1991-11-27

HOUSE OF COMMONS DEBATES


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THIRD SESSION-THIRTY-FOURTH PARLIAMENT 40-41 Elizabeth II

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Published under authority of the Speaker of the House of Commons by the Queen's Printer for Canada
Available from Canadian Communication Group - Publishing, Supply and Services Canada, Ottawa, Canada K1A 0S9.
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Wednesday, November 27,1991
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Prayers

Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, in my home town of Hamilton, Ontario, the unemployment rate in October stood at 10.3 per cent. That is up dramatically from 6.8 per cent recorded in October of last year.
The welfare caseload in the regional municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth is swelling. There has been a steady growth in those families and individuals who must rely on welfare since as far back as 1989. The welfare caseload is up by 56 per cent from last year. There are presently 14,000 people on welfare in the region.
The government's economic mismanagement has created an overlap problem involving regional welfare payments and UI benefits. Waiting an average of eight weeks for their unemployment cheque, applicants are eligible to collect welfare, and when they get their retroactive UI benefits they are supposed to repay the welfare. Alas, few do, and that is costing the region more than $2 million a year. The region wants the moneys owed for welfare deducted at the source from the UI cheque-a reasonable request to make the system fair.


PARLIAMENT HILL
Mr. Peter L. McCreath (South Shore):: Mr. Speaker, I see once again that fake Christmas trees are adorning the halls of Parliament. What a shame. What a disgrace. What a terrible environmental example. So much for the
greening of the Hill. Real Christmas trees are environmentally friendly, they are beautiful, they are a renewable resource, they are Canadian, they even smell nice.
I think it is time Parliament set the example, threw out the fake Christmas trees and replaced them with beautiful and real Christmas trees.
Mr. Speaker, if Parliament does not have the sense to do so, I would at least urge all Canadians who celebrate Christmas to have the good sense and the patriotism to treat themselves by supporting a valuable Canadian resource industry by having a real Canadian Christmas tree this year. In case you did not know, the best Christmas trees come from the Christmas tree capital of Canada, the South Shore of Nova Scotia.


COMMEMORATIVE MARKERS
Ms. Catherine Callbeck (Malpeque):: Mr. Speaker, in September I tabled a private member's motion calling on the federal government to honour the contribution made to Canada by our late former Prime Ministers by placing a commemorative marker near their burial sites.
As we grapple with our national unity and identity as Canadians, one obvious problem that I have observed is that many Canadians do not have an appreciation of our history. We often lack an appreciation for the great benefits that living in Canada has brought to us.
It is my hope that by commemorating the efforts of those who have dedicated their lives to building our nation, Canadians may better recognize our generation's obligation to continue to build and preserve a united Canada. By appreciating the accomplishments of the past, it helps us to better prepare ourselves for the future.
I thank the many members from all sides of the House who have indicated to me their personal support for this initiative and I ask the government, whether or not my motion is selected-


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

November 27, 1991
[Translation)


CROSS-CANADA REFERENDUM
Mr. Guy Ricard (Laval-Ouest):: Mr. Speaker, on Monday, I received a telephone call from the member for Longueuil, asking me to sign a petition from his leader in favour of Quebec sovereignty.
This missive, commonly called "Lucien's letter", was intended to prevent consulting all the people of Canada on the federal constitutional proposals.
Faced with my refusal, he insisted, claiming that 15 members from Quebec had already signed this petition, including the members for Laprairie and Chateauguay.
A check revealed that no Conservative member had signed this petition that would prevent Canadians from expressing their opinion on this important issue.
Mr. Speaker, that is intellectual harassment, cheap politicking and undemocratic!
I ask all hon. members of this House to refuse to go along with it, because if we want to respect Canadians and Quebecers, we must let them express themselves freely.
That shows how the Bloc Quebecois acts in its attempt to break the harmony that exists in this wonderful country of ours.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Chris Axworthy (Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing):: Mr. Speaker, it is time this government stopped using GATT as an excuse for inaction at home.
GATT is as far away today as it was yesterday, and the government's attempt to shift the focus to these talks has failed. It is time it got on with the task at hand.
What is clearly needed is a set of policies and programs, many of them promised but not delivered by this government, that will keep our family farms on the land and preserve some stability in the agricultural community while we wait for sanity to return to the international marketplace.
This government cannot have it both ways. It is time to get the job done.


NATIONAL UNITY
Mr. Girve Fretz (Erie):: Mr. Speaker, I was encouraged to learn that Jim Taylor, a truck driver from Toronto, has taken the initiative as a private citizen to speak out for a united Canada.
Mr. Taylor ordered 200 bumper stickers that read: "My country includes Quebec", and slapped one on his van. People stopped him to ask how to get one, so within four weeks they were gone.
Out of the response of 300 letters, only one was negative. Encouraged with the response, Jim bought billboard space from Mediacom and now there are 15 billboards in 11 cities across Canada with the message in both English and French.
Jim Taylor is exceedingly optimistic about the future of Canada. He knows that there are problems ahead, but he also reminds us that each one of us has the resources to find inventive ways to promote Canadian unity.
Jim Taylor should know. He has taken his step as an ordinaiy Canadian, and has proven that positive attitudes can be courageous and contagious.


UKRAINE
Mr. Rey Pagtakhan (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, the people of Ukraine have long waited for the day they can once again raise their own flag, elect their own leaders and guide their own destiny, fully recognized by the international community.
This December 1, they will be that much closer to this goal. They will vote in a referendum to confirm the act of the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, passed last August 24. I am heartened Ukraine supports nuclear disarmament and minority rights.
Ukrainians have a right to make this decision, and I am proud to be one of three members of Parliament who will leave for Kiev tomorrow to observe the electoral
process.
Ukrainian Canadians, 1 million strong, 100 years in Canada, will be casting a vote in spirit with those in their ancestral home.
November 27, 1991

I make no secret of my support for the cause of Ukrainian independence in my letters to the Prime Minister and in my previous statements in this House. The will of the people to be united, to join together, is the essence of democratic culture.
I urge Canada to support Ukraine in the outcome of this referendum.


REFORM PARTY OF CANADA
Mr. Felix Holtmann (Portage-Interlake):: Mr. Speaker, it is hard to believe a new political party in Canada has a dictator at its helm.
It is the "gospel truth according to Preston". The Calgary Sun has reported a secret Reform Party memo saying that Preston Manning must control and correct party members' input and policy.
To all those who have joined this party, you have been duped by a political evangelist into believing the Reform Party agenda is grass roots driven.
Manning's theory is simple: "My way or the highway". As one Reformer put it: "This puts a lie to everything the Party espouses".
To members of the Reform Party, you will be welcome back to the Conservative Party, your views will not be screened by this Prime Minister or any other Party authority. Your ideas and your input will not be censored.


LIBERAL PARTY OF CANADA
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg TVanscona):: Mr. Speaker, first the Liberals flip-flopped on the gulf war.
Then, they did a backward reverse on the U.S. Canada free trade deal followed by a belly flop on the GST. As one senior Liberal said: "If we knew what we wanted to do, it would be a lot easier to communicate it to everybody".
Last weekend, Liberals found out that their unclear policies are fine because other than embracing the Tory principles of unbridled trade and competitiveness through poverty, there is nothing they would do if elected.
The Leader of the Opposition thinks that globalization is a fact of life.
Mr. Speaker, unlike the Liberals and Conservatives, New Democrats believe that poverty, unemployment and pollution do not have to be facts of life, that we do not have to sell out to the multinationals.
To the majority of Canadians who agree and who do not have to choose between tweedledum and tweedle-dee, I say: "Welcome to the NDP".


SYLVIE LAVOIE
Mr. Marcel R. TVemblay (Quebec-Est):: Mr. Speaker, today I would like to tell you about a young judo expert who lives in my riding. Seventeen-year-old Sylvie Lavoie was chosen by Judo Canada to represent Quebec and Canada at the Pan-American Junior Judo Championships in Medellin, Colombia.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out and mention the courage and perseverance of this young Canadian sportswoman, who as we speak is striving for a place of honour and a gold medal. I believe it is important to support our youth who hold an important place in our community and our country. I conclude by saying to them, "Work very hard, spare no effort, be determined and you will become a symbol of national pride." We need young people who are strong, disciplined, eager and above all determined, Mr. Speaker.


CAPE BRETON ECONOMY
Mr. David Dingwall (Cape Breton-East Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, last Sunday a parade of concern in Sydney, Nova Scotia, drew thousands of people to the streets.
Cape Bretoners are tired of being blamed for government failures. We are tired of having decisions made in the offices of bureaucrats without consulting the very people these decisions affect.
We have seen phoney companies with phoney job applications arriving like vultures, ready to feed off people's misfortunes. The president of Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency said in Sydney, and I quote: "It is illiteracy and rotten weather that keeps companies out of Cape Breton".

November 27, 1991
Oral Questions
How dare this man, a senior public servant, insult the very people his agency was created to assist. The president of Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency has little to be proud of, given ACOA's record of handing out money to losing ventures.
The President of ACOA blames bad weather for Cape Breton's falling economy. The economic cloud that hangs over the island has more to do with all his agency's failures than it does with our region's level of rainfall.
I think it is time that this particular senior public servant resign and, if not resign, the minister responsible for ACOA should fire him and fire him-


SENATOR CLAUDE CASTONGUAY
Mr. Willie Littlechild (Wetaskiwin):: Mr. Speaker, as a member of the special joint committee on a renewed Canada, I would like to offer my sincere thanks to Senator Claude Castonguay for his role as co-chair during the first few months of the committee's mandate.
Senator Castonguay is a valuable representative of Quebec and is widely respected not only in his home province but throughout Canada. He has been a key member of the constitutional committee and his positive contributions will be greatly missed.
I join with other members of Parliament and of the Senate in wishing him a quick recovery.

-and the hope that in spite of his involuntary absence, we will be able to continue to benefit from his sage advice.

[English)


DRIFT-NETTING
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, we welcome the news that Japan has agreed to comply by the end of 1992 with a United Nations moratorium on the use of huge fishing nets known as drift-nets. This is an abhorrent practice which ravages the oceans. These vast nets are known as walls of death because they trap and kill in vast numbers, dolphins, whales, turtles, birds and other marine life.
Drift-netting continues still to be practised by South Korea. We urge the Government of Canada to make
special representations to our embassy in Seoul, urging South Korea to comply with the moratorium and behave in an environmentally responsible manner.


