1990-01-25

Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Government House Leader):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 18 petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


Albert Glen Cooper: I move:
That this House do now proceed to Orders of the Day.


Mr. Speaker:: The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


Mr. Speaker:: In my opinion the yeas have it.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps I cannot hear but I can count.
And more than five members having risen:


Mr. Speaker:: Call in the members.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I declare the motion carried.



POINT OF ORDER


Mr. Patrick Boyer (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to see whether at this juncture you would seek the consent of the Elouse to permit the Secretary of State for External Affairs to make a brief statement on Canadian foreign policy relating to Cambodia. It is a statement of which the opposition critics for External Affairs are aware and would be able to respond to in the normal fashion.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: On the same point of order, first the member for Ottawa

Vanier followed by the member for Kamloops.


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, I have two points. On the first point, Routine Proceedings calls for Statements by Ministers to be made in that time. The government shot itself in the foot, moved that the House proceed to Government Orders and, of course, did forgo its right to make a statement.
The second point is that we have committees sitting at this time. I do not think it is proper to have committees sit when this House votes on important matters such as we just did. I would like to have a ruling from the Speaker. If committees must continue to sit then we must have a ruling from the Speaker.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: On the first point, the member for Kamloops.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, I must say that I do not quite understand what the request means. Under the daily routine of business, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Government House Leader responded to the call for Tabling of Documents. The next order of business was Statements by Ministers. I realize that the Secretary of State for External Affairs was in his place ready to make a statement. It came as a surprise to all of us that the parliamentary secretary decided to introduce a dilatory motion to move directly to Government Orders which would sabotage the Secretary of State for External Affairs' intention of making a statement.
I would like to seek clarification before we proceed further on this point of order. I would like to know why the government did what it did if it was going to actually make it impossible for the Secretary of State for External Affairs to make his statement.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, if I may respond to the comments by both members of the opposition. Number one, we, as a government are very much interested in debating the legislation in the House of Commons at any time. Yesterday the NDP hijacked Parliament, wasted an entire day. When we could have been getting on with the serious issues of the day they were playing games.


Some hon. members:: Order.


Albert Glen Cooper: As long as they continue to behave in that childish fashion and continue to make public statements that they are going to tie up this House of Commons and refuse proper debate in this House, we are going to continue to move, by whatever means we can, to assure this House and its members the opportunity to debate the legislation.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Albert Glen Cooper: be allowed to make a reasonable statement with the appropriate time for the opposition members to follow if they choose to do that. It is a simply request; a yes or no from them will suffice.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I just want to pursue my point. When I said that the government had a chance during Routine Proceedings to have Statements by Ministers, my critic, the member for Papineau, was not in the House at that time. He is now here. He was in a meeting with NGOs. The government knows that. Everybody knows that we are meeting today with the NGOs across Canada. That is an important meeting for us. I do not know why the government cannot get its act together and co-ordinate things so that we can have an organized day and a fruitful meeting with people who are very important to us.
The member for Papineau is here now and he agrees that it is so important to Canada that we could probably, by unanimous consent, go to Statements by Ministers and have a response from all sides.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I can be helpful and resolve this impasse. To be fair, let me first of all say that the parliamentary secretary was accurate in his comments and I have to take that criticism, we did oppose the government's initiative to introduce the goods and services legislation yesterday.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Nelson Andrew Riis: I cannot apologize for that, that is a fact. I appreciate that the Secretary of State for External Affairs wants to make a statement today on what I think we all agree is an important matter.
Let me suggest this: We will certainly give our consent to proceed and to agree that the minister should make his statement at this point with the understanding that at the conclusion of the minister's statement and response from both opposition critics, we would automatically revert to Routine Proceedings and proceed as we would normally do during the day.
I am prepared to say that to allow the Secretary of State for External Affairs to make his case.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member for Winnipeg-'Transcona on the same point of order.
Routine Proceedings


Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg Transcona):: Mr. Speaker, if the government regarded the ability of the Secretary of State for External Affairs to make his statement-which in any other context I would welcome, and I have often welcomed the willingness of the Secretary of State for External Affairs to make ministerial statements-then it could have moved to Orders of the Day after the minister made his statement. That was the next item under Routine Proceedings, and the government did not do that. The government itself has brought about this situation.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The parliamentary secretary asked for unanimous consent. I gather that there is consent from the official opposition. There is, in a sense, a conditional consent from the New Democratic Party, so I would ask the parliamentary secretary to respond to the conditional consent from the New Democratic Party.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, the very reason I moved the motion to proceed to Orders of the Day was to prevent what happened to this House of Commons yesterday happening again today. So we asked to move to Orders of the Day. We have asked for consent, without condition, for the minister to make his statement and the critics from the two parties to respond. They can simply say yes or no. Let it be on their heads.


Nelson Andrew Riis: I am prepared to make it simple, Mr. Speaker. No.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: On a point of order, the Right Hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs.
Right Hon. Joe Clark (Secretary of State for External
Affairs): Let me just understand this, Mr. Speaker. I am asking clarification from the House. Do I understand it that it is now the position of the New Democratic Party that when the foreign minister of Canada wants to come into the House of Commons to bring the House of Commons up to date on developments in Cambodia, on matters of Indo-China, indeed, on other questions of foreign policy, that for reasons of procedural, petty politics by the NDP, they deny Parliament the opportunity to discuss parliamentary and foreign policy business?


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, this is a very important issue and we have to understand what is happening here.
I appreciate the kind gesture of the Secretary of State for External Affairs early this morning. He notified both opposition parties that he was prepared to make a

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statement in the House today on Cambodia, an issue that we all agree is very important.
At that time, as House leader for the New Democratic Party, I alerted our external affairs critic that this was happening, enabling him to prepare his remarks. This was the plan.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I have a point of order from the member for Montreal-Saint Denis. Of course I will give the floor back to the member for Kamloops.


Mr. Marcel Prud'homme (Saint-Denis):: Mr. Speaker, I would like some clarification from you on the Standing Orders. Permission was sought for unanimous consent, which was refused. I do not see what we are discussing now. It is a debate that is continuing. If we want to debate the question, I would really like to participate. But permission for unanimous consent was refused by one of the parties. I am not going into their reasons; I am saying that permission was refused. So let us go on to what we should be doing now, because we are getting into a debate between the Right Hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark) and the NDP. This is not a procedural issue. It is a debate we are getting into. If you want to allow a debate, I intend to take part in it.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member for Saint-Denis is right when he says that unanimous consent was sought and refused. I saw the Secretary of State for External Affairs as perhaps trying to make another attempt to obtain unanimous consent, and that is why I intend to allow the hon. member for Kamloops at least to say what he has to say following the representations by the Secretary of State for External Affairs.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I simply want to say that we did appreciate the gesture of the Secretary of State for External Affairs this morning alerting the opposition parties of his intention to make a statement.
We prepared ourselves to respond accordingly in the usual traditions of the House. That is why we were quite taken aback. I must give credit to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Government House Leader in that he may have been anticipating that the New Democratic Party might do something today to frustrate the government's efforts to discuss the goods and services tax. Having made that assumption, there are a number of
other places during Routine Proceedings when he could have moved the motion that he did to go directly to Orders of the Day. He chose not to.
As a result of his decision he sabotaged the efforts of the Secretary of State for External Affairs. In other words, he made the decision that we would not deal with this statement today. I regret that decision. We were prepared to respond to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. We were anxious to respond to the Secretary of State for External Affairs, but the government itself made it impossible for us to do that.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
Right Hon. Joe Clark (Secretary of State for External
Affairs) moved that Bill C-25, an Act to amend the Geneva Conventions Act, the National Defence Act and the Trade-marks Act, be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee.
Patrick Boyer: Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to speak in favour of Bill C-25, an Act to amend the Geneva Conventions Act, the National Defence Act and the Trade-marks Act, and to offer a few comments on the importance of this legislation for Canada.
Fifty years ago, Mr. Speaker, the world entered a period of armed conflict. The Second World War caused destruction and indescribable suffering in many parts of the globe. Atrocities were committed against the weak and defenceless, and the war affected even the most helpless and the most innocent. This terrible experience proved once more that the concept of total war is intolerable.
Certain forms of protection, which previously had received only formal recognition, were now given very serious thought and considered to be important principles of international humanitarian law.
In the immediate postwar era, codifying humanitarian principles consisted basically in developing concepts that were to become part of the international law that is binding on all States. The so-called Principles of Nuremberg became a statement of standards that all States and all individuals were to observe at the outbreak of war.

Important as these principles were, they only touched on basic humanitarian problems and did so in a rather general way. It was acknowledged that more specific rule applying to specific situations were necessary and that these rules should be codified in a treaty that would enable all States to ratify their acceptance of these obligations. This development was to lead, in 1949, to the adoption of the four Geneva conventions.
The Geneva conventions are a major step in the development of humanitarian law, in that they provide significant new forms of protection for those who are most vulnerable during periods of armed conflict. They have now been ratified by most countries, including Canada.
Although these instruments were considered very important, the search continued for even more effective forms of protection.
In 1977, after four years of intensive negotiations, two additional protocols to the four Geneva conventions were adopted.
Like the conventions, the protocols clearly define how the signatory States must act during periods of armed conflict, in order to protect as much as possible those persons who are unable to provide for their own defence.
The fundamental and comprehensive nature of the obligations and form of protection set forth in the protocols make these instruments as important as those to which they are attached.

But Canada has not yet ratified the two Geneva Protocols of 1977. A Canadian delegation participated very actively and effectively over the years 1974 to 1977 at the diplomatic conference which adopted these instruments.
Indeed, at the conclusion of those conferences the Canadians present signed the protocols thereby committing us to consider seriously the possibilities of ratification.
Certainly the process of ratification is a lengthy one. It includes the stage we have now reached today with Bill C-25 coming before the House of Commons for second
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reading. It is a stage that requires careful consideration of the obligations which are set out in the protocols.
It may seem strange at a time when peace is breaking out all around around the world that we would be busy with the rules that govern the protection of the innocent and the civilians in times of armed conflict. Yet we are also mindful of the need both to preserve international norms and standards that can protect human rights, and to ensure that we carry out our obligations and anticipate the darker side of what may yet happen from time to time.
In looking at these protocols and the changes which they require us to make in existing legislation, Bill C-25 represents the next important step that must be taken for Canada to ratify the 1977 protocols. Perhaps the most important provision in Bill C-25 is in respect to the amendments to our own Geneva Conventions Act passed by Parliament in 1965. That act was the implementing legislation necessary for Canada to ratify the important Geneva protocols that had been developed in 1949.
In the 1965 statute, one of the important obligations that Canada assumed related to grave breaches, or war crimes. When drafting the Canadian implementing legislation, the question of Canada's obligations with respect to punishing grave breaches was viewed as having a fundamental importance.
The approach that was agreed on in the Geneva Conventions Act in 1965 was called the double criminality test. This is important to understand in light of legislation just recently passed here in Parliament relating to war criminals.
Let me explain the way the double criminality test applies. For an act or an omission to be punishable under this regime of international and domestic law it had to constitute both a grave breach of the Geneva conventions and a corresponding offence under Canadian criminal law. When consideration was first given to ratifying these protocols it seemed that the implementing legislation could simply take the same form as the 1965 Geneva Conventions Act.
However, there was a problem with this double criminality test. Thus that approach was found not to be feasible. For example, the different kinds of problems

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that arose can be seen in some of the newly defined offences, such as launching an indiscriminate attack which would affect civilian populations. This does not correspond to any provision in existing Canadian criminal law.
It was therefore decided in preparing this legislation for the consideration of Parliament that the grave breaches of protocol should simply be made direct offences under Canadian law. In one or two instances that approach would have created some anomalous results because of different standards. To avoid that this legislation, Bill C-25, simply proposes to amend the Geneva Conventions Act, the earlier 1965 statute, in a manner which will provide that all grave breaches, including those defined in both the conventions and the protocols, will now be direct offences under Canadian law.
The result is that the double criminality test will be eliminated for convention grave breaches.
Bill C-25 is not only concerned with the concept of grave breaches under the convention and the protocols; it also deals with the full question of the war crimes legislation. I want to touch on that briefly because that was legislation passed in the Thirty-third Parliament, and many members present recall the debate at that time. One of the important differences to bear in mind is that the legislation passed by Parliament dealing with war crimes would apply not only as all other criminal law does to crimes committed henceforth, but it also has retrospective application.
The grave breaches of the Geneva conventions and protocols on the other hand can only apply to crimes committed from here on out. That is a point that Canadians feel is very important, as reflected in the hard choice that this Parliament made when dealing with the criminal law to deal with war crimes.
The other aspects of the protocols that are touched by this bill relate for example to the matter of the Trademarks Act. This simply has to do with the importance of protecting international emblems that are worn to identify, in this case those who bear the distinctive emblem which is the equilateral white triangle on an orange background.
I pause to point out that recently we heard allegations coming from the Middle East where there is continuing conflict about soldiers using the outward appearance of being representatives of the news media. At other times
we know of soldiers pretending to be representatives of the Red Cross and using the Red Cross emblem to get passage to areas from which they would be excluded as military personnel.
For example, that is why the international emblem of the Red Cross is likewise protected under our Trademarks Act. It is one of the ways in which we can use our law, as other countries who are parties to this same convention can use theirs, to do all we can to see that these important international emblems that give safe and neutral passage to those who are trying to protect innocent civilians and to preserve humanitarian conditions in times of conflict are not victimized by having the military interests on either side use these designations to gain passage to where otherwise they would not. It is important for the integrity of the Red Cross or, in this case, the emblems that are worn by those who carry out the provisions under the Geneva protocols.
In the changes proposed to the Geneva Conventions Act, which I referred to earlier, we find that there is also an amendment to the National Defence Act. The code of service discipline under the National Defence Act currently provides punishment for a number of offences corresponding to grave breaches of the conventions and protocols.
However, this code which applies to Canadian Armed Forces personnel contains a statutory limitation on the prosecution of offences under its purview. Of course, members realize that such limitations are not contemplated in either the Geneva conventions or the protocols. Those are the kinds of offences against which the clock never ceases to run but where justice sooner or later must be realized and achieved.
In order to be in compliance with both our obligations set out in the Geneva conventions and protocols and consistent with our own domestic provisions for armed service personnel, the statutory limitations in the code of service discipline must be amended so as not to apply to grave breaches of the conventions and protocols. That is another point I wanted to bring before members as an explanation of Clause 7 of Bill C-25.
In conclusion, I think that the 1977 Geneva protocols are fundamental humanitarian instruments. They are important for Canada, as they are for all other countries of the world, because they represent a sincere effort to create and maintain a civilized world. The imposition of order and those standards, even in times of armed
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conflict, might once have seemed as an almost surrealistic notion.
Yet it is by developing these conventions and protocols, having them ratified as we are now in the process of doing in Canada, that we work day by day and year by year to see that international law and order can be maintained, that innocent victims of total war will be protected to the greatest extent possible that international law can provide.
That is why I am very happy to have had a chance to address a few remarks to the subject matter of Bill C-25. I look forward also to hearing the remarks of other members of Parliament on this legislation as we give it second reading and as it completes its way to Royal Assent. Another important stage will have been completed. It will then permit Canada to ratify these protocols and fulfil our international obligations.


Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-Trinity-Conception):: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to have the opportunity to rise and speak generally in support of Bill C-25. The context of the bill would be very hard in principle to deny. It is a context which, in light of the suffering that those of us in this generation know, is something that is still very near and dear to our hearts.
The thread of my address will essentially be a few general comments on the impetus of the bill. I would then like to respond to some of the comments made by my colleague in introducing the bill, and then perhaps some detailed comments on the specifics of Bill C-25. I would then like to indicate what it means to us in the longer term and where we would expect to go in respect of any approval that we may give this particular piece of legislation.
I would begin by saying that we have to face as a hang-over, if you like-and I hate to use the term-the past sins of our forefathers. But in this day and age when we are indeed looking at a more peaceful world in the 1990s than we were in the 1980s, it is a grim reminder that war has been with us since civilization has been around. We are probably looking at one of the more
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peaceful interludes, in the promising sense of peace, than we have had for some time.
But, in juxtaposition to that, it is incumbent on me to remind the House that the military casualties during the Second World War are well known to many, not just the military historians or the boffins who are interested in the details of World War II. Most of us in the House are of the generation that has read books about it. We have been subjected to it and are aware of the atrocities on the military aspect.
The civilian casualties in the Second World War alone are staggering. These are the numbers of those who were wounded or killed. In Canada, for example, in the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Canadian Army, the Royal Canadian Navy and the auxiliary forces, we lost 42,000 people.
The figures are broken down. I think it is worth while to look at them. In the Canadian Army, 23,000 killed,
58.000	wounded; in the Royal Canadian Navy, 1,600 killed, 400 wounded; in the Royal Canadian Air Force,
17.000	killed, 1,400 wounded; casualties listed in statistics, 42,000; 59,800 were also wounded, which gives us a total of 100,000 before we even consider the casualties of the families of the relatives. I dare say, Mr. Speaker, you could multiply that at least by tenfold and perhaps even by twentyfold which, when you think of it, has a pretty big impact on the population of Canada in World War II between the years 1939 and 1945.
We were at war but not in the midst of the war. The war did not take place in our country. Canada was not a battleground. Even so, such a large percentage of our population could be considered to be casualties in addition to those 100,000 who were killed and wounded.
I am not going to rhyme out a litany of other countries and their statistics. The crux of this bill and what it pertains to, and why in my heart of hearts I would find it difficult to do anything but support it, relates to these kind of numbers in World War II.
Let us not forget that what comes out of Bill C-25 has been a very long time in the making. As we are all aware, it takes a long time to get people to agree in these conventions on exactly what has to be included. Every sentence, every word, every bit of punctuation, every parenthesis has to be agreed upon. It is not too hard to

