1990-02-01

Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, we are all aware that today is a New Democratic Party opposition day on an important environmental issue. There have been consultations among the Parties and while we were anticipating having a vote at the conclusion of today's debate, there has been agreement that the vote be postponed until Monday at six, with the understanding that we would now go through the normal Routine Proceedings.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. Minister of Justice on the same point of order.


Hon. Doug Lewis (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to confirm that there have been those consultations and that it is agreeable with the government. I think you would find confirmation from the Official Opposition too. I appreciate that it is on the record. It should perhaps be formally recognized as an Order of the House, in whatever way the Chair wishes to formalize that suggestion and to make it official.


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, we would certainly concur. Given that we have new hours on Monday and people realize that the House starts at one o'clock instead of the usual 11 o'clock, we agree that six o'clock is an appropriate time for the vote, but it will be on government time, I take it, and the additional time taken for the vote will not be added on to the day. With that caveat we agree.


Mr. Jim Hawkes (Calgary West):: Mr. Speaker, to be a little more precise, is the member suggesting that the vote on Monday be at 6.45?


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Six.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: The normal Monday hours for government business under the new system run from three o'clock until seven o'clock. If the vote were to occur at the conclusion of government business, then it would occur at seven, with a 15 minute bell. If he is asking for it to take part of government time, then I would assume that the bells would ring at 6.45 or maybe 6.30. Is the hon. member suggesting that government business be interrupted at some other hour for the holding of the vote? If somebody wants to make a suggestion, the government would be receptive to hearing exactly when we should have that vote on Monday.
Let us remember, Mr. Speaker, that one of the reasons we changed the hours for Mondays was to allow an opportunity for members to arrive at the House for deferred votes on a Monday. That is the reason we said let's vote more often at seven o'clock on deferred votes rather than at six o'clock. Is there some desire to change that for this one occasion?


Mr. Speaker:: I will hear the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier further and then I will hear the hon. member for Kamloops.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, since I raised the issue, I would like to add this comment. The government whip and I can always ask the Chair to defer a vote. In this case, that is not allowed. However, with the assent of the New Democratic Party and with their initiative, I agree that the vote can be deferred to Monday at six o'clock. I understand that the bells would ring at 5.45 p.m., and vote taken after that.
The reason is that normally we would have the vote at three o'clock after Question Period and Routine Proceedings. That would be the normal procedure, but to give a chance to western members to be here-and I hear the government whips clearly-I think six o'clock is appropriate. I hope we understand each other. Committees sit Monday night and committees have difficulties. There are six or seven committees sitting. The difficulty I have is allowing members to be here to vote, have their supper and then get back to their committees. We would be flexible and understanding of members' obligations to

February 1, 1990
Routine Proceedings
be at committees and also in the House to vote. That is the only reason I am asking for six o'clock. If that does not meet with general consent then I am flexible.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, the point of the original suggestion was just that, that we have taken some soundings and it would appear that all members can be here who wish to be here Monday by six o'clock in terms of flights and so on. The understanding would be that the bells would ring at 5.45 p.m. and the vote would be at six o'clock. It is as simple as that. I think it is important that we identify that the vote will take place at six and the government business of the day will be interrupted until the vote occurs and then on with the normal business.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I can appreciate the Chair's concern that we seem to be negotiating on the floor of the House, which we do not normally do, but we are negotiating in good faith.
The government has no difficulty in this case taking the time out of government time with one condition, and that is if the bells ring at 5.45 p.m. and the vote is at six, there would have to be an understanding that there would be no dilatory points of privilege or order which would interrupt getting back to debate immediately after the vote.


Mr. Speaker:: The House has heard the proposition put forward. Is it the wish of the House to agree?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: The Hon. Member for South West Nova may want to discuss what we have just done with the Speaker after and I would be prepared to see her in my chambers.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour of tabling, in both official
languages, the government's response to several petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



ROYAL COMMISSION ON BILINGUALISM AND BICULTURALISM


Hon. Gerry Weiner (Secretary of State of Canada and Minister of State (Multiculturalism and Citizenship)):: Mr. Speaker, this is a very special day for all of us who are committed to strengthening the harmony and co-operation between our two official language communities. It is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the preliminary report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism co-chaired by Davidson Dunton and Andre Laurendeau. It was an historic document for Canada.
That report presented Canadians with an exciting challenge, a challenge presented by a group of our compatriots who had spent two years listening to Canadians, reflecting on what they had heard and discussing at length among themselves what their conclusions should be.

As a result, measures were taken with the support of all the parties in this House to promote official language equality throughout the country.
Since that day 25 years ago, we have made progress towards greater linguistic justice. The 1969 Official Languages Act, the 1982 Constitution and the new Official Languages Act of 1988 provided a framework within which we were able to pursue our common goals.

One of the first and most important measures was to open up the Government of Canada to Canadians of both linguistic communities. We have a public service that now offers greater opportunities to English and French speaking Canadians alike, to work together in harmony and in the context of equal opportunities. As well, the government has made important strides in providing its services to the public in both official languages.
February 1, 1990

The government has also worked with all provinces and territories to encourage them to make their services available to their official language minorities in then-own language.

In the field of education, there are tens of thousands of French-speaking children outside the Province of Quebec who are now receiving their education in their own language where before they could not. There are additional thousands of English-speaking pupils across the country benefiting from more and better teaching of French as a second language.

The English speaking population of Quebec continues to have access to a network of English language schools, colleges and universities. Furthermore, both English and French are taught extensively as second languages in Quebec schools.

Schools and community centres serving official language minority groups have sprung up in several provinces. Official language minorities now have their own community radio stations and community newspapers. Of course, organizations are also working hard to strengthen the ties within their communities. The most notable of these are La Federation des francophones hors Quebec and Alliance Quebec, but there are many others.

Despite the inevitable tensions that have occurred and continue to occur from time to time, the progress we have made in the past quarter century has strengthened us and given us fresh insight. We have got to know each other better. We have become more used to the process of dialogue that is so essential to our very survival.
As a member of an official language minority community, I am proud of what we as Canadians have accomplished to promote Canada's two official languages. Federal, provincial, territorial co-operation on official languages is a dynamic example of the Canadian commitment to official language equality. Through joint initiatives, substantial impetus is being given to promote minority language education and second language instruction and other services in the two official languages are being improved.
Routine Proceedings

These forward-looking measures set the stage for a Canada that is united in its diversity and full of promise for the future.
It all started 25 years ago. That is a day to remember and a memory to cherish.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Madam Speaker, it has been a quarter of a century since the day the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Bicultural-ism was appointed by the then Prime Minister, the Right Hon. Lester B. Pearson. A quarter of a century may seem negligible in the history of a country, but to official language minority communities that have had to struggle to preserve their heritage, to many of us, a quarter of a century seems very long indeed.
In its report, the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission said that Canada was experiencing the worst crisis in its history. That was in the Sixties, Madam Speaker. In 1989, history seemed to repeat itself. What we are seeing is a new emergence of intolerance and misunderstanding, largely arising from ignorance and disinformation.


An hon. member:: Deplorable!


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Despite constant efforts, despite federal legislation passed in 1969, 1973 and 1988, and despite provincial legislation, including Bill 8 in Ontario and Bill 142 in Quebec, we still have a long way to go to ensure that our Canadian linguistic duality is approached with respect, generosity and tolerance.
Madam Speaker, although we can rejoice in the progress that has been made, we must face the facts. As they say, it isn't over until it's over.
Linguistic equity is far from being an accepted fact. In some provinces, movements and groups are sowing the seeds of disunity by refusing to acknowledge the rich resources of a country that has enshrined two official languages in its Constitution. They refuse to recognize the very foundations of our history.
To ensure that both official languages are treated the same, we must rely on firm leadership and on the understanding of Canadian men and women at all levels, whether federal or provincial, in our municipalities and our schools. That is the only way we will be able to guarantee linguistic justice in this country. We must explain to Canadians that, if we are to preserve this

February 1, 1990
Routine Proceedings
fundamental resource of our country, there are certain challenges to be met.
While Quebec's language minority has access to schools, to the courts, to the legislature, and a range of social services, in most other provinces the Francophone minority is still denied, in addition to the right to be educated in its own language, access to control over institutions, access to the courts, access to the legislature, to health services, and so forth. Some groups are now asking the courts to acknowledge their right to have their children educated in their official language.
Although the federal government already supports the provinces in this area, we must intensify our efforts to make Canadians understand that giving rights to a minority in no way diminishes the rights of the majority.
When we see a situation like the one that arose this week in Sault Ste. Marie, we have every right to start asking some serious questions. To deny a minority rights it was never given is like trying to cure a disease before it has been diagnosed. Madam Speaker, I think this is a deplorable situation, and I am very sorry this had to happen. How could anyone seriously think that a 4 percent of a community could be a threat to 85,000 of its members?
If we want to ensure that our country can look foward to a harmonious future, the majority must stop holding hostage the minority group. We must stop these scare tactics. Hate never brought people together. In the case of Sault Ste. Marie, the only thing they have to fear is fear itself.

Our two official languages are Canada's precious jewels. Our two official languages are the most important aspect of our heritage. Our two official languages are one of the most differential characteristics of what Canada is all about. It should not be divisive. It should unite us, because that is what makes Canada a special country. Linguistic minorities should not have to struggle to survive. Linguistic minorities should not have to struggle to get what is rightfully theirs. They should be able to enjoy and share the heritage left to them by their ancestors.
Whether we are French-speaking Canadians or English-speaking Canadians, are we not all Canadians? Does Canada not belong to all of us? If it does, why can we not live together in harmony and respect and trust each other? Ignorance and intolerance toward our minorities damages Canada. And if you kill one's language, you kill part of the country with it.
Canadians gave themselves a Constitution which recognizes two official languages. The law of the land should be respected and protected by all governments and all individuals. If we are not able to do it in our country, Canada, then Canada is nothing but a sand castle.
In order for our mutual respect to develop, we must pay attention to the important fact of Canada. We indeed must try and develop strong bonds with each other. We must compromise, we must respect our spirit, we must respect each other.
There is still hope. I hope the next 25 years show us the way with strong leadership as to how we will succeed in peace and equity in matters of language.


Mr. Ian Waddell (Port Moody-Coquitlam):: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today as a member from the West and for the New Democratic Party of Canada to recognize the 25th anniversary of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Bilingualism and Biculturalism.

When the commission was established, Andre Lauren-deau, a great Canadian and co-chairman said, that, as history tells us, Paris was worth a mass and Canada surely is worth a commission. What a commission it was, it had a profound impact on Canada.

The vision expressed in the recommendations of this report had a considerable influence on the history of our country. The key recommendations-the principle of ensuring that the official language minorities of Canada receive public services in their mother tongue, the idea that French as well as English must be a working language in Canada, etc.-were reflected in the Official Languages Act of 1969, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and more recently in Bill C-72 which was passed before the last election.
February 1, 1990



On this twenty-fifth anniversary of the "by and by" commission, I can remember the time we asked when this commission was going to report. It was a little bit of a joke, because royal commissions takes a long time. They said "by and by it would report". It was not a joking matter because it was a very serious and very important commission.
As hon. members before me have said, we have cause for both satisfaction and concern. We have more bilingual people than ever before. Recent Statistics Canada reports state that the increase has been from 13.5 per cent in 1971 to 16.2 per cent today, so we are going forward and not backward.
This reflects in large measure the desire of young people in this country, and I emphasize young people, to learn either English or French as the case may be. The young people of Canada are demonstrating their support for a bilingual country every day in classrooms, through exchanges and through travel. It is this reality we must consider when we hear noisy demonstrations, as we have recently, of intolerance toward official language minorities in Canada. Look at the pictures on the TV screens. Those are old faces that show intolerance. The young people are not showing the level of intolerance. They have a different view of Canada and that is the view that was reflected in the reports of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism.
There has been a lot of talk, and more than talk, of distinct societies in Canada. The Meech Lake constitutional accord recognizes Quebec as a distinct society which is a position supported by my party, the NDP. However, in my view, the accord also creates another nine distinct societies. It seems to me that one of the reasons we have been bogged down recently in constitutional change is that that view of Canada is in conflict with the view of Andre Laurendeau and Davidson Dunton in the report of the B and B Commission 25 years ago. In all this discussion of distinct societies, we must not forget that one of the major elements of Canada's distinctiveness as a country is that it is bilingual. We all, I believe, can agree to that. Compare this to California where there are moves to make it a unilingual state. We have a different view in Canada. We have a view that Canada is bilingual and that is a result, by and
Routine Proceedings
large, of the royal commission 25 years ago. We are not a melting pot.
For us to remain distinctive, we must continue to pursue national policies that, to the extent possible, give Canadians the chance to live, to learn and to work in either official language. Those of us who support the vision of the Bilingual and Biculturalism Commission must speak out-all of us-more forcefully than ever before for tolerance in this country.
I want to conclude with two quotes, one from Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the other from his rival, Henri Bourassa. Laurier said in 1897, on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee: "If there is anything to which I have devoted my political life, it is to try to promote unity, harmony and amity between the diverse elements of this country. My friends can desert me. They can remove their confidence from me. They can withdraw the trust they have placed in my hands, but never shall I deviate from that line of policy".
Laurier's concept of Canada was to have a tolerant society but not necessarily enforced by law.
I want to end by quoting from the real father of the B and B Commission and the bilingualism nature of Canada, Quebec nationalist Henri Bourassa. I quote from page 78 of Tom Berger's book 'Fragile Freedoms. He was a former judge from British Columbia who wrote:
Bourassa went on to describe his vision of a bilingual, bicultural Canada, an Anglo-French nation from sea to sea.
We deserve better than to be considered like the savages of the old reservations and to be told: "Remain in Quebec, continue to stagnate in ignorance, you are at home there; but elsewhere you must become English."
No, we have the right to be French in language; we have the right to be Catholics in faith; we have the right to be free by the constitution-(and) to enjoy these rights throughout the whole expanse of Confederation.
In our own day, Pierre Trudeau has adopted Bourassa's idea of a bilingual and bicultural Canada. Trudeau is Bourassa's heir, not Laurier's. The Official Languages Act of 1969 enlarged the availability of services in English and French in federal departments and institutions, pursuant to Section 133 of the BNA Act.
A further expansion of the scope of those two official languages is now taking place under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I will conclude with the guarantee of English and French education throughout the country

February 1, 1990
Routine Proceedings
and with the view that young people, not the older generation, who want to see a bilingual country.
That is the real legacy that Laurendeau and that royal commission has left us. That is our view of Canada.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!



INTERPARLIAMENTARY DELEGATION


Mr. Bob Hicks (Scarborough East):: Madam Speaker, I have faithfully tried for nearly a week to table this report.
It gives me great pleasure, pursuant to Standing Order 34, to present to the House the eleventh report, in both official languages, of the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE


Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present the report of the Legislative Committee on Bill C-38, an Act to amend the Federal Court Act, the Crown Liability Act, the Supreme Court Act and other Acts in consequence thereof, with amendments.
The report was prepared by the Chairman of the Committee, Mr. MacLellan, and I present it on his behalf.



STRIKING COMMITTEE-THIRTY-FIRST REPORT

Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present the thirty-first report of the Striking Committee.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



CANADIAN RACE RELATIONS FOUNDATION


Gérard (Gerry) Weiner: for leave to introduce Bill C-63 intituled "An Act to establish the Canadian Race Relations Foundation".


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Shall the Hon. Minister have leave to introduce the bill?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



BANK ACT


Mr. John R. Rodriguez (Nickel Belt) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-282, an act to amend the Bank Act (fair banking practices).


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Shall the hon. member have leave to introduce the bill?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


John R. Rodriguez: Madam Speaker, this bill establishes certain basic banking services for which there will be no charges whatsoever. It also retroactively puts a freeze on bank service charges which have been in effect. Third, it establishes an independent ombudsperson for those Canadians who have complaints about bank service charges.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the first time and ordered to be printed.
February 1, 1990

Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, as you can see I have a pile of petitions, but I will present them all at once for the sake of brevity.
These petitioners are concerned about the government's decision to proceed with the goods and services tax. They have a long list of concerns as to why they are against it.
These petitioners are from Kamloops, Westsyde, Brocklehurst, Avola, Westmount, Batchelor Hills, Bar-riere, Dallas, Valleyview, Blue River, Paul Lake, Bam-hartvale, Knutsford, Chase, Clearwater, Blackpool, Birch Island, Kamloops Indian Reserve, Wells Gray Park, Chu Chua, Skwaam Bay, Black Pines, Harpers Ranch, Rayleigh, Niskonlith Lake, Louis Creek, Logan Lake, Little Fort, Heffley Creek, Darfield, McLure, Monte Creek, East Barriere Lake, Vinsulla, Trapp Lake, Tranquille Plateau, Monte Lake, Pinantan Lake, Pritchard, Savona, Vavenby, Westwold, Deadman's Creek, Lac Le Jeune and Cherry Creek.
They are asking that the Parliament of Canada do whatever it can to stop the government from proceeding with the goods and services tax.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Madam Speaker, I have a petition sent to me by people from Alberta who strongly object to this imposition of an additional sales tax on goods and services.
They claim that the Conservative federal government wants to impose on Canadians a new hidden tax which will touch about everything they buy, that the imposition of the new general goods and services tax will cause serious and unfair hardship to low and middle income Canadians and, further, that the imposition of this tax will create an onerous burden on small business.
They claim that this is an unprecedented tax grab from the pockets of Canadians. They will be hit not only with higher taxes but higher inflation, higher interest rates and higher unemployment.
The petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to reject the proposed goods and services tax proposal of this government.
Routine Proceedings


Hon. Roger C. Simmons (Burin-St. George's):: Madam Speaker, I have pleasure in rising to present a petition, pursuant to the appropriate Standing Order, from some people in Windsor, Ontario.
The prayer of their petition is one that will come as no surprise. They want this nefarious, objectionable, unreasonable goods and services tax done away with before it ever sees the light of day. I have great pleasure in supporting the prayer of their petition.
They are appealing to people on the government side to start listening to the real people out there in Windsor and other parts of this country.


John R. Rodriguez: Madam Speaker, I have the privilege, responsibility and the honour to present and totally support a petition signed by hundreds of residents of Val Therese, Val Caron, Blezard Valley, Capreol, Coniston, Sudbury, Garson, Lively, Naughton, Walton, Noelville, and St. Charles.
They point out that the proposed goods and services tax is a regressive tax, that it does not respect the ability of the taxpayer to pay, and that in fact the government has not addressed the present unfair tax system which permits wealthy Canadians and corporations to pay little or no federal tax at all.
Therefore they ask Parliament to call upon this government to cease the proposal which will shift the tax burden on to the backs of ordinary Canadians through this regressive consumption tax.


Mrs. Pauline Browes (Scarborough Centre):: Madam Speaker, the first item of business in the House of Commons for the 1990s brought members of the House of Commons together in a united way in voting for the preservation of the Rouge Valley, 10,000 acres in metro Toronto, as a park.
I would like to present today names of petitioners who join with members of the House of Commons. These people are from Scarborough, Mississauga, Richmond Hill, North York, Markham and Toronto. They too wish to send a very strong message to Premier Peterson of Ontario to have the Rouge Valley saved as a park.
This is a very unique and precious natural area. It is in the national interest to preserve this wildlife and wilderness area.

February 1, 1990
Routine Proceedings
The interim report of the royal commission on the future of the Toronto waterfront recommended the Rouge Valley be saved, as did the mayor of Scarborough and thousands of people in the Rouge Valley system organization.
I am very pleased to present this petition which calls on the Government of Ontario to have the Rouge Valley established as a park.


Mr. Dan Heap (Trinity-Spadina):: Madam Speaker, it is my honour and duty, in accordance with Standing Order 36, to present a petition from residents of Winnipeg, Dugal, Quebec, St. Foy, North Vancouver, Canoe Bay, Roblin, Saskatchewan, Saskatoon East, Thunder Bay and Barrie who are concerned that the government ought not to cut the VIA Rail service which is so important, particularly to the smaller cities and towns of Canada.
Therefore, they ask the Parliament of Canada to maintain VIA Rail with Canada's present national network, to upgrade VIA Rail with new equipment, and to have a passenger train act giving VIA Rail a firm, legislative mandate.
Finally they ask Parliament for revised costing arrangements with the railway companies.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Madam Speaker, it is my privilege to present a petition from the residents of North York, Toronto, Thunder Bay, Middleton, Nova Scotia, Dollard, Quebec and Downsview who are concerned for the government's present action against the people of Natashquan in Labrador and eastern Quebec.
They ask that the Parliament join with the Assembly of First Nations, the Innu of Labrador and other aboriginal peoples of northern Canada in opposing the use of their lands for NATO-NORAD attack training.
They demand that the Canadian government end all NATO-NORAD low level flight training in Canada and oppose establishment of NATO operations in Canada, including the proposed tactical fighter and weapons training centre at Goose Bay, Labrador, and that Parliament should redirect Canada's NATO-NORAD funding toward enabling Canada's aboriginal peoples to regain
control of their lands and their livelihood and promoting sustainable development for all Canadians.


M. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: Madam Speaker, I too have a petition signed by Ottawa area residents who are against this regressive tax on goods and services which will spell the end of thousands of jobs in the small and medium-sized business sector and which will boost inflation.
Your petitioners are urging us Liberals to resort to every means at our disposal to defeat this measure so that the tax will never be implemented.


Mr. Joe Fontana (London East):: Madam Speaker, for over 10 days this government has denied the people of Canada the democratic right to have their petitions presented to their representatives in the House of Commons.
It is indeed a pleasure and privilege this morning to rise and present, on behalf of hundreds of people from southwestern Ontario, a petition asking this government to rescind its proposed bill respecting the goods and services tax which will be devastating not only to small business but to seniors, to students and to people in lower and middle income groups.
They want this government to listen to their petitions, to listen to their voices and to scrap this tax once and for all, at any rate.


Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour and duty, under Standing Order 36, to present to this House a petition certified correct by the clerk of petitions. It contains the signatures of Canadians who reside not just in my riding of Hamilton West but, as members of the ridings of Hamilton-Wentworth and Burlington might take note, Canadians who reside in the communities of Dundas, Greensville and in particular Burlington.
They strongly oppose this new goods and services tax, which they say is an unprecedented tax grab from the pockets of Canadians and will hit them not only with higher taxes but higher inflation, higher interest rates and higher unemployment.
They humbly pray and call upon Parliament to reject the proposed goods and services tax.
February 1, 1990


Mr. Felix Holtmann (Portage-Interlake):: Madam Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to present this petition from about 24 people from Portage La Prairie, Manitoba who wish Parliament to enact legislation that protects human life from conception to natural death.


Mr. Joe McGuire (Egmont):: Madam Speaker, I rise, pursuant Standing Order No. 36, to present a petition opposing the government's goods and services tax.
It is the wish and prayer of the petitioners that this government cease in its efforts to foist the goods and services tax on an unwilling and unaccepting public.


Mr. Russell MacLellan (Cape Breton-The Sydneys):: Madam Speaker, I would like to present a petition from a great many Canadians who are very concerned about the goods and services tax and wish to express to the government their disagreement in what the government is doing.
They say that it is just going to be a tax grab and certainly will not be in the interest of Canadians. In fact it will be very damaging to the people of Canada.


Mr. Ron Fisher (Saskatoon -Dundurn):: Madam Speaker, it is my privilege to rise today, pursuant to Standing Order No. 36, to present a petition on behalf of the people who are decrying what the government has done to VIA Rail, including the $500 million cut that is resulting in decreased service and the certainty that the equipment needed to maintain VIA would not be purchased.
They are asking the Government of Canada to force VIA Rail to come up with a firm business plan to assure the continuance of VIA Rail as a world method of transportation.


Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Madam Speaker, it is my duty and pleasure today, pursuant to Standing Order No. 36, to present to this House a properly certified petition from Canadians who are absolutely opposed to this government's proposed goods and service tax at 9 per cent, 7 per cent, 1 per cent or whatever.
Routine Proceedings
The signatories on this particular petition are part of the 72 per cent of Canadians who are saying no, loud and clear, to any type of GST.


Mr. Ross Harvey (Edmonton East):: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise, under Standing Order 36, to present roughly another 300 signatures of Canadians, mostly resident in Edmonton but resident in other parts of Canada as well. They are in addition to the thousands I have already presented and are calling on Parliament to reject the current proposal for a goods and services tax and to cause the government to cease with the proposal which will shift the tax burden on to ordinary Canadians through a regressive consumption tax instead of through real tax reform.
I am going to keep presenting these signatures as they come in until one of two things happen: either the government scraps the GST or the Canadian people scrap the government.
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands -
Canso): Madam Speaker, it is my privilege, pursuant to Standing Order 36, to present a petition on behalf of my colleague, the member for Windsor West, from Canadians in the Windsor area who also are opposed to the goods and services tax.
They think that it is a regressive tax, an unfair tax, an inflationary tax and a tax which they want this government to withdraw. They humbly pray and call upon Parliament to achieve that end.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present petitions signed by a host of electors in the riding of Windsor West who object to the goods and services tax and call upon Parliament to reject this unfair and regressive tax.


Mr. Bob Kilger (Stormont-Dundas):: Madam Speaker, this petition has been certified correct under the provisions of Standing Order 36. On behalf of my fellow citizens of the Windsor and London regions I am pleased to convey their message. They urge Parliament to reject the goods and services tax because they believe it is totally unfair.

February 1, 1990
Routine Proceedings


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Pauline Browes: Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 152, 174, 176, 181, 182, 187, 188, 189, 202, 203, 204, and 207.


Mr. Gardiner: Since the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding with the United States regarding the Softwood Lumber Thrift (M.O.U.), has the government received any communiques, messages, formal advisories or letters regarding the M.O.U. from any level of government, commission or private organization in the United States and, if so (a) by department, what number were received (b) in each case, on what dates?


Hon. John Carnell Crosbie (Minister for International Trade):: Since the Softwood Lumber Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed on December 30, 1986, the Government of Canada has received 64 communiques, messages, formal advisories or letters from the U.S. government, commissions and private organizations in the U.S. regarding the MOU.
External Affairs and International Trade Canada 49;
Canadian Embassy, Washington 7;
Revenue Canada 8;
Forestry Canada 0.
A list of the dates of the correspondence received by the departments and agencies is attached.
Softwood Lumber Memorandum of Understanding Correspondence from the United States
External Affairs and International Trade Canada
1987	1988	1989January 8	March 22	February	22January 8	May 4	March 3January 22	May 27	March 17February 13	June 7	March 27February 20	June 9	April 25February 24	June 22	June 20March 6	June 23	July 21March 16	July 14	July 21March 16	August 22	August 4March 18	October 5	September 22April 28	November 14	October 16May 1	November 22	November 2May 4	November 23	December 1July 31	December 21	December 1October 16	December 29	December 11December 15	December 21 December 22 December 22Canadian Embassy-	-Washington	August 21	March 1	April 10December 15	April 7 July 7	April 21Revenue Canada	January 11	January 4	August 2
May 1
September 8 November 2 November 2 December 1


Mr. Young (Gloucester): 1. Does the government have plans to encourage "wage and price moderation" in the public sector and, if so (a) what are they (b) do they include plans to prevent future collective agreements in the federal public sector from containing clauses which fully or partially index wages and benefits to increases in the (i) consumer price index (ii) any

other index, either before or after implementation of the proposed goods and services tax and, if so, in what way?
2. What number of the government's employees are presently covered by collective agreements which index wages and benefits according to (a) increases in the consumer price index (b) increases in the consumer price index less three per cent (c) no index at all (d) other indices?


Hon. Robert R. de Cotret (President of the Treasury Board):: 1. The government has no plans to make changes to the way in which the wages or benefits have been established.
2. There are no provisions in any collective agreement which applies to federal public servants which establish wages or benefits according to an index.


Mr. Young (Gloucester): Has the government budgeted or spent any money to advertise and explain the proposed goods and services tax to Canadians and, if so (a) for the present and each future fiscal year, what amount (b) what amount has already been spent on (i) the operation of the government's proposed goods and services tax information telephone lines (ii) proposed goods and services tax pamphlets (iii) advertisements in all forms of media (iv) the hiring of new personnel with the full or partial responsibility for the said advertising or explaining or communications work concerning the proposed tax (v) leasing any office space and equipment for these activities (vi) any other expense?


Hon. Michael Holcombe Wilson (Minister of Finance):: (a)	For the fiscal years 1989-90 and 1990-91, Treasury Board has approved an operating budget of $7,661 million for the Goods and Services Tax Working Group: $5,138 million for 1989-90 and $2,523 million for 1990-91. These figures include expenditures for salaries, travel, supplies, materials and so on.
In addition, a budget of $4.5 million has been established for a public information campaign about the GST for the fiscal year 1989-90.
(b)	To date:
(i)	The sum of $476,200 has been spent on the operation of a toll free information line service.
(ii)	The amount spent for pamphlets explaining the proposed Goods and Services Tax is $204,600.
(iii)	Out of the 1989-90 public information budget of $4.5 million, a total of $2,916,600 has been spent for advertisements explaining the proposed GST to Canadians.
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(iv)	The amount spent on the hiring of new personnel to be responsible for communications work concerning the proposed tax is $479,900.
(v)	The sum of $26,400 has been spent on the leasing of office space and equipment.
(vi)	Other expenses for travel, postage, freight, furniture, and other supplies total $248,100.