NAGORNO-KARABAKH
Mr. Bill Attewell (Markham-Whitchurch-Stouffville):: Mr. Speaker, last evening Soviet television announced that the Parliament of Azerbaijan today decided to abolish the autonomous status of Nagorno-Karabakh and also change the name of the regional centre.
Thss News Agency reported that the Azeri deputies backed this measure unanimously. Nearly 1,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands forced from their homes in almost four years of guerrilla fighting. The move to abolish Nagorno-Karabakh is sure to ignite further violence and bloodshed.
I call upon my government and the United Nations to condemn this latest decision by the Parliament of Azerbaijan aggressively.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Andre Ouellet (Papineau-Saint-Michel):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister responsible for Constitutional Affairs.
This morning every newspaper in the country reports that bowing to internal and external pressures the government has decided that it will not bring forward legislation on a national referendum.
Can the minister explain why it is okay to consult Quebecers on their constitutional future, but it is not okay to consult the Canadian population on its?


Right Hon. Joe Clark (President of the Privy Council and Minister responsible for Constitutional Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, in the Speech from the Throne the government very clearly made a commitment, and I quote the Governor General:

You will be asked to approve enabling legislation to provide for
greater participation of Canadian men and women in constitutional
change.
That is an undertaking which we intend to honour.
The question here has to do with the word "referendum". The hon. member knows that in these circumstances at this time in the province of Quebec, in particular, that is a loaded word. He knows for us to use that loaded word now would be to drive away from Canada people whom we want to draw into Canada. We are interested in keeping the focus of attention upon proposals to renew this Confederation. I hope he would be too.
I certainly do not intend to use words that will drive potential supporters of Canada away from Canada. I ask the hon. member: Is he going to insist on using words which will drive potential supporters of Canada in Quebec away from Canada?


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the minister that Liberals are not cowards and we are not afraid of words. The word "referendum" means what it means.
In Quebec there was a referendum and there could be another one next year that will allow Quebecers to say yes or no to Canada.
Why are the minister and his colleagues afraid to allow Canadians to say in a national referendum yes to Canada and also yes to Quebec?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I know where the hon. member is coming from on this issue. I know the history of referendum campaigns and I know the connotation the word has.
I repeat the commitment of this government. We intend to honour the undertaking in the Speech from the Throne to find a way for Quebecers and other Canadians to be involved in the decisions with respect to constitutional change. We intend to do that.
Oral Questions
support of a renewed Canada all of those Quebecers who want a renewed Canada, to use a word that we know is a loaded word and would drive some of those people away today. That would be a serious mistake for Canada.
That may be the strategy of the Liberal Party. That is not the way we intend to conduct this trial because we are seeking to find ways in which we can cause Quebecers and other Canadians to come together behind a renewed federal system.


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question.
I must say I have a lot of sympathy for the minister because I know where he is coming from, but I have some doubts about some of his colleagues because I know where they are coming from too.
I would like the minister to assure us that all his colleagues including those from Quebec are supporting the minister's initiatives. Can he assure this House that all of his colleagues in Quebec are going to explain to Quebecers the government's proposals and are going to speak for Canada in the province of Quebec?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I can assure the hon. member and the Liberal Party that the members of my government and our supporters here will continue to work towards constructive change in our Canadian federation.
We have put specific proposals on the table and have asked for suggestions for improving those proposals. We do not want to be distracted from this goal through the use of words that may give more weight to the separatist option.
We are here to rebuild Canada. We are not here to help separatists in Quebec or anywhere else.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


I would think that it would be the height of folly for a	AGRICULTURE
national government, at a time when we are trying to	_
focus attention upon particular proposals for constitu- Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg St. James): Mr. Speaker, tional change, at a time when we need to draw to the my question is for the Prime Minister.

November 27, 1991
Oral Questions
My caucus met with farm and political leaders today who described the state of agriculture in Canada with phrases like "decay of a nation" and "watching a culture die".
The hard facts are that bankruptcies in farm and related industries were up 77 per cent in October over September, but in Saskatchewan they are up 250 per cent. Some farmers will not last until Christmas. Yet this government insists on waiting months to distribute all its emergency aid cash to farmers.
In the name of mercy, why not now?


Hon. Charles Mayer (Minister of Western Economic Diversification and Minister of State (Grains and Oilseeds)):: Mr. Speaker, in the name of accuracy, money is being distributed now. We have about 10 per cent of the total amount of NISA cheques in the mail. We have application forms that are going to be in the mail by the end of this week for the $400 million of special assistance. There is GRIP money that is starting to flow.
Farmers have cash advances available to them. The government, through the supporting of credit to the Soviet Union, to name one, is shipping and moving grain at a record clip.
We do know, and I say this as a farmer, that we very much appreciated the farmers being here this week. I had a chance to meet with them this morning and spent an hour with them at our caucus. We met with them yesterday, with the Deputy Prime Minister. Our Prime Minister met with the premier of Saskatchewan. They have made their case with a lot of class and I think in the process have impressed upon people very much the desperateness of their situation. I think that does them a lot of credit, especially when they are suffering such very low prices.
Having said that, the money that we have put on the table is in the process of being distributed. I think the hon. member should realize that there is going to be something like $2.8 billion net in the farmers' hands from government programs by the end of June next year. That is a lot of money.


Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg St. James):: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is again for the Prime Minister who indicated yesterday that he would be meeting with the finance minister to talk about possibly some new money for farmers. But if he takes as long to make up his mind as he did the last time, hundreds of farmers could lose their farms.
I ask the Prime Minister: Can he give Canadian farmers assurances that any new announcement will be made quickly before hundreds more farmers go under?


Charles James Mayer: Mr. Speaker, with respect, the programs that are in place are being put in place as a result of consultations with farm groups and with the provinces. I would suggest that the money that is going out is going out at a pretty good clip based on the process that we have to use.
With some of the money that we put out in the past, in fact the member has been up on his feet in the past couple of years yelling because some of the money did not go until later on toward spring seeding. Some of this money is in the process of going out now. I just told him that application forms are going to be in the mail this week for the new money that is there. If in fact farmers want to send back their applications as quick as they get them, some of that money will be available before Christmas.


Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, I have a very serious question for the Prime Minister of Canada.
Most of us in this House had an opportunity in the last couple of days to meet with farmers from across the prairies. We know the frustration, the despair, the human tragedy that those farmers talked about. We have a crisis now that is worse than any time in this country since the 1930s in terms of bankruptcy, incomes that are well below the poverty level, all kinds of social problems, economic problems, school depopulation, rural depopulation.
In light of that, can the Prime Minister tell the farmers of this country, particularly the prairies, whether or not he is willing now to consider their request for an extra emergency amount of money worth $500 million and have that money sent out soon to the farmers across the prairies.


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I had a very good meeting yesterday with the premier of Saskatchewan precisely on this point. I think that the premier acknowledged that the amounts under GRIP and NISA and the special deficiency payment of $800 million was probably unprecedented by the Government of Canada in favour of Canadian farmers.

He pointed out again, as I know, the particularly vulnerable situation in which farmers find themselves because of depressed grain prices, which is why the Minister of Agriculture and the minister of trade are in Geneva at this point in time. We have an historic opportunity to try to break the pattern of the suicidal European versus American trade distorting subsidies which deprive Canadian farmers of their share of the market, and also depress commodity prices here at home.
Even though we have provided, as I think the premier acknowledged, an unprecedented amount in favour of producers, Canadian prices still remain just about at levels of 1962. The farmers' costs have gone up and the prices remain depressed. While we came up with I think some very good programs and a large amount of money,
I indicated to the premier that when the Minister of Finance returned I would meet with him and the Minister of Agriculture to see if perhaps some programs could be structured in a way that would be of greater benefit to the farmers.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is for the Prime Minister.
Yesterday I met with a gentleman from Gull Lake, Saskatchewan, who told me that the average age of farmers in these rural municipalities is now 61 years old and that 56 per cent of the farmers in that municipality are facing foreclosure. I think what we have here, Mr. Speaker, is a national emergency, a national crisis.
I wonder if the Prime Minister can now do the right and proper thing and signal to the farmers that there is some hope, that he will make sure when he talks to his Minister of Finance very shortly that there will be an emergency extra $500 million for the farmers of prairie Canada. Please do that, Sir.


Charles James Mayer: Mr. Speaker, no matter how much money the government puts out in this situation, somebody is going to say it is not enough. We know it is not enough. There are people who are having difficulty meeting household expenses off their farm income and that is not a pleasant situation for anybody.
Oral Questions
Let me again point out that there is a record amount of money going to be available to all farmers across the country in the grain and oilseeds business by June of next year and it is not all gloom and doom. There are some positive signs that prices are increasing. We just raised initial payments for malt and barley this week.
There are some positive signs in the wheat market. With a record crop and the program that we have in place to assist the Canadian Wheat Board as well as other agencies in the country to sell grain, we are in a good position to move the record crop and as prices increase it is going to mean more cash for farmers. There are some signs out there that there are some positive things happening.


Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Saskatoon-Humboldt):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister's indication yesterday and again today that the government would look for more funds to assist farmers just a ploy to send the coalition farmers home with a glimmer of hope or is he actually serious about recognizing the farmers' needs for more money now?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I happen to be Prime Minister of a government that has increased assistance to western fanners by 650 per cent and has provided more aid to western farmers than any other government in the history of Canada. We have always stood by the Canadian farmer. We will continue to do so.



Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. I am a Canadian outside Quebec and, like so many Canadians, I want to have a chance to say yes to Quebec. There are thousands of Canadians outside Quebec who want a chance to restore Quebec's confidence in our country. Will the Prime Minister give Canadians outside Quebec who still believe in a renewed country a chance to say yes to Quebec in a national referendum?

