because if Yorkton, with at almost 20,000 people, goes, then what about the other towns and the other small cities across Saskatchewan and across Canada? How long is it before Kamsack, Estevan, or Weybum are closed as well?
The government across the way does not give a damn about rural Canada. I invite today the back-benchers of the Conservative Party to stand up and join me in a fight to save the Yorkton post office, to reverse that decision, to stand up for rural Canada, and to stand up for some of the historical values and contributions made in the

country by rural people. What is it doing to our rural way of life, to a service that people need, and a service that people want? Justify the decision and reverse it.


POSTAL SERVICE
Mr. Len Hopkins (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke):: Mr. Speaker, there are many people on Rural Routes 1 and 2, Renfrew, Ontario, who wish that Canada Post would take their complaints about mail service seriously.
On October 1, Canada Post decided to award one contract for the two rural mail routes to a person who does not live on either route. Canada Post unceremoniously dispensed with two well-liked and efficient contractors who knew everyone along the way. In return, it gave the people a service where cheques and other types of mail were ending up in neighbours' mailboxes; letters that were put in mailboxes for the contractor to pick up were left in the mailboxes; a businessman lost the opportunity to bid on a contract because the tender was floating around in the system; and wrongly delivered letters that were put back into the mailboxes with instructions as to where they belonged were being delivered back into the same mailboxes a few days later.
Customers on RR 1 and 2 Renfrew want me to call on Canada Post again to treat their legitimate complaints seriously, to review the contract that was granted on October 1, to talk to the customers about the type of mail service they are receiving and to get this serious problem settled now.


AGRICULTURE
Mrs. Louise Feltham (Wild Rose):: Mr. Speaker, my compliments go out to the federal and provincial ministers of agriculture who recently agreed in Winnipeg to several initiatives recommended by agri-food policy review task forces.
One in particular will lead to the creation of an agri-food advisory council for environmental sustainability. This council will advise ministers on resource base and environmental policy issues for the agri-food sector. This is one element of a three-part strategy relating to the conservation of soil and water and the protection of the environment. The strategy will also involve the
private sector which will advise on programs in each province relating to the sustainability of agricultural resources.
Hon. members anxiously await the ministers' next meeting scheduled for Februaiy when they will assess the situation following the conclusion of the GATT negotiations and discuss the cost-sharing formula of the proposed safety net system.


GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Giuseppe (Joseph) Volpe: Mr. Speaker, we can see that the GST is already hurting our economy. For example, under the GST transitional rules all industries, except the housing industry, will get rebates for inventory on hand at December 31, 1990.
With new housing, purchasers of homes started prior to that date will qualify for an FST rebate of 2.8 per cent of the purchase price if they close before February 15, 1991. They get nothing after that date. All inventory standing as of December 31 carries the full FST and is subject to full GST if unsold by March 31. That inventory will suffer a double taxation.
A high interest rate policy and a phenomenon of walk-away purchasers are exacerbating that problem. Those in housing propose one simple, corrective solution. Specifically, will the Minister of Finance extend the deadlines for the FST rebate provisions, or will he allow builders the same rebates available to purchasers, following the March 31, 1991 deadline?


REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Mr. J. W. Bud Bird (Fredericton-York-Sunbury):: Mr. Speaker, the concept of regional development is frequently misunderstood by many Canadians, particularly those in regions who do not require such help.
We must always remember that Canada is a confederation of regional distinctions, some of which have economic advantages over others. One principle of Confederation is a fair balance between regions so that economic advantage and disadvantage are equalized.
All too often, regional development is characterized as charity. Nothing could be further from fact. Regional

November 27, 1990
S. ft 31
development is a right in Confederation. That is why the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency is so crucial to the Atlantic region. It is a program of fundamental economic advantage to these four provinces, which is designed to provide the potential for economic balance with more affluent regions of Canada.
It is not only important that we maintain ACOA's advantage, it is even more important that we use it wisely and well to create lasting benefits which, themselves, will help achieve the balance and may, eventually, even remove the need for special regional aid. Until then, regional development is a unique and essential instrument of Canadian Confederation in Atlantic Canada and elsewhere.


INUIT RELOCATION
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, we are appalled by an article in The Ottawa Citizen today which denies the suffering endured by Inuit of northern Quebec, who were relocated to the Canadian high Arctic in the 1950s as part of a government initiative. It is obvious that the writer has not spoken to any of the Inuit involved, nor does he have any personal knowledge of the circumstances and hardships which confronted these Inuit people.
The writer accuses the survivors and descendants of the relocation of spreading garbage. Perhaps this writer, unlike the people who were relocated, never had to forage through a white man's dump because he was hungry.
The article is misinformed, ill-researched, and pompous. Not only do these Inuit people deserve recognition of their suffering and an apology from the Canadian government, they now deserve an apology from the writer of this disgraceful article.


AGRICULTURE
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, from December 3 to December 7, International Trade ministers from 100 or so GATT member States will meet in
Brussels to conclude the Uruguay Round and make decisions on the future of world trade. This Round is the most ambitious one we have known since 1948.
The Union des producteurs agricoles in Abitibi- Temiscamingue has made frequent representations during the past few months. It is afraid the Canadian government's strategy consists in gaining access to international markets for our wheat in exchange for dropping subsidies and production support programs in Eastern Canada for milk, beef, pork, and so forth.
Mr. Speaker, Canadian representatives must stand up for our farm producers in Quebec and Canada.


PREMIER OF NEWFOUNDLAND
Hon. Jean Lapierre (Shefford):: Mr. Speaker, last Saturday, in La Presse, we were again treated to one of those recycled statements by "Lord Screech". Premier Clyde Wells was at it again, and all I can say is that although as Quebecers, we patiently listened to him for eighteen months when there was still hope for renewed federalism, today, our patience has run out. We will not stand for lectures from the Premier of Newfoundland on citizenship or Politics 101, Mr. Speaker.
The Premier of Newfoundland had the nerve to say that the Belanger-Campeau Commission was unlawful. Mr. Speaker, we have news for the Premier. The Belanger-Campeau Commission will serve as a guide for all Quebecers in deciding on their common future, and nothing Clyde Wells can do will stop them. Quebecers have nothing to learn from " Lord Screech" who says today it is up to the federal government to decide on our future.
Mr. Speaker, the right to self-determination is internationally recognized. Even Newfoundland called a referendum to decide whether it would join Canada. And today, they would deny us the same basic right? Mr. Speaker, that is unacceptable!


Mr. Speaker:: I regret the hon. member's time has expired.


CO-OPERATIVE HOUSING
Mr. Mike Breaugh (Oshawa):: Mr. Speaker, today 12 different housing interest groups are on Parliament Hill lobbying for continued support for co-operative housing by the federal government.
They want the federal government to make a commitment now to continue direct sponsorship of the index-linked co-operative housing program in 1991 and beyond. The income mix as it now exists in housing co-operatives has been developed over the past 20 years and allows people from different economic and social backgrounds to build strong, healthy communities together. The index-linked mortgage has significantly lowered the cost of developing non-profit, co-op housing. The current program costs 58 per cent less in the first year and almost 20 per cent less over a project's life than the previous program.
As the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' Big Cities Mayors Caucus has put it, it urges "the federal government to maintain the federal non-profit co-op housing program with the existing income mix component".


THE NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Mr. John Nunziata (York South-Weston):: Mr. Speaker, more on NDP hypocrisy.
I am deeply concerned about both the Ontario New Democratic Party and their federal cousins here in Ottawa. It seems that they are unable to decide in which direction they are headed. Simply put, they do not know which end is up.
One example is the Ontario government, headed by back-flip Bob, who have reneged on a majority of election promises. Now these self-annointed environmentalists have proposed to extend the already overburdened Keele Valley Dump site, thus threatening the Oak Ridges Marine.
What makes this situation comical is that the federal NDP is putting forth a candidate claiming to be an environmental engineer, if you can believe it, in the York North by-election where the dump is located. This type of confusion is consistent with NDP policy-making.
After all, the party to my left is where Big Bad Bob received his political training.
A second example of confusion politics is the NDP stand on constitutional reform. It has managed to cover all of its bases with a federal leader who states that she is a federalist, her entire Quebec caucus which believes in sovereignty-association, and a provincial leader who has absolutely no idea where he stands.
Yes, Mr. Speaker, I am truly worried about the NDP.


PERSIAN GULF
Mr. Peter L. McCreath (South Shore):: Mr. Speaker, the gulf crisis is not an issue over which Canadians should seem to be divided.
It would seem that it has become the pattern of politics in the country that the opposition is not prepared to agree with the government even on the time of day or the weather forecast.
But Canadians cannot seem, nor should they be, divided on the actions of a Saddam Hussein. We cannot seem to be divided over the actions of a nation that arbitrarily invades its neighbours, or a leader who is prepared to use his nations' children as cannon fodder, or to gas his own troops.
The world is united against such actions and is preparing to send the message that such behaviour will not be tolerated, indeed will be repelled with force, if necessary.
Canada must stand unequivocally with our allies on this issue, and Canadians should stand united.
I urge all members of the House to put Canadian and world interests first, to lay aside their partisanship, and show Saddam Hussein and his ilk that their actions are totally unacceptable to Canadians.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Jean-Luc Joncas (Matapedia-Matane):: Next week, Mr. Speaker, the representatives of 100 countries will meet in Brussels, Belgium, to seal the fate of international trade. For Quebec farmers and dairy producers, this round of GATT negotiations is one of the major indicators of the economic future of the whole agricultural community in Quebec. Since the mid 1980s

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the United States and the European Community have been waging a costly war to market their agricultural products, a war whose annual tab amounts to $300 billion in financial support of every description.
Mr. Speaker, I urge our govemement to remain firm at the negotiation table so that our agricultural producers may keep what they have acquired through many years of efforts and sacrifices.


MILITARY FAMILY SUPPORT CENTRES
Ronald MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, as you know, my riding of Dartmouth is home to many of the men and women who are currently serving under three Canadian naval ships, HMCS Alhasbaskan, HMCS Terra Nova and HMCS Protecteur which have been deployed in the Persian Gulf.
It is also home to the families who have been left behind while their loved ones go off to an area of the world in conflict. To say that these people-wives, husbands, children, parents, and friends-are living through a stressful period of time would be an understatement.
Fortunately, they do not have to wait in isolation. Thanks to the work of the Military Family Support Centre, under the direction of Lieutenant Commander Tom Willdey, they have been strengthened through the establishment of special Ships Spousal Support Networks for each of the ships on deployment.
It is a chance for the families who have been left behind to get together and get involved in activities, to be updated on Gulf news, or simply to enjoy the company of someone with whom they share a similar experience.
The idea of the Ships Spousal Networks is not new. They often come about when a vessel is away at sea. However, under these circumstances these networks are special and participants are describing them as a lifeline.
Thanks to the work of Lieutenant Commander Willdey, the staff, and volunteers at the military family support centre, these life lines remain strong. For that
the families, the community, and members of all parties in the House of Commons thank them.


VETERANS AFFAIRS
Mr. Lee Richardson (Calgary Southeast):: Mr. Speaker, last Friday, a few veterans in my constituency were left with the mistaken impression that they would be adversely affected by spending cuts included in the supplementary estimates. I have discussed this matter with the Hon. Gerry Merrithew, Minister of Veterans Affairs, and am pleased to tell those veterans and the House that they will not be touched as the Department of Veterans Affairs finds $3 million in reductions.
For instance, there will be no reduction in budgets for disability pensions, no reductions in war veterans allowances, and no reductions in the Veterans Independence Program. The cost of transport for counsellors to veteran clients will not be cut. No cuts are being made in the operation of the veterans' hospital or veterans' homes. Reductions will only apply to operating and capital budgets so veterans in Calgary and across the country will not be adversely affected by spending cuts.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Herb Gray (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. Canadians are aware of a draft resolution currently under discussion among members of the United Nations Security Council. This resolution would authorize all necessary means to get Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait on or before a deadline, likely this coming January 1 or January 15.
Yesterday, speaking from the Middle East, the Secretary of State for External Affairs said, and I quote: "My personal view is that deadlines are artificial."
Will the Prime Minister confirm that the Secretary of State for External Affairs was speaking for the government when he said that deadlines are artificial?


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, the resolution to which my hon. friend refers contains the words "draft resolution" because it is just being considered by members of the Security Council. It demands that Iraq comply fully with Resolution 660 and all subsequent relevant resolutions and decides, while maintaining all of its decisions, to allow Iraq one final opportunity, as a pause of goodwill, to do so.
I think that the Secretary of State spoke about what all members of the Security Council who seek peace and who seek the respect of the Security Council resolutions and not war, have been addressing. The pause of goodwill would be sufficient to allow the President of Iraq another opportunity to reflect upon actions that he has taken and to do what the world community unanimously has called upon him to do, namely, to withdraw from Kuwait and to return to the borders of his own country.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has not denied that the Secretary of State for External Affairs was speaking for the government when he said that deadlines are artificial.
Therefore, I ask the Prime Minister: Has the government instructed its representatives at the United Nations Security Council to inform the other members of that council that Canada will not support a deadline being included in the draft resolution on Iraq currently being discussed among members of that council?


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I have indicated very carefully what the Secretary of State for External Affairs is seeking to achieve, and it is consistent with the participants at the Security Council who on every resolution, of which this will be the eleventh, have supported almost unanimously the requests that the authority and the moral authority of the United Nations be respected and defended. Yesterday, for example, by way of illustration, it is reported that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev delivered an ultimatum to Iraq last night warning it to withdraw from Kuwait or face the worst consequences. "If Iraq really wanted to settle within the entire region and is interested in avoiding the worst, it must now openly pull out
Oral Questions
of Kuwait and release hostages, " Gorbachev reportedly told Foreign Minister Aziz.
President Gorbachev said: "He must weigh everything once more. The fate of Iraq is now in the hands of its own leaders and time is expiring". Indeed, this is the language and the substance of the resolution. Time is indeed expiring. What Canada is seeking is the opportunity for the President of Iraq to weigh this very carefully and to make a considered decision, such as the one that President Gorbachev yesterday invited him to make in the interests of world peace.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, we all welcome the interest of President Gorbachev in peacefully resolving this matter.
I did not hear any deadline mentioned in the quotation from President Gorbachev read out to the House by the Prime Minister. The UN resolution does make a specific reference to a deadline.

Speaking to an American Senate committee this morning, former American Defence Secretary James Schlesinger said that so far economic sanctions against Iraq have produced the expected results but might have to be maintained for a whole year if they are to have a decisive impact. His opinion is shared by a good many international affairs experts.
My question to the Prime Minister is this: Does he share the views of these experts and, if not, would he explain why?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, sanctions do have an impact on Irak, and this is why the Canadian government approved them and support them with the troops that have been sent to the scene.
Nothing in the resolution proposed for the consideration of Security Council members flies in the face of that reality. However most council members see eye to eye on one point: if the president keeps insisting, they might have to consider other circumstances and other options. But that is as far as the resolution goes. Nothing there clashes with the position taken by the Canadian government, or those of the President of the Soviet

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Union or of the President of the French Republic, to name just a few.


Mrs. Christine Stewart (Northumberland):: Mr. Speaker, as my colleague just said, according to many observers there is strong evidence that sanctions are working.
It would seem important to listen to further evidence concerning sanctions from our parliamentary delegation now in Iraq. We would like further clarification and to know if the Prime Minister agrees today that sanctions still are the best means to achieve UN goals and a resolution of the conflict in the Gulf?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, we are there in the gulf because we seek to avoid war. We seek to defend the interests and the integrity of the United Nations. We seek to assist in the deterrence of aggression which is consistent not only with our traditions and our history, but also with our position as one of the founding nations of the United Nations.
Indeed, we believe that sanctions have played and will continue to play a useful role. There is nothing in the draft resolution at variance with that.


Christine Susan Stewart: Mr. Speaker, so that all members can participate in a full and informed debate tomorrow on the Gulf crisis, I would ask the Prime Minister to fulfil the promise made to this House yesterday and table today full information on the effectiveness of the sanction policy.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, indeed there is a motion for tomorrow:
That this House, noting that the government of Iraq has not complied with the United Nations Security Council resolutions concerning the invasion of Kuwait and the detention of third country nationals, supports the United Nations in its efforts to ensure compliance with Security Council Resolution 660 and subsequent resolutions.
That will be debated by all members of the House. The Secretary of State for External Affairs is on his way back from Jordan and Israel presently. He will no doubt provide information we have available on sanctions.


An hon. member:: He is not here yet.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Well, he is not here yet but I will ask to see what information is available that might be relevant.
There will be this debate tomorrow. Not only will all members participate but it will be interesting to see how all members vote.


Mr. John Brewin (Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, the resolution which the Prime Minister just read out does not, as the Prime Minister I am sure will concede, expressly commit the Canadian government to place Canadian troops in any offensive action against Iraq, should that be authorized by the United Nations. That resolution which is coming before the Security Council on Thursday, according to the drafts that are now circulating, clearly authorizes the use of force in the gulf after the deadline-whatever the deadline ultimately is-is passed.
My question to the Prime Minister is this, will the Prime Minister make a clear, unequivocal commitment that before Canadian troops are committed to any offensive action against Iraq, the Prime Minister will bring a motion before this House giving this House a chance to pass judgment on whether Canadian troops as such should be committed to offensive action in the gulf?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the hypothesis that my hon. friend raises is one to which I will respond only because it is in the context of a debate that will take place tomorrow.
I personally believe and have said many times that the action that was taken at the United Nations and the action that is proposed is designed to convey an unequivocal message to the president of Iraq that aggression does not pay and that lawlessness is an unacceptable code of conduct in the international community.
That having been said, the hypothesis that my hon. friend raises would represent a substantial variance from policy at this point in time and I would be happy to ask the House leader to consult with members of the House to ensure that there is full participation.


John F. Brewin: Mr. Speaker, I doubt if anyone in this House, let alone the Canadian people, could understand what the Prime Minister just said in respect of the specific question that I asked, that is will there be a debate in this House on a clear resolution authorizing Canadian participation in force, or will there not be? Will the Prime Minister indicate how he interprets the resolution, that is the motion that is being placed before the House for debate tomorrow? Will he acknowledge that does not in fact give the government

Oral Questions
the right to place Canadian troops at war in the Middle East?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, we brought the matter forward for full debate on September 24. It is going to be brought before the House for full debate again tomorrow. If circumstances require, we will bring it for debate again.


John F. Brewin: I take that, Mr. Speaker, and I assume that the House will take that as in fact a commitment that before troops are committed to the Persian Gulf that the government will bring forward yet another resolution.
Let me conclude with a supplementary on the resolution that is coming before the UN on Thursday.
It is clear to this House and to the world that a war in the gulf will be a catastrophe not just for Canadians or other forces who are involved but for civilians, the environment and the whole region.
Will the government use its position on the Security Council just for once in this term and speak and act independently at the Security Council for peace and not war in the Persian Gulf?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, that is a deeply offensive suggestion to the people who represent Canada on the Security Council whose entire commitment is to the cause of peace.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Martin Brian Mulroney: From the very beginning, Canada's conduct has always been devoted to the cause of peace. It was our position. We could hardly be accused of anything when our position was the same on most of these motions as China, the Soviet Union, Colombia, Cote-d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Finland, Romania, Malaysia or Yemen.
This is the international community coming together and saying to those of all political persuasions from all areas of the world and conveying a message to Saddam Hussein that indeed, as my friend says, war is a catastrophe.
Rather than accuse the United Nations or the United States, the NDP should be conveying that message to Iraq.
[Translation\


HOUSING
Mac Harb: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of State for Housing. The minister is about to table before Cabinet his recommendations regarding the co-operative housing mouve-ment. The Canadian people are concerned that the government will abolish the mixed income housing program which was very successful in the past. Why does the minister intend to abolish the Co-operative Housing Program? Will he tell the Canadian people now what his plans are?