Mr. Gauthier: Were blended interest, general wage increase and inflation rate assumptions used for 1989-90 and each of the next twenty fiscal years to produce the estimate contained in Section 7 of Volume I of the 1988-89 Public Accounts "that the actuarial present value of unfunded supplementary retirement benefits, including provision for future indexation, in respect of benefits earned or in pay as at March 31, 1989, could be between $850 million and $5 billion," and if so, respectively, what were they?


Robert René de Cotret: Insofar as the Office of the Comptroller General is concerned:
Streamed economic assumptions were used in preparing the estimated obligations for all pensions plans as at March 31, 1989. The economic assumptions start with current salary and interest rates, and gradually blend into long term economic assumptions. In both scenarios, the assumed rate of return on the account balances reflects a 1 per cent margin over the medium term to allow for possible adverse economic situations. The specific assumptions are as follows:
$6 billion	$850 million
Unrecorded Liability	Unrecorded Liability
Calendar Year	Assumed Fund Yields	CPI Increase	General Salary Increase	Assumed Fund Yields	CPI Increase	General Salary Increase%	%	%	%	%	%1989	10.1	4.8	4.4	10.1	4.8	4.41990	10.0	4.4	3.3	10.0	4.4	3.31991	10.0	5.7	3.2	10.0	5.7	3.21992	9.9	3.0	3.0	9.9	3.0	3.01993	9.8	2.7	3.0	9.8	2.7	3.01994	9.6	2.5	3.0	9.6	2.5	3.01995	9.4	3.0	4.0	9.4	2.3	2.81996	9.1	3.5	5.0	9.1	2.1	2.61997	8.9	3.5	5.0	8.8	2.0	2.51998	8.6	3.5	5.0	8.5	2.0	2.51999	8.4	3.5	5.0	8.2	2.0	2.52000	8.1	3.5	5.0	7.9	2.0	2.52001	7.8	3.5	5.0	7.5	2.0	2.52002	7.4	3.5	5.0	7.0	2.0	2.5
February 1, 1990
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$6 billion	$850 million
Unrecorded Liability	Unrecorded Liability
Calendar Year	Assumed Fund Yields	CPI Increase	General Salary Increase	Assumed Fund Yields	CPI Increase	General Salary Increase2003	7.1	3.5	5.0	6.6	2.0	2.52004	6.9	3.5	5.0	6.3	2.0	2.52005	6.7	3.5	5.0	6.0	2.0	2.52006	6.4	3.5	5.0	5.7	2.0	2.52007	6.3	3.5	5.0	5.5	2.0	2.52008	6.1	3.5	5.0	5.2	2.0	2.52009	6.0	3.5	5.0	4.9	2.0	2.52010	6.0	3.5	5.0	4.5	2.0	2.5
In both scenarios, the assumptions remain constant after 2010.


Mr. Boudria: Have any grants to the Canada Council, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council or the International Development Research Centre been spent on (a) a study of the social value of lawn ornaments (b) a study of latrines in Guatemala (c) the translation of the book If it weren't for sex I'd have to get a job (d) a study of the attitudes of Nova Scotians towards animals (e) the publication of a banana newsletter from the French Riviera (f) a study of the fool as a transitional figure in the historical development of western civilization and, if so (i) what was the total amount spent on (ii) what was the purpose of each project?


Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: I am
informed as follows: (a) Yes-The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
i)	$12,000 (1987-1988).
ii)	This project in the sociology of culture examines how people in a society, including an ethnically, linguistically, gender-and class-divided society, experience and express their culture. The researcher focuses on a cultural symbol, the mass-produced lawn ornament, to find out how the choice and arrangement of such ornaments in a yard communicates something about how they see themselves, how they view animals (often depicted in ornaments), or about a nostalgia for the past (outmoded work tools are popular as decoration). Study of the sociology of culture is one aspect of understanding our society. To understand society as a complex whole, we need to examine the human motivations, aspirations, values, and cultural differences of individual segments of
society. This is particularly true in Canada because of its multicultural makeup.
b)	Yes-The International Development Research Centre.
i)	$215,300 over a 36 month period.
ii)	The International Development Research Centre is supporting a project titled DAFF Latrine in Guatemala. The Centro de Estudios Mesoamericano Sobre Technologia Apropriada is undertaking this project ot evaluate and provide advice on technical aspects and social acceptance of dry alkaline family fertilizer (DAFF) latrines.
The safe disposal of human waste is major public health issue in developing countries. Five million infants and children die of diarrhoeal disease annually. This project investigates the factors responsible for program failures, designs a low-cost composting latrine, assesses its technical performance and social acceptability, and is presently developing technical support materials to institutions promoting the latrine in Guatemala and throughout Central America.
c)	Yes-The Canada Council.
i)	$10,320.
ii)	For the translation from English to French of a book titled "If It Weren't for Sex, I'd have to Get a Job". This book is the memoirs of Arnold Manweiler, a veteran Canadian private investigator whose career spanned over 30 years; it recounts, often humorously, some of the cases Mr. Manweiler investigated and gives readers an inside look at the day-to-day life of a Canadian "private eye". The quality of the translation supported by the Council was such that the Governor General's Literary Awards jury named it as one of the three finalists for the 1988 translation award. The grant was awarded through the Council's Translation Program, which encourages greater exchanges between Canada's English-language and French-language communities through grants for translation of works by Canadian authors from one official language to the other. Assistance is also available for the translation of Canadian books from a language other than English or French into one of the official languages.
d)	Yes-The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
i) $21,664 (1986-1987).
February 1, 1990

ii) Animals play an essential role in human affairs: as farm animals, laboratory subjects, game, and as pets. With wild animals we share a decreasing amount of open space as the human population grows. Important public decisions about our use of and co-existence with animals require a sound understanding of how people regard animals and such issues as animal rights. This survey of Nova Scotians by a trained wildlife biologist will allow researchers to make generalizations about the attitudes of all Canadians. (The micro/macro approach in research is effective and is commonly used by scholars and pollsters.) The results will be of use to policy planners, legislators and wildlife managers in developing programs in such areas as animal rights, wildlife preservation, commercial and recreational hunting and fishing, and environmental protection.
e)	Yes-The International Development Research Centre.
i)	$669,000 over a 36 month period.
ii)	IDRC is supporting a project titled Banana and Plantain Information Network. This project aims at setting up an information system to support the establishment and operations of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain (INIBAP), wich has its headquarters in Montpellier, France.
Banana and plantain are a major export crop for many developing countries. The estimated world market worth is more than $10 billion (US) a year. In addition, bananas are the staple food for millions of poor people. In many Third World countries a nutritious variety of "green" banana is boiled in soups and stews. It has the consistency and flavour of a hard potato or yam and is used more like our staple potato or rice than the fruit we are familiar with in North America.
In tropical climates, crops are constantly susceptible to insects and disease. Central America is currently suffering from a disease called black sigatoka which treatens the region's best species. The fungus is spreading quickly and relentlessly and there is fear it will spread to South America, the Caribbean and eventually, even Africa. Unfortunately, small rural farmers cannot afford the pesticides and fertilizers used by the large plantation
Routine Proceedings
owners. Many small producers are being forced to leave their lend.
Scientists in many parts of the world are doing genetic research to develop new species or superior bananas that are resistant to insects, disease yet produce good, nutritious fruit.
Canada, through IDRC, is playing a leading role as executing agency and along with a consortium of international donors is supporting a coordinated program of research on bananas and plantains. The international network, known as INIBAP (International Network for the Improvement of Bananas and Plantains), received 12 per cent of its funding from IDRC. Other contributors include Australia, Belgium, France, the U.S.A. and the E.E.C.
The government of France has provided facilities at the International Cooperation Centre of Agricultural Research for Development (CIRAD), in Montpellier, which is a centre of excellence on tropical fruits. The IDRC grant to INIBAP is to help establish a research network with the purpose of linking scientists in the developing countries for mutual exchange on research results. The mechanisms include a question and answer service on production and disease problems, creation of a data base and exchange of infromation in and between the developing countries themselves.
f)	Yes-The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
i)	$24,540 (1986-1987).
ii)	Study of Western civilization necessitates an examination of the figure of the fool. The fool, who is known through literature and culture, questions the way people think or act. His target may be the general populace or a person with great power to help or hurt those around him. The fool's distinguishing characteristic, which gives him the possibility of being so influential, is the ambiguity about his statements-is he really foolish, or is he wise? This study concentrates on how the fool expresses the anxieties of a population during periods of social change. Because civilization is always in the process of changing, and because the 20th century has brought us even more rapid and tumultuous change, studying the fool who questions our ways remains very relevant.

February 1, 1990
Routine Proceedings


Mr. Comuzzi: Since April 26, 1989, has the Royal Canadian Mounted Police conducted an investigation into the leak of Budget documents and, if so, what has been the total cost in (a) person-hours (b) dollars?


Hon. Pierre Blais (Solicitor General of Canada and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: Yes. The primary investigation was conducted in Ottawa, however, inquiries were also undertaken in the various provinces where stock exchanges are located. In addition to the involvement of operational units, support was also provided by specialized units such as surveillance and identification services.
(a)	The reporting system of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) does not allow a definitive account of the total number of hours expended on this investigation.
(b)	As a rule, other than for planned operations, the RCMP does not cost its investigations. The actual cost could only be ascertained by looking at each individual's involvement, determining his/her salary classification and the hours expended. In view of the number of individuals involved at different locations, costing would be difficult to accomplish and would not provide an accurate amount.


Mr. Milliken: Did the government enter into a contract for the distribution of brochures on the Goods and Services Thx and, if so (a) with whom (b) what was the (i) date (ii) money value (iii) term of the contract (c) what was the responsibility of the contractor to pick up remaining brochures (d) was the contractor paid an additional sum to collect the brochures after October 10, 1989?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: (a) The Department of Finance entered into a contract with Infocentre Network on August 15,1989 to distribute brochures on the proposed Goods and Services Tax.
(b) (i) The duration of the contract was from August 15, 1989 to October 9, 1989. At that time, the distributor offered to extend the contract for a two week period-a regular practice in the distribution industiy.
(ii) The amount of the contract was $146,749.00.
(iii) see (i)
(c)	The contractor was instructed to remove all existing brochures from its information centres beginning October 12, 1989.
(d)	The contractor was not paid an additional sum to collect the brochures after October 10, 1989.


Mr. Blaikie: Does Atomic Energy of Canada Limited have a marketing plan which would include the sale of CANDU or Slowpoke reactors to Guatemala, Brazil or Colombia and, if so, have any formal or informal negotiations taken place between government officials and officials from these countries on the sale of such equipment?


Hon. Arthur Jacob Epp (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Atomic Energy of Canada Limited reports as follows:
AECL has no plan to sell a CANDU or a SLOWPOKE to Guatemala, Brazil or Colombia. However, in the past, AECL has had discussions with Colombian nuclear authorities regarding the possible sale of a MAPLE X research reactor.


Mr. Manley: Since January 1, 1989, have verification audits been carried out regarding certificates of origin, in accordance with the Free Trade Agreement, by (a) Canadian officials in the United States (b) United States officials in Canada and, if so, in each case, what number?


Hon. Otto John Jelinek (Minister of National Revenue):: Since implementation of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on January 1, 1989, verification visits to the other country respecting certificates of origin in accordance with the FTA have been carried out by Customs officials of both countries. During the 1989 calendar year, five such visits to business firms located in the United States were carried out by Canadian Customs officials, while two verification audits of firms located in Canada were carried out by U.S. Customs officials. As of January 5, 1990, each country's Customs administration has notified the other of an impending verification audit.


Ms. Hunter: Between December 13 and 16, 1989, did the Department of External Affairs hold discussions in Ottawa with representatives of the ARENA Government of El Salvador and, if so (a) at what level
February 1, 1990

(b) what was the focus of discussion (c) on whose initiative was the meeting held?


Right Hon. Charles Joseph Clark (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: The Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of El Salvador Ricardo Valdivieso, had two meetings with the Department of External Affairs on December 14, 1989. The first meeting was with Mr. Chretien, Acting Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs. This was followed by a meeting between Mr. Valdivieso, his delegation of business and labour leaders and the Director General, Director and officer responsible for El Salvador in the Caribbean and Central America Bureau. These meetings were at the request of the government of El Salvador. The discussions centred on the situation in El Salvador, with particular reference to the recent hostilities. The human rights situation was discussed in some detail, as well as the prospects for negotiations and peace.


Ms. Hunter: Has the government undertaken an Environmental Impact Assessment on the effect of low-level flights brought about by deregulation of the airline industry on the bald eagle habitat of the Gulf Islands between Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia and, if not, does the government plan such a study in the near future?


Hon. Lucien Bouchard (Minister of the Environment):: Environment Canada surveys in 1987 indicate that Bald Eagle populations in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia have increased approximately 30 per cent over an 11-year period. Populations in the adjacent San Juan Islands, Washington, have also increased.
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Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of Transport):: The
Management of the Canadian National Railways advises as follows:
(a)	Cause of the accident has been identified as human error.
(b)	$7,601.81.
(c)	and (d) The vehicle was retrieved by employees using CN equipment for one day, that was available at the site, including: a five-ton truck; a trailer; and an all terrain caterpillar-type tractor (muskeg). No overtime was required.
(e)	The President of CN is informed promptly about all significant operating irregularities on the railway. Incidents of the kind addressed by this question are handled at the regional level. In view of the media interest in this particular incident, the President of CN was informed about it on August 4, 1989.


Pauline Browes: Madam Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The questions as enumerated by the parliamentary secretary have been answered. Shall the remaining questions stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I wish to inform the House that because of the ministerial statement Government Orders will be extended by 18 minutes beginning at one o'clock.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS

[Stage Direction]
Although no direct studies have been conducted, casual field observations indicate that normal, routine commercial airline activity does not visibly harrass nesting or feeding eagles. No further studies of eagle populations in the Gulf Islands are planned.

Mr. Saint-Julien: On or about August 2, 1989, was a CN by-rail vehicle involved in a landslide at mileage point 106.2 of the Franquet-Chapais subdivision in Abitibi and, if so (a) what were the causes of the accident (b) what was the amount of damage to the vehicle (c) what was the cost of recovering the vehicle and of all expenses related to the accident (d) what was the cost of overtime paid to CN employees (e) when was the President of Canadian National informed of the circumstances of the accident?


ALLOTTED DAY, S. O. 81-NATIONAL PARK SYSTEM
Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena) moved:: That, in the opinion of this House, the government should move to complete the national park system (land and marine) by the year 2000 and should implement the recommendation of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Report) that Canada protect at least 12 per cent of land and marine zones.
He said: Madam Speaker, this is the first time in Canadian history that this House has taken the opportunity to debate and vote on the completion of our national parks system and also vote on the international scientific consensus obtained by the World Commission on Envi-

February 1, 1990
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ronment and Development, more commonly known as the Brundtland Commission, to set aside 12 per cent of land and marine zones with full protection.
Our national park system is only one-half complete after more than a century of considerations in the provinces and territories. Only 21 of the 39 natural bio-regions of Canada have any kind of representation and only two of the 29 natural marine bio-regions have any form of protection at all.
Most members of this House know that the first national park in Canada was created in Banff in 1885, over a century ago. Members are likely aware of where the 12 per cent proposal for land set aside has come from. I will spend some time this morning dealing specifically with why we have to get to at least that minimum figure of 12 per cent.
We must focus on system preservation and linkage of areas for the protection of species when we are talking about the 12 per cent. Areas must be linked whether we are talking about the flight paths of the whooping crane or other migratory birds or many land mammals. Many plant species require that kind of system linkage for their proper protection.
When we speak in this Chamber today and when we take the recorded vote on Monday, we are speaking for all of those in Canada who have no voice. I speak not only of some of the very young in this country and some of those who are unborn, but we must also realize that we speak for those many species that have no voice and yet suffer drastic harm and in many cases extinction at the hands of our species.
We need to keep in mind in this debate that 40,000 children will die today of malnutrition and disease. As the Brundtland Commission so accurately and carefully pointed out, one of the most fundamental building stones that we have to set aside on this planet are these set aside zones of 12 per cent of land and marine zones for a better understanding of this remarkable living planet.
Some 20,000 species will disappear this year, most of them in tropical areas. Some 80 per cent of our bio-diversity on this planet is in tropical areas. As I will point out in my remarks this morning a considerable number
of species have become extinct, at our hands, in this country even during this century.
Between 1885 and 1929 Canada established 15 national parks at a rate of one park every three years. Sadly, in the next 20 years, only four parks were created. We have been in a bit of a stall in the years ever since; only 34 national parks have been created since 1885.
In 1989 the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, more commonly known as the IUCN, identified only 3,500 protected areas around the world in 125 countries. I will also spend some time on why we need to complete the national parks system and to set aside the 12 per cent.
Canadians are light years ahead of the majority view which I believe is still held in this Chamber, although perhaps the vote on Monday will be a resonating, positive yes. In the most recent complete Gallup poll, the 1987 poll, extensive questions were put to the Canadian public, and 96 per cent of Canadians support strong government action to protect wilderness. In 1987 Canadians spent $5.1 billion on wildlife related activities, and existing national parks contributed $900 million to the Gross National Product and supported 34,000 person-years of employment.
It is important to note where Canada's national parks are. Let me refer to the rather excellent book called Endangered Spaces. In British Columbia there are 6,300 square kilometres of national parks, and those are six parks. In Alberta there are 54,000 square kilometres with 4.8 parks. The reason it is a broken number is that part of Wood Buffalo National Park lies in the Northwest Territories. There is also a transboundary park with British Columbia.
In Saskatchewan there are 4,700 square kilometres which make up two national parks, and in Manitoba there are almost 3,000 square kilometres with only one national park.
In Ontario there are 2,000 square kilometres with five small national parks, and in Quebec there are only 935 square kilometres with three national parks. In New Brunswick there are 445 square kilometres with two national parks. There are 1,300 square kilometres in Nova Scotia with two national parks, and in Prince
*

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February 1, 1990

Edward Island there are only 26 square kilometres and one national park.
In Newfoundland there are 2,300 square kilometres and two national parks. In Yukon there are 32,000 square kilometres with two national parks. The Northwest Territories has 3.2 national parks with 74,000 square kilometres, again that is Wood Buffalo included. In all Canada there are only 182,000 square kilometres in our 34 national parks. If we look at the add ons in provincial and territorial parks, there are 1,160 of those parks comprising 138,000 square kilometres.
Interestingly enough, in all of our great country, in terms of wilderness areas, there are only 43 comprising 8,680 square kilometres. We still have no national sanctuaries for grizzly bears, for cougars, or for a lot of the large carnivores. We have no natural sanctuary set aside for many of raptors. As many members of this House would know, some of our most remarkable species, such as some of our falcons, have become extinct at the hands of DDT and other perhaps unintended efforts of mankind.
In terms of areas of provinces and territories, the total in Canada is 9,922,000 square kilometres so the total area protected is 6.3 per cent of our country. But if you look at the total area of reserves with no logging, mining, or hunting it drops precipitously to 254,000 square kilometers, only 2.6 per cent of Canada.
That is really what this debate is all about. As I said earlier, the international scientific consensus is that we are still going to continue to lose thousands, if not tens of thousands, of species per year until we take this kind of collective planetary action.
The debate here today has to be about what has been recommended by scientists to government, that if we do not take the opportunity to complete our national parks system by the year 2000 we will have foregone the opportunity.
And on the issue of 12 per cent, there is increasing and growing pressure coming from mining companies, logging companies and from other resource extraction interests to try to make sure that there are no further parks; national, provincial, territorial, or ecological re-
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serves, yet 96 per cent of Canadians want serious action taken. As you will find from my remarks this morning, many of these national parks and ecological systems can be obtained at almost no cost. It requires government leadership and some durability of will. It does not require a lot of money.
Let me quote for a moment from Our Common Future, the famous Brundtland report, the World Commission on Environmental Development. From chapter 6 called "Species and Ecosystems: Resources for Development" we find:
1.	Conservation of living natural resources-plants, animals and micro-organisms and the non-living elements of the environment on which they depend -is crucial for development. Today, the conservation of wild living resources is on the agenda of governments; nearly 4 per cent of Earth's land area is managed explicitly to conserve species and ecosystems, and all but a small handful of countries have national parks. The challenge facing nations today is no longer deciding whether conservation is a good idea, but rather how it can be implemented in the national interest and within the means available in each country.
2.	Species and their genetic materials promise to play an expanding role in development, and a powerful economic rationale is emerging to bolster the ethical, aesthetic, and scientific cases for preserving them. The genetic variability and germplasm material of species make contributions to agriculture, medicine, and industry worth many billions of dollars per year.
3.	Yet scientists have intensively investigated only one in every 100 of Earth's plant species, and a far smaller proportion of animal species. If nations can ensure the survival of species, the world can look forward to new and improved foods, new drugs and medicines, and new raw materials for industry. This-the scope for species to make a fast-growing contribution to human welfare in myriad forms-is a major justification for expanded efforts to safeguard Earth's millions of species.
4.	Equallly important are the vital life processes carried out by nature, including stabilization of climate, protection of watersheds and soil, preservation of nurseries and breeding grounds, and so on. Conserving these processes cannot be divorced from conserving the individual species within natural ecosystems. Managing species and ecosystems together is clearly the most rational way to approach the problem. Numerous examples of workable solutions to local problems are available.
As I am often reminded, some of the poorest countries on the globe are light years ahead of Canada. We have 2.6 per cent of our land protected seriously as wilderness. Tanzania, which is a poor country, has 17 per cent of its land set aside and, of course, a great deal of the pressure that has been exerted for that has come from communities such as Canada.

February 1, 1990
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There is a new approach called "anticipate and prevent". The historical approach of establishing national parks that are somehow isolated from the greater society has been overtaken by a new approach to conservation of species and ecosystems that can be characterized as "anticipate and prevent". This involves adding a new dimension to the now traditional and yet viable and necessary step of protected areas. Development patterns must be altered to make them more compatible with the preservation of the extremely valuable biological diversity of the planet. Altering economic and land use patterns seems to be the best long-term approach to ensuring the survival of wild species and their ecosystems.
Third World governments can stem the destruction of tropical forests and other reservoirs of biological diversity while achieving economic goals. They can conserve valuable species and habitat while reducing their economic and fiscal burdens. Reforming forest revenue systems and concession terms could raise billions of dollars of additional revenue, promote more efficient long-term forest resource use and curtail deforestation. Governments could save themselves enormous expense and revenue loss, promote more sustainable land uses and slow down the destruction of tropical forests by eliminating incentives for livestock ranching.
We know all of that, Madam Speaker. Many of us in this country are fighting hard to try to protect the tropical rain forests which are disappearing at the rate of one acre every second. As David Suzuki said to our caucus last weekend, if a creature had come from outer space and was stomping its way across Brazil and the tropical rain forests of this globe, humanity as a whole would unite to try to stop that monster from destroying our globe at a rate of one acre per second in the areas that have the greatest degree of biological diversity that there has ever been on the planet in those small and localized zones. So much is to be done there, and there are recommendations here about what to do.
But let us look at our own temperate rain forests of British Columbia, 80 per cent of which are gone. This is the old growth on the coast of British Columbia. There must be more national parks. Part of those areas, part of the 12 per cent solution of land and marine areas, has to
include temperate rain forests which have the same carbon fixing capacity as do tropical rain forests. A third of the forests of Alberta are about to be put before the saws of international power brokers.
We already know that in this country we could save 80 million trees a year by simply having the same recycling requirements as the state of California. That is a third of the cut of the province of British Columbia. That is all of the cut of the province of Ontario. The same people who are being laid off at pulp mills now could be working in recycling plants. Yet no one wants to bring in a regulation mandating, absolutely requiring, recycling in this country so that we can protect lands and put them into the kinds of systems that I am talking about in terms of the 12 per cent solution and national parks.
We were fortunate in that the world commission had one of Canada's greatest minds working with it, Jim McNeil, who was the secretary general. In the concluding remarks in the section, "The Need for Action", where he talks about the number of conservation organizations and members around the world, he says the following:
All of these indicate that the public puts a value on nature that is beyond the normal economic imperatives.
In response to this popular concern, governments have been moving to help species threatened within their borders, primarily through the establishment of additional protected areas. Today, the worldwide network of protected areas totals more than 4 million square kilometres, roughly equivalent to the size of most of the countries of Western Europe combined, or twice the size of Indonesia. In terms of continental coverage, protected areas in Europe (outside the USSR) amounted by 1985 to 3.9 per cent of territory; in the USSR to 2.5 per cent; in North America to 8.1 per cent; in South America to 6.1 per cent; in Africa to 6.5 per cent; and in Asia (outside the USSR) and Australia to 4.3 per cent each.
Since 1970, the networks have expanded in extent by more than 80 per cent, around two-thirds of which are in the Third World. But a great deal more remains to be done. A consensus of professional opinion suggests that the total expanse of protected areas needs to be at least tripled if it is to constitute a representative sample of earth's ecosystems.
There is still time to save species and their ecosystems. It is an indispensable prerequisite for sustainable development. Our failure to do so will not be forgiven by future generations.
There can be no more telling phrase than that. Let me repeat it:
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There is still time to save species and their ecosystems. It is an indispensable prerequisite for sustainable development. Our failure to do so will not be forgiven by future generations.
There is time to act and the costs are not great. I believe very recently was the anniversary of the minister taking on the most important portfolio in the country. Shortly after he assumed his portfolio some recommendations were given to him by the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, the Canadian Nature Federation, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the Canadian Wildlife Federation, Ducks Unlimited, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Wildlife Habitat Canada and World Wildlife Fund Canada. They are brief but I think they are very important to have on the record.
They said:
Despite substantial contributions by many government agencies over the past 100 years, the national network of protected areas is half finished at best. Canada has dedicated 6.3 per cent of the landscape to parks, wildlife areas and other nature reserves but only one-third of this is closed to resource exploitation. This is well short of the 12 per cent recommended by the Brundtland Commission. Only 21 of 39 terrestrial natural regions are represented by national parks and 3 of 29 marine natural regions are represented by marine national parks. Of 136 "Special Areas" identified in 1982 by Environment Canada as deserving protection in Canada's north, only 19 have been acted on. Only eight provinces or territories have park system plans to guide their contribution to the national network, and only four of these jurisdictions are more than halfway toward achieving their own park system goals. Canada is in danger of being identified as the "emperor with no clothes" by the international conservation community, especially given our opportunity as one of the last nations on earth with significant remaining wilderness.
I must interject at this point to remind members of the House, as David Suzuki reminded us a few days ago, that if we do not take action in this decade, in the year 2020 there will be no significant wilderness area left on the face of the earth. That is within the lifetimes of most of us sitting in this Chamber.
Canadians overwhelmingly support government leadership to get the job done. For example, a 1987 Gallup poll revealed that 96 per cent support government expenditures for wilderness protection and a 1981 Statistics Canada survey showed that Canadians spent $4.2 billion on wildlife related activities during 1980 alone.
And that has continued to skyrocket upwards. Nine out of ten Canadians make some use of wilderness during each year for spiritual and other purposes.
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This broad support also manifests itself through focused public concern about specific sites such as South Moresby, the Saguenay Fjord and Toronto's Rouge River Valley.
By the reckoning of experts worldwide, the opportunity to complete the national network in Canada will all but vanish by the year 2000 as development and land use commitments overtake our last frontiers. This concern was emphasized by the Task Force on National Park Establishment in its 1987 report to the federal Environment Minister entitled Parks 2000.
Establishing protected areas need not be an expensive undertaking, especially if the goal is to reserve lands and waters primarily on Crown land over the next 10 years, leaving any "development" of services for the future. The important thing is to state clearly the conservation destiny of such lands and waters without further delay.
I know that I am running out of time, Madam Speaker. There are many more things I would like to touch on. Let me just conclude by saying how important I, personally, and I think all Canadians, take the vote that will occur at six o'clock on Monday. The completion of the national park system is possible. It is an objective that we must move toward. Setting aside 12 per cent of Canada requires the leadership of the federal government with the provinces, with the territories, with first nations, with conservation groups, with all Canadians of good will who want to see the ecosystems and species of this part of our planet fully protected for future generations.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Questions or comments. The Hon. Member for Scarborough Centre.


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There were discussions held earlier and I believe there is unanimous agreement in the House to hear the minister who has kindly stayed to participate in this important debate. He has another unbreakable commitment. If we could, perhaps sometime later at the convenience of the Chair have my ten-minute question period that would allow the minister to speak.


Mr. Caccia:: Madam Speaker, we on this side of the House have agreed to that arrangement.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: If there is unanimous consent we will come back to the period for questions and comments later on.