Oral Questions


Martin Brian Mulroney: Well, Mr. Speaker, we all had a chance to say yes to Quebec with the Meech Lake Accord.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: And the hon. member for Hamilton East is to be commended for supporting the accord. Unfortunately, others refused to do so, and now we have a situation where we have to rebuild bridges between Quebec and Canada. That is why the government is committed, as the minister has just mentioned, to asking Parliament to pass legislation in May 1991 that will give Canadians a greater say in constitutional reform. We intend to respect that commitment.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I am more inclined to trust the democratic process than the Prime Minister is because I am confident that, if we give Canadians outside Quebec a chance, they will vote massively in favour of Quebec in a referendum.
I have a second question for the Minister responsible for Constitutional Affairs.

Unlike the Prime Minister, I am not afraid of democracy, and I believe that the Canadian people should have a right to have their say. I want to give Canadians a chance to say yes to Quebec, and there are thousands and thousands of them who are prepared to do that. What are you afraid of, Prime Minister?


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Gatineau-La Lievre. The hon. member was out of order.


Sheila Maureen Copps: What is so hard?


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Gatineau-La Lievre.


An hon. member:: Don't get up, Mark. Don't get up.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for The Battlefords- Meadow Lake.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Len Taylor (The Battlefords-Meadow Lake):: Mr. Speaker, a very important coalition of farmers and farm
organizations are still in Ottawa outlining a major economic and social problem facing farmers and rural Canadians. They have indicated that they have fulfilled their financial commitments but the federal government, which promised an adequate third line of defence package, has not yet lived up to that end of the commitment. When the federal government forced the provinces to contribute more than they had available to GRIP and NISA programs, does the minister not agree that it is time for the government to meet its responsibilities and deliver an adequate acceptable third line of defence payout equal to $1.3 billion called for by the farmer coalition?


Charles James Mayer: Mr. Speaker, if the member is talking about adequate responsibilities, this government has provided a record amount of assistance to farmers. I have said that no matter how much it is, it is never going to be enough. Surely there is a responsibility of the provinces in this.
Part of the $640 million that went out last spring was for the so-called second line of defence that we could have held back and used on third line of defence.
Let me give the percentages. In the last fiscal year of the direct support paid by all governments to the producers in Saskatchewan, the federal government paid
83.2	per cent in Saskatchewan.
I hope that member makes the same case to his new premier to live up to his expectations.


Leonard William (Len) Taylor: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary. It is an urgent matter that requires urgent and immediate attention by the federal government at this time. Producers expect their government to be with them in times of trouble.
Since the ministers have found $800 million that they said they did not have before and that has been termed inadequate by the farm representatives here today, is it not time this emergency was addressed adequately in the terms the farmers coalition has brought to the minister's attention so that the farm community can farm with confidence and not with fear.
November 27, 1991


Charles James Mayer: Mr. Speaker, this kind of debate does not help farmers. It is a problem that all of us have to do our very best to address. That includes municipalities, provincial governments and the federal government.
The hon. member should know that the province of Alberta just recently kicked in an extra $110 million and he should know that the province he comes from, when the new government formed office, cancelled its harmonization with the GST. I understand that cost it over $200 million.
If it was really serious about supporting farmers, it should have kept harmonization and it would have had an additional $200 million to spend on its farms.


Mr. Mark Assad (Gatineau-La Lievre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of State for Agriculture.
After four years of working with various participants on GATT article XI, the Canadian government claimed it could count on the support of several countries. Nevertheless, the Dunkel report reveals an alignment with the American position, with the consent of European governments, which will put an end to all quota systems in Canada's farm programs.
What does the government intend to do about this threat to our agricultural system?


Hon. Pierre Blais (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: Mr. Speaker, just a few minutes ago, I was talking to my colleague, the Minister of Agriculture. Earlier today, the minister and the Minister for International Tirade had a meeting with Mr. Dunkel.
There was also a meeting with the Cairns Group and the Quad group, to which Canada belongs, to discuss certain issues in the presence and with the co-operation of Canadian farm leaders now in Geneva.
In fact, Canadian farm leaders still fully support the Canadian position and have not challenged it in any way. Mr. Speaker, we prepared this position-the Canadian position-with our farm producers. We prepared it together, during extensive consultations, before going to GATT. We are still defending this position with all the energy we can muster. We built this position with them,
Oral Questions
and we will continue to involve them in these negotiations.


Mark Joseph Assad: Mr. Speaker, the minister's remarks are surprising, to say the least, when we consider that the constitutional proposals tabled last September suggested that getting rid of marketing boards would remove a barrier to the mobility of goods.
On many occasions, the government was obliged to call negotiators in Geneva to order for statements that more or less said the same thing.
Mr. Minister, how can you expect farmers to have any confidence when they see such flagrant contradictions in our agricultural system? In other words, what is your agricultural position for Canada?


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat surprised to see the hon. member take the same position the Bloc Quebecois critic took yesterday in the House of Commons. Provincial ministers Picotte and Ciaccia said once again yesterday that they still supported the Canadian position, Mr. Speaker.
As part of that position, we still support maintaining a reinforced and clarified article XI, Mr. Speaker.
This was again stated very clearly to the Director General of GATT today and to all our agricultural partners in Europe, Mr. Speaker.


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
Today Statistics Canada figures are grim. Bankruptcies are up 45 per cent. So far this year 63,000 individuals and businesses have been forced into bankruptcy because of this government's economic incompetence.
Last week the Minister of Finance admitted that his claims of economic recovery were grossly exaggerated. So I want to ask the Prime Minister: Is he prepared today to do the same thing? Will he finally admit that there is no recovery, that the recession continues, and that it is his own government's economic policies that are causing such devastation in the Canadian economy?

Oral Questions


Hon. Gilles Loiselle (President of the TVeasury Board and Minister of State (Finance)):: Mr. Speaker, I do not think the government will agree with that because it is not the case.
It is a fact that the number of bankruptcies is at a disturbing level. We realize that. I would say that private bankruptcy is higher but business bankruptcy is only marginally higher.
However, these numbers stem from high rates of interest and we have been acting precisely on that. Since September interest rates have gone down by 100 basis points and have created a condition where we are hopeful that the recovery will be there. It is still fragile, but if we did not have so much gloom and doom from the Liberals maybe it would be more helpful.


Ronald MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Minister of State for Finance.
A Gallup poll to be released tomorrow says that 90 per cent of Canadians believe that the recession is not over. Eighty-four per cent say that the government's economic policies are inappropriate and unacceptable.
I want to ask the minister: If the recession is over, as he claims, why is it that nine out of ten Canadians do not know about it?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, since the poll is secret I will have to wait until tomorrow to look at it.
I do not disagree that the rate of bankruptcy is very disturbing, but that is one more reason for us to have the right policies. If the hon. member thinks that by doing it the Liberal way-borrow money that we do not have, raise taxes, scoop the capital so that businesses cannot organize themselves and create employment-is the answer, I think he is wrong.
We remember where we were during the Liberal recession with the rate of bankruptcies being double the number it is today.


AEROSPACE INDUSTRY
Mr. Jim Peterson (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
Last week when told in this House that the deal between McDonnell Douglas and Thiwan would cost Canada 3,500 aerospace jobs, the Minister for Science said that this was mere "speculation".
At the same time the president of McDonnell Douglas said: "As existing orders run out, McDonnell Douglas will be out of business".
Why does this government not believe the president of McDonnell Douglas who said these jobs would be lost, or is it just waiting for the workers to get their walking papers before it will act?


Hon. William C. Winegard (Minister for Science):: Mr. Speaker, we will do everything we can to support McDonnell Douglas, particularly with respect to the MD-12.
In terms of the agreement, there has been no firm agreement signed between McDonnell Douglas and Thiwan. There has been no government to government agreement and the member knows that has to happen before any firm commitment can be made.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: Mr. Speaker, that is absolute nonsense because the president of McDonnell Douglas Canada has said those jobs are on the line. This is just one more example of this government's economic incompetence and mismanagement.
Let me give another example. Last week the Minister for Science told this House that the government knew nothing about the McDonnell Douglas-Thiwan deal.
This deal was signed last July. Why did the government not know about it? How can this government manage our economy when it does not even know what is happening in one of our major aerospace manufacturers?


William C. Winegard: Mr. Speaker, what was signed previously was a letter of intent to try to reach an agreement. That agreement has not yet been reached and neither the Government of Taiwan nor the Government of the United States has an agreement that it can act upon.
November 27, 1991

In terms of the MD-12 assembly, we are prepared to stand by McDonnell Douglas and help in any way we can for it to obtain that contract.


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Mr. Speaker, the minister and this government suggest that these bankruptcy figures today are disturbing. In fact they are at record levels. They have never been higher in this country. The minister suggests that in fact there has not been much increase with respect to business bankruptcies. They are up 22 per cent.
If this minister is concerned to see credit get to people across this country being hit by bankruptcy, will he listen to the pleas of his Superintendent of Financial Institutions who today came out and said that the banks in this country were not lending money when they should be? Will he in fact stand up and say there has to be action on the part of the banks and the government to get this economy going again?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I do not agree at all with the numbers just given by the hon. member. Of course the situation is disturbing and that is why we must act to correct it by creating the proper conditions.
Let me give him the number, for example, of business establishments we have had this year. It is close to 2 million businesses as compared to less than 1 million in 1982 with a rate of bankruptcy of 1.28, and the present rate of bankruptcy is of 0.78. This of course is not a satisfactory situation, but one must not dramatize.
We are going through a transition period. The government must do everything it can to create the conditions for the recovery. It is not by borrowing money that we do not have, causing the capital to flow to government coffers and not to the business community which needs it badly. That will solve the problem.


Steven W. Langdon: But the
point, Mr. Speaker, is that the government's own Superintendent of Financial Institutions is saying that the banking system in this country is not delivering that money to the businesses that need it. Despite lower interest rates the government's policy is not working.
I want to ask the minister about a confidential memo from the International Monetary Fund which indicates
Oral Questions
that it is the IMF that has urged governments to take this policy.
I want to ask the minister if he will admit that the reason that he has not helped people here in Canada suffering from recession is because he has instead listened to the IMF in Washington.