Hon. Alan Redway (Minister of State (Housing)):: Mr. Speaker, I have said a number of times in the House already and as recently as last evening that the government is reviewing the current Co-operative Housing Program that has been in place for the last five years.
We are consulting in good faith with the co-operative housing movement and the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada. I will be making recommendations in due course before the end of the year on where we should be going in co-op housing from here on in. No question about it, I will be making those recommendations.


Mac Harb: Mr. Speaker, the minister is well aware that there are over 1.2 million Canadians who are in need of housing.
I would like to specifically ask the minister if he will extend his support to: One, meeting the high demand for co-operative housing through the construction of at least
5,000	units annually. Two, the continuation of index-linked financing, and three, the maintenance of the income mix component for new and existing co-operative housing.


Alan Redway: Mr. Speaker, in 1985 the government undertook some consultations with all people involved in housing in Canada.
At that time, as a result of those discussions, the government arrived at a policy whereby all federal housing dollars would be targeted toward low income Canadians.

Oral Questions
The Co-operative Housing Program, as the hon. member knows, is an exception to those principles. It is an exception because the philosophy of co-operative housing is to have a mix of income in a co-operative housing project. That is something we are looking at very closely at at the present time.
The recommendations that I will be making to cabinet will address the whole issue of income mix. It will address the issue of ILM mortgages and the whole question of a continuing co-operative housing policy and program federally.


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Joe Fontana (London East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Finance. Housing starts are at their lowest level in six years, down 40 per cent. The construction industry has 82,000 unemployed and climbing, and could reach 150,000 in the next month or two.
Now that the minister has admitted that he has purposely triggered this recession and inflicted this pain, will he now do the right thing: lower interest rates, scrap the GST and start building this country instead of tearing it down?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, it is a gross distortion of the policy of this government to suggest that we have triggered a recession deliberately. The hon. member talks about the low level of housing starts, and that is true. What has happened here is we had a very strong level of housing starts, in excess of 200,000 units a year and up as high as 240,000 units a year for a period. That has resulted in a fairly substantial amount of the demand being met. Now the pendulum has swung the other way. We hope that it will swing back soon to a more normal level of housing. We have seen interest rates come down. Five-year mortgage rates have come down from the 14.25 to 14.5 per cent to the 12.75 to 13.0 per cent range, and other mortgages rates have come down as well.
This we believe is the best thing that we can do without doing things that will distort the housing market, as the housing industry would agree. They do not want us to put special programs in that will distort the market, but they do want us to get interest rates down. That is what we have been doing.


Joseph Frank (Joe) Fontana: Mr. Speaker, surely the Minister of Finance is not suggesting that interest rates are low enough. In fact, he should know that support for his government is even lower than the interest rates in this country.
My supplementary question is this. Effective April 1, 1991, 1991 home buyers, if there are any left, who buy a home which which was completed in 1990 but not yet sold will get no FST rebate but will also have to pay the GST. Why does this government insist on double-dipping into the pockets of new home buyers who are already pounded by this government's high interest rate policy? Will this government reverse that double-dipping policy?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I met with representatives of the housing industry just yesterday. This was a proposal that they put on the table that I said I would give consideration to. At this point I am not in a position to say what we would do.


Mr. David Barrett (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister for International Trade. Given the press reports that President Bush conditionally agreed to Canada sitting at the negotiating table to discuss free trade with Mexico, I ask the minister to please tell this House today exactly what the specific conditions are that Canada has agreed to in order to participate in these negotiations. Will the minister table all correspondence that his department has had with the United States relative to the Mexico-Canada-U.S. free trade agreement, plus research papers that support Canada's position?


Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister for International TVade):: Mr. Speaker, I am indeed glad to welcome the hon. gentleman back from his prolonged siesta.


Mr. Speaker:: I know that the hon. minister is motivated by only the best of good wishes, but I would hope that he would remember the rules here and carry on with the answer to the question.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, I am certainly not going to ask the hon. gentleman to vamoose.
With respect to his question, he is a little out of date because it was two or three months ago, I believe-I cannot remember the exact date-that we agreed with the United States and Mexico to engage in a consultation

Oral Questions
as to how we would best proceed with a trilateral negotiation of a possible U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement. The U.S. administration agreed to that then.
I will be having a meeting at Brussels toward the end of the week or on the week-end with the minister of trade of Mexico and Carla Hills, the U.S. trade negotiator on that subject. Our officials have had several meetings. We are working on a series of papers in that connection. By the early winter we expect to know whether or not we will engage in a such a trilateral negotiation.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, there is a difference between having a siesta and being asleep at the switch.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: If the hon. member says there is a difference, I accept that there is a difference.


David Barrett: Having sold out Canada in the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, the minister is now being asked what specific conditions the Americans are asking for. Of course he has not answered that question.
I now ask the minister what steps he will take to ensure Canadian working men and women that they will not be faced with cheap Mexican wages competing with existing Canadian jobs in Canada and lose thousands of jobs, as they already have under the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is apparently afraid of every country in the world that has lower wages than Canada. If that is his policy, then we will cease trading and we will raise prohibitive tariffs against every developing country in the world. This apparently is the new humanitarian NDP policy: we cut off every country in the world that has lower wages.
As a matter of fact, since January 1989, 207,000 net jobs have been created here in Canada, of which 180,000 or 87 per cent have gone to women. That is the record of
success that we have achieved despite difficult economic conditions.


GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND TRADE
Hon. Roy MacLaren (Etobicoke North):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister for International Trade.
In the Uruguay Round of the GATT, tougher rules regarding intellectual property are being sought, including for pharmaceuticals.
Is the Canadian government satisfied with the draft proposals permitting Canada to continue its current system of compulsory licensing in the pharmaceutical industry? Or, does the government envisage that it will need to change the present Canadian system?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, as a matter of fact there is an interesting comparison here between a sensible question being asked and the previous question that was asked.
This is an important issue that the hon. gentleman is asking about. There is a negotiation on TRIPs, so-called, trade related intellectual property, and about the U.S. and parts of Europe including Switzerland. The European Community has made suggestions in connection with the intellectual property matter that would prohibit compulsory licensing systems, for example, applying only to special fields of technology.
As far as the government is concerned, we are very satisfied with the present system that we have in effect. It was passed by the House several years ago, as I remember. There was considerable opposition from members opposite, but now they apparently support that system. I gather from the tenor from the hon. member's question that they realize their mistake and are supporting our system. We intend to continue to support it ourselves.


Mr. Bob Speller (Haldimand-Norfolk):: Mr. Speaker, my sensible question is for the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs.
The minister will be aware that the use of generic drugs has saved consumers hundreds of millions of dollars. If compulsory licensing is dropped at GATT, it could wipe out thousands of Canadian jobs.

November 27, 1990
Oral Questions
Will the minister tell this House once and for all that he will not sacrifice Canadian jobs just to satisfy his government's American corporate friends?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, apparently the hon. gentleman did not hear the previous question or the previous answer.
I can certainly tell him that this government is not going to sacrifice Canadian jobs for anyone, including hon. members opposite.


IMMIGRATION
Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration.
Canadians who leave the country to marry a citizen of another country have to wait two years or more before their spouses can come to Canada.
Can the minister tell Canadians, and in particular Canadians of Indian origin, that this inhumane, long delay will not be tolerated any more and that new measures will be introduced to reunite spouses as soon as possible?


Hon. Barbara McDougall (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, clearly this is a matter of some considerable concern from a humanitarian point of view.
However, as the hon. member knows, part of the reason for the delay is simply the high demand of people who want to come to Canada. As the hon. member also knows from my announcement on immigration levels, with the additional money that we are going to put into processing we will be able to speed this process up, I would hope quite considerably. We will be moving spouses to the top of our priority list, as we move into our new immigration plan.


Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, the minister said that it is due to the high demand of people who want to come to Canada. But why do spouses have to wait over two years to be reunited? Why does the minister demand that spouses be separated immediately after getting married?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, what I am saying is that our immigration plan does call for better conditions for
spouses. It is a problem, but it is also due to the high number of people who are applying to come to Canada. We have the power to change the system to some extent, but not to the extent the hon. member and myself would like to.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment who has lost the battle in cabinet on including specifics on global warming in the shrinking green plan. Greed obviously packs more punch than green for the Conservatives and their millionaire friends in the fossil fuel sector.
Would the minister explain to Canadians why he has chosen pollution and profit ahead of the conservation and energy efficiency strategy, which would have cut carbon dioxide emissions and would have saved every man, woman and child in Canada $5,000 over the next 10 years?


Hon. Robert de Cotret (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, all I can say to my hon. colleague in answer to that question is that the only thing that is shrinking here is his knowledge base about what is going to be in the green plan.


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister. It will be interesting to see if when he said "billions" with an s it is the $5 billion that his predecessor promised in five $1 billion announcements.
Would the minister confirm that without action on global warming, which is clearly the most serious global environmental threat that we face, Canadians will face emergency costs as revealed in Geneva of $12 billion in dikes and other emergency measures to hold back sea rise over the next 20 years?


Robert René de Cotret: Mr. Speaker, I would like to re-emphasize the position that this Government of Canada has taken in Geneva.
First of all, we re-emphasized our commitment to stabilize greenhouse gases by the year 2000 at 1990 levels. Second, we stated very clearly in Geneva-and my colleague was there to hear me-that we accepted that further steps were required and that we would be working with the international community to set out those steps. Finally, we argued very strongly in that

forum that the convention to be negotiated, starting in January in Washington and leading up to the meeting on global warming in Brazil in 1992, should be negotiated at the same time as the protocols are negotiated so that the heads of state in 1992 could sign a comprehensive package.
We are moving very aggressively on global warming, and that is the reason why at the Geneva meeting Canada was singled out among a small group of countries as being among those that had moved aggressively on the issue.


CANADA SCHOLARSHIPS PROGRAM
Louise Feltham: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for Science. It pertains to the Canada Scholarships Program in science and technology.
Presently the Canada Scholarships Program in science and technology is not available to students attending colleges and technological institutes.
Could the minister apprise the House whether the government, as part of its commitment to improving Canadian competitiveness, plans to recognize the excellent research being conducted by the young men and women in our colleges and institutes, by implementing an awards program for technicians and technologists?


Hon. William C. Winegard (Minister for Science):: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question and for her continued interest in this subject.
There is no question that every member of this House would agree that technicians and technologists are an important part of making Canada a competitive nation. I have received hundreds of recommendations on this same issue. Maybe they have all been inspired by my hon. colleague.
I remind the House that this government, not very long ago, agreed to support a private sector led study on the role of technicians and technologists in Canada. I think what we will do-and it is on the science agenda and it will stay very high on the science agenda-is that
Oral Questions
as soon as funding becomes available, we would be pleased to consider it.


IMMIGRATION
Mr. Gilles Duceppe (Laurier-Sainte-Marie):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. We all know that Ottawa and Quebec are supposed to sign a new agreement on immigration. This morning, the Quebec Minister of Cultural Communities and Immigration pointed out that signing this agreement was essential if Quebec was to pursue its plans with respect to immigration and that the agreement was not incompatible with current attempts at constitutional clarification in Quebec. My question is this: Does the Prime Minister intend to sign this agreement as soon as possible and if not, why not?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, last week, before the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration, we talked about the Meech Lake Accord and a constitutional agreement, and subsequently about an administrative agreement. Of course, we are still working on this question but at this point it is impossible to set a date.


Gilles Duceppe: Mr. Speaker, if I understand correctly, the minister has just demonstrated that federalism can be an asset to Quebec. History will remember the important role played by the Prime Minister of Canada since his famous speech in Sept-iles on Quebec's progress towards sovereignty, and I want to thank him for that.


An hon. member:: That's more than you ever did!


Gilles Duceppe: However, would she perhaps tell us, in no uncertain terms, whether or not she will sign this agreement? Since there is no immediate connection with the discussions on our constitutional future, it is feasible in the present context.


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, the answer doesn't change just because the hon. member is a bit upset.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Barbara Jean McDougall: The answer is still the same. The Prime

November 27, 1990
Oral Questions
Minister and myself have said this is an important question, but other matters remain to be discussed. There may be an announcement at some future date.


FISHERIES
Hon. Roger C. Simmons (Burin-St. George's):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my friend, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. He will know that the inshore fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is a complete disaster once again this year. Ten thousand fishermen on the south west coast, in Labrador, and along the great northern peninsula are facing a pretty rough winter as a result.
Would he confirm for us that further quota cuts in the gulf are being contemplated? Also, would he indicate to the House what plans he and the government have to help those fishermen and plant workers who are caught in this situation, absolutely through no fault of their own?


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member says that it is not a fault of their own. Certainly members will not at this time blame the Spaniards or the Portuguese for the overfishing of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
We know and we are aware that some fishermen have raided the resource by discarding and dumping at sea in ways that are totally unacceptable. We have people from the industry, from the provinces and from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans working out a plan to try to address these enormous problems in the gulf.
Yes, we are contemplating reduction of the total allowable catch in that area, but before we make that decision we have to see what measures we can take to try to alleviate the impact that this could have on fishermen on both sides of the gulf.


Roger Simmons: Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed in the minister. He will want to reflect on the answer he just gave, because apart from it being inaccurate it is unfair.
He may be talking about some people but, if he listened to my question, he is not talking about the people in my first question. I carefully did not say people in other provinces or in other parts of Canada. I carefully
said people on the south west coast of Newfoundland, in the great northern peninsula, and Labrador. I put to him in this House that none of them in these categories have been guilty of the kind of activities that he has described. He might first want to apologize to the House and to these people in particular.
I ask him, more to the point, to reflect on the question now that he understands it and tell us what he is going to do for those people who, I repeat to him, through no fault of their own find themselves in the situation.
I am not suggesting that it is particularly the minister's fault either, but he is in a position to do something about it. I appeal to him, on behalf of those people, to do exactly that instead of flailing away and blaming people who do not deserve-


Mr. Speaker:: I am sure the hon. member has put his question. The hon. minister.


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, I fully understand that the answer or the solution does not lie in trying to blame anyone for the problems that fishermen on the south west coast of Newfoundland are experiencing and will be experiencing.
I think the hon. member knows the concern that this government has shown for fishermen affected by a reduction in fishing quotas. We will monitor the situation in the next few weeks and in the next few months. If it becomes required to implement measures to try to be helpful to those communities and those fishermen, we shall proceed the way we have done in the past.


CHILDREN
Ms. Albina Guamieri (Mississauga East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Health and Welfare. On October 1st, this government virtuously declared it would designate a minister responsible for children. Today, we see reports telling us that 30 per cent of the 1,2 million children in Quebec schools are undernourished. I would like to ask the Minister responsible for children-that man who asked with such eloquence the rest of the world to fight children's poverty-to explain why his government did nothing to
November 27, 1990

put an end to that shameful situation in Canadian schools?


Hon. Perrin Beatty (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, the key responsibility of the federal government is ensuring that an attack is made on child poverty in Canada and around the world. We have made significant progress during the tenure of this government to lift children out of poverty, to give their parents the resources that they need to ensure that all children in Canada are properly nourished.
It is a commitment that is ongoing. It is one where we have made significant progress, and it is one where we are determined to make progress in the future.


Albina Guarnieri: Mr. Speaker, thousands of Canadian children cannot afford breakfast while this government is out to lunch.
I have a supplementary questions. Some 20 years ago, the Prime Minister's friend and mentor, Margaret Thatcher, as education minister cancelled the milk program for school children in England.
I ask the Minister of National Health and Welfare if the events at Westminster last week will encourage his government to repair the holes it has cut in Canada's social safety net and, for a change, bring in direct support for those children who are hungry.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, I have to give the hon. member credit for creativity, if not for her understanding of the Constitution. She may well understand education is a provincial responsibility as opposed to federal, but where the federal government does have a responsibility is in ensuring the welfare of Canadian citizens. We do that, first of all, with transfers to the provinces under the Canada Assistance Plan and, second, in ensuring that an attack is made nationally on the issue of poverty.
If the hon. member would consider the figures today with those when her party was last in office, she would find that poverty among all groups, and particularly among children, has declined significantly since the Liberals were thrown out of office.
Privilege


EMPLOYMENT
Mr. Steve Butland (Sault Ste. Marie):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration. I think everyone is relieved that Algoma Steel is back to work and hopefully 6,000 people will eventually get back to work. The callback threshold for steel workers to become eligible for UI has been designated as 1,870, more or less. I asked her chief policy adviser if 1,725 would be acceptable. He said: "Yes". I retorted: "1,625?" He said: "No.".
I am asking the minister which number would she endorse: 1,200, 1,625, 1,750, or 1,870, or none of the above?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, the question clearly is a frivolous one because what we do is determine every case on its merit and that is the part of what is in the legislation and what is in the regulation. It depends on the context of the situation. He knows that.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY
Mr. Speaker:: I draw the attention of hon. members to the presence in the gallery of the hon. Joel Matheson, Attorney General of Nova Scotia.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


PRIVILEGE
Jean-C. Lapierre: Mr. Speaker, I should like to draw your attention and that of hon. members to a question of privilege concerning services and resources which are available to members and which unfortunately are not fair at this time. You sent me a letter today-I take it upon myself to read it because it is so very short-in which you say: "Dear Colleague, be advised that the Board of Internal Economy has considered the note in which you propose that the board allocate funds to your group for research and for the leader's office. Having examined your request, the board members deemed it impossible to approve the allocation of funds for the time being. Sincerely yours-" and so on.

Privilege
Mr. Speaker, this response is not satisfactory at all, and when I think it took two months for each line, things are worse still. As far as I know the Board of Internal Economy is not a dictator and, in cases of requests for public funds, it should have to justify its decisions. Mr. Speaker, I simply cannot be satisfied with this "no", no "for the time being".
For what reasons was the request deemed impossible? I suggest that nine members of the House are entitled to know who made the decision. When you say "for the time being", what do you mean by "for the time being"? Will it be possible next week or even the following month?
Mr. Speaker, I call on your sense of fairness to explain to me why some members of this House have access to research services when others, who must play the role of opposition, do not have access to these same services.
Mr. Speaker, which rule of the House prescribes that there are two kinds of members? Does the decision of your board create two categories, those who are entitled to research services and have the right to carry out their mandate in the opposition, and the other element which is even worse, because with the budgets the traditional parties have voted for themselves they continue to use funds allocated at the time when some of us were in other parties. Mr. Speaker, we know that these amounts are calculated on the basis of the number of members in the House.
Therefore, I find it unacceptable that the Progressive Conservative Party should continue getting over one million dollars, the Liberal Party $674,000, the NDP $461,000, while no research staff is available to our group, which represents nine ridings.
Mr. Speaker, even in the Members' Manual of Allowances and Services, they explain that it was agreed later on to make the research funds also available to the caucuses and ordinary members.
When I read this on page 2 of Chapter E-8 of the Members' Manual of Allowances and Services, I agree with you that the members of our group rank as individuals members, but I do not understand why, if these funds are available to individuals members, your reply was so short, so unjustified and so unacceptable.
Mr. Speaker, I am aware that your Board of Internal Economy operates as a sort of small select club, but it is
indefensible not to provide the necessary means to those who have legitimately chosen to defend certain options which you might not share. But democracy being what it is, I feel that the Board of Internal Economy through its rules, is imposing what I call the tyranny of the majority. It will not allow the people who do not share their option to have access to the same services. I do not see why my friend the hon. member for Laurier-Sainte-Marie who sits here as an individual member should he not have access to as much research staff as the former member for Laurier-Sainte-Marie? What is the difference? Was he less properly elected then the former incumbent? What is this private club, whose members allow themselves millions of dollars but who refuse to make them available to the people who do not share their view, but who have greater legitimacy in public opinion?
My colleague of the Reform Party has no research staff either, and we all know that if an election was held today, she would represent many more citizens than all of the Western Tory Members put together. And I can foresee that if an election was held today, there would be very few Tory Members on the other side and that the Bloc quebecois would represent thousands and even millions of people.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member is making a point which goes very much to the administration of this place. I am listening carefully. A political speech is not going to help me make up my mind as to how I respond to the particular issue that the hon. member is raising.
I certainly have the hon. member's point. I would ask him to sum up.