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Lucien Bouchard: Madam Speaker, first of all I would like to sincerely thank my colleagues who have agreed to make this

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arrangement to allow me to participate in this very important debate.
Let me say that I agree in substance and merit with most of what has been said by the member. There are a few nuances to add and I would like to do so later on during my short speech. I would like to reserve most of my time for a question and answer period.
When I became the environment minister I was, of course, very much impressed by the importance of the burden of the portfolio. The more I studied the files and programs the more I could see that this is certainly one of the most important political challenges in the years ahead for all of us. There are days when there are negative feelings because it is very frustrating to be a minister, especially of the environment. We are squeezed between the high expectations of people and the government restraint placed on expenditures during a very difficult period.
One of the areas of the department which always gives me a lift is the parks system. The national parks, Parks Canada, are beautiful and Parks Canada is such a success that it is always encouraging for me to work in my department. When I experience a downfall I ask for Parks Canada people to come into my office and work on their programs and projects. Parks Canada is one of the country's greatest successes and is recognized all over the world. People should realize that our parks are not only beautiful for us but is an object of envy all over the world.

Madam Speaker, Parks Canada is an agency from which we ought to draw inspiration when establishing our country's future environmental policy. During the few years since the Brundtland Report was made public a good many people have spoken with deep conviction- and they have my full support-of the new concept of sustainable development which was coined to describe our common effort to reconcile environmental and economic priorities. Sustainable development is indeed a major concept. Madam Speaker, let me tell you that primarily through Parks Canada programs our country has now been fractising sustainable development for nearly a century, without realizing it, as did Mr. Jourdain when he wrote prose. One hundred years ago, we Canadians came to the conclusion that natural expanses must be preserved, not only because they are truly magnificient but also because there is a cause-and-effect
relation between our future action in that field and the environmental benefits we stand to reap. For example, a number of years ago in Canada we had to come to grips with the ever present ecological problem created by economic development and tourism development and environmental protection. We Canadians, particularly those who work for Parks Canada, have known for quite some time that we must keep unsoiled the extraordinary wealth which we have chosen as sites for public parks and which will be our legagy to future generations. Yet at the same time the present generation should be able to enjoy all this. So how do we proceed? Because today's generation is ever more concerned over economic issues, development, jobs, as well as ready and practically unlimited access to our parks, we are faced with a conflict which must be resolved. Our policy in Canada is to go ahead and develop our parks, in so far as this will create jobs and attract tourists, of course, but never to the detriment of future generations.
So we did practice sustainable development even before these words gained widespread currency, and we can indeed stand proud of this achievement.
That being said, after these self-congratulatory and indeed quite legitimate comments, we must realize, as the hon. member pointed out, that it is absolutely vital to determine what remains to be done, and a great deal remains to be done! The regions, for instance. Canada has 39 different bio-regions. This is a measure of the tremendously diverse resources of this country, with 39 different types of bio-regions within its borders. We should be able to establish parks representing each of these bio-regions.
Today, after 100 years and some of the most successful efforts the world has known in this area, only 21 bio-regions are represented in the 24 national parks that exist today, but we have 39 bio-regions. This means that we must create 18 new parks. We now have to decide whether we have the political will and the budgetary commitment to complete the network.
Why the rush? I agree with the previous speaker that we must set a date. We cannot put off doing so indefinitely. The situation is changing so rapidly that we will never be able to reach our goal of 39 bio-regions if we let development gradually encroach on areas that are as yet unprotected. We can defend regions that are already protected, parks that already exist, but we can do very little to defend areas where we could and should create
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parks and which today are very attractive to economic development.
What we must do is freeze the resources and the natural wealth of Canadian parks and make a commitment, as a government and as a country, to complete our network of parks by the year 2000. I have made this commitment, and I can inform the House that this is what the government is now working on. In my own department it is a top priority. In cabinet, it is among our three most important issues. I am referring to an environmental action plan for the next five years that will lead the way to implementing sustainable development throughout the country. One of the major components of this action plan will be to implement our commitment to complete the network by the year 2000.
Before answering any questions, I would like to say a few words about an additional commitment we have been asked to make, and that is to set aside, specifically, formally and mathematically, 12 per cent of Canada's territory for parks. This figure is taken from the Brund-tland report.
I would like to point out to the House, Madam Speaker, that it is a general proposal that is in no way particularly intended for Canada and the proposal in the Brundtland Report makes no distinction between very small countries which are completely developed and where the very scarce green spaces which are in danger must be preserved immediately and a big country like ours where we have wide open spaces.
So is the 12 per cent rule binding on Canada? No, Madam Speaker! I do not know what the exact percentage is. For example, I do not know what standards my colleague is using when he says that 12 per cent of Canada's green spaces must be saved. Why 12 per cent? Why not 14 per cent? Why not 8 per cent? Why not 9 per cent? We have 6 per cent now. Six per cent of Canada is already more than many countries in the whole world.
Must we do more? I think so. I think that we should increase the percentage. But the important thing for me is first and foremost to create parks where they need to be created, to complete the system in the 39 ecological regions of the country. What percentage will this give us? We will find out as we go along. But I do not think it
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would be wise to set a figure like 12 per cent-that would lack the required flexibility.
Protecting the environment is not a bureaucratic operation. Completing Canada's parks system is not an accounting procedure. I think we have to be careful there! As far as I am concerned, of course, I cannot vote for the motion. It is a problem of form, which I regret, but we live in a parliamentary system. We perceive this motion as requiring a no-confidence vote. I will not vote no confidence in the government. But the basic principles contained in the motion seem perfectly acceptable to me, with the exception of the 12 per cent criterion. I think this percentage is quite debatable.

Mr. Fulton Madam Speaker, the minister seems to have confused part of my remarks. I think he understands very well where the figure 12 per cent came from. I quoted from the Brundtland Commission report. The members of the commission solicited material from biologists and others from around the world as they were travelling on the minimum level required to maintain at least a reasonable degree of biodiversity on earth. Twelve per cent was an internationally arrived upon consensus figure, that being the minimum. If we can get beyond that that is great.
I, for one, do not understand the rationale behind the minister's remarks about Canada having 6 per cent set aside in all of the possible park protection statuses that there are in this country. As I pointed out, the study done by the World Wildlife Fund concluded that only 2.6 per cent of Canada is actually really protected. Mining, logging and all kinds of other activities are allowed in that other 4 per cent, which is principally made up of provincial parks and others.
I have two questions. At the Toronto Conference it was decided to reduce carbon dioxide by 20 per cent by the year 2005. That was arrived at by consensus. In the Brundtland report 12 per cent has been arrived at by consensus. Canada is somewhere between 2 per cent and 6 per cent now and we need to get to 12 per cent or more.
Does the minister not think that it requires the leadership of the federal government to get there? We can see that for some provinces it is no longer possible. In P.E.I., New Brunswick and Nova Scotia it is very

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difficult to set aside the kinds of areas that are required for biodiversity. That is possible in many other areas of the country, but it requires federal leadership.
Some provinces have done nothing even on park planning for two decades. They are basically shell departments. There is nothing going on there. I plead with the minister to agree that we do need to target what the international scientific community suggests, the 12 per cent or more; not less, because we are a big country. More because we, in fact, can achieve it.
Can the minister confirm to the House that there will be targets and timetables for the completion of the national parks system by the year 2000? I think Canadians are of enormous conviction and support for all members of this House to get on with this. We have to fight the pressures of the developers to set aside these lands, no doubt about it. But that is our responsibility, not just to the present generation. We are the last generation that has the choice and I think the choice has to be to opt to complete the national parks system and to go to the 12 per cent.
I thought under parliamentary reform that a vote such as this was not a challenge to the government, that that was the whole purpose by which James McGrath conducted the hearings that he did. It is not a confidence vote. I am confident that between now and Monday night Canadians, by the tens of thousands, will be phoning members of parliament of all all parties trying to persuade them to vote in favour of this motion, the first vote that has been taken in the history of this country, on 12 per cent and completion of the national parks system. Could the minister respond on the 12 per cent, on the targets and timetables?
I must say I am dismally saddened by the minister's earlier remarks that he considers this to be a matter of confidence and that even though he supports the motion he could not himself vote for it, because if the minister votes against it, I am confident many government members will follow his lead and vote against something that is in the national interest.


Lucien Bouchard: Madam Speaker, I would like to say a few words on the first question about the 12 per cent target. I will not commit myself and this government to the 12 per cent target right now because the main commitment is related to the completion of the
network in terms of the 18 additional parks we have to create in Canada. This must be done before the year 2000.
The answer to the second question is, yes, there is a commitment from this government to complete the network by the year 2000. This means the creation of 18 additional new parks all over Canada. There is an additional commitment, while not so specific in terms of the number of parks, to the creation of a network of marine parks. We have many, many natural marine regions to protect in Canada and we are now in the process of conducting very intensive negotiations with the Quebec government to create a park at the mouth of the Saguenay River.
It is a very difficult negotiation because it must be completed outside the general pattern of the creation of parks because, as you know, the Quebec government is refusing to transfer ownership of the land to the federal government. We have to create new concepts with respect to the law so we will have what we need, which is a marine park. There will be many other parks before the year 2000.
I do not think that we can make a commitment to create all the parks required to represent the totality of the ecological regions of Canada as far as marine parks are concerned, because we do not know exactly how many regions there will be. It is a huge task to complete the networks of terrestrial parks, to create 18 new terrestrial parks, and at the same time, to create an unknown number of marine parks, when we do not know exactly the kind of pattern we would use.
Yes, there is a commitment for the completion of the parks system by the year 2000 with the establishment of 18 additional parks. We will make a clear and precise commitment in the action plan for the next five years. I intend to propose to my colleagues that we make a commitment for five new parks during the next five years.
Five parks are under immediate consideration. The east arm of Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories is now being actively negotiated within the Dene-Metis land claim settlement process. Also, we have Northern Banks Island in the Northwest Territories. Consultations with the community of Sachs Harbour and the govern-
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ment of the Northwest Territories have recently been reactivated.
There is also Blue Nose Lake in the Northwest Territories. Consultations with the community of Paula-tuk, the Wildlife Management Advisory Committee and the government of the Northwest Territories began in 1989. There is also North Baffin Island in the Northwest Territories. Consultations have been under way for the past couple of years, focusing primarily on the local communities of Pond Inlet and Arctic Bay.
The Manitoba Churchill Park working group, comprised of federal and provincial officials and local people, has been set up to examine the feasibility of establishing a park in this area. This is where most of the polar bears live and breed in Canada. I have been in touch with my counterparts about this. Those are the five parks.
I do not commit myself that these will be the first five in the actual plan, but they are certainly under consideration. Those are northern parks, and we have to do a lot more in the north. The north and the Arctic are really threatened. They are very vulnerable. We must step in and create parks there as soon as we can. I would like to stress the priority of this program.
Just as a resume, on the 12 per cent of parks, I do not want to be misunderstood. There is no precise or formal commitment by the government to the figure of 12 per cent. Of course, the current percentage of 6 per cent will be increased when we create 18 new national parks and more marine parks, but to what percentage, I do not know exactly. We will see that as the program is developed.


Charles L. Caccia: Madam Speaker, I would like to offer the minister an opportunity to explain to Canadians why he can endorse and support the Brundtland report in its totality and then refrain from supporting and endorsing one of its clear recommendations which is the subject of the debate today. How can he do that?


Lucien Bouchard: The Bruntland report covers many issues and a high number of recommendations, as we all know. It has changed the environmental landscape of the world. This report is very important. I do not want to minimize or underestimate the importance of the Brundtland report.
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But this debate is about the same issues, as our colleague has just mentioned, as the proposal made by the Toronto conference on climate change a few years ago when they proposed a reduction of 20 per cent in the CO2 emissions by the year 2000. No country has, until today, made a commitment on this. I know that we will all have to make commitments when the International Climate Board files its own report later this year, probably in the fall.
It could be that some countries will make a commitment for higher reductions. Some will make a commitment for fewer reductions. For example, the French government will be in a position to make a very strong commitment for a very high reduction of CO2 emissions. Why? Because in France there is a specific situation. They rely heavily on nuclear energy and nuclear energy does not issue CO2 gas. In Canada, the United States, China and many other countries, it will be difficult to make a reduction of more than 20 per cent. So there are distinct and specific situations prevailing in different countries.
The Brundtland Commission was an international commission and they proposed and set a target for the whole world. We will tiy to do our best. In Canada in terms of absolute figures and absolute dimensions of land devoted to parks we stand as one of the best in the world, because 6 per cent of Canada is a lot more than 50 per cent of Switzerland. There is quite a difference. These things must be approached with flexibility and without losing contact with reality.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The period for question and comment has now expired.
Before we proceed on debate with the hon. member for Davenport, I think we should revert to the question and comment period which was to follow the speech of the hon. member for Skeena.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Skeena in a very good presentation made a reference to the 39 bioregions in Canada which have been identified as needing to be protected. I am wondering whether he can relate that to the decision two days ago by Toronto City Council to adopt the year 2000 as the target year for reducing emissions of carbon by 20 per cent. The Toronto City Council committed itself, according to the report, to achieving a 20 per cent reduction of the 1990 levels of carbon gas emissions into the city's atmosphere by the year 2000.

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It also agreed in principle to put $22 million from the proceeds of the sale of its Langstaff farm property into an atmospheric fund for initiatives such as reforestation in Ontario and outside Canada. My question to the hon. member is, do his bioregions, by any chance, include areas in southern Ontario which would be appropriate for this reforestation project proposed by Toronto City Council?


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, I have followed with great interest what has been going on in the city of Toronto through its city council. I think their ideas of reduction of pollutants, which requires some co-operation with the federal government in terms of, for example, emission regulations on motor vehicles. They have gone far beyond that in terms of parking and additional licensing fees and so on, some ideas which have been adopted out of cities that suffer really serious atmospheric problems, such as the city of Los Angeles or Mexico City.
The idea that I particularly like in their proposal in terms of the recycling of carbon emissions is that of making use of the sale of, I believe, a piece of property and taking that $20 million plus and using it for the replanting of trees, not only within the city of Toronto and its environs, but also in other areas of the world.
We in this House all know that there are areas in Central America and other tropical areas where there are sites where much more significant growth rates are possible, and in terms of carbon fixing, that is one of the reasons why tropical forests are so important. Their capacity to rapidly recycle and to fix carbon dioxide through the carbon cycle is much greater than in our northern forests and even some of our temperate forests which only have a few months of the year to grow.
Let me just touch one more moment on the replanting part of that cycle which I think is very important. The Government of Australia announced earlier this week a plan to plant a billion trees between now and the year 2000. This is really a remarkably important proposal because of the significant areas of Australia that have been deforested and the capacity of that number of trees to fix carbon.
There are 39 bioregions in the country in the area known as the Canadian Shield which is perhaps an area that Toronto city council could look at. There are 11 of
Canada's 39 bioregions and I think the Canadian Forest Service might be best to advise us which would be best. They are the Tbndra Hills, the Central Tundra Region, the Northwestern Boreal Uplands, the Central Boreal Uplands, the West Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Precambrian Region, the Central Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Precambrian Region and the East Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Precambrian Region, the Laurentian Boreal Highlands, the East Coast Boreal Region, the Boreal Lake Plateau, the Whale River Region, the Northern Labrador Mountains, the Ungava Tbndra Plateau, and the Northern Davis Region as well as the St. Lawrence Lowlands. I think that gives the members some idea of the vast geography, the vast size of these 39 Canadian bioregions and, of course, there are indigenous species of conifers and hardwoods that might be best planted in each of those locales.
Certainly the kind of leadership being shown by the city of Toronto is something that perhaps should be ruminated on somewhat more hi this chamber. I find it quite disturbing to have heard the arguments of the Minister of the Environment as to why he is suggesting the completion of the national park system and the setting aside of the designation of 12 per cent of Canada's lands for full protection is somehow a challenge or a non-confidence kind of a motion to the government. I stand to be corrected by the Table and by the Speaker, but it is very important that we know before the end of today that my understanding of votable opposition days is that they are not to be considered as non-confidence motions in the government, that members are free to vote of their own conscience and so they should.
Perhaps, Madam Speaker, you could remark on this point sometime during the day because I think Canadians would like to know whether or not that is the case. I know there are many Conservative members, some of whom are here in the House who have already spoken to me and told me that they would like to support this motion.


Ron Fisher: Madam Speaker, I would like to commend the member for Skeena for leading off the debate today and doing it in one of the grandest styles that could possibly be attributed to a friend of the environment.
I would like to commend him also for pointing out that the Ministry of the Environment is perhaps one of the most important ministries in the government. Another
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very important ministry in the government is that of the Prime Minister and it seems to me, and I would like to ask the member if he could refresh the House's memory on something the Prime Minister had said in relation to the Brundtland report. My faint recollection is that he had commended it very highly and had pointed out to the House that Madam Brundtland herself had commended him for his support of it. Could you expand on that?


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, I think it is an important point. It was raised by the member for Davenport with the minister a little bit earlier, but in relation to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister, on behalf of Canada, did endorse the recommendations of the Brundtland report, the World Commission on Environment and Development, at the United Nations and received a resounding round of applause that rang around the world for doing so.


An hon. member:: And received an award for it.


James Ross Fulton: That is right. He received an award and has spoken of the glowing terms in which he has been described by former Prime Minister Brundtland to the international community as a real leader on the issue of land and species preservation. I must say I find it quite shocking. The Brundtland report itself describes the requirement for the designation of 12 per cent of the land in marine zones of planet Earth as the absolute fundamental foundation of sustainable development and we have a government that is constantly espousing sustainable development.
If the actual locus building block is the setting aside of 12 per cent and the Prime Minister has endorsed it before the only formal international body that we know, which is the United Nations, and been given accolades from around the world for endorsing those recommendations, we cannot suddenly find the government ejecting the core recommendation of the royal commission and saying, "Well, we like eveiything else but the core recommendation", I think it would be hypocrisy of the very highest order.
I would hope that members on the government side think very carefully about the importance of the signal that is given to Canadians and the corporate community in this country and to the world, that we are dead serious about completing our national park system and not just the five north of 60 between now and the year 2000 but
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that we are going to complete in all the 18 bioregions and that might mean far more than 18 national parks.


Pauline Browes: Madam Speaker, just to remind the member, without throwing too many accolades to the city of Toronto council, I would just like to remind the member that the metropolitan Toronto council recently voted to put garbage in the most sensitive area in metro Toronto and probably in Ontario, that is the Rouge Valley. There are other levels of government that have a lot of work to do on this.
First, I would like to compliment him on his interest in this and also the minister who responded in such enthusiastic terms of his commitment to the park system. Just a few years ago there was a task force report called Our Parks, Vision for the 21st Century, headed by Doctor Theberge. In those recommendations he talked about some new concepts of preserving significant pieces of property, the geography of Canada in terms of partnership.
I would like to ask the member to comment on this new concept, whether it is urban ecological reserves or whether it is Canadian heritage parks, but a new partnership, that we may have between levels of government dealing with preserving special pieces of property.


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, I thank the member for the question because it is a very important one. There are individuals, groups, municipalities, and people all over this country and all over the world who are looking for the most proactive and most effective way of setting aside areas that are of enormous importance, either to them locally or to the world. I think there are all kinds of opportunities for partnerships. But let me start with what I would describe as the top end of the question or of the issue, the setting aside the 12 per cent of land and marine areas. The federal governments of every state around the world must take on the leadership in that role. They may not be the one who set aside the majority of that 12 per cent, but they must be the leaders because they have the majority of jurisdiction and tools in most areas around the world.
In terms of completing the national parks system, I am not one who believes in the philosophy that was espoused by Madam Blais-Grenier while she was here, which is that private Canadian citizens should be responsible for going out and fund-raising and for buying the land to create our national park system. I think that was a terribly unfortunate proposal. In terms of small ecolog-

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ical proposals, local and municipal, I think there are opportunities for individuals, clubs and groups to participate in buying the lands and resources-


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member but his time has expired.


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Madam Speaker, we on this side of the House want to congratulate the member for Skeena for his motion. We support it, of course, from this side of the House. At the same time, I cannot help expressing a sense of being stunned, shocked or dismayed by the weakness of the minister's speech today and his reluctance to give a commitment to a motion which is put forward in an honest manner which asks for a commitment by the government to move toward the year 2000 in order to complete the national park system, land and marine, and to achieve or to protect at least 12 per cent of land and the marine zones.
I ask myself whether the Minister of the Environment is ill-advised or is he weak or is he insecure that he cannot get up in the House today and give a more positive speech to Canadians on this matter.
What is troubling him? Is he troubled perhaps by the fact that by the year 2000 he might achieve 11.2 per cent and, therefore, be reproached for that by parliamentarians and politicians at that time? Or is he troubled by the fact that he might overshoot the target and deliver 13 per cent and he would then be embarrassed by the applause? I do not know. I am puzzled by this kind of weak attitude. Or are we facing a classic example of leadership by rhetoric, in which case the member for Skeena has placed before us a fantastic motion that is putting to the test the political will of this weak, tired, unimaginative government. Maybe that is what is happening today in this House to the embarrassment of the Tory backbenchers who themselves could not believe their ears half an hour ago when the minister was taking such a weak political stance on such a fundamental matter.
The minister and his government have endorsed the Brundtland report. The Prime Minister spoke in support of it at the United Nations in September 1988. The Prime Minister went to the Hague in March 1989 and he has again indicated the support and the endorsement of
this government, the Canadian government, which includes everybody, for the Brundtland report which contains this specific proposal. Now, when it comes to the first crunch, so to speak, to the test of truth, to the litmus test perhaps, here we find the minister getting up and saying, "Well, you know, we don't want to be bound by percentages. We somehow would like to be flexible. Therefore we have to vote against this motion because it could be interpreted as a motion of non-confidence in this government." What nonsense!
The member for Skeena made it quite clear in his interventions that this is not a motion of non-confidence. The member for Skeena has made it quite clear that he is referring, in his motion, to the Brundtland report and here, all of a sudden, we have a withdrawal. I ask, where is the commitment on the government benches to the Brundtland report when it comes to cutting down CO2 pollution? What will they say then? "Oh well, you know it is something that we cannot precisely tackle for you. It is too complex a matter." Sure it is because if they fail on a matter that is fairly straightforward as the question of achieving a certain percentage to be set aside for national parks, then we can expect attitudes like that too.
This is a political debacle for the Conservative Party to come into the House today and make a statement of such a nature which indicates that really, they support with words, with rhetoric, with declarations, particularly abroad. They are very good at that, in making grand statements. When it comes to the heart of the matter at home, then they withdraw with some kind of weak excuses. What a sham!
I am glad to say on behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada that in the last election we did have a plank- and it was plank number one-a statement to the effect that we will expand, if elected to power, Canada's national park system. I am glad also to say that we did indicate directly in reply to a questionnaire that was sent to the Liberal Party of Canada during the election that we would complete this system by the year 2000. So we made, during the election, a general statement which was in the pamphlets which all of us distributed door-to-door and then a very specific statement as well by way of a communication to the Canadian Parks and Wilderness
February 1, 1990

Society that we would do it by the year 2000 as recommended by the Brundtland report.
We were also the only party to recognize that, in order to achieve that goal, money must be regularly set aside. Therefore we pledged to establish a special fund, a capital development fund, which would receive an annual allocation through budgetary means and would ensure that there would be adequate funds established in order to set aside these new parks.
I am beginning to worry as to whether the Minister of the Environment today cannot give a positive answer because he is'afraid of what the Minister of Finance is presently doing to budgets of this nature. He is a foreboder of bad news. Somehow the capacity to perform, on the part of the Minister of the Environment, is undermined by the budget-cutting exercise that is taking place under the direction of his colleague, the Minister of Finance. Well perhaps he should be honest and tell the House that this is why he cannot give this kind of commitment, having endorsed the Brundtland report.
We should ask ourselves why there is a rush and why, by the year 2000, because this is the heart of the motion put forward by the member for Skeena. At first sight it is hard to believe that Canada could be in danger of losing its wilderness and its wilderness heritage. It is such a heritage which is closely linked to the extent of national parks and wilderness areas that we are able to put aside. Also, we have enormous stretches of land which are unoccupied.
Appearances are deceiving. We have lost the original Atlantic hardwood forest. On the west coast only a handful of unlogged watersheds still remain. Farmlands have replaced all but .2 per cent of Manitoba's tall grass prairie land. We will never be able to have a wilderness park area, in the Canadian sense, in southern Ontario because it is too late. There is not enough wilderness left. And in Quebec, the giant James Bay II hydroelectric development project will drown a very large area forever unless this project is stopped.
Last September the World Wildlife Fund and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society came up with an interesting idea. They launched in Toronto-and some of my colleagues here today were present that day-an ambitious 10-year program under the title Endangered Spaces. This campaign which is now under way puts
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forward five good reasons why we must act in a hurry by the year 2000, as the motion tells us.
First, according to the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife-and I repeat and stress the linkage between wildlife and national parks-in Canada there are 183 species that we may lose unless action is taken to protect them and their habitats. To put this in other words, to save endangered species we must save endangered spaces.
Second, if within the next 10 years, we do not make the decision of reserving natural areas, we will have lost the opportunity to do so because there is urban movement, expansion and sprawling. There are other encroaching interests on such lands. This point was made very strongly by the task force on parks establishment and it is a point that is fully accepted and endorsed by conservationists across the country.
Third, Canada is one of the few countries in the world where the opportunity of protecting wilderness, as we know it, still exists and that is why we are the envy of the world and the admiration of tourists. Anyone who speaks about Canada sooner or later will be speaking about our wildlife. We have all experienced that when we have gone abroad.
Fourth, there are already serious conflicts and even fights over what is left. For example, you have the Carmanah Valley in British Columbia, and Temagami here in Ontario. These flare-ups are telling us that so far there is no clear understanding of the significance of what we have lost and the impact in the event that additional areas may be lost in future. This is why we, who come from Metro Toronto, are having quite an intense experience in correlation with the saving of the Rouge Valley. Though it may be limited in wilderness value, nevertheless it is the last opportunity next door to a metropolitan centre. This is why we would like to see it saved by the provincial government.
There is a long list. We know that South Moresby is in the process of being saved, thanks in good part to the efforts of your colleague, the Speaker. We know there is a constant battle about the Stein Valley whose future is still uncertain. There is definitely to be added to that list the Khutzeymateen in British Columbia and the Stikine Valley. There is Manning Park in the Cascades area, also in British Columbia. There is Robson Bight, the Akami-na and Kishinena area, Nimpkish Island and the Tahsish-

February 1, 1990
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Kwois area, the watershed to which I have referred. Then, the Haida nation's claim on Du Guusd, which is an interesting site, Brooks Peninsula, the mid-coast, particularly Calvert, Hunter Island and Mussel and Kynoch Inlets, the Tatshenshini-Alsek area to which one might add the Kakwa scenic area in the Rocky Mountains, and finally, as far as we know at least, the Redfem Lake which is described as the Lake Louise of the north. So, we are talking of significant sites that are in this missing package which should be put aside and which we should working on in order to complete our parks system.
There is also the pressure of the marine parks system about which the present government has been strangely silent. It was a system that was launched as a concept in the early 1980s and since the Conservative Party took power we have not heard much about that potential and particular component in the totality of the plan.
The World Commission on Environment and Development recommends, of course, that all nations should try to protect at least 12 per cent of their lands and waters for ecosystem conservation. It is interesting to learn from the report entitled "Our Common Future" that some nations have already done so. For instance, Costa Rica which has already protected over 20 per cent.
At this point Canada ranks twentieth in the world in terms of protected lands as a percentage of our total land base. The total area protected by national and provincial parks in Canada adds up to about 6.3 per cent. If we subtract areas where logging, mining and hunting are permitted, that 6.3 per cent shrinks to 2.6 percent of our total land base. As you can see, we still have a long way to go.
We know Temagami and the Rouge Valley are endangered areas in Ontario. So we have some work to do, not only in British Columbia but in other parts of Canada. In the case of Temagami, it is important to know that the red and white pine forests of northeastern Ontario are anywhere between 500 to 700 years old. These pine ecosystems are some of the last of their kind in North America still in a natural state, so far undisturbed by logging and other human activities. Their cultural and emotional value is immense and unmeasurable. Dr.
Peter Quinby of Sir Wilfrid Laurier University writes, and I quote:
These old-growth pine ecosystems should be preserved for scientific study. As well, they should be protected because they maintain water quality and soil stability, they retain large amounts of nutrients, they provide valuable genetic material and they provide important wildlife habitat.
Dr. Tom Hutchison of the University of Toronto writes, and I quote:
The global loss of old-growth forest ranks with the damage from global warming and acid rain. The long-term health of the global forest must be first addressed in our own backyard.
Time is passing and I must watch the clock in coming to a conclusion. If this government is sincere in its commitment to the Brundtland Report, the government has an opportunity to show its interest in the Temagami area. If it is involved in the Rouge River Valley, as it is setting a precedent at the present time, why not show its willingness and its propensity in the Temagami area as well? We certainly urge the Minister of State for Forestry and the Minister of the Environment to find the courage to intervene in Temagami as they did in the Rouge Valley.
We are talking about the value that the public places on nature. It is unquantifiable and yet it is very high. Not only that, but it is mounting. Evidently the lifestyle that we have adopted over decades in urban centres makes the excitement that we feel in natural parks and wilderness sites much greater than it was 50 or 100 years ago. I cannot explain this but it is a visible fact that we come across politically every day.
The public places a high value on nature. This is why we were hoping to hear a positive statement on the part of the minister on this motion. This is why we were so disappointed, stunned and shocked by the minister's reply.
It is fair to say that in the history of national parks the Conservative government has been quite good at finishing Liberal initiatives but poor at initiating new sites. The previous minister completed several national park negotiations, but he left the cupboard bare for his successor. In other words, he finished the Liberal agenda. Now we want to see progress that is under the auspices and initiated by the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. We have not seen any progress on Mingan National Park. Actually, it has been put aside. We have not heard of any progress on the Saguenay Marine Park. We have not heard anything on the general concept of marine

February 1, 1990

parks in general for a long time. What is happening? We do not know. I can tell you in conclusion that the speech today by the minister is troubling us as to the future and what Canada is in for by the year 2000 in not finding it possible to endorse such a recommendation in the Brundtland Report.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Madam Speaker, I commend the hon. member for Davenport on his speech. I know his commitment over many years to questions on the environment even before he became a Member of Parliament is very firm and sincere. I would ask him if he would comment to us on the apparent willingness of the Liberal government of Ontario to allow the invasion and destruction of the old-growth forest in Temagami.