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to give the assurance to the member that this is not the case. Had we followed the Liberal policy for the 15 years preceding ours, our deficit would be at $100 billion and then we would be taking instruction from the IMF.
But we are not. We made these decisions before. What the IMF says is that some of the measures we have taken it would recommend because they are good, valid measures.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Paul Martin (LaSalle-Emard):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment. On June 5, I asked the minister when he would produce environmental studies of government policies. He answered that they did not yet have the methods to do so. Yesterday in the House, I asked the same question and unfortunately, I had the same reply. No progress in six months. However, in a study that I have here and which the minister knows well, a very reputable institute, Resources Future International, long ago developed the methods that the minister is supposedly seeking.
Mr. Speaker, is the minister prepared to submit immediately to the Auditor General for approval the methods contained in this report in order to apply them in reviewing the next budget?


Hon. Jean J. Charest (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, let us be clear on the meaning of what we said yesterday. I told the hon. member for LaSalle- Emard that the government had to create the methodology to do the environmental assessment as policies move through the Cabinet system. That does not mean that there is no method at all, Mr. Speaker; on the contrary, it means that every case is unique. When an issue is presented, the government must adjust accordingly and put in place the processes, mechanisms and evaluations that will enable us to produce an environmental assses-sment. That is what I meant in my answer and that is what we will continue to do in the years to come.

Oral Questions


Paul Edgar Philippe Martin: Mr. Speaker, we have been waiting eight months for the environmental evaluation of the budget. We have been waiting almost a year for the environmental evaluation of energy policy. We have been waiting the same length of time for the environmental evaluation of agricultural policy.
The fact is that this minister's constant fudging on a very firm commitment to the green plan speaks miles about why there is such public cynicism about the political process.
Therefore, will the minister release his working papers on this issue, if indeed he has some, and will he ask his officials to meet within the week with a designated group of environmental organizations, with members on both sides of this House and with the Auditor General so that jointly we can come up with a method to keep to the promise which this member's colleagues are so desperate to keep?


Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, there is no fudging whatsoever on this issue.
Evidence of that, if the member absolutely needs an example to illustrate what is going on, is the NAFTA negotiations, the negotiations between Canada, the United States and Mexico, to consider whether we want to enter into a trade agreement with them. The member knows that in that case there is an environmental assessment going on. If he needs a precise example, there is a precise example.
It is for the government within the framework of our own system to work out the methodology. We are doing that now as different dossiers come forth.
If the member absolutely wants to pursue this question, I suggest to him that I would be very happy to go before the Standing Committee on the Environment and offer testimony. Since I have been minister I went before committees four times up until now. I would be happy to go back once a week, if that is what the hon. member wants and if that is what the committee wants.
That is why we have a committee system in the House of Commons.


FISHERIES
Mr. Brian Tobin (Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the ministers of fisheries and employment, my question is directed to the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister will recall that on October 22 the minister of fisheries said in the House that the federal government had provided more than adequate funding to look after all fishermen and all plant workers who met the criteria of the Fisheries Atlantic Emergency Assistance Program.
Is the Prime Minister aware that today federal officials are telling Atlantic Canada that there is no more funding available to provide for plant workers who meet the program criteria and who should have started work this past Monday?
What is the Prime Minister going to do to ensure that the federal government's commitment to the people of Atlantic Canada is kept at this time?


Mr. Ross Belsher (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency):: Mr. Speaker, the minister of fisheries has been in constant contact with the Atlantic fisheries people and with the Atlantic fisheries minister. He was there last week and met with them. He is well aware of what some of the people are saying, and it is being looked at now.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, when I and other Liberal MPs raised this matter several weeks ago, the minister of fisheries said: "Anyone who can show a reasonable connection to the fishery or to being a plant worker is going to be assisted, or my name is not John Camell Crosbie".
What is the Prime Minister going to do to restore the name and the credibility in the current circumstances of his no name minister of fisheries?



Oral Questions


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, let me repeat for the record. My name is not John Carnell Crosbie.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Martin Brian Mulroney: I had an opportunity just before I left to meet with the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and we had approved, I think, a $39 million program in favour of that-


An hon. member:: Only for Newfoundland.


Martin Brian Mulroney: My friend from Nova Scotia says "only for Newfoundland." What is wrong with that? This is a program to help Newfoundlanders. Are the Liberals opposed to us helping Newfoundlanders? Here we are trying to help Newfoundlanders with $39 million and the member from Nova Scotia says "only for Newfoundlanders". I say that is not enough for Newfoundlanders. We are trying to do more, and we are also doing a lot for Nova Scotia.


THE CONSTITUTION
Mr. Greg Thompson (Carleton - Charlotte):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs. During the past number of weeks, many members of Parliament have held town hall meetings and round table discussions in their ridings to hear the views of their constituents on the countiy's future, more specifically, to hear views of their constituents on the government's constitutional proposals. My question is this.
What mechanism can be used or will be considered to allow individual members of Parliament to report their views, the views they receive from their constituents, to the committee and to Parliament?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate members from all sides of the House who are conducting those kinds of discussions in their own constituencies. It is another means to help us consult the public of Canada and also to improve the proposals that are on the table.
I think the hon. members makes an excellent suggestion, that we should seek to find a means-and I will undertake to meet with the members of the special joint committee to do that-by which the summary reports of
some of those consultations can be made available to the special joint committee so that they will have the benefit of the advice of interested Canadians as they make recommendations as to how to improve the proposals we have put before Parliament.


TRANS-CANADA HIGHWAY
Mr. J. W. Bud Bird (Fredericton-York-Sunbury):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Transport. There is no development need in the maritime provinces quite so important for long-term success, both for prosperity and service to citizens, than is reconstruction of the Trans-Canada Highway, particularly through the corridor province of New Brunswick.
It is obvious that fulfilment of this goal involving more than $2 billion can never be attained without major participation by the Government of Canada.
Will the minister please advise us about the state of negotiations and planning with respect to the Trans-Canada Highway. Is it the top priority in the national highway policy and will progress on its construction be seen in the foreseeable future?


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, it is precisely because we recognize how important these highways are that my department has been consulting with our provincial and territorial colleagues in order to plan a new national highway policy.
The hon. member certainly knows that since 1978, Transport Canada has contributed nearly $207 million toward highways in New Brunswick and there are more under way. New Brunswick has decided to spend most of that money on the northeastern region. We are still consulting with our provincial counterparts to arrive at a national highway policy.


PETROLEUM INDUSTRY
Mr. Ross Harvey (Edmonton East):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. If during the 1980s the foreign controlled companies in Canada's petroleum industry had reinvested their cash flows at the same rate as Canadian-controlled companies, another $8 billion in new investment could have resulted. That could have saved many of the 60,000 jobs, more than 40 per cent of the total, that were lost from Alberta's oil patch since 1985. But they did not. They sent $23 billion out of the country.

Point of Order
Instead of trying to remove the last vestiges of control on foreign investment, will the minister turn his attention to seeking new sources of Canadian investment money for the petroleum industry, thereby ensuring the benefits of that new investment remain in Canada.


Hon. Jake Epp (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, I have read with interest the hon. member's press release, plus the figures he received from my department. Regrettably, he does not tell the whole story.
If he looks at the decade that he uses his statistics for, it is true that there was a lot of investment for Canadian companies. It was done through the taxpayer. It was called PIPS. They received benefits through the tax system greater than the amount of money they invested. There were also such companies known as Dome, and the member knows what happened in terms of the Government of Canada. He also knows what happened in terms of the acquisitions on Petro-Canada.
I simply point out to the member, if you take a look at foreign investment today, you can show the Caroline project for Shell or the Hibernia project where the majors are non-Canadian, or we could take a look at even Hibernia with Husky. I could go on. But I say to the hon. member that-


Mr. Speaker:: I think we do have to go on. The hon. member for Markham-Whitchurch-Stouffville, a short question.


CANADA POST
Bill Attewell: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister responsible for Canada Post. He knows that strikes cause great harm to seniors, to charities, to small businesses. I recently put forward a private members' bill that would effectively ban all future strikes with Canada Post. I want to ask the minister responsible if he would adopt a similar initiative by this government that would declare all services essential and bar any future strikes?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, there is absolutely no question that Canadians are fed
up with the kinds of strikes we have had from irresponsible union leadership who are pursuing political agendas, such as the leadership of CUPW, and I must say the leadership of PSAC has not distinguished itself recently as well.
I am definitely looking at changes that we can make to ensure that Canadians get the service they are paying for and deserve and we are no longer held to ransom by irresponsible union leaders.


POINT OF ORDER
David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the Chair could assist members on this side of the House in indicating to us the Standing Order which was violated between the exchange between the deputy leader of our party and the Prime Minister. Perhaps the Chair could advise as to whether or not it was Standing Order 37, subsection (1), Standing Order 18, or indeed under Beauchesne paragraph 359, subsection (6).
I say to the Chair with great respect that we would like to know the Standing Order which has been breached. We would like also to ask if the Chair would reflect in terms of the intervention which was made by the Chair, if in fact it was under the circumstances and in view of the urgency of the question which was asked somewhat hostile.


Mr. Speaker:: I do not think it is proper, first of all, on rising on a point of order to the Chair, and asking the Chair for some clarification which I will try to give, and I do not think it helps to make the suggestion that the intervention on the part of the Chair is hostile. I hope that no hon. member in this place would believe that I would intentionally make an intervention in a hostile way.
I say to the hon. member for Hamilton East that I know she was upset at the intervention. I wonder if hon. members could give me a moment until we see the transcript. I may have been in error. If I am I will be the first to say so. But I would like to see exactly what the transcript shows.
November 27, 1991



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 109, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Committee on Health and Welfare, Social Affairs, Seniors and the Status of Women entitled "The Health Care System in Canada and Its Funding: No Easy Solution".
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO PETITIONS
Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to table pursuant to Section 36(8) of the Standing Orders the government responses to several petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


Mr. Speaker:: I apologize to hon. members. I would like to take a moment. I was concentrating a few minutes ago on a point of order and in doing so I neglected to do something which I know hon. members would want me to do and that is draw to the members' attention the presence in the gallery of Dr. Dimitrji Rupel, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Slovenia.