Jean-C. Lapierre: Mr. Speaker, I would not want to dwell on this issue, but I must say that in order to fully carry out my responsibility as the member for Shefford, I must have the same rights and privileges as any other member in this House. I insist that all hon. members should be treated the same because we represent here thousands upon thousands of people. We want to do so adequately. Mr. Speaker, research staff are there first and foremost to make it possible for members of the opposition to make a thorough review of the government's legislation.
November 27, 1990

Mr. Speaker, we get them in large number everyday. It is clear that if we want to assume fully our responsibility-in spite of everything, we manage as best we can, and the public appreciates it, but it is not enough. I do not see why the member sitting in front of me has access to a research staff while I do not.
Mr. Speaker, it is a question of justice, fairness and ability to do the job. There are not two categories of members in this House and you must make sure that they receive the same treatment. There are not two categories of citizens, and there are not two categories of members. That is why I beseech you to reverse your decision, and if you refuse, you should at least have the decency to explain why.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member raises an interesting point. I would like to respond from my point of view and especially the view of my constituents in western Canada.
The hon. member says his party wants the same rights and privileges as other members. They have them, do they not? They have a research staff. They have people in their offices. We have three people in our office. They have three people in their office. They have their office budget like we all have. Each MP has that. They have that.
This Parliament has been very liberal-small /-toward the Bloc quebecois. That is what my constituents say.
They have places in this House. They have been asking questions. They have been allowed to get in the House after a questionable oath taking ceremony. We have been very liberal.
It is not a party. It does not have 12 people. Those are the rules. They should stop whining. The House has been very liberal to them and I find it shocking when they get up and whine, bitch and complain.
If my constituents were here in the House, they would be a lot harder on them than the rest of us. We have been very liberal toward them. They should stop whining and get to work by using their existing resources.
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Mr. Speaker:: I am going to exercise my prerogative as Speaker and take the point that the hon. member for Shefford has made. I see other members rising, and this could go on all afternoon.
It may well be only an administrative matter, but the hon. member has argued his case with some passion and I am going to consider it carefully.
I am going to return to the House, and I hope my response will at least show that the complaint has been taken seriously, which I know the hon. member wishes me to do. I hope that my response will be consistent with fairness in the House.
This is not a place to continue a debate on oaths or other things.



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[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of Bill C-40, an act respecting broadcasting and to amend certain acts in relation thereto and in relation to radiocommunication, as reported (with amendments) from a legislative committee.
Ian Gardiner Waddell: Motion No. 17
That Bill C-40 be amended in Clause 3 by striking out lines 39 and 40 at page 5 and substituting the following therefor:
"(vi) contribute to national unity, shared national consciousness and identity",


Sheila Finestone: Motion No. 30
That Bill C-40 be amended in Clause 5 by adding immediately after line 6 at page 9 the following:
"(a) establishes priorities for the system based upon the national interest;"


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, this is a very crucial amendment to the bill, perhaps to one of the most important parts of it. Let me summarize what it does.
The 1968 Broadcasting Act, the act that we are changing, says that part of the mandate of the CBC is to promote national unity.

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The government has removed that clause from the CBC's mandate. This is a very crucial change to a bill.
In describing the CBC's mandate, this present Bill C-40 describes it as follows: That the CBC should:
(i)	be predominantly and distinctively Canadian,
(ii)	reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional
audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions,
(iii)	actively contribute to the flow and exchange of cultural
expression,
(iv)	be in English and in French, reflecting the different needs and
circumstances of each official language community-
(v)	strive to be of equivalent quality in English and in French,
(vi)	contribute to shared national consciousness and identity,
(vii)	be made available throughout Canada-
(viii)	reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada;
And so on.
Yet, the government has removed the one obligation from the CBC, that of promoting national unity. The removal of this clause combined with the division of the CBC board into English and French standing committees weakens the CBC as a national institution. It seems to me that now more than ever we need someone to speak for Canada. We need to start looking about strengthening national institutions.
My hon. friend from the Bloc quebecois wants to dismember Canada, to have a separate Quebec and other separate regions in Canada.
There are forces in the country that are out to destroy this very country. There are traitorous forces in the country that want to dismember it. Surely, Mr. Speaker, the government itself should be moving to strengthen national unity, not to weaken the country; to strengthen national institutions, not to weaken them. That is what is happening in this bill.
Marjorie Nichols, my friend, writing in the paper today, The Ottawa Citizen, suggested that maybe we should privatize the CBC. Well, there again, we would lose another national institution. The people in the country are asking who is speaking for Canada. They are dying for someone to speak for Canada. Look at the opinion polls. They want someone to speak for Canada.
Steven Godfrey, in a recent article in The Globe and Mail, put it this way: "The proposed changes," that is, the change in dropping this clause out of the Broadcasting Act, the promotion of national unity, "are a sad commentary on the fact that there remains no area in which the very words 'national unity' can be spoken without inviting attack from members of the federal government alone. The federal government itself."
In an earlier speech today, I pointed out how the government is leeching the CBC by cutting back its budget and by relying more on advertising revenues to make it more of a commercial corporation. The government is squeezing and leeching the CBC. What is it doing now? It is meeching the CBC.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: I make reference to Meech Lake. What the government is doing is saying we want the CBC to have a Meech Lake view of Canada, but Canada is a little more than Joe Clark's community of communities. This is one reason why ordinary Canadians were opposed to Meech Lake. It is not because they were anti-Quebec, not at all. That is a misinterpretation in Quebec.
My friend laughs and many Quebecers believe that, but it was not to be anti-Quebec at all. Canadians believe, I think, that there is an over-all Canadianism that is beyond the regional loyalties and Canada must be more than 10 distinct societies. It is true that Quebec has a special place in Confederation, through language and culture, and should have power to do that.
Canadians, by and large, when they think about it, including English Canadians from all over the country, agree with that. But they do not want to see a number of decentralized distinct societies in the country so there is no national government at all. That is what this government is doing. That is what this Prime Minister tried to do with Meech Lake. That is why Canadians rejected that. There is a greater view of Canada.
When I was speaking in the Meech Lake debate, I said-and you have to remember that goes back a few years, Mr. Speaker-that Canadians do not want Team
November 27, 1990

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Alberta with Gretzky-he then played for Edmonton- or Team Quebec with Mario Lemieux-he was then playing for a Canadian team. They wanted Team Canada. They wanted to see one team and they wanted people to speak for Canada.
The minister and others have expressed the view that keeping the clause dealing with the CBC promoting national unity will lead to propaganda, that the CBC will be forced to maintain an artificial, political notion of unity in defiance of the artistic integrity of the corporation and the independence. The minister noted in his speech that Liberal governments in the past have launched witch-hunts against separatists in the CBC. That is wrong. Clearly, it is wrong.
It should be noted that the CBC's journalistic independence is protected elsewhere in the bill.
I see the minister leaving the House. I hoped the minister would stay and listen to this very important clause. He just puts his hand down and he leaves. It is one of the reasons why this minister has never got this bill through the House of Commons and why it is being delayed. He just does not simply care.
This is a key provision of the bill. The government has attacked the CBC in the past. It stacked the board of the CBC. It made political appointments, such as Bill Neville and Elizabeth Bumam. It has cut back the budget of the CBC. It attacked people in the last election campaign. Dale Goldhawk, for example, the president of ACTRA, was silenced and forced to resign his union position. It has taken after other people in terms of the investigation of election coverage in respect of the free trade issue. Look at the attacks on Roy Bonisteel and David Suzuki?
The CBC is in trouble. The CBC has problems. Part of the reason is because of this government. It is about to attack the CBC radio. I appeal to people out in the country who are followers of CBC radio and CBC television, when it is at its best, to stand up for the CBC and to stand up for Canada. Do not let the government destroy it. My God, it has destroyed almost everything we have got. It has taken our rural railways and our rural post offices and gotten rid of them. It has cut back railways. It is about to sell Petro-Canada. It has slavishly followed the United States in foreign policy. We are losing Canada. This whole country is up for grabs and this is an indication of what is going on. This country may not survive.
We are in a struggle for survival in the next couple of years. This government should be forced to go. It is too bad that we have this out-dated system where a government can be so low in the polls and at the same time still have a majority in the House of Commons, because we have gutless back-benchers who are afraid to vote against their government. If they were not afraid, we would not have the GST. We would not have the cutbacks in these national symbols.
The government is removing the national unity clause of the CBC. It has said to the CBC board of directors: "Well, now you have to sit in English. You have to sit in French." The next step will be while there will be an English network and a French network. Then there will be an English network responsible to the government in Ottawa and a French network responsible to the government in Quebec. Then there will be two countries. We are moving to lose Canada. We need people to speak up for Canada and we need these particular clauses.
I know there are arguments saying that the CBC should not be a propaganda tool. I do not believe the CBC is a propaganda tool with government. I think there are problems with the CBC. I think some of the commentators, as Rick Salutin said in the Saturday Night article recently, feel that perhaps there is too much centralized power in Toronto where the CBC broadcasters, such as the Peter-and-Wendy-and-Barbara group, take on too much power to themselves.
But the real view of the CBC is an instrument of national unity, reflecting Canadians to Canadians, taking every part of the country and showing it to other parts of the country, not being a commercial network, such as the American networks, being distinctively Canadian with 95 per cent Canadian content in drama, with a Canadian view of the world, reflecting to our people.
Who speaks for Canada, Mr. Speaker? Not the government. Who is going to stand up while this country is going to the dogs? I hope ordinary Canadians will put pressure on the government, hopefully to get it to resign and to change government in Canada.
I believe this country is worth fighting for. I believe we are losing it and I think that is a great tragedy. We have to fight it everywhere we can and this is one of the places to fight it. I am pleased my colleagues in the other

November 27, 1990
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opposition party are are also making this fight and I applaud them for that.
We want to see the role of the CBC to promote national unity. We want federal institutions to speak for Canada.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to thank the hon. member for his excellent presentation.
I am glad that this review of the Broadcasting Act provides us with another opportunity to talk about national unity. To me and to millions of Canadians and Quebecers, this question is extremely important, and I think it is a matter of utmost concern. I therefore want to take every opportunity to express my faith in a country I am proud of, a country that is mine, that is ours, and a country that is admired and respected throughout the world. Tell me: Where on this planet would we be better off than right here in Canada? Unfortunately, we are destroying this country with a bill that is a disaster, that is poorly drafted and unacceptable to Canadian men and women.
It should come as no surprise when I say that when I read the papers or watch television in Quebec, I can't help wondering who defends the interests of Canada in our province. There is plenty of talk about sovereignty and independence, but hardly a whisper about federalism. I am reminded of what was said so eloquently by the leader of my party. My leader said it this way: "No one has the courage to talk about Canada in Quebec," and I think this is very sad.
As you know, Mr. Speaker, my leader said no one has the courage to talk about Canada in Quebec, and I think he is right. And that is why I object to the abrogation of the national unity clause as proposed by Bill C-40 before the House today.
The bill, in fact, does away with the mission entrusted to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1968, and I quote:
Contribute to the development of national unity and provide for a
continuing expression of Canadian identity.
If we relieve the Corporation of this obligation, who will take over that responsibility? Isn't the corporation the nerve centre of our communications, as was said by our Prime Minister? What do we expect to accomplish with this wording change proposed by the government, for it does not add anything-quite the contrary, it diminishes the importance of the CBC mandate? There can be no doubt that at a time when our country has to cope with profound divisions concerning our constitution and linguistic issues, at a time when intolerance and racism are all too often so obvious, the CBC can indeed be the very link which unites Canadians from coast to coast and which can promote our identity and set off the absolutely unique nature of our nation.
Since the infrastructure is already in place, Mr. Speaker, I do not understand why we should fail to ensure that it is properly maintained and in good condition. Why would anyone want to thwart such positive measures and not promote national unity? I cannot understand that.
Can this kind of mission be considered as propaganda, as the Conservatives claim, and I quote my leader, Mr. Jean Chretien:
The raison d'etre of a country is to survive.
Quebecers have to be told about Canada. Never since
Confederation has the survival of our country been so seriously
threatened.
Even after the Meech Lake failure we must continue to cultivate the will to live together, to understand one another, and to respect, support and appreciate all our differences. We must put the emphasis on the similarities which unite us, not on the differences which divide us. By taking away from the CBC the mandate to promote national unity-and not the Union nationale, as our Minister of Communications said a number of times in the House, for he thinks we are still in the mid 1960s-are we going to prevent the broadcasting of scenes which do nothing at all for national unity? If so, I will come back on my position.
As I see it, changing the words will not change anything. Freedom of the press would always be respected, and I sincerely hope so. I have in mind the sad isolated incidents in Brockville and Sault Ste. Marie which, repeatedly shown on the screen, led us to believe that all English Canadians were intolerant, something

which our history has contradicted on a number of occasions. That is unacceptable.
I suggest that the government is making a serious mistake by weakening an institution such as the CBC, which is the cornerstone of our broadcasting system. As far as the government is concerned, the CBC should be relieved of its responsibility for national unity at the time when the government should be using eveiything at its disposal to ensure that the people of Canada are well informed and share a common vision of the future, while appreciating our regional and linguistic differences.
I believe that building national unity in Canada requires developing its character, building its identity and its national conciousness. We need strong institutions like the CBC to ensure that all regions and all social partners weave together the fabric of national unity.

Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, this is not the way this bill is designed. What this government is doing is building a form of sovereignty association into our national broadcasting system, the CBC, instead of building bridges of communication and common links across this land. Cultural survival is one of the critical issues today.
I have before me an interesting piece of legislation which is presently being looked at by the European council. They have set up an important fund called the Euromidges support fund. It was set up at the end of 1988 to develop the European cinematographic and audiovisual industry. Its main aim is of a cultural nature. It said in its report that the importance of audiovisual works in transmitting European culture in all its forms is obvious. The European cultural values in particular to younger generations must be communicated.
Cultural survival is a critical issue today. Broadcasting is a central vehicle through which Canadians can communicate, a major instrument for Canadian expression in the arts and entertainment, an essential means for providing a Canadian perspective in news information and programming. CBC reaches almost every household, so it is in a unique position to enable this cultural appreciation and growth as identification for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren. This is what will
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help form Canada and inform Canada. It becomes a very distinctive culture on the global map.
I find this whole approach totally disturbing. On the television sets in our living-rooms is this little remote control that my grandson calls "the little clicker". We hold the key to the future of the cultural identity of Canada. If you look at this bill and if you look at the way the government has put a sense of sovereignty association into this bill, it is totally disturbing. It has taken the CBC and divided it into English and French. It has taken the national unity mandate away from it. It has taken the CRTC and balkanized it by putting in a "he who hears decides" on a regional level. It has put in the potential for a challenge of its federal jurisdiction through its definition of programming.
This bill is totally unacceptable and the national unity clause is the greatest farce of them all when you see what the government has done in removing that. It has also removed all the other things that make this a distinctive Canadian unity from coast to coast and have allowed us to take a sovereignty association vehicle, instead of being the central nervous system of this country, the transportation unit of the intellect. We have managed to destroy a wonderful concept that needs to be reinstated into this country.


Jean-C. Lapierre: Since the House is dealing with Bill C-40, Mr. Speaker, I wish to express my views on the two amendments moved by my hon. colleagues of the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party and aimed at using the CBC in part as a propaganda agency.
I know that the Hon. Member for Mount Royal would simply love to see the CBC become an exponent of her own political convictions, that her leader would love to appear more often on the CBC and feels that the CBC should act as a agent of his party. Yet, Mr. Speaker, the fact remains that if we respect the freedom of the press, the creative ability and the record of an institution which has adequately served its listening and viewing public, I do not think that we should allow the CBC to become a propaganda agency.
The NDP member has emphasized that the CBC should-


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Weaken Canada!

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Jean-C. Lapierre: He said: "Weaken Canada". I say to the hon. member that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation would have no credibility if it were to become a propaganda tool. I am surprised these members show so little respect for the intelligence of the audience.
Mr. Speaker, you yourself were once a dynamic element of Radio-Canada, and I am sure you would never have wanted to become a propaganda tool. This particular clause in the Act could be interpreted very narrowly. If tomorrow morning, the hon. member for Mount Royal became minister of Communications, I predict she would immediately tell the president of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation about his obligation to promote national unity. And in any referendum we might have in Quebec, for instance, Radio-Canada would play a proactive role that would have no connection with the neutral and objective information gathering to which Radio-Canada has always been dedicated.
The hon. member said earlier that we did not talk enough about federalism, that not enough people were talking about it. The problem isn't Radio-Canada. The problem is that the hon. member can find no credible spokespersons for her option in Quebec today. Only her leader, on his occasional visits to Quebec, mumbles a few words about old-fashioned federalism. But we shouldn't blame Radio-Canada.
What we must realize is that there are no more credible Francophone spokespersons for the option they want to suggest, no one who is prepared to serve their cause, and that is true across the province. When I see this abdication reason and common sense, these demands for a propaganda mandate for a Crown corporation, I can tell them it won't work. Quebecers didn't give Radio-Quebec a mandate to work for Quebec's sovereignty. In fact, the first people to object would have been the hon. member for Mount Royal and all her friends in the Equality Party. They would immediately draw parallels with the Nazis or whatever. We have heard those speeches before.
Why do they want to make Radio-Canada do something they would not approve in the case of Radio-Quebec? When the Parti quebecois was in power in Quebec City, for instance, did they tell Radio-Quebec: Now you are going to pursue the same objectives as the government? Never, Mr. Speaker! They had too much respect for freedom of the press.
When I heard the hon. member for Mount Royal say that the leader of her party said a country's purpose in life was to survive, I thought I never heard such a stupid statement. A country's purpose in life, Mr. Speaker, is to share what we have and to establish common institutions. Survival is not enough. When I hear them saying this sort of thing, I am not surprised they have dropped substantially in the polls. They just want to survive, but we want more that just survive, we want to live! To that extent I believe that the definition she wants to give to the CBC again underlies the weakness of their arguments.
Mr. Speaker, they say that the CBC should develop a common vision of the future, but who will do that? The hon. member for Mount Royal, or perhaps the hon. member for Vancouver? Will it be Clyde Wells, Mr. Speaker? Can you imagine Clyde Wells being the CBC president tomorrow morning? What kind of propaganda outlet would it become?


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Jean-C. Lapierre: I see the Liberal members applauding. I can appreciate that, Mr. Speaker, because they may already be looking for a new leader and Clyde Wells seems to be giving a much better performance than their present leader. Even so, Mr. Speaker, I am not trying to promote him.
When I hear the kind of statements Clyde Wells has just made, suggesting that the Belanger-Campeau Commission is illegitimate, can you imagine what it would be like if he were president of the CBC! He would ban all news concerning the B-C Commisison. When he states that the future of the country lies in the Senate, it speaks volumes for intelligence and democracy! You know, Clyde Wells is the one who is called- In fact he is the Premier of Newfoundland, the man with great ambitions. He is learning French not only to be able to speak on the CBC English network, but now he also wants to speak in French on Radio-Canada!


Ian Gardiner Waddell: He is not a New Democrat.