Charles L. Caccia: Madam Speaker, I deplore the behaviour of the Ontario government in Temagami as much as the hon. member for Trinity-Spadina. I wish they would find the necessary political courage to do what needs to be done and to set into motion the social shock absorbers that are needed for the workers affected in that area in order to carry them over. These decisions are difficult. Therefore, they require a convergence of environmental and social measures. It is the lack of social measures and this false dichotomy that it is either the environment or the economy that troubles many of us. We know that if we do not resolve politically and psychologically that false dichotomy-and in the long-term we do not see all these forces coming together-we will be left with no original wilderness and natural areas because there will always be pressure for their elimination and always for some reason. A classic example of that is what has happened to the forests in the Mediterranean area. All historical accounts and records tell us that the Mediterranean watershed was rich with forests. They began to be harvested intensively by the Venetians around the 14th century or 15th century. Those forests have not regrown.
I am sure at that time the Venetians made a very good case to exploit those forests for economic reasons. I suppose the same was the case for North Africa. The records indicate that the entire Mediterranean Basin, north and south of those waters, was richly endowed with forests. They are gone and I am sure that the same
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arguments are being raised these days for the cutting of Temagami and other areas that are in dispute. We must come around on that issue if we want to leave something for future generations to enjoy.


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, I appreciate the courage of the member who has just spoken on the many issues on which we have fought together. I am still shell-shocked at the remarks of the minister this morning. I thought there was a lot more spirit in the man as a man and I thought there was a lot more energy in the man as a minister than has come through this morning.
The majority of bioregions that are still without representation are south of sixty. They are in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario, and particularly in Quebec. Quebec is the most under-represented bioregion in North America. The majority of the cabinet are from Quebec but they do not seem to understand, let alone the maritimes. It is interesting to be talking about the vulnerability of the Arctic.
I know that some time today the Speaker will remind all members of the House that this is not a non-confidence votable motion and I would like the member to touch on that. I would like the member to touch on the shock that I share with him on what I believe is the first member of this Conservative government to publicly reject the recommendations of the Brundtland report. It happens to be the Minister of Environment. It is truly shocking and I would like to quote from a very excellent article "The Upshot" to get the member to tie those three things together and respond:
- in a 1987 national Gallup poll, over 95 per cent of Canadians voiced their approval of government spending to preserve our wilderness areas. This high level of support extended across all regions of Canada, and among all socio-eonomic groups. Not surprisingly, 96 per cent of those who had visited a national or provincial park within the past two or three years favoured such spending, but even among those who had not made such a visit the approval level was high, at 91 per cent. These kind of data are further buttressed by powerful Canadian opinion in favour of protecting the environment in general. For example, 93 per cent of us say we shouldn't relax environmental laws to achieve economic growth, 88 per cent say protecting the environment is more important than keeping prices down, 87 per cent are upset about the lack of action taken to protect the environment, 84 per cent participate in wildlife-related activities, 82 per cent express concern about saving endangered species, 70 per cent say we should do

February 1, 1990
more to protect the environment even if it means jobs must be lost in
the process, and 70 per cent believe that major spending on the
environment would in fact have a positive effect on the economy.
It seems to me that the minister and his government are wildly out of touch. Perhaps the hon. member for Davenport could touch on the parks that have been proposed. If there are only five out of the 18 bioregions to be represented between now and the year 2000, that means the 13 representative bioregion areas would have to take place between 1995 and the year 2000. Would he comment also on the non-confidence matter.


Charles L. Caccia: As usual, the member for Skeena asks very penetrating questions. I will try to deal with one of them at least and that is on the nature of his motion because I share his view that this is not the motion that would put the existence of this government into danger. Actually, I came into the House convinced that this would be a motion that the government and Progressive Conservative backbenchers could support with ease, in good conscience and also with a certain sense of political pride because it would reflect their own commitment. Also, no one would come into this chamber on January 2, 2000 and say "Oh, well, look. It is only 11 per cent. You have failed to deliver". I imagine the parliamentarians at that time would rejoice.
We certainly do not see this as a non-confidence motion. Even if the government were to interpret this to be a non-confidence motion, what stands in the way of them defeating it if they want to defeat it, if it is really that serious? But, it is not. If the government supports it, the government will not fall. Even if the government defeats the motion, it will have inflicted on itself a very serious political wound for the reasons we have discussed. So it seems to me that it would be a win-win situation for the government by coming in on Monday and voting for this motion. It would reinforce the political commitment and the political will that they have expressed internationally and at home, since the publication of the Brundtland Report.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The question and comment period is now over. It being 1.18 p.m., I do now leave the chair until two o'clock p.m.
At 1.18 p.m., the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Mr. Speaker, the goods and services tax as proposed by the Conservative government will, among things, severely affect post-secondary education and amateur sports in Canada.
The 7 per cent tax will hit students especially hard. According to the Canadian Federation of Students, the GST will cost students approximately $200 a year. At McMaster University in my riding of Hamilton West, this will mean that a total of $2.1 million will be extracted from students' pockets by this regressive Conservative GST.
Since half of all post-secondary students earn less than $7,000 per year, students cannot afford to have the GST eat away at what little money they have left on restaurant meals, prepared foods and, yes, the very tools of education, books for their courses.
Also, many students have been very active participants in amateur sports. Like many families who have already found the cost of their children participating in amateur sports extremely high, students will also have to bear the additional burden of adding 7 per cent to the cost of memberships, equipment and travel.
Students, and 72 per cent of all Canadians, say enough is enough and call upon this government to scrap the tax.


THE QUEBEC WINTER CARNIVAL
Mr. Marcel R. Tremblay (Quebec-Est):: Mr. Speaker, under the theme "At the heart of the world", the 36th annual Quebec Winter Carnival will be officially launched tonight with the crowning of the 1990 Carnival queen.
This Winter Festival the pride of Quebeckers, has over the years ranked among the largest festivals in the world. Of course, Mr. Speaker, this success is due to top-notch
February 1, 1990

people such as the president of the 1990 Carnival, Mr. Marcel Veilleux, who is also known for his joie de vivre and his tremendous vitality, as well as all volunteers who are supporting him wholeheartedly and all participants who share the same enthousiasm, whether in the wind and cold or under a spring-like sun.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I would like to extend a warm invitation to all my colleagues in the House and all the Canadian people to come and see for themselves how friendly and welcoming Quebecers are.
Welcome to the Quebec Winter Carnival "At the heart of the world", which runs from February 1 to February 11, 1990.


CANADA POST
Mr. Len Taylor (The Battlefords-Meadow Lake):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday a three-person delegation from Prince Edward Island came to Ottawa to appear before the Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Government Operations Committee to express concern about Canada Post's uncaring and undemocratic activities on the Island.
As the meeting proceeded, a Conservative party member of the committee indicated that she would no longer be able to maintain her presence at the meeting. The chairman asked opposition members to promise not to move motions that might embarrass the government because the government would not have enough members present to defeat those motions.
I objected, but to the surprise of those present, the chairman chose not to ask for a replacement of the government member and instead adjourned the meeting, sending the P.E.I. representatives home without a proper hearing and removing my right as a member to further question the witnesses or request committee support for their position.
I am deeply saddened by the actions of the committee chairman who left the people of Prince Edward Island without a proper voice on one of their strongest concerns, the retention of post offices in Island communities.


ENTREPRENEURS
Mr. Ken James (Sarnia-Lambton):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to report that Canadian entrepreneurialism is alive and well, despite the doom and gloom scenarios which continue to dominate the projections and statements from members opposite.
Notably absent are any acknowledgements of the Canadian entrepreneurs or companies which have taken advantage of access and proximity to the vast American market. For example, I have yet to see anyone, including the member opposite, applaud the recent accomplishment of Montreal-based Imasco Ltd. Yesterday the company announced that its fast food subsidiary was purchasing the Roy Rogers fast food restaurant chain for $365 million U.S.
Through such an acquisition, Imasco now enters into the U.S. markets where it was absent. Just think of the implications here. Roy Rogers, a name synonymous with Americanism and tradition, is now going to be Canadia-nized. Oh my! What have members opposite got to think about this?
Bold Canadian entrepreneurial initiatives such as this deserve due recognition and salutation from all members of this House. I put it to you, Mr. Speaker, that proper assessment and developments in the North American trade and commerce requires a two-sided coin, not conveniently one with two heads.


Mr. Eugene Bellemare (Carleton-Gloucester):: Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to congratulate the athletes, trainers and organizers of the first world ringette championship.

These games are currently being played in arenas in the city of Gloucester. A total of eight teams are involved including representatives of Finland, the United States, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec.
I hasten to add that all games are drawing record crowds.

February 1, 1990
Together with my fellow constituents in Carleton- Gloucester, I salute the efforts of those who initiated the idea of bringing these championships here. Their countless volunteer hours of preparation have culminated in a world class event.

Good luck to all athletes!


Mr. Charles DeBlois (Montmorency-Orleans):: Mr. Speaker, it is with no light heart that I rise today to denounce an anti-Quebec hate campaign on which have embarked a number of Toronto media and especially Quebec city Toronto Sun correspondent Peter Stockland.
By writing that the mere mention of a so-called Quebec culture would prompt Herman Goering into drawing his 44 Magnum, the journalist who claims that the poor Quebec Anglophones are persecuted by their fellow citizens and their Government can only exacerbate the current tensions between francophones and anglophones in Canada.
Mr. Speaker, in this crucial period for national unity and the future of Canada, Canadians can do without such invitations to violence and intolerance from certain irresponsible journalists and media.
I strongly urge journalist Peter Stockland and the Toronto Sun to apoligize publicly not only to Quebecers, but to all Canadians.


NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION AGENCY
Mr. Guy St-Julien (Abitibi):: On January 31st, 1990, Mr. Speaker, the National Transportation Agency announced that the Canadian National Railways could not stop operating the Franquet-Chapais line in the Chapais subdivision.
The Agency ordered the CNR to carry out the necessary work to update the line and resume operation by July 31st, 1990. The Agency determined that the real losses incurred by the CNR in the operation of this line amounted to $590,444, which is considerably less than the $5,403,646 which the CNR had tabled for the years between 1984 and 1987.
Moreover, the Agency questioned the amount of savings in operating costs which the CNR had forcasted following the abandonment of the line. It expressed its concern about the evidence showing that the CNR was following a rail service demarketing policy on this line.
Mr. Speaker, the people in the Abitibi-Chapais area are grateful to Mr. Weinberg, who chaired the meeting, member Nicole Forget, as well as Councils Michele Hurteau, Claude Jacques and Danielle Bouvet of the National Transportation Agency.


ITALIAN CANADIANS
Russell Gregoire MacLellan: Mr. Speaker, there has been a great injustice that has gone on in this country for 50 years, and that is the government's refusal to apologize to Italian Canadians for the internment of 700 Italian Canadians during the Second World War.
In 1939, Mr. Dominic Nardocchio of Sydney, Nova Scotia, was 35 years of age. He was taken from his wife, his eight children and the job that he had and was interned for two years because the government felt he committed one crime and that was being an Italian Canadian. After 50 years, the Government of Canada still refuses to apologize to these people.
The National Congress of Italian Canadians in Canada wants only one thing, an apology. That is not asking too much. I would ask the government of this country to make this apology today to these Italian Canadians.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg TYanscona):: Mr. Speaker, Manitobans are getting a hard lesson in just how little Conservatives everywhere care about the environment. The Manitoba Eco-Network, a group diligent in their defence of the province's environment, has had to close its doors today because of a lack of funding. Not only is its share of federal money inadequate, but the Filmon government in Manitoba has so far refused to even grant it enough money to survive until the next fiscal year in

April. On top of this, the federal government will not grant this group charitable status.
Now we hear that the Minister of the Environment is promising the electors in Chambly a new park if they vote Tory on February 12. This is the same park that was promised to Chambly in 1988. When asked why he was repeating a two year old promise, the minister said that elections were the time to make promises.
We have learned that lesson in Manitoba as well. We remember that the Prime Minister promised Winnipeg the new International Centre for Sustainable Development in the 1988 election. Since that time, there has not been another word about it from the mouths of the Prime Minister or the Environment Minister, except at international conferences to brag about this non-existent centre. Elections may be the time to make promises about the environment, but for the Tories there is never any time to keep them.


BLACK HISTORY MONTH
Mr. Peter L. McCreath (South Shore):: Mr. Speaker, today marks the beginning of what has been designated as Black History Month across Canada.
It is appropriate that a Nova Scotian rise to draw the attention of this House to this important and symbolic observance, because Nova Scotia has long been the home of a significant and substantial black community. The first black person came to Canada as an interpreter with Samuel de Champlain to Port Royal in 1605.
Others came as loyalists after the American Revolution including, I might say, the ancestors of my black constituents in the town of Shelburne. Black immigrants have continued to come to Canada from all parts of the world.
For 200 years, black Canadians have contributed significantly to our historical development and to our culture. Much of this contribution, I might say, is celebrated at the Black Cultural Centre in Westphal, Nova Scotia. Black Canadians continue to make a significant contribution to the economy and culture of Canada.
I urge all Canadians to note and to welcome the observance of Black History Month as well as to use as an occasion to reflect upon the need and degree to which this contribution is adequately or inadequately reflected in our mainstream national institutions, both public and private, economic, political and cultural.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Jim Jordan (Leeds-Grenville):: Mr. Speaker, I commend Dupont of Canada for its recently announced pledge to eliminate toxic emissions from all its operations by the year 1995.
I note that this goal by Dupont demands a performance at levels above all legal requirements and I commend Dupont for that action.
Since Dupont received the gold medal for environmental achievement from the United Nations World Environment Centre two years ago, this new initiative will serve to further enhance Dupont's reputation for environmental awareness around the world.


ROMANIA
Mr. Jean-Pierre Hogue (Outremont):: Mr. Speaker, since my statement last November 29 on the situation in Romania, we have had the joy of seeing the Romanian people successfully free themselves from the yoke of Communist tyranny. But despite the appearance of a new team of leaders, the country is still desperately short of medical supplies and food. We are told, for example, that there is one syringe for 20 patients, surgical instruments are rusty and medication of all kinds is greatly lacking.
We can do something to help ease this unfortunate situation if we want to. The International Red Cross in Geneva is accepting donations to provide some of what Romanian health institutions lack. Furthermore, and to conclude, Mr. Speaker, Romanian Canadians in the riding of Outremont which I have the honour to represent may set up a local organization which could send medicine, surgical instruments and food to Romania.

February 1, 1990


RIDING OF CHAMBLY
Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday in Saint-Bruno in the riding of Chambly, the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bouchard), who is also the government's "godfather" for ridings on the south shore of Montreal, made another fine election promise to the voters in that constituency. This promise had already been made by his colleague, the Minister of Communications, during the last election campaign when the Progressive Conservative Party was doing everything to re-elect Richard Grise. We know now where the promises made in the last election got him! The voters in Chambly also remember another promise from the Minister of Transport (Mr. Bouchard) made on behalf of the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) the day after the Saint-Basile-le-Grand disaster.
Once again, this government has made a promise that it did not keep. The people of Chambly deserve better than Conservative or Liberal promises. Mr. Speaker, they deserve a real member of Parliament, a New Democrat!



Mr. Michel Champagne (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State (Forestry)):: Mr. Speaker, I hope people in the constituency of Chambly have realized how much contempt the New Democratic Party has for this institution, this House of Commons.
Last night, it must have been veiy clear to them that, rather than work at extremely important legislation, the New Democratic Party chose to waste the time of the House of Commons and its members by shamefully challenging the rulings of the Chair.
How can people in the constituency of Chambly take seriously the comments of the New Democratic Party candidate, who wants to represent and defend them in this House, when in fact his party's ultimate goal is to prevent this institution from working properly.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude on this word of caution to the constituents in Chambly: Remember that during the 1988 election, Ed Broadbent and his gang supported Meech Lake and the "distinct society" clause.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Not all of them!


Michel Champagne: After that election, they all reneged on that Agreement, thereby refusing to recognize the historial legitimacy of Quebecers. We might expect the same from the so-called "star" candidate who quite clearly has no political clout in his own party.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: He will be elected.


Michel Champagne: And, more ironic still, he has the gall to refer to honesty.


BILINGUALISM AND BICULTURALISM
Robert (Bob) Kilger: Mr. Speaker, today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism.

In their report, the Laurendeau-Dunton Commission suggested that Canada was going through the worst crisis in its history. History seems to be repeating itself today. Unfortunately, language equality is far from being achieved. To ensure equality between both official languages, sustained leadership and understanding between Canadians at every political level will both be needed.

This anniversary reminds Canadians of the work accomplished in the past 25 years to foster understanding and a spirit of co-operation between English and French-speaking Canadians. We must continue to promote harmony and to recognize the considerable contribution made by both linguistic and cultural groups to Canada.
Our two official languages are characteristic of Canada. Whether we are English or French speaking, we are all Canadians proud of Canada and its heritage. Happy anniversary. Bon anniversaire.
February 1, 1990



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mr. Brian Tobin (Humber-St. Barbe - Baie Verte):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. Yesterday, the Prime Minister dismissed calls for the resignation of Brian Gallery from the board of CN by suggesting the situation was not urgent. I suggest to the Prime Minister that CN's integrity as a Crown corporation is at stake, as is the integrity of the conflict of interest guidelines authored by the Prime Minister.
Will the Prime Minister assure the House today that Mr. Gallery, the Prime Minister's appointment as acting chair, as a member of the board of CN, has resigned or has been removed effective today from the board of CN? Will he further assure the House that a thorough, complete and independent investigation into Mr. Gallery's activities at CN will be carried out and made public?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I will repeat, substantially, what I said yesterday. The decision concerning allegations reported by The Globe and Mail and other newspapers-these have been evaluated and will have to be evaluated by the chairman of the CN board of directors.
This morning, I was again in touch with the chairman of the board who is looking at the facts, and I have been informed, Mr. Speaker, that Mr. Brian Gallery has resigned as vice-chairman. I think we should let the chairman of the board assess the facts and report his findings, and we will then look at his assessment and the recommendations made in his report.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his answer. I have a supplementary question for the Minister of Transport.
The minister should know that Canadian National is refusing to provide members of this House and indeed other interested parties with a copy of the logbook for
Oral Questions
the executive dining car used by the president and/or chairman and/or any of 26 vice-presidents at CN.
Since Crown corporations are not required to comply with the access to information code, the only way that information can be made available is as a result of a request by the Minister of Transport. I ask the Minister of Transport, will he direct-


Mr. Mazankowski:: How far back do you want to go?


Brian Vincent Tobin: -the President of CN to make the logbook on all of those eight executive cars available to members of the House of Commons so that we may ascertain, as members, that those cars have only been used for legitimate CN purposes and for no other private purpose?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I am always surprised when the Liberal Party demands an explanation about rules they themselves made when they were in power. I may remind the hon. member once again that the integrity of the proceedings in this House depends basically on one thing: an assessment of the facts. The hon. member referred to reports about the use of the dining car, and so forth. I believe Canadians are satisfied when they hear that the person responsible for the corporation, the chairman of the board, is looking at the facts of the case to which the hon. member referred, and that depending on his assessment of those facts, he will report to the Minister of Transport and we will then consider what our response will be. I think everything is there, everything is opend. I hope the hon. member will have the patience to wait for the normal process to take its course.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pathetic sight to see the Minister of Transport attempt to duck, on behalf of himself and the Prime Minister, the responsibility for this mess by passing it over to the brand new chairman of CN who has only been in the job a few months and who, by the way, was appointed much like Mr. Gallery, as a consequence of his presumed ability and his affiliation with certain members opposite.

February 1, 1990
Oral Questions
Mr. Gallery's letter of July 5,1989 to CN is a matter of public record. It is also a matter of public record that, in addition to carrying advertising by CN, Mr. Gallery's magazine Seaports and the Shipping World also carries advertising for Government of Canada Crown corporations, including four pilotage authorities, seven port corporations and Ports Canada, every one a Crown corporation that reports to the Minister of Transport.
My question is straightforward. Can the minister ascertain whether or not any of these other Crown corporations which report directly to the minister have been subject to any of the same kind of letters or attempts to squeeze extra advertising dollars out of them for Mr. Brian Gallery's magazines?


Mr. Speaker:: There is no basis for the latter part of the question and, left as it is, it stands in substitution of a charge. The hon. member knows that that is not appropriate. The hon. minister may want to reply, but I am saying that the question, as asked, is out of order.


STATUS OF WOMEN
Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the minister responsible for the status of women. In a report today to the United Nations, this government will attempt to gloss over the gross inequities for women in Canada. Will the minister admit that Canadian women not only are poorer than ever, but that the GST and UI cuts and over-all increased living costs are increasing not decreasing discrimination against women in Canada?


Hon. Barbara McDougall (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, far from admitting any such thing, I think the hon. member has to admit that Canadian women are better off today than they were five years ago by quite a long way, that there are fewer women living in poverty today, and that our employment equity is helping women in the workplace.
Last week the President of the Treasury Board announced the most fair pay equity plan that we have seen in this country and yes, women are better off. This does not suggest that we do not have some problems. I would remind the hon. member that her party did not bring in
the kind of pay equity that we did and we are looking forward to more progress for women, not less.


Mary Catherine Clancy: Mr. Speaker, I do not know how closely the minister has looked at the pay equity provisions that were announced last Friday, but they are pretty poor and they are fractional as opposed to the needs of Canadian women. The minister should know that and so should the President of Treasury Board.

Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is directed to the same minister.
What steps does she intend to take to finance new programs designed to help women in Canada, and especially the National Day Care Program.


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, the government set up a day care program, and the Liberal senators blocked it! It is not our fault-it's the other place-

This government continues to be committed to women, and we have made progress continually for women. We have broadened the base of support for women, not just through the women's program but through health and welfare and our initiatives on family violence, and through the nearly $400 million of pay equity program that was announced last week by the President of the Treasury Board. The hon. member should be applauding what has been going on for women in this country instead of complaining.


BANK OF CANADA
Ms. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Finance. Today's increase of 30 base points in the bank rate is bad news for all Canadians. That increase puts us back to May 1989 levels. It hurts farmers, it hurts small business people, it hurts home buyers, it hurts the poorer regions of this country.
When is the Minister of Finance going to assume his responsibility, tell the Governor of the Bank of Canada that enough is enough, you are hurting Canada, and roll back the interest rate?
February 1, 1990


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, that sort of bravado simply does not work. She knows that we cannot just roll back interest rates. The primary objective-


John R. Rodriguez: You rolled them up.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I would encourage the hon. member not to take advice from the people on her left and her right.
The primary purpose of our monetary policy, supported by our fiscal policy, is to get inflation down. What we have seen in recent weeks as we tried to get interest rates down, a minimal reduction in interest rates, was an over-reaction in the exchange markets.
In the interests of getting long-term growth in the economy, it is important to achieve stability in financial markets. That is what has been happening in recent days, and in that regard I fully support what the Governor of the Bank of Canada is trying to do.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, the minister knows that excessively high interest rates tend to increase the deficit. The government is proposing the GST to reduce this deficit.
If the government really wants to reduce the deficit, why this contradiction between its fiscal policy and its monetary policy?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, as I have said on many occasions, the best way of getting interest rates down on a permanent basis is to get inflation down. One of the ways of getting inflation down is by encouraging, through interest rate policy, a reduction in the demand for credit. That is the purpose of the policy of the Bank of Canada. As we have seen in recent days and weeks, there has been some apparent sign of success here. We want to encourage that success to continue because if it does, we will be able to get interest rates down on a permanent, long-term basis.
In the 1970s when the Liberal government ignored the pressures of inflation, we got 20 per cent and 25 per cent interest rates. If that is what my friend is striving for, she is going in the wrong direction, certainly a different direction than this government is going.
Oral Questions


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, Canadians know that the way to get the interest rate down is to get the Tories out.


Some hon. members:: Out!


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: The minister keeps saying that because of the deficit Canadians have to tighten their belts, that because of the deficit Canadians have to accept an insufferable 7 per cent new sales tax. The minister knows that a 1 per cent increase in interest rates adds $4.4 million a day to the deficit. What a waste, $4.4 million a day, 365 days a year.
Is it not time to cut interest rates and stop cutting programs for Canadians?


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I did not hear the question. Could she repeat
it?


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Yes, I can, Mr. Speaker. I asked the minister if it is not time for the minister to cut the interest rates and stop cutting programs for ordinaiy Canadians.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, the other side of what the hon. member has just said is: if she does not want interest rates cut, she wants to increase inflation. If she wants to increase inflation, then what she is doing is hurting the very people who she wants to help, people in low income brackets and people who are senior citizens living on fixed incomes.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: What about the GST?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Her seat mate just said: "What about the GST?" I want to take some time here to correct the Leader of the New Democratic Party. She said that the GST is going hurt those who are on low incomes and hurt those who are senior citizens. That is absolutely wrong.
We have brought in the GST credit, as a result of which 84 per cent of people who are 65 years or more or single-parent families will get the benefit of the GST credit.
With the benefit of the GST credit they will be paying less sales tax after sales tax reform than before.
Oral Questions


GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
[Stage Direction]
February 1, 1990
Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance speaks of the goods and services tax. I would like to quote Mrs. Jean Woodsworth, president of One Voice, the Canadian seniors network. She said: "The tax on goods and services means hardship on seniors. It seems that low and middle income seniors will be pushed toward poverty. The proposed tax credits do not reassure them." That is what seniors think of the minister's answer.

Mr. Speaker, the minister knows that the elderly need the services of lawyers and accountants, as well as certain general maintenance services such as plumbers, electricians, car mecanics, and also homemakers, either to do their shopping or housecleaning. All these services will be taxed under the GST proposed by the government. The minister will have 4,000 tax policemen to monitor the application of this tax.
Doesn't the minister agree that these additional tax levies are unfair to our grandparents?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I will say to the hon. member and to the Leader of the New Democratic Party that we have indicated in the GST paper dated December 19 the impacts of the GST combined with the GST credit. Let me just read out for the hon. member the impact on single individuals over 65. With an income of $12,500 they are better off by $148; with a $15,000 income they are better off by $80; with a $20,000 to $25,000 income they are better off by about $140.
If the member for Kingston and the Islands and the member for Yukon disagree with these figures, they owe it to the seniors of this country to prove where those numbers are wrong, numbers that have been certified by the best in the Public Service of Canada. If they cannot prove that those numbers are wrong, they should not be misleading senior citizens.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, if the minister had listened to my question, he would realize that senior citizens are the ones who say this tax is wrong; not just me.
We have two wrong policies here: the goods and services tax and high interest rates. The minister knows that the cash payments will be inadequate to help seniors who are spending all or nearly all their income to maintain themselves. Even funerals are to be taxed.
The minister urges Canadians to buy now and beat the tax. Does the minister not realize that seniors find this pay now and die later tax policy repugnant?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is neglecting to point out to the senior citizens to whom he has been talking the number of things that are not taxed under the GST.
Rentals are not taxed. Residential rents are not taxed. Basic groceries are not taxed. Meals-on-Wheels are not taxed. Health services are not taxed. Glasses and hearing aids are not taxed. Medical devices, canes, wheelchairs, and things like that are not taxed.
A wide range of products is not taxed under the GST. Those exemptions, together with the GST credit, are what makes this tax a fairer tax for senior citizens today than is the case with the existing sales tax.


CANADIAN NATIONAL
Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister.
I want to return to the matter of Brian Gallery and Canadian National. Could the Prime Minister confirm that Brian Gallery has resigned only as vice-chairman of Canadian National and remains on the board of Canadian National at the nomination of the Prime Minister?


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: I was
informed, Mr. Speaker, before coming into the House that he had resigned both as a director and a vice-chairman.
My understanding is that he could not hold the position of vice-chairman unless he were a director.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, one of my colleagues just checked with Canadian National and was informed that Mr. Gallery is still on the board.
I would appreciate it if the Prime Minister or the Minister of Transport would confirm to the House, immediately after Question Period or during Question Period, whether or not Mr. Gallery remains on the board of directors. If his conduct is such that he should resign
February 1, 1990

as vice-chairman, certainly he should not remain on the board of directors.