POINT OF ORDER


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, since you have now taken the Chair, as you
Routine Proceedings
are fully aware on Friday of last week I had raised a procedural argument with regard to bill C-35. Of course there were several hours remaining on Friday. We had the weekend. We have had Monday, Tbesday and it is now 3.10 on Wednesday afternoon.
I am wondering if the Chair would now be in a position to give information to members of Parliament as to when that procedural argument will be taken back into the Chamber and a decision made so we may proceed with the business of the House.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I understand the opposition House leader's interest and also his impatience, if I may say so, but I can only repeat what I said yesterday, as I have received no further indications since that time. Once again, the Chair will certainly consider the hon. member's interest in this matter and will provide the requisite clarification with respect to the questions raised by the opposition House leader as soon as possible.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Chair for the intervention. I do not think it would be too onerous on the Chair if perhaps some indication could be given as to when the ruling may be forthcoming.
We are presently debating subject matter before the House which has a direct reference to the items contained in Bill C-35 and in particular, Part III. I realize that the Thble, the Chair and members are preoccupied with bigger and more important issues.
I would like to have some idea from the Chair and/or Table as to when we might expect a decision on that procedural argument on Bill C-35. Perhaps the Chair could indicate that it will be done in the quickness of time before the end of this week. Will it be done before the end of next week? Will it be done before the House recesses for Christmas?
I do not wish to ask the Chair to give me a specific time. Surely the Chair, understanding the frustrations that members have to contend with, could give us some approximation as to when the decision will be forthcoming with the arguments one way or the other on my procedural case on Bill C-35.

November 27, 1991
Routine Proceedings


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I can assure the hon. member that the Chair will not remain unmoved by the persistence of the House Leader for the Official Opposition.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, I simply wanted to echo some of the requests made by my hon. colleague, the House leader for the Official Opposition.
I simply wanted to say that last Friday when this procedural irregularity occurred there was an incredible amount of goodwill on all sides of the House to find a solution that would allow us to proceed with the remainder of the day in anticipation of a relatively early response.
I appreciate your comments, Mr. Speaker, that you are awaiting further information, but I think it is important, particularly in light of the fact that it resulted from co-operation in the House, that after a number of days such a straightforward procedural decision ought to be forthcoming.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I have nothing further to add except that the Chair has taken note of the questions raised by the opposition and NDP House leaders.



COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE


Mr. Bob Horner (Mississauga West):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Solicitor General.
In accordance with its order of reference of Thursday, October 9, 1991, your committee has begun considering the subject matter of Bill C-283, an act to amend the Criminal Records Act and the Criminal Code in consequence thereof and agreed to adopt the following report with the following recommendations.
The committee recommends that the Solicitor General of Canada table in Parliament by March 1, 1992
comprehensive legislation reforming the Criminal Records Act.



FINANCE-FOURTH, FIFTH AND SIXTH REPORTS OF STANDING COMMITTEE

['Agreed.']
Mr. Murray W. Dorin (Edmonton Northwest):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour today to present, in both official languages, the fourth report of the Standing Committee on Finance.
In accordance with its order of reference on Wednesday, October 2,1991, your committee has considered Bill C-20, an act to amend certain statutes to implement the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 1991, and agreed to report it with amendments.
I also have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Finance.
In accordance with its order of reference of Wednesday, October 2, 1991, your committee has considered Bill C-32, an act to amend the Canada Assistance Plan, and has agreed to report it without amendment.
I also have the honour to present, in both official languages, the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Finance on the proposed spending control act.
I would like to say that report was worked on by all members of the House in a very co-operative manner and I would like to have the House acknowledge that. All members shared in it. It is a report that we were able to agree on and hopefully the government will find it helpful in coming forward with the official bill.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



Rey D. Pagtakhan: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I am pleased to present to Parliament a signed petition from my constituency of Winnipeg North and in fact beyond, up to Quebec. It contains some 55 signatures at least.
The petition refers to the declaration of Ukrainian independence on August 24, 1991 and that one million Canadians of Ukrainian descent have sustained their ideals of freedom and support for this cause in then-ancestral home.
November 27, 1991

Since Ukraine is a founding member of the United Nations they pray that Parliament urges as the Government of Canada to give genuine support to the people of the Ukraine by officially recognizing Ukraine's independence and establishing full diplomatic relations with the government and people of the Ukraine immediately following a positive confirmation vote in Ukraine's referendum on December 1, 1991.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to present a petition, pursuant to Standing Order 36, on behalf of residents of Darfield, Heffley Creek, McClure, Barriere and Lewis Creek, British Columbia.
They point out their very serious concern regarding the intention of a particular company to dam the North Thompson River at Vavenby, British Columbia, in an effort to divert water to sell in California.
They point out that this is one of the many United States proposals to divert Canadian rivers into the United States and northern Mexico. They ask that the Canadian government simply indicate clearly to the United States that Canada's rivers are not for sale.


Nelson Andrew Riis: I have another petition, Mr. Speaker, primarily from the residents of Kamloops.
The petitioners point out that the RCMP is being severely restricted in terms of its budgeting from all levels of government. They are concerned about the increasing perception that the RCMP is unable to fulfil its mandate as we would expect.
They are asking, particularly in this case, that the federal government restore adequate funding to the RCMP to enable it to fulfil its mandate and role as the only visible police force for many communities across British Columbia.
Government Orders


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Shall all questions stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Tuesday, November 26, consideration of Bill C-28, an act respecting insurance companies and fraternal benefit societies, as reported with amendments by the Standing Committee on Finance.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: According to the Speaker's ruling made yesterday we will debate Motion No. A.


Gilles Loiselle: Motion No. A
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 2 by striking out line 2 on
page 2 and substituting the following:
"business under section 362, as applied by subsection 656(1), or subsection 656(3);"


Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Mr. Speaker, this is a very technical amendment to clause 2 of the bill because of changes made in the committee. It just happens to be one of those things that was missed at the finance committee when we were straightening this bill up when we had the bill before us. It is a technical matter and ought to be moved ahead without debate.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.

November 27, 1991
Government Orders


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The question is on Motion No. A. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. A agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Motions Nos. B and 3B, standing in the name of the minister, have been grouped for debate.


Gilles Loiselle: Motion No. B.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 2 by striking out line 36 on
page 6 and substituting the following:
B"236, and that is not converted into a company with common shares under this Act".
Motion No. 3B.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 237 by striking out lines 20
and 21 on page 130 and substituting the following:
"(d) generally, respecting the conversion of a mutual company into a company with common shares."


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, as a result of consultations in the other place with the Canadian Bar Association, technical wording was changed with reference to what is set out in Motion No. B. This is a technical amendment that more properly describes a demutualization process.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The question is on Motion No. B. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. B agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The next question is on Motion No. 3B. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 3B agreed to.


Gilles Loiselle: Motion No. C.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 13 by striking out line 34 on page 18 and substituting the following:
"254 to 259 and Parts X, XII and XV to XVII".


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Resuming debate, the hon. member for Mississauga South.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, this is a very technical amendment. It adds the words "Part X" to a description of societies in the definition section, section 13.(2). It should be approved without debate.


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


Some hon. members:: Question!


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The question is on Motion No. C, standing in the name of Mr. Loiselle. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt this motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. C agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Motion Nos. 1, 6 and 7, standing in the name of the hon. member for Nickel Belt, have been grouped for debate.


Mr. John R. Rodriguez (Nickel Belt) moved:: Motion No. 1.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 23 by striking out lines 29 to 33 at page 21.
Motion No. 6.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 407 by adding immediately after line 18 at page 215 the following:
"(2) The Minister may approve only the following acquisitions:
(a)	the acquisition by a person, or entity controlled by a person, of up to 100 per cent of the shares of a company or an entity that holds any share of a company where the company or entity to be acquired holds assets whose total value is less than ten billion dollars;
November 27, 1991

He said: Mr. Speaker, this amendment is once again maintaining consistency with the opinions expressed by this party in this corner of the Chamber with respect to the Bank Act and the Trust and Loans Act. I am dealing with the first motion, Motion No. 1.
This motion would allow the Crown to establish a Crown corporation for the purposes of insurance. The
Government Orders
same arguments that we have made previously are the arguments that we want to reinforce again.
Why would the federal government close out its options and the options of provincial governments to establish an insurance company if in its own wisdom it sees fit to do so?
I have expressed the view previously in discussing this matter on the other bills that it portrays a medieval view of government, that in fact before it even has a chance to exercise an option it forbids itself from exercising the option or even considering the option. The arguments that have been used were that somehow or other we cannot allow provincial governments to establish a Crown corporation which might come under federal jurisdiction.
They do it all the time in other sectors of the economy. Provincial governments establish Crown corporations for transportation and they have to be governed by a National Transportation Act. There are other examples.
Yet here in the financial sector it seems that this government, given its mentality and its corporate agenda, wants to prevent the people of the country if in the wisdom of the government it sees that it should establish an insurance company, from doing so.
We find that unacceptable. That is why we have opposed it in the Bank Act. We opposed it in the Trust and Loans Act, Bill C-4 and Bill C-19, and we are opposing it here on Bill C-28, the Insurance Companies Act.
Our other motions deal with the ownership. Again it is a consistent argument that we have made on Bill C-4 and Bill C-19. Given the new changes that are encompassed in these bills and given the new climate that will be present when these bills finally become law, insurance companies are going to be able to do practically all the things that banks do by virtue of the fact that they can closely hold trust and loan companies.
It seems to me you have all of the potential there for a meltdown. We have said the best guarantee for the shareholders, for the policyholders and for the people of Canada is to be widely held.