Jean-C. Lapierre: He is not NDP, but NDPs are worse, Mr. Speaker.
The point I wish to make is that instead of asking the CBC to do the job for them, they should offer true alternatives to Quebecers. I respect their determination to promote federalism and Canadian unity. I tell them
November 27, 1990

that we are prepared to discuss this issue with them anywhere and anytime.
Over the past few weeks, Mr. Speaker, debates were held in 26 Quebec CEGEPs, and in most cases, the elected Liberal members did not have the guts to appear before the students. They had to send in their some insignificant party hacks. I can tell you that my friend from the NDP and my colleagues of the Bloc Quebecois took part in these debates. We did not ask the CBC to do our own job. The fact is that these people are desperate, that they cannot find anyone to transmit their message and they would gladly avail themselves of the federal government's resources.
Mr. Speaker, that happened before and I must confess that literally at the time the Canadian Unity Information Centre dumped millions upon millions of dollars on Quebec. A gentleman named Paul Tellier was in charge then but now the situation is different; such abuses were tolerated in the 1980s but today they would be totally unacceptable.
And I say to the Federalists: Go ahead, promote your convictions, but do not try this time to use Ottawa's spending power to buy the support of Quebecers. You would simply fail. Every effort to buy their support would result in a massive rejection. It is not without reason that the vision defended by the Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada only has a mere 6 per cent support in Quebec. This is not CBC's fault but that of the Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada himself, with 6 per cent. Even if he appeared every night on the CBC television network, he would not convince anybody. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I say to them: Do not try using federal taxpayers' money to put one over. Use the power of your convictions. The time for propaganda is over!


Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, it is a relief to get up to speak. I can only say that the unmitigated balderdash to which we have just been treated by the hon. member for Shefford needs some response, even if it does dignify such nonsense by even mentioning it.
I am enthralled by the clear belief that the member who just spoke has absolutely no regard for journalistic integrity, obviously no regard for the professionalism of journalists who work for the CBC, and clearly no regard
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for journalists in general. I am glad to see the hon. member for Halifax West applauding. I trust that the hon. member for Halifax West holds the view I do. I would presume he does, that Canadian unity is a good thing. Perhaps he does not. No doubt he will have a chance to say so himself.
It is a tragedy in this country today that people are asking from one coast to the other, east and west, north and south, inside Quebec and outside Quebec: "Who speaks for Canada". When did it become a crime in the minds of members of this Chamber to speak out in favour of Canadian unity? When did it become some sort of disgrace, to quote the member who spoke previously, some propaganda, to be in favour of the survival and the flourishing of this country?
I cannot believe that anyone who would sit here in this House, who would stand in this House and speak or claim to speak for Canadians, could actually stand and argue against Canadian unity. It is a sad time that we have come to, if this is the case in this country today.
The mandate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for Canadian unity is something that has been with us for a very long time. It is something that the past president of the CBC, Pierre Juneau, said did not in any way interfere with the workings of the corporation in serving its various and multicultural audience.
On May 16, The Ottawa Citizen reported that the CBC is an agent for Canadian unity. It must remain that way as a bulwark against various decentralizing forces. Everybody who sits in this Chamber knows what the decentralizing forces are. There are hundreds of them. There are the questions of language, culture, geography, and regionalism which every single one of us in our home provinces and here in Ottawa have dealt with and continue to deal with on a daily basis.
The things that pull us apart are part and parcel of our experience as Canadians. They make us who we are. To quote Andrew Coyne in The Financial Post, "they make us know that we are us, that we are imperfect and that we have a multitude of problems", but they also make us know that we have survived for 123 years and, please God, we will survive as long as this earth survives. Mind you, with this government, that may be a problem as well.

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The member who spoke previously talked about a mandate for national unity destroying a respect for creativity. I am sorry that my colleague for Kingston and the Islands is not here to make his usual interjection of "what nonsense", because that is what it is. It is rank and errant nonsense. The creativity that has been fostered by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation across this country, whether one is talking about Cod Co. from the province of Newfoundland or cultural programs that relate to our native peoples in the north and in the west or whether-


Mr. Tobin:: Codswell.


Mary Catherine Clancy: It is codswallop, just so that the hon. member for Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte will know.
At any rate, the cultural programs which have come from all over this country reflect that "useness", if I may coin the word, that is Canadianism, that is neither English nor French nor any of the multitude of other cultural groups of people this country. It is Canadianism.
When I speak to that, I know that I speak to the hearts of millions of Canadians, from whatever background they have been fortunate enough to spring. I know that that strikes a cord. It must strike a cord in the vast majority of members of this House, because this country in all its works and pomps is perhaps the most precious gift which any group of 26 million people were ever lucky enough to receive.
We stand here in this Chamber, we look at a Crown corporation such as the CBC, and we know that that Crown corporation, that broadcasting network, has made a difference to Canadians all over this country. It creates for Canadians a sense of self and a sense of oneness with our neighbours. The forces that pull us apart, as I said before, are many, varied, and strong, so we must be particularly careful of those forces that pull us together, and the CBC is one of those forces. It is something that Canadians, certainly those of my generation and the generation that is coming behind me, have always taken as a given. I say that of Canadians, of whatever background and of whichever of the two official languages.
I recall, as a graduate student in England with other Canadian graduate students from Quebec, Ontario, the maritimes and the west, staying up all night to listen to Radio Canada International in order to get the news
from home, to listen to hockey games, and to just keep our link with our home country. That is how we discussed it, English and French, of whatever background, our country. It remains our country. CBC is one of the strongest mechanisms that makes it stay our country.
This summer I was fortunate enough to travel to different parts of Canada to speak to friends and family who live all over this vast country. I visited Quebec, western Canada, and the north. I heard the same thing from all these people. What is happening to our country? What has become of the country that we all fought for? What has become of the spirit of tolerance, acceptance and acknowledging each other?
I will tell you one of the things that has become of it, Mr. Speaker. It has become the butt of jokes for people who have no respect for the history and the traditions that began with great explorers who came to this country in the winter with De Monts and Poutrencourt who came to Port Royal.
My friend over there thinks this is funny. He thinks that a spirit of caring for this country is funny. I am glad I amuse him. If I amuse him, that is fine. He should remember that French and English alike have a stake in this country and will hold that stake. It is this country. It is not two countries; it is one country. It is not two nations; it is one country.
I fear for my colleagues in the New Democratic Party as well. The critic for the New Democratic Party, the member for Port Moody-Coquitlam, said in a November 25 article in The Toronto Star that he does not share the fears of the member for Mount Royal about the deleted national unity clause. He believes that the CBC contributes to unity simply by existing.
I believe that it contributes to unity simply by existing. I believe, along with the member for Mount Royal, along with the member for Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte, and along with every Liberal member in this House, that putting in the mandate for national unity can only strengthen that endeavour. It can only strengthen our belief that this is one country of many peoples, all with an equal share and an equal stake; that we are not going to see the CBC die; that we are not going to see that mandate destroyed; and that we are not going to see this



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country go down the tubes because of an irrational response of a government that does not care.


Gilles Duceppe: Mr. Speaker, I am concerned about the stand taken by the hon. member for Mount Royal who is in fact attacking the freedom of the press. I get the feeling that she has the same disease as her leader who accused members of the press of being against him. In his view, to be on his side, journalists have to be actually working for him. She said we should promote national unity because there is more talk about separatism than federalism in Quebec. But that is what is really happening in Quebec, Mr. Speaker. Indeed, there are more people talking of sovereignty than there are talking of federalism. Should the CBC not reflect that fact, make it known and ensure that the people get a clear picture of what is going on in Quebec? Should objectivity be denied for the sake of national unity?
Should the CBC be used for propaganda purposes? What would you say if Radio-Quebec were used to promote sovereignty? That is not the case. That is not the mandate it was given by the national assembly.
Mr. Speaker, for the hon. member for Mount Royal national unity means that you must say "Jean Chretien is against Meech Lake!" if you are speaking English, and Jean Chretien est en faveur du lac Meech if you are speaking French. That is how the member for Mount Royal sees national unity, Mr. Speaker.
Does national unity mean that the people of Quebec are to be made to believe that the NDP exists in Quebec because it exists in British Columbia? Come now! We know that would not be an objective statement and that is not the truth. So, once again, the CBC must reflect the reality and not be a propaganda tool at the hands of the government.
Must we, all in the name of national unity, display Chinese vases, would say a very contemptuous former prime minister as he did when he was having problems with Quebec? Is that what national unity means for the Liberal member? All in all, if the people of Quebec make use of the CBC and pay for it, do they not have the right to be informed objectively? Do francophone journalists not provide objective information? I am almost done, Mr. Speaker. It seems to me that there is a
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disinformation problem in Quebec at the present time. It has to do with anglophone media distorting the Quebec reality and not informing the rest of the country of what is going on. All Quebecers do not live in the town of Mount Royal, Mr. Speaker.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to rise and participate in debate on this bill. I want you to know that I was number 10 on the list. Eight of the colleagues who were ahead of me were contemplating their speech material in the back and I had the opportunity, I am sure of their deep contemplation, to rush in here and fill the
gap-
I am pleased once again to rise and participate in debate on this bill respecting broadcasting. I had the pleasure of doing so some three or four weeks ago. This bill, in the context and against the backdrop of what is occurring today in our country, points out the new mindset-


Gilles Duceppe: Mr. Speaker, there is no quorum. [Translation]


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: A member asked if there was a quorum.
And the count having been taken:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: There being a quorum, I shall give the floor back to the member for Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Jim Karygiannis: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sick and tired of what the member just did. I think the Chair should actually talk to him when he just gets up and says "on a point of order" and then leaves.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: That is not a point of order. The hon. member for Humber-St. Barbe- Baie Verte has the floor.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, I hope you will adjust the clock so that I do not want to lose the opportunity to

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participate in this important debate. The Speaker, of course, has earned a reputation for fairness in this place.
It is indeed interesting that a member would want on the one hand to be concerned that the proper quorum be present in the House and, having ascertained that in fact the proper quorum is present in the House, would then vacate the House. That is not the kind of attitude that demonstrates a sincere desire to debate, a sincere desire to exchange views, because there is nothing more legitimate than having different strongly held views, no matter what the view, and wanting to share that view, wanting to generate understanding. I do not share the views of the members of the Bloc quebecois. I do not always share the views of every member of my own caucus. We discuss that on Wednesday mornings in the Liberal caucus. We certainly do not always share views with members of the Conservative Party. But, if I do not share views with colleagues of this place, I always share at least the notion that every voice has a right to be heard, and that every voice represents a legitimate point of view.
We are here in one place and the whole notion of a legislature is to ensure that different voices from different backgrounds, different regions, and sometimes in different languages, can exchange knowledge and information on life's experience and generate a degree of understanding.
Simply playing a role of anarchy, a role of division, a role of frustration and a role of anger is testimony to a mandate that seeks, not to build, but to break down.
In the face of those kinds of people, represented by the member who caused the point of order, who caused the fuss, and then left, and in the face of that kind of mentality what has the government done?
In almost every aspect of the national life of this country in the face of that kind of mentality, this government has retreated. In the face of the challenge to Canada today, the challenge to national unity, this government has retreated.
It has brought in a broadcast bill to appease certain people that removes the offensive and terribly insensitive reference to the mandate of the CBC to be an agent of national unity. That offended some people, so it takes
it out because people such as the Bloc quebecois did not like it.
It brought in a Broadcast Act that set up two boards for the CBC because that offended some people-people such as members of the Bloc quebecois-so we take it out. In the face of the very thorough, very serious professional and dedicated members of Quebec's Belanger-Campeau Commission-and I do not agree with many of its members-who were doing their job in a most serious manner on the future of Quebec, how does the government respond? Does the Prime Minister decide that he is going to appear before the Belanger-Campeau Commission? No. Does the leader of the NDP decide to appear before the Belanger-Campeau Commission? No. Does the government decide to set up a parallel national process involving every part of the country, including Quebec, to respond to Belanger-Campeau? No, Mr. Speaker, it does not.
It sets up the Spicer Commission without any reference to the individual members of that commission. It has a mandate that is a watered-down, pale, pathetic mandate to act as a legitimate and serious response on behalf of the people of Canada through their agent, the national government, to the crisis that is unfolding in Canada today and to what is going on in Quebec today, legitimately. It is the right of the people of Quebec to have such an exercise, but it is the responsibility of the Government of Canada to respond to it in a meaningful way.
That has not happened with this pale, pathetic, watered-down, ridiculous answer called the Citizens' Forum. It is an insult to the intelligence of the people of Canada, a country mired in paralysis at a time when leadership is demanded.
These points have been made by the Leader of the Opposition in responding on the day the forum was announced when he said it had to be a serious agent to provide an opportunity for the people of Canada to speak about their country and to seek solutions and new directions. That was the position of the Leader of the Opposition and he shares my view, I am sure, that that the kind of comprehensive action we wanted has not been produced. We have nothing but great disappointment in what we have seen so far in the face of the constitutional evolution that is under way in the country.


An hon. member:: Why didn't you tell Wells that?
November 27, 1990


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. speaker, the member across the way is hooting and hollering: "Why did you not tell Wells that?"
What I am saying, and what I suspect, modestly, is reflected in the gut and in the heart and soul of a great many Canadians, is that people have a sense that this ship of state upon which they are all passengers today is adrift in a vast angry and stormy sea. As they sit as passengers, 26 million or 27 million Canadians, on that ship adrift on an angry sea being bounced to and fro, feeling their stomachs heave, they want a sense of leadership. They want once again a steady hand on the helm. They want a leader to chart a new course for this country. They want a captain capable of bringing the ship out of the stormy seas and back safe home again at port.
When they see this Prime Minister, this captain, to whom we have entrusted the job of navigating the ship of state for the next two years, the two years left of the mandate, obsessed with indecision and stuck in his wardroom below decks, incapable of taking new directions for Canada, incapable of being heard in the province of Quebec on behalf of all Canada at a critical time, the people of this country wish there was a way of making this captain walk the plank. They hope that when he walks that plank that he finds himself in shark-infested waters, because Canada needs a new beginning. It needs a new captain on the ship of state.
Canada needs a new sense of direction, and that sense of direction cannot be found in a government that continues to water-down national institutions, to haul the heart and soul out of the CBC, to strip bare of any national mandate the Broadcast Act, and to give us these pale and pathetic responses, such as the Spicer forum, to national crises.
The people of Canada know that this country is in crisis. They know that these are serious days. They know that the challenge to unity is great, perhaps greater than ever before in our history, but they believe the country is worth fighting for. They believe that the hearts, minds and souls of Quebecers are worth fighting for, that those who have turned to the Reform Party are worth fighting for and they want a leader to rally them to the cause. The sooner we get that kind of leader, the better off this country will be.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Jim Karygiannis: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about an issue that is very important in the hearts of many Canadians. Unity. There
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are some of us who have chosen Canada and have come to this great country of ours by choice.


Mr. Gustafson:: They destroyed it.


Jim Karygiannis: My hon. colleague across the floor says we destroyed it. Well, I challenge him, because I came to this country 20 years ago to add to this country, and I certainly do not think that I came here to destroy it.


Leonard J. Gustafson: Ask Wells.


Jim Karygiannis: Well, I do not have to ask Wells. I can ask my father when he made that choice to come to this great country of ours, and if you, sir, think that I do not have a place in here, then you are mistaken.
In the year 2000, 50 per cent of the Canadian population will be something that is neither French-which the Bloc quebecois thinks it has in the bag-nor English. They will be from other minorities. They will be people from Europe, south Asia, and east Asia.
When these people come here, are we going to ask them to follow the example of the Bloc quebecois? Are we going to ask them: "Why do you not raise your little bandito flag and make this part of Canada yours?" Well, I say to my hon. colleague from Quebec that that is not what those people coming over would prefer to do. They come here looking for a better future, as your forefathers did, Mr. Speaker, and as my father did. Yet, when we come to this great country of ours, we have something which is called dismemberment. We want to take this country and tear its guts out.
The Reform Party in the west says it is going to be a national party. Yet, its constitution does not allow it to run candidates in other parts of the country. The Bloc quebecois that is only interested in getting its 37 per cent in Quebec. There is one party that stands for Canada and there is one party that fights for Canada.
We see CBC and we listen to it. There is some dead time on CBC which is on the weekends in the mornings. Do you think, Mr. Speaker, that the Minister of Communications will say: "Let us take this time and let some multicultural groups use it." In the greater area of metropolitan Toronto and in other areas, there is MTV which is distinctively made up of multicultural television. There is City TV, which is channel 7, which on Saturday and Sunday mornings devotes its programming entirely to multicultural television. There is Global which does the same. In Hamilton, CHCH-TV does the same.

November 27, 1990
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Therefore, I am challenging the minister and I ask him why we do not give some air time to these different ethnic minorities. We should not call them minorities. We should call them different ethnic Canadian components, because I am proud to be Canadian first and of different roots and different heritages.


Jean-C. Lapierre: Good for you.


Jim Karygiannis: My colleague from the Bloc quebe-cois says: "Good for you." Sir, it is good for me because I made this country my choice and I want to fight to keep it united, regardless of the hon. member who wants to split the country. He wants to take the country and split it apart.


Jean-C. Lapierre: I fought the last referendum and you betrayed me.


Jim Karygiannis: You fought the last referendum and I betrayed you? Well, I did not betray you. In the commission set up by the Liberals in Quebec, who are in the hip pocket of the Prime Minister, we do not find one single member who speaks for the anglophones. In the Spicer commission, this hoodwink of a commission that the Prime Minister has set up, we do not find a single representative who speaks-


Leonard J. Gustafson: Keep your eye on it.


Jim Karygiannis: My colleague says: "Keep your eye on it." It will be swept under the carpet, as was done with Meech Lake which failed completely.
I spoke before about notorious. This government is notorious about hoodwinking the Canadian people. Notorious, "n-o t-o-r-i u-s". Mr. Speaker, you can fill the blanks in.
I am very proud to stand in the House and speak about unity. For those members who think that unity is something to take to task, I say to them that there are those of us, the late comers, who have been the soft targets up to now who are going to stand up and say to their faces: "No more." There are those of us, 50 per cent by the year 2000, who will be neither English or French, who are going to say: "We want to keep this country united." There are those of us who will not opt for division. There are those of us who will fight to the death.


Jean-C. Lapierre: Too late.


Jim Karygiannis: My hon. colleague from Quebec says: "It is too late." I have to remind him and the Bloc quebecois that there are only 37 per cent in the latest poll in Quebec who think like him. I wonder where the rest, the 63 per cent of the people-


An hon. member:: Oh, no.


Jim Karygiannis: Thirty-seven per cent is its popularity. Sixty-three per cent of the other people of Quebec-


Leonard J. Gustafson: They're all Tories.


Jim Karygiannis: He says: "They're all Tories." He is dreaming, too. Is that notorious Tories? Is that "n-o t-o-r-i u-s" Tories? That is all he has got.
We want to keep the country united and, if the hon. member does not want to keep this country united, I will tell him what the Canadian population is going to do to him. They will turf him out.
I want to quote the Prime Minister. On July 31, 1990 he said: "I will not allow it to break into pieces or give it up to anyone." This Prime Minister has done nothing else but that. This Prime Minister has been a vehicle for division. He wanted to win the election so he went to Quebec to talk to those member who said they were federalists. We saw what happened to one of those members. They walked from over there on the government benches to be over here with the Bloc quebecois. They walked over here because the Prime Minister could not deliver to them what he promised.
The Prime Minister sold Canada out in order to form the government and he is going to try to do it again. Well, it is not going to work, Mr. Speaker.
My hon. colleague from Quebec asks if Canadians have a leader. I say to him that Canadians do have a leader. They have a leader within the Liberal Party.


An hon. member:: Oh, oh.


Jean-C. Lapierre: Look at the polls.


Jim Karygiannis: I would look at the polls and the hon. member had better look at the polls. By the year 2000, 50 per cent of the Canadian people-
November 27, 1990


Jean-C. Lapierre: That's not a poll.