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understand the reason for that kind of detail when we look at these figures.
I am talking about a period of 2,160 days during which the Soviet Union suffered losses of 20 million; China, 10 million; Poland, six million; Germany, four million; Japan, two million; Yugoslavia, 1.5 million; Romania, 660,000; Greece, 620,000; and so on. I note again that the official statistic given for Canadian war dead is 42,042, when in fact the casualties go far beyond that.
If you add up the total statistics of the war dead in World War II, you are looking at close to 90 million people. You can take that to its second and third order and include those who were physically wounded, those who were wounded in mind and then those casualties of the statistics. In looking at this bill we are into another realm, another extent, another dimension, another derivative of the terrible aspects of war. These are the civilian populations, the women, the children, mothers, fathers, the people whose lives have been torn apart by the savageness, the viciousness and sometimes the inconsiderateness of war.
Even war must be civilized. Even war should be civilized. We as civilized people in this country, in this part of the world, the western hemisphere, the North American continent, should be seen as very active supporters and enthusiastic champions of this kind of cause. In a general sense I think we have to be very careful that in any note of proposing a sentence, a fraction of a word, a nuance, an extension of a verb or the parsing of a phrase that we do not lose sight of the over-all support that should be considered for this bill.
I want to take this opportunity, in as non-partisan a sense as I can, to make a comment like that which I made at the beginning of my presentation. I believe my hon. colleague from across the floor also suggested that it is almost a paradox that we are now looking at these conventions that pertain essentially to the concern and care for civilians and civilian casualties in time of war.
At first, second and maybe even third glance, peace seems to be breaking out all over. I could talk a long time on that subject. I just left the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs. We had two presentations made to us. While it would be inappropriate for me to tiy to include even parts of what both witnesses had to say at that committee, I do believe that I should make some comment with respect to this aspect of the bill. I have a piece of paper here in small
preparation for this presentation this morning with a quotation given to Plato, that only the dead have seen the end of war. I would suggest that some greater men living in our time right now may be believing that and they may not be, I am not sure, but I would like to look at that for a while.
We are beginning a new year and a new decade and when I compare it to 1980 there is quite a comparison. I recall in another incarnation sitting in essentially a war room, a headquarters centre, worrying very much about the state of the world. The strategic assessment in January 1980 was far different from the strategic assessment of today. The Afghans had been attacked by the Soviet Union and the situation all over Europe was very bad.
We have ushered out these events to a large degree from the 1980s. We have a foundation now in the 1990s that would lead us to believe that maybe we should concentrate more on the dimensions of the civilian aspects of defence and perhaps denigrate, reduce, give less emphasis to, and be fairly lenient in budget cuts in trying to get our expenditure under control in defence matters.
In a general sense, I, and I am sure many of my colleagues on both sides of the House, have read what we know of the strategic situation right now. If there is anything that can be said in a general sense it is that the situation is dynamic, fluid and in some ways, if you use the definition of stability, essentially meaning you know what is happening. I would suggest there might be a good argument for believing that there may be more instability and more change at this point in time in our history, especially the history of those of us in the House of Commons today, than there has been at any other time in our lives.
We have a change in the world's economic, political and social structure. These are the products of decades and products of things like the Second World to which I made reference a few moments ago, and even centuries in creating for us an environment of perceived instabilities and indeed the structures that pertain to them. Perceived instabilities bring with it hostages, fear and insecurities. In turn, instability and insecurity lead to an even faster change of pace as governments scramble to tiy to meet the change, respond to the change, try to amend their policies and to make statements in their
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respective Parliaments and their Houses of Commons, to reflect how they plan to cope with these changes.
If there is any statement that I have made since I have been in the House of Commons, I will make one now that I am very sure of. I am usually sure of the statements that I make in the House of Commons but I do not always have agreement from my colleagues. In this one I know some of my hon. friends would agree when I make the statement that never before in our lifetime have the changes in the international scene been so vivid in their effects as in eastern Europe during the final weeks and indeed the opening months of this decade, 1990. People in the satellite nations of the Soviet Union have been struggling to throw off their oppressive chains. That gives us a great feeling. It makes us believe and it makes us perceive that they are coming around to our way of living. They are coming around to our beliefs, to accepting our values, and wanting to do things our way. I am one of those who is slow in perception when it comes to those kinds of things.
So dramatic and unpredictable are these changes that the NATO Alliance-it is not in disarray but I can assure you if I were given the list of the top 10 items of discussion in the NATO forums, in the passageways and in the private offices among the ambassadors nationally and internationally, I would say that in that top 10 it would certainly be how are we going to reorganize.
Military planners, external affairs planners and people who write white papers are asking what is the future of military organizations. What is the future of Canada's military force in this new decade? I am not going to take this opportunity to give my views on the dishevelled, out of date, and inappropriate white paper. I must say in all fairness I have a certain sympathy for the Minister of National Defence, his planners, writers and strategists in producing a white paper today that will be valid in a couple of days time.
I could not get off this platform now without commenting equally that even before the situation in the world changed, there were many pieces of evidence to indicate that even as the white paper was written and the strategic assessment, as it pertained at the time, the resolve to discharge the promises to Canadians, to those military people in uniform who believed that some of
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their problems in the previous few years were finally going to be redressed were not. There was a great disappointment which I believe has not been overtaken by events but made even more complex and disconcerting by the international situation that we find ourselves in today.
It is really a poignant comparison when I look at this legislation as it affects and involves civilians in those areas where there are wars and compare it to the situation where civilian lives are lost in Canada and the military has an involvement in the saving of these lives and the possible avoidance in the loss of some of these lives. I speak with a certain amount of experience, happy experiences in some cases and sad experiences in other cases.
I make reference now to the over 9,000 search and rescue incidents that take place in Canada almost on an annual basis. It varies plus or minus 10 per cent but the going average is 9,000. These are marine incidents, air incidents and incidents of other kinds. In addition, of course, there are the mercy flights that almost inevitably involve the men and women in the Canadian forces that in many cases are very much instrumental in saving lives, in relieving grief, suffering and pain and, indeed, in the ultimate case, in saving lives.
We should remember when we are putting our back to the wheel in this kind of a bill, when we are looking at the concerns of humans, human dignity and human rights in other countries, that we not forget that we have first and foremost a commitment in our own country to make sure that we do whatever possible and to the optimum extent to shape our forces, the force structure, and the basing of these forces. That should be a major concern. It should supersede and take priority over budgets, dollars, politics and, yes, Mr. Speaker, over everything, because it concerns people and living in Canada in peace now, today.
It is in that context that I would once more ask the Minister of National Defence to make sure that the decision that was made with respect to the demise of the tracker aircraft and the rebasing of search and rescue forces out of the Summerside area be done in a very measured sense, and to make sure that the margin, whether it is 1 per cent, 2 per cent, 5 per cent or even a

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quarter of a percent of saving one life in those 9,000 incidents be scrutinized again and again to its fullest.
I have spoken on the international scene and I suppose, in that sense, the likelihood of war, as we see it. I have spoken on the need for concern with NATO in Canada. I have spoken on the need to ensure that our search and rescue forces policies, dictums, methods and basings be done in such a way that under scrutiny it can be shown that there is no better way to do it, that we will have the best that money can buy.
I want to go back to the beginning of my statement with respect to the international scene and the relationship of the international scene to our defence policy right now. I look very simplistically at the defence policy as an insurance policy. If you go to a doctor and say: "Thank you doctor, I have just been told that I do not have cancer, but I still think I am going to die. I have this inscrutable pain. I do not know what is causing it. Now that you have diagnosed what it isn't, please tell me what it is", you do not on the same day run downtown or get on the telephone and tell your lawyer that you want to cancel your insurance policy because you are hedging, and that is essentially what a defence policy is.
If we have the right defence policy, we will never have to go to war. If we never have to go to war, we will not have to worry about Bill C-25 because we will not have the casualties to which great reference is made in this bill.
A defence policy is more than an insurance policy. A defence policy, no matter how it is written, no matter how long it is, how short it is, is essentially designed to do a number of things. It is designed to protect Canada, to protect Canadians here and abroad, and to protect our maritime interests, air interests and surface interests. If it is looked at in an implementation type of way, unless we have forces of any kind mobile enough to be able to be dispatched in the three dimensions of our country, be it on the land, on the sea, and in the air, our defence policy is not working.
We must bear that in mind so that we will prevent anything from happening in our country which will allow us to make a contribution to the international scene which, hopefully, will help us prevent war and the indescribable casualties that are involved. This is a terrible expression to use, Mr. Speaker, but I just made
reference 15 minutes or so ago to 100 million people in World War II.
A speaker at a conference which I attended roughly eight or nine years ago made a comment that I did not particularly like, but I found it very comparative. He said that if it were ever to happen again between the superpowers, or even not between the two superpowers, it would make World War II look like a picnic. That is a frightening statement. It is one that causes me to concern myself with how we perceive the future here in Canada.
I would hasten to add that the direction of change is not premeditated. There could be setbacks and there could be U-tums. I remind everyone about the night that we sat in this House and talked about Tiananmen Square. Mr. Gorbachev is not out of the woods. He may fall from power. There may be some reversals in the nationalistic trends that we have seen.
I am not suggesting for one minute that the Soviet Union will never again engage in military action in central Europe. But in the future it would be, perhaps, as a belligerent confronting another national army or perhaps as champion of a new European order. Who knows?
These changes happen to be centred in Europe right now, but let us not forget about the Third World and other parts of the world that do not even have to be named in this House. I think there is a minimum line that Canada could take and that it should be taking. I would certainly urge my colleague, the Minister of National Defence, as soon as he can-although I understand the difficulties he has in coming up with something at this particular point in time, but even if it is an interim policy-to give us a statement of where National Defence is going in Canada. I can assure him and his colleagues across the floor and my colleagues on this side that there are a lot of people who are confused, dismayed and whose morale is kept as high as it is only by the outstanding leadership shown by our senior military personnel and, indeed, our senior civilian personnel in the Department of National Defence, and that flows all the way through.
I think this is a fantastic bill. It talks about human dignity. It talks about human life. It talks about human rights. Who in this House is not for human rights? It is not a question of whether one is for it, but to what degree is one for it? When is one prepared to compromise something that may take a tinge away from human dignity, from human rights? When is responsibility more important than human rights? These are interesting
January 25, 1990

questions. Indeed, I have seen examples in the relatively short time I have been in the House where I found it interesting how three philosophies could essentially agree with the principle of human rights, but at the same time the deviance could be perhaps seen as differences in policies.
This bill is an act to amend three acts: the Geneva Conventions Act, the National Defence Act, and the Trade-marks Act. I am not going to talk too much about the Trade-marks Act. The protocols here are the protocols to the four Geneva Conventions. We are going back now to August 12, 1949. We have a preamble, legal status, and definitions which are very important, field of application, who is involved, and then we get into some of the details that I believe should be noted here.
Article 12 talks about the protection of medical units. Despite the many wars we have had and despite the difficulties we have had in centuries, there has always been a fragment of civilization that causes survival to be there. In my time there has been the rebuilding of Germany after World War II, the rebuilding of Japan after World War II to the point that today those countries not only take their place with the rest of the world powers but are seen as our competitors in the all-important field of economics. I do not object to that. As a member of civilization, God help us if we stop having those kinds of attitudes.
Parallel with that has been the tremendous concern that civilization has always had for medical units. I am a great supporter of the medical fraternity and I am delighted to see that Article 12 talks about the respect and protection that will be accorded to medical units at all times and specifically that they should never be the object of attack. That is very important and I am delighted to see it here.
In reviewing this bill, I went on to see other areas that perhaps deserve comment. I was particularly heartened and encouraged to see the part on civilian population where it talks about the general protection against the effects of hostilities and such things as indiscriminate attacks against the civilian population when it is not required and is a violation of those principles. This is a
Government Orders
code of civilization. This is something against which we would be very ill-advised to have serious objection.
In going over this bill there are certain aspects that if debated in a committee sentence by sentence, I would have some difficulties with. In one section, Part III, Article 7, we are talking about the wounded, the sick and the ship-wrecked. It was not too long ago that we stood in this House and talked about the rigours and the difficulties faced by those who go down to the sea in ships and do their business in great waters. Bill C-25 has a separate section which deals with ship-wrecked personnel and how they should be dealt with. I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, as a sailor that particular part of the humane treatment and aspect of this bill is one that I am very much in favour of.
I think one aspect of this bill, and I am just about to wrap up-


An hon. member:: Don't do that, you might as well go to one o'clock now.


Fred J. Mifflin: Mr. Speaker, I enjoy wrapping up because I usually have to put my act together when I am told that my time is up. I find it is a great position to be in when my colleagues say that I have lots of time to wrap up. Perhaps I should take advantage of that.


Mr. Benjamin:: Go to one o'clock.


Mr. Ferguson:: It's not often we have such enlightened speakers.


Fred J. Mifflin: The hon. member is very kind in his comments.
My party's position on this is that in principle we support the bill. I suppose we would be open to the suggestion as to whether or not we would want to cross every "t" and dot every "i". The important thing to remember is that we are dealing with an aspect of human rights that has taken a long time to put together. This is a piece of legislation that I just would not even begin to have some feeling for the detail of the work involved. I hope to God it will never have to be applied. But if it is, I would like to think that our country, with the compassion we have for human rights and the belief we have in the fundamental principle of individual freedoms, would be seen as Indeed, as we have shown in our aspect of peacekeeping in military forces throughout the world, a history that started back in the late 1940s, we would be

seen as a champion of the bill as it goes from approval in our country to Royal Assent to whatever happens from here on in.
I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to make my views known on this subject and perhaps to speak on some other peripheral subjects that while not directly pertinent to the bill certainly are involved in the sense of cause and effect.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Chair would offer the floor to the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-'Transcona, with the consent of the House, of course, either to start now or after Question Period.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, if other members agree, I will call it one o'clock.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Is there consent?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: It being one o'clock, I do now leave the chair until 2 p.m.
At 12.55 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask the government again to amend the pension legislation and stop the blatant discrimination against ex-spouses of deceased federal public service employees and armed forces personnel.
On January 6 the CBC news report quoted the President of the Treasury Board as saying that the appropriate amendments would be brought before this House as soon as we resume in January.
On January 8 I contacted the minister's office and was told that no such legislation was being drafted and that no such recommendation had gone before cabinet. In short, nobody in the minister's office had any idea what the minister was talking about.
These Canadians feel that they have been betrayed by this minister and they are fed up with this empty rhetoric and broken promises. As a result the Canadian Pensioners Concerned and the Organization of Spouses of Military Members are now preparing to go to court to fight for fairness and equality with other Canadian men and women under this government's pension laws.
I now call upon this government to treat this matter with the urgency that it deserves, to introduce this legislation to get rid of this discrimination and to do so immediately. Enough of the rhetoric, now is the time for action.


CANADA POST CORPORATION
Mr. Dave Dingwall (Cape Breton-East Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my frustration and anger with this government and in particular Canada Post. Main-a-Dieu, Cape Breton is a small fishing community in my constituency. It is presently awaiting the closure of its post office. It is a post office that has been in their community for 150 years.
Canada Post is neglecting to recognize the important role the post office plays in our rural communities. The post office has served as more than an avenue for postal service. It has served as an important element in our rural communities' social fabric. It is a meeting place and a sharing place for young and old.
I would ask the Minister responsible for Canada Post to change this particular decision and keep the Main-aDieu post office in operation. The post office is a valuable part of this community's identity and should not be dismantled. The people of Main-a-Dieu demand better of this government. They wish to have their post office maintained for years to come.


CELEBRATION OF YEAR OF THE HORSE
Hon. David MacDonald (Rosedale):: Mr. Speaker, this Saturday, January 27, marks the Chinese New Year and Vietnamese New Year, Tet. May I take this opportunity to extend my very best wishes to the Chinese and Vietnamese communities in Rosedale riding, across
January 25, 1990

Toronto and indeed throughout Canada as they celebrate the beginning of the Year of the Horse.
The Chinese community is one of the oldest and most distinguished in Canada. Throughout the years they have made an invaluable contribution to the building of Canada and to the cultural mosaic of our country.
The Vietnamese Canadian community has more recently settled but is also a vital part of the cultural life of this country. The Vietnamese have become full and active participants in Canadian society while maintaining the vibrant traditions of their past.
While China and Vietnam have had differences as countries I know that Canadians of Chinese and Vietnamese origin have and will find more that brings them together as Canadians than divides them. Best wishes for a happy and a prosperous new year.
* sfe *


POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION
Mr. Chris Axworthy (Saskatoon -Clark's Crossing):: Mr. Speaker, a recently leaked document from the office of the Minister of Employment and Immigration reveals that $51.8 million is being cut from the Summer Employment Experience Development Program. That is a 44 per cent cut in the federal government's commitments to student summer employment opportunities.
The Prime Minister has committed himself to making education a priority of his government but the government's commitment to education and its rhetoric are billions of dollars apart. The Minister of Finance has cut $7 billion in transfers to the provinces for post-secondary education over the next eight years and plans more cuts. He has added a 3 per cent administration fee for student loan applications and hit Canada's universities and colleges and their students with the goods and services tax. Students' fees are being increased across the country while the Secretary of State defends his government's devastating policies.
On top of this high interest rates hurt hundreds of thousands of Canadians trying to pay off huge student loans. All those involved in post-secondary education and concerned about the future of Canada and its young people call upon the Prime Minister and this government to stop the cuts and give Canadians a chance to get the education they need and deserve. The government
should be helping, not devastating our post-secondary education system.


FISHERIES
Mr. J. W. Bud Bird (Fredericton-York-Sunbury):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak about the Atlantic Canada fishing crisis.
We must acknowledge the serious economic problems caused in many areas of the Atlantic region by the sharp decline in fish stocks in Canada's east coast fishery. However, it is equally important to recognize that solutions to those problems will probably not be found in some miraculous revival of the fishery resource. In fact, we may just be stopping in time to avoid incurable depletion.
The first important step toward solutions may well be to reluctantly accept that our fisheries have now reached and exceeded their limits of sustainable development. By so doing perhaps we can better turn our minds and our energies to finding real and lasting answers for present circumstances.
The immediate priority, of course, is to ensure economic support for people in those communities who have critically and unfortunately lost their livelihoods. We probably have the best unemployment insurance program and over all social safety net in the world for those purposes.
The ultimate priority though is to create new economic activities which are sustainable long term. We have good programs for these purposes too, better than ever before with ACOA's mandate, that are already paying major dividends in our Atlantic economy which is still a good one despite the fisheries crisis.
Our most valuable assets always are the traditional capabilities of Atlantic Canadians to cope, to create and to overcome. There is plenty of evidence in the Atlantic regional economy today to prove that. Our most compelling need now is to fully use all of those capabilities and to get on with the job.


CANADA POST CORPORATION
Mr. Jack Iyerak Anawak (Nunatsiaq):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to protest again this government's callous treatment of its northern citizens. Under a program begun many years ago under a different administration, Canada Post has been shipping food to northern Canadians at special

mail rates. The program's special social objective is to reduce regional disparity by enabling northerners to purchase fresh food at relatively affordable prices.
This government, however, has decided to eliminate the program and is phasing out its funding. Canada Post, as a result, is increasing the food mail rates to northern communities. Last October, Canada Post proposed to increase the food mail rate by 32 per cent. After protest by northerners and northern MPs this enormous increase now will be reduced by a minimal 5 per cent. This is small comfort.
My constituents in the eastern and central Arctic already shoulder the highest cost of living in this country and many are on fixed incomes. Because of the government's action many of my constituents will go without certain basic foods just so the government can increase Canada Post profits.


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Mr. Peter L. McCreath (South Shore):: Mr. Speaker, it has been a long time since Canadians have had an opportunity to witness a spectacle of hypocrisy to match the visit earlier this week of the committee of the other place on Bill C-21 to the town of Canso.
The message I understand that the committee did not share with the people of that fine town who have been so troubled is that right now, today, this very week, the number of weeks required to qualify for UI is double that which would be required if Bill C-21 were law. It is ten weeks plus four weeks because the other place has stalled the VER, plus six weeks penalty from the existing repeater provision.
Under Bill C-21 Guysborough County, including the town of Canso, will move to the Cape Breton UI district. The repeater provision will be gone. The number of weeks required will be ten weeks, not the current 20.
Senator Hebert, why did you not tell them the whole story? Let C-21 pass into law.


Mr. Bob Kilger (Stormont-Dundas):: Mr. Speaker, during this one-year assessment of the free trade deal, the Minister for International Trade stated that Canadian border communities should get off their duffs and promote our business advantages here in Canada. The city of Cornwall has lost several industries recently with 550 workers losing their jobs. These closings and the ripple effect they produce have shocked this community. However, the workers of one plant, Marimac Inc., are trying to purchase their former employer's business rather than give up.
As well, 150 workers of BASF Cornwall are doing everything possible to save their plant, including calling upon the Prime Minister for assistance. This should tell the trade minister something about the determination of Canadian border towns to stay alive under his government's trade deal.
I believe it is the Minister for International Trade who should get off his duff and deliver to Canadian workers and industries the increased access to U.S. markets which he has been promising for so long.


RESIGNATION OF MINISTER
Mr. Larry Schneider (Regina-Wascana):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday Canada's amateur sports community was shocked to learn that it had lost a leader. The hon. member for Sherbrooke had always carried out his duties with honesty and openness. Unfortunately, due to a minor technical violation of the ministerial code of conduct, he has chosen to resign his post as Minister of Sport.
This was of course an honourable action by an honourable man. In offering his resignation the member for Sherbrooke was upholding the honour of this noble institution. He realized that the principle of judicial independence must be maintained even though others may not. He did what was right, not what was convenient.
I know that all members of this House salute this man of honour and I look forward to the return of this great friend of Parliament.
January 25, 1990


ILLITERACY
Ms. Margaret Mitchell (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, today the International Book Voyage sponsored by the movement for Canadian literacy is being launched. Representing B.C. is Larry Loyie, a native Canadian who attended literacy programs at Carnegie Centre in Vancouver East.
Two years ago Larry was functionally illiterate. Now, due to his persistence, he is a creative writer who is helping others. This morning the minister said over four million Canadians are functionally illiterate. This wasted potential has serious personal, social and economic consequences. Yet literacy programs in Vancouver, and I expect elsewhere, accommodate only 2 per cent of illiterate persons. Language and literacy needs of many immigrants are being ignored.
I call on the minister to ensure ongoing funding for literacy programs so that the International Year of Literacy will not have been in vain, and so that Canada will benefit from the expanded potential of our people.


THE MINISTRY
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, the sports community is deeply saddened by the resignation of the Hon. Jean Charest, rightfully acknowledged as the best Minister of Sports Canada has ever had. At the Saskatoon Games as well as at the Quebec Games in Val-d'Or I was able to see for myself just how simple and human the Hon. Jean Charest, Member for Sherbrooke, was with athletes and organizers who approached him to discuss various issues.
The Hon. Jean Charest has also earned the full respect of the international constituency both for his position on drug use by athletes and for his strong defence of Canada's sports policy at the Jeux de la francophonie. He was also deeply concerned over other issues such as the predicament of young secondary school drop-outs in Canada and the integration of the handicapped in the Commonwealth Games.
Mr. Speaker, what I have just said gives us every reason to deplore the minister's resignation.


FISHERIES
Mrs. Coline Campbell (South West Nova):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans again showed his lack of understanding of the fishery. When mentioning the 200-mile limit, he said that the zone was "entrusted" to our use.
According to International Law of the Sea, Canada has complete management rights within the 200-mile exclusive economic zone. Moreover, the agreed rights of foreigners to catch surplus stocks is subject to our control and regulation.
In short, the minister has it all backwards. It is we who entrust our surplus stocks to foreign fishermen, only after we have determined that doing so is not against the interest of the Canadians. Our authority within the 200-mile limit is unquestioned and without limits. It is not entrusted to us.
Has the minister forgotten that we declared the 200-mile limit because it was clear that we could not trust foreigners to care about the long-term sustainable development of our fishery? Maybe he has not forgotten; maybe he was announcing a major change in policy. Maybe the government has decided that it is the foreigners out of the goodness of their hearts who have given us the right to fish within our 200-mile limit.
Actually, this might explain much of what the government has been doing to the Atlantic in recent months. I would ask that the minister give the House more warning in future, when he is planning such major announcements that so affect the east coast. Maybe we could take him on a long walk off a short pier, or take him out to the 12-mile limit and show him that it would be a Canadian boat that would have to rescue him.


NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Mr. Felix Holtmann (Portage-Interlake):: Mr. Speaker, last night and this morning I witnessed a total contempt for this Chamber and for the Speaker by the NDP.
Canadians will want to know that the New Democratic members of Parliament have no guts to stand in their place and debate their position. Canadians should know that the New Democrats are making a mockery of the

January 25, 1990
Oral Questions
purpose of this Chamber. Their games played here belong in Romper Room. The New Democratic Party has demonstrated again that they have made a complete farce of their own principles.
It is a known fact that the big winners of the GST are low and modest income Canadians and the biggest losers are the rich. What a shameful demonstration by Wonder Woman and her romper room brats.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: In the event that a similar statement is made by any hon. member, I just want to give notice that the last comment was pretty clearly directed at an individual, and I know that hon. members would know that that is not acceptable in this House.


CHILD POVERTY
Ms. Joy Langan (Mission -Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Institute of Child Health released a report on the health of Canadian children today that is a national tragedy. This report found that our children are at the bottom of the priority list of both the federal and provincial governments. Without the political will for immediate action our children will continue to suffer.
Figures show the death rates for poor children are 56 per cent higher than those for higher-income children. Native infant mortality rates are twice the national rate. The economic level of families can determine the health of our children.
Poverty does not mean that a child will necessarily have health problems, but poverty does mean children in poor families are at greater risk of illness and death. Poverty often means a child plays on the street or comes home to an empty house because parents cannot afford adequate child care.
The Tories, by shelving a national child care program, have done nothing to reduce the risk. The Tories have ignored this risk. The Tories have failed our children. Canadians must demand that we increase the value we place on the well-being of our children. It is their right and it is an investment in the future of our country. I support the Canadian Institute of Child Health's recommendation and call on this government to create a national child health policy.


GOVERNMENT SPENDING
Mr. Charles A. Langlois (Manicouagan):: Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce has given us, as government members, and the Canadian people a very clear message: cut federal spending.
Mr. Speaker, the deficit is eating into the government's financial resources, threatening the very existence of our social programs, and exerting enormous pressure on the Canadian economy by depriving it of the capital needed to ensure the smooth operation of this country's businesses.
The solutions are difficult but obvious: a three-year freeze on government operating expenditures; saving programs which contribute to economic growth and provide for the security of the various classes; and further substantial cuts in the public service.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Right Hon. John N. Turner (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. It concerns the economic rationale of his new goods and services tax. Everyone, even his Minister of Finance, is predicting that the country is now entering a period of slow growth. The Prime Minister chooses now to introduce a massive new sales tax. The Prime Minister says that he will not bring interest rates down because he has to fight inflation. Indeed, the bank rate went up again this morning. At the same time the Prime Minister is introducing a brand new sales tax.
The Prime Minister claimed this week in the House of Commons that he is committed to the less favoured regions of the country, yet he introduces a brand new sales tax which will hurt and inflict the most hardship on the regions of the country.
If he is so concerned about inflationary pressures, if he is so concerned about slower economic growth, if he is so

January 25, 1990

Oral Questions
concerned about aiding the less favoured regions of the country, why does he, at this moment, introduce a massive regressive, inflationary sales tax that risks the economic future of the country?


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I think most people would agree that the idea of introducing or changing taxation measures is for any government neither pleasant nor easy. Canadian Parliaments have considered the problem of the manufacturers' sales tax for decades. There has been general agreement in this Parliament under different governments and across the nation that the present manufacturers' sales tax places a severe penalty on Canadian manufacturers and favours importers over those who create jobs in Canada. We are the only industrialized country left with that kind of pernicious tax on our own domestic manufacturers and producers. Forty-eight of our leading competitors around the world have adopted a tax similar to the goods and services tax that is now being proposed here.
I draw to my hon. friend's attention that all of the analysts of substance indicate that while there will be a modest initial increase in inflation, in the longer haul the structural reforms that will be brought about by the introduction of a goods and services tax will be beneficial for the entire nation. It will increase our competitive position, it will help our exporters and will create new wealth and new employment in Canada.
As I conclude-


Some hon. members:: Order!


Martin Brian Mulroney: I draw to my friend's attention that this is a replacement tax. We are getting rid of a 13.5 per cent manufacturers' sales tax and substituting for it a 7 per cent goods and services tax. I believe that is in the interests of consumers and producers alike.


John Napier Turner: I would think that after that answer we all have as much latitude as we need.
I draw to the Prime Minister's attention that the two largest trading nations in the world, namely the United States and Japan, have no such tax as his Minister of Finance has just introduced. It is no accident that they are the strongest trading nations in the world.

Mr. Speaker, the economists tell us that the government should do everything it can to spare Canada a recession. The Prime Minister and his government, however, are doing the exact opposite of what has to be done. After reducing funding for the social programs that might have helped us in these difficult times, the Prime Minister is dead set on introducing his goods and services tax, which will aggravate inflation and cause more unemployment.
Could the Prime Minister explain to the House why he is going to introduce the goods and services tax although he knows perfectly well that in the present circumstances, this tax may well bring about a recession?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party has criticized the present tax system. The Liberal Party said that the present tax was pernicious and that we had to get rid of it. I think the Liberals would do well to consider defining their tax alternatives. They are against the GST, but they have nothing positive to offer.
I think the Liberal Party has a moral obligation, if it wants to be taken seriously, to identify for the purposes of this debate the exact nature of its tax proposals.
The Leader of the Opposition said in his preamble- [English]
That our two leading trading partners do not have the equivalent of a GST. He is quite wrong. Japan has introduced the equivalent of a GST. While the United States does not have a GST, it does not have medicare either. Canadians will decide Canadian policies.


John Napier Turner: Mr. Speaker, let us consider the consistency of the Prime Minister. Apparently we have the current version of the goods and services tax which was introduced in this House yesterday. It violates all of his election promises relating to such a tax. It violates the election promise he made for provincial participation and it violates the election promise for simplicity. It violates his election promise for visibility. It violates his election promise for fairness and it violates his election promise for revenue neutrality.

January 25, 1990
Oral Questions
If this is the final version of the Prime Minister's goods and services tax, why is it 100 per cent the opposite of what he promised during the last election? Has he got to the stage now where he no longer feels any personal obligation to fulfil his promises and commitments to the Canadian people?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, we have demonstrated clearly that we have fulfilled our promises. I want to take the leader of the opposition through what he has just said, point by point. On the question of provincial participation, we said at the time-


John Napier Turner: Unworkable without it. That is what you said.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, if I might have the opportunity to refer the Leader of the Opposition to the white paper back in June, 1987, we said that there were three options. What is being proposed in legislation now is precisely one of those options. We tried to get provincial participation. It was not possible.
Second, on simplicity, perhaps the hon. member would like to compare the manufacturers' sales tax and its 22,000 exemptions out of 75,000 taxpayers with this particular tax. If he looks at that tax where one out of three taxpayers has an exemption and some sort of special deal on it with Revenue Canada, surely the Leader of the Opposition will understand that it is a very complex tax.
The third point is visibility. How can the hon. member say we are not moving to a very visible tax? By changing from an existing tax which is very deep in the price of anything that is purchased in this country to one where the cash register receipt will show how much tax is paid, that is visibility.


BORDER CONTROL
Hon. Andre Ouellet (Papineau -Saint-Michel):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Revenue.
Yesterday, Montrealers were dismayed to learn that the Miron quarry had become a dump for waste from New York.
I would like to ask the minister what concrete and practical measures he has taken since his colleague from the Environment and he assured this House in December 1988 that they were taking measures to control the Canada-U.S. border? What has been done? How is it that today, 14 months later, we find ourselves with a situation like the one at the Miron quarry in Montreal?


Hon. Otto Jelinek (Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member will know that we have entered into agreements with the Department of the Environment for the Province of Quebec to monitor the borders on illegal solid waste coming into this country-


John Napier Turner: Check it off as it
comes in.


Otto John Jelinek: The Leader of the Opposition just doesn't want to listen, does he? We have been very successful in the last 14 months. The hon. member has just pointed out the time frame.
However, a few days ago solid waste was hidden in recycled paper as a new method of trying to move solid waste into Canada. A shipment did come in. A shipment came in because it was impossible for our customs officers to know that it was being hidden in the recycled paper. We took immediate measures to utilize our new automated computers, our Customs commercialized systems, to have an input into the system. As a result of that, as recently as yesterday our customs officers stopped another illegal shipment with waste hidden in the recycled paper and the U.S. Customs were able to seize it as a result of the positive steps taken by Canada Customs. So, our system is working.


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question.
The minister tells us about a truck that was blocked. But he is silent on the dozens of trucks carrying thousands of tons of waste from the United States which are dumped here in Canada. We are indignant about this silence on these trucks coming from the United States.
January 25, 1990

Does the minister know that Quebec has a law making this American waste illegal? When will he reach an agreement with U.S. Customs to stop this American waste at the U.S. border?


Otto John Jelinek: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member should know that there are some liquid and other wastes that are not dangerous to our environment and society that are allowed to move on both sides of the border. Those illegal wastes, solid wastes, which are not allowed to come into this country are being monitored. Agreements have been made not only the Department of the Environment from the Province of Quebec, but with U.S. Customs and other agencies. We are working very closely with the Department of the Environment and my colleague, the Minister of the Environment, and we are satisfied that there is no negative effect as a result of the position that this government has taken.
What has happened in recent days in Quebec proves that the system is working and that illegal waste is not entering Canada from the United States.
[DOT]k


TAXATION
Ms. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: My question is directed to the Prime Minister. Groups opposed to this government's goods and services tax are springing up across the country. This week, senior citizens in Montreal said: "This is a regressive tax that causes severe hardship for those who are in greatest need, the poor and the elderly". And the government answers that it has no other option. My question to the Prime Minister is as follows: How can he keep saying that all Canadians must pay more tax on all the items they buy, when tax loopholes for the rich, the people who make thousands of dollars worth of profits on the stock exchange or in real estate, continue to exist?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member is mistaken. We do have a very regressive tax in Canada at this moment. I am referring to the manufacturers' sales tax, that will be eliminated when the GST is introduced. We must remember that under this program, Canada will eliminate the existing 13.5 per cent tax and replace it with the
Oral Questions
7 per cent GST. We must not forget that this tax measure contains tax benefits that will help the neediest, the less fortunate in our society. This means that the GST will be applied far more progressively than the present tax that will disappear as a result of this new measure.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister says that the manufacturers' sales tax is not fair. I would ask the Prime Minister why his government raised it not one time, not two times, not three times, but four times since his government has been in office.
The reason Canadians are opposed to the goods and services tax is that they recognize that the tax burden is not being shared fairly in this country. Will the Prime Minister confirm that the tax deduction which allows businesses to write off 80 per cent of their entertainment expenses costs this government approximately $1 billion per year?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend asks why the taxes were raised. The taxes were raised by this government for the same reason they are raised by other governments here and around the world: to pay bills, to pay the cost of increasing demands of society for everything from health, education and welfare to research and development.
In all of those areas, this government has increased the federal commitment dramatically over the last five years, and all of those have to be paid for. They can be paid for either by raising taxes, cutting expenditures or printing money. There was too much money printed for too long around here, the consequence of which was rising inflation, sky-rocketing unemployment and a burden of debt which we inherited from the Liberals and are now trying to get rid of.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, the New Democratic Party has provided a number of alternatives to the goods and services tax.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Will the Prime Minister commit to a fair tax system to raise revenues by ensuring that businesses do not receive a particular benefit that ordinary Canadians do not receive? I ask the Prime Minister again, will he confirm that the 80 per cent tax deduction for businesses on entertainment-we are talking about entertainment-costs this government

January 25, 1990
Oral Questions
about $1 billion a year which could go to provide for those programs that the Prime Minister speaks of.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, both I and the country will remain transfixed as we await the presentation of the options for taxation from the NDP.
All our measures will be announced in the budget, but if my hon. friend is interested in equity, the fact is that once the GST is in place, lower and modest-income seniors will pay less tax under the GST than they do today.
I think this will be of interest to all senior citizens. This will be accomplished through the GST credit which will be paid by cheque four times a year to 84 per cent of the senior citizens in Canada. As soon as the House passes the GST, 84 per cent of senior citizens four times a year will receive a very substantial cheque directly from the federal treasury to make sure that they are kept whole and that they come out of this ahead.
This is what social justice is all about. The NDP should be supporting it.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Hon. Jean Lapierre (Shefford):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Environment Minister. In December 1988, the Minister of the Environment made commitments in this House when American construction waste was being imported. A little later, it was contaminated oil. Then the Americans sent us their old household appliances, making Canada their dump, and now they are sending us their medical waste, making Canada the Americans' toilet.
Mr. Speaker, my question for the Environment Minister is this: Since that commitment was made in December 1988, what concrete action has he taken to stop this intolerable situation for all Quebecers and Canadians?


Hon. Lucien Bouchard (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, that is the kind of irresponsible question that is sometimes asked about the environment. It is
irresponsible because it refers, for example, to traffic in contaminated oil. We know very well that we conducted a thorough investigation, involving over 1,000 samples. We never found a drop of contaminated oil at the border since last year. Secondly, refrigerators were mentioned, for example. We know that chemicals to replace CFCs now exist. But will we require their introduction when we still do not have the information to know whether or not they are more dangerous than CFCs? We are waiting for reports; specialists are looking into it. One must be responsible, Mr. Speaker, and we are!
Something we are now doing is that in June we will publish new regulations in the wake of the Basel Agreement which will forbid international transportation of toxic substances within a very precise framework and will also include regulations banning the import of scrapped construction materials from the United States. We are beyond reproach on this score, Mr. Speaker, and I want to denounce this kind of untimely initiative.


Jean-C. Lapierre: Mr. Speaker, the minister never spoke so truthfully. Indeed, he is responsible for the mess Canada is in. The reality is that the Province of Quebec has done its job and passed very specific regulations on waste. I am waiting for the minister to act. Minister Paradis is waiting for the federal government to act. The City of Montreal is waiting for the federal government to act. Wake up! What concrete action will you take so that we stop being the Americans' laughing stock?


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member just referred to my friend, our friend, the Minister of the Environment, Mr. Paradis. First I note that Mr. Paradis put me as well on his hit list, in good company with Mr. Bourassa, his deputy minister and officials.
Secondly, Mr. Speaker, I would suggest in a very friendly way that my friend Mr. Paradis adopt more coherent regulations on importing such material. For example, it costs $100 a ton to bury this kind of dry material in New York and only $12.50 in Quebec. Perhaps Quebec should change its regulations, Mr. Speaker.
January 25, 1990


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mrs. Christine Stewart (Northumberland):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for External Relations. Today we had the opportunity of meeting with several members of the Canadian Non-Government Organization Community who work in overseas development.
Last May the minister gave a firm commitment that cuts in foreign aid would not be repeated in this year's budget, and that in fact, in terms of dollars, there would be an increase as well as an increase of ODA as a percentage of GNR
Will the minister today categorically reaffirm to me and the Canadian NGO community that her word is good, and that she can be relied upon?


Hon. Monique Landry (Minister for External Relations):: Mr. Speaker, I can inform the hon. member that although this government is intent on reducing the deficit and, as a result, there have been cuts in the aid budget, the government's commitment to international development has not changed. I think our credibility is more important than the amounts allocated for the aid budget, and since 1984, there have been many initiatives reflecting the Canadian government's commitment to Third World countries.
As for the meeting to which the hon. member referred, this morning the Secretary of State and I also had the pleasure of meeting representatives of the various NGOs. I think all parties agreed it was necessary to make the public more aware of its role in supporting development aid.
As for our position, we maintained the government's commitment to help the poorest countries.


Christine Susan Stewart: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the same minister. I do not feel that I got an answer to my previous question.
Oral Questions
Last May the minister said in the House of Commons: "As soon as next year, we will increase aid funding which will grow by $800 million over the coming year, and this, Mr. Speaker, is a firm commitment".
Poverty in the Third World has a direct negative impact on Canada's economy, environment and security. Why can this government not assure us that it will live up to its commitments to the Third World today for our sake and theirs?


Monique Landry: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is referring to something I said last year. Perhaps I, in turn, may refer to what was said on January 19,1981 by the Liberal Prime Minister at the time, in answer to a question-


An hon. member:: Promises, promises!


Monique Landry: -don't you want to hear what I have to
say?
-to a question put by the hon. member for Oshawa, who asked the Leader of the Liberal Party about that party's commitment with respect to .5 and .7, and I quote the Prime Minister at the time, who said:
The hon. gentleman says that from 1975 on we have not
progressed in proportional terms toward the goal I had set, and he is
right.
Mr. Speaker, I don't think the Liberal Party has a monopoly on compassion.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, in her answer to the previous question, the Minister for External Relations referred to Canada's credibility. I would like to ask the Secretary of State for External Affairs a question about Canada's credibility and about his own credibility.
It seems to me that what is at stake in whether or not there are further cuts to overseas development assistance funds in Canada is the credibility of Canada as a country seriously committed to international development and the credibility of the Secretary of State for External Affairs into whose safekeeping that reputation is given.
I ask the Secretary of State for External Affairs if he will rise in his place now and say that he will not give in

January 25, 1990
Oral Questions
to the dictatorship of small minds coming out of the Ministry of Finance and that he will stand up for Canada's reputation as a country committed to overseas development assistance?


Right Hon. Joe Clark (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, while we are talking about the credibility of Canada in foreign policy, I must make reference again to the shameful display this morning by members of the New Democratic Party when, for simple partisan reasons, they prevented the discussion in this House of Commons of an important foreign policy statement with regard to Indo-China and Cambodia.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: The hon. member will well know that of the major industrialized countries, the G-7, Canada is second only to France in terms of the proportion of money we make available to official development assistance.
The member will know that in terms of forgiveness of debt, in terms of moving to an all-grant basis, in terms of taking initiatives whether they are in Indo-China or in Central America or in Africa or anywhere else, this government has very often and consistently taken the lead in the world. We intend to continue to do that and we intend to maintain the capacity to do that.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, the minister does himself a disservice by misrepresenting what happened here this morning. He knows that it was a motion moved by his colleague which prevented him from making the statement that he wanted to make.
Does the Secretary of State for External Affairs not realize that the very reputation which he referred to in his answer, without answering the question that I asked him about the cuts, is the veiy thing that all of us want to preserve? I ask him to answer the question. Will he stand up to the pressure that is being put on his department to cut back funds to overseas development assistance? Will he get up in the House today and say that there will be no cut-back and that if there is, he will have the decency to resign in protest?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has not come through so clearly since he stopped wearing a microphone.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: The Official Opposition today was prepared to let me make the statement on Cambodia. I wonder if I might have the unanimous consent of the House, specifically the New Democratic Party, to table and have appended to Hansard the statement that I would have made today about Canada's initiative, including an aid initiative in Indo-China, an opportunity that was lost because the New Democratic Party wanted to play politics rather than get on with the foreign policy of this country.


Some hon. members:: No!


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr.   J.W. Bud Bird@Fredericton-York-Sunbury: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of the Environment.
The proposed fixed link crossing, the bridge to Prince Edward Island, would be a major infrastructure investment of almost $1 billion, one which a majority of Islanders and most other Canadians feel would be a big boost to both Prince Edward Island and to the Atlantic region. Certainly if it were feasible to do, it would be a most timely investment for all concerned in present circumstances.
I understand that the project as proposed would be self-financing over 35 years and in fact would eventually eliminate even the federal ferry subsidies which currently exist. Of major concern to all is that the crossing structure project be environmentally sound. It has been under study by an environmental review panel whose report I understand was supposed to be with us by September 1989.
My question is this: What is the present status of that review, when will it be received and can it be intensified and accelerated in light of current economic needs?


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his excellent question.


Mr. Speaker:: We were all anticipating that start to the
response.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!
January 25, 1990


Lucien Bouchard: In a nutshell, the panel has been struck. The panel has requested further information from Public Works. They were provided with information last December and public hearings should begin in March. By the end of July, we should be provided with a final report.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Gilbert Parent (Welland -St. Catharines-Tho-rold):: Mr. Speaker, the members of the non-governmental organizations who are here today will be very disappointed that the minister is breaking her promise for $800 million which she made last year. My question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
In view of the dramatic developments that are taking place in Europe today and in view of the fact that these eastern European countries are going to need moneys to rebuild their economies, my question to the Minister is this: Will moneys that have been allocated for Third World countries be redirected to help these European economies and countries and cause insufferable hardship on the Third World or will new moneys be allocated for this purpose?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, earlier today the Deputy Prime Minister and I had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Wojcik of Poland who has been in the country leading a Polish economic commission holding seminars across the country trying to find practical ways in which Canadian entrepreneurs and others might take part in the dramatic changes in Europe. That is certainly one kind of aid that Canada can extend.
Another kind of aid has been announced by my colleague and by other ministers of the government in a $42 million package that is available to Poland and other countries. We are, of course, participating in the formation of a new eastern European development bank.
As the hon. member would know, the only way that funds to eastern Europe could be eligible as official development assistance would be if that were so agreed
Oral Questions
by the Development Advisory Committee of the OECD. They have not agreed and that settles the question.