November 27, 1991
Government Orders
We quoted yesterday in debate a commentary in The Economist that calls on the Government of Canada to recognize the need to maintain the wide ownership rules.
When this legislation goes into effect, there will be no small insurance companies. There will be no small financial institutions. There will not be that little insurance company that you knew in your little town on a street. These are going to be huge conglomerates. These are going to be large.
In fact these bills will force them to grow large like a cancer. There is no advantage for them to stay small. There is every encouragement, every reason for them to become bigger, bigger and bigger.
This is madness. We have said this. We said yesterday in debate that bigness is not necessarily better. Bigness is not necessarily better. We have adopted the sliding scale of ownership because we felt that the study in 1985 of the green paper was appropriate.
We believe that is the most effective way to prevent the concentration of ownership. We believe that one of the big problems with the failures that we have seen in financial institutions, particularly the trust sector, has been because of the close ownership. It is because of the mixing of financial owned by non-financial.
All the commentary that we have been reading recently says we have to make sure we separate the commercial from the financial. Why does a mining company own a trust company? It seems to me that is a recipe for disaster as was the case with Standard Trust.
Can you imagine a Campeau bank, a Campeau trust company or a Lavelin trust company? Can you imagine an Algoma bank or an Algoma loan and trust company? That is the danger. We have to keep those two operations separate. We cannot mix the commercial and the financial.
That was the rationale behind the green paper that the finance committee tabled. The whole question of close ownership is one of the greatest threats to the health of the financial institutions of this country.
We have built in Canada a banking system second to none in the world. I am prepared to say that. We are second to none in the world.
We are dealing with the Bank Act, and we have to look at the situation as it is presented to us. The banks of this country are the most secure in the world. They were built through a system of regulation, a pillar system. It is a system of wide ownership.
It seems to me that we are now saying the system that built the banking structures in this country are not good enough now for building some new huge structures. So we throw out all of the things that we have proved to be successful. We are saying now it is open season. You can have mutual companies, and this bill envisages mutual companies being demutualized. You are not going to have a nice little insurance company where all the policy holders hold it, where we are all holding hands and we are feeling each other and it feels good and you have hot milk or something and you are feeling good. All that is gone. They will demutualize, and then once they demutualize they will have to sort of merge, they will have to find partners. You will have this growth and only the mighty will survive. It is back to the jungle in this legislation. It is survival of the fittest.
I do not think that serves the best interests of Canadians.
We have argued in these Motions No. 6 and 7 for wide ownership. We believe that is the way to go. It is the best guarantee. In the long run when these institutions fail, it is the taxpayers who pick up the pieces through the CDIC. It is the taxpayers who bail out the depositors.
I say to the House, this is the last chance, you have a last chance. This can be a deathbed repentance. Accept now, brothers and sisters on the other side, accept now and you shall be saved. Accept this amendment now. Repent now before the hour is too late. I see you are standing so my hour has come.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Debate, the hon. member for Malpeque.


Catherine S. Callbeck: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on Motion No. 1 on the Insurance Act, Bill C-28.
This is a similar amendment to the one we discussed in the last couple of days concerning the Bank Act and the Insurance Act.
November 27, 1991

At that time I indicated in the House that we in the Liberal Party were opposed to the motion. Last night we voted against similar motions pertaining to the banks and the trust companies.
We have been studying this legislation for over a year in the financial institutions. We have heard over 100 witnesses, but never did we have a provincial government come to the committee and request this power. Never did we have an individual or a consumer group come forward and ask that a provincial government be able to incorporate an insurance company under the federal law.
As I stated before, if a provincial government wants to enter the financial services sector, certainly there is nothing to stop it from setting up a provincial trust company, as has been done in Ontario and Alberta.
I also have a concern that if a provincial government could own a federal financial institution, how that might affect federal-provincial relations.
To be consistent, as we are on this side of the House, we will vote against this motion for the same reasons I put forth in the last couple of days to similar amendments that were made to the trust and the Bank Act.
At this time, I have nothing further to add to debate on this amendment.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 76(8), the recorded vote on the motion is deferred.
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The next question is on Motion No. 6, and the result of this vote will be applied to Motion No. 7.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


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


Gilles Loiselle: Motion No. 1A.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 142 by striking out lines 27 to 32 on page 78 and substituting the following:
"(c) who is a shareholder for any other purpose except the right to receive notice of, or to vote at, a meeting, or
(d) who is a policyholder for any other purpose except
(i)	the right to receive notice of, or to vote at, a meeting,
(ii)	the right to receive payment of a policy dividend or bonus, and
(iii)	any purpose where the determination of policyholders is governed by contract,".
Motion No. 2A.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 153:
(a)	by striking out line 23 on page 88 and substituting the following:
"ticipating policies issued by a company on which no premiums are due is";
(b)	by striking out line 30 on page 88 and substituting the following:
"coming into force of this Part on which no premiums are due is entitled to".
Motion No. 2B.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 153 by striking out line 24 on page 88 and substituting the following:

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"entitled to attend, and is also entitled to one vote at, a meeting of policy-".
Motion No. 2C.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 154 of Bill C-28 be amended
(a)	by striking out line 41 on page 88 and substituting the following:
"issued by a company on which no premiums are due entitle the holder there-";
(b)	by striking out line 8 on page 89 and substituting the following:
"Part on which no premiums are due is entitled to more than one vote, or to a";
(c)	by striking out lines 18 to 20 on page 89 and substituting the following:
"ing policies issued by a company on which no premiums are due and one or more policies, other than participating policies, referred to in subsection (1) on which no premiums are due".
Motion No. 2D.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 154 by striking out line 1 on page 89 and substituting the following:
"cies, issued by the company is entitled to attend, and is also entitled to one".
Motion No. 2E.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 154 by striking out lines 30 to 33 on page 89 and substituting the following:
"ly from participating policyholders; (b) is not otherwise entitled to more than one vote at a meeting of policyholders; and (c) is not otherwise entitled to more than one vote at a meeting of shareholders and policyholders, unless the holder is also a shareholder, in which case the holder is entitled to one vote as a policyholder and is also entitled to vote his or her shares."
Motion No. 2F.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 164 by adding, immediately after line 45 on page 93, the following:
"(3) For greater certainty but subject to subsection (2), subsection (1) applies in respect of a policy issued before the coming into force of this section and requires a company, within three years after the coming into force of this section and at least once every three years thereafter, to do the things referred to in that subsection in relation to such a policy."


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, these are highly technical amendments that were considered by the Canadian Bar Association in the pre-clearing hearings by the Senate. The government has accepted them as amendments that will clarify descriptions in the statute.
To a large extent they deal with the voting arrangements for participating policy holders. For example, a
participating policy holder is entitled to attend a meeting and is entitled to a vote. One vote per policy holder is the arrangement and that type of thing is carried on through all of these amendments.
I think the amendments should pass without debate.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, I have no problem with these amendments. As the hon. member for Mississauga South has said it just clears up language.
I want to flag a concern I expressed in committee and I even tried a motion and it was defeated. That was the question of notification of participating policy holders. I was not satisfied with putting the onus on the policy holders to inform the company officials that they wanted to receive notice of annual meetings. It seemed to me that the onus should be on the company to inform the policy holders of the annual meetings.
I want to express my reservations about the way in which these amendments have been proceeded with. I do not have anything against the technicalities they are trying to establish but I want to express the concern.
I hope by the end of the afternoon, by the time we wrap up Bill C-28, we will have resolved that concern I have about notification of participating policyholders.


Catherine S. Callbeck: Mr. Speaker, we have reviewed the amendments. I agree with the hon. member for Mississauga that they are technical amendments and we will be voting for them.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 1A agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The next question is on Motion No. 2E. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 2E agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: The next question is on Motion No. 2E Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 2F agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois)):: The next question is on Motion No. 2A. A vote on Motion No. 2A will apply to Motion No. 2C.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 2A agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: The next question is on Motion No. 2B. A vote on Motion No. 2B will apply to Motion No. 2D.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 2B agreed to.


Gilles Loiselle: Motion No. 2G
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 168 by striking out line 4
on page 97 and substituting the following:
"the members of which are primarily".


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, this is another technical amendment that disqualifies certain persons. It deals with mutual companies. It is a highly technical amendment. It replaces the word "exclusively" with "primarily". As we were talking about simple or plain language the other day, my friend from Malpeque will appreciate the problems we have with this kind of legislation.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 2G agreed to.


John R. Rodriguez: Motion No. 3.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 208 by adding immediately
after line 40 at page 116 the following:
"(3) The directors of a company shall place before the shareholders for approval, at every annual meeting, a list containing
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the names of the five directors, officers or employees of the company who are to receive the highest salaries to be paid by the company in the next financial year of the company, together with the amount of such salaries.
(4)	Notwithstanding any Act of Parliament, the salaries referred to in subsection (3) may be paid only to the extent that they have been approved by special resolution.
(5)	Forthwith after each anual meeting of shareholders, the company shall send to the Superintendent, a list containing the names of the five directors, officers or employees of the company who are to receive the highest salaries to be paid by the company in the ensuing financial year of the company together with the amount of such salaries.
(6)	For the purposes of this section, "salary" means any form of remuneration payable by a company for work performed by a director, officer or employee of the company and includes
(a)	commissions, vacation pay and bonuses;
(b)	reasonable value for rent and housing;
(c)	payments in kind; and
(d)	any other advantage received directly or indirectly from the company;
but does not include
(e)	any amount paid as a consequence of the termination of the employment of any director, officer or employee."
He said: Mr. Speaker, the member for Mississauga South, in his whole approach to bank service charges, wants disclosure. He believes that these things should be out on the table so choices can be made. We argued consistently that the wages of the highest paid officials of financial institutions ought to be approved by the shareholders of the institution.
The people are the shareholders of Canada and the government, cabinet and members of Parliament are the officials of this country. Everyone knows the salaries of members of Parliament, cabinet ministers, the Prime Minister, the chief executive officer. Public servants know. There is a process for voting on those raises, on those salaries.
Yet the shareholders of a financial institution, which is a microcosm of the macrocosm, cannot vote on the salaries of the big boys. The shareholders are allowed to vote on the salaries of the directors of the corporation but not on those of the guys on the inside, the ones with the private restaurants attached to their offices, the ones who really make the decisions. We do not know what their stock options are, we do not know what their bonuses are, we do not know what their salaries are, we do not know what their golden parachutes, or their platinum parachutes as the case may be, are.

November 27, 1991
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The important point is that the shareholders do not get to set those salaries. They do not get to approve them. In the end, those salaries come out of the dividends that would be going to those shareholders. It is their money. They are the ones who have taken the risk. They put their money into the corporation and have a right to decide what the salaries of the top dogs in the operation should be.
However, this government has said that it would remain secret. If an institution sets up a branch in the United States and its stock is traded there the information has to be revealed. As a result, we have a situation in which in this country we do not require that information to be available to shareholders but in our major trading partner it is required.
Canadians who want this information have to go down to the United States and seek access to its process to get that information.
It seems to me that this is very important, particularly in the case of financial institutions. It is extremely important in light of what these bills are going to be doing, and I am referring to Bill C-4, Bill C-19, Bill C-28.
We are going to see one of the greatest feeding frenzies ever seen in the next couple of years. It is going to be like dropping a piece of meat into a tank of piranhas. It will be a feeding frenzy where they will eat up each other.
In such a situation it is very important that the shareholders know what kinds of compensation the chief operating officers of that financial institution are getting. It is very important. I do not have to tell you about the situation at Standard Trust, even now. It is something I have to put on the record. I have been after the appropriate committee of this House, the Standing Committee on Finance, to continue the post-mortem on Standard Trust. I have sent letter after letter to the chairman of the committee asking that we continue the examination of Standard Trust.
Nothing has happened. We had one meeting. Michael Mackenzie appeared before the committee and we just
touched the tip of the iceberg to try to determine what happened.
I am not a suspicious person by nature but I wondered: "Why is it that we did not do the post-mortem on Standard Trust?" Why do you think we did not do it?