Jim Karygiannis: It is not a poll, he says. Well, maybe he should wake up and smell the coffee. He should wake up and smell the rationale because one-third of the Quebec people are allophones, one-third of those people.


Jean-C. Lapierre: They will be tested.


Jim Karygiannis: Well, they came to this country by choice and that choice is to stay within Canada, not to separate.


Jean-C. Lapierre: They will be tested.


Jim Karygiannis: He says that they will be tested. Well, Mr. Speaker, I am sure they will be tested.
In the two minutes I have left, I want to take the time to realize that as we proceed to the year 2000 there is one party that will speak for Canada's unity. There is one party that will try to work very hard to keep Canada united and that, Mr. Speaker, is not the Conservative Party. It is not the NDP. We know what its member from Quebec is saying. We know what he wants to do. He wants to sell this country out so he can get elected and so it can get one more seat in this House of Commons.
We know that the Bloc quebecois is saying: "Vote for us, we are going to separate."
There is one party that will fight very hard to keep this country united and that one party is none other than the Liberal Party.


Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join in debate at report stage of Bill C-40, an act to amend the Broadcasting Act.
The legislation before us is similar to that bill which was presented in the House before I became a member in 1988. Because the election was called, of course, that bill died on the Order Paper.
As a former broadcast journalist, the major difficulty I have with this bill, and indeed the Official Opposition has with Bill C-40, is that it drops the CBC's 1968 mandate, and I quote, "to contribute to the development of national unity to provide for a continuing expression of Canadian identity".
I have always found, and I am sure other Canadians agree with me, that the CBC has been a great instrument of national unity and, in fact, an expression of our very identity, the promoter of our cultural distinctiveness, our linguistic duality, and our regional diversity.
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Where there are no CBC affiliates, there is a tendency to rely on news provided by American networks which have the budgets and resources to post correspondents around the world. The result is, of course, good news and good reporting, but it is through the eyes of another country, a country very different than ours, with a different philosophy and a different ideology.
There was the courage to establish a national broadcasting network composed of radio and television outlets across Canada, in part to resist the strong cultural influences of the south.
While working as a television broadcast journalist in the city of Barrie, Ontario, CKVR, a CBC affiliate, was fortunate enough to rely in part on news gathered from across the country and around the world. Then, while employed by CHCH-TV in Hamilton, Ontario, it became quite evident to me, because of budget restrictions and because it was an independent station-that is it did not have an affiliation with the CBC or CTV networks- we had to rely on our international news and purchase that news from NBC. The American slant to the news was ever-present, and that cannot be denied. The same can be said of other news organizations from across the country. Instead of relying on the American feed, they would be able to broadcast news from a Canadian perspective, with Canadians speaking on Canadian issues from around the world about those issues important to Canada.
Part of the reason behind the national unity clause was that Canada was so vast a land and in many ways geographically remote, that it was necessary to bring Canadian content to these regions. Many people wonder what the true identity of Canadians is. Whatever the definition is, as our communications critic for the opposition, the hon. member for Mount Royal noted: "there is no doubt that without a constant and unflinching determination to be ourselves and the direct and constant involvement of our government, never would we have survived or would we have preserved our identity."
This bill would move the CBC away from that mandate of promoting national unity. Just because the CBC is well established does not mean that it has to turn its attention away from its national unity role. After all, the forces of the United States are not any weaker today than they were yesterday. Indeed, they are even stron-

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ger. Make no mistake. By opposing the changes to Bill C-40, we are not fighting against outside influences but fighting for our national unity. At this time in our nation's history, the role of national unity and our national broadcasting network is especially and crucially important. As other Canadian institutions are put on the auction block or are disseminated by this government and decimated by this government, such as the massive VIA Rail cuts that we saw last year, the CBC is truly the purveyor of national unity and is that thread that weaves and binds the regions of our country.
Unfortunately, it appears that the damage the Conservative government has wrought on this country is not enough and is far from over. Now it has sets its sights on the CBC. What is next? Privatization? I would certainly hope not.
Speaking on the record, the second reading of the Broadcast Act, 1932, R. B. Bennett stated of the national unity mandate that: "This country must be assured of complete Canadian control of broadcasting from Canadian sources. Without such control broadcasting can never become a great agency for the communication of matters of national concern and for the diffusion of national thought and ideals. It seems to me that in Canada, the system we can most profitably employ-''and the members opposite perk up their ears when they hear the word profitably-R. B. Bennett was talking about cultural profitability, "is one which responds most directly to the popular will and the national need."
He concluded: "In this stage of our national development we have problems peculiar to ourselves and we must reach a solution of them through the employment of all available means." The Minister of Communications said of the national unity clause that it is an "intolerable interference" because the CBC "was maintaining this political value artificially and it was a constraint on freedom of expression."
The minister himself has not contributed greatly to the CBC's freedom of expression when he himself has cut an estimated $240 million over six years. How can the CBC pursue the mandate it was founded to perform when it is under siege by this government? The maintenance of a
Canadian broadcasting system such as the CBC is fundamental to the future of Canada.
Most people recognize how greatly affected we are by what we hear and what we see in connection with radio and television programming. Statistics brought forward in earlier debate by the hon. member for Mount Royal, who has been very articulate and worked very hard on this very thick bill, show that 80 per cent of our publishing industry rests in foreign hands. Eighty per cent of our publishing industry rests in foreign hands. Ninety-seven per cent of films shown in Canada come from outside the country. Eight-five per cent of records and tapes are based on imported master tapes in broadcasting. Seventy-one per cent of all programming viewed by English-speaking Canadians on television is American. The figure is lower in French-speaking Canada.


Jim Karygiannis: Canada for sale.


Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Canadians watch an average of 24 hours of television programming each week and 18 hours listening to the radio. Obviously, these statistics reveal not only how we rely on radio or television for entertainment, but show us how whatever is actually being broadcast will make its impression, affect our thinking. It is therefore important that the CBC remain an agent of Canadian unity and that it is so described in this legislation.
I would like to address a couple of other amendments put forward by my colleague, the member for Mount Royal. The amendment is grouped together with that of the amendment of the member for Port Moody-Coquitlam, dealing with the national unity cause itself. This amendment, Motion 17, reaffirms the mandate of the CBC to:
"(vi) contribute to national unity, shared national consciousness and identity,".
This clause must be put back into the legislation. I believe that these amendments and others put forward by my colleague for Mount Royal will address some of the inadequacies of this bill, especially the one dealing with national unity.
I say again, in conclusion, that the government should not proceed with this legislation without the clause. As R.B. Bennett would have said, "especially at this critical stage of our national development".
November 27, 1990

Communications is, after all, the vehicle for understanding. The CBC, the envy of this ever-changing world of ours, is the beacon of our true national spirit.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: 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 Comox-Al-bemi-Human Rights; the hon. member for Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing-Goods and Services Tkx; the hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond- Scotia Synfuels Project.
The member for Oshawa has the floor.


Michael James Breaugh: Mr. Speaker, I wanted to take just a moment to participate in the debate here this afternoon because I must admit I have been disturbed somewhat by not only what I have heard, but the way in which it has been put.
I think that most of us who have been in political life for a little while understand that the basics of it all is communication. If your constituents cannot talk to you, reach you or tell you what their problems are, you cannot very well solve them.
It seems to me that part of what I have heard discussed here this afternoon has to do with that ability to communicate. It may be that the CBC is only one of many ways in which the people of Canada can talk to one another. But it is apparent from the debate this afternoon that if we need anything, we need an ability to talk to one another.
I do not know that it serves a useful purpose to have a nation split up, people unable to communicate with one another, with political parties forming in different regions of the country and the rest of us not even able to share in that discussion.
It seems to me that some of what we have seen this afternoon is evidence of that, that there are political parties forming and reforming in this country which have a different idea. It would be fine if we all had some means, like this Parliament and like a national communications system, to hear them out, to hear what they have to say and to respond to them. It seems that some members do not want to hear what others have to say. They do not want to accept that somebody else might have an opinion just as valid as theirs.
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I would argue that in this bill and in this Parliament this afternoon, there is evidence that we have a major problem in just translating our beefs to one another. I think we better resolve that because I think that that is the road to ruin. Whether one would be a member of the Bloc quebecois arguing that no one else in the world understands their point of view, or whether somebody is from the Reform Party in western Canada, and somehow you feel that the rest of the nation has not bothered to listen to you, we should all admit that at the very least we need a means to communicate. We need to resolve some of our difficulties and disagreements. If we have an argument that is real and substantive and divides, then surely it should be something where we can sense, but not just that we forgot to talk to one another. It is not just that we did not have any means to communicate. It is that the question before us is for real and that the arguments are for real. They are not because someone portrayed us in a light that we did not want.
It is difficult in this day and age where communication very often is not the long speech that is made in this Parliament, but communication is a 20-second clip on television. I do not think that any of us could deny for a moment, whether we like it or not, that we have all seen clips of life that have had much more impact on the people of this country than anything that has been said in this Chamber.
I think, very dramatically for example, we are now getting around to the point where we are analyzing the clip of people in the city of Brockville, Ontario, who walked on a Quebec flag. Now we are analyzing how widely that visual was disseminated around the world, and how much of an impact it had on people in Quebec, in other parts of Canada, and in other parts of the world. It is dramatic. It is ironic that it was the CBC which had the thoughtfulness to go back, almost a year after the fact, and analyse is that really what those people were trying to transmit? Well, most of them were not even from Brockville. Most of them did not have that idea in mind when they participated in something that was captured in a small video clip and broadcast around the world. That is the negative power of communications.
What about the positive power? Is there a chance? I was struck again during the entire Meech Lake debate of how little Canadians know about one another, about the different circumstances in which people in Canada find themselves. I heard this afternoon in this chamber a lot of members who, it seems to me, simply feel that if someone could slip a few words into a piece of legislation, the problem would be resolved. I do not believe

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that is true. I wish it were that simple, but I do not think it is. I have heard members espouse that if we could only find a new slogan, or a new person, or a new leader, that all of a sudden all of the nation's problems would disappear. I do not believe that is true either. I wish it was, but I do not believe it is.
I look at the world, particularly a nation like Canada, and it is a pretty awkward place to tiy to govern. I am sure even the Prime Minister would admit to that this afternoon. It is difficult to bring together all of the different regions of the country. Some times people would say "this country does not make sense. It is too big. It is too diverse. It is hard to get around. It is cold. It is not a friendly climate in many parts of this country".
In part, even old Tories like Sir John A. Macdonald understood some basics about this nation, that if you wanted to be a nation people had better be able to reach one another. They need a train to go from one place to another, or you cannot even pretend to be a nation. People would have said: "You need things like a post office. You have to be able to send letters to one another". Even if you do not send a whole lot of letters, there has to be something which represents the federal government in each of our little communities. That is not a supermailbox. That is a tradition which they call a post office. They recognize that as being a focal point for the federal government in their community.
If there is someone who is undermining all of this sense of a nation, it probably is not anyone on this side of the aisle. I do not think that I would point my finger at less than a dozen members who purport to be something called a Bloc quebecois. I would look across the aisle where someone has taken away most of the institutions, slowly, surely and methodically, over a fairly lengthy period of time on which people have relied to make this a country that works.
Part of what we are discussing this afternoon is, once again, someone looking to the CBC to solve all their problems. I do not think it can. I do think it ever has. I do not think it ever will. But, I think it is part of what we need. If there is not an effective communications system in this country, how can you even have the argument? You cannot. You will wind up with people shouting
slogans. That does no one a service, no one anywhere in this country. It is difficult. Many of the members here have had a chance to travel across Canada. The first thing that hits one when one tries to do that is that this is not easy; this is a huge nation, a diverse nation. We need to be able to talk to one another, we need to communicate effectively, we need to reinstate all of those institutions that brought us together, in the first instance.
I think it is sad, but it is a fact, that this government has moved steadily, slowly, on a day-by-day basis, to take away some of the things that made it possible to have a country called Canada. It seems to me, and it is evident from the discussion this afternoon, that the nation called Canada has a crisis on its hands, not just one but many of them.
If we are to move forward in a sensible, rational manner, we will need every communication device we can conceive of, including a revitalized Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, to do that. I believe it is possible for all of us, with very different ideas about what this country should be and about what the problems are here and extremely different ideas about how you would resolve them, to meet somewhere, whether it be by means of radio, television, print journalism, an effective communications system, or a postal system that we can all recognize in our own community. If these things can be put together and if members here and all Canadians can have some chance to utilize these things we will have, at least, an opportunity to work out our differences.
Part of what disturbs me about the debate I have heard here this afternoon is not that people argue and disagree but that they have no time to hear someone else's point of view. You cannot win an argument that way. One can shout people down; one can avoid the eventual resolution of a problem; but one cannot win an argument unless one is, first and foremost, prepared to hear what the other side has to say. One must test the waters and see if the grievances of others can be addressed. There has not been a lot of that in here, this afternoon.
It is true, as I have heard members say during the course of this debate, that this nation is changing. I am not sure that it is a planned, logical evolution but, undeniably, it is changing. It is changing in economic terms, in linguistic terms, and in demographic terms. I would hope that in this Chamber and in the broadcasting done by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, we
November 27, 1990

would at least have an opportunity to have a sensible, rational, logical argument and that we could, at least, have the tools that would allow us to communicate, effectively, with one another. I hope that that is what comes out of this bill and other attempts by the government, but I must say, I do not see a concerted effort to do that. Quite the contrary, I see things moving in the opposite direction.


Mr. Gilbert Parent (Welland-St. Catharines-Tho-rold):: Mr. Speaker, thank you for recognizing me this afternoon.

I want to make a few comments on what my colleague, the hon. member for Oshawa, said earlier. His concept of Canada probably parallels that of quite a few people in this country. Bill C-40 deals with amendments to the CBC act. My colleague, the hon. member for Hamilton West, put the problem into perspective.
What I would like to do in the time allotted to me is to point out, perhaps, some of the good things that emanated from the old Bill C-136, which are now incorporated in Bill C-40 and also, as gently as I can but hopefully with constructive criticism, point out where the bill might be a little bit deficient.
As my colleague, the hon. member for Hamilton West, said, the purpose of Bill C-40 is really to replace the 1968 Broadcasting Act and is essentially identical to Bill C-136 which died on the Order Paper when the 1988 federal election was called. The legislation had its genesis in the task force on broadcasting policy and it had an extensive review by the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture, which resulted in four reports, containing recommendations for new broadcasting legislation. Since Bill C-136 died, we hoped that the new minister would take the time to reshape a new bill and put his own imprimatur on it. In my opinion Bill C-40 is not such a bill. It is still the hurried bill of a defeated minister with very few changes. We had hoped that the new minister and the Department of Communications would have prepared a report on all of the suggestions made by so many responsible citizens and
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groups, by so many experts and, at the very least, explained why their concerns have not been met.
I mentioned earlier that there were positive provisions which were carried forth from Bill C-136 to Bill C-40. Among them, we the Liberals are very pleased to see the following provisions. Women, children, cultural minorities, aboriginal peoples and the disabled are specifically mentioned in the legislation. The need to portray more accurately the multicultural nature of our society is also included in there. The special nature of the French language broadcasting environment is recognized. The CRTC will thus be required to take these market differences into account when making licensing decisions.
The originators of program signals and their authorized agents, such as the cable operators, will be able to take action in the courts against commercial pirates stealing their scrambled signals. There is provision for making educational broadcasting an integral part of the law. I want to deal more specifically with that particular area a little later in my speech.
Local Canadian stations will be given priority status when carried by cable, and the provision that the president of the CBC be a member of the CBC board of directors seems to be a very common sense approach to this whole thing.
There were some amendments made by my party which were accepted in the legislative committee, such as the recognition of community broadcasting as one of the elements of the Canadian broadcasting system, along with the public and the private. We are going to have an amalgamation of the three. The mandatory requirement that the Canadian Broadcasting system be owned and controlled by Canadians is just common sense. Why should we have our communication systems controlled by someone outside this country? The programming of Canadian broadcasters will also include children and be a reflection of the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada, ensuring that television and radio more accurately portray the multiracial as well as the multicultural nature of Canada.
Permit me, Mr. Speaker, to interject a few mild criticisms, if I might, hoping that with these interjections the minister will perhaps consider them. We believe, as I am sure my hon. colleague from Manitoba believes, because in his heart I believe he harbours Liberal ideas, that Bill C-40, while improved, is still seriously flawed

Government Orders
and should not be passed into law without further major changes. We believe in a national broadcasting system and a national vision of Canada; not a community of communities, not two Canadas, and most definitely not 10 Canadas. Bill C-40, if passed, will only further separate and Balkanize Canadians at a very critical point in our nation's history.
The following are some of my concerns. First of all there is the challenge to federal jurisdictions. We in my party are concerned that the federal government's jurisdiction over broadcasting could be challenged through new definitions. The new definition of broadcasting in clause 2 of the bill is defined broadly as to include the transmission and reception of programs other than by means of radiocommunications; that is to say, hard wire or closed circuit transmissions. These were considered previously to be under provincial jurisdiction.
Second, undertakings will be divided into programming and non-programming functions, a rejection of the conventional legal practice which has regarded such undertakings as indivisible. That too seems to be absolutely in keeping with common sense.
My colleague who is sitting beside me, the member for Hamilton West for whom I have a great deal of respect, addressed the problem of Canadian unity. The 1968 Broadcasting Act required that the CBC "contribute to the development of national unity". Of course it should. It is not there for the unity of another country. It is there so that we can speak to one another as Canadians. However, that reference has been dropped in Bill C-40. Why would they do this if this is the major raison d'etre for this bill?
I skipped a lot of what I wanted to say because I want to deal with the educational service. First, the alternative program that we talk about in education should not be introduced at this time or through Bill C-40. This ruling was expressed by the Nova Scotia Department of Transportation and Communications and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters to which my colleague belongs.
However, if the government believes that there should be another service, we believe that it should be a Canadian learning channel which would address national needs while serving provincial and educational demands of its learner audiences. A Canadian service would provide a necessary and needed complement to the already existing American learning channel, which in 1987 was watched by 120,000 Canadians. That was an increase of 124 per cent over 1986.
There is a dire need to put forth our own Canadian programs for Canadians. Liberals recognize that education is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces. We feel that collaboration by the provinces should be encouraged to provide such a service. Issues and social challenges such as the general criticism of current educational standards, emphasis on the delivery capacity of education in Canada and others would be countless subjects available for the exploration of Canadian learning in this country. We should have our own learning channel.