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, of course, if I receive this information before question period, I will produce it in the House. I simply want to inform the Liberal House Leader that he is prejudging certain events or facts, I do not want to, and I would ask him once again to have the decency to wait for the chairman of the board's assessment. I think that is a basic courtesy we owe to any Canadian before making any judgment whatsoever, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that the minister himself did not take the action to remove Mr. Gallery from CN instead of waiting for Mr. Gallery to resign.
My question is for the Minister of Transport. In Mr. Gallery's letter of July 7, 1989 he makes references to two companies that have potential business with CN: Cast and Maersk.
Has the Minister of Transport entered into an investigation to determine whether or not Mr. Gallery in fact followed through with his suggestion in the document that as a good friend of these people he would ensure that CN would not get the contracts?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I will just repeat what I said to his friend in the Liberal Party. The chairman of the board investigates.


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question.
Would the Minister of Transport agree to table in this House the copy of any correspondence received by him from the chairman of CN with regard to this investigation?
Furthermore, would he agree to communicate with the chairman today to insist that part of his investigation include an investigation of whether or not Mr. Gallery talked to the two individuals involved?
Oral Questions


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I hope my friend understands that I will not direct the chairman of the board of CN to determine what are my facts in terms of that case.
He will determine himself what he will investigate. He will report to me, and I will advise at that time.
Once again, it is not I but the chairman of the board who will determine which facts he will consider.


GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Mr.   J.W. Bud Bird@Fredericton-York-Sunbury: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Finance about the goods and services tax program.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


Nelson Andrew Riis: Here it comes.


Mr. Bird:: You are not going to like this question, but why not listen?
The existing manufacturers' sales tax is already prepaid primarily at 13.5 per cent on a large volume of stocks and inventories being carried by many Canadian companies, many of them in small business.
On January 1, 1991 under the GST program, the existing tax will be terminated and refunds will be made to these companies for the amount of tax then being financed on their inventories on hand.
What will the impact of these refunds be on the cash flow of Canadian companies? Will these refunds be processed and paid in a timely fashion?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member has pointed out, there will be a rebate of taxes paid on inventory held by companies as of January 1, 1991. That amount is difficult to be precise about at this time, because we do not know exactly what the inventory will be. Our guess is that it will be of the order of $2 billion.
It will be paid out in part immediately, but there will be a hold back, which I expect would take about three to six months to confirm, and then that final amount will be paid.

February 1, 1990
Oral Questions


TRANSPORT
Mr. Jean-Pierre Blackburn (Jonquiere):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. Back in 1985 our government signed a $25 million agreement with the Province of Quebec for the construction of a highway between Alma and La Baie. Unfortunately, even after six years the government of Quebec has not managed to spend that money, so much so that the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region stands to lose $11.2 million if nothing is done.
Can the minister tell the people of Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean whether his counterpart in Quebec City has been in touch with him to find a solution so that the region will not lose these millions of dollars and that the Alma-La Baie highway link may be completed as soon as possible?


Benoît Bouchard: Indeed, Mr. Speaker, under the 1985 federal-provincial agreement we earmarked $12.5 million, as did the government of Quebec, for the highway referred to by my colleague.
For reasons best known to them, Quebec government officials have yet to invest more than $6 million of their total appropriation. I will soon be meeting with my colleague the Quebec Minister of Transport and I intend to raise this issue because the funds have been and are still committed by the federal government, and hopefully the government of Quebec will come up with its share of the funds allotted.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY
Mr. Speaker:: I wish to draw to the attention of hon. members the presence in the gallery of the Committee on Privileges and Elections from the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, led by the chairman, Mr. Danny Dumaresque.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


HOUSING
Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: My question is directed to the Minister of State for Housing. Montreal is the Canadian city to be hardest hit by the abolition of the RRAP which helped renovate rented housing and kept rents moderate, Mr. Speaker. Does the minister understand that Montreal is unique in Canada in that 80 per cent of its people are tenants and that the cuts in the last budget, which Montreal is still suffering from, will make the rent increases unafforable for the least fortunate Montrealers, because the RRAP was abolished? Will he restore housing assistance for Montreal?


Hon. Alan Redway (Minister of State (Housing)):: Mr. Speaker, as I said yesterday, we have set up a tripartite committee composed of representatives of the federal and Quebec governments and the cities of Montreal, Verdun and Quebec to find a solution to this problem. I hope that the committee will come up with a solution very quickly.


Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, the government should look into specific cases before abolishing the program. While the minister is studying, the number of homeless Montrealers is growing.
Will the minister tell this House, Canadians and Montrealers what measures he is going to take to help those Canadians who cannot pay the higher rents when the GST takes effect in January 1991?


Alan Redway: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member is well aware, currently the federal government assists some 600,000 households right across the country.
In this past year and in order to help those needy Canadians to whom the hon. member is referring, particularly in Montreal, the federal government participated in and assisted financially almost 2,500 new housing projects. That included about 18,000 additional housing units for needy households across the country.
In total it meant that the federal government guaranteed capital assistance to build those housing units in the amount of $1.2 billion in 1989. We are providing subsi-
February 1, 1990

dies this year for just those new housing units in the amount of another $34 million.
There is a considerable amount being done, and we will continue to do eveiything we can within the resources available.
sfc *	*


FINANCE
Mr. Jim Peterson (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. The minister has confirmed again this day that he is preoccupied with only one economic policy: inflation.
When will he look at what his high interest rate policies and his high dollar policies are doing to Canadian consumers and to Canadians who have to invest in Canada to make us competitive in global markets? The French and the Germans are paying 6 per cent interest rates for their money, and we are paying 13.5 per cent.
When will he think about what it is doing in terms of our high dollar cutting off our exports? When will he think about what our high interest rates are doing in terms of exports themselves and our manufacturers who have to compete in world markets?
When will the minister get off this monomaniacal policy of high interest rate?


An hon. member:: Where were you between 1980 and 1985? Where were you, Jim?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has made some valid points. I agree with him that we must be concerned about our competitive position. We must be concerned about the level of interest rates, but we also have to recognize that there is a very close relationship between the level of inflation and the level of interest rates. That is what we are trying to do, and we are trying to draw that to his attention.
Let me remind him that before he was on the other side of the House he had a somewhat different point of view on these matters. On May 14, 1981 he said this is about the whole question of interest rates and inflation: "If hon. members think there is a magic fix or a quick solution, there is not".


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!
Oral Questions


An hon. member:: Who said that?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Did you say that? Did you say that, Jim?


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: It must have been David.


Martin Brian Mulroney: You stand up and apologize right now.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: Mr. Speaker, how soon the hon. minister forgets.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: I remember so well his words in those years criticizing high interest rates policies. He was dead set against them. We stand on principle today.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Willowdale will put his question.


BOEING CANADA
James Scott (Jim) Peterson: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is another matter involving economic mismanagement of Canada's affairs. It is directed to the Prime Minister.
In 1986 the government received $90 million for the sale of de Havilland to Boeing. Will he confirm today that the government is paying over $150 million to Boeing, in effect meaning that this deal will have cost Canadians over $60 million?
Will he confirm at the same time that this payment to Boeing involving a $51 million grant for the new Dash-8 has no guarantees of jobs in Canada and absolutely no guarantees that research and development and design have to be done in Canada?
In other words, Boeing could take its money, pack up at Downsview and move to Seattle. What is he going to protect Canadian jobs and to protect Canadian workers?


Hon. John McDermid (Minister of State (Privatization and Regulatory Affairs)):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member was not around in 1986 when the negotiated sale took place.

February 1, 1990
Oral Questions
I want to remind him that those were the questions asked by the Liberals in those days. As a matter of fact, the hon. member for York Centre stood at the gate handing out pamphlets to the workers, telling them that they were all going to lose their jobs because of privatization.
Let me give the hon. member the facts today, and I will be very accurate with them. In 1985 employment there was 4,290. Today it is 5,813.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


John Horton McDermid: They are developing new planes there. There is new technology being developed there. Their sales have doubled and their order books are full. They are doing a very fine job not only at de Havilland but in Arnprior in the Ottawa Valley and in Winnipeg as well.
It has been a good deal for Canada. Yes, we are negotiating with Boeing on cleaning up some of the final negotiations on the agreement. When they are ready and the deal is finished, we will announce it.


Mr. David Barrett (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister.
In an interview with Pamela Wallin on December 20, 1985 the Prime Minister of Canada said at that time: "The Government of Canada has not run the taxpayers' business very well. Why should we be in the business competing with the private sector losing $1 billion? We want to save those jobs in Toronto. We want to protect that technology."
The Prime Minister went on further to say: "The state should not have a primary role where the private sector can do a better job. We shouldn't be subsidizing with your tax dollars a Crown corporation to compete with the private sector".
After making these statements why is the Prime Minister's government going to bail out Boeing and give it another shot at the trough after privatization, to the tune of $150 million of taxpayers' money here in Canada?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, there is no bailing out here whatsoever.
A deal was consummated between the Government of Canada and de Havilland back in 1986. The deal at that time was very complete. Many changes were required in
the operations of de Havilland to ensure that the company could become viable over the long term.
Part of that potential settlement relates to items we specifically agreed to cover, as well as other categories of potential liabilities, which is normal in any kind of a deal. That is what the negotiations are about. There is no such thing as a bail-out. That is nonsense.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Prime Minister for his answer!


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, the minister who responded to my question to the Prime Minister neglected to mention that at the current moment lay-offs are taking place at the plant. At the current time there are subcontracts and contracts going out to South Korea, China, Egypt and the United States.
Will the Prime Minister tell us and the Canadian people why it is necessary to use taxpayer's dollars to subsidize jobs in these other countries while lay-offs are taking place and money is being shoved out?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, that demonstrates why that individual was a premier of a province for three short years. The people in British Columbia smartened up pretty quickly by booting him out.
What nonsense. None of this money goes to subsidize jobs in other countries at all.


David Barrett: You are contracting out.


John Horton McDermid: As a matter of fact, de Havilland is __ selling planes made in Canada in all those countries he ' talks about. There are something like 1,600 more jobs today at de Havilland in Toronto.


David Barrett: They are contracting out.


John Horton McDermid: Those people are paying taxes. They are gainfully employed.
Speak to your union friends in Toronto, ask them how they like the jobs. They like it very well, thank you very much.


CENTRAL EUROPE
Hon. William Rompkey (Labrador):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. President Bush's announcement yesterday of new initiatives for the withdrawal of American troops from central Europe was just
February 1, 1990

the latest in a series of initiatives by both eastern and western leaders with regard to the stationing of foreign troops in the countries of central Europe.
What is the position of the Government of Canada on this subject? More particularly, what is the position of the Government of Canada with regard to the continuing presence of Canadian forces in central Europe?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the decision the President announced last night was one that Canada had been consulted on. It is one that we had had the opportunity to discuss with President Bush and with others over some considerable period of time. It is one on which we congratulated the President prior to his making it public last evening.
We think it is a very strong indication of the quite excellent reactions, both in the east and the west, to developments over the last several months. It is a very healthy and positive sign.
The Government of Canada is part of NATO. We have always indicated and conveyed our intention to act in concert with our allies. We will be doing precisely that. The Minister of National Defence and the Secretary of State for External Affairs have had ongoing discussions in a number of important areas.
When something more is ready to be conveyed publicly, we will be happy to do it.


Bill Rompkey: Mr. Speaker, the leaders who have taken these initiatives and the countries that have taken these initiatives have done so on the basis that the Cold War is over. Yet the white paper of the Government of Canada is still extant and the government stands behind the Cold War rhetoric in it.
Does the Prime Minister not agree that the white paper of the Government of Canada is completely obsolete and completely outdated? When is he going to offer some initiatives for the defence of Canada for the Canadian people, and particularly for members of the Canadian Armed Forces whose moral has hit rock bottom?
Oral Questions


Hon. Bill McKnight (Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman identifies the white paper which was written in 1984-1985 and enunciated in 1987. The facts of that day were accurate. I am sure, as much as we would all like to be able to look forward with clarity, the changes that have taken place in eastern Europe over the last six months were not anticipated by myself, by the Prime Minister or, I am sure, by the hon. member.
I would suggest to the hon. member that the actions taken by President Bush, by NATO and by the Warsaw Pact at a time when there is great instability in the world are lending to a stable reduction in arms, bringing security to the world and peace to Canada. We all hope it works. Patience and prudence at a time like this, I would suggest, is the best course for Canada and other NATO allies.


Mr. Speaker:: There will be a single question from the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, followed by a single question from the hon. member for Moose Jaw-Lake Centre.


THALIDOMIDE VICTIMS
Mr. Rey Pagtakhan (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Health and Welfare. On January 18 of this year the War Amputations of Canada, in pursuit of its compensation claims for Canada's Thalidomide victims, met with the Department of National Health and Welfare, which indicated it would respond within two weeks. That deadline is today.
Thalidomide victims have been through a lifetime of disability and suffering. They deserve redress and they deserve a fair deadline for a response.
Could the Minister give the House today a definitive date as to when it would issue its definitive decision? Would the Minister assure the House that it would immediately conclude a compassionate and generous settlement with the Thalidomide victims of our country? Fairness delayed is fairness denied.


Hon. Perrin Beatty (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, in December when I made an announcement to the House of Commons with regard to extraordinary assistance to haemophiliacs, those who

February 1, 1990
Points of Order
contracted AIDS through the blood system, I indicated that the government was prepared to sit down and discuss with Thalidomide victims and others their particular circumstances. We have been continuing to have those discussions. I think it is appropriate that any answer that we have to convey to them be conveyed to them directly as opposed to being conveyed on the floor of the House of Commons.
This is a matter to which we assign considerable importance and we will do everything we can to reach an agreement which is fair and compassionate and which recognizes the needs of the people involved.


Mr. Speaker:: This will be the last question. The hon. member for Moose Jaw-Lake Centre.


ATLANTIC CANADA
Mr. Rod Laporte (Moose Jaw-Lake Centre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. Contrary to all the evidence, the Prime Minister says that there is no crisis in Atlantic Canada, yet it is his government that has added to Atlantic Canada's problems by the proposed cancellation of the At & East program.
Despite the fact that this bill has not even been debated in the House, I have learned that the railways have been instructed by the government that all new contracts after July 16, 1989, would not receive the At & East rate and that all extended permits at the At & East rate were to end yesterday.
Because of this program the elevator at Saint John has announced that it will be closing at the end of February, and that is only the beginning. The loss of this program means the abandonment of railways and the possible closure of Atlantic Canada's only flour mill.
My question is very simple. Given the fact that this program has injected some $26 million and 250 jobs annually into Atlantic Canada, and given the fact that his bill has not even been debated in the House, will the Minister admit that his department has improperly instructed the railways to boost their rates on shipments of grain and flour to Atlantic Canada?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I would like to consider the information provided by my colleague about the company and I will get back to the hon. member. Once again, I do not believe
that is the fact, but I would like to check that out and I will come back to the hon. member.


POINTS OF ORDER
Mr. Speaker:: I have a point of order from the Hon. Minister of Transport.


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I just want to confirm what the Prime Minister said during Question Period in response to the question from the hon. member for Windsor West. Mr. Brian Gallery has resigned from CN from both positions.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Winnipeg-Trans-cona on a point of order.


COMMENTS DURING DEBATE
William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, my point of order arises from a claim made by the Minister of the Environment in the House earlier today with respect to the motion before the House which reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should move to complete the national park system (land and marine) by the year 2000 and should implement the recommendation of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Report) that that Canada protect at least 12 percent of land and marine zones.
The Minister of the Environment made a procedural claim with respect to this motion to the effect that it is a non-confidence motion. This motion is not a non-confidence motion. You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that as a result of the changes to the Standing Orders brought in by the recommendations of the McGrath report, as it is popularly known, the language of confidence was taken out of the Standing Orders having to do with opposition days. So for the Minister of the Environment to get up and suggest that he could not support this motion because this is a motion of confidence is completely false. This is not a motion of confidence. It is only a motion of confidence in the political sense if the Prime Minister chooses to make this motion a matter of confidence, and one can only ask why the Prime Minister would decide to do that.
Did the government fall when we passed the resolution on an opposition day having to do with South Moresby? Was that a matter of confidence? The fact of the matter is this is not a motion of non-confidence. It is a motion on which members of the cabinet, government back-benchers, opposition back-benchers, everyone has
February 1, 1990

the opportunity to express their support. I can only conlude that the minister is trying to hide behind a false and mistaken interpretation of the Standing Orders.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I think that debate should properly take place during the debate on the particular motion. However, I want to say from the standpoint of the government that there may be a day when we do review the rules and perhaps more specifically outline exactly what could take place.
My hon. friend did not mis-state it intentionally but I think he would realize that the South Moresby motion, when debated, did not have a vote attached to it. It was not a confidence motion with a vote as today's is. It was an agreed upon motion after debate was entered into, and there is a great difference.
My hon. friend has a point but the government is of the opinion and holds the position that this is a confidence motion. I am really disappointed in the New Democratic Party. I want to make it very clear that the Liberal Party did not do this. To play petty politics with something as important as the environment is just not understandable.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member has raised a complaint on a point of order. The government has responded and I do not think it is something on which I should make a ruling.


COMMENTS DURING QUESTION PERIOD
Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, further to the point of order raised earlier by the Minister of Transport which arose out of questions and answers in Question Period, I want to make clear that we accept fully that neither the Minister of Transport nor the Prime Minister were attempting to mislead the House in any way. The Minister of Transport, Hansard will show, indicated that Mr. Gallery has resigned as vice-president of CN. There was no reference to his directorship.
I called CN and spoke to them directly during Question Period. I was informed directly by CN that Mr. Gallery had resigned as vice-chairman, but not as a director.
Business of the House
It is for that reason that we on this side put a second question to the government. I think it ought to be clear that nobody, on either side, was attempting to mislead this House today.


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I just want to confirm what I said. I checked that out myself with, I believe, people who would normally receive letters of resignation. I can say to the House that Mr. Brian Gallery has resigned as vice-president of the Board and as a director of CN.


Mr. Speaker:: I think it is very clear, as the hon. member pointed out, that the questions were asked on the basis of answers given earlier. I thank the hon. minister for coming into the House and clarifying the matter.
The hon. member for Trinity-Spadina on a point of order.


BLACK HISTORY MONTH
Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, I wish first to commend the hon. member for South Shore on his statement drawing our attention to the fact that this is the beginning of Black History Month. However, since I know the hon. member would not wish to mislead this House intentionally, I wish to advise him of my information that the first black man recorded to arrive in Canada was Matthew De Coste, a black man of Portuguese ancestry, who, as a navigator for Jacques Cartier, arrived on the St. Lawrence in 1535.


Mr. Speaker:: One of the very first Canadians. I thank the hon. member for that information.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, this being Thursday, I want to ask the customary question of the government House Leader to enable him to give a statement of government business to this Chamber.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise the House that tomorrow will be an allotted day. Monday we will continue debate on Bill C-62, the goods and services tax bill. Tuesday we will continue debate, and probably finish debate, on Bill C-62.

February 1, 1990
Business of the House


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the government House Leader could advise members of the House what has happened to the environmental assessment and review legislation. It was promised in this House, in committee and publicly by the Minister of the Environment, that it would be brought before this House last fall. We are now fairly well past the fall. As a matter of fact we are almost out of winter, I think. Perhaps the government House Leader could tell us where the environmental assessment and review legislation is.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Madam Speaker, if my hon. friend will check the Standing Orders he will find that Question Period runs from 2.15 to three o'clock and that is a very valid question to ask the Minister of the Environment during Question Period.


POINT OF ORDER
Jean-Robert Gauthier: Madam Speaker, I have a question to submit to the House and hon. members. The Orders of the Day say:
Not later than 15 minutes before the ordinary hour of daily
adjournment, every question necessary to dispose of proceedings
shall be put forthwith in accordance with Standing Order 81(14).
My question, Madam Speaker, is this: Since earlier today we adopted a proposal to postpone until Monday the vote on the motion before the House, would it not be possible, in order to have more debate, to have more time so that hon. members can speak on this important motion, that we agree that the bells will not ring at 5.45 but rather at 6 o'clock as usual and then we will see if there are enough votes to justify a recorded division on the question before us?
It is just a matter of adding some time, 15 minutes more today, so that we can have more debate and more members can participate.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Madam Speaker, just for the sake of precision, I think we should try to get the
extra 15 minutes for debate. Certainly we would be in unanimous agreement with the rest of the House to do that.
To be precise, I do not believe there needs to be a bell today. I think a voice vote would take place at six o'clock instead of 5.45 p.m. If the voice vote is called one way or the other and enough members stand in their places, then the deferral would be made to Monday, in which case the bells would ring on Monday at 5.45 p.m. and the vote would take place at six o'clock on Monday. I think that is the precise understanding members should have.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The House had heard the suggesting made by the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: On another point of order, Madam Speaker, we would like to give notice to the House that the Liberals would like to divide the 20 minute periods allocated to us on our rounds into two 10-minute periods followed by a five-minute question and comment period. That is, again, in an effort to try to give our members more time to debate this very important motion. We are very much interested in debate.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, in the normal tradition of opposition days we would certainly agree to that. We would like to keep the option open as to whether or not the New Democratic Party would follow the same course, but I understand it will be open to all parties to use, if they wish, or just to continue in the traditional way.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Madam Speaker, certainly the government would go along with that on the understanding that the government has the option also. Any party can use 20 minutes for one speaker or divide it between two speakers.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The Chair would appreciate it if each and every member who seeks the floor would advise the Chair whether he or she intends to take the full 20 minutes or share time with one of his or her colleagues.

February 1, 1990



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Fulton:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should move to complete the national park system (land and marine) by the year 2000 and should implement the recommendation of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Report) that Canada protect at least 12 percent of land and marine zones.
William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, one cannot help, when one begins to debate this particular motion before us today, but contrast this day with another day in the life of this Parliament some time ago when all members of Parliament joined together to unanimously pass a motion having to do with the preservation of South Moresby as a national park. That, for me, was one of the finest days certainly in my time as a Member of Parliament. The government of the day, the same government that we have now, saw no threat in the coming together of all members of Parliament behind the particular motion. That makes it all the more mysterious why today the Minister of the Environment rose and opposed the motion which we have before us.
Perhaps just for the record I will read the motion moved by the hon. member for Skeena:
Thai, in the opinion of this House, the government should move to complete the national park system (land and marine) by the year 2000 and should implement the recommendation of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Report) that Canada protect at least 12 percent of land and marine zones.
All that this motion would do, if it were to be passed, would be to give parliamentary approval to a goal that the government itself up, until today, had not renounced. Indeed, I would suspect that on many occasions it has indicated that this is the government's goal.
So why on earth would the Minister of the Environment not get up and say to the hon. member for Skeena, the environment critic for the New Democratic Party, that this is a motion which he would be glad to have passed. It would certainly be helpful in his relationships with his own department and his bureaucrats, in his
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relationship with the business community and in his relationship with environmentalists-in all those relationships that he has to enter into in order to fulfil these goals which, up until now, we thought were the goals of the government-to have the unanimous support of the Parliament of Canada in doing so.
It sort of boggles the mind to reflect on why the Minister of the Environment would be so intent on not having the backing of Parliament and so intent on destroying his own reputation. Here was an opportunity for him to shine in a way that a previous environment minister, Tom McMillan, had with respect to South Moresby when he agreed that a motion having to do with South Moresby would pass the House. Instead, we have the Minister of the Environment getting up and making a very spurious argument indeed with respect to the fact that this motion is a non-confidence motion.
As I said earlier on a point of order, although Mr. Speaker ruled that it was not something that he wanted to comment on as a point of order, this is only a motion of non-confidence to the extent that the government declares it to be so at the political level. The objective of the McGrath reforms passed in this House in 1985 was to take the language of confidence out of the Standing Orders with respect to supply motions, which had traditionally been, as part of parliamentary tradition, a matter of confidence. This was sort of a lay-over in the language, if you like, because actually opposition days had nothing to do with supply any more. They were simply an opportunity for members of the opposition to move motions. But because they were still under the rubric of supply, the language of confidence had lingered beyond its meaningfulness.
That language was taken out of the Standing Orders precisely so that Private Members, to use the language of the Prime Minister himself when he mandated the McGrath commission, would be able to vote as they chose on matters like opposition days, so that no longer would we have government or opposition members being able to hide behind the language of confidence. In the days before the reform it used to be that opposition members would vote in favour of an opposition motion even though they did not support the substance of the motion because they said they did not want to miss any opportunity to express non-confidence in the govern-

February 1, 1990
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ment. Of course, the reverse argument was used on the government side. As a result, we did not have an opportunity in Parliament for members of Parliament to express themselves outside this whole notion of confidence and non-confidence. That was the purpose of the reform. Yet here today we have the Minister of the Environment getting up and doing exactly what the reform was intended to prevent. Having raised it on a point of order, the Minister of Justice and government House Leader gets up and says-and I can only interpret it this way-that at the political level, not the procedural level, this is now a matter of confidence for the government. Why would it be a matter of non-confidence in the government if a motion supporting the goals that it alleges itself to have were to pass?
I rest my case, Madam Speaker. I do not want to talk about the procedural point all day because there are other things to talk about. One of the other things to talk about, of course, is what over-all context the minister's behaviour ought to be placed in today. That over-all context is getting to be an over-all context and record of disappointment when it comes to the environment.
The member for Lac-Saint-Jean, the Minister of the Environment, came to this House with a great deal of expectation held by a great many people in all parties. When he was made the Minister of the Environment there were people on all sides of the House who thought that here is a guy who might make a difference, here is a guy close to the Prime Minister, a Quebec lieutenant or whatever, maybe he can make a real difference. Instead, what happened is he had to be taken to court twice in order for the federal government to live up to its responsibilities for environmental review vis-a-vis the Rafferty-Alameda Dam. He had to be taken to court twice.
He finally did the right thing, on the last possible day he could have done it, when 60 per cent of one of the dams was already completed. Is this the great environmental hope of the Conservative government?
With respect to the international centre for sustainable development which was promised in 1988 in Winnipeg by the Prime Minister during the election campaign, have we seen anything that would give us any reason to
believe that there was any sincerity in that promise at all?
I see the hon. member for Provencher is in the House. Maybe he would like to get up later and explain why we have not seen any sign at all in Winnipeg that this centre will actually ever be built. Instead, the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Environment will go about the globe announcing, at various environmental conferences where they get, believe it or not, awards, this international centre that they are building in Winnipeg about which they have done absolutely nothing.
How long will it be before the Canadian public wakes up? I think the Canadian public has woken up to the fact that when it comes to the environment these people are charlatans; these people are frauds; these people are tricksters; these people do not mean what they say when it comes to the environment.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Shoal Lake is another Manitoba-Ontario transboundary issue. We are getting it from both sides in Manitoba. We are getting arsenic in our drinking water from Ontario and we are having the Rafferty-Alameda Dam pollute the Souris River.
What do we get from the government? The hon. member for Brandon-Souris got up, when responding to me in a late show not to long ago, and said that this is not really a matter of federal jurisdiction. And I got a letter from the Minister of National Health and Welfare the other day saying that even if he passed a safe drinking water act it would still be up to the provinces.
This is leadership? Basically it is a do anything you like to the environment scenario. These guys won't do anything unless, of course, you have enough money and enough time-and thank God the Canadian Wildlife Federation did-to take them to court and make them live up to their own responsibilities.
What we have asked for in this motion is what the Brundtland Commission asked for. We have the Prime Minister dancing all around the globe saying he supports Brundtland. He even reminded me in the House one day that he got an award from Brundtland. Yet his government is unwilling to support a motion that calls upon it to live up to the Brundtland Commission report with respect to the setting aside of natural lands, not tomor-
February 1, 1990

row, not by next year, but by the year 2000, ten years from now.
This is not some ridiculous claim but simply a claim based on the scientific evidence that if we do not do this by the year 2000 we will not be able to do it ever because the very lands that need to be set aside will have disappeared as a result of development and other means of transformation.
The government opposes this motion, Madam Speaker. Surely the government is concerned, as everyone is, about the disappearance of the tropical rain forests, whether it is in Brazil, Sarawak or wherever. The government's attitude to this motion is that it has no intention of setting an example. It has no intention of being able to speak to these other countries about what they are doing to the global environment from any sort of moral high ground at all.
In fact some of these countries which are the object of global concern have already set aside more land as wilderness area, or as untouchable area, than Canada has. And yet our governments and many Canadians, in a quite self-deluding way, imagine that we are the sort of environmental good guys in the world. We are not. We have clear cut more acreage in Ontario and British Columbia than we would ever want to admit to the rest of the world. And in Manitoba now, as the result of a deal called the Repap Deal, we have ceded a fifth of the province to some entrepreneur who will turn it into disposable diapers and various other unneeded paper products. That is where we are at environmentally and yet we propose to lecture the people of Sarawak or the people of Brazil.
I think we should lecture the people of Sarawak or Brazil. But in the same way that we felt in order to make a real case to the United States about acid rain we had to have an acid cleanup action program in our own country, we need to show that we are serious about preserving old growth forests, tropical forests, whatever the case may be, on Vancouver Island and in various other parts of Canada. We have not done that. The barbarism with respect to our forestry continues. We act as if it is still the 19th century. That is what is at stake here.
I cannot imagine a more devastating argument in international circles than to have some of these countries-they have embassies here, they will notice when this is raised in international fora-say that there was a motion to the effect that Canada comply with the
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Brundtland Report recommendations on natural heritage by the year 2000 which was defeated in our parliament. Who are we talking to? Why should they listen to us? It was defeated by our own government. That is going to be embarrassing. It is going to be embarrassing for the government. It is going to be embarrassing for all Canadians.