An hon. member:: Why?


John R. Rodriguez: I will explain why. It is because at the same time that Standard Trust was sinking below the seas we were unlatching the cages of the financial institutions.
Now you start to see a pattern. We might have discovered some things about the way in which our regulatory system for financial institutions works that might call into question what we are doing in these bills.
Then the public may have twigged to that and said: "If you could not control a small little trust company like Standard Trust, how are you going to control a Hulk Hogan? How are you going to do it?"
Now we have the scenario. The Ontario Securities Commission started an investigation into Standard Trust. I want to ask you: "Is it going anywhere?" Oh, no, it is not going anywhere because Mr. Michael Mackenzie says: "I cannot tell you certain things. I cannot produce certain documents. My lips are sealed. My hands are tied". What is happening? The OSC is going to court to see if it can force the information out of the regulator.
I always thought that the legislators ought to be able to examine these things when they fail. We ought to be able to examine and sift the bones and entrails to see if we can build a better beast.
That seems logical, but we cannot do that. However some things have leaked out that have direct connection to the revelation of these salaries and emoluments for directors and head honchos.
For example, we found out that these Standard Trust bigwigs were paying themselves $1 million in pension payments. Who paid for that? Not the shareholders but the taxpayers through the CDIC. When it went down the tubes $250 million came right out of the pockets of every person watching now to pay the depositors.
November 27, 1991

Whose money is it? It is the people's money. That is the kind of important information that has to be made public because it will inform certain decisions by the shareholders. It will set certain bells ringing.
The member for Mississauga South said: "Oh well, Mr. Mackenzie gets that information". Mr. Mackenzie got that information from Standard Trust, I assume-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: Order, please. Your time is over.


Catherine S. Callbeck: Mr. Speaker, this is a similar motion to what we debated in the last couple of days concerning the Trust and the Bank Act.
This is an issue which was never studied in the finance committee over the year that we have been looking at financial institutions. I am aware that there are good arguments on both sides. People arguing in favour of it say that it is important that shareholders have this information so that they are able to assess the salaries that chief executive officers are receiving from financial institutions.
They will also be able to assess CEO's salaries compared to the job they are doing to see whether they really deserve these high salaries. There are also arguments to be made against this, certainly the concern about privacy, personal risk and the increased competition that it causes, as has been experienced in the United States where this legislation is in effect. One thing it has done is drive up the salaries of chief executive officers.
I agree with the principle of disclosure. There is no question about that. I think there are a lot of good arguments for this amendment, but I do not agree with singling out financial institutions and disclosing the top five salaries of the chief executive officers in financial institutions and not other major corporations. If we are going to do this, if we are going to consider it, then my suggestion would be that we study it first, that we find out the pros and cons. Then we look at it, and if we are going to do it then let us be fair about it. Let us do it not only to financial institutions, but also to other corporations.
Again, I agree with the principle of disclosure, but I do not agree with singling out financial institutions. Therefore, we will be voting against this amendment.


Mr. Mike Breaugh (Oshawa):: Mr. Speaker, I want to just briefly take note of this amendment because I think it is an eminently supportable motion. I have read a number of articles and have seen a very good television
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piece on, I think it was 60 Minutes, which looked at this kind of a problem, which seems to have kind of escaped everyone's notice. Perhaps it would be logical and sensible to begin now in this bill to address this particular problem. It does seem that there are some people who are placed in the corporate structure in such a way that they kind of escape the scrutiny of everyone.
I suppose many of us in our caucus would not show a great deal of sympathy if in the private sector, in a bank or a lending institution for example, someone was overpaid. That is not the problem though. The problem really is when taxpayers, directly or indirectly, are expected to subsidize that kind of overpayment. That clearly is wrong.
The problem at the moment seems to be access to the information, that in many cases not even those who you would normally consider to have access to this. Shareholders in a company, for example, often do not have access to that information.
In a time of great restraint, such as supposedly the period we are now in in Canada, we have said to many people who are employed by the federal government that there is absolutely no money available for an increase in salaries this year. We have said that to members of the Senate and members of the House and to a great many other people who work for the Government of Canada. It is a concept that is spreading rather rapidly, that there is not any money available for salary increases.
I do not quite agree with that concept but I do certainly acknowledge that it is around.
There should be access to information which at least allows us to compare what is happening in the private sector. At any point in time when we the public are expected to subsidize, in whatever direct or indirect way that we might be asked to do that, then certainly we have an obligation to get that information out on the public record.
The amendment that is before us at the moment seems to me to be a very straightforward amendment. It basically says that people who are shareholders in a company will have access, not to everybody or to everything, but certainly to the top five people who would be in their corporation. You could argue of course that maybe that is an invasion of their privacy. Sure it is, but so is the publication of my salary, and there are almost 300 people in this Chamber who have the same thing happen to them. It is an invasion of our privacy, to be sure.

November 27, 1991
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An hon. member:: Would you publish your staff's salaries?


Michael James Breaugh: Yes, I would be quite happy to do that. I do not see a problem with that. I do not understand what would be wrong with saying that. Since we know the salary ranges for every civil servant in Canada, since that is known public information-


An hon. member:: How about the bonuses?


Michael James Breaugh: -how then could that be such a gross invasion of privacy? I think the problem we are trying to get at here is that we have certain people who are excluded from having any information put forward about what the salaries are. There may have been at one time a good argument for saying: "There is no need to know", but I believe the argument has shifted somewhat. Now there is a need to know. Now there is a need to have access to that information if we are expected to, for example in this case, look at banks and lending institutions and say: "Well now we need to rewrite that legislation". Do we and do we ever need to subsidize them? Do we ever need to invest public tax money directly or indirectly into what they do?
I hear a constant flow of arguments on different occasions now that says basically that the private sector is the private sector and should be left alone unless it needs public money. When it needs public money then, of course, it is everybody's obligation to jump right in here. All of those people are fierce proponents of the marketplace until such time as it is inconvenient for their purposes to make that argument. They then say: "But we need some government intervention. We need some government help. We need some government money. We need some funding into the private sector". I am prepared to consider that, but when we do that we should do that as conscientious investors. That is to say, we know what is going on there.
All this amendment does is provide us with an access point to some information about the financial arrangements that are made to compensate the top five people in a corporation. I think that is reasonable. I understand the argument that it is an invasion of privacy, but so is the publication of my salary. If I can live with it they can live with it.
I suspect that most of these people are making two, three and four times what I am making so maybe it is a somewhat larger invasion of their privacy. I suspect that if that is a known condition of employment, if the salary is $400,000 a year and you know that it is going to be made public, I will bet you would still take the job. I will bet that the fact that it is an invasion of your privacy could be somehow set aside for a moment on the way to the bank or the trust company to cash your pay cheque.
I think this is a sacrifice, but a small one and a necessary one if we are to continue with the current process that is widespread in Canada of the private sector turning to government, directly or indirectly at some point in time, and asking for assistance. While we should do that in many instances, we would be stupid shareholders if we did not know the information that is pertinent to the situation.
This simple amendment simply says that the top five people in that chain of command should put their salary requests before all of the shareholders.
I tried to turn this around and see what the argument would be on the other side and it is a short argument indeed. I want to hear some member stand up in this Chamber today and tell me why you cannot disclose the salaries of the top five people in a corporation to the shareholders in that corporation. If it is only an invasion of their privacy then perhaps we should put on the record another little subamendment that says: "Well, if you want the money you have to publish what your salary is, and if you do not want to publish what your salary is don't take the money".


Mr. John Manley (Ottawa South):: Mr. Speaker, I had not actually intended to get involved in this issue, but after listening to the member for Oshawa and the member for Nickel Belt there are a few things that I think those who are watching this debate may find themselves a little bit confused about. I engage in it only for those reasons.
One thing that I picked up from the member for Nickel Belt was that somehow the Standard Trust inquiry by the finance committee was somehow suppressed in a

November 27, 1991

conspiratorial way while this legislation was being pushed through. He made many inflammatory I would say statements in the course of his comments that suggested the existence of this conspiracy first of all, and also suggested that for some reason the level of executive compensation in Standard Trust was the cause of that company's failure. What I would like to say to him and through you, Mr. Speaker, to the House is that I am not satisfied that we are finiihed with the inquiry into Standard Trust. The committee has been involved with quite a few other things, including looking at the failure of the Bank of Credit and Commerce.
The evidence that we had when we looked at Standard Trust-and the member for Nickel Belt was there and had an opportunity to ask many questions-did indicate some problems with how Standard Trust was conducting its affairs even in relation to the rules that exist. It certainly did not point to the company failing because of executive compensation, nor did it indicate that had executive compensation been disclosed, somehow that would have saved the company.
The second thing that I found very confusing about his statements in particular were that he seemed to be suggesting that his amendment would allow shareholders to decide the level of executive compensation. Of course what they provide for is merely disclosure. They do not provide that the shareholders would somehow vote on executive compensation.
I think it is important to understand what is happening here. He will know if he remembers during the discussions that we had that I was one who in principle favoured disclosure. There are some concerns that I have about it however.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, my point of order is that the hon. member has not read the amendment. It says that "the directors of a company shall place before the shareholders for approval at every annual meeting, a list containing the names of the five directors, officers or employees of the company who are to receive the highest salaries to be paid by the company in the next financial year of the company, together with the amount of such salaries".
Therefore, there is approval by the shareholders, brother, and that is what I was saying in my debate.
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John Paul Manley: Thank you, brother Nickel Belt. The way it reads to me is that there is the usual requirement for approval of the shareholders. There is nothing in that amendment that requires that the shareholders approve the compensation. It asks for approval of the list of directors. If his intention was to have them perhaps he should rewrite it.
The point I am seeking to make in addition to that is that the concept of fairness surely has to prevail even among chief executive officers. I would think the NDP would agree with that.
I would suggest to the member, if he wishes to do something like this that he bring in a Private Member's Bill related to executive compensation of firms that are governed at the federal level. It would require disclosure of executive salaries, not just for executives of financial institutions, but executives of all corporations that are regulated by the federal government. That would be more fair.
It would still fall a long way short of fairness because -and there is nothing we can do about this without the co-operation of the provincial governments-it would continue to leave out of that system compensation for employees of corporations who are regulated in the provincial sector, all those incorporated for example in Ontario or elsewhere that were not carrying on federal activities.
He would be creating quite a disincentive for top executives for example to move from the manufacturing sector into the financial services sector. Until that system is the same for everybody, I think he is on the wrong path.
I think the final point that I would like to address is this idea that somehow disclosure of salaries is related to the failure of these institutions. That came particularly out of the comments by the member for Oshawa. He suggested that somehow when financial institutions fail, they go on to the public dole. Therefore because these executives' salaries are somehow related to institutions for which guess deposit insurance applies, that in one way or another there is a need for disclosure because public money was involved.
I must say I find that a complete red herring. I think we really need to focus on the issue of whether or not disclosure of executive compensation, either for the information of potential investors and shareholders or for the broader community, should be in place.