Mac Harb: Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by thanking the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, all 21,000 of the them across Canada who brought this issue forward in the years between 1985 and 1990. They worked extremely hard to bring this issue back before the House of Commons.
The Liberals, and myself personally, believe in the goal of Canada in developing its national personality. Building its sense of national identity and consciousness are factors needed to build Canadian national unity. This has been endorsed by my colleague from Quebec when he spoke on behalf of the Bloc quebecois. He and I do not share the same concept of Canada. We need a strong, national institution like the CBC, as my colleague said, to weave all the regions together in this mosaic that we keep talking about, the mosaic of Canada.
In my riding there is approximately 486 Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. Many of them have written to me on this issue, trying to bring to my attention to the many important aspects of Canadian broadcasting. I am in total agreement with the thrust of what they wrote to me about, and here I am before the House speaking in support of national unity as part of the CBC mandate.
If we look back to 1932, when the government of the day decided to create the public radio service that eventually became the Canadian Broadcasting Corpora-

November 27, 1990

tion, at that time the government made a very important step. It realized that Canadians should have control over broadcasting in Canada. R. B. Bennett said at second reading of the broadcasting bill, as reported at page 3035 of Hansard of May 18, 1932:
First of all, this country must be assured of complete Canadian
control of broadcasting from Canadian sources-
He recognized that Canada's autonomy and independence hung on the control of our communications systems.
When television was introduced, there was a need for further regulation to protect Canadian content and culture in CBC programming. Therefore in 1968 a new Broadcasting Act was introduced, at which time something very important took place. At that time the mandate of the CBC was to "contribute to the development of national unity and provide for a continuing expression of Canadian identity". For the first time in Canadian broadcasting history, the national role of the CBC was reaffirmed.
The CBC realizes that Canada is unique in both its demographic and cultural diversity. As a result, a national medium is required to serve the needs of the Canadian population. Precisely because the CBC is considered our national medium, it does not make much sense to eliminate its role to promote and preserve a uniquely Canadian identity. As we know, traditionally the CBC has been a great vehicle for promoting Canadian culture.
There is no doubt that there is money to be made by decreasing Canadian made programs and by purchasing low cost commercial production, but the facts remain that Canadians without a doubt enjoy the CBC the way it is. I have the figures to prove it.
Nearly 500 English radio outlets and almost 200 French radio outlets broadcast CBC services in Canada. This year the CBC's annual report states that English and French radio programming reached about one out of five Canadian adults every week. That is approximately six million Canadians on a weekly basis.
As for television, English broadcasts are now made from 18 stations, 23 affiliates, and 637 broadcasters. CBC French television is broadcast from 217 media outlets. During the year 1988-89 television season, the CBC
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English audience share was 17 per cent, a figure that put it on par with the three major American commercial networks in their home markets.
The fact that the CBC has almost 20 per cent of the television market share is very impressive, particularly since most large cities in Canada receive all the American channels and some Canadian stations broadcast American programs.
The figures show also that Canadians are watching more and more Canadian television productions. According to the CBC annual report, efforts to Canadia-nize prime time schedules of both English and French television networks have had positive effects.
For instance, since 1984-85 the production of prime time CBC English viewing captured by Canadian programs rose from 60 per cent to 64 per cent. For the French network, for example, the proportion of viewing to Canadian programming has risen from 75 per cent to 85 per cent. Clearly the CBC continues to be a leading force in bringing a uniquely Canadian flavour to broadcasting in Canada. There is absolutely no reason why this should not be mandated within Bill C-40.
There can be no doubt that in this day and age we are flooded with information from all sides. It is for this reason that Canada needs a national information clearing house to sort through the information and present it from a Canadian perspective.
The CBC has always been a unifying force for Canada. It should be allowed to grow and continue to be Canada's voice. I do not think that keeping the national unity clause within Bill C-40 will turn the CBC into an instrument of the state, as has been stated by some members of the House.
Looking at the past four years, the CBC had some really difficult times. For instance, when the government was first elected in 1984, it promised support for CBC's resources and independence. However, in 1984 when the Minister of Finance introduced his mini budget, the first thing it did was cut $75 million from the CBC parliamentary allocation.
The following year, in February 1985, the first advertisement of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting appeared in The Globe and Mail, calling upon the Prime Minister to study the future of broadcasting instead of making senseless cuts to the CBC's budget. In May 1985

Private Members' Business
the government responded by appointing the Caplan-Sauvageau task force on broadcasting policy.
The following year, after extensive public hearings and research, the task force issued a comprehensive unanimous report with recommendations for broadcasting policy and a badly needed new Broadcasting Act.
In 1987 a House of Commons committee studied the Caplan-Sauvageau report and issued unanimous recommendations to the government supporting the thrust of the task force report. As a result, in June 1988 Bill C-136 was introduced and in September 1988 it died on the Order Paper.
Now we have Bill C-40 before us. I would like to stop right here by saying that we do support certain aspects of the bill, but we would whole-heartedly like to see the government adopt the recommendation of the hon. member for Mount Royal.


Giuseppe (Joseph) Volpe: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate having the two or three minutes remaining to express some of my views on Canadian unity.

I am pleased to speak about the unity clause because what we are talking about is the essence of Canada. The best statement I have heard or read to date comes from the The Financial Post a few months ago. It indicated, and I quoted: "If information is the currency of commerce of the modem economy, ideas are the binding force of a modern nation. We can no longer be defined by what we are but by what we believe. To be Canadian should mean to stand for something".

So we must leam and appreciate the fact that the CBC can be used as a vehicule to express the concept of Canada. We can defend Canada only if there exists a concept which all people can appreciate.

On that question, unless we give the CBC the opportunity, the mandate, or the requirement to gather together all concepts which in their totality define Canada and Canadians, identify the regions, and show the contribution that each and every one of these regions
gives to the Canadian identity, both on a cultural and linguistic basis, then truly we can say that we have a vehicle for the expression of what is Canadian.
Unless we consider the amendment that my hon. colleague for Mount Royal has presented, we will forgo the opportunity to give the CBC not only this mandate but the opportunity as well to carry out the concept of a Canada that exists in the totality of all of its residents and all of its regions, be they from the west or the east, from the maritimes, from Quebec whether they speak French or English, or from a culture like my own which fits into neither pattern.
The important reason to support this amendment- and I think my colleague from Shefford can also appreciate it-is that we cannot understand and fully integrate the total diversity that is the essence of Canada, unless we are willing to recognize specific regions.
One would be tempted almost to say the distinctive nature of certain regions can be translated and exchanged with all other Canadians through a common vehicle. We are going to forgo that opportunity. For what purpose? To give us an opportunity to turn our backs on fellow Canadians? To ignore the contributions that French and English-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order, please. It being 5 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Member's Business as listed on todays's Order Paper.



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


John F. Brewin: That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of immediately implementing the recommendations respecting policing of the Thsk Force on Aboriginal Peoples in Federal Corrections, as presented to the Solicitor General on March 30, 1989, and file with this House a timetable for implementing the remaining recommendations.
November 27, 1990

He said: Mr. Speaker, this motion was placed on the Order Paper many months ago when I was the critic for our party in the area of the Solicitor General and dealt with federal corrections.
Under the system in which the House operates, the names of members get drawn to present their motions. Mine happened to be drawn. I was very pleased about that and for the opportunity of presenting this motion to the House, because I view it as a particularly important motion at this time.
The issue of the condition and treatment of our aboriginal peoples is a matter that, of course, is now front and centre in Canada, one that has attracted the attention of all Canadians over the last number of months. The problems have been with us for many years, and the problem in particular of the treatment of our aboriginal Canadians in our corrections system is one that has been before Canada for years and years.
The Solicitor General's department and the Correctional Service finally responded to those problems with the appointment of a task force on aboriginal peoples in federal corrections. The task force was, for practical purposes, internal to the Correctional Service. Its members included Mr. Ingstrup, the present Correctional Service of Canada Commissioner, along with Messrs. Rayner, Nuttall, Sawatsky, Cunningham, Louis, and Dicemi, as well as a working committee, all the members of which came from within the Public Service of Canada.
The task force reports and recommendations outline the continuing horror story and the sheer racism of the treatment of native and aboriginal Canadians within our corrections system.
As we all know and as it has been pointed out time and time again, it is a scandal that a so-called civilized country such as Canada should treat its native people the way it does. There is no clearer picture of the discrimination against native people than the treatment within our Correctional Service.
It is a story of institutional, systematic racism, institutional conservatism, and an inability to change and respond to an obvious wrong, immorality, and evil. There is the simple statistic that 9 per cent of those within our Correctional Service who are incarcerated in Canadian
Private Members' Business
prisons are native people. Yet, they only reflect 2.5 per cent of the general population.
To some extent, the Correctional Service of Canada can say: "Well, that is somebody else's fault. We only take the ones they send us." Yet, as this report shows, native people stay in jail longer than white, non-Indian, non-aboriginal inmates in our system. They spend less time on parole and more time actually behind bars. They have fewer services available to them. Frequently, their religion is given no regard whatsoever. Their system of thought and of internal government is disregarded and the result, of course, is that it contributes to recidivism among the native populations in Canada.
The time has finally come for the House and for the government to address the issue and to procrastinate no longer. The government, through the Correctional Service of Canada, produced a fine report, full of excellent recommendations. As a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General, when I asked Mr. Ingstrup, Commissioner of the Correctional Service, what he intended to do about implementing the report, he said that there was a committee working on this. This was over a year ago, I think in the spring of 1989, shortly after the report was made public.
I am quite looking forward to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General telling us specifically what has been done to implement this report. If he is able to say that there has been substantial implementation, then I will congratulate him. But I would also hope that the parliamentary secretary will come to the House and offer a timetable for completion of implementation. I would hope that not only will there be a substantial record of achievement over the last year and a half, but for those items which have not yet been implemented, that a timetable will be offered today in this House.
This is not a partisan matter. It is a matter on which all sides of the House can join. We want the parliamentary secretary and the department to come forward with accomplishments in this area, because the people of Canada finally are saying to the government: "Do not wait longer. You must act on these recommendations."
I could take the House through the recommendations. They are important, but it seems to me the important point to make now is that the time has come for action.

Private Members' Business
There is a companion report which appeared after I had filed this motion in the House. That report is called Creating Choices, and it is the report of the task force on federally-sentenced women, filed in April, 1990. Among women who are incarcerated, there is again a disproportionate number of native people. This report poignantly outlines the pain that is suffered by native women in our prisons. Just recently, there was yet another suicide, that of a young native woman in our prisons.
I know that the Solicitor General has responded very positively to this particular report and he is to be congratulated for that. He recently announced that finally after over 50 years, the prison for women in Kingston is going to be closed. He said that the government has made a firm commitment to implement the recommendations of the task force on federally-sentenced women. I would like to hear from the parliamentary secretary a specific commitment to implement the recommendations respecting native women in our prisons, because that is important to hear and it is important to get the government on record on that.
We have not yet heard in the House the government commit itself to an implementation of the earlier task force report on aboriginal peoples in our federal corrections system. I would ask the government to take this opportunity to deal with this long-standing and painful issue. I would ask that the parliamentary secretary take the time to outline the specifics of what the government has done and what the government will do.
I am going to keep my remarks brief, because I know there are other members who would like to speak to this. I call on the government, not only to speak to the issue, but to allow this motion to pass unanimously before six o'clock.


Mr. Derek Lee (Scarborough-Rouge River):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to this motion. Rather than make my hon. friend do penance, I will not dwell too long on what is perhaps a point of order or a technical problem that I had in the wording of the motion which seems to refer more to policing than-


John F. Brewin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, just to clarify-


Derek Vincent Lee: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has had ample opportunity-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The hon. member for Victoria on a point of order.


John F. Brewin: Mr. Speaker, I hope you do not take this from my friend's time, but rather from the time I did not use.
I should have explained that in the wording of the resolution before the House the word "policing" slipped in inadvertently, but the motion does call on the House to ask the Government to consider the advisability of immediately implementing the recommendation respecting the task force on aboriginal people as presented and filed with this House. That is what it was intended to mean, and I believe that is what it really does say, Mr. Speaker.


Derek Vincent Lee: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the reference to policing was just partly Freudian as a result of the member's fine work on the Committee for Justice and the Solicitor General where the hon. member for Victoria served over the last year or so.
In any event, the task force report that is the subject of the motion raised many issues in corrections at a time which was well in advance of a number of very public Canadian events that brought to the attention of the public our clear delay in addressing a number of very obvious needs of native Canadians, not just in the field of corrections, but in a broad spectrum of activity that cuts right across the whole of their existence. We, in Parliament, must share some of that blame.
The task force was not a parliamentary task force, but was a task force of individuals with expertise in the field that was being studied, that was corrections.
The recommendations of the report address very clearly and succinctly a number of areas to which I am sure we agree the corrections system should be responding. I will mention just a few of the highlights of the report for the benefit of the record since the report is not a parliamentary report.
The report recommends the gathering of statistical information that would relate to the ethnicity that is the status of being an aboriginal in the country at the time the native comes in contact with the correctional system. It recommends the generation of some new particularly targeted measuring sticks to determine how well we are

serving the native community in the corrections field. It recommends instituting mechanisms which will address the particular rehabilitative needs of native Canadians.
As an aside, I would like to refer back, as I guess we should, to the justice system of which the corrections system forms a part. We must recall that there are several goals of the justice system taken as a package and the two most important for our discussion here are the deterrence role of the justice system and the rehabilitative goals of the corrections system.
No one wishes to detract from the deterrence function. We have a criminal code in the country that applies to all, including native Canadians, but I think we must admit that there are some environments across the country where our western Judaeo-Christian based criminal code may not be a perfect fit for the native communities. That issue is a conceptual one which is being addressed in other fora.
The second function is a rehabilitative one. I pray that we are not failed to be convinced, in addressing the rehabilitation function of our justice system for native Canadians, that we do not forget that for most native Canadians-not for all, but for most-they live their lives in a society and environment which is other than main street in any of our urban areas.
Therefore, in order to truly and honestly address rehabilitation in the corrections system, we have to do it from where they live their lives. There is a need in our corrections system to institute mechanisms that will dovetail and correspond to the social order in which they find themselves. It is a social order that has been there long before the white man came to this continent.
Another of the recommendations involves the integration of native Canadians into the corrections system's policing systems.
Lastly, it recommends that we have programs at least in a transition period to raise the sensitivity and awareness level of civil servants and volunteers in the area of corrections. Thus, when they work within the system in policing and corrections, whether it be the incarceration phase, a parole phase, a mandatory supervision phase, a residency phase-all of those aspects of corrections-the particular rehabilitative needs of native offenders are
Private Members' Business
responded to in a way that is very sensitive and calculated to produce a result that will serve both the community that that individual lives in and Canadian society as a whole.
My colleagues on this side of the House are supportive of a prompt but comprehensive response of the government to this report. Because it is not a parliamentary report, it does not have a clock running on it. We would be remiss if we did not call the government to task and demand that the report not gather dust and that it respond in a concrete way to the well articulated needs of aboriginal peoples in our corrections system.


Mr. Benno Friesen (Parliamentary Secretary to Solicitor General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to respond to the motion put by my colleague from Victoria regarding the report on the incarceration of native people of our country.
I listened with care to the comments of my colleague. I must say I was somewhat disappointed in them. First, he said that his comments were not meant to be partisan. If that was non-partisan, I would hate to see him in full flight when he gets partisan with his comments.
This motion is now over a year-and-a-half old. While it is not his fault that it has been on the Order Paper so long, he has been a critic for most of that period of time. He said he was waiting to hear from me as to what recommendations and activity had been going on in this area in the intervening months. A simple call to the department could have helped his curiosity during this period. He would have found that the department has been taking this report very seriously.
What concerns me even more is the fact that he has seen other indications that this minister and his predecessor had taken all of these recommendations seriously. Witness, for example, the example he gave of all of the recommendations regarding the incarceration of women. Part of that involves the incarceration of native women.
As he knows, and he will know, special attention will be given to native women in that particular report. That is what he said, and the very fact that he could recognize that should be clear evidence that we do take this report seriously.

Private Members' Business
The fact is that the report was filed just over 20 months ago. It is one thing to file a report. It is another thing to implement the recommendations, all of which are accepted in principle. The government accepts these recommendations. There then has to be a mechanism for implementing those recommendations. It would be wrong on the part of the government to try to implement them again from Ottawa. I think the hon. member for Victoria would agree to that. What we have to do is implement them in consultation with the people who are most affected by them.
The intervening months have been used, by and large, in consultation with the native community across Canada to make sure that when we do implement these recommendations, it is done in a way that is mindful of the sensitivity of the native community.
In a sense, I suppose I want to compliment the member for bringing this motion forward because it does allow us to put on the record what has been happening in the intervening months. I would like to put on the record the fact that following the completion of the consultations with the provinces, the territories and the national aboriginal organizations, the implementation of the recommendations of the task force was approved in February 1990.
In March 1990 the executive committee of Correctional Service Canada directed the execution of an accelerated implementation plan for the recommendations. I would emphasize the the plan is currently in effect with the objective of implementing the majority of the recommendations within the current fiscal year.
The hon. member opposite happens to be leaving right now just when he finished saying that he wanted on record what was happening. He is already leaving the House.
The 61 recommendations of the task force have been grouped thematically to foster a systematic approach to their application. The categories include recommendations relating to the following areas: institutional programs and operations; the release preparation of aboriginal offenders, post-release programs and support services; personnel matters, including aboriginal cultural awareness training and the recruitment of aboriginal
staff; and the monitoring and evaluation of aboriginal programs and services. In addition, a study of the needs of Inuit offenders was commissioned by Correctional Service Canada to supplement the work of the task force. The study, which was completed in April 1989, produced an additional 29 recommendations which are being put into effect as part of the accelerated implementation plan.
The plan has the following objectives: to increase the number of institutional programs which are relevant to the needs and interests of aboriginal offenders; to increase the full parole release rate for aboriginal offenders to equal at least the rate for non-aboriginal inmates, which is what the member who just left wanted to hear about, to make sure that the aboriginal population would be treated the same way as the non-aboriginal population was treated; to increase the percentage of aboriginal offenders who are successfully serving a portion of their sentences on conditional release; to increase the extent of program delivery for aboriginal persons, and/or agencies; and to implement the development of accurate data collection concerning aboriginal offenders and their program involvement.
The strategies for the implementation of the recommendations of the task force vary in the five regions of Correctional Service Canada. This variation is necessary because each region has a different proportion and distribution of aboriginal offenders. As of September 30, 1990, the distribution was as follows: the Atlantic region had only 31 aboriginal offenders; a small population of aboriginal offenders existed in the Quebec region, which had only 34; the Ontario region had 146; the Prairie region had by far the largest population of aboriginal offenders with 844; and the Pacific region had 246 aboriginal offenders. In total, the number of aboriginal offenders under the responsibility of Correctional Service Canada as of September 30, 1990 was 1,301.
Aboriginal inmates comprise about 11 per cent, not 9 per cent as the member suggested before, but rather it is much worse. It is 11 per cent of the total of approximately 13,000 offenders incarcerated in the federal system. Aboriginal peoples who constitute only 2.5 per cent of the population of Canada are therefore significantly over-represented in the population of federally-incarcerated offenders.
November 27, 1990

In addition, the 194 aboriginal offenders who are serving federal sentences are housed in provincial institutions under the terms of federal-provincial exchange of service agreements. A number of initiatives-and this is what the member wants to hear-toward the provision of equitable decision making and equivalent opportunities for the successful reintegration of aboriginal offenders have been implemented or they have advanced enough to report on. For example, the Atlantic region has established native liaison services in its institutions. Despite the small number of aboriginal inmates in this region the native liaison workers are necessary for the development of culturally sensitive programs and services.
In the Quebec region, the tensions of the past summer between aboriginal people and governments have not slowed down the implementation of initiatives planned in support of the aboriginal and Inuit offenders in that region. For that reason a special program for Inuit offenders is under way at La Macaza Institution. When fully implemented, the program will include academic instruction by a professional person who has experience in teaching Inuit individuals as well as a program of cultural instruction.
There is also significant progress in the Ontario region, and I notice Mr. Speaker, that you want me to hurry along, and in the Prairie region.
The Prairie region has the largest population of incarcerated native persons, with approximately 65 per cent of all federal aboriginal offenders. For that reason, many special initiatives are under way within that region. Let me give some very noteworthy examples, and I will conclude with this, Mr. Speaker: an increase in the number of native liaison workers under contract to a ratio of one worker for every 50 inmates; the solicitation of proposals for the piloting of a new substance abuse treatment program in three institutions; the implementation of three pilot projects for the intensive case preparation of difficult and high-risk cases; the commencement of staffing actions for the placement of community development officers in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan; the production of printed materials in the Inuit language for placement in four institutions; the modification of regional instructions in order to
Private Members' Business
accommodate the unique dietary needs of Inuit offenders; the establishment of a regional council of aboriginal elders in order to obtain elder input into native issues in the region, this in addition to the native advisory committee of the Prairie region; the implementation of a pilot project on cross-cultural staff training that promotes increased understanding of aboriginal approaches to learning, this in addition to the native awareness training which is already established within the region.
I could go on. There is the Pacific region and so forth. I would hope that the member is satisfied that the government has, is and will continue to take this issue seriously, not simply because it is a government responsibility, but because it is right to do and the aboriginal peoples of our country deserve it.