Gilbert Parent: We are happy to hear that these moneys will not be redirected.
[Translation\
My second question, Mr. Speaker, is directed to the Minister of the Environment.
Third World poverty is the most extreme on this planet. If there are any cuts in aid programs for the Third World, the ensuing destruction of forests and the effects of famine will affect the environment of Third World countries and the entire world.
My question is this: Can the Minister promise the House that he will speak to his colleagues to ensure that Third World Aid funding will not be cut?


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I would like to mention a personal experience I had, and I do so with a great deal of pride. I had the privilege of attending the conference at the Francophone Summit in Quebec City where the Prime Minister was the first to announce that Canada was cancelling all debts of African countries. I still feel very proud of the fact. This decision has enhanced Canada's international reputation, and I don't think we need any lectures from anyone on the subject.


FISHERIES
[Stage Direction]
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands-
Canso): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Fisheries. The minister knows that after much effort by Canadians in processing, harvesting and marketing, red-fish has become an important species in Atlantic Canada. For National Sea Products it is now their second largest catch. Yet in a letter dated January 9, to the minister, the president of National Sea expressed shock that without prior consultation or discussion, redfish was being included in a program for under-utilized species and National Sea's allocation was to be reduced below projected catch levels for 1990.
How does the minister justify giving this species away as under-utilized when National Sea wants to harvest it
[Stage Direction]
January 25, 1990
Oral Questions
and fish plant workers in Canso, Gaultois, Trepassey and elsewhere face the loss of their livelihood?
Hon. Thomas Siddon (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member might understand that tens of thousands of tonnes of surplus species, including redfish, have been left uncaught by the Canadian fishery in recent years. I believe that in these times where Atlantic communities are facing great hardship because there are fish unavailable from our primary cod stocks, we should take advantage of this uncaught surplus through a pooling arrangement to make it available to firms that will indeed harvest it, process it and market it to create additional employment in Atlantic Canada.
I have made that opportunity available to the established redfish users by giving them a 20 per cent cushion over and above the redfish they have used during the past four years and offered to supplement it on the basis of viable enterprise proposals which they will put before the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans. Other parties can at the same time put forward bids to turn this unused resource to the advantage of Atlantic communities.
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands -
Canso): Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Fisheries repeatedly said in the House that Canadians are free and in fact encouraged to go out and fish these so-called under-utilized species. Why is it that when they do and when they invest time and money into developing them, he calls them under-utilized and gives them away at the same time as these fish plants in Atlantic Canada are being allowed to close?


Thomas Edward Siddon: Mr. Speaker, as I have already said, we make surplus fish stocks available on a priority basis to any Canadian venture and to any Canadian fisherman who wishes to go out and harvest that stock.
The decisions on which these quotas of surplus and non-surplus stocks are based are taken after extensive consultation with all of the interested parties in the Atlantic groundfish fishery. I must repeat the point I made a moment ago: There are tens of thousands of tonnes of redfish which have been left uncaught in the water and I intend to make those available to the large companies and to others who bring forward viable
propositions to land them in Canadian plants and create that economic benefit for Atlantic communities.


PROPOSED GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance. Yesterday, outside the House, the minister said that support was growing for his GST proposal.
Was the Minister of Finance referring to the fact that the provincial Liberal government in Ontario has enthusiastically jumped on his bandwagon by agreeing to collect the federal tax? Can he also confirm that a second provincial Liberal government, namely that of the province of New Brunswick, led by Frank McKenna, is about to jump on this Liberal-Conservative bandwagon of the GST? Can he confirm those facts?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows, there is growing all-party support, and I am sure that if there had been a provincial NDP government, it would also be offering to participate in what I think are useful discussions which we initiated as a result of the federal-provincial Finance Ministers' meeting in early December to review different ways that we could co-operate, between the two levels of government, to reduce the compliance burden and to find ways that could simplify the operations of the tax, particularly as far as small businesses are concerned.
I did not imply that the provincial governments were coming on board in support of this particular proposal, but I do want to say that I am very encouraged by the positive attitude on the part of the provincial governments to look for ways of simplifying the operations of the tax.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the Minister of Finance can explain something else. We learned yesterday that three polls done last year on the GST cost the taxpayers some $290,000.1 wonder if he would agree that this is a waste of money. Why spend that kind of money on polling? I wonder whether or not he will also agree to tell us how much more money they are going to spend on polling on the GST and whether or not those polls will be made public without going through the process of access to information.
January 25, 1990


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I would point out that this was a Canadian pollster that we used, not like the American pollsters that are used by the New Democratic Party of Canada.
The hon. member knows that it is useful and helpful in the course of policy development to have a sense of some of the attitudes and the directions of Canadian thinking so that we can better reflect in the decisions that we make the attitudes that Canadians have. That is one thing that members of Parliament do, they try to assess how people are thinking about particular issues. This is just further development along those same lines.


EXTERNAL AID
Mr. Stan Wilbee (Delta):: Mr. Speaker, my question today is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs. In 1984-85 thousands of Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel to escape the persecution and famine in that country but, unfortunately, thousands more were left behind. Of these, 1,500 were children, many of whose families had been transferred to Israel.
In light of Canada's good relations with Ethiopia over the years and in light of the fact that there is evidence that the famine is recurring, what is Canada prepared to do to bring about the release, emigration and reunification of these unfortunate people?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, my department and I have been involved in this issue for some years and will continue to do what we can to bring about the reunification of families of Ethiopian Jews.
Of course, what is easiest for us to do is to encourage the reunification of families which have connections in Canada. We make regular representations to the Government of Ethiopia to facilitate that process and will continue to do that. If there are particular cases which the hon. member or anyone else has to bring to my attention, I would like to receive them and I will pursue them.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, a single question.
Oral Questions AGRICULTURE


Mr. David Walker (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Agriculture. As he well knows, the western Canadian farmer is undergoing a real crisis. It is estimated that his income for the coming year is going to be 10 per cent of what it was last year. The Canadian farmer will be making the same as he did in 1941.
I have a specific question. The Americans are saying they will go after any market that they have to, and they will pay anything to protect their market. That is the same market we have. They were willing to pay $20 a tonne in their latest grain sale with the Soviet Union. What is the minister doing to respond and to protect the Canadian farmer?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Privy Council and Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows, 1988 was a record income year for farmers across Canada. In 1989 it dropped slightly but was still about 15 per cent above the five-year average.
The 1990 projections do not look as promising and, accordingly, the federal government and the provinces have established a committee to assess the problem; to assess the drought, the cash flow problems and the over-all finance problem. I expect to get a full report back by the end of February.
As the hon. member knows, the preliminary crop data will not be available until some time in the early part of February. It will be assessed to see whether in fact the programs that we now have in place will be able to be applied effectively or whether in fact there will need to be further assistance which we will develop together with the provinces.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Brant, a single question.


CRUISE MISSILE TESTING
Mr. Derek Blackburn (Brant):: Mr. Speaker, earlier this week I put a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs with respect to ending the cruise missile testing in Canada. In response to that question the minister said that it was Canadian policy to follow in step with NATO and to work in concert with NATO with respect to arms build-down and bringing to a conclusion the cold war.

Points of Order
We find out today that Belgium, a member of NATO, has called for the withdrawal of some 26,000 troops from West Germany. The Minister of Defence in Belgium said that NATO was not responding fast enough to changing events in Europe.
I now put the question again to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Will he also show courage and creativity in attempting to bring about the end of the cold war by announcing that not only will cruise missile testing come to an end in Canada but they will not continue with the designation of Goose Bay as a low-level training flight facility?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I was naturally intrigued when I saw that report. I have checked into it. I understand that Belgian officials say that the Minister of Defence in that country was misreported by his media. That, of course, would never happen in this country. I am looking to determine exactly what was said and I will naturally bring it to the attention of the hon. member whose interest I understand.


POINT OF ORDER
Mr. Speaker:: I would like to advise hon. members that we will take, I understand, a very short point of order from the Right Hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs followed by the usual question on business matters by the hon. member for Windsor West. Then we will have a question rising out of yesterday by the Minister of Finance followed by the member for Calgary West.


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I have two separate points of order which I would like to pursue separately with your agreement.
The first is that I misled the House and falsely accused the member for Winnipeg Transcona of wearing a microphone at the New Democratic Party convention. That was inadvertent. I was wrong. I apologize to him and I apologize to the House for misleading it.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. During question period, the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Clark) suggested that, with the unanimous consent of the House, the statement he wanted to make this morning could be tabled and appended to Hansard. I only want to say that we agree as
long as the official opposition is also allowed to table its response.


Charles Joseph Clark: If I can speak for my government, we agree. I have the honour to table, in both official languages, a copy of my statement.


Mr. Girve Fretz (Erie):: Mr. Speaker, on the point of order raised by the Right Hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs, I would like to draw your attention to comments made by the hon. member for Winnipeg Transcona.
In the heat of debate he called the right hon. gentleman an idiot. Sir, I believe that is language unbecoming a member of the House of Commons. I believe that he would do the honourable thing at this time and apologize.


Mr. Speaker:: I must say that in all the years that I have been here, of course, I have never heard anyone called an idiot in this place. I am sure that the hon. member for Winnipeg Transcona may have thought that. If he uttered it, of course, I think it would be appropriate if he withdrew. But I, of course, will hear from my friend.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, only those things which are on the record and which Mr. Speaker hears are the things that people normally withdraw. But I did say what I said and I said it after the minister said what he just withdrew.
And so, having withdrawn it, I will do likewise.


Mr. Speaker:: I am compelled to return to a matter of a minute or so ago. I would ask that the Secretary of State for External Affairs just remain for a moment.
I must ask the House if there is agreement that the Right Hon. Secretary of State table his comments. Is that
agreed?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: On the other hand, it seemed to me that that consent was given with a condition on the part of the Official Opposition at least.


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, my recollection is that we are allowing the Secretary of State for External Affairs to table his statement in the House immediately. We will have up to six o'clock to table our own because I was to respond spontaneously to the minister. I now have to draft my response, which I do not mind, but normally I speak with just a few notes. So it is subject to this condition that we will agree.
January 25, 1990

Points of Order POINT OF ORDER


Mr. Speaker:: I want to say to the hon. member that I have a secretary that takes dictation very well. I make the facilities of the Speaker's office available to hon. colleagues.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, on the same point, I think that since the Secretary of State for External Affairs has requested unanimous consent to table the remarks that he would have made in the House had his party not short-circuited his opportunity to make the speech, I think it is only fitting, if there is an agreement, that the two opposition parties are also able to table their responses. With that understanding, I give my consent.


Mr. Speaker:: I take it also that consent is given that they will be appropriately printed in Hansard!


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.
[.Editor's Note: See Appendix.]


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, this being Thursday, I want to ask the representative of the government House Leader to give the customary statement of government business.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, tomorrow being Friday, we intend to call Bill C-5, which will be followed by Bill C-34. Then, if we have further time, we would call again the bills that are on the Order Paper for today. I should also say that on Monday, January 29, we expect to proceed on Bill C-62 and we expect, further, to call that on other days in the same week.


WAYS AND MEANS MOTION
Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Chair for its indulgence in allowing me to spend some time considering the issue that was raised by the hon. member for Kamloops yesterday in relation to the tabling of Bill C-62 and the Ways and Means motion preceding that.
I should start by noting that the August technical paper was not tabled in the House. I said I wanted to check on that when I stood yesterday, Mr. Speaker. However, I did table the draft GST legislation on October 13, 1989, which, as I stated at the time, and I quote, "fully reflects in draft bill form what the August technical paper would look like if it were put into bill form". That is a clear reference to the technical paper.
I would like to go back a little bit further, however, because I think it is important to look at the process that sales tax reform has gone through to reach the point where yesterday the GST bill was introduced.
Sales tax reform was first mentioned when I tabled the agenda for economic renewal in November of 1984. In June of 1987 the white paper, which included extensive comments on sales tax reform, was issued. In November of 1987 and March of 1988 the finance committee tabled its studies of sales tax reform. In April of 1989 the goods and services tax reform paper was issued with the budget. In August of 1989 I issued the goods and services tax technical paper. In October of 1989, as I indicated earlier, we tabled the draft GST legislation. In November of 1989 the finance committee tabled its report on the technical paper on the goods and services tax.
Clearly, there would have been no committee hearings or committee report without the study of the technical paper. The sole purpose of the hearings undertaken by the finance committee was to study the technical paper and the proposals that were in that paper.

January 25, 1990
Points of Order
Finally, on December 19, 1989, I tabled a document entitled "The Goods and Services Tax" which superseded the August technical paper.
These are the documents that have been issued or tabled since our government started with the process of sales tax reform. I point out that none of these documents were required documents for the development of the legal authority to implement the GST. They were all useful documents from a policy development perspective but they were not necessary within the formal legislative process by which this House operates.
The Ways and Means motion that was tabled on Monday of this week, and was concurred in on the following day, is a different matter. It was, as members know, the first step in the legislative process of seeking legal authority from Parliament to implement the GST.
The Ways and Means motion adopted by this House on Tuesday of this week stands on is own as the first step in the legislative process, and it does not derive its authority from documents previously issued by the government or tabled in this House.
I submit, Mr. Speaker, that my hon. colleague's concerns about the implication of "a Ways and Means motion based on a non-parliamentary document" are misplaced. Policy development documents or discussion papers that precede the tabling of Ways and Means motions are often not formally tabled. I think the mistake that my hon. colleague makes is in confusing the policy development process with the process by which legislation derives its legal authority.
The truth of the matter is that, having come to the end of such a long process of policy development, the government did not wish to table a Ways and Means motion without providing the context. In short, we made reference to the August technical paper as a historical milestone of the GST policy development process in an effort to be helpful to members of this House.
You will note, Mr. Speaker, that our efforts in this regard were very clear. We listed the titles of the significant policy documents, their dates and how they were issued, either formally tabled or issued outside the House. Again, all of this to be helpful.
In closing, I would again submit that the Ways and Means motion tabled on Monday of this week stands on its own in providing the scope and the legal authority for
the GST legislation, with or without the reference to the August technical paper that my hon. colleague has referred to.
It follows from this that the scope of the Ways and Means motion is clearly defined, and that the rate of the GST cannot be amended to exceed 7 per cent. I can assure you that there was never any intent to forge new parliamentary traditions, and I do not believe that that has been the result.
With that said, Mr. Speaker, if it would be helpful to the Chair, I would certainly be prepared to table the August technical paper. I would like to thank the Chair for its indulgence in this matter and hope that the ambiguity perceived by my hon. colleague has been laid to rest.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. parliamentary secretary on the same point.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I wish to enter into this discussion for a few moments this afternoon. I would like to make two arguments. The first one is that I think this is totally frivolous and that we should not be treating this point of order seriously. Second, I would like to put on the record for future reference, and I emphasize future reference, some of our comments on the process of Ways and Means motions.
Let me review the situation as I see it. The minister gave notice of his Ways and Means motion on Monday. On Tuesday the House voted and concurred in the Ways and Means motion. Yesterday, the GST bill was introduced and read the first time.
After reviewing the member's arguments, I cannot understand what point it is that he is really trying to make. If he or anyone else had a problem with the Ways and Means motion, why did they not express their concerns in the same way, for instance, that members do at the report stage on amendments placed on the Order Paper for debate, that being that any objections are presented before the item is moved and disposed of, or, as should have been the case here, before we voted to concur in the Ways and Means notice.
Raising his points now, after the House has decided by way of a vote on the Ways and Means motion, a vote that he took part in, is ridiculous and raises my concern that perhaps the member did not understand what he had in fact voted against.
January 25, 1990

Is he saying that Your Honour should rule the process invalid due to a reference in a Ways and Means motion that was put there to provide context and information in relation to an exhaustive and detailed public examination of a government proposal? How can the bill that we introduced be declared invalid simply by what has happened here in the past couple of days?
We do not believe that in any way any changes to the Ways and Means motion would affect one comma of this bill. Taxation bills are based on, and not identical to, Ways and Means motions. We would ask if this House is now to swallow itself by giving weight to documents issued, tabled or whatever during a five-year process of study by the public, the government or the committees of this House.
Is the member seriously suggesting that somehow overnight the Ways and Means process now must include technical papers as a formal and interpretative part of the process that will extend or restrict the scope of whatever bill it is that the government is planning on proceeding with? Surely not. The Ways and Means is the first step in the process of bringing forward a taxation measure. That is pure and it is simple.
I am not sure what this game of procedural brinkmanship is all about but I suspect it has more to do with simply stalling a measure that he and his party do not support and it really begs the question, "Whatever has happened to the old-fashioned way of getting at issues called debate?"
Having said that I believe this whole process is frivolous, I do want to, for the future, put a few thoughts on the record. I emphasize again, for the future, should a question on another Ways and Means motion come up at another time.
The member has stated that the whole process of the Ways and Means tabling, concurrence and, finally, the GST's introduction is invalid because the August 8, 1989 technical paper referred to in the GST Ways and Means was not tabled when released by the minister, and further, that this government is somehow embarking on a new procedure of basing finance bills on technical papers that have or have not been tabled in this House.
Points of Order
This is simply not the case. The August 8, 1989 technical paper was not tabled at the time of its release simply because the House was not sitting in August. The Ways and Means motion states that the August technical paper was issued and not tabled. Documents for which no statutory requirement for tabling exist do not have to be tabled.
Standing Order 32 deals with documents that should be tabled and I quote Standing Order 32(1):
Any return, report or other paper required to be laid before the House in accordance with any Act of Parliament or in pursuance of any resolution or Standing Order of this House may be deposited with the Clerk of the House on any sitting day, and such return, report or other paper shall be deemed for all purposes to have been presented to or laid before the House.
Standing Order 32(2) says:
A Minister of the Crown, or a Parliamentary Secretary acting on behalf of a Minister, may, in his or her place in the House, state that he or she proposes to lay upon the Table of the House, any report or other paper dealing with a matter coming within the administrative responsibilities of the government, and, thereupon, the same shall be deemed for all purposes to have been laid before the House.
If documents are tabled for which no statutory requirement exists, it is simply because the minister wishes to do so as a courtesy so that the public and Parliament can be informed of government initiatives. This August 8 technical paper, while not tabled, was in fact distributed to all members of Parliament following its release and was in fact the only document released by the Department of Finance on August 8, 1989, as was stated in the Ways and Means motion relating to the GST.
What could be more specific than that? How could the member end up still being confused? The hon. member is trying to give formal parliamentary weight to a document which, all along, was meant only to inform the public as part of the government's ongoing process of consultation and information. In short, the minister is being taken to task on the floor of the House of Commons because he was being helpful in providing context to where the Ways and Means emanated from.
I think if we go through all of the documents, the Ways and Means motions, it becomes very clear that everything that was done in this five-year process is a consistent step-by-step process. The Ways and Means motion refers to a 7 per cent GST. It does not pick up a

January 25, 1990
Points of Order
theme that was mentioned in the earlier technical document of 9 per cent.
So in fact we believe that in this case it is a very frivolous point of order simply because the House had decided, the member had an opportunity, if he chose to, to get up and make his objections to the Ways and Means motion before the House decided on it, before he in fact and his party got up and expressed their opinion that Ways and Means motion. So we believe that it is frivolous.
Second, we do believe that should this question arise again it is very clear that the Ways and Means motion is the only part of the formal process that begins the financial process. It is not the documents that are referred to in that Ways and Means, whether they be technical documents, documents tabled in this House or documents not tabled in this House.
The bottom line is that we believe this is a frivolous point of order. We believe that the House should not be held up in any way while this issue is considered because we do believe that the raising of the point of order was totally out of place and is simply being used as a disruptive tactic to delay dealing with a very important piece of legislation which is central to this government's program for this particular Parliament.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the comments of my hon. colleagues. I respect their views and simply want to say at the outset of my comments that in no way was this meant to be a frivolous point of order.
The arguments have been presented to you. I do not have much to add to what I raised yesterday but I would like to repeat two small sections.
First, I would like to reply to my hon. friend, the parliamentary secretary, regarding why I raised it when I did. When I read the notice of Ways and Means motion I read that a tax in this motion referred to as a goods and services tax would be imposed after 1990 under the Excise Thx Act at a rate of 7 per cent as set out in the documents entitled, and so on and so forth.
In other words, when I saw the words "as set out" I must admit I made the assumption that they were documents, papers that had been tabled in the House of Commons. That is the way we normally do business to
my understanding, that is the way I have always done business. And it was not until I went to the Journals branch to receive a copy of the technical paper to familiarize myself with the contents that I was made aware that it had never been tabled, that this document on which the Ways and Means motion was based was not a document that had been tabled in this House and made available to members of this House, but was a technical document that a minister had issued some time in the past.
Without going over the arguments, I do hope that we are not entering an era where significant tax changes will be based primarily on documents issued by some one, some place, somewhere, and not here in the House of Commons.
I reiterate, however, that the question that I posed to you yesterday and asked for a ruling on, that is, whether or not the adoption of this Ways and Means motion had breached parliamentary tradition, I still think is a very valid question. And asking you to review whether we are not establishing a very dangerous precedent is still a very reasonable question to ask.
As well, I believe that whether this imposes a rather uncertain scope around the goods and services bill and the amendments the House will be empowered to consider is a question on which you ought to rule.
So while I respect the views of my hon. colleagues, I do think that we are trying to offer you views to enable you to make a decision so that this type of question never comes up again in the future. We will have some very clear guidelines spelled out as a result of your ruling when you make it. I do not think that the arguments put forward today detract in any way from the questions that I posed yesterday.