Ross Harvey: Assuming the government cares.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: My colleague from Edmonton says "assuming the government cares". I do not think the government does care, frankly. I think it sees the environment as an issue to be managed in the interests of good public relations, sort of a political problem which, if taken seriously, would be at odds with their other beliefs about the nature of economic growth and the nature of the economy. And so the government does its best to bide its time and hope to get by with the least possible environmental protection, meanwhile saying the right things, speaking to the right conferences.
This is what we have and in a way this is the downside, if you like, of everyone being concerned about the environment. As someone who has been concerned about the environment for a long time, I welcome the fact that everybody is concerned about the environment. But it makes life more difficult in a way for the environment because when everybody is for the environment, it is more difficult to tell who is really for the environment and who has just got a public relations strategy. It becomes harder and harder to discern the false prophets from the true prophets. It becomes harder and harder to distinguish the environmentalists from the ad men. That is one of the things with which we are going to have to deal. It is a necessary stage, if you like. It comes with the fact that the environment is at the top of the polls. This means that every Tom, Dick, Harry or Susan is now going to be preaching about the environment.
I think the Canadian people have to do two things; they have to ask themselves who was raising matters of the environment in this House and elsewhere across the country when everybody on this side, whether they were on this side or when they were in opposition, still thought that it was kind of a funny thing to do. They still thought that it was a kind of peculiar, hippy-dippy, left over from the sixties kind of thing to do, for back-to-the-landers and other freaks. I will tell you who it was, it was the

February 1, 1990
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Progressive Conservative Party who had that view of people who raised the question of the environment and that is the view that most of them still have. I believe that a few of them over there do not, but most of them still have that view, they have just learned how to talk differently while doing what they always wanted to do. And that is to have uncritical economic growth without regard to the environmental consequences.
You will recall, Madam Speaker, I hope, the story about how in the old days the miners used to take canaries down into the mine. The reason they had the canaries down in the mine was that when the canaries died they figured it was time to get out of the mine. It was a sign that the air was not fit to breath and they would get out of there as fast as they could.
With respect to both the Canadian environment and the international environment, the canaries are dying all over the place. The canaries come in different forms. The canaries come in the form of beluga whales in the St. Lawrence River. The canaries come in the form of cod fish off Newfoundland that are disappearing. The canaries come in the form of fish in the Great Lakes that have weird tumors and other genetic and mutational problems. The canaries are dying all over. In fact, actual species are dying all over all the time.


James Ross Fulton: Twenty thousand a year.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: The hon. member for Skeena said 20,000 a year. The canaries are dying all over the place and what is this government doing? They are kind of having lunch down in the mine debating about how they can dig deeper instead of reviewing the whole project, instead of saying-


Ross Harvey: They are eating the canaries.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Somebody said they are eating the canaries. But this is a very serious analogy. What the government is doing is not paying attention to all the signs around us that we are on the verge of a global, ecological catastrophe which will precipitate an economic catastrophe that will make all this blather about deficits look trivial.
The real deficit, the deficit that cannot be paid off if it is not paid off soon, is the environmental deficit. When you are constantly borrowing and not putting back clean air, clean water, fertile soil, trees that take hundreds of years to grow, you are building up a deficit and a deficit that cannot be paid back, a deficit that makes the fiscal deficit, which is the preoccupation of this government, morally insignificant. Yet, the government carries on as if it thinks it can carry on like this forever. The fact of the matter is that we cannot carry on like that.
All that this motion asks the government to do is to put aside lands that are already there. You do not have to stop any development that is already happening. These are lands that are there but do not, as yet, have the appropriate legal and institutional protection. You do not have to tear anything down. What does the government do? It opposes this motion and gets up, like the Minister of the Environment did, on an entirely spurious point of order and argues that the government cannot support this motion because it is a non-confidence motion.
We would like to make things easy for the government. We would like to move, and I so move, an amendment, that the motion be amended by adding, after the words "marine zone", the following:
"and, that for the purposes of clarification, this question not be
considered a matter of confidence in the government."


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I will take the amendment under advisement and come back to the House. I am not sure whether this amendment is in order or not.
A point of order, the hon. member for Winnipeg Transcona.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, with respect, I do not think there is a lot to take under advisement. This is an amendment which is quite in order. Quite frankly, I do not see any reason why the Chair could not accept it at this point so we could proceed to debate the motion as amended.


Ross Harvey: Madam Speaker, I believe you would find, were you were to ask, that both the mover and seconder of the main motion are perfectly happy to have the motion as it is before the House, so amended.
February 1, 1990


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The Chair, along with the officers at the table, feel that there may be a problem with accepting this amendment as is. I would ask the House to please allow me to take it under advisement for a few minutes and then I will get back to the House.
I will now proceed to the period of question and comments.


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, I know the hon. member is very much aware of the remarks of the Minister of the Environment this morning. We know that there are 39 bioregions in Canada and 21 of the bioregions are presently represented by the 34 national parks that we have. There are 18 bioregions that are still not represented, the majority of which are south of 60.
In the minister's response this morning on this motion, he indicated that there are four national parks and four different bioregions north of 60 that are under consideration. One happens to be in the member's own province, which is the Churchill proposal for Canada's first national park dedicated principally to the preservation of the polar bear.
That still leaves 13 bioregions unrepresented. The minister suggested this would be the Conservative government's master plan, they would complete these five, perhaps others, but five between now and 1995. This would leave 13 bioregions unrepresented and 26 marine biophysical regions unrepresented. Since only 54 per cent of the land areas have managed to obtain national park status since 1885 when the first national park was created, that being Banff, I wonder if the hon. member would, first; touch on the proposal vis-a-vis the province of Manitoba, that being the only one suggested south of 60 and second; whether or not that target and timetable is likely to achieve what is being suggested by the minister's own task force, where it was stated definitively that if we do not complete the national park system between now and the year 2000, it simply cannot be because of developmental pressures that are making it impossible.
I wonder if the member could take a moment to talk about how realistic the government's proposal is and what kind of forces might there be out there that the Prime Minister and the cabinet might be listening to
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instead of the 96 per cent of Canadians who, when polled, say they want the national park system completed.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, it seems to me that the import of what the minister said with respect to his plan for only completing another four or five parks by 1995 is that he has basically written off the rest of the country that is eligible to have a national park and that has been designated as eligible in various plans produced by the government over the years.
There are various marine bioregions and the other eight or nine bioregions beyond the four or five already planned and these are to be written off. Why do we say that?
It is not as if the government has 150 years to do this. If it did, then it could say, "This is proceeding in an orderly fashion", as governments have said for the last 100 years. But we do not have that kind of time left, we have to do things in a hurry. We know that species disappear because of the effect of many environmental problems. The damage which is done to the ecosystems is not a gradual thing which happens, to use a mathematical analogy in a sort of 1,2, 3,4, 5 sort of way. It happens in a 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 kind of way, exponentially. Perhaps the hon. member would think it useful if I recited a story which I think illustrates what we are talking about.
Imagine, Madam Speaker, that there is a pond which used to be covered by lily pads, starting out with one lily pad, in a period of 28 days. So you start with one lily pad, two lily pads, four lily pads, 8, 16, 32, 64. I am trying to make it understandable to members on the other side of the House. It proceeds in this way and on the twenty-eighth day the pond will be completely and totally covered. Ask yourself, Madam Speaker, what will be the situation in the pond on the twenty-seventh day? On the twenty-seventh day half the pond will be uncovered. On the twenty-seventh day it would be possible for those who do not understand the situation to be sitting on a lily pad somewhere and saying to those who are saying "You'd better get out of here fella, the pond is going to be covered very, very soon". It is very possible for others to be sitting there saying "What are you worrying about, what's the rush? We have half the pond left". What happens on the twenty-eighth day, Madam Speaker?

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Bingo! The pond is covered. That is the way environmental problems work.
I do not know whether we are on the twenty-seventh day or whether we are on the twenty-sixth day or whether we are on the twenty-fifth day. Some people think we are on the twenty-seventh day.
Recently I told this story to David Suzuki and he said to the hon. member for Skeena that he thought we might be on the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth day, somewhere in there. I hope not. I know that we are in the twenties. If we do not act fast, one of these days we are going to wake up to a world that we should be held criminally responsible for by our grandchildren.


John Williston (Bud) Bird: Madam Speaker, I would like to refer the hon. members of the NDP caucus who have introduced this debate and have been participating in this discussion to some testimony that we received in the sub-committee on forestry yesterday and the previous day from the deans of three of Canada's leading universities. I would like to refer them particularly to the testimony of Dr. Gordon Baskerville of UNB. Yesterday, although frustrated by the bells which rang throughout the afternoon, we did get some very substantive testimony in which Dr. Baskerville described the process of sustainable development as he sees it happening and the whole business of forest management. This included wilderness areas and ecological reserves and all the multiple uses and integrated management perspectives with regard to our forests.
One of the points that he made very clear was that the imposition of constraints is not management. The concept of management is the concept of establishing, first of all, what we want to do with our forests, where we want to go with them and then working at developing how we are going to achieve those directions and what the management methods are going to be.
The question has been asked, what would the Minister of the Environment be waiting for in completing the national parks system or in working towards his objective of completing it by the year 2000. It may well be that he is waiting for the development in Canada of more sophisticated, comprehensive and substantive forms of management towards sustainable development, rather than the isolated, let's do it now, one constraint kind of approach
that the members of the New Democratic Party seem to favour.
The multiple use of our forests is fundamental to the interests of all Canadians. One of the things that we have to do, first of all, is to decide how we want to use those forests and what portions we want for ecological reserves and for wilderness areas.
I would like to ask all three of the members who spoke in the few minutes I have been here this afternoon, if they will undertake to read the testimony of the three deans of forestry presented to the subcommittee here in Ottawa this week.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, the hon. member does not seem to grasp the time line that we are talking about, the fact that we have so very little time. He has not appreciated that. He wants to talk about management. His concept of management just cannot grasp the whole notion of leaving things alone, of letting them be what they are in creation, for all time. He just cannot get a handle on that.
According to this concept of management, all those full-growth forests out there, be they trees of 800 years or 400 years or whatever, have been poorly managed for 800 years, because nobody was in there doing management. God is a poor manager, it would seem.
What is at stake is the view of a consumer material society which I think is condemned rather well in Luke 12, Chapter 20:19, where it says:
19.	And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou has ampled goods laid up
for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry.
20.	But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be
required of thee; and the things you have prepared, whose will they
be?
That is the kind of time line we are dealing with when it comes to the global environment.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The period of questions and comments has now expired. Resuming debate with the hon. member for Rosedale.


Hon. David MacDonald (Rosedale):: Madam Speaker, I must say I am somewhat intrigued by the last comments of the member for Winnipeg Transcona. He and I share at least one profession in common, but I think he has
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fallen into a very large trap, and I may have to remind him of it during the course of the next few minutes.
First of all, I want to say how delighted I am that the member for Skeena has raised this matter by way of an opposition day motion. I think all members of all sides agree in the importance of the subject that has been raised here this afternoon. He has already read the statistics into the record about the kind of overwhelming public support there is. I do not think there can be any doubt about that whatsoever.
In addition, I would say there is very strong agreement on all sides of the House with respect to the importance of preserving for posterity the 39 ecological zones. One assumes that the total representative sampling of the land base of Canada, plus, I think, some 26 marine zones that would give a proper representation to that aspect of our resource heritage.
There are two things that are fundamental here this afternoon. One is the agreement that we must have a full representative sample preserved while it is still possible. I guess the second point is that we must do it within a reasonable time period. A lot has been made of the fact of how long it has taken us during the first more than one and a quarter centuries to get to the stage where we are at today, which is roughly about 50 per cent of our over-all national objective.
What I am troubled by, and I hope the member will listen carefully to what I am going to say-


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: I'm all ears.


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: Well, I was not going to say anything about your physical characteristics-


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: What I am troubled by are two things that seem to be running in train here. One is that somehow an opposition member can introduce a debatable motion which, on its merits or on some of its merits at least, should then allow us to totally forget the context in which we are having this discussion. I know the member has been here for some years and with some intermission I have been here a few years myself. And if there is anything I have learned in this Chamber, not just in this Parliament but in fact in any of the parliamentary traditions in operation, is that when one is discussing
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supply and when a motion is moved by any opposition member, that is a matter of confidence in the government. There can be no other interpretation.


An hon. member:: Not true.


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: Well, I am sorry. My friend from Winnipeg says, "Not true". I think he has either a short-term memory or a somewhat inspired and selective view of the rule changes introduced by the-


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: We changed the rules while you were away.


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: Listen, my friend, listen carefully. There is no way that any committee recommending rule changes can change the essential character of the debate on supply.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Look at the precedents.


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: My other friend has come here a little more recently. He better look through all the precedents and realize that on the issue of supply, which I think covers at least seven centuries of parliamentary history, when an opposition member moves a motion, whatever that motion is, and that motion comes to a vote, it can be nothing more than a motion of confidence in the government of the day.
I am sorry the member for Davenport is unavoidably absent at the moment because I think he would have great difficulty in disagreeing with this. He sat for many years in a government that argued this case night and day. Several of my colleagues on this side of the House know that we use some of these same hoary arguments, but they do not hold water; they will not hold water. I think it is foolish in the extreme to waste the time of the House in debating what a former Prime Minister and distinguished parliamentarian said were rabbit tracks. We are not interested in rabbit tracks this afternoon. We are interested in the central objective which I think the member for Skeena properly introduced which is the achievement of a full representative sampling of these ecological zones in a reasonable time period. That is the issue. That is what we want to achieve and no amount of phoney struggling with the rules should get in the way of that objective. I am sorry, I think our friends to our left are being badly misled in trying to divert this to some kind of phoney debate about what is possible or not possible in a votable motion on supply. It is one of the

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fundamental traditions that makes the parliamentary system work.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: On a point of order, the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Madam Speaker, the hon. member is arguing this point. He seems to be getting into a point of order on the question of the admissibility of the amendment, and so on. I know he is not directing his remarks specifically to that. I would like to refer him to Beau-chesne's sixth edition on page 257 and I quote citation 926 of that edition:
Formerly, the votable motions presented on allotted days were defined by Standing Order to be automatically motions of noconfidence. Following the recommendations of the Special Committee on Standing Orders and Procedure, and the Special Committee on the Reform of the House of Commons, these references have been omitted from the Standing Orders.
And citation 927 reads:
A motion on an allotted day, although not put forward as a votable motion, has been deemed, with unanimous consent, to have been carried unanimously.
Now, clearly these motions can be carried and they cannot, in those circumstances, be considered to be motions of confidence or else, when they had been carried, even unanimously, the government would have been out on its ear. The rules have changed and I ask the hon. member to recognize that fact.


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: Madam Speaker, the member is a distinguished member of the bar, which I am not, has practised at the bar for some years. He is a relatively new parliamentarian. I invite him to review parliamentary practice. I was not a member when that report, whatever one it was, was agreed to unanimously, but I can tell you that if he thinks simply by the passage of that particular rule or report we have changed the nature of the fundamental way in which Parliament operates, he is very much mistaken.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Why change the rules then?.


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: Why do we bother having votes on days of supply if-


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: What's the point of changing the rules. Don't bother me with rules, I have my own idea of Parliament.


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: I would think if you really want to give up, give up. I was here when we had most of supply on the floor of this House. If you really want to give up one of the important items left for an opposition,
to represent and to register on a regular basis, both by way of debate and vote, its opposition to current government practice or stewardship then that is a very large decision. I do not hear the leader of your party or the leader of the official opposition arguing that they want to give up that important and fundamental parliamentary instrument. So I think you had better go back to the drawing board if you think-


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The hon. member for Rosedale has, as he has said himself, been a member of this House for quite awhile and he should know that he should address the Chair.


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: I apologize, Madam Speaker. I guess in my enthusiasm of how important I feel it is to retain these particular fundamental parliamentary aspects that I would not want to see for the sake of some short-term or superficial game-


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: A point of order, the hon. member for Winnipeg Transcona.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Rosedale astounds me. He is entitled to have his own interpretation of how he thinks Parliament works and what the rules may have been before he left here in 1984, but the fact is that in 1985, and as is recorded right here in the annotated Standing Orders, says:
In 1985 the Standing Orders were further amended by removing
the no-confidence reference.
That happened in 1985. That did not not happen, it happened. The fact of the matter is that when opposition parties want to move motions that, in their judgment, are critical of the government, they are free to do so and the government is free to vote against them. In this case, we have moved something which is consistent with government policy and the government, instead of supporting the motion, has hidden behind the false and completely spurious claim that this is a motion of non-confidence. I have more confidence in the hon. member than that to think that he would get up and make an argument to the contrary. I have never seen such sophistry in my whole life.


SPEAKER'S RULING
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Maybe before we do resume debate we will take a second of the House's time to rule on the amendment which was presented by the hon. member a few minutes ago. We did look for some kind of a precedent and did not. I will
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have to rule this amendment out of order and I will refer the hon. member to Article 437 which says:
An amendment setting forth a proposition dealing with a matter which is foreign to the proposition involved in the main motion is not relevant and cannot be moved.
The main motion deals strictly with the environment.
I would also refer the hon. member to Article 482 which says:
On an allotted day during consideration of the business of supply, an amendment must not provide the basis for an entirely different debate than that proposed in the original motion.
That is exactly what we are getting into right now, so I will declare the amendment out of order and we will resume debate on this motion on the environment.
A point of order, the hon. member for Winnipeg Transcona.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, if I understand your ruling correctly, you are saying that it would be inappropriate for us to have an amendment which designates this as a matter of non-confidence because it is already not a matter of confidence. Is that how I am to understand your ruling, Madam Speaker, that-


An hon. member:: The amendment is out of order because it is not needed as the Standing Orders already provide for it.


Some hon. members:: Order, order!


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The reason which I have given the hon. member is that the amendment is not related directly to the main motion. He may want to reread Article 437 and I think it will make it very clear.
Resuming debate, the hon. member-on a point of order, the hon. member for Winnipeg Transcona.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, earlier Mr. Speaker refused to rule on a point of order that I made with respect to confidence and the nature of this motion. You have now made a ruling on an amendment which had to with the language of confidence, making it clear that this motion was not a motion of non-confidence. I therefore want to ask you, Madam Speaker, what your interpreta-
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tion is of the statement in the annotated Standing Orders on page 279 where it says:
In 1985 the Standing Orders were further amended by removing
the "no-confidence" reference - .
What does that mean, Madam Speaker? Perhaps you could tell us for the erudition of myself and the hon. member for Rosedale. Perhaps that means something entirely different from what it appears to say. If it does, I would like to know about it.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The article which the hon. member just read simply means that Standing Orders were amended and different words were removed. As far as whether or not this motion is a confidence motion, the government decides if a motion coming from the opposition is a confidence motion or not. At this time it seems to the Chair that the government has chosen to see it as a confidence motion.
With regard to the amendment moved by the hon. member, it is out of order.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Perhaps now someone from the government will get up and say why this is a matter of confidence according to them instead of according to some archaic view of parliament that has no relationship to the Standing Orders. If the government wants to make this a matter of confidence, perhaps the member for Rosedale could say why the passing of a motion in compliance with government policy is a matter of confidence as far as the government is concerned and stop hiding behind his interpretation of rules that no longer exist.


S. O. 81-NATIONAL PARK SYSTEM
David Samuel Horne MacDonald: Madam Speaker, I would be delighted to move to discuss the content of the motion because I think that is the essential issue here today. I would also be happy to indicate why we on this side of the House find difficulty in supporting the whole of this motion and that may be helpful to the member for Skeena, the member for Winnipeg Transcona and others on the opposite side.
We concur with the notion that we should take all necessary measures to complete the country's system of national parks. Clearly, as I said earlier, we have to gain a complete representation of the ecological zones and do that, I hope, by the end of the century. I would also say there are several reasons why we do not share the hon. member's proposition that we should set a figure as some

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kind of an absolute figure. I want to quote from one organization that the member for Skeena and I, and hopefully most other members, would take very seriously in this whole process and that is the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.
They do not advocate the use of any percentage formula for determining how much of a country's land and water area should be set aside for national parks, wilderness, or any other type of protected area. The ICUN is an international network of governments from more than 100 countries, together with 450 non-governmental organizations, scientists and other conservation experts whose goal is to promote the protection of the world's heritage resources.
This expert committee which was founded in 1948 considers it more important to focus its attention on developing a strict definition of what constitutes a national park and encouraging countries throughout the world to adhere to these national park criteria than on establishing some arbitrary formula. Since the mid 1960s the ICUN has urged all countries to adopt what they refer to as the "natural regions concept" to guide the development of their respective systems of national parks or equivalent reserves in a systematic manner.
The beauty of this scientific approach is that it clearly sets out the number of natural parks required for a complete system, provides a straighforward means of measuring progress toward this goal and ensures that when the national parks system is completed it will protect a comprehensive and representative sampling of the country's landscape and natural phenomena. Canada, along with the United States which has been moving on this as well, was one of the first countries in the world to adopt the ICUN approach for planning its network of national parks.
I want to say that if we start there, we have a very strong measure of agreement. I would also like to point out that in achieving the over-all objective, there are several major hurdles that we have to overcome. I want to mention two this afternoon. There has been almost no reference to these two which are fundamental to achieving the very goals that the member for Skeena and others fully support.
One is the whole notion of establishing a complete mapping inventory of the country. I want to quote Monte Hummel who in a press release of September 6 released a very important document. Members will recall that several weeks ago I held up the Endangered Spaces document as an important move by 100 voluntary agencies to mobilize hundreds of thousands of Canadians around achieving the very goals that everybody in this House supports. There have been some disparaging remarks about the commitment of the Minister of the Environment. I want to tell you what was said just last December by 40 conservation groups from across Canada, and I quote from their own press release:
-joined today in unanimously congratulating Environment Minister Lucien Bouchard for his pledge to complete the national parks system by the year 2000.
Now that does not sound like some kind of halfhearted, not quite sure, insufficient support. We have to be very careful about the extent to which we engage in some kind of partisan debate and weaken the kind of cross-party support that made the South Moresby motion possible. It was a very specific and a different context motion that was put, as members have been reminded here today. That is the kind of process we have to replicate.
Hummel made it very clear in September that if we are going to move specifically and practically in this area, certain things have to be done. I quote one paragraph of Hummel:
Right now 8 of the 12 provinces or territories have mapped their natural regions. But only 6 have set targets, i.e. clearly identified candidate protected areas for their natural regions. Only four jurisdictions are 50 per cent or more down the road to completing their plans, which means we likely have 150 to 200 more parks to create.
-most of those obviously being provincial.
Only two jurisdictions have obtained Cabinet approval for their park systems plans, and one of these is Quebec where there is currently a moratorium on the establishment of new parks. And no jurisdiction has committed itself to completing its parks system plan by the year 2000. In fact, no jurisdiction has attached any time limit to this task. I should emphasize, that this analysis is based on information provided to the WWF by the provinces and territories themselves.
Those are the facts of the situation. If we hope to really move ahead as a country, as a Parliament, all three parties together, we have to take the challenge of knowing exactly what we are about and urging the

various jurisdictions to follow through in having a complete blueprint, as is being urged by the endangered species campaign. It is incredibly important.
I want to read into the record the words of His Royal Highness Prince Phillip, who wrote the forward to this campaign, who is the honorary international president of the World Wildlife Fund. He wrote this with respect to this campaign and this country:
Canada has an almost unique opportunity to ensure that future generations will be able to see examples of the state their land was in before the rush for development and exploitation began. The task is to conserve a whole range of viable ecosystems and habitats, covering all the country's natural regions. It is also necessary to ensure that those human activities that impinge directly on the natural environment, such as forestry, farming and commercial fishing, adopt sound conservation practices.
That statement by His Royal Highness, again clearly states the challenge that faces us all. We are not operating in some kind of isolation. We are not in some kind of an ivory tower. We must work with others. We must, in the first instance, work with the provinces.
I am frankly amazed that we have not heard either from the NDP or the official opposition a clear acknowledgement that the provinces must be directly and helpfully involved.
The hon. member for Davenport made the remark in his statement that this government had completed projects initiated by his Liberal friends. Why was that? One reason was because we changed the approach. We were prepared to work with and not simply to move in unilaterally and get the kind of mix-up in delays and dilemmas that Kouchibouguac in New Brunswick resulted in and several others.
We want to see a realization of this plant and the minister, I think very realistically and methodically, laid out the five initial parks that he hopes can be a part of that package. I would say quite frankly that I hope that that is a minimum and not a maximum objective. If we are going to reach by the end of this decade those 39 zones and those 18 new parks, that strikes me more like two a year than one a year. To that extent, I would certainly support the hon. member for Skeena in seeing if we can reach that stage.
I want to say quite directly and simply that unless we acknowledge the realities of putting the park system together, knowing what we are doing, working with our
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closest partners, working with the major economic and social sectors across the country, we will achieve nothing. I hope that members on all sides of the House realize the importance of that.
I simply want to say in conclusion that the government is not in a position to move unilaterally to set aside 12 per cent of any province's lands and waters for wilderness protection or for national park purposes. The protection of wilderness is not solely a federal responsibility but one that must of necessity be shared with provincial governments and other jurisdictions.
It is hoped that by striving to complete the national park system within a reasonable time frame, such as by the year 2000, the federal government will encourage the provinces and territories to give similar priority to the completion of their respective systems of provincial and territorial parks, ecological reserves, wildlife areas and other categories of protected areas that they administer.
In my view, the completion of each jurisdiction's system of protected areas following the systematic approach that has long been advocated by the international union for the conservation of nature will contribute far more to the protection of this country's environment than simply the setting aside of some arbitrary figure, whether it is 12 per cent or any other and will achieve in the end the very results that the hon. member for Skeena and I believe all members of this House hope to achieve.


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, I am glad that the hon. member for Rosedale has moved away from the rather spurious argument that has been going on for a good chunk of the day about some kind of threat to the government. Frankly, I have been a great supporter of the Minister of the Environment until today. The speech he gave in this House related to the completion of the national parks system and the reasons upon which he did not want to consider the 12 per cent target were absolutely without foundation. I think the minister will have to deal with me and many members of this House on different grounds from this point on.
I would like to ask the member to respond because he raised a number of arguments that I think need to be fleshed out somewhat. In the document provided by the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee and others, which I referred to earlier today, to the minister when he took office a year ago, one of the points that is made is

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point number three on parks, and states: "By the reckoning of experts world wide the opportunity to complete the national network in Canada will all but vanish by the year 2000 as development and land-use commitments overtake our last frontiers." This concern was emphasized by the task force on national park establishment in its 1987 report to the federal environment minister entitled "Parks 2000".
The concern that I have, and the minister alluded to when the member was here, the four potential national parks north of sixty and one south of sixty leave 13 bioregions south of sixty with no representation whatsoever. A number of our bioregions in fact have more than one representation.
There are 34 national parks now. There are two national marine parks out of the 27 marine biophysical regions. I want to give one other quote to the member before he answers. That was given in 1960 by Alvin Hamilton who was the minister responsible for national parks. In his plea to Canadians, now 30 years ago, he said and I quote: "It is my feeling as minister in charge of parks, that it is about time all those millions of people in Canada who use the parks and love them, should band together and form themselves into a national parks association. How can a minister stand up against the pressures of commercial interests who want to use the parks for mining, forestry, for every kind of honky-tonk recreational device known to man unless the people who love these parks are prepared to band together and support the minister by getting the facts out across the country."
I suggest to the member for Rosedale that is precisely what is happening now across the country, but the government is not listening.
On the final point, that he must respond to in relation to the provinces, I have a very short quote again on Canada in a global context:
Between 1885 and 1929, Canada established 15 national parks.
But with the transfer of natural resources in western Canada to the
provinces in 1930, the national-parks program ground to a halt.
Only four parks were established in the next twenty years: Cape
Breton Highlands in 1936, Prince Edward Island in 1937, Fundy in
1948, and Terra Nova in 1957.
It is a situation that requires really serious national leadership and a response to those pressures that the minister must respond to from the provinces, the territories, the first nations and those who are here in Ottawa every day demanding of the government that there be no further movement on parks or ecological reserves, those who are the major developers in this country.
It is my view-and I think it is widely held in this countiy-that a very strong vote or a unanimous vote from this Parliament is the only way to give the tools necessary to the Minister of the Environment to deliver on this last opportunity to complete the national parks system.