Robert Evans Skelly: Mr. Speaker,
I thank my colleague from Victoria for bringing forth this motion so long delayed because of the problems of House business. I think it is nevertheless timely that we discuss this issue, given what has been happening across the country in the last several months.
While I appreciate the statement that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General has brought to the House, in every instance he talks about this has commenced or that has commenced. It has been a year since this motion has been tabled in the House and there should be much more progress, I would say, than has been the case in this situation.
Every time we hear the government answer criticisms as to the delay in implementing programs, we hear that the process of consultation has had to be carried out.
The process of consultation is not that satisfactory either. I am sure that would find some agreement among natives across Canada. This is just another example of the points of contact that native Canadians have had with non-native institutions in this country dating back to time immemorial.
The first institutional contact, of course, was the institution of the reserves and the Indian agent system. When natives were forced on to reserves, they were forced to suffer some of the worst, lowest quality lands that Canada could locate for them.

November 27, 1990
Private Members' Business
They were put on to reserves without adequate funding or the adequate availability of housing, health care, infrastructure and education systems. As a result, those kinds of problems resulted in additional problems which native people were forced to experiences: diseases of poverty, things like tuberculosis and dysentery that killed thousands of our native citizens across this country.
They were oppressed while on the reserves. They had to get permits from the Indian agents in order to leave the reserve. If they violated that permit system, often they were enfranchised and kicked out of their communities. That is the first point of institutional contact that native people made with the non-native society.
The second point of institutional contact, of course, was the residential school system. We have all heard the stories recently about what happened to native children in the residential school system. That system was designed as a systematic approach by the Canadian government and the Department of Indian Affairs to tear native children away from their parents and communities, which were seen as cultural influences, influencing them toward the old native culture, and forcing them into the residential school institutions which were run by the missionary religions.
Those institutional schools totally uprooted children from their communities, something that many of us who have not gone through that school system would find extremely difficult to understand, contemplate or sympathize with because without having gone through that kind of experience, it is veiy difficult to understand.
It is only now that native citizens such as Phil Fontaine who have gone through the experience of the residential school system have begun to tell us about that institutional point of contact with the dominant, non-native society.
In those institutions, native children were terrorized, brutalized, sodomized with the object of destroying their culture, contact with their parents, families and communities, and accepting the culture of the dominant society. That institution was an institution of cultural genocide that achieved its objectives by humiliating and brutalizing those native children.
I do not think any Canadian, having seen that system in operation, could possibly believe that that kind of system could be perpetrated by one Canadian upon another. It is interesting because I am getting to the other institutional points of contact.


Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order I just wonder if it would not be in order to call irrelevance of the remarks of this member to the motion.


Robert Evans Skelly: Mr. Speaker, if I may speak for a second to the issue of relevance, I think as many native people will tell you today, many of the community and social and individual dysfunctions that have resulted from this particular Canadian institution brought about into Indian communities "for their own good"-to use the term of the Department of Indian Affairs-have resulted in dysfunctions in native communities that result in many natives ending up in another institution, the institution we are talking about now.
I think it is strictly relevant to the discussion that we are having now. If given a few seconds, I will be able to make that relevance clear.
What has happened as a result of the residential school system is that native people have lost their languages, culture, family and community institutions in many cases. That has led to serious individual problems that result in native people coming into contact with the justice system.
For example, when native children came home to their reserves from residential schools, children who had been away for years and years from their parents did not, in many cases, recognize their parents. The understanding of the content of the relationship between parents and their children had been lost. The incest taboo that exists between parents and child had been lost. There are many cases now of domestic sexual abuse and violence that are prevalent on native reserves that many people draw exactly back to this system of the residential school system.
The United Church of Canada has apologized to the native people of Canada for what they have done to the native people through the residential school system. It is regrettable to this day that the Roman Catholic Church has not done that. The Government of Canada, which was the author of the system in the first place, has not seen fit to apologize to native people for what it did to native children, native communities, native parents and to native culture through the residential school system.
November 27, 1990

Those individuals are still paying the price for that institution today. In fact, all Canadians are paying the price for that system today.
The result has been that when natives themselves revolted against the school system and refused to allow them to continue, back in the 1960s, what happened was that native people took control of their own education. They insisted on taking control of their education system, thereby taking it away from the missionaries who had so abused native children and native communities.
What happened is that natives then came into contact with another institutional system of the dominant society. That was the child welfare system. Indian families had been so disintegrated that it gave the white middle-class social service system an opportunity to apprehend those children. Often they were adopted into foster homes or exported to the United States or Europe where they lost their culture altogether. The final point of contact that many native children and many native young people have with this system is the prison system. For this assistant to the Solicitor General to stand up here and say that things are proceeding normally and that things are progressing as quickly as they possible can is a cop-out.
My colleague from Mackenzie recently told me that of the six women in Kingston prison in the last year, three have committed suicide.


John F. Brewin: Six native women.


Robert Evans Skelly: That is six native women in the Kingston prison. Fifty per cent of them have committed suicide. As a result of the contact that native people have had with our institutions, natives have the highest suicide rate of any ethnic group anywhere in the world. It is 11 times higher than any other ethnic group anywhere in the world. It is directly due to the kind of institutions that Canadians have forced upon native people, including the institution of prisons.
We have to act quickly on this issue. We have to act effectively on this issue. A territorial judge has pointed out that now, more native young men are likely to come into contact with the justice system or to go to jail in the Yukon than are likely to complete school. There are serious problems out there. I do not think that the Solicitor General or his parliamentary secretary have
Private Members' Business
taken this issue seriously enough. I congratulate the member for Victoria on bringing this measure and motion forward to make sure that this Parliament is constantly looking over the shoulder of the Solicitor General, to make sure that this institution does not treat natives like other institutions that we have forced on them in the past.


John F. Brewin: Mr. Speaker, it has been suggested to me that for the record, I should raise a point of order about a comment made by the parliamentary secretary during his remarks.
He is an experienced member and he knows it is not appropriate to draw attention to the fact that a member happens to be absent from his seat at any particular moment. I happened to briefly duck behind the curtains.
I could hear every single word the member was speaking.
I am probably one of a few people in the country who could even tell him now what it was he said while he was speaking. I would hope that he would render an apology to the House, because he knows he was out of order when he said what he said.


Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, I made those remarks. I accept the fact that we are not to call members on that, but he had made such a point of wanting to hear exactly what we were proposing and the progress we were making that I was a little surprised he was leaving the Chamber.


John F. Brewin: I would ask the parliamentary secretary to do a little better than that, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I appreciate the co-operation of hon. members on both sides of the House. Again I recognize the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.


Mrs. Dorothy Dobbie (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today in support of the motion of the member. I am a little surprised at some of the comments I hear when my understanding is that the House is very much in accordance with this motion.

Private Members' Business
In that spirit we want to proceed to speak in favour of the motion because the government certainly takes these questions very seriously. A major factor in our efforts to improve the delivery of correctional services to aboriginal offenders was the task force on federally sentenced women. This was a joint initiative between the public and volunteer sectors.
The task force was made up of two committees, a steering committee and a working group, which were co-chaired by representatives of the Correctional Service Canada and the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. As my colleague probably knows, the membership of the task force included federally sentenced women, community, aboriginal women's groups, and a variety of governmental agency representatives as well. The task force released its report in April 1990. As I have said, that has had a major impact on the thinking of this government.
There are approximately 260 federally sentenced women incarcerated in various places in Canada. The total number of women offenders is generally a stable number, as my colleague is aware, representing about 2 per cent of the total federal offender population. Of this group, about 15 per cent are aboriginal women. Specifically, according to the latest statistics available to me, native women in prison number about 46.
Approximately 200 of women at any given time are under the control of the federal government are under the Community Release Supervision Program. About 50 per cent of all federally sentenced women are accommodated at the only federal prison for women, which is a multi-level institution located in Kingston. Most of the remaining women are serving their sentences in provincial institutions due to a federal-provincial exchange of service agreements.
Additionally, since March 1990, 11 women who are serving federal sentences and who have earned the privilege of a minimum security rating have been housed in a new minimum security institution which is also located in Kingston.
Due in part to their small numbers, there are several long-standing and unresolved issues which have placed women at a disadvantage in the federal facility for women at Kingston. Many of the women, for example, are very far from their families, their cultures, and their communities. Like their male counterparts, many aboriginal women offenders come from the prairie provinces. They already face cultural isolation. In addition, when they are removed geographically from their communities they face additional isolation. As well most of the inmates are whites, so there is a cultural separation that creates many problems.
Because it was originally designed as a maximum security institution, the prison for women must accommodate a whole variety of security classification levels. This results in the overclassification of many women. That reduces their opportunities to access other community facilities and programs that are geared and suited to their individual security needs. While the minimum security facility for women helps to address some of these problems, especially, for example, the problem of geographical dislocation, like the prison for women it too is in Kingston. It can only accommodate 11 minimum security women, which means there is a great and crying need.
There is also a lack of programs and services to respond to the unique needs of women. The task force found that physical and sexual abuse is part of the history of many federally sentenced women and that the incidence of such abuse is particularly high among aboriginal women.
In fact, 90 per cent of aboriginal women offenders told the task force members that they had been physically abused during their lifetimes. Usually this abuse had taken place over long periods of time. This compared to 61 per cent of non-aboriginal women. In addition, the number of aboriginal women who talked of being sexually abused was as high as 61 per cent as compared to 50 per cent of non-aboriginal population. Many of these women expressed a desire for individual counselling to deal with these experiences.
There are very few services available in provincial institutions for survivors of physical and/or sexual abuse, a fact which disadvantages many of the federally sentenced women who reside in these facilities through the exchange of service agreements with the provinces, as I mentioned before. Furthermore, aboriginal women really look to having some culturally appropriate programs- they need these-which will help them to recover from their experience with either kind of abuse.
There are other program inequities which result from the placement of federally sentenced women in provincial institutions. These facilities, for example, are not
November 27, 1990

geared to the needs of longer term offenders, people who will be in the population for a longer period of time. They do not offer programs that will contribute to the eventual reintegration of these women into the community. There is very little effective pre-release planning or programming to help these women.
Furthermore, it is somewhat demoralizing for women who are facing long-term incarceration to be housed in provincial institutions with other offenders who are there for only a short period of time. Because of the time differences friendships are broken up just when they are beginning. This creates much greater pressures for the women who are there as federal offenders. The facilities are continually releasing women who are there with shorter sentences, reducing the opportunities for friendship.
In its report the task force presented a number of recommendations including the following. It suggested that we close the prison for women and the establishment of four federally operated regional facilities for women serving federal sentences. Additionally it suggested the creation of an aboriginal healing lodge, which would serve as an incarceration option for aboriginal women who are under sentence.
The aboriginal healing lodge would be designed in consultation with aboriginal people. It will operate from a unique cultural perspective, which would put a high value on spiritual leadership, as well on things that are culturally appropriate in terms of role modelling. The services will be provided by professionals who have had some experience with the native traditions and cultures. In addition, the healing lodge will respond to the concerns expressed by many aboriginal women offenders that they are not dealing with people who understand their culture and have experiences relevant to their particular needs and that they are not comfortable talking with non-aboriginal people about sexual or other kinds of abuse.
The lodge will provide the following to aboriginal offenders: a safe place for women of aboriginal descent; a caring attitude toward self, family and community; a belief in individualized client specific planning so that people are treated like people rather than like numbers; an understanding of the healing role of children who, in
Private Members' Business
aboriginal cultures, are considered to be closer to the spirit world; and pride in surviving difficult backgrounds and personal experiences.
The lodge will also respond to the concerns of aboriginal women around issues of racism. Aboriginal programs should reflect the cultures and spiritual experiences of federally sentenced women who feel that they have suffered from marginalization and from erosion of then-culture in mainstream Canadian society.
On September 26, the Solicitor General announced the government's response to the recommendations of the task force on federally sentenced women. Canadians can be very proud that the response included full support for the major recommendations of the task force.
The government has made a commitment to ensure that new regional correctional facilities for women will be constructed within four years. In the meantime, Correctional Service Canada is committed to implementing the short-term recommendations which were also submitted by the task force and which aimed at improving conditions in the prison for women.
The recommendations calling for the elimination of transfers from provincial correctional institutions for women will be implemented. The recommendation calling for the daily presence of an aboriginal elder at the prison for women to minister to the spiritual needs has been partially implemented. The service is also in the process of implementing such measures as funded visits with family and enhanced telephone contacts at no additional cost to the inmate.
This will be of particular value and of great assistance to aboriginal women because, as I pointed out, most of them suffer from serious geographical dislocation from their families, their communities, and their cultures.
Finally, the recommendation which calls for the provision of a national aboriginal liaison worker has been successfully implemented already. This worker facilitates information sharing and assists aboriginal women in maintaining contact with their families, cultures, and communities cross Canada.
Once again, we would like to support the motion of the hon. member opposite and say that we whole-heartedly support all and any measures that can make the

November 27, 1990
Private Members' Business
aboriginal women more comfortable in federal institutions.


Mr. Doug Fee (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, I too am very pleased for this opportunity to comment on the motion and to offer my support to it in principle. I share the desire of the hon. member for Victoria, as do most if not all members on both sides of this House, to implement any changes that are going to make Correction Service Canada more effective and able to improve rehabilitative services to all inmates of both sexes and all races.
The issue raised in this motion is serious. Although it is obvious that I am going to be more supportive of actions that have been taken since the task force recommendations than was the hon. member for Victoria, we are both going to agree that there is still need for more.
I also edited my comments very carefully so that they fit into the allotted time. I notice that the time has been reduced somewhat, so I would like to offer my conclusion and then give my argument because I do not want to leave out the conclusion.
My conclusion is that I feel there has been a significant evolution in aboriginal offences services over the last two decades, but there are still facts that are outstanding and troubling. They include the fact that fewer aboriginal offenders have been granted full parole by the National Parole Board. Second, when aboriginal offenders were granted some form of conditional release, it occurred later in their sentence than in the case of non-native offenders. Third, aboriginal offenders were more likely to have their parole revoked than non-native offenders.
These are serious concerns, but I believe that the federal government, through the intervention of Correctional Service Canada, has, is, and will continue to take every possible step in implementing the recommendations of the task force on aboriginal peoples in federal institutions.
I said that I support the motion in principle. I would suggest that so does the federal government and Correctional Service Canada. The federal government and the CSC have already taken measures to implement the majority of the recommendations within this current fiscal year. I say "the majority of the recommendations" because some of them, those which relate to affirmative
action, to personnel recruitment and development, and to the statistical adaptation of psychometric diagnostic tests for use with aboriginal people, as well as some which require other agency participation, will require a phased in implementation that will extend beyond the current fiscal year.
The hon. member for Victoria has spent time, as have I, on the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General. Among other things, we have read and reviewed the mission statement Correctional Service Canada. For those who have not heard or read it, I would like to add it to the record of this debate.
Correctional Service Canada, as part of the criminal justice system, contributes to the protection of society by actively encouraging and assisting offenders to become law-abiding citizens, while exercising reasonable, safe, secure and humane control. Through this mission statement, Correctional Service Canada recognizes its responsibility toward all offenders, including aboriginals. Further, it recognizes what it calls core value number 2, that "the offender has the potential to live as a law-abiding citizen".
The mission statement also articulates a specific strategy objective in relation to core value number 2, which is "to ensure that the needs of female and aboriginal offenders are properly addressed".
Many other objectives which are reflected in the CSC strategic plan for the period of 1990-91 to 1992-93 are also of special importance in order to meet the needs of aboriginal offenders. They are all relevant to the question before us, so again I am quoting:
1.2	to ensure that policies and procedures affecting offenders are communicated in such a way that they can be understood by offenders and are readily accessible to them;
2.3	to provide programs to assist offenders in meeting their individual needs, in order to enhance their potential for reintegration as law-abiding citizens;
2.4	to ensure that offenders are productively occupied and have access to a variety of work and educational opportunities to meet their needs for growth and personal development;
2.6	to ensure that program needs are considered when making placement and transfer decisions;
2.7	to ensure that the risk presented by the offender is taken into account when making decisions, particularly in matters relating to the reduction of security and conditional release;
November 27, 1990

3.8	to provide staff training and development opportunities that are based on the achievement of our Mission, develop the full potential of staff members, and emphasize interpersonal skills, leadership, and respect for the unique differences and needs of all offenders.
Corporate objective number II of the plan is:
To develop and implement policies and programs to address the specific needs and reduce the potential recidivism of federally sentenced women, native offenders, violent offenders, sex offenders, mentally disordered offenders and inmates serving long sentence.
The innovative projects and enhanced services for aboriginal offenders are aimed directly at these strategic and corporate objectives.
These objectives do not answer all of the recommendations contained in the report of April 1989, but it is important for this House and everyone concerned about the recommendations and their impact on Correctional Service Canada to know that they exist. They are stated objectives of Correctional Service Canada written for this year which illustrate that the recommendations of the committee are being acted upon and that the programs are being influenced.
As I mentioned earlier, the federal government and Correctional Service of Canada have already taken measures through a national accelerated implementation plan to implement the majority of these recommendations within the current fiscal year. The plan has the following five objectives:
to increase institutional programs that are relevant for Aboriginal offenders, and to assist in their preparation for success on conditional release;
to increase the release rate on full parole for Aboriginal offenders;
to increase the percentage of Aboriginal offenders who are successfully serving a portion of their sentence on conditional release;
to increase program delivery by Aboriginal persons and/or agencies; and
to develop accurate data collection concerning Aboriginal offenders and their program involvement.
Prior to being elected to this House my first-hand experience with federal Correctional Service Canada was limited to the medium security institution in Bowden, and of course media reports about others. Since my election and appointment to the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General, I have had the opportunity to look at corrections in a different and hopefully
Private Members' Business
more complete manner. I still know more about Bowden than the others.
I would like to offer two recent press reports as examples of positive attempts to improve correction programs. First, on October 9, a news story appeared in the Red Deer Advocate, under the heading "Spirits soar at prison powwow". It outlined a Thanksgiving week pow wow that was held in the Bowden institution. It reported not only that the spirits of native inmates had been raised but, quoting from the article, "It gave them a chance to reflect, take in and start to heal". On the institution grounds in Bowden the native inmates have established a tepee and sacred grounds where they have erected a sweat lodge, where they hold sweat lodge ceremonies twice a month. From the Red Deer Advocate, of last Friday, an announcement was reported of a federal grant to the institution for a native awareness day to curb racism and give staff a better understanding of natives and of their culture.
In corrections it is important to address the individual needs of offenders and of specific, identified offender groups in order to optimize their successful reintegration. Because of the disadvantaged position of aboriginal offenders, this concern becomes even more acute in order to respond effectively to their needs and to encourage their return to the community as law-abiding citizens.
The implementation of elder services and native liaison worker services launched aboriginal specific correctional programming and marked a pivotal point in the situation of native offenders. These have now become the-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I regret to interrupt the hon. member but the hour provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired.
Pursuant to Standing Order 96(1), this order is dropped from the Order Paper.

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.