Mr. Speaker:: I want to thank the hon. Minister of Finance for taking the time to give the Chair his views on this matter. I also want to thank the parliamentary secretary. Again I want to thank the hon. member for Kamloops for responding.
I must say to all hon. members, as I said yesterday, that of course the Chair takes this matter as a serious question. I shall return to the House with a response as soon as I am able. I thank hon. members.
The hon. member for Calgary West on another matter.
m

January 25, 1990


PRIVILEGE
Mr. Jim Hawkes (Calgary West):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a question of privilege which arose from the objections I made yesterday when it appeared to me that one or more New Democratic Party members of the House had voted twice on a single formal division taking place in this House.
Mr. Speaker, I submit to you now, after having looked at the television, our electronic Hansard tape of those divisions, that two members did in fact vote twice, and that such actions constitute a prima facie case of privilege. If you so find, Mr. Speaker, I will be prepared to move the usual motion for referral of the matter to the Standing Committee on Elections, Privileges, Procedure and Private Members' Business.
I cannot imagine anything that is more serious to the rights and privileges of members. It begins with the electoral process where it is against the law for citizens to attempt to vote twice in a single election. Certainly in this chamber it is against our traditions and against our privileges.
I think the grounds for this question of privilege are indisputable and pure. I cannot do my job as a member of this House. I cannot vote and be unimpeded in having my vote lead to a legitimate decision if any or several members vote twice on a single question.
The highly unusual nature of such actions probably makes them a contempt of Parliament rather than a breach of privilege, but that is for the House to determine at a later point.
The television tapes will show that in the recorded division on the motion of the member for Kamloops for first reading on his Magna Carta day bill, the member for Regina-Lumsden voted twice, first in the affirmative and then in the negative.
On page 7438 of Hansard you will find, Mr. Speaker, that this problematic behaviour was further compounded when the member stood in this chamber and clearly denied having voted twice. That was in this chamber where we take the word of a member on important issues. He clearly denied it.
The Lord gives us eyes to see and ears to hear. Mr. Speaker, if you review the tape you will find that the
Privilege
member's name was called in the affirmative and called in the negative. You will see, Mr. Speaker, that the member rose in his place in the affirmative and was recorded in the negative.
Later in the recorded division on the motion of the member for Kamloops for leave to introduce his National Housing Act amendment bill, the member for Windsor-St. Clair voted twice: first in the affirmative and then in the negative. His name was called in the affirmative. When you view the tape, Mr. Speaker, you will see him rising in the affirmative and again in the negative.
I cannot state more emphatically the unacceptable consequences for all members if such actions are not stopped. Every member's vote here would become devalued without their being able to do anything to stop the debasement.
The consequences to each and every member's right and duty to make a decision on questions are unthinkable and unacceptable. This is a profoundly basic matter of privilege.
I refer you, Sir, to Maingot's Parliamentary Privilege in Canada at page 199 where the privilege grounds of intentional misleading are discussed. He states: "It must be shown that the member was obstructed in his work relating to a proceeding in Parliament".
At page 205 in the section dealing with raising complaints against members in the House of Commons, he states: "A member of the House of Commons who, for example, has admitted to have deliberately misled the House would probably forthwith be the subject of a motion for contempt".
He also states that simple justice requires that no hon. member should have to submit to investigation of his conduct by the House or a committee until he has been charged with an offence.
I have indicated to you already, Mr. Speaker, that I am herewith making the charge with the television tapes as evidence.
Further I point you, Sir, to page 194 under the heading "Member Gets Benefit of Doubt" where a 1978 precedent of ruling is cited to indicate that if the member making the claim to privilege or objecting to a possible contempt has an arguable point and the Speaker feels any doubt on the question, then he should leave it to the

January 25, 1990
Privilege
House. I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that you might want to do that.
Finally, as I suggested earlier, the offence in question is probably a contempt rather than a breach of privilege since I do not think that voting twice is in our traditional codified limits or list of banned practices. Why would it be since it is so unthinkable?


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have a chance to intervene in this point of privilege.
The accusation I do not understand at all. Early this morning, having heard the comments of the government Whip last night, I looked at Hansard and read it clearly. I noticed on both occasions to which he refers that when the actual vote was taken it is very clear who voted in support of the motion to declare a Magna Carta day and who voted against it.
Not only is it clear in Hansard, which of course is our official record, but the Speaker indicated some concern and the member for Regina-Lumsden got to his feet to clarify the situation. He stated: "I did not rise on the first vote." That was the vote in favour of the motion.
"I did not rise on the first vote," he repeats.
Third, he stated: "I did not vote the first time."
In other words on three different occasions, in case there was any element of a doubt, he rose and indicated that he did not vote in the affirmative.
I cannot imagine how much clearer one could get, both in terms of how the vote is recorded and on three occasions the comments of the hon. member.
Turning to the second point regarding the hon. member for Windsor-St. Clair, again, at the time the Speaker asked: "I would like to ask the hon. member for Windsor-St. Clair whether he is opposed or in favour of this bill." He asks that because there had been some heckling from the government side at the time in terms of whether he had voted in favour or not.
The hon. member for Windsor-St. Clair then rose in the House and said, again, to clarify very, very clearly: "I thought it was really quite clear", he said. "I stood fully erect against the vote."
Again, it was recorded in Hansard that he voted against the motion and stated clearly in the House that the hon. member voted against the motion.
Then the Acting Speaker of the day said: "That is all I wanted to know." It was clarified.
Normally, we do not have to stand up and clarify how we vote as a response to some heckling from the government members. But because of the seriousness of the vote, because it was looking at the pros and cons, presumably, of declaring June 15 Magna Carta day for Canada, recognizing that this was a day in our history when a very cruel king imposed taxes that were unfair, and so on, the people had risen against that particular initiative. Whether that was an appropriate thing to do or not, it encouraged the members to take their-


Mr. Speaker:: I heard the hon. member with his usual learned appreciation of history yesterday. The issue here is not whether the king had risen; it is whether the members have risen. I would ask the hon. member to keep to the point.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do take this matter very seriously. I suspect my hon. colleagues take it seriously as well.
I simply want to conclude by saying that yesterday we went to extraordinary lengths to ensure the voting practice of certain members both in terms of how Hansard records it, as it always does, but, more appropriate, the fact that the two hon. members in question actually stood in the House and on a number of occasions made it very clear how they had voted.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a few comments regarding the suggestion that some members of this House might have voted twice yesterday, which is against the rules and, in my opinion, shows a certain-

I guess the better word to use is the word "contempt" for the House, if they did in fact vote twice.
I have some difficulties with the argument put forward by my colleague on the government side. I must share with him some of my concerns.
January 25, 1990

Yesterday's events were the results of a procedure, the government having introduced a GST bill which we have fought, as you know, Mr. Speaker, continuously since it was suggested to the House some months ago. Liberals will continue to fight that bill, but we will do it within the rules. We will do it within the spirit of the rules. We will do it to try and get the government to withdraw that proposal, but we will always abide by the rules.
Normally the claim that a member voted twice-and that is the claim, I think, that is being made by my friend and colleague, the government Whip-would be dealt with, I suspect, as a matter of order rather than as a matter of privilege. No reasonable member, and I suspect that we are all reasonable members here, would try to accelerate this accusation into a claim of contempt unless-and I underline that-there was ample evidence that this behaviour was an intentional, calculated effort to impede the work of the House. If that can be proven, then there may be reasons for contempt.
But if any member choses to accuse another member of contempt on that basis in such circumstances, he or she must be able to support that accusation with facts.
Let us look at the Hansard of yesterday. I know it is going to be difficult because what I have to say is pretty touchy in the sense that I was here. I heard the Clerk call the name of the member for Regina-Lumsden. I saw the member for Regina-Lumsden attempt to rise and point his fingers, making a sign, I thought, that he intended to vote. It could be-and I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt-that he had a cramp in his hamstrings, that he had a sore back, or something, or that he made a mistake and sat down. He admitted himself: "I will admit I lifted my backside from the chair an inch", so I have to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one. It is my only way of looking at a gentleman's word.
In the other case, I was here again.


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps the hon. member is suggesting that sometimes hon. members rise with no consequence at all.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Sometimes they do that, Mr. Speaker.


Albert Glen Cooper: Don't take that personally.
Privilege


Jean-Robert Gauthier: I am not taking that personally, don't worry.
In the other case concerning the member for Windsor-St. Clair, I was here, Mr. Speaker. I saw and heard the Clerk call the name of Mr. McCurdy. Mr. McCurdy, when the member was challenged by the Chair, or asked by the Chair, he said this, as reported in yesterday's Hansard at page 7441:
Mr. Speaker, I thought it was really quite clear that I stood fully
erect against the vote. I thought that was pretty clear.
The only conclusion I can draw-and I am being very fair here-is that members of the NDP have difficulties standing up for anything.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Jean-Robert Gauthier: They do not know when they are standing or not standing.


Mr. Speaker:: We ought to confine our argument to the physical act of standing, not to matters of great principle in a general sense. I know that the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier would want to assist the Speaker.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: That is what I am doing, Mr. Speaker.
Again, Sir, you were invited to look at the transcripts of the videos of yesterday's deliberations. If you do that, Mr. Speaker, you cannot draw any other conclusion but that indeed they tried to stand. One said: "I stood erect". In both cases they either have not got a backbone in their back and thus they cannot use it, or they have had some kind of difficulties asserting whether they were sitting or standing-and I am being fair; I am being very fair here.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member is a professional man. I would think that I could almost take judicial notice of what the hon. member says about whether or not there is a backbone. However, I am still concerned about whether or not, backbone or not, the body belonging to the hon. member got up.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I shall leave you to decide that. In your great judgment, knowledge and wisdom you will have to decide whether they did stand or not-and they possibly did. I will leave that to you.
The Chair will also have to decide whether the Clerk saw them stand, yes or no. We all saw the Clerk, heard the Clerk acknowledge the person. I am not going to question the Table's vision or how it interprets people standing or sitting.

January 25, 1990
Privilege
In any case, to allege that there has been contempt is pushing things a bit too far, if in my view I want to pay very much attention to the hon. member's intention to either rise or sit. I cannot judge that and will leave it to the Speaker to come back and tell us that in his view the member was either standing or sitting. As I said before, NDP members always have difficulty standing up for anything, so I have difficulties deciding whether they were standing or not.
If you decide, Sir, that there is a prima facie case of privilege-and by the way contempt is privilege or privilege is contempt-then any motion accusing those two members of voting twice would have to bear some kind of proof that indeed they did it deliberately. That I am not qualified to judge, as I think I made clear in my remarks.
I am not sure whether they intended to obstruct. I am not sure whether they wanted to vote. All I know is that the facts, since that is what you are looking at, Mr. Speaker, are there. They are on tape. We all saw them. We were here. I am witness to something that happened.
I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, I will go with the decision one way or the other. I hope that you have a lot of patience, Sir, a lot of vision and a lot of judgment. It is going to be difficult.


Mr. Howard Crosby (Halifax West):: Mr. Speaker, like my colleagues, I was a witness to the events in this Chamber on January 24, 1990.1 think that this was a dark day for the House of Commons. I think all members will recognize that for various reasons.
The dark part of the day that I want to point out in support of my colleague and his representations to the Chair is recorded in Hansard and is beyond dispute. I registered this complaint, and it is recorded in Hansard as well.
I said then, and I will repeat it today: there is no more serious function of a member of this House of Commons than registering a vote. I say that because when they register a vote in this House of Commons they do so on behalf of their constituency, and together we vote on behalf of Canada. To jeopardize the purity of voting in this House of Commons is one of the most serious contempts of Parliament that can take place.
You only have to look, Mr. Speaker, at page 7436 of Hansard to see the contempt printed on the permanent record of this House. What is printed there is the fact that on a division, on a voice vote, the Speaker heard and registered yeas and nays. Then, at least five members of this House of Commons stood up and asked for a recorded vote.
I am looking at the proceedings with respect to a bill concerning Magna Carta day. When the recorded division was called, notwithstanding the yeas and nays on the vote, notwithstanding that five members of the House of Commons stood up and asked for a recorded vote, there were no nay votes registered. There was no negative vote. Nobody in the House of Commons was against that measure.
There was something going on in this chamber. I will not say what it was. I will tell you if you ask me what I think was going on. What I think was going on was obstruction of the business of this House. In my view that is what was going on. I suspect, Mr. Speaker, but it is up to you to find out, that there was unjustifiable obstruction of the business of this House contrary to the rules of this House.
The rules of this House are based on honour. Voting is based on honour. That honour was breached because members of this House stood up, asked for a recorded division, and then did not vote against the measure.
Somebody in this House is deceiving the House. Mr. Speaker, you have to find out who that person is.


Mr. Speaker:: I thank the hon. member.
The hon. member for Windsor-St. Clair on the same point.


Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-St. Clair):: Mr. Speaker, I am tempted to say that we have had garbage in and garbage out-garbage in from the government side and garbage out from the Liberal side.
I find the discussion that is occurring now really quite outrageous. We have people who in a less self-righteous incarnation stormed the Chair now talking about propriety in the House. We will leave that alone.
What we have at issue is the accusation that this member and another member are in contempt for having voted twice. We have launched into a discussion of
January 25, 1990

whether one is standing or sitting. If there is any contempt in this House, it is contempt for the truth.
I am sure that my colleague for Regina-Lumsden will defend himself. But I am here to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that any video tape or any other evidence will show that in the midst of a great deal of heckling and a vote going on I was engaged in a conversation with my colleague right here. In respect to which and in order to pursue it I moved myself in her direction. I may indeed have raised myself an inch or two from my chair. That did not, in my mind, constitute a vote.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


Howard Douglas McCurdy: I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, if the member is doubtful about what erect is, what standing is, then that member should review all the tapes and look at the way in which this member has consistently voted ever since he has been here. It is to stand erect and to bow his head at every occasion. That did not happen yesterday.
We have had the Liberal proponent of the Conservative point of view suggesting that my name was called by the Clerk. The Clerk generally assumes that every one in a row is going to vote either in the affirmative or the negative, whether that member stands or not. Very often, as you know, Mr. Speaker, names are called before people have even contemplated standing up, or long afterward, so it is patently ridiculous to use that as a criterion.
I am here to tell you, Mr. Speaker, and this House that it was perfectly clear that I did not stand, did not intend to stand. I think it can be no more than an excruciatingly childish malevolence that would have any member in this House accuse me of acting in an improper way. I have not done so. I am not doing so. I will not do so. I resent the accusation.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Mr. Speaker, the first point I want to make is that the point made by the hon. member from Halifax is well taken. Hansard shows no recording of anyone saying: "Nay". Yet there were some hon. members who voted nay. So what?
Second, I believe the government Whip made a point about how members voted on a voice vote of yeas and nays. I defy that hon. gentleman-and I know that the Chair would not even attempt, nor would the Clerk-to
Privilege
pick out every hon. member present in the House who said "yea" and every member who said "nay".
The Speaker goes by the number of decibels or the amount of volume from the "nays" and from the "yeas". I have often thought that I would like to get a left-eared hearing aid for the Speaker. I thought that the "nays" had it, but he said they did not. That is beside the point.
If the member were recorded as having voted twice on the recorded vote, then one would obviously be in contempt, although no Clerk of any competence-and our Clerks possess the highest possible competence-is going to put a member's name down each way on a vote. They are just not going to do it. They will draw the matter to the attention of the Chair. The Chair will ask the hon. member for clarification, which he did in the case of my colleague from Windsor-St. Clair, and which he did in my case. I replied, as quoted by the Liberal Whip who quoted Hansard accurately, making it plain that I was voting "nay". That was the end of that.
The government Whip now tries to make a federal case out of it. Frankly, Mr. Speaker, if you ruled I voted "yea" and not "nay" I could not care less. Everybody here knows that we were working within the rules of Parliament, within the rules of this House, to do what we could to prevent the government from calling the bill on the goods and services tax. That is perfectly in order within the rules. Should we choose to divide in one party two ways on a bill from a member of that one party, surely that is up to us and to the individual members. I am certain that it would be of no concern to the Chair.
I stated that I thought I gave what certainly was a satisfactory explanation to the Acting Speaker who was in the chair yesterday as to clarifying where my vote was to be cast. He so ordered and the results were announced by the Clerk. I assumed that that was the end of that.
I agree with my colleague who said that he did not see anything here about a question of privilege. It may be on a point of order. Points of order were raised yesterday and were answered to the satisfaction of the Chair. I am assuming that that would have been and should have been the end of that.
Mr. Speaker, I will leave it to your good judgment. Whichever way you say that I voted and whichever way you say that the hon. member for Windsor-St. Clair

January 25, 1990
Privilege
voted, we will abide by what you say. I hope that will put an end to that.
Also, I want to express my gratitude to the government Whip for helping take up government time.


Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a brief contribution to the discussion because I think the principle that has been raised by the government Whip is an important one. Certainly it is not the practice of this House that members vote twice. Indeed, I would like to refer your Honour to citation 223(3) of Beauchesne's Fifth Edition, page 76, which states:
If a Member who has heard the question put should inadvertently vote contrary to his intention, he may not be allowed to correct the mistake; but his vote must remain as first recorded.
If you look at the Clerk's record for yesterday's votes on the three votes that are in dispute today, Mr. Speaker, I think you will see that the Clerk's record indicates that both the hon. members who have just spoken voted yea on the first occasion and then the mark was removed after the members explained that they were voting nay and that they had only voted once.
I suggest the citation that I have referred to in Beauchesne's indicates that the vote having once been cast by the member rising in his seat, and his name being called and no correction being offered at the time indicates that that vote cannot subsequently be changed, even if the member seeks to vote a second time.
In support of that the learned author of Beauchesne's refers to a debate of July 1. In fact it was in the early morning hours of July 2, 1926, and it was a most famous occasion in this House. The vote was won 96 to 95 votes. As a result of that division on that day, my hon. friends opposite will recall the Meighen government came crashing down. The House was dissolved the next day and it went out in an election-a good thing for Canada!
What happened was that one of the members of the House, Mr. Bird, voted inadvertently. He was paired and he was not supposed to have voted. He rose after the
vote and made this statement as recorded at page 5311 of Hansard for July 1, 1926. He said:
I wish to explain to the House, and with extreme regret, that I was paired with the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Kennedy) who had retired from the House on account of indisposition, and I cast my vote inadvertently.
He at least voted inadvertently. He did not vote twice. The Speaker went on and stated:
-The rule is that when a vote has been recorded, when the result has been proclaimed, and when the motion has been declared carried or lost, that expresses the judgment of the House. This principle is to be found in May, who says at page 343 that a vote once given cannot be withdrawn.
With regard to the claim made by the hon. member for Nelson that he was paired, May, at page 336, says:
There cannot be any parliamentary recognition of this practice (pairing) although it has never been expressly condemned and it is therefore conducted privately by individual members or arranged by gentlemen known as the whips, who are entrusted by their political parties with the office of collecting their respective forces on a division. Therefore, the hon. gentleman having voted in the House, the vote must stand as it was proclaimed by the Clerk.
There was a considerable argument following, a brief but considerable argument, because clearly this vote had veiy profound implications. Yet, on that occasion, the rule was stated. It is restated in Beauchesne's. It has clearly been the rule in this Parliament for as long as anyone here has been around, and I suggest that once those votes were recorded for the yeas yesterday, the hon. members ought not to have been permitted to vote or to change their vote or to indicate that their vote was any other way. Having been recorded once they were stuck with it. If they chose to move in their seats when a vote was being taken I suggest that is their funeral.
The hon. member says he was going to speak to his neighbour. The rules provide that during the taking of a vote no member shall make any noise or cause any disturbance. The words are very clear in the Standing Orders. If the hon. member wants to rise in his seat, if he wants to move about the House during the taking of a vote, I say it is contrary to the rules, and if his or her vote gets recorded in a way he or she does not want I suggest that is the hon. member's own tough luck.
I say that to have allowed the change yesterday in those votes was improper. To have allowed the second votes I say was improper, and my submission is, Mr. Speaker, that the member's vote must stand as recorded. The precedent in 1926 has to be one of the strongest
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possible precedents because it brought down a government. It was a vote of confidence in a government, a three-day old government. That precedent stands and has represented the law of Parliament throughout the period since, and probably for a good long time before. I invite your Honour to so rule.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Winnipeg Transco-na on the same point.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, as much as I would love to get on to Bill C-25, I have listened with care to the arguments that have been presented. I was not here yesterday when these events took place. I have looked at Hansard, I have listened to the arguments, and I must say that this whole exchange drives me to abject despair about the House of Commons and where it might be headed. I say this with respect to the fact that Hansard shows how people voted and how they did not vote. Obviously this was sorted out at the time.
What the government Whip appears to be doing is suggesting that hon. members from Regina-Lumsden and Windsor-Lake St. Clair in some way or another attempted to deliberately sabotage the voting process or mislead the House with respect to how they voted. I think it is clear on the face of it that that is not what they were about. It was clear on the face of it yesterday or Hansard would not record what it records.
The response of the government members is to the tactic of forcing a vote on a matter on which there is no dispute in order to delay, a tactic they do not like but it certainly is a tactic that they would have had no qualms about employing themselves if they felt strongly enough about things.