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: Madam Speaker, I would have to say to the hon. member for Skeena that I am somewhat disappointed to hear his opening comments because he only has to think about the most recent example of South Moresby. If he wants to achieve the kind of unanimity and progress that I think he is looking for, there are ways of doing it, not by way of a motion that not only that has been put, but by the nature of the debate that I have listened to over the course of the last several hours. I simply say that as a piece of friendly advice.
I think that one has to balance off some of the more critical things that were said here today. Again, I repeat part of what came from the World Wildlife Fund on December 12 in reference to the Minister of the Environment:
The minister's historic commitment demonstrates clear federal
leadership in our campaign to protect Canadian wilderness areas.
I do not want to hold Mr. Hummel to that, but he said it not too long ago. I think it is an indication that he recognizes there is a serious attempt being made.
I would like to think that the member for Skeena, and others, recognize that and are prepared to work with it to make it happen. We are going to have to work together. If I can put it very bluntly the greatest problem in achieving this is not, in my view, back and forth across this floor. It is all over parts of the rest of the country, as the member knows only too well from his province of British Columbia, I think we have to develop a strategy.
What pleases me most about the Endangered Spaces campaign is that it puts most of its focus on Canadians. I have to say to the member that statistics are fine. Ninety-seven per cent may want to see the park system completed but I know that when the crunch comes-and it is going to mean some allocation of moneys and some
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reallocation of resources and it will likely affect some transition for people in traditional occupations-real issues are going to surface that are going to have to be dealt with, as the member knows only too well. I think we have to make sure that we make progress, that we get beyond the kind of bleak record that occurred between 1930 and the 1960s.
On that score I hope we can develop. Maybe today's debate can be a springboard into a real strategy. We only have this decade, in my view, to do it and we need to have a very clear cut strategy to make that happen.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Madam Speaker, in his speech the hon. member indicated that the government was unable to accept this motion because to do so would constitute a question of confidence in the government. There is a precedent that runs contrary to that.
On Friday, November 24, last year, in this House, the then hon. member for Oshawa, Mr. Broadbent, moved a motion concerning child poverty in Canada. That motion was moved on a supply day as the opposition motion on that day and at the end of debate on that day the motion was carried unanimously by the House.
The Minister of National Health and Welfare, who is here today, participated in that debate and supported the motion fully. I invite the hon. member for Rosedale to review the provisions of that day and come back to the House a little later and tell us that, in fact, the government agrees with this motion, the government does not regard it as a matter of confidence, and will adopt the motion so that the motion can be carried by the House.


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: Madam Speaker, if I may reply just briefly. I remember that day very well. I remember there were several things about it that were significantly different, not the least of which is that I believe the motion was put in such a way as it did not create a similar situation. I think we have had a frank discussion here. The minister has said it and I have repeated it with respect to the 12 per cent. This is not something that we would feel comfortable in adopting, both in terms of its principle and in terms of its reality particularly with respect to the way in which we are going
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to deal with the other key players which are the 10 provinces and two territories.
One has to be realistic about this. It is all well and good to try and take a sort of precedent, and that is all I would refer to it in this instance, and try to incorporate it as a valid objection. In this instance, I think it is mixing apples and oranges, quite frankly.


John Williston (Bud) Bird: Madam Speaker, I would like to add my comments in support of those expressed by the hon. member for Rosedale, that whether this is a confidence motion or whether it is not, I would vote against this motion on the basis of the commitment to a specific percentage of land and water resources of this country.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: No specifics.


John Williston (Bud) Bird: No. As a matter of fact I would like to read a paragraph from page 35 of the New Democratic Party document on the environment called "Towards a Sustainable Future", which I understand was authored by the hon. member for Skeena. It says, and I quote it in the context of my earlier words on sustainable development and the comprehensive approach we must take. He said in his document: A royal commission on our forests should be established by the federal government. A complete assessment of the effects of ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, acid precipitation, soil degradation and forestry should be included in the mandate of such a royal commission.
Other issues that should be addressed include the designation of protection for ancient forests and watersheds, the most appropriate technologies for harvesting, the impacts of monocultural replanning, alternatives to chemical pesticides and the effects of harvesting methods and existing plant and animal species to name some of the major issues identified.
He went on to recommend that a royal commission be established and that the forestry company be required by law to practice sustainable forest management.
This motion is the second that I can recall in the past few months that the hon. member for Skeena has put in an effort to Put a band-aid solution to the whole environmental question. He came up with a green stamp policy to move us toward sustainable development when in fact he knows that we spent months in our environ-

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ment committee talking about carbon taxes, energy taxes and all kinds of incentives and disincentives toward sustainable development.
I just believe that he is trying as usual for a silver bullet that is not going to fix the environment.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: The period for questions and comments is now over. Resuming debate.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: On a point of order, Madam Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: On a point of order, the hon. member for Winnipeg Transcona.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, the reason the member for Rosedale did not rise to say anything in response is because the member who rose allegedly on a question or comment having to do with what the member for Rosedale said spent the entire time talking about what the member for Skeena said, who is not the member who had the floor.
I remind Madam Speaker that the interpretation given to the question and comment procedure was that whenever there was a person or a member rising of a party other than the party of the speaker who was speaking prior to the question and comment period, that that person should be recognized, rather than a member of the speaker's own party, which was not observed in this case.
It is on this point of order that I want to say that I regret that I did not have the opportunity to point out to the member for Rosedale that the book he quoted, Endangered Spaces, has a whole chapter devoted to what Parliament did with respect to South Moresby, the kind of thing that he has prevented happening here today.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I would like to say one thing to the hon. member. There was one member of each party recognized in that round of questions and comments. He might remember as well that his colleague, the hon. member for Skeena, who was the first one to be recognized after the speech of the hon. member for Rosedale, had an intervention that lasted close to six minutes of the ten minutes, so there were three short interventions from one member for each party. I think that this was as fair as could be.


Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview-Greenwood):: Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise here today in support of this
motion. I would like to remind the House and the people of Canada what the motion is all about because it seems to me that we have spent so much time on the process of this House today that the people of Canada must wonder what we are doing here.
The opposition motion proposed by the member for Skeena reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should move to complete the national park system (land and marine) by the year 2000 and should implement the recommendation of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Report) that Canada protect at least 12 per cent of land and marine zones.
What has absolutely boggled my mind today is the fact that for the last year this House has been working almost unanimously on this issue called the environment. The Minister of the Environment I think has done a good job in working with all members of this House to try and make sure that the objectives which we all share are met. I naturally want to cite one very specific example that happened in my riding last September, Our World, the summit on the environment where we had over 40,000 people talk about all issues related to the environment. It was a week long event.
I also want to remind the House that not only did the minister speak but also the member for Fredericton-York-Sunbury came and spoke. Everyone was invited. All parties participated and it was a great success. I do not remember at that time one speaker not referring to the Brundtland Commission as kind of the international guideline. The Prime Minister has stated repeatedly that the Brundtland Commission is the international guideline.
What concerns me about today's debate is that this will be the first government in the world to vote against the Brundtland Commission Report. I think that is a dangerous precedent because if there is one system related to the environment that we are all proud of as Canadians, it is our national parks and wildlife system. No one here is stating that the system is perfect but it is the one are where we can keep the momentum going. It is the one area where we have got a leg up not only in terms of our national pride but our international pride. When people think of Canada they do not think of our smoggy cities, they think about our parks and our rivers and our lakes and our mountains.

To have a precedent set today where the government is voting against such a basic motion is very dangerous. I think it will send the wrong signal to Canadians, that all of a sudden the lead House in this country, the national Chamber, is breaking down on an issue where we all are united. I have not been in this House as long as the member for Rosedale who also is my member of Parliament and I have great respect for him. But there has got to be a way to send the united signal to the people of Canada. I think that had better be done by Monday.
We all know that the Brundtland Commission has been supported by nearly every government in the world. The recommendation that our national park system today be complete by the year 2000 by the Brundtland standard is not an unrealistic objective. It is not an unrealistic objective because this is the one issue where Canadians are ahead of us politicians.
There are children watching in schools today who are going to be confused because they are going to see us wrangling over procedure. They are going to see the government against the Brundtland Commission. We are seemingly for national park completion alone. We know that is not the case. We know that the Minister of the Environment is for completion. I think that they have to take the leap and get on with this.
If we cannot look after and maintain our parks and wildlife areas, the questions that come to my mind are: Are we going to break down on the Brundtland Commission guidelines when it comes to how we are going to maintain our cities? How are we going to make them more liveable? What are we going to do when we need new national standards for automobile emissions, when we need new standards for waste and water treatment? Are we going to take the same approach, where all of a sudden we are going to find ways of maybe not following the Brundtland Commission guidelines? What is going to happen to our attitude toward sustainable farming and so on?
We have already seen another example in Bill C-29 respecting the Forestry Act where we have endorsed the Brundtland Commission. We also see many examples across the country where provinces are not living up to it.
When the member for Rosedale talks about the fact that these relationships are municipal and they are
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provincial, I agree with him, but it is up to this Chamber to take the lead. This Chamber leads not only Canada but is our voice abroad. It is a bad thing for us to send out a signal that we are not trying to achieve the international standard.
The issue of the environment has always been an issue on which I have taken an absolutely non-partisan approach. I think most members in this House know that I have taken that approach from day one. This is the one area where we must all work together. Let us not disappoint the people of Canada today and let us figure out a way, between now and Monday, that we can get ourselves back on track and make sure we meet the recommendations of the Brundtland Commission.


John Williston (Bud) Bird: Madam Speaker, I would like to acknowledge the significant contribution of the hon. member who has just spoken to environmental awareness through the organizational efforts he put into the conference Our World in Toronto last year. I was pleased to be invited to speak on that occasion and I spoke on the subject of forestry and on the concepts of integrated management and sustainable development as they pertain to forestry.
I believe that we are united in our concern for the environment and in our desire to ensure that environmental imperatives permeate all the things we do and decisions we make in this government and in the affairs of this nation. I certainly am committed firmly in that direction.
What I am concerned about and what I would not support at this stage, as I have indicated in respect of this motion, is the absolutism of one particular resolution that identifies 12 per cent, 15 per cent or 8 per cent of our land. As the hon. member for Rosedale said, we are close to agreement on the objectives of this resolution. The Minister of the Environment said, on January 22, 1990:
- our goal must be to complete the network of our parks by the year 2000.
I have instructed my officials to work on a plan to include in the global action plan of the government a strategy to complete this network by the year 2000, with a clear commitment for the establishment of a certain number of parks within the next five years.
There is no question that we are going in the same direction.

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However, I am not sure the hon. member who has just addressed the House was in the House when I spoke earlier this afternoon and made reference to the testimony of the deans of forestry of three of Canada's universities given at our subcommittee on forestry this week. In this testimony we were cautioned against quick fixes to sustainable development, against management by constraint instead of management by planning, by direction and by comprehensive, integrated, multiple use approaches to our environment. That is the reason I would not support this motion, and I would ask the hon. member if he would undertake to read that testimony. Hon. members of the New Democratic Party did not make that undertaking. I hope they will read the testimony because they will find in it an approach to sustainable development and an approach to the implementation of the principles of the Brundtland Report whereby we adopt its principles in a progressive, constructive and achievable manner, not just blindly as wild statements of principle for which we are not responsible.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Madam Speaker, if I can respond to that, I think we are forgetting that the report of the Brundtland Commission was not some document basically dreamt up in the middle of the night which was recommending quick fixes. This is something on which some of the best and the brightest in the world have been working for years.
I am not trying to argue with the professors of forestry from New Brunswick. I will read their testimony. I guess my point is a communications point. There is an international perception that the Brundtland Commission is a respected credo. What is happening here today is a perceptual problem. The world recognizes that document as one on which we all must work to set standards and guidelines. The problem that we have today is that the Government of Canada is going to be voting against a Brundtland Commission guideline that has substance.
I know the hon. member is not against sustainable development, but this is going to make a very tough sell to not only the people of Canada but to the rest of the world, and that was my point.


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, I appreciate the remarks of the member who has just spoken. Before asking the question, I would just like to read the motion again so that we all have it clear in our minds:
That, in the opinion of this House,-
That is what we are seeking through a vote in this House. It is not binding on the government. It is in the opinion of the House. It continues:
-	the government should move to complete the national park system (land and marine) by the year 2000 -
This is the key wording on the 12 per cent:
-	and should implement the recommendation of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Report) that Canada protect at least 12 per cent of land and marine zones.
There is no direct time deadline. We are simply seeking the opinion of the House to tell Canadians. That is why I worded it so carefully. I did not want to get into what everyone now claims as some kind of silver bullet and all these other things.
Referring to the point the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood was just making, in the concluding two articles of Chapter 6 of the Brundtland report there are these two points:
Since 1970 the networks have expanded in extent by more than 80 per cent, around two-thirds of which are in the Third World. That is where the growth on protected lands are. But a great deal more remains to be done; a consensus of professional opinions suggests that the total expanse of protected areas needs to be at least tripled if it is to constitute a representative sample of earth's ecosystems.
That is true of our country, as with most. This is really the key wording:
There is still time to save species and their ecosystems. It is an indispensable prerequisite for sustainable development. Our failure to do so will not be forgiven by future generations.
The Brundtland committee heard representatives from much of the world, the Third World as well as the developed world. Scientific opinion or consensus came to this conclusion and the entire body says that setting aside these areas is an indispensable prerequisite for sustainable development.
I would just like to hear, further on your remarks, why it is so important when there is not a deadline on the 12 per cent, but that is the international scientific consensus, and why it would be so wrong, for whatever reasons, for this Chamber to send out the wrong signal on turning down the fundamental building block of the Brundtland commission?
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Dennis Joseph Mills: Madam Speaker, I want to say that I am a late comer to this issue on the environment and that I respect the substantive knowledge of the member on this issue.
I want to speak directly about the issue related to my own riding of Broadview-Greenwood. The hon. member for Rosedale is my neighbour. The dirtiest and most polluted river in Canada flows through the middle of my riding. The Don Valley is 1,500 acres of wasted land right now in a city where 2.5 million people cannot even go for a walk. It has been lack of political will. It has been a lack of co-ordination of municipal, provincial and national government to work together.
The very thing that makes me nervous about what is happening today is that that national will we seem to have been galvanizing here in the last few months on this issue is going to break down.
I say this in a very self-serving way because it is the most polluted river in Canada and I do not want to see a step backward. If I get a feeling that the government is fudging on something that is easy in comparison to some of the more difficult problems like a Don River or a Don Valley, then I think it may be the beginning. Part of this game, and the hon. member for Rosedale said it, is mobilization or momentum. We cannot lose that at all. We must keep it up.


Mr. Flis:: Madam Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the intervention of the hon. member for Broadview- Greenwood. He said that he was a latecomer. I wish we had more latecomers like him, especially on this topic.
He referred to the World Summit on the Environment in his area last fall. I attended that summit. What I was impressed with was the number of young Canadians out of the 40,000 who were there. If we want to save this planet I think we have to start changing people's attitudes, and what better way than to change the attitudes of the young users of this planet. I was very pleased. I would like to congratulate the hon. member for his leadership on the environment.
My question to the hon. member is: Has he considered taking that model and promoting it to other countries and other continents? I think that is the best way. If we can influence 40,000 people within a one-week summit, perhaps we have an ambassador here who can maybe
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save this planet. Has he considered moving that idea across the world?


Dennis Joseph Mills: I would like to thank the hon. member for Parkdale-High Park for his generous comments.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: If I may, I was advised at the start of this afternoon's proceedings that there would be some members who would only use 10 minutes and 5 minutes for questions and comments; in other words that they would share the 20-minute period. The hon. member did not mention that when he started his speech.
I realize that I must really put an end to this period of questions and comments, to be fair to every one, and recognize the hon. member for Halifax for her 10 minutes, followed by a period of 5 minutes of questions and comments.


Mary Catherine Clancy: Madam Speaker, I rise this afternoon in very strong support of this motion, in support of the comments and statements made by my colleague for Broadview-Greenwood, in support of the Brundtland report generally, and in support of a future for our country, for our children and for the world.
Protecting and preserving our environment is clearly the idea whose time has come. My colleague, the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood, said that he has recently come to the "apostleship" of the environment, and, as my colleague for Parkdale-High Park said, I welcome him with delight to that circle. A number of us who for a long time struggled in vain on the question of the environment can only look upon the developments over the last several years with an incredible relief and an incredible happiness. For too long a time, for the last 20 years in this country, small groups had been crying out as voices in the wilderness and receiving little or no response as rivers, such as the hon. member mentioned, became polluted to the point where people could not walk along their banks.
My own harbour in the magnificent city of Halifax became a sink hole and an open sewer. The beautiful harbour of one of the most picturesque villages in eastern Canada, Mahone Bay, was a place where people went for years in the summer to look at the water, to swim in the not terribly warm waters of the Atlantic, and to enjoy the marvellous hospitality on the south shore of Nova Scotia. Now when we walk along the beaches and along the coast at Mahone Bay, we are likely to see

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broken syringes, medical waste and other detritus of our over-industrialized society.
With the exception of perhaps some industries which still seem to have difficulty balancing goals of profit with the objective of preserving the planet, almost everyone now pays at least lip service to environmental protection. Almost everyone realizes the acceptance and the action of environmental plans and environmentally friendly sustainable development as we come to the end of the 20th century and head into the 21st.
Unhappily for many, the response is just lip service. It is necessary to a degree, in wondering why it is that the government does not support this resolution, to examine critically what the government has done to meet our collective objective for this planet. Unfortunately it is easier to list what the government has failed to do rather than what it has done.
The environment, the health of Canadians and the future of our children have become catch phrases, but we still see a failure to regulate and to stop those industries that are totally hazardous and totally frightening to those of us who are fully committed to an environmentally safe Canada and an environmentally safe world.
We look at the megacorporations and we look sadly at our neighbour to the south, the United States. We see that our government still does nothing in a really meaningful way to say to the megacorporations that pollute and to say to our neighbours to the south: you must stop this because it is due to your industries that the salmon no longer swim in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick rivers in the great numbers that they used to. It is due to acid rain and other pollutants that the rivers in southern Nova Scotia contain much of the same material that your local diy-cleaner uses to clean your overcoat.
It is due to an inability to talk tough to polluters on a national and an international level that a country, as one of my colleagues mentioned earlier, which is recognized world wide as a place of mountains, valleys, rivers, prairies and an expanding northland is becoming nothing more than a memory, nothing more than a poster that we can hang on our walls, but we cannot see any more when we look out our windows.
When we come here to Ottawa, many of us from across the country, and we see the beauty of this city, we think as well of the beauty in our own cities. There has to be a fear that comes with it when we look at the changes in the environment, when we look at the changes in our weather patterns.
Just this past week eastern Canada was hit with a bizarre storm; winds higher than had been experienced in years; the waters of the harbour polluted as they are coming farther in and swamping restaurants on the harbourfront; winds so high that scaffolding was blown off buildings and sent down city streets; newsreels of people having to hold on to lamp posts and to car door handles to keep from being blown away; and a huge amount of snow, much more than normally falls in two or three snowstorms in the Halifax area.
Last summer we experienced weeks and weeks and weeks in the Atlantic area of 90 degree plus temperature and 98 degree plus humidity. This is something that we are not used to in our part of the world. We know that those of you who have to suffer in central Canada have to put up with that. It is not part of our climate. It is not part of our climatic history, and it worries us because we know that again this is part of the greenhouse effect, the warming of the planet, the failure of governments down through the years to do something significant to stem the tide of environmental disaster.
Some months ago at an international meeting of women politicians I was fortunate enough to meet former Prime Minister Brundtland. Listening to her incredible commitment to environmental protection and environmental regulation and listening to those who support her and follow her in the various European and African countries, I and a number of colleagues both Canadian and American were saddened that in spite of this increased awareness for the environment we still have not taken that awareness and turned it into concrete action.
I look again at the resolution and at what it says. It says that in 10 years, in the opinion of this House, the government should complete or move to complete the national park system, land and marine, and should implement the recommendation of the Brundtland
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report that Canada protect at least 12 per cent of land and marine zones.
In a country the size of ours with beauty and resources, land and marine, is it so much to ask that the government do this over the next 10 years? Is it so much to ask that we preserve the heritage for ourselves, for our children and for the generations to come? Is it so much to ask that we ensure through action of this kind that will show to the rest of the world that Canada is serious, that Canada is moving and that Canada will take nothing less than strong environmental controls to ensure our future?
Is it so much to ask that we ensure that this country is not a memory, that its beauty is not left to the books in our libraries and the posters on our walls, but that its beauty from Atlantic to Pacific, from north to south, in all of the provinces and territories, is one that we will enjoy ourselves and preserve for future generations?
I do not think it is so much to ask. My colleagues on this side of the House do not think it is so much to ask. I know that in their hearts my colleagues on the other side of the House do not think it is so much to ask. This is not a partisan issue. This is an issue that involves all of us, our futures, and the future of Canadians for hundreds of years to come. It is not a lot to ask and it is not a lot to give.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Questions and comments. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Terrebonne.
[ Translation [
Jean-Marc Robitaille (Terrebonne): Madam Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak to the motion presented by the hon. member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton).
The motion concerns the environment which, as the hon. member is well aware, is one of the top priorities on the government's agenda.
As you know, Madam Speaker, in the Speech from the Throne, the government made a commitment to consolidate the environmental assessment review process. It is not a commitment to be taken lightly.
All levels of government, industry and Canadians across the country will have to learn to live according to new rules. Canada was built by people who counted on the abundance of its natural resources, and now, and this
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government fully intends to do so, we must find new ways to make sustainable development a reality.
The environmental assessment review process is a basic component of the new type of sustainable economy to which Canadian society must aspire. It is a complex and controversial issue, but we will get there, Madam Speaker.
At this point, I would like to comment on the second part of the motion presented by the hon. member for Skeena. Madam Speaker, the hon. member twice surprised me with his apparent failure to understand this question.
First, he gave us a simplistic interpretation of the Brundtland Commission's recommendation to protect 12 per cent of the total area of this planet.
Second, Madam Speaker, he failed to understand the role of our national parks in protecting the Canadian environment. As his party's environment critic, the hon. member for Skeena should be better informed. And in addition to being environment critic, he also represents a riding that includes the National Park Reserve of South Moresby-


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: On a point of order, the hon. member for Skeena.


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, there is a rule in this House regarding the reading of speeches, and I am quite confident the member has neither read the Brundtland report nor wrote the speech. Perhaps he would like to comment on that.


Mr. Robitaille:: Madam Speaker, I shall, if I may, continue my speech. As for the Brundtland report, I think that if the hon. member gives me a chance to continue my speech, he will find out how much I do know about this report.
Madam Speaker, in addition to being environment critic, the hon. member represents a riding that includes the National Park Reserve of South Moresby. You are, of course, aware that the region is one of the most beautiful on this earth. The government made it a national park reserve because it is deeply committed to protecting those national regions that are typical of Canada.

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The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: On a point of order, the hon. member for Skeena.


James Ross Fulton: I regret breaking into the member's speech, but after his earlier remarks I think I have a responsibility to do so. South Moresby is not a national park. It is a national park reserve. For someone who claims to be so up on all the facts in relation to parks, perhaps he should be aware of that.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I think the hon. member knows that that is not a point of order. He may wish to make some comments after the hon. member's speech. The hon. member for Terrebonne.


Jean-Marc Robitaille: Madam Speaker, I greatly appreciate the interest shown by the hon. member for Skeena in my speech.
The South Moresby area enjoys protected status because my government, the government I represent, acted to give it that status, and it did so with the unanimous support of the House of Commons.
The hon. member for Skeena knows that creating a national park is not an easy process. He knows that we cannot arbitrarily decide to create a national park. The federal government has to work together with provincial and territorial authorities, native people, municipalities and the general public. The federal government cannot simply announce it is going to create a national park, expropriate property and do as it likes. The Liberals did with Mirabel, but not this government.
The hon. member for Skeena knows that perfecly well, and South Moresby is a case in point, Madam Speaker.
Discussions with the Government of British Columbia were very arduous, and negotiations are continuing with the Haida to determine how Environment Canada will be able to work together with them and with the residents of the Queen Charlotte Islands to make this national park reserve a place where Canadians and other citizens of this planet will be able to acquire an appreciation and understanding of the magic of this extraordinary site. That is the point I wanted to make, Madam Speaker.
It is true that the Brundtland Commission recommended tripling the land area currently enjoying protected status, which is about 4 per cent. As part of a campaign for the preservation of endangered spaces, the World Wildlife Fund has asked that a network covering at least 12 per cent of Canadian territory be given protected status. To reach this goal, federal, provincial, territorial and local authorities must complete the networks of parks, wildlife reserves and protected areas. When approaching an issue of this magnitude, Madam Speaker, the federal government cannot, in the nineties, go it alone and act unilaterally.
Together with the provinces and the territories, the Canadian government now protects nearly 7 per cent of our magnificent territory. The 12 per cent objective is indeed a laudable one, but in fact, this figure is entirely arbitrary. Hon. members will agree, I am sure, that the Canadian government should never act arbitrarily, whatever the issue may be, and that includes protecting Canada's magnificent natural sites.
In any case, arbitrarily preserving 12 per cent of this vast country of ours will not achieve the objective targeted by the Brundtland Commission's recommendation, nor will it meet the objectives set by the World Wildlife Fund in its campaign to protect endangered spaces.
Madam Speaker, to protect appropriate areas in our environment, we must proceed systematically. The Canadian government has opted for a systematic plan to preserve representative samples of Canada's 39 bio-regions, and the Minister of the Environment hopes the national parks network will be ready by the year 2000. This means, Madam Speaker, that we must create 18 new national parks, since 18 of our country's bio-regions have yet to be represented within our national parks network.
The choice of areas to be protected also depends on the habitat requirements of endangered species. For instance, if we were to make 50 per cent of the Arctic a natural reserve, thus meeting the 12 per cent objective, we would not be doing much to save the belugas in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence.
The challenge is enormous, Madam Speaker, and the hon. member for Skeena is not unaware of the difficulties either; he knows the problems raised by protecting South Moresby. As I said, Madam Speaker, the federal government cannot just decide that this land is a park and then expropriate or remove the people who live

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there or earn their living on it. We had examples of that with previous governments. Our government does not operate that way.
We must proceed as partners. To properly safeguard our territory, we must establish partnerships and reach consensus with all levels of government and with the people. That is exactly what this government is doing, Madam Speaker, for South Moresby Park, for the Prairies Park, for the Bruce Peninsula Park. It is acting rationally and systematically to reach its objective of protecting a part of every natural region in Canada, not an arbitrary objective of 12 per cent of the national territory.
Once the various national, provincial and territorial parks and wilderness areas are completed, as much as 12 per cent of the Canadian territory may become protected areas. It may be more, it may be less, but it will not be simply an arbitrary protection of 12 per cent of the territory.
Under the World Wilderness Funds threatened natural site campaign, Canada is being asked to set aside at least 12 per cent of its land and water to create federal, provincial and territorial park systems and other protected areas. This campaign however does not insist on this arbitrary figure of 12 per cent, but on the representation of all natural regions within these protected area systems. The media have jumped on this 12 per cent figure because it is impressive. If, as I indicated earlier, we manage to protect 50 per cent of the arctic territoiy, we would have reached our 12 per cent objective. But would the essential area which must be protected throughout Canada would indeed be protected? Should the 12 per cent figure be set as an objective for the principle only of it or for what it really means?


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Questions or comments? The hon. member for Skeena.


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, I am interested in asking the member a question because he describes my interpretation of the Brundtland Report as simplistic and that I am unaware of the role of national parks.
I would like to ask the member a very simple question. What percentage of the province of Quebec is national parks and how many are there in the province of Quebec?


Jean-Marc Robitaille: Madam Speaker, I could not tell you just how many national parks there are in the province of Quebec. I do not know and I have no way of finding out. On the other hand, I suppose I could tell you that there are probably not enough. I may have offended the Hon. Member when I said that his interpretation of the Brundtland Report was rather simplistic, but I repeat what I said in my remarks: If we are satisfied with seeking the 12 per cent objective as a matter of principle, I am afraid we are missing the boat.
There are protected areas and national parks and we should protect 12 per cent of the territory, but we must do so in an orderly fashion following a sound assessment and not simply as a reaction or in an haphazard. I understand the enthousiasm and vigor which with the Hon. Member for Skeena defended his motion, but it is necessary to understand that we cannot always do things in reaction to events as they occur. I suggest it is important to understand the deep significance of the 12 per cent objective which does not mean that 12 per cent of the Canadian territory will be protected for the principle of it. There are particular areas to be protected. There are natural habitats to be protected. To this extent, I feel it is quite justified to carry out a good assessment of the sites and territories to be protected in order to make the right decisions for our future generations.


James Ross Fulton: The hon. member perhaps would be interested to learn that there are three national parks in the province of Quebec. They comprise 935 square kilometres which is only four-tenths of 1 per cent of the land mass of the province of Quebec. A poor Third World country such as Tanzania has 17 per cent of its land base set aside in national parks.
The member is quibbling over the 12 per cent, whether that is too high or too low. He seems to be arguing that it is significantly too high. I think anyone who was listening to his remarks would assume that. The fact of the matter is the 12 per cent was achieved through international consensus, from scientists from around the world who studied what kind of biophysical mass, either land, marine or atmospheric, is required for the protection of endemic, indigenous, migratory and pelagic species. These are scientific figures that are being used. The

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member did not know how many parks there are in his own province, what size they constitute, and he is arguing that a 12 per cent figure is too high.
Let me ask the member a very simple question that he should be able to answer for his constituents and for all Canadians. Does he or does he not support and endorse the fundamental recommendations of the Brundtland report, which his own leader, the Prime Minister did before the United Nations? He endorsed and adopted the recommendations of the Brundtland report before the United Nations. Will the member rise in the House and do the same thing today?