Adjournment Debate



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

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

Robert Evans Skelly: Mr. Speaker, as you know, I am expressing some concern about a response that was given to a question I asked almost at the time that the member for Victoria submitted his motion.
I asked at that time the Minister of Justice, having received the 1989 report of the Human Rights Commissioner of Canada, if she would act on a recommendation proposed by the Human Rights Commissioner for a Royal commission of the stature of the Bilingualism and Biculturalism commission into the issue of the relationship between natives and non-natives in Canada. At that time the minister responded: "It is not up to me to institute a Royal commission. It should be a decision of the Prime Minister and his government".
As Mr. Speaker will recall, in his 1988 report, the Human Rights Commissioner pointed to the situation of native people in Canada. He indicated that the grand promise of equal opportunity that forms the central purpose of Canadian human rights stands in stark contrast with the conditions in which many native people of Canada lived. He pointed out that the treatment of native Canadians is a national shame. He called upon the people of Canada to set up a Royal commission which would inquire into the relationship between Canada and its native citizens, a Royal commission that would have the stature of the Bilingualism and Biculturalism commission that set the language and cultural debate between the two nations of Canada's dominant society.
At the time of his annual report of 1989 the Human Rights Commissioner came back to the House of Commons recognizing that little if anything had happened to correct the situation or improve the situation of native people in Canada. He talked about the conditions under which native people in this country lived. He said to the people of Canada: "Anyone who thinks the game has been won need only to glance at the statistics or have a
closer look at the shattering truth that lies behind them. Some of the social indicators may have improved, but the condition of aboriginal life is still a long way from matching the expectations of Canadian society as a whole".
He also said: "Make no mistake about it, these are human rights problems. If there is any single issue on which Canada cannot hold its head high in the international community, any single area in which we can be accused of falling down on our obligations, it is in this area of aboriginal relations". Again he called upon the people of Canada, the Parliament of Canada, and the Government of Canada. He said: "It is for this reason we have suggested that a thorough going inquiry into these problems modelled on the Royal commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism of 25 years ago might play a useful role in achieving consensus without being used as an excuse for delaying important developments".
Again the chairman of the Canadian Human Rights Commission called on Parliament and called on government to take action to establish a Royal commission into the relations between Canada's native people and its dominant society.
Just a few days ago, on September 21, in an act almost of desperation and frustration coming out of the Oka crisis this summer, again Human Rights Commissioner Max Yalden made public a report to Parliament in which he again called on the Canadian government, saying: "Progress has been too slow and little if anything has been done." He called upon the Canadian government to establish a Royal commission into the relations among Canada's aboriginal people, the government, and the people of Canada. Again nothing was done.
I am concerned that as a result of what is happening with the recommendations of the Royal commission, native people are becoming more and more frustrated and perceive more and more that Canada does not attach any priority to their problems. In fact, they see the Prime Minister playing games with the issue of a Royal commission. At one time, he holds it out as a carrot to the Manitoba chiefs in order to try to get the chiefs to silence Elijah Harper when he is standing up in the legislature and saying no to the Meech Lake Accord. Another time he is holding it as a stick to the natives. When Meech Lake died he said: "You are responsible
November 27, 1990

and, as a result, you are not going to get a Royal commission."
When he talked to the First Nations Congress in British Columbia about the possibility of either having a process to set up land claims negotiations in that province or having a Royal commission, the native people in British Columbia said that they wanted both but that they did not want the selection of one to jeopardize the other.
More recently we have heard Lowell Murray say: "No, this Royal commission will not be struck until the Spicer committee reports on July 1."
It is time to end this process of manipulation. It is time for the government to call a Royal commission. It is evident that the problems out there need the examination of a Royal commission. The aboriginal people want it. The people of Canada want it. When is the government going to follow the people of Canada and do the bidding of the people of Canada?


Mr. Rob Nicholson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, the issues raised by the Canadian Human Rights Commission are serious ones of concern to the federal government.
As the hon. member noted, the report recommends a Royal commission, one modelled on the Bilingual and Biculturalism Royal commission of 25 years ago.
The Prime Minister told this House of Commons on September 25, 1990 that the government had been discussing an agenda with native leaders to address issues of concern to Canada's native people. The Prime Minister outlined this government's plans to preserve the special place of first nations in this country, based on the aboriginal and treaty rights recognized in the Constitution.
The agenda will have four main pillars: the land claims, the economic and social conditions on reserves, the relationship between aboriginal peoples and governments, and the concerns of aboriginal peoples in contemporary life. Fundamental to the agenda are changes to the Indian Act, with the objective of enlarging the aboriginal capacity for self-government within the framework of the Canadian Constitution.
Adjournment Debate
However, at the present time many of the departments of this government are already at work on the issues that have been identified by the Human Rights Commission. The Ministry of the Solicitor General, the Ministry of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and the Department of Justice are among those departments that are addressing separately and jointly the question of aboriginal rights, native justice, self-government, and other pressing issues of concern to the people of Canada, aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike.
Since 1977 the Department of Justice has funded the Native Court Worker Program in conjunction with the provinces and territories. The purpose of this program is to assist natives who become involved in the criminal justice system and to enhance the awareness of those involved in the criminal justice system concerning the values, customs, and socio-economic conditions of native people.
In most cases the program is delivered by a native agency which varies from province to province. In British Columbia, for example, the carrier agency is the Native Court Worker and Counselling Association, while in Ontario the Friendship Centres deliver the program.
In June 1990 the Minister of Justice, meeting with her provincial and territorial colleagues, agreed to sponsor a national conference on aboriginal justice jointly. Fifty per cent of those participants will be aboriginal people. The conference will be co-sponsored by the Yukon whose Minister of Justice originally proposed the gathering.
The Marshall inquiry made a number of recommendations concerning the criminal justice system and aboriginal people in Nova Scotia, and since the report was released representatives of our government have been available to work with provincial and Micmac representatives to act upon these recommendations.
I think the hon. member would, and should, agree that the federal government has demonstrated by these and other initiatives that it is deeply committed to addressing the problems faced by aboriginal people in this country today, and we have every intention of continuing to do so.

Adjournment Debate GOODS AND SERVICES TAX


Chris Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I have raised a number of questions regarding the GST and the way it affects lower-income Canadians.
Over the past several months, we have heard the Minister of Finance and the Minister of National Health and Welfare state repeatedly that families with incomes of $30,000 or less will, in fact, be better off under the goods and services tax than they are now. This statement is open to challenge on a number of grounds. In fact, the GST will not help middle and lower-income families in any way, shape or form. That is why, of course, 80 per cent or so of Canadians want the tax scrapped and want a fair taxation system in the country.
While arguing the benefits of the GST for lower-income Canadians, the government often refers to the GST tax credit as the measure that takes the burden of the GST off this group. This, of course, is simply not the case. The tax credit is only partially indexed to inflation, first of all, meaning that its real value will decline each year and that the income threshold for receiving the credit will also decline. As the years go by, fewer and fewer families will be eligible for the credit and those who are eligible will receive less money.
If the government was serious about using the GST tax credit to assist the less well off, it would have indexed it fully to inflation. By not doing so, the government is making it clear to lower-income Canadians that they will bear a greater tax burden in the years ahead. Lower-income Canadians will be paying more tax and receiving less in the form of the GST tax credit in the future.
Another problem with the tax credits under the GST is that by earning less, a person does not necessarily receive a higher credit. In other words, those who are less well off will not necessarily be compensated any more. For instance, a single person earning $6,000 is eligible for a tax credit of $190. A single person earning between $14,000 and $24,000 is eligible for a tax credit of $280. Whatever the case, it is clear that this will not compensate those Canadians for the increased costs due to the GST.
Presumably, the rationale for giving those with lower incomes a lower GST credit is that they will, in fact,
spend less of their money on GST taxable items. But they will spend a higher proportion of their income on taxable goods and services. The lower a person's income, the larger the proportion they will spend on essential goods and services.
Lower-income earners do not have the luxury of putting some money aside in tax-free savings account such as RRSPs. Canadians living below the poverty line are not going to be savers. In fact, with this government's regressive policies, such as cutbacks to family allowances, cuts to transfer payments to the provinces for health and post-secondary education, cap on CAP for British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, and the privatization and reduction in benefits for the Unemployment Insurance Plan, few ordinary Canadians will be saving at all.
Yet another call for concern about the efficacy of the GST tax credit is that a number of provinces have indicated that they may consider the credit as income and thus reclaim the credit from welfare recipients. In other words, many welfare recipients, the poorest of the poor, will have absolutely no protection from this regressive GST at all.
The Minister of Finance, and others, have indicated in the House and elsewhere that they would strongly encourage the provinces not to take this step of robbing the poor of their GST tax credit. But, the government has not made a firm and absolute commitment to ensuring that this will not occur. It must make such a commitment immediately to stop its ideological cousins and provincial Conservative governments from grabbing this meagre GST tax credit from the poorest of Canadians.
This, Mr. Speaker, is particularly a problem in Alberta and my province of Saskatchewan, which has not yet indicated that it has no intention of taking the GST credit from social assistance recipients, and indeed appears to be considering the matter very strongly.
In addition to this, there are many other claims about the miracle of the GST. The Minister of Finance has told us that many products will actually cost less under the GST. He has given examples such as washing machines, driers, and new automobiles. These items are generally not in the budget of lower income families. Lower-income families, if they can afford a car at all, will buy used cars which are newly taxed under the goods and services
November 27, 1990

tax. It is hard to visualize just how lower-income families will benefit under the goods and services tax.
In addition, the minister's statements assuring us that some items will cost less under the goods and services tax because of the removal of the manufacturers' sales tax are based on the assumption that manufacturers will pass this saving on to the consumer. Yet we have heard on numerous occasions from manufacturers saying that they have no intention of passing on the savings. Instead, we will see many items simply jump 7 per cent in price beginning January 1, 1991, if indeed the tax is implemented.
What about the timing of the implementation of the GST. Canada is presently in a recession and governments across the country are running deficit budgets and, at the same time, trying to reduce the deficits. The way in which they are trying to do this will inevitably lead us down the road to cuts in social assistance, health services, post-secondary education programs and so on. These are the sorts of cuts we have seen from this Conservative government and provincial Conservative governments.
During a recession, a time when low-income Canadians need social safety nets the most, it appears that they will be reduced, both at the federal and provincial level.
The government has acknowledged but under-estimated greatly the inflationary effect of the GST. While this will make it more difficult for all Canadians to make ends meet, once again lower-income Canadians will be the hardest hit. Lower-income Canadians, if employed at all, are most likely to be employed in non-unionized, part-time and temporary jobs. They have no bargaining power with their employer, or with the government, to index their wages or, if they are on social assistance, no bargaining power to indexed or social assistance cheques to inflation. The latest example of this is the partially-indexed GST credit, a small compensation to the poor for the great hardship the GST will bring them. They will fall further and further behind in times of inflation.
In closing, Canadians have asked for tax reform but they have not asked for the GST. The GST is clearly not what they have in mind. When they want a tax reform, they want a fair taxation system where those who can afford to pay more do so. The more affluent, who are
Adjournment Debate
now the subject of tax loopholes, should be paying their fair share. The 118,700 profitable corporations which paid no tax last year should also be paying their fair share. The GST is regressive and hurts lower-income Canadians the most. It is not fair that a welfare mother earning $6,000 a year pays the same 7 per cent tax that a corporate executive earning $200,000 a year pays.
In closing, it is time the government listened to the concerns of Canadian families by helping them, instead of punishing them for being less well off. Surely not being able to see their own children eat properly-we all know that one in four children in Saskatchewan goes hungry-is punishment enough. It is time that the government decided to implement a fair tax system and scrap the goods and services tax.


Mrs. Pauline Browes (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State of Canada and Minister of State (Multiculturalism and Citizenship)):: Mr. Speaker, prior to the assertions of the hon. member for Saskatoon- Clark's Crossing, this government has had a great interest in fair taxation.
We have worked to eliminate the special treatment that is used to permit those of greater means to pay less tax. Consequently, higher-income Canadians and profitable corporations now pay taxes which are more commensurate with their earnings.
First, we converted personal exemptions and many deductions to tax credits to improve fairness, and reduced or eliminated many special tax breaks. We also eliminated or reduced many special corporate tax breaks, and broadened the tax base so that profitable corporations pay tax.
In the 1989 budget, the government announced a new large corporations tax for Canadian corporate capital in excess of $10 million. Effectively January 1, 1991, the large corporations tax will be raised and that rate will be a 15 per cent increase. This tax will help ensure that big business pays its fair share of tax.
The proposed goods and services tax is designed to further improve the fairness of taxation in Canada. Under the GST, the distribution of the tax burden will be more progressive.
Wealthy Canadians will pay their fair share. They will not be able to avoid the GST. They tend to consume more and, therefore, will pay more on average on the

November 27, 1990
Adjournment Debate
sales tax. With the GST credit, families with incomes of up to $30,000 a year will have more after-tax income than they do now. This includes three-quarters of families headed by seniors or single parent families. In total, some 8.7 million families and individuals will receive credit cheques.
As well, basic groceries and residential rents will be exempt under the GST, further reducing the tax burden of lower income Canadians.
Before the government introduced refundable sales tax credits in 1986, low income Canadians paid much more federal sales tax as a percentage of their income than the higher income brackets. Since 1986, the federal sales tax credit has been increased three times. With the introduction of the GST, the refundable sales tax credit will be enhanced once more, the monetary value of the credit will be increased and the income eligibility threshold to receive the credit will be raised. As a result, lower income earners will pay much less as a percentage of their income than those in higher income brackets.
The hon. member is also of the opinion that business will fail to pass on to the consumer the savings of the existing sales tax replaced by the GST.


Mr. Dingwall:: That's right. That's right. Nose is growing.


Pauline Browes: Well, albeit there will be a number of forces operating to ensure that savings in the removal of the existing tax are passed on to consumers.
The hon. member might just want to look at pages 7 and 8 which contain a number of businesses in the Consumer and Corporate Affairs operations dated 1990 of the committee report.
Since 1984, the government has taken an active role in making the Canadian tax system more progressive. The GST is just another step toward fair taxation.


SCOTIA SYNFUELS PROJECT
David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I rise with regard to a question that I posed on November 20 this year to the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology.
On that particular occasion I asked the minister if he would reconsider the decision that he had made to kill the Synfuels project, which affects the people of eastern Nova Scotia.
This particular project had widespread support across the province. In fact, April 18, 1990, was the first time in a long time the Nova Scotia House of Assembly passed an all-party resolution. Even the socialists and the Conservatives supported the Liberal Party in Nova Scotia in supporting the Synfuels project, which in its very essence is where coal and crude oil come together to form a particular product, thereafter being exported to various countries and to various businesses in order to produce energy.
Unfortunately, the Government of Canada has killed this particular project. If there is any further testimony, as codified in the Chronicle Herald of November 16,1990, it said: "Ottawa kills Synfuels Project".
There are three major advantages of this particular project. I would have hoped that the minister in his wisdom, and particularly the officials of the department, would have seen fit to sit down with the principals of the Synfuels project to debate and discuss with them a plan of action in order to see this particular project realized.
I should note for the edification of members in this House that we in Atlantic Canada, partly because of our geography, and also because of our limited sources of energy at the present time, are dependent to a large extent on the importation of foreign oil, so much so that it has caused provincial governments down through the years, going back to the mid 1950s, and perhaps even before that, to come up with an energy policy which is supportive of the resources which we have in the boundaries within our provinces and to utilize that not only to create jobs, but also to have a stable supply, if you will, of energy for the taxpayers of that province.
With coal being used on the Synfuels project and the technology that is readily available, one could get approximately five barrels of oil per tonne of coal. That is an amazing sum, Mr. Speaker, in view of the large quantities of imported oil that we have in the province of Nova Scotia.
There is a clear advantage for Canadians from coast to coast, but particularly for those of us in Atlantic Canada, namely, that there would be less of a dependence on foreign oil. I do not have to point out to the parliamentary secretary who will be responding to my assertions here today the need for stable supplies of energy across this

great country of ours. We just have to look to the Persian Gulf where the stability of oil supplies which feed many parts of the world are certainly in question. Of course, the consequential effect that that has with regard to rising energy prices is a concern for all Canadians.
The environmental advantages of this particular project are well documented and well supported by environmentalists and those of us who are concerned with good public policy for Canadians in that area of our country.
Cape Breton has coal which is low in ash, but it is very high in sulphur. It is a very soft coal and it would be utilized very easily with regard to new coal technologies and the processes that go into place in terms of changing that particular coal into a liquid substance, which is thereafter used in energy and used for domestic purposes. There is a real environmental advantage.
There is a regional development advantage. As I said on November 20, as my colleagues have said on previous occasions, and of course as I have said this repeatedly in the House, the construction phase of this project would result in approximately 500 construction jobs. It would provide direct and indirect jobs of approximately 2,000. So you can see, Mr. Speaker, in terms of an economic bonanza, if you will, in that area of eastern Nova Scotia, it would be very helpful.
I want to point out to the parliamentary secretary that in that area of the province unemployment is exceedingly high. In fact, the figures from the Department of Employment and Immigration base it at approximately 17.3 per cent. For those of us who have the privilege, and I say it is a privilege to live in that area of this country, we know it to be much worse than 17 per cent. In fact, municipal leaders in many parts of my constituency, namely Glace Bay, would indicate that it is much higher than 17 per cent and at 30 and 40 per cent.
Hibernia will cost $5.2 billion of taxpayers money. The Lloydminster project will cost taxpayers $1.2 billion. The OSLO project will cost Canadian taxpayers $4.1 billion. All those compared to the Synfuels Project, with benefits in terms of environment, regional development, jobs indirect and direct, as well as the construction, and of
Adjournment Debate
course the benefits in terms of less dependence on foreign oil, which will cost a mere $400 million.
In closing, I am the first to admit that this is indeed a lot of money. Therefore, it underlines the need for the the Government of Canada to sit down with principals of the Synfuels Project and work out a plan which is equitable for the principals and for the Government of Canada, but more importantly beneficial to Canadians who happen to live in the Atlantic region and reside in the eastern part of Nova Scotia.
I invite the very able parliamentary secretary to stand in his place and give us the kind of reassurance that taxpayers in that area of the country so rightly deserve.


Mr. Andre Plourde (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to respond to the question raised by the hon. member for Cape Breton-Richmond East concerning the Scotia Synfuels project.
The project, in a variety of configurations, has been examined and analysed by federal representatives for nearly ten years. During the initial years of its development, the project enjoyed financial and technical support provided by a consortium, directed by private sector interests with the necessary expertise to carry out the project. Over time, the members of this consortium abandoned the project for technical or financial reasons.
During that time, the federal government invested approximately $2 million, together with the private sector, in testing procedures and project-related technology studies. We wanted to work with the project sponsors to find out whether we could develop viable markets and thus use the human and natural resources of Cape Breton.
Tests indicated that the technology could be used but additional detailed engineering studies were necessary to ensure that the proposed facility would produce the forecast quantity and quality of synthetic fuel. Federal and provincial representatives met with the project leaders on many occasions over the years in order to make the project a success. As you can see, Mr. Speaker, we co-operated very closely and we invested taxpayers' money. Briefly, we did our share to make the project materialize.

Adjournment Debate
During discussions with the sponsor last year, it was frequently pointed out that a project of this size could not proceed without a qualified and dynamic principal partner from the private sector. This essential ingredient could not be found, Mr. Speaker, which means that all the risks would have to be taken by Canadian taxpayers. In addition to the requested investment tax credits totalling $200 million, the project would require hundreds of millions of dollars in additional financial assistance, in the form of interest reductions and credit insurance.
As I pointed out, the project sponsors have had every opportunity to develop the project and meet the appropriate people to make the project a success. At the present time, after years of activity, the project has not yet been finalized. Funds that were supposed to come from the private sector are not there and have not even been identified. Briefly, it is no use having further meetings on the subject, Mr. Speaker, unless there is a significant change with respect to private sector interests.


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


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.32 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
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[Stage Direction]


Wednesday, November 28, 1990