Mr. Speaker:: I hesitate to interrupt the hon. member but this House has had many years of experience of tactics to delay. Hon. members on one side or the other may not like those tactics, but provided they are within the rules I have no power, authority or inclination to limit them. What the Chair is faced with here is a question of whether members rose both for the yea and the nay vote. It is that simple. I will have to draw what conclusions I must draw as a consequence.
I do not want the argument to get off into the question of whether or not delaying tactics in the House of Commons are right or wrong. They are used and as long
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as they are used within the rules, as I have said many times, they are accepted. We understand that. It is part of the tactics of this place.
The statements on the part of the hon. member for Calgary West, and we have just heard from the hon. member for Halifax West, are very clear. The allegation is that the members rose for both votes. That is what I have to decide. If that is physically so then I have to decide, I suppose, what inference I draw from that.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, I will try to be brief and to the point. I think what we have here is not a point of privilege at all but a form of character assassination that I think is unworthy of some of the people that I know on the other side of the House. Frankly, I am quite disappointed by that.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Cambridge on the same point.


Mr. Pat Sobeski (Cambridge):: Mr. Speaker, I will indeed be brief. I was here yesterday. After the vote took place, what I heard was the Clerk of the House rise and state quite clearly that the results of the vote were 24 to one. I reviewed the tape this morning and if my memory serves me correctly, the videotape also recorded a 24 to one vote.
My question is that in Hansard on Division No. 173, the vote is recorded as 23 to one. As the Speaker reviews the comments over the last half hour, could you take into consideration that once the member from Regina- Lumsden had indeed clarified his vote, the vote count changed in Hansardl


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Windsor-Lake St. Clair on a further intervention.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, I think that my colleague from Winnipeg-Strathcona has well characterized what is at issue here. I would also like to refer to other participants in this argument about how many angles there are on the head of a pin.
First, the Liberal member has indicated that if there was an inadvertence in voting, in this instance yea when the intent was to vote nay, then the effect of that is to cancel the intended vote and let the first vote stand. That seems to suggest to me that there is an assumption that inadvertence is at least possible. Inadvertence, not

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only on the part of a member but inadvertence or an error on the part of the Clerk.
I want to re-emphasize the pattern of voting in this place. It is generally assumed that members of a particular party are all going to vote the same way. Once the process is in train, I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, on the part of your own observation, that it is very likely that no matter what a member might have done, the probability is high that his or her vote would have been recorded consistent with that of the pattern of voting of his or her party and not reflect any dissent that might have been there.
It is perfectly clear on the evidence that there was no standing upright on the part of this member on the yea vote, that there was indeed a clear standing, erect and upright with a bowing of the head in the affirmative with respect to the nay vote. It was subsequently questioned by the then Acting Speaker what the intention was.
Now, for anyone in this House to suggest that he or she saw or heard whatever the person may claim to have seen or heard which was inconsistent with what actually happened is absolute garbage. It is even worse for someone who was not here to have launched into a tremendous analysis on the basis of no evidence, on the basis of deductive reasoning. What is involved here is inductive reasoning. What is seen should lead to the conclusion not what is thought leading to the conclusion.
this discussion at this time. I think the appropriate ruling is to look at-


Mr. Speaker:: Just a moment. Hon. members have risen and said that from what they saw and what they saw on tapes other hon. members voted twice. They have put that matter to me and the question of whether it is a breach of privilege or contempt or both. That is the issue I have to decide. I do not want to have the argument move away from that particular issue. I do not think that the argument is advanced on one side or the other with any vituperation with respect to the motivation of any particular member in the chamber.
Unless we have further interventions, I am going to look very carefully at what has been said. I have to tell the House that I cannot ignore this point that has been raised and I must deal with it. I will return to the House as soon as I can. I can only say that I regret that this issue has arisen, but it has and I will have to deal with it as adequately as I am able and in the interests of the House. I will return as soon as I can. I thank hon. members for their interventions.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: 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: one, the hon. member for Winnipeg-St. James-Agriculture; two, the member for Saint-Laurent-Solicitor General; three, the hon. member for Fundy-Royal-Acid Rain.
I think what we have here is an example of the Government Whip shooting himself in the foot because what his concern is really all about is that the New Democratic Party in this House yesterday used every tactic conceivable within the bounds of the rules in order to impede the introduction and the debate on a piece of legislation which gives offence to 80 per cent of the population of this country.


Mr. Speaker:: That may or may not be the case. But that is not the argument that has been brought to me this afternoon. I, of course, will hear the hon. member's conclusion of his remarks.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Let me just finish, Mr. Speaker. There is no recorded vote in Hansard that indicates that I voted any other way than what I acted to vote or what I have claimed to vote. I think it is just patently ridiculous. It is malevolent, childishly malevolent, to have introduced



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[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Clark (Yellowhead) that Bill C-25, an Act to amend the Geneva Conventions Act, the National Defence Act and the Trade-marks Act be read a second time and referred to a legislative committee.
William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, I was beginning to believe that I would never get to speak to this bill today. I am glad that the opportunity has finally arisen. I find it unfortunate that it did not come
*
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January 25, 1990

earlier, not just because it was a personal inconvenience, but because of the nature of the controversy that prevented us from getting to this matter earlier.
Bill C-25 before us is an Act to amend the Geneva Conventions Act, the National Defence Act and the Trade-marks Act. The purpose of the bill, as I understand it, is to ratify two protocols to the 1949 Geneva Convention which were agreed to in 1977. This tells us something about how slowly the mills of the gods grind with respect to international law, the fact that in January 1990 we are only now proceeding to ratify a protocol that was agreed to in Geneva in 1977.
The Geneva Convention that we are talking about here refers to the law applicable in time of armed conflict, humanitarian law or rules of conduct in war. The protocols serve to broaden the scope of the conventions. For instance, they include additional protections for prisoners of war and rules regarding children in armed conflict. The Geneva Conventions Act is amended so that its language is consistent with that of the protocols. The National Defence Act is amended so that there are no statutory limitations on the prosecution of grave breaches, again consistent with the protocols, and the amendment to the Trade-marks Act introduces legal protection for the new international distinctive sign for civil defence.
On the face of it, from the point of view of the New Democratic Party, there seems to be nothing particularly objectionable about this legislation. It merely ratifies what was agreed to in 1977. If there is anything objectionable, and perhaps there are some reasons for this but I cannot imagine that there is a good reason, it would be why something should take 13 years to be ratified. There are other countries, of course, which have already ratified the protocols.
I understand that the sole controversial feature of the protocols is that it extends the rules of the Conventions beyond international conflicts to cover civil wars or national liberation movements and the governments which they oppose. If my information is correct, I understand that this is giving our American friends some problems as they are leery about giving POWs of national liberation movements a recognized status. I am glad to see that the government, in bringing this bill before Parliament, is not itself participating in that
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cautiousness and is willing to proceed with the ratification of the protocol.
This particular bill also gives us an opportunity to talk about international law in general and the over all approach of this government to existing international law as well as to the need for international laws which do not now exist or which could possibly come into existence very quickly if the government were more active in this respect. When I speak of laws that could possibly come into existence, I am thinking of the fact, for instance, that we have not as a country ratified the Law of the Sea.
Here we are in the middle of an ecological crisis of major proportion on the Atlantic coast with respect of the fishery in which almost everyone agrees that one of the causes of that ecological crisis has been overfishing and the role of foreign fishermen and foreign trawlers in our waters. This situation would seem to me to point to the need for stronger international agreements with respect to the oceans and with respect to the seas and yet we have not had any attempt made by this government to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention. Why, Mr. Speaker? The only reason I have heard is that there is reluctance in Washington to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention because there are things in the Law of the Sea Convention with respect to the sharing of mineral rights on the ocean floor that offend the entrepreneurial sensibilities of the American administration.
Therefore, here we are, in many respects, victims of our own reluctance on the east coast to bring into force, because in order for these things to come into force there is a requirement that so many nations ratify the Convention. That requirement has not been met and Canada has not done its part to help that convention meet that requirement by ratifying the Law of the Sea Convention.
Canada, with respect to existing international law, does not exactly have a perfect record either. We could talk about the fact that the government of El Salvador, headed by the Arena Party, recently prevented the evacuation of FMLN soldiers needing medical aid, in contravention of the protocols. There was no Canadian protest with respect to that or, for that matter, with respect to other violations of human rights by the Arena government which, as we all know, derives its political sustenance from the fact that it is supported by the United States and through its relationship with the

January 25, 1990
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military in El Salvador which is supported by the United States to the tune of $1.3 million a day.
There we have an instance where existing international law has something to say about something which is actually happening. It is very fine for the government to be acting finally with respect to international law as it affects something which is not happening in many respects, that is to say with regard to some future war although wars are going on in the world, but where we have an opportunity to comment on the enforcement or the appropriateness of existing international law, we have passed up those opportunities.
We have passed them up with respect to El Salvador, which I have just mentioned. We passed up the opportunity to show our respect for international law when the United States invaded Panama in contravention of a considerable body of international law. Yet the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for External Affairs said that although they regretted the use of violence, they were not willing to condemn that particular violation of international law.
We show contempt for international law in our continuing silence about what is being done to the formerly separate country of East Timor and its people by Indonesia, because we regard our commercial relationships with Indonesia as more important than the fate of the people of East Timor.
I was very disturbed to learn just the other day that Australia has entered into a contract or an agreement with the Indonesian government with respect to a body of water that formerly seemed to be part of East Timor, and therefore our Australian colleagues are giving credibility to the Indonesian claim, a claim which stands over against the obvious case of East Timor with respect to the UN Charter and the whole matter of the right to self determination.
It seems to me that the government's record with respect to international labour law is also suspect. It has come to our attention in recent weeks, as a result of events in Romania, that the CANDU reactor which was being built in Romania was being built by what can only be described as slave labour.
Now, Mr. Speaker, does the government really intend to have us believe that the people in AECL and the
people in the appropriate government departments did not know that this was going on? Or was it, in fact, a willingness on the part of the government to turn a blind eye to the violation of international labour law in the interests of promoting the agenda of the nuclear industry in this country? It certainly seems to me that the latter interpretation is the one that has the most probability of being true.
Violations of human rights in the context of wars continue. Yet what does Canada do to prevent these kinds of conflicts from occurring around the world, which conflicts these protocols to the convention rightly address? It seems to me the main thing that Canada could be doing would be acting to prevent these conflicts in the first place. Instead, Canada, to our shame, has a record of contributing to these conflicts by being a country which sells arms to many of the countries involved in the very kind of conflicts that these protocols now try to address.
I have here before me the most recent edition of Ploughshares Monitor for December, 1989. It has a handy list, if you like, of all the countries in which there are now armed conflicts proceeding in which there is documented direct Canadian arms sales and documented indirect Canadian arms sales. I am relieved to see that there are some conflicts going on in the world where are no documented direct Canadian arms sales or, for that matter, indirect Canadian arms sales. Let me mention the ones in which there are documented direct arms sales. In Columbia there is a record of documented indirect Canadian arms sales. There is documentation of direct Canadian arms sales in Peru, in Israel, in Northern Ireland and Turkey. There is documentation of indirect arms sales in Western Sahara, Sudan, Chad, Uganda and Angola.
There is a record of indirect Canadian arms sales in the Iraq-Iranian conflict. In India where there is conflict between the government and separatist ethnic and religious rebels, there is direct Canadian arms sales; in Samolia, indirect Canadian arms sales; in Mozambique, direct Canadian arms sales; in Sri Lanka, direct Canadian arms sales; in Indonesia, direct Canadian arms sales; in Malaysia, direct Canadian arms sales; in the Philippines, indirect Canadian arms sales.
January 25, 1990

Finally, in the conflict between the Chinese and Vietnamese governments since 1979, there is record of direct Canadian arms sales. This is evidence compiled by Project Ploughshares for the most current, comprehensive sources.
It is one thing to pass protocol. We will be co-operative in passing these protocols. It is another thing to work in the international community around the world for those things which will actually prevent the situation to which these protocols address themselves.
Unfortunately, as far we are concerned, the Canadian government's record in that respect is not one that Canadians should be as proud of as they sometimes are. There is no question that the average Canadian feels good about Canada's role in the world, and so they should, in many respects. They need to be reminded, not just from time to time, but consistently that our hands are indeed dirty with respect to a lot of these armed conflicts that are happening around the world.
It is about time we did our part to move the world toward a new concept of security that is not based on military arms, the kind of security which is sought by all the people to whom we now sell arms, but the kind of security that could come from a real attempt to build a just and sustainable international economic order. It is a concept of security in which environmental damage would come to an end, in which children would not be dying at the rate of one every two seconds, and which deals with many of the things the non-governmental organizations concerned with international development are concerned about.
They were here today to protest the possibility of further cuts in Canada's overseas development assistance. That is where matters of real security come in. Yet this government appears to be on the brink of pulling back even further from its responsibilities in that regard.
I believe there is a need for new strength and new concepts in international law to deal with human rights violations within countries and to deal with environmental violations. We need to find a way for the United Nations to escape from its captivity to the notion of national sovereignty so that nations which are abusing, torturing, murdering or committing genocide against elements of their population can no longer hide behind the notion of national sovereignty. We need to find a
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way, as a world, to transcend that notion, because we have become that global village in which everyone's business is everyone else's business, whether we like it or not. It would be a simple world if that were not the case, and an easier world in many respects, but it is not that kind of world. What happens anywhere in the globe is indeed the business of everyone else on planet earth and it is about time we had international institutions which were trying to reflect that reality.
That is true with respect to human rights violations. It is also true with respect to the environment because, as we found out, it is not just in the context of human rights violations that we need to transcend notions of national sovereignty. It is in the reality of nature and transboundary pollution that we find the real limits to national sovereignty. Pollution does not know borders. It is a bit like money in that respect. Pollution can transcend national sovereignty in a way which is often very damaging, as we know only too well here in Canada as a result of transboundary air pollution coming from the United States in the form of acid rain.
We are becoming even more aware of it as a result of evidence that our oceans, particularly our east coast, it appears has been used as a toxic dumping ground by various and sundry ships, either by way of disposing of their own waste or perhaps even waste they deliberately intended to dump in Canadian waters.
We are not in a position to do anything about that nationally or internationally. We have not signed the Law of the Sea, and we are not pressing for tough environmental action. Nationally, we have a couple of tracker planes still operating out of Prince Edward Island. The government is not willing to guarantee their future.
The other night I saw on television that apparently we have a plane which keeps an eye on the Great Lakes for toxic dumping and recently it made a flight over Newfoundland. But this is something it can do only every once in a blue moon.
Are we about to become the garbage dump of the world or are we going to do something about this? We need to act in at least two different ways. We need stronger international laws with respect to the environment, and we need the self respect to have the capacity to monitor at the basic level at least what is going on in our own territory, particularly in our own waters. Yet

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that is something that the government has chosen not to do.
I am always saddened by the language of security and its obvious inadequacy. How many times recently have we witnessed on the national news stories about beaches being destroyed by oil spills. We wonder how we are going to clean up the beaches and save the sea birds, the fishery, maintain the scenery for the tourist potential and all those things.
In the meantime, while the very foundations of life in the sea are being threatened, navies all over the world with their submarines with sea-launch cruise missiles, destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers cannot do anything against what is really now threatening the planet, now threatening the human prospect, and against what is really threatening creation.
How pathetic is the human consciousness when we consider all the money and effort which is put into preparing to kill each other in such a variety of phantasmagoric ways. Yet nature itself is poised to render us extinct because we do not have the common sense to act together to defend ourselves from this common threat to human security, the environmental threat.
That is why we need to show more respect than this government has for the whole notion of international law for those laws which exist now, for those laws which are waiting to be ratified and for those laws which have not even been written. Only through developing that kind of global consciousness will we be able to save ourselves, if we can save ourselves. What does Canada do?
There is a convention of the International Labour Organization with respect to asbestos and the occupational health and environmental human health consequences of the use of asbestos. What does the Canadian government become noted for in international circles? Ignoring that convention. Ignoring that conclusion of the ILO.
Canadians like to pride themselves as being a bit ahead of the Americans on some of these issues. We are even at odds with the United States of America. When it comes to asbestos we have been absolutely shameful. We have been participating in campaigns of disinformation with respect to the records on asbestos and encouraging
countries to ignore the ILO Convention, encouraging countries to ignore the record with respect to asbestos in countries like Thailand, for example.
What does this do for our international reputation? What does this do for our ability in the councils of the world to argue for stronger international law? Is it just so we can selectively disobey it when it suits our purposes? I hope that is not the case and yet in so many ways that appears to be the case. Time and time again we have appeared to be willing to turn a blind eye to what is going on with respect to the environment or with respect to the record of certain governments in order to pursue the economic self interest of our country.
One is reminded of the fact that not far from here at this very time there are a number of people in the city from Iran who are on a hunger strike to call attention to the massive human rights violations which continue in Iran despite the death of Ayatollah Khomeini and the coming to power of the new Prime Minister, Rafsanjani. These people are doing their best to call attention to the fact that from the way that regime treats its own people it clearly deserves to be isolated by the international community and clearly deserves to have some action taken against it, such as a boycott of arms sales or a boycott of oil imports. Yet what did the Canadian government do? It resumed diplomatic relations with the Iranian government on the basis that it wanted to encourage the moderates. These people are the moderates. This is like the moderates that the government talks about who are in charge of El Salvador.
I have taken the opportunity in the context of this bill to say not only that we support the coming into force of these protocols and Canada's contribution to that by ratifying them as we are in the process of doing here today, but also to say that we would support the government if it moved to be much more creative and much more courageous in attempts to prevent the kinds of situations which these protocols address in attempts to create a world in which our concept of security is much broader and deeper and takes into account the environmental and social dimension.
We would support the government if it moved to incorporate those insights into its entire foreign policy which it clearly did not do when the hon. member across the way was the Minister of Defence. It brought in a white paper which, even at that time, was colder than the cold war and which now has fallen into complete and
January 25, 1990

utter disrepute. We cannot find anybody in the country who would be willing to say a good word about it.
There is an opportunity as well as a necessity for the government to rethink its foreign policy and to begin to ask serious questions about how Canada can live up to its new responsibilities in this new situation. How can Canada live up to the responsibilities that it has in its unique geopolitical context, being situated between the superpowers.
How can we move in the Canadian Arctic to establish principles of common security and confidence building and various other arrangements which would assure the superpowers that the Canadian Arctic was not being used in a way that threatened either of them. We have an opportunity to break new ground as to how the superpowers will relate to each other.
Obviously both superpowers, in differing ways, are coming to the end of their tether. They are coming to the end of their hegemony over their respective spheres. It is coming more quickly in the Soviet Union. The United States still likes to think that Central America belongs to it as the Panamanian invasion shows so clearly. Whether it likes it or not, even it is coming to the end of the day when the world is divided into these two camps.
We are going to be living in a multi-polar world, for better or for worse. It is in that multi-polar world that Canada will have an opportunity to practice what it is best at. That is the kind of peacekeeping, constructive, mediatory role that Canadians have fashioned for themselves over the years and which will become even more important in this multi-polar world. There is an opportunity here for the government to do some creative thinking. I am glad to have had the opportunity, in the context of the this bill, to encourage it to do that.


Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Saskatoon-Humboldt):: Mr. Speaker, I am going to follow to some extent upon the dissertation of the member for Winnipeg-Transcona on the responsibilities of Canada in the kind of situation in which we are finding ourselves. We in the New Democratic Party have no difficulty in supporting this particular bill and we intend to do so. It is an act to amend the
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Geneva Conventions Act, the National Defence Act and the Trade-marks Act.
The bill itself is the incorporation of the two protocols that were signed in 1977, Schedules 5 and 6, into the present bill, the Geneva Conventions Act. These are the portions of this bill which we accept. We have signed these protocols as a country and we depend upon our experts to make sure that we have not put ourselves in a difficult position. Therefore, we welcome the bill and we will support it.
There is a rub in this kind of bill, as far as Canada is concerned in the world, in what has been historically a very aggressive approach to the world, with the requirement of forced views to dominate and to control.
This type of bill is setting the rules for war, and by doing so we are having the tendency to legitimize war as a method of solving problems between countries or within countries. One of the measures in the bill extends the Geneva Convention to human rights and the protection of prisoners, and children in countries where there has been insurrection, where there is a kind of war which some people will call war for freedom and others would call a revolution.
The very fact that we need such a convention is a statement to some extent of the continuing barbarism of humankind. War has often been described as the legalizing of devastation of humanity, the legalizing of killing. Those conventions are part of the rules under which war is supposedly to be conducted. I suppose it is better than having no rules, no convention, but it is a bit hypocritical on our part as Canadians, and I guess on the part of other nations of the world which proclaim that they want peace and work for peace and still find it necessary to put in place rules which make war less barbaric than it would be without those rules.
It is hypocritical too in the sense that it has a tendency to promote war, in the sense that if you conduct war within these rules you are not going to be condemned quite as much as in other circumstances.
As my colleague for Winnipeg-Transcona indicated, we have in Canada, and I guess in the world, a very difficult kind of definition of security. Preparations taken and made by countries in the name of security often have

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the opposite results. If you think of security as being security of the individual, the country, production ability of the country, the movement of goods and so on, to continue in a normal way, then the preparation for what we at times call security often has the opposite results with the fact that we have situations where the security forces dominate. In the cases of Romania and Panama in the last little while, the security has had the opposite effect.
Rather than securing people, jobs, the economy, it had the effect of limiting growth and freedom.
This kind of security produces refugees, it deprives people of the basics in education, of health care, housing, and employment. People find themselves living in fear, even in fear of their own government. Many die unnecessarily. Far from being a convention that will that ensure security forces do not impinge upon freedom of the individual, the security forces are assisted in doing so.
In Canada there are things that we could do to assist the world in becoming secure for the individual. There are things that we could do to make war less possible and, in the eyes of some, unnecessary. That is the direction that the foreign policy of Canada, the foreign policy of the nations of the world who considered themselves peace-loving should be moving.
We cannot expect Canada to fully address the situation but the government can do everything possible to help build an international order in which all can live in peace, freedom and with economic justice. We have within our House of Commons a group of parliamentarians who call themselves the Parliamentarians for World Order who have as their aim an internationalist approach which would allow the world to proceed from now on with a minimum or, hopefully, without any wars.
In proposing this kind of action for the government, or asking that the government spend more time on pursuing this kind of a goal, there are many areas which we could define specifically. I will mention a couple. The first one is the Third World situation. Over two million
people died in wars in the Third World in 1945. Every hour the world spends $130 million on armaments while 2,000 children die of starvation and disease. The transfer of arms to Third World countries has risen from $5 billion per year in the 1970s to $35 billion in the late 1980s.
Many arms transfers are sales on credit which then add to the already great debts which these governments are forced to pay. These weapons do not have the effect of calming the situation in those Third World countries. Instead, they have the effect of adding to the tension in those countries and making it less possible for there to be positive development since the money is being spent on arms and not on development.
Canada's record with development aid, peacekeeping works and so on is good but it is not having the kind of impact in the Third World countries which it should. Yet the government is withdrawing from that kind of support and that kind of aid in those countries. That is only one, and in the further opportunities that I will have, I would like to present more of these kinds of situations.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I gather the hon. member had not finished his speech. The reason that he sat down was because it was five o'clock. Right?


Stanley J. Hovdebo: Yes, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member for Okanagan-Shuswap (Mr. MacWilliam) has given me written notice that he will be unable to move his motion during Private Members' Hour on Friday, January 26, 1990.
Since it was impossible to arrange, in accrodance with Standing Order 94, for an exchange of positions in the order of precedence, I hereby order the clerk to drop this order to the bottom of the order of precedence.
The hour provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business is therefore suspended, and pursuant to Standing Order 94, the House shall revert to the business before it prior to Private Members' Hour.
January 25, 1990


PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS-MOTIONS FOR PAPERS   EXTERNAL AFFAIRS SECURITY
Mr. David Kilgour (Edmonton Southeast) moved:: That an humble Address be presented to Her Excellency praying that she will cause to be laid before this House copies of the government's files on the nature of the relationship between Herbert Norman and any of the state security organizations of the Soviet Union or any other Warsaw Pact member.
He said: Mr. Speaker, my motion, Sir, is with respect to certain papers involving the late Herbert Norman which was to be debated during the next hour. There have been discussions, Mr. Speaker, of which the other parties have been made aware, and I am extremely pleased that the Secretary of State for External Affairs has appointed the academic and former diplomat Peyton Lyon and contracted with him to look into this matter and to attempt to put to rest any lingering doubts about the late Mr. Norman, and I very much hope he succeeds.
The only concern I have, Sir, is that Mr. Lyon must be permitted to have access to the RCMP, now CSIS, documents in making his inquiry which is to be completed by March 15. I hope the parliamentary secretary will rise in a moment on this point of order, and I am hoping that there is unanimous consent that, subject to the remarks that he makes, the motion might be withdrawn.


Patrick Boyer: Mr. Speaker, following on the suggestion by the hon. member for Edmonton Southeast that the motion now before the House be withdrawn, I would like to simply assist members of the House with some information confirming what the hon. member has stated, and that is with respect to the action which the Secretary of State for External Affairs has initiated in response to the questions which the hon. member previously raised in the House relating to the seemingly never settled question about Herbert Norman, a one-time foreign service officer of this country.
Private Members' Business
I would confirm to members of the House and particularly the member for Edmonton Southeast that, under the direction of the Secretary of State for External Affairs, Mr. Peyton Lyon has been retained by the department on a three-month contract to review all the files which the Government of Canada has relative to this matter in order that the situation can be put to rest and finalized.
The terms of reference established for Professor Lyon are such that they directly address the questions of last May 5 posed by the hon. member in that, for example, he is to examine the nature of Mr. Norman's relations with spies, the significance of testimony of E. Bentley and the nature of Norman's relations with security organizations of the Soviet Union and other states.
Professor Lyon has a three-month assignment to do this work. He has completed one month of the task so far, having already looked at the files at External Affairs and the National Archives and will complete that process by looking at all other files which the Government of Canada has, which would include CSIS files. This will enable a report to be made by March 15, so I would believe that by the end of March, a report can be laid before members of this House, in Parliament, on this matter.
For that reason, I think it is appropriate that the hon. member has suggested that we not debate the matter further at this time, but consent to his request that his motion be withdrawn so that toward the end of March, we can hear fully the results of this methodical review that is being carried out by Professor Peyton Lyon, whom I fondly remember as having been one of my professors when I was at Carleton University.
On this side, we have complete consent to the suggestion by the hon. member.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, we have been approached by the member for Edmonton Southeast, relating to this disposition of motion P-8, which is a Notice of Motion for Production of Papers.
We agree that since the government has taken the route of having Professor Peyton Lyon look into this question, it would possibly be redundant for us to discuss it at this time. We would unanimously agree to have the motion withdrawn from the Order Paper.

January 25, 1990
Adjournment Debate


Stanley J. Hovdebo: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the New Democratic Party, we would also agree with the withdrawal. My particular concern had been trying to balance between the freedom of information and the use that can be made of this kind of request for papers by parliamentarians which other people in Canada do not have. Under the circumstances, I see no problem in agreeing to the withdrawal of the motion.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I gather there is unanimous consent to allow the hon. member for Edmonton Southeast to withdraw his motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.
Order discharged and motion withdrawn.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

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

Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg St. James):: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise at this time and speak for the next six or seven minutes about a very serious matter that relates to many sections of this country. In this particular case I am talking about agriculture.
I could start off by asking the question: How many of us in this Chamber, how many Canadians would like to lose up to 90 per cent of their income in the year 1990? In some cases, there will be 100 per cent losses of net income. That is exactly what prairie farmers are facing in the year 1990. In my home province, it is estimated by Manitoba government economists that net farm income will drop 87 per cent. In Saskatchewan, it will drop 101 per cent.
Put in terms of figures, after taking into account living expenses such as food and clothing, the average return to a farm business in Manitoba will be just a little over $1,300 in 1990. That is compared to over $10,000 last year. To use an aggregate figure, net farm income in Manitoba will drop to a paltry $37 million in 1990. That compares with $285 million in 1989 and $364 million in 1988.
In the face of those dreadful figures, those frightening figures, what has gone wrong? Why this terrible forecast? Well, first of all, the grain market around the world is not very strong. Again, Manitoba farm economists predict that wheat prices will drop 10 per cent this year; oats, 28 per cent; barley, 20 per cent; com, 15 per cent and canola, 6 per cent.
Also, when it comes to special crops, there will be a decrease in prices; canary seed, 17 per cent; mustard, 8 per cent; lentils, 6 per cent; field peas, 5 per cent. Livestock prices, at best, will be stable or will experience slight increases.
On one side of the ledger, we have a soft world market, particularly in grains. But that is only part of the story. The major reason for this dreadful forecast, this drop in farm income in my province and other provinces in this year, 1990, is because of the reduction in farm supports from the federal government.
It is estimated that government support in the farm sector this year will drop 70 per cent. No wonder farmers are facing a crisis. No wonder the agricultural community is in disarray, because it is this government which claims that it is a great friend of the farmers. The fact of the matter is that this government has abandoned the farm community on the prairies.
Let us look at what this government has done. Thke, for example, the budget of a few months ago. What did the budget do when it came to farmers? I will tell you: crop insurance, slashed $200 million; grain and flour transportation, slashed $60 million; rail branch line rehabilitation program, cut $48 million; grain and crop advance payment programs, slashed $54 million; dairy export program, cut $12 million; commodity-based loan program, slashed $15 million; and the Canadian Dairy Commission, cut $10 million. That is a grand total of $399 million. No wonder the farm community is suffering and it is because of this government.
But the situation gets even worse than that. For example, the excise tax rebate on farm fuels has been cut as of the beginning of this year. That is going to cost perhaps as much as $900,000 extra in farm fuels to the farmer. You know, the farmer is already down and out and he is having to face this extra cost of as much as $9,000 in farm fuels.
January 25, 1990

The farmers just cannot take it. On the one side, the market is soft, they are losing support. But on the other side, they are having to face higher costs and they are having to face higher taxes. Take, for example, the GST. It is going to take millions and millions of dollars out of farm pockets. It is a sad story.


Mr. Cardiff:: That's not true.


John Harvard: Yes, it is true. It is true not only for farmers, it is true for almost every Canadian in this country. The hon. parliamentary secretary is denying the comment. All he has to do is ask Canadians. Look at the polls and we will find out who is speaking the truth, and how Canadians feel about the issue of the GST.
Supply management is under attack in this country because of the government. It is possible that in one, two, or three years, the the grain farmers on the prairies may be thrust into what is called a continental domestic market. They have not asked for it but they might get it. The question is: Has the government really addressed this issue? Does it really know the consequences? Does it know the ramifications? Does it know what it is doing to the farmers? No, it does not know what it is doing to the farmers. It has no idea. All it knows is how to tax. That is what it knows how to do. It knows how to tax and it knows how to cut, but it does not know anything about policy, not one little thing.
Do you want to hear something about supply management? I will tell you. This comes from a farmer, as quoted in the Winnipeg Free Press the other day, under the heading of "Supply Management". This is what the farmer said. "It is working well for me. You know what you are going to get before you even start, but free trade has hurt all supply managed farmers of milk, eggs and poultry. Just the mention of free trade and the value of turkey quotas dropped from $1 a pound to 70 cents. For 100,000 pounds of quota, you pay $70,000. At the farm gate, the actual turkeys are selling for 65 cents a pound".
You do not have to listen to me, you might construe me as a little partisan. Just listen to the farmers. They are telling you that the government is absolutely wrong. The farmers are also telling the government that they
Adjournment Debate
feel abandoned. There is a crisis out there and the government is not recognizing it.
It reminds me of what the Prime Minister said about Atlantic Canada the other day. "There is no crisis in Atlantic Canada". That is what he said. Oh, I know he tried to explain it by saying that there is a crisis only in the fishery. But we all know that if you have a crisis in the fishery in Atlantic Canada, you have got a crisis right across those provinces. It is the same thing when it comes to the prairie provinces. If you have a crisis in agriculture, you have a crisis everywhere.
It is time that the government listened to farmers. It is time that it put its ear to the ground because there is something terribly wrong going on in the prairie provinces and other agricultural sectors of this country.


Murray Cardiff: Mr. Speaker, I will stick to the topic as closely as I can and not deal with some of the rhetoric that we have just heard. It is important to keep the farm income situation and outlook in perceptive.
In 1989, there was a record high for realized net farm income and the final figures for 1989 are expected to be 13 per cent above the average of the last five years.
Even the prairies' 1988 realized net income was a record high and 1989 income should equal the five-year average. True, the outlook for 1990 is not encouraging, but we must keep in mind that the forecast is very preliminary at this stage. The 1990 crop is not even in the ground at this point.
International grain markets are particularly volatile these days due to low world stocks. Conditions could change dramatically over the next few months. If we look back over a number of a years with similar predictions, it has often been the case that it has changed.
The 1990 farm income prospects serve to underline the purpose of the work that has been under way for some time to develop a new long-term predictable stabilization program. This is one of the government's top priorities for this winter.
This government, when it came into office in September 1984, recognized the seriousness of the financial difficulties in the agricultural sector, the complexity of the problems and the need for a number of different

January 25, 1990
Adjournment Debate
assistance measures. At that time many farmers were starting to deal with the impact of the high interest rates of the early 1990s which had risen to unprecedented levels. At the peak in August 1981, the prime rate reached 22.75 per cent.
In the face of high interest rates, those farmers who were highly leveraged found themselves unable to meet their debt obligations. These high interest rates were followed by declining market returns, especially for grains and oilseeds where an international price war intensified the existing market difficulties. Widespread droughts in the mid to late 1980s created additional financial problems for many farmers, not only in the west but right across Canada. They all had to face that problem.
Recognizing the serious financial difficulties facing farmers, this government took action. We established the Special Canadian Grains Program and the Canadian Crop Drought Assistance Program that I know that many farmers appreciated that this government was there to respond to their needs.
Farm debt review boards were set up across the country to help farmers reach arrangements with their creditors. Three hundred and sixty million dollars was also made available to enable the Farm Credit Corporation to enter into arrangements with farmers in the same way as other creditors. From the beginning of the program to the end of December, the farm debt review boards have completed 8,253 cases and in 6,356 of those cases, arrangements have been identified between farmers and creditors, a 77 per cent success rate.
The hon. member suggested that 8,000 farmers in Saskatchewan are facing foreclosure. In fact, the estimate is closer to 7,700 farmers, based on accounts in arrears to major lenders. A year ago it was estimated that there were 8,200 and the trend is therefore positive and is declining.
But one must remember too that most of the loans that are in arrears do not always result in foreclosure. Often the loan is only in arrears due to a short-term cash flow problem and is brought up to date once the funds are available. In the serious cases, farmers can turn to farm debt review boards and very often financial restructuring can help farmers service their debts. The success of this program has already been noted.
In the short term, the federal and provincial governments will be monitoring the farm income situation carefully. We have set up a federal-provincial committee to provide essential information vis-a-vis income difficulties prior to the development of a long-term safety net program.
The government recognizes that there are cases where restructuring of debt and arrangement are not possible. In those cases, and when the family so desires, there is assistance available to help with adjustment out of the industry.
This is not an easy time for many farmers, their families and their communities, and there is no quick-fix solution. But we are on the right track with the income adjustment assistance which we have provided and we will provide in the future if conditions warrant.
At the conclusion of the Agri-food Policy Conference in Ottawa this past December, it was announced that we were establishing an industry-government task force on farm finance. This task force will examine a number of farm finance issues including the particular needs of beginning farmers. It will report to the meeting of the federal-provincial agriculture ministers in August of this year. Based on the recommendations of the task force, the federal government, in co-operation with the provinces, will be in a position to take whatever action is most appropriate for the industry.


SOLICITOR GENERAL
Mrs. Shirley Maheu (Saint-Laurent-Cartierville):: Mr. Speaker, when I rose in the House on October 3 last year, I asked the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Beatty) when Child Find would be advised whether or not it would get the funds it needed to continue to exist. Since that date, I have been informed that the organization received $15,000 to help write a book on missing children. This miserly gesture on the part of the federal government is a clear indication that the minister and his colleagues do not seem to care about dealing with the problem of missing children in Canada.
January 25, 1990

As you know, Child Find is a non-profit organization with headquarters in my riding, Saint-Laurent-Cartier-ville. Its purpose is to reunite missing children with their families.
The group has been asking for government assistance since April 1989. I have written to several members, urging them to support this group by providing substantial financial assistance.

In effect, the grant from the Solicitor General's office will provide the Missing Children's Network with enough funds to hire a single individual to work for three months to contribute to a book project. What should be done is to provide a sufficient level of funding that will ensure the network's ability to actively and without restriction pursue the cases of hundreds of missing children and broken families that each day look forward to reunification.
The Minister of State for Employment and Immigration provided for three UIC recipients to work in their office from September to December of 1989. However, this does not address the issue of continued government support that this organization needs to perform its task.
It is of the utmost importance that the network receive the kind of support that will give it a real chance in helping to reunite missing children with their families.
Unfortunately, it remains painfully clear to me and the rest of Canadians that this government is simply unconcerned about the problem. Instead of demonstrating leadership in the area, this government has given in to bureaucratic pigeon-holing that cannot decide whether the issue of missing kids should be handled by the Solicitor General, the Minister of National Health and Welfare or the Minister of Justice.
It is clear that instead of passing responsibility from department to department, this government should be co-ordinated and unwavering in its support of organizations such as the network that actively try to combat this national social problem.

By collaborating with this group, the government would acknowledge that the problem of missing children is a social rather than a criminal one. It is not a straightforward crime that we can hand over to the
Adjournment Debate
police to solve. It is a problem that should be acknowledged as arising from family violence. Not until the government realizes this will we, as a society, be able to deal with the problem of missing children.
Mr. Speaker, why does the government refuse to see the problem of missing children as an aspect of family violence? By doing so, the government is depriving the organization of funds that could be provided by the family violence prevention unit at the Department of National Health and Welfare. This is intolerable.

I say that it is our collective responsibility to protect the needs of Canadian children and families to ensure that every possible resource is allocated to combat this problem.
Let us put this into perspective. The federal government will spend nearly 100,000 of our tax dollars to look into such socially relevant issues-and I am being very sarcastic-as the role of the fool in history or the social significance of lawn ornaments. I am naming just two. It is willing to spend nearly $25,000 on any one of these issues while it refuses to spend as much in addressing parental abduction and runaways as a result of abuse.
The Missing Children's Network has successfully reunited 60 families across Canada. With adequate resources one could only speculate on the number of successful reunifications that this group could facilitate.

The Network has been able to operate until now, thanks to the unceasing work of its staff and volunteers. It has managed to keep financially afloat and thus carry out its tasks and meet its objectives. However, financial resources from the private sector are not unlimited. The government must now do its share and provide a level of funding which will enable the Missing Children's Network to continue its good work and thus give missing children a real chance to find their parents again.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, the government's giving the Missing Children's Network $15,000 is just a drop in the bucket. After waiting over six months for an answer from the government to find out if it could continue with its noble work, it is only being given this trifling sum. We will long remember that this Conservative government

January 25, 1990
Adjournment Debate
was only willing to give $15,000 to an organization which has already saved 60 children.

What the Tories are actually indicating is that they are only willing to spend a miserly $10 for each of the children on the RCMP missing children's registry. How can we take the Solicitor General's initiative seriously? How can we explain to the nearly 1,700 children and their families out there that they are worth only $10?

In summary, my question is the same as last October 3: When can the Missing Children's Network expect to receive the necessary funds to maintain an adequate level of service for the Canadian people? Why is this government so reluctant to provide the funds which the agency needs? And when will this government adopt a positive and modern attitude to the Missing Children's Network and stop looking away from the problem, as it did in the past?