Jean-Marc Robitaille: Madam Speaker, I want to let the hon. member for Skeena know that I am not at all ashamed of not knowing everything. Madam Speaker, good for the member for Skeena if he has all the information, because personally, if I am asked a question for which I lack information, I feel completely at ease to come right out and say so.
When the hon. member for Skeena refers to the fact that I seem to be saying in my statement that 12 per cent is too much, or interpreting it that way, Madam Speaker, I did not say that 12 per cent is too much! I repeat what I said before. As part of a campaign to save endangered natural sites, the World Wildlife Fund requests that Canada safeguard at least 12 per cent of its land and water by completing the system of parks and other protected areas at the federal, provincial and territorial levels.
However, Madam Speaker, the campaign does not necessarily favour the goal of 12 per cent but wants every natural region to be represented among the areas protected. At the end of my speech, I stated clearly that when the system is complete, we may have more than 12 per cent, we may have less. But until then, obviously we will go ahead. An evaluation is now being done. I understand the eagerness of the hon. member for Skeena, I know that he cares about this subject, I know that the hon. member for Skeena is all caught up in it. I understand all that. But we cannot always react that way and say such things without first doing a good assessment to find out what areas should be protected.
If the Hon. Member for Skeena choses to interpret my remarks as though I stated that 12 per cent is too much, then I would simply refer him to my comments and tell him I am not saying it is too much. All I am saying is that before talking in terms of 12 per cent I think we should take the time to make the necessary evaluations and refrain from prescribing 12 per cent just for the sake of doing that. I said so. Protect half the Arctic lands and you will have your 12 per cent. But is that really in keeping with the findings of the Brundtland Report? I am not sure.
Madam Speaker, this is why I say again that the Hon. Member for Skeena's interpretation of the Brundtland Report is very simplistic.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: On a question, the hon. member for Skeena.


James Ross Fulton: The member seems to have slipped back again without answering a very fundamental question. He has now indicated that he is a great student, a great scholar of the Brundtland report and that I do not know much about it. That being the case, it could well be.
I have a very simple question to ask, since he is such a erudite scholar on the matter, does he or does he not endorse the Brundtland report?


Jean-Marc Robitaille: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member may think I tried to avoid answering his question, but the fact is that if I did not quite respond as he was expecting it does not mean that the answer I did give is meaningless. Again I would suggest he is free to interpret it as he sees fit.
I want to repeat what I said earlier, Madam Speaker. Stating that we must protect 12 per cent of the territory is a valid objective in itself. As I said before, if we were to protect half the Arctic lands that would account for 12 per cent of the territory, but is that really the objective?
Madam Speaker, I think the issue is too important to pin it down to a figure of 12 per cent. As I see it, this percentage stems from a basic principle which we uphold and which the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bouchard) so staunchly defends.
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The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: There is still a minute and a half left. The hon. member for Hamilton West.


Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Madam Speaker, I will make my question very short. The member who just spoke pointed out that this matter was close to the heart of the NDP hon. member and that he could understand his passion.
I think the hon. member should understand that an issue of this importance must be close to our collective hearts. Our environment and all the issues concerned are important to all of us here in the House of Commons and across this country. The member said that we should not act arbitrarily. Yet the definition of "arbitrary" is "based on random choice". It is not a random choice.
I point out to the fellow member that it is a choice being made to protect at least 12 per cent of land and marine zones. There is nothing arbitrary about that figure.
Therefore, I also ask the question: Does he, or does he not support the Brundtland report?


Jean-Marc Robitaille: Madam Speaker, when the hon. member referred to my use of the word "arbitrary", that we must not act arbitrarily, I made it clear at the time that it was important, that you don't expropriate people this way. You don't say: We are going to create a park, get out, your property is expropriated!
The Liberals did that, Madam Speaker, in the case of Mirabel, and we saw what happens when a government acts arbitrarily.
In my speech, Madam Speaker, I made it clear that it was important to negotiate with various levels of government and with the general public. It is important to have a consensus. You don't act arbitrarily and say: 12 per cent, that is where we want it, so get out! You can't do that.
As for the Brundtland Commission, obviously my government and I support the Brundland report.


Mr. David Walker (Winnipeg North Centre):: Madam Speaker, I wish to bring to the attention of the House some of the concerns that have been raised in western Canada. In many ways, the debate reminded me of when I was a university teacher listening to a number of
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disgruntled students giving a bad presentation. My job was to come in at the end of a seminar and try to bring some common sense to it.
Sometimes the west seems so far away that people wonder: Who are these guys from the west? They seem to be very moral and very upright. They really understand the environment and there is a lot of passion in their voices. Perhaps they stand for what is right?
The World Wildlife Federation described the prairies as the most altered environment in the world. If you are looking down at the prairies, what do you see? One of the biggest alterations in the environment is a huge dam in northern Manitoba.
One of the legacies left to us by the provincial NDP, which is somehow or other never mentioned in this federal House, is that Manitoba Hydro Dam. If you look at the devastation of Indian reserves, the devastation of the environment, mercury poisoning, the loss of fishing industry, the lack of economy, the ruination of trapping lines, you say: "Was that the federal government? Was that the big bad federal Liberals they talked about for years?" No, no, that is the NDP. But do they mention it? No, they have forgotten about that.
These guys in the NDP like to use the Brundtland Commission or some other report as a benchmark. Well, the benchmark is not what you read, it is what you do. These guys have done things wrong time and time again in the west and they come in here, like old gun slingers and say: "Let's go shoot the Tories". Well, Tories are such easy targets, anybody can hit the Tories. I will join in with the gang in a few minutes because they are such easy targets.
The real problem in dealing with the environment in the west is coming to grips with the fact that we are making one decision after another the same way as we did before. As politicians we all love to talk about the environment because it is such an easy topic. We all know that the public opinion polls tell us that our voters are concerned about it, but let us get down to some concrete points in which this government could have made a difference.
For example, let's talk about the Centre for Sustainable Development. The Centre for Sustainable Development was announced by the Prime Minister as an extension of the Brundtland Commission in the middle of the 1988 federal election. We are still waiting in Winnipeg. In fact, we have waited so long that even our mayor, who loves the Tories, has been forced to write to the Prime Minister asking, "Where is the centre?".

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When you can get our mayor involved after all of these years, and taking on this government, then you know you have reached a crisis. So we have the city of Winnipeg being disappointed one more time in one more way. However, it is more than just Winnipeg, the whole country is disappointed because we need to get on with the research and development promised by this government. Even if the government does go ahead, before it has started, it has announced major cut-backs in this centre's budget.
The second issue in which the government could have made a difference is the Rafferty-Alameda dam project. Here people are opposing the dam, not just because the dam project is bad, but because there is a certain process at stake, namely, that we must take the environment seriously before we alter it. This government has decided that it will build the dam to help its Saskatchewan Tory friends. The government will set it up, and then maybe do an environmental assessment. Well, the government has had to be dragged through the courts not once but twice. Instead of making a statement at the outset that "We understand the environmental concerns in the west and throughout this country and this dam project, although a small project tucked away on the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border, we think it important enough to stop and say let's think about what we are doing". No, all the government wanted to do was make a deal and arrange a payoff.
Those are two past decisions. Hopefully, the Centre for Sustainable Development is not entirely past, but those are decisions where we say the government is wrong. Let us take a look at what is taking place in this country right now and set out a new agenda. For example, Manitoba Hydro again wants to build a dam. It has lots of international buyers. Throughout the United States, different states want more hydro-electricity from Manitoba and the Ontario government would like to be a big purchaser. There are many environmental issues. Let us not do the same thing as we did the last time. Let us not sell off the reserves of native peoples in the hope of making some money for the Manitoba economy. Let us make sure that as the power lines are constructed we understand the environmental fallout. And we must also
make sure that we understand that there are interprovincial trade issues here and that the federal government does not nap its way through the planning stages but stands up and says: "These are the benchmarks that we will use to make sure this project is environmentally sound".
Another issue facing western Canada is the development of the pulp and paper industry. We have large development proposals in both Manitoba and Alberta. Although these projects are more environmentally sound than the ones put forward in other generations, they are still very, very susceptible to damaging the environment. Again, the federal government has been ducking the issue. It has been talking to people in the Government of Alberta about whether it is federal or provincial jurisdiction. It has been ignoring the issue in northern Manitoba. The fact is that when we talk about having a strong national government, we are not necessarily looking for money. What we are looking for is the establishment of ideals and principles that will make it easier for us to develop our country on sound environmental principles. In these cases, where is the federal government?
Next there is the issue of agriculture. The Minister of Agriculture pays great attention when we ask him in the House of Commons about his "Growing Together" paper or about subsidies to farmers. When has he ever taken the initiative on environmental issues? One of the great threats to our agricultural industry is the consumption of chemicals for decades on the prairies which is eroding the quality of the soil and the quality of the agricultural community.
It is not for us as politicians to tell the farmers what to do, because farmers are very sensitive about their farming habits. But, it is also for us to show leadership and say: "Please start talking about the environmental crisis on which we are on the verge, lest we have to come to you with new regulations". The Minister of Agriculture refused to discuss that in his "Growing Together" paper and has refused to raise it with farming groups. Some day in the future we are going to be in the middle of a crisis, as we have been in every other sector of the economy. We will find ourselves endangered and will have farmers bitter because we are talking about new regulations
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when right now is the time for the government to act and respond.
In these very few minutes, I would just like to reiterate the importance for the environment on the prairies, that the government not just take to reading the Brundtland Report, making statements at the United Nations, making grandiose statements that make headlines, but really sit down with people, such as the Manitoba TREE group which is concerned about northern Manitoba and the Concerned Citizens' of Manitoba which is worried about a number of environmental issues. The federal government will not fund them, it will not talk to them. This is no way to treat citizens who have in their hearts and souls the concern about the environment.
I implore the government to change its policy, to realize the mistake that it is making, to realize in the front-benches that they have to take these initiatives seriously and give the Minister of the Environment the support that he probably needs because these guys do not really understand it. Allow the Minister of the Environment the freedom to develop policies that will make this environment sustainable for the next generation.


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, I know that the member has listened with care to the debate as it has gone on today. It does not seem that there is the kind of potent support for the completion of the national park system by the year 2000 that one would have hoped for from the government side, knowing that the minister is on the public record and the government seems to be on the public record in endorsing that. The Prime Minister, himself, has endorsed Brundtland at the UN.
The question I want to ask the member is the following one. Does he not think that it would be helpful for a minister of the environment, such as the present Minister of the Environment, to be able to go to the territories, to be able to go to the provincial governments, to be able to go to municipal governments and state that 96 per cent of Canadians who have been polled recently want to complete the national parks system? There are very high statistics relevant to that kind of setting aside of land in all kinds of other areas of polling that has been done.
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However, to be able to go, whether to Victoria, Quebec City, Toronto or anywhere else in the country and say: "Look, I want your support to set aside this particular land and this particular bioregion because it is important. We have no representation there, and I have the mandate of Parliament. This is not just a government push. Not only are Canadians on side but I have all the Liberals, the NDP, and all the Conservatives. You say that you have this particular problem in that area. Well, Parliament stands behind here. That mining company says this will be a problem, or you could have that forest company wanting to get in there or somebody wanting to do some kind of pongo-pongo development there."
Wouldn't you agree that if there is something significant this Parliament could do, it is this kind of a motion which, frankly, should be able to deliver the kind of consistent power into the hands of the minister that it seems to me Canadians have been demanding for the last couple of decades?


David Walker: Madam Speaker, I cannot think of anything that would be more appropriate for this government to do than to take on an initiative in support of the national park system. In a symbolic way, Canadians want to see their particular environments from one region to the other protected.
For example, on the prairies it is almost impossible for a Canadian to now see grasslands. There are little bits here and there in private hands. There is one small piece in Winnipeg that has been preserved by a local park, but it has none of the authority of a national park. You say to yourself that there are so many unique comers to this country, yet the 21st Century is going to be a tremendous threat to these areas. For Canada to grow and survive it is going to need more people, it is going to need more resources. The questions that we are addressing here today in which the whole House is so involved are fundamental to the protection of all different types of areas.
The National Parks Program, although it is a very weak program under this government, could be symbolically so important to Canadians that we reach out and say: "We understand how important this property, these lands are for you. This is not to be used for mining. This is not to be a mixed use piece of property. This is going to be a national park set aside so that future generations can see exactly what it was that we had and, as we go along with

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development in other areas, we are secure in the knowledge that we have set it up to protect the lands for future generations."


Mr. Clark (Brandon-Souris):: Madam Speaker, I apologize to the hon. member in the sense that I did not hear all of his words when he was discussing the Manitoba Hydro proposal, and the proposed sale to the Government of Ontario. I am just asking for clarification, whether he and/or his provincial colleagues are criticizing that particular project. Are they opposed to it? I am simply not aware of the answer to that question.


David Walker: Madam Speaker, I think any Party nowadays puts itself in danger to oppose or support a large scale development project before environmental questions are answered. So in the abstraction, we have built hydro projects in the past, we will probably build them in the future. The reality is that we have done severe environmental damage in northern Manitoba previously. I am sure my provincial colleagues await to see the strength of the environmental assessment process. We wait to see not only the role of the provincial government and the role of Manitoba Hydro, but we certainly await the role of the federal government both symbolically and in real terms of the regulations it can apply if necessary.


Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Madam Speaker, as I have listened to this debate today I keep going back in my mind to an experience I had about 10 years ago when I first took my three children out west to see the full breadth and scope of the country they were going to inherit. It was a trip filled with strikingly beautiful, impressive and marvellous experiences, but it was also a trip that involved some pretty devastating experiences.
Certainly one of those was travelling through B.C. and seeing what had been done to some of the mountainsides of the Rockies. To look up and see to a certain line a fabulous, wonderful forest growing there as it has been for many, many years, and then right beside it to see something that looked so devastated, so scarred, so out of keeping with anything that looked like human accomplishment. We saw huge amounts of wood left on the mountainside, we saw that somebody had just wrenched that whole mountainside apart without any care for what was being left behind and what would be there 10, 20 and
100 years from now. We saw the waste of an extremely valuable resource. It was a very sobering experience for all of us. We had a very thoughtful and sad dinner that evening as we talked about what was being done in parts of our country, a country that we felt were extremely valuable and deserved better.
At that time I was in municipal government and it made the things that I was concerned about seem relatively small. Yet I guess I have realized that in context every bit we do is important. Retaining a 100-acre conservation area in the middle of an urban municipality is an important contribution and insisting that windsurfers and boats use one side of a pier and not the other because on the other side the destruction of a wetlands area would be the result. All these things are small but important contributions.
Earlier last week I talked to a group of children at one of the schools in my riding. None of the children were more than 11 years old. They have spent the last year recycling paper because they understand, as some people in this House seem not to understand, that the preservation of trees is important. They know that the full tonne of paper that they have managed to recycle in the last year represents exactly 19 trees that did not get cut down.
It is amazing to think what a difference those small kinds of contributions could make right across the country. The children also understand what they have done and the importance of it in a much broader context because with the $50 that they earned from recycling that paper, they bought two acres of rain forest in the Amazon. They know that the forests and the trees are important, not only to the people who live in the Amazon but to all human beings on this earth. They know instinctively, but also intellectually because they have taken the time, as it seems some members of this House have not done, to understand what the balance of life in this world is all about. They know that as we are spewing carbon dioxide into the world, it is the natural areas, the growing areas of the world, that buffer the damage that is done by our abuse of the atmosphere. So they want to do their small part to protect what they can.
As the environment committee heard this year, they have learned that the burning of those forests and the destruction of those forests is destroying the long-term ability of a whole people to feed itself. As we heard this
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morning, in 20 years, if the destruction of the rain forests proceeds as it is, there will be no soil and no ability for those people to feed themselves. That is pretty horrendous when you think about it; only 20 years from now. To me twenty years does not seem that long ago. In Brazil the ability of the people to feed themselves only 20 years from now is being destroyed on a daily basis and we are not doing anything about it.
The preservation of natural areas is an important issue world-wide, and it is an important issue in Canada. Again, we come to a question of balance. With governments it is always a question of balancing how much we use of resources with the need to ensure that they are there for the long term.
Any family understands this principle, understands that if you have so much money for groceries for the week you have to make it last for seven days. But we have never been able to translate that into an understanding of the world, an understanding that certain things do not simply replenish themselves when they are gone, and that if we want to continue enjoying the benefit of some of those resources we have to stage their use in a way that allows them to be replenished.
But there are some things on earth that are so precious, and certainly some things in our country that are so precious, that you cannot use them up or you will never be able to replace them. So it is a legacy that we owe to ourselves, to future generations, to preserve certain areas that are so unique that they are irreplaceable.
To find the balance is our job as politicians. What is the balance between the competing interests? Sometimes we have to be able to say, yes, jobs are important, but we cannot allow jobs to happen at the expense of destroying something that sustains life on this earth and that sustains the richness of our lives as human beings in this world.
In a way the argument is kind of ridiculous. I ask anybody just to picture a map of Canada. There is an ocean on either side and third one above us, and where do we live in this country? Nearly 80 per cent of us live in a little ribbon just so big. To say that we cannot look at that whole big area, more than half a continent, and set aside 12 per cent of its most precious areas so that it will be there in the future is simply not being realistic about
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what this nation is all about. If we cannot do that now, we will never be able to do it.
Now is the time. We are on the threshold of the future of this country. We have just begun. This is the time to make a commitment and say that we want the most precious parts of this country to be forever a part of its heart, its soul and its physical existence. We will grow, we will expand and we will draw on the world's resources around those things which are too precious to use up, too precious to destroy. That still leaves us a whole huge country in which to do what we want to develop as human beings.
There are assets that have been here for millions of years. Who are we, in our small span on this earth, to say in our greed, our lack of caring and our need for immediate gratification, that we are going to take something that has been here for a million years and use it for our own short-term pleasure, denying it forever to other generations? Who are we to do that? What gives us the right?
Humanity walked out of the Garden of Eden, according to my religious tradition at least, and we like to think of that as something that happened at the beginning of the world. Well, in fact, it happened in the last small fraction of a percentage of world time. Who are we now to say that we are going to destroy the Gardens of Eden of our country or of our world?
I think the politicians are way behind the public. I think it is time we caught up with a public that is telling us, "We don't need disposable diapers if it means destroying forests, thank you very much". Instead of trailing that crowd, let us get in front of them and show some leadership.


Mr. Ross Stevenson (Durham):: Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to join in the debate on this resolution here this afternoon.
Let me read the resolution again because it helps to focus on the debate if we refresh our minds. The motion moved by the member for Skeena states:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should move to complete the national parks system (land and marine) by the year 2000 and should implement the recommendation of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Report) that Canada protect at least 12 per cent of the land and marine zones.

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I concur with the minister in that the government should take whatever steps are necessary to complete the country's system of terrestrial and marine parks. It is only by setting goals and a timetable in a strategic time path that we will accomplish these goals and make the achievement worth while.
Our 34 national parks are certainly vibrant, living museums ranging from the northern most areas of our country in the ice-covered tip of Ellesmere Island to the southern most marshes of Point Pelee, from the shores of the Pacific Rim on the west coast of British Columbia to those in eastern Canada at Terra Nova National Park in Nova Scotia.
I also agree that there is considerable urgency in this matter because forestry, hydroelectric power developments, mining and other resource extraction activities are steadily encroaching on Canada's last remaining wilderness.
The Minister of the Environment has already stated in this House, I believe on January 22, that he is personally committed to completing the system of national parks by the year 2000, and that he has directed his officials to prepare an action plan outlining how this ambitious and certainly important goal can be attained.
This commitment is a clear indication of the importance that the present government places on this activity and certainly we believe it is important to the people of Canada and to our country that we protect our environment and, in particular, some of these very important regions.
Each government of Canada owes it to the next to put its imprint on what is already the world's finest family of national parks. I am pleased that real progress has already been made by this government. The Minister of the Environment is giving it very high priority, also to creating new national parks. His short list of parks that are currently being seriously investigated in one way or another includes Banks Island, the northern Baffin Island, Bluenose Lake, the east arm of Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories and the Cape Churchill area in Manitoba.
I also agree with the House leader of the New Democratic Party that the government should work with some diligence to complete this national parks system. Canada is a country that has been shaped by water. We are bounded by water in many areas of our perimeter: the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River along our
southern boundary; the Pacific Ocean on the west; the Arctic Ocean on the north; and, of course, the Atlantic on the east.
These water bodies have had a pronounced influence on our history. They continue and will always continue to have a major importance to our economy, not only from a tourism point of view, but also for the marine based industries.
Clearly the system of protected areas under the administration and control of the federal government will not be fully representative of Canada's geography until outstanding examples of these marine environments are set aside by the Parliament of Canada as future national marine parks are created under the National Parks Act.
I am proud that the government is also striving to complete the network of national marine parks in a systematic and timely manner. This is a policy that is in place and it is a guide to the selection, establishment, planning and management of new marine parks. Similar to our national terrestrial parks, there are 29 various marine regions that have been adopted in setting the scope of this particular system. The long-term goal is to provide adequate representation of each of these 29 marine regions in the marine park system.
However, I cannot support the member's contention that the government should complete the network of national marine parks in this very short timeframe, which is really just this next decade. It would be an admirable goal, but I suspect it is something that is unattainable. I think we should most certainly have to move onward with the job. Of course there are several reasons to move on, but there are also reasons why I think we have to proceed with, at least, some caution.
First, the creation of national marine parks is still in its infancy and the national marine parks policy which sets aside the stage of selecting, establishing, managing our marine parks in Canada was first approved by the former Minister of Environment in September 1986 under the direction of this current government.
The following year, a provision to create a national marine park in the waters surrounding South Moresby National Park reserve by the year 1993 was included in the park agreement between Canada and British Columbia. Legislative authority for the government to create national marine parks in general, as a separate type of park and to proclaim the Fathom Five in Georgian Bay,

Ontario, which is not too distant from my riding, as Canada's first such park was passed in 1988.
The point I wish to make in this brief chronology of events, is that things are moving fairly rapidly on this front. Research, planning, support for new marine parks must accompany the establishment of such parks. In my opinion, the government would be wise to proceed with the maximum swiftness that can be attained, but certainly with some caution as well in the creation of these national parks so we do it well and we learn the proper protection of these marine reserves, how to make opportunities for people to go into these areas, but to do it in a safe and conservation-minded way.
I suppose we might say that hiking boots and backpacks must give way to swimming fins and scuba tanks in some of these areas. It will be interesting and certainly very enjoyable for all Canadians to see the marine park group continue to expand.
Because marine ecosystems differ significantly from those on land, the experience gained from managing the country's century old national park systems are not readily transferable to the marine park counterparts. Furthermore, the experiences of other countries in dealing with marine parks are not always directly transferable because there are relatively few examples where marine parks have been established in cold or temperate and Arctic oceans which are the sorts of waters that surround our country.
There is another important reason for questioning the haste that is included. I do not question that we must move forward, and move forward as swiftly as possible, but I think establishing all these marine parks by the year 2000, within one decade, is a little bit bigger challenge than one can expect in order to proceed in an organized way.
As I mentioned earlier there is only one marine park in the country at this time. It was established in 1988. I mentioned one in South Moresby in British Columbia. That really means two df the 29 regions have so far been represented, leaving 27 regions yet unrepresented. If the government were to move forward and follow the timetable suggested by the hon. member, it would mean establishing an average of two to three marine parks per
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year over the next 10 years. Although it may be something that we would like to talk about, I suspect that goal is unrealistic.
In my view, the government should aim to establish at least two national marine parks in each of Canada's three environments and on the Great Lakes by the year 2000. This would mean that within 10 years there would be a total of no fewer than eight national marine parks. Work towards this goal has already begun. For example, the Minister of Environment is negotiating with the province of Quebec now for the establishment of a marine park at the Saguenay River. This is an area of considerable diversity and species. Of course, the ones of particular interest are the blue whale and the beluga whale.
Park officials are also examining the prospects of a new marine park in three northern regions. Those are the Lancaster Sound area at the eastern end of the Northwest Passage, the Hudson Bay and along the coast of Labrador. Similar studies will be undertaken this year in other marine areas if sufficient resources are available.
I think this goal is both realistic and wise in the view of the newness of the marine system. Also I think it provides those with the responsibilities of managing these new underwater parks an opportunity to develop their expertise, develop policies and correct any problems that may develop in the establishment of these parks.
The new national marine parks will also serve to increase public awareness of the benefits of marine parks and to help develop stronger public support for this new initiative. With the experience thus gained and the strong public support that already has been generated, Canada will have a solid basis by the year 2000 for a national marine park system that will match the grandeur that is internationally recognized for our current terrestrial parks.
Madam Speaker, I differ from some of those who have been critical of the government today. We have made significant headway on the terrestrial parks and more negotiations are going on and others will start in the not too distant future. There is significant progress in our marine park system which was just recently started by this government.

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I look forward with eagerness, along with a great many Canadians, to see our fantastic family of national parks grow in the future. I am sure, as I stand here today, that there will be many new parks by the year 2000.


James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, I appreciate many of the remarks that were just made by the member who just spoke. I am sure he is aware that there are 39 bioregions in the country and there are park representations in 21 of those bioregions at a rate of about one and a half parks per bioregion, because we have 34 national parks.
When the minister was speaking this morning, he indicated that the plan of the government right now is to simply have one representative area in each of the bioregions that are left, although if we were to proceed as we have to date, we could in fact suggest that there is a need for 27 terrestrial national parks as well as for 27 national marine parks.
But the point that the members seem to be driving at is that there simply is not time between now and the year 2000 to complete the system either due to time, money, political will or everything else. I suggest the members go back and look at the 1987 task force recommendations on national park establishment because they made it quite clear that we will have foregone the opportunity to have made a lot of decisions if we dilly-dally very many more years, even into this decade.
A very strong recommendation was made by a number of groups that I have referred to earlier in my speech about the need simply to establish the protected areas. As they said:
Establishing protected areas need not be an expensive undertaking, especially if the goal is to reserve lands and waters primarily on crown land over the next 10 years, leaving the "development" of services for the future.
They are basically indicating two competing interests for those areas, that these are areas of national significance either for biological reasons or biodiversity reasons. Would not the members support and endorse the idea that we need to complete the designation and the reserving of those 27 marine areas during this decade as well as those 18 to 27 national terrestrial areas, because if we do not, we will have foregone the opportunity?


Kenneth Ross Stevenson: Madam Speaker, I certainly cannot disagree with the general objective that the member mentions. I think the problem with urgency, of course, as the member is well aware, is that there are other interested parties in all of these areas, governments and various other groups who claim their own interests for whatever reasons in the important terrestrial and marine areas of our country.
While each group has its own good intentions, it does require a great deal of time to negotiate these agreements. Even to put some sort of restriction on prior to significant negotiation, it is not all that easy to accomplish this in certain areas, as the member is well aware. We have situations going on in our country right now where there has been various development or control agreements on sensitive areas.
I think of the situation in areas like Temagami where there has been a longstanding agreement of many years that is under reconsideration. Of course, there is relatively little agreement on how that should be handled. It has developed into a very controversial issue in that area. So even to say that we can set aside a certain area that we would like to have for a national park somewhere in the future, and that we might start serious negotiations four or five years down the road, it will also be met with significant objection.
I think as resources and time is available, it is important that we look into these situations. I have confidence that the minister will do that because if we just look back we will see the progress that has been made in the last five years.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: I must interrupt the hon. member. On a point of order, the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Madam Speaker, earlier today there was a discussion as to whether or not the question that Your Honour is about to put should be a matter of confidence in the government. I must say that I think perhaps the government has changed its tune since not a single one of its ministers is here to vote confidence in itself and I wonder if, in the circumstances, the government might agree that this is no longer a question of confidence.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Madam Speaker, as the member, who is quite skilled in parliamentary procedure knows, calling attention to the presence or absence of members is really against our rules. I want to assure the member, because I think his intervention was partly in the nature of a question, that the government and members on the
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government side regret veiy much that the two opposition parties have joined forces to trivialize something which is so important in this country. Forcing a vote under confidence in the House of Commons rather than choosing a path on which we could have all agreed is really to trivialize the issue.


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


Mr. Benjamin:: Madam Speaker, we in this party and, I believe, the official opposition, consider this a vote of confidence in the minister and an indication of support from all parties in the House of Commons for the ministers' endeavours and efforts on completing the national parks system by the year 2000. So this is a motion of confidence, not non-confidence. And I urge the government to support it.


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: It being six o'clock, pursuant to order adopted earlier today, it is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 81(14), to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith all questions necessary to dispose of the supply proceedings now before the House.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Champagne):: Pursuant to order adopted earlier today, the recorded division stands deferred until 5.45 p.m., Monday, February 5, 1990.
It being 6.05 p.m., this House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow, pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.05 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Friday, February 2, 1990