Patrick Boyer: Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the hon. member for the strong humanitarian commitment she has shown in this area by raising this issue today and previously in this House. However, I would also reject the facile analysis that we have just heard relating to spending, and the seriousness of the problem, and her contention that this government does not care or is not aware of this problem.
Before when she raised the question with the minister in the House she had been pushing very hard on behalf of an organization, the Missing Children's Network, for an amount of $150,000. The fact is that the government and that department is not able to provide sustaining funding for organizations. Yet the government did want to provide assistance. It did contact the network and provided $15,000 for the conference that was held. It is currently working with the network in Montreal, and others, to develop very important pamphlets that will be of guidance to parents, teachers, community groups and others to bring to light some of the information that we have learned in this country, sometimes with difficulty
and sometimes with sadness, about the social problems that give rise to missing children. This is an effort to get this information out in pamphlet form which involves another $15,000.
When the hon. member contends that this government is unaware of the problem she is in fact herself unaware of the fact that in 1985, within months of forming the government of this country, the seriousness of this problem became very clear to the government, as it did to all Canadians. The government at that time announced plans for a national forum on missing children, created a missing children registry within the RCMP, and initiated much of this important research into what is really the cause of missing children.
The fact is that in most of the cases the police are normally the lead community agency in responding to a missing child incident. It is not a matter of just spending a lot more money. It is a matter of improving links and understanding, information and communication among the police, schools, parents, courts, social agencies, and members of Parliament-all organizations involved-because there is in fact much more that can be done through effective co-operation than simply spending more money on the problem.
The creation of the RCMP missing children registry way back in 1986, which did predate the hon. member joining the House of Commons, has been the single most important contribution of the Ministry of the Solicitor General to the missing children issue. I am not going to give the statistics now because the member did so in her remarks.
There is a tremendous challenge here. It is not one that can simply be answered by putting money to it. It is one that is very serious. The research that the federal government has been carrying out has shown that the majority of the missing children incidents reported to the police involved children running from their home or from an institution. Many of the incidents of running away involve children who run more than once during the same year. After runaways, parental abductions constitute the second largest category of missing children incidents that are reported to the police. Abduc-
January 25, 1990

tions by strangers constitute a very small but extremely important number of cases.
As we are beginning to understand more about this problem we are becoming better equipped to deal with it. It is a sincere initiative by this government to address a very real problem. The hon. member does us all a service by keeping this issue in the forefront of our concerns here, but I do not accept the criticisms that she has made of the government's initiatives in this area. They are initiatives of which all members of this House, in a non-partisan fashion, ought to be very proud.


ACID RAIN
Mr. Bob Corbett (Fundy-Royal):: Mr. Speaker, in June of last year President Bush announced his intention to transmit a bill to Congress which would, among other things, reduce emissions causing acid rain. Specifically, the bill would amend the Clean Air Act by inserting a number of sections that call for nitrogen oxides to be reduced by 2 million tons and sulphur oxides by 10 million tons relative to their 1980 emission levels by the year 2000.
It was clear that President Bush recognized acid rain as a serious environmental problem and one that demanded immediate action. The time had finally come for concrete action rather than more study.
At least 50 per cent of Canada's acid rain, and as much as 70 per cent in some areas, has its origins in emissions of sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide from heavily industrialized regions of the United States. Canada's contribution to American acid rain, in retrospect and in comparison, amounts to 10 or 15 per cent of their total.
My purpose in quoting these figures is not because I want to point fingers but to illustrate that while there is a movement of airborne pollution across the international boundary in both directions, there is an obvious imbalance in terms of contributions to the problem. This imbalance accounts for Canada's determination to work with the United States to deal with our common problem.
As a member of both the subcommittee on acid rain and the special committee on acid rain, I can report that we recognized that the only way we could convince the American government that it should take steps to reduce that problem was by taking the necessary steps to reduce acid rain in our own country. We could hardly go to the
Adjournment Debate
United States and demand that costly pollution controls be implemented if our own domestic controls were lacking.
Significant steps have indeed been taken in Canada which demonstrate our resolve. For example, agreements to fight acid rain have been reached between the federal government and the seven easternmost provinces. Some $150 million dollars has been provided to help companies lower sulphur dioxide emissions by 50 per cent 1994. This will significantly reduce the amount of acid rain that we export to the United States. The maritime provinces are currently participating in three pilot projects worth $50 million to develop cleaner, more efficient methods of using coal.
Stricter standards have been in effect since September 1987 to reduce motor vehicle emissions by 45 per cent. In March 1986, the government established a new program to eliminate the hazards posed by the presence of lead in gasoline. As a result, leaded gasoline emissions will be virtually eliminated in this country by 1990. Clearly there is a lot more that we can do, but I think that at the very least we have demonstrated a willingness to do our part.
That is why it is particularly distressing to hear the American justice department's views on the issue of acid rain. In a written brief submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals, the department states that a number of reports, both in Canada and the U.S., document the existence of acid rain as a problem, but argues that important scientific questions remain unresolved concerning acid rain deposition effects on forests, lakes, crops and building materials.
This sounds all too familiar. When I asked the parliamentary secretary on December 19 what steps the ministry of the environment was taking to impress upon the American government the seriousness of acid rain, he indicated that a January meeting was planned between Canadian and American officials to discuss a bilateral accord on acid rain.
I would like the parliamentary secretary responsible for reporting to the House this evening to comment on the results of that meeting.


Patrick Boyer: Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by paying tribute to the work of the hon. member for Fundy Royal. He has worked over the years on the important issue of acid rain and keeping this issue very much alive before the House.

January 25, 1990
Adjournment Debate
I should say, in a preliminary way, that during the time a couple weeks ago when this House was not in session, I went south from my constituency, not very far south into the United States but as far south as the state of Ohio, to be the keynote speaker there at a conference on the environment.
Ohio is right in the heart of the valley where soft coal is mined and much of it burned, thus a contributing factor. There I was able to see-and I would like to report it to the hon. member-that now within the United States the issue of the legislative and legal response to this problem in President Bush's legislation which is now before Congress and the other bills before Congress dealing with acid rain has now unfortunately gone beyond the point at which for too many years the Americans were stuck, namely, the point of whether acid rain was even a problem, to the next stage where they are debating among themselves as to who is to pay, how much, and how they will work this out.
With respect to the issue in the United States it is also important to report to the hon. member that just at the time I was there 10 leading environmental groups of the United States had sent a letter to Secretary Baker criticizing the United States government for not having moved quickly enough to fulfil its commitments on environmental issues in and around the Great Lakes and on other issues such as acid rain.
Happily, as a result of initiatives taken by this government and by the hon. member for Fundy Royal, the issue has now moved to the stage where it has become an issue being debated within the American political system. That is a happy day for all of us because for so long it was simply lobbying by our government of the United States government. Due to the good relations that our Prime Minister has developed with the Americans, we were able finally to see something accomplished.
On the specific point, my information is partial and I do not want to mislead the hon. member into believing
that I have the benefit of full information this evening to completely answer his question. I do know that when Ontario and several of the U.S. states petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals last year to require the international air pollution provisions of the existing U.S. Clean Air Act to be used to implement a U.S. acid rain control program, it gave rise to a legal issue, one of them being certainly the one to which I think the member is referring.
The precise legal question at issue is the interpretation of that narrow administrative matter. U.S. administration officials have argued that there is insufficient scientific information available to proceed as the petitioners have requested and that the President's comprehensive acid rain proposal would provide a more effective and efficient solution.
Our view is that there is ample evidence for the administration to use its existing authorities and we will continue to press this as a friend of the court, amicus curiae, in the proceedings that are now taking place.
In conclusion, media reports that have portrayed the administration's position as backing away from its commitment to acid rain controls are simply not giving a full or complete picture. Indeed, earlier this month President Bush admonished the United States Congress to get on with passing the new Clean Air Act.
I hope that that is at least a partial response to satisfy the hon. member. If this is not adequate information I am sure that he will continue, both during the Question Period and at other opportunities, to raise the issue. I would be happy to get any further information that he might require.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The motion to adjourn the House is deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow morning at ten o'clock.


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 5.41 p.m.

[Stage Direction]
Statement tabled in the House of Commons by the Right Honourable Joe Clark, Secretary of State for External Affairs and replies thereto by the Honourable Andre Ouellet and Mr. Bill Blaikie.
January 25, 1990
Charles Joseph Clark: I want to provide a progress report to the House on international efforts to end the violence that has gripped Cambodia for fifteen years. The Cambodian people have suffered greatly from invasion, unparalleled abuses of human rights, and civil war. We wish to ensure that Canada does its part in helping to break the cycle of suffering in Cambodia.
There are measures Canada can take to address the suffering of Cambodia, and which will contribute to the building of a lasting peace.
The recent history of Cambodia is a saga of unending war, turmoil and death. During the Vietnam war, approximately 600,000 Cambodians were killed.
At war's end, in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge forces overthrew the Cambodian government of Lon Pol. The criminal acts perpetrated afterwards by the Pol Pot regime between 1976 and 1979 were condemned by the international community and by Canadians of all walks of life.
The expulsion of the Khmer Rouge by the Vietnamese in 1979 resulted in a long civil war opposing three Cambodian parties to a government put into office by the Vietnamese army. Eleven years later, despite diplomatic efforts, the war is still raging on and more Cambodians are dying. The limited resources of Indochina are tragically wasted on the battlefront.
In September 1989, Vietnam withdrew its troops from Cambodia. Since then, the civil war has intensified. The front lines have changed somewhat, but, in general, have remained the same as those drawn up eleven years ago. In many instances, military solutions have been sought instead of political solutions.
The victims remain the same: the people of Cambodia, and indeed all of the people of Indochina who have borne too long the burden of protracted military struggle.
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From the beginning of the war, Canada has helped fund the efforts of the United Nations and its agencies to care for the 300,000 Cambodians seeking refuge on the Thai-Cambodian border. Our commitment continues to these people, and this fiscal year it will amount to $3 million in food and other aid.
We also recognize the need to assist the 8 million Cambodians still living in their country whose lives have been disrupted by the armed struggle. Their needs are immediate and real. A response to their suffering must not be held forever hostage to progress towards a political settlement.
With that in mind, the Government is now in the process of re-establishing the eligibility of Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, the three countries of Indochina, for official Canadian development assistance.
The exact nature of this aid is now under study by CIDA. As part of that process, an officer from our Embassy in Bangkok is currently in Cambodia with representatives of Canadian non-governmental organizations to examine how best to resume an aid relationship there.
In the short term, these programs will be small scale and focussed on humanitarian needs. Over the longer term their expansion will be predicated on progress towards peace and the political realities in the areas affected. We will not have Canadian aid channelled into the military efforts of any group. Nor will we permit it to be used by groups or governments whose records demonstrate a fundamental disrespect for basic human rights. We will, for example, insist that no Canadian aid be distributed in areas controlled by the Khmer Rouge. The central problem in the Cambodian conflict remains how to deal with the Khmer Rouge in an eventual settlement process. The reign of terror of the Pol Pot regime was one of the most brutal chapters in human history. Each position we, as a government, have taken on the question of Cambodia has been grounded in a determination never to allow the Khmer Rouge back into power.
We have called upon the Chinese, Soviet and other military suppliers to the Cambodian parties to cease their support. There is no benefit to Cambodia to be found in the further import of weapons. The people of Indochina have seen enough implements of war to last for all of history.

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Two major developments broke the old impasse respecting Cambodia. The first was the recognition by the Parties themselves, and countries close to them, that war would yield no winner, but would hold back the development of Cambodia and its neighbours.
The second was the decision to treat the search for peace as a regional responsibility and lift it beyond the immediate combatants. Seminal to that process were the Jakarta informal meetings which brought the six nations of ASEAN directly into the process, working with the Cambodian Parties, Vietnam and Laos.
The next step was to make that search for peace a genuinely international preoccupation, moving beyond the region, to involve permanent members of the Security Council, and other countries with a particular interest or contribution. The Paris Conference was convened. Canada was invited because of our unique experience in peace-keeping, our extensive relations in the region, and our acknowledged reputation as a trusted and moderate nation.
The Paris Conference succeeded in getting the agreement of all parties to involve the offices of the United Nations, in the form of a fact-finding technical mission sent to Cambodia. It also made substantial progress in the design of an international control mechanism and in refining the complex of tasks that such a mechanism will have to address.
Canada co-chaired that Committee with India, and Parliament can take pride in the skill and effectiveness of the officials in the Canadian delegation. That first Committee produced the agreement that could well be the basis of further progress now.
The Paris Conference may resume, and Canada and other countries may be called upon to participate in UN-led peacekeeping and transitional arrangements. It is important that potential participants be adequately prepared. As part of this process, officials from my Department and the Department of National Defence are reviewing Canada's recent experiences in Namibia and elsewhere. Lessons learned there can be applied to improving the planning and organization of future peacekeeping operations such as in Cambodia. The collection, exchange and assessment of peacekeeping information with both existing and potential peacekeepers, as well as with the UN itself, can only serve to strengthen the UN's effectiveness and reputation as a peacemaker.
In October, I dispatched a mission to Indochina led by Ambassador Alan Sullivan, Head of our delegation for most of the Paris Conference, to explore and encourage the resumption of negotiations. One of the major messages delivered by Ambassador Sullivan in Hanoi and Phnom Penh was that of the importance of accepting a major role for the UN in any settlement.
In November, the Government of Australia proposed the establishment of a UN interim administration for Cambodia. That proposal has Canada's full support. It overcomes the problem of how to share power between the Cambodia parties, by delegating to the UN the responsibility for administering the country in an interim period prior to elections.
Like the UN-based settlement recently achieved in Namibia, this proposal would effectively guarantee that no Cambodian party would retain or acquire political power sufficient to disrupt the process leading to free and fair elections. That is the most flexible and reasonable proposal currently in play.
It has been welcomed by all the key players in the dispute, with the exception of the Khmer Rouge.
Indeed it is becoming increasingly clear that the Khmer Rouge and its two non-communist coalition partners no longer speak with a unified voice.
At the same time, Canada and other countries recognize that the current regime in Phnom Penh-the Hun Sen regime-is more than simply one of the four factions. Over the last few years it appears to have provided adequate government, and its record in most areas is far better than that of the Khmer Rouge Government which preceded it. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of human rights and in basic respect for human life.
The peace process was moved forward in Paris last week in a meeting of the five permanent members of the Security Council. The meeting resulted, for the first time ever, in a significant level of agreement between the mentors of Cambodia's warring factions.
Their views were summarized in a 16-point communique highlighting an enhanced UN role in the resolution of the Cambodian problem. China's decision to agree to the communique represents a significant concession and suggests that China may move away from its long-standing insistence that the Khmer Rouge have a major role in the interim government. Such flexibility from the Chinese, who are the principal backers of the Khmer Rouge, is an important ingredient in ensuring the cooperation of the Khmer Rouge in the peace-building process.
January 25, 1990

As I have said in the past, we all wish that we did not have to deal with the Khmer Rouge. Unfortunately, the Khmer Rouge remain a major military reality, the strongest among the three resistance factions. To exclude them a priori from the peace would leave them no option but to continue fighting a civil war. We must instead find a way to include them in the process of peace while removing their ability to either wage war or to seize power and return Cambodia to the living hell it experienced under Pol Pot.
The next weeks will be crucial as details of the potential UN role are further discussed, and as options for resolving other key questions such as a cease fire and transitional arrangements are explored. Canada will be active in that process.
Should the Cambodian Parties return to the negotiating table with the kind of flexibility and commitment demonstrated by the permanent five in Paris, it is probable that a resumption of the Paris Conference will follow as a next step.
Adjournment Debate
As a co-chair of one of its key committees, we expect to be closely involved in the preparations for a new Paris Conference. We will continue to work closely with our friends in Asia and elsewhere to help create the best possible environment for peace-building.
We will stress that a new window of opportunity to build a lasting peace has been opened, and that all the Parties to the conflict must approach the upcoming discussions willing to seek and make the compromises which will be required if Cambodia's long nightmare is to come to an end, and peace is finally to be brought to this one gentle and tranquil land.
Peace for Cambodia must become a priority for the world community. Canada has the experience, ability and commitment necessary to play an important role in the peace process. I can assure the House that we will do so.

January 25, 1990
Adjournment Debate
Honourable Andre Ouellet (Papineau-Saint-Michel)
I want to thank the minister for his courtesy in giving me an advance copy of his statement.
The minister's description of the horrors of the war in Cambodia dramatically highlighted the suffering of the Cambodian people.
I welcome Canada's decision to re-establish Cambodia's eligibility for official development assistance provided by Canada.
I wonder, however, how the minister will be able to meet these pressing needs at a time when his colleague, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson) is talking about spending cuts. The budget envelope of the Canadian International Development Agency has already been severely affected, and many people are afraid there will be further cuts in the next Budget of the Minister of Finance.
At a time when the minister is talking about a full-scale review of Canada's foreign policy in connection with the political changes that are occurring throughout the world, he chooses to raise the subject of Cambodia. And why not? But when is he going to talk about East-West relations and how his government intends to meet the new challenges facing us as a result of the extraordinary changes that have taken place in the Warsaw Pact countries? When will the minister consider North-South relations worthy of a minister's statement in this House? We are very anxious to know how the Conservative government intends to deal more compassionately with the debt of Third World countries and how it will try to resolve a problem that is taking on alarming proportions.
The situation in Indochina deserves our attention, but I really wonder why the minister was so anxious to make this statement today. I am concerned about his priorities. The Conservative government already has a reputation for making pretty speeches. Unfortunately, its reputation for concrete action falls rather short of the mark.
The minister tells us that a Canadian official is now in Cambodia with representatives of Canadian non-governmental organizations to try and find the best way to resume an aid relationship there.
We are still at the stage of good intentions. No definite decision has been made, and we don't know whether the government will make a significant contribution that will justify today's statement or whether that contribution will be negligible, as has often been the case after pompous statements made by the Prime Minister or a member of cabinet.
Today, we in Ottawa are being visited by several representatives of Canadian non-governmental organizations concerned about the budget cuts. They have come to tell us that if CIDA again reduced their grants, some of them would have to give up their work and close down.
At a time when the Canadian government calls on these organizations more and more for its foreign aid program, it would be regrettable if the government's left hand, represented by the Finance Department, strangled the agencies which the government's right hand, represented by the Canadian International Development Agency, is reaching out to.
I therefore say to the minister: If you want Canadian non-governmental organizations to do your work in Cambodia, keep funding these agencies generously right here in this country.
In his long statement, the minister finally admitted that the crux of the Cambodian conflict remains the participation of the Khmer Rouge in any settlement. We think that the minister is taking a very great risk by putting so much trust in them and including them in the peace process, when they could again take power for themselves alone and reimpose their reign of terror.
What guarantee does the minister have that the Khmer Rouge are no longer able to make war and again plunge Cambodia into the hell it went through under Pol Pot?
I also wonder why Canada supported the Khmer Rouge's request for United Nations accreditation. It seems to me that this group should not at this time have the prestige and credibility that go with such accreditation. Has the minister had guarantees that he did not tell us about?
I hope so, because there is no doubt that peace in Cambodia is most desirable.
January 25, 1990

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg Transcona)
I welcome the opportunity to reply to the Secretary of State today on this government's change of policy with respect to Indochina.
We in the New Democratic Party are pleased at the government's decision today to extend development assistance funding, through CIDA, to Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. This is a positive move, one which will be welcomed by the non-governmental organization (NGO) community which has long been calling for an extension of aid to the region.
We are also heartened today by the Canadian government's acceptance of the Hun Sen government as legitimate and significant participants in the Cambodian political process. The recognition of the dramatically improved human rights situation in Cambodia since Hun Sen took power is also a new and positive step in Canadian policy towards Cambodia.
I feel it necessary, however, to comment on some of the revisionism that the Secretary of State for External Affairs appeared to be indulging in today. In particular, Mr. Clark stated the following, and I quote,
"Each position we, as a government, have taken on the Question of Cambodia has been grounded in a determination never to allow the Khmer Rouge back into power".
This is a difficult assertion to accept given the fact that this government has recognized the Khmer Rouge-Led coalition as the legitimate representatives of Cambodia at the United Nations. This government's diplomatic support of the reprehensible Khmer Rouge has been, in a word, immoral. It's refusal to deal with the Hun Sen government during this period has been very regrettable.
Adjournment Debate
So, much as we appreciate the government's moves today, I also feel compelled to ask the question, why did it take so long? Why did it take so long to accept the Hun Sen regime-it had been receiving reports for some time about the popularity of the regime and its positive record in government. Why did the Canadian government wait so long to give humanitarian aid to Cambodia and Vietnam-these countries have long been facing a desperate economic situation and have been in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
On the point of assistance, given the extensive economic crisis in the region, we hope the aid is substantial and that it moves from humanitarian aid to also include long-term development assistance programs.
With respect to Vietnman, it is now time to work to reintegrate Vietnam back into the international community. The Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia last year procedded as promised, and this has certainly earned it some international good will.
The New Democratic Party is pleased by the recent diplomatic progress internationally regarding Indochina. The Australian proposal is a promosing one, China's acceptance of a process which involves the UN is also much welcomed. Perhaps we can replicate the Namibian process-one which has proven to be a major success in terms of UN involvement in bringing about peace and democracy.
I urge the Canadian government to support its rhetoric here today, and to show its commitment to peace by playing an active and positive role in the peace process, to ensure that the people of Cambodia, so deserving of peace, have the opportunity to experience it in the near future.

Friday, January 26, 1990