November 27, 1991
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If so, we should encourage it at all levels. As the member for Malpeque pointed out, the evidence is that in the United States, CEOs receive a higher ratio of compensation to other individuals in their corporations than is the case in Canada.
There are statistics that prove that. If the object of this exercise is to hold down executive compensation-which I suspect is really what he is getting at, although he has not come out and said it, and since I guess it is part of the philosophy that everybody should be paid the same-the evidence is that it does not work. In fact the evidence is that when you disclose everybody's salary, then you have a kind of bidding war for the best CEO.
I am not sure, but it seems to me that there should be a little more study of this aspect of the proposal before we go down that road.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Deblois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 76(8), the recorded division of the motion stands deferred.


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (for the President of the Treasury Board) moved:: Motion No. 3A.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 234 by striking out line 23
on page 129 and substituting the following:
"accordance with Division X, which applies in respect of that acquisition with such modifications as the circumstances require, as if each reference in that Division to
(i)	the "offeree company" or the "offeror" were a reference to the "company",
(ii)	a "dissenting offeree" were a reference to a holder of a share of the company who has not offered to sell his or her share under the terms of the mutualization proposal,
(iii)	an "offeree who accepted the take-over bid" were a reference to a holder of a share of the company who has offered to sell his or her share under the terms of the mutualization proposal, and
(iv)	the "date of the take-over bid" or the "date of termination of the take-over bid" were a reference to the date on which the Superintendent approves the purchase or other acquisition of the shares of the company pursuant to a mutualization proposal."


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, this is a very technical amendment dealing with mutualization not demutualization. From time to time a privately owned corporation in the insurance business wants to become a mutual company. This particular amendment that was formulated in our hearings in the Senate is a technical amendment to clarify how mutualization takes place under division 10 in the bill.
I think the amendment should carry without further debate.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBiois):: 


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Motion No. 3A agreed to.
Bernard Valcourt: Motion No. 3C.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 254 of Bill C-28 be amended
(a)	by striking out lines 7 and 8 on page 142 and substituting the
following:

November 27, 1991

"policies or to cause itself to be reinsured against all or any portion of the risks undertaken by it;";
(b)	by striking out lines 16 to 29 on page 142 and substituting the following:
"agreement to (a) transfer all or any portion of its policies to, or cause itself to be reinsured against all or any portion of the risks undertaken by it by, any company, society or foreign company that is authorized to transact the classes of insurance to be so transferred or reinsured;
(b)	transfer all or any portion of its policies, other than its policies in Canada, to, or cause itself to be reinsured against all or any portion of the risks undertaken by it, other than risks in respect of its policies in Canada, by, any other body corporate;
(c)	purchase or reinsure all or any portion of the policies of any body corporate; or
(d)	sell all or substantially all of its".
Motion No. 3D.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 257 by striking out lines 40 and 41 on page 143 and substituting the following:
"(b) cause itself to be reinsured against all or substantially all of the risks undertaken by it, or".


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, these two amendments deal with insurance and re-insurance for re-insurance company situations and are highly technical amendments again, formulated with assistance from the Senate hearings. We believe they ought to cany without debate.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The vote is on Motion 3C, standing in the name of Mr. Loiselle, and the result will apply to Motion 3D. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt this motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motions Nos. 3C and 3D agreed to.

Motions Nos. 3E, 5A, 5B, 1C, 9 A, 10B, 11A and 11B are grouped for debate.
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Hon. Bernard Valcourt (for the Minister of State
(Finance)) moved:
Motion No. 3E.
That Bill C-28 be amended in the French version of Clause 282 by striking out lines 13 and 14 on page 155 and substituting the following:
"anterieure a".
Motion No. 5A.
That Bill C-28 be amended in the French version of Clause 368 by striking out lines 35 and 36 on page 198 and substituting the following:
"quant a l'etat des finances de la societe pour l'avenir."
Motion No. 5B.
That Bill C-28 be amended in the French version of Clause 369 by striking out lines 42 and 43 on page 198 and substituting the following:
"effets negatifs importants sur l'etat des finances de la societe et necessitent".
Motion No. 7C.
That Bill C-28 be amended in the French version of Clause 442 by striking out lines 31 to 38 on page 240 and substituting the following:
"des rdglements concemant la divulgation du nom du mandat de la societe mandataire visee au paragraphe (1) et de la retribution eventuelle de celle-ci pour agir & titre de mandataire."
Motion No. 9A.
That Bill C-28 be amended in the French version of Clause 499
(a)	by striking out line 10 on page 271 and substituting the following:
"un pret au gouvernement d'un pays etranger ou a une";
(b)	by striking out line 20 on page 271 and substituting the following:
"par ce gouvernement si l'acquisition fait partie d'un programme de reamenagement de la dette publique du meme gouvernement."
Motion No. 10B.
That Bill C-28 be amended in the English version of Clause 542 by striking out line 3 on page 299 and substituting the following:
"provided by a financial institution or a".
Motion No. 11 A.
That Bill C-28 be amended in the French version of Clause 630 by striking out lines 40 and 41 on page 338 and substituting the following:
"previsions quant aB l'etat des finances de la societe pour l'avenir."
Motion No. 11B.
That Bill C-28 be amended in the French version of Clause 631 by striking out line 6 on page 339 and substituting the following:

November 27, 1991
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"importants sur l'etat des finances de la".


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, these amendments are an attempt to rationalize English and French. Every once in a while we have these problems as we try to make our bills read totally the same in both English and French. Consequently these motions help to correct that problem in the bill and they ought to pass without debate.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The vote on Motion No. 3E will apply to the other motions just debated.
The first vote is on Motion No. 3E. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I declare Motion No. 3E carried. Motions Nos. 5A, 5B, 7C, 9A, 10B, 11A and 11B are therefore carried.
Motion No. 3E agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Motions Nos. 3F, 3H and 11D, all standing in the name of the Minister of State for Finance, are grouped for debate.


Bernard Valcourt: Motion No. 3F.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 331 by striking out line 33
on page 183 and substituting the following:
"accounting principles, the primary source of which is the Handbook of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants."
Motion No. 3H.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 346 by striking out line 47
on page 190 and substituting the following:
"auditing standards, the primary source of which is the Handbook of the Canadian InstituteB of Chartered Accountants."
Motion No. 11D.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 641 by striking out line 28 on page 343 and substituting the following:
"auditing standards, the primary source of which is the Handbook of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants."


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, these are amendments that are very similar to amendments that were moved on Bill C-19 and Bill 04. They involve the introduction of the handbook of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants as a reference with respect to acceptable accounting practices and ought to be carried without debate, as they were before.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The vote is on Motion No. 3F, standing in the name of Mr. Loiselle.
Remember that the vote on Motion No. 3F will apply to Motions Nos. 3H and 11D. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I declare Motion No. 3F carried.
Motion No. 3F agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Motions Nos. 3F, 3H and 11D are thus agreed to.

Motions Nos. 3G and 11C standing in the name of the hon. member for Nickel Belt are grouped for debate.


John R. Rodriguez: Motion No. 3G.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 337 by striking out line 40 at page 185 and substituting the following therefore:
"meeting, appoint two auditors, who shall be independent of each other, to hold office".
Motion No. 11C.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 633 by striking out line 31 at page 339 and substituting the following therefor:
November 27, 1991

"two auditors, who shall be independent of each other, for its insurance business in".
He said: Mr. Speaker, these two amendments would require two auditors for these new creatures that are being created with this legislation.
One of the things we have said consistently about these bills C-4, C-19 and C-28, is that they will result in a different kind of financial institution. Since the pillars are being collapsed in effect, insurance companies are going to own trust and loan companies.
There are expanded powers for insurance companies. They will be able to take certain types of deposits. They want to grow. They want to become bigger. They want to become global competitors.
As this happens we need to build in fail safe protection for depositors, investors and the people of Canada. I could not imagine why the government and the Liberal opposition would agree to reduce the number of auditors for a bank to one when they had two. I could not understand it.
I have heard the arguments from the member for Mississauga South and from the Liberal side. Having two auditors in the case of the Northland Bank and so on did not prevent the collapse of the bank. Because somebody broke into your house does not mean that you do not keep locks on the doors. That is the same argument.
Because people can break into your house, somehow or other you should make it easy for them and unlock the door. Leave it unlocked. We have argued that two auditors are essential. This is a check on what one auditor does. This is a protection for those who invest in the company and depositors.
I was amazed that the government members and the Liberal opposition in committee would actually vote to remove the dual auditor system. Yet they are prepared to put in the actuary and an auditor. It seems to me that the two auditors to check and double check on a financial institution is absolutely essential to the integrity of the institution.
We had evidence when Michael Mackenzie came before the committee on Standard Trust. If you read the evidence he gave-I read some of it into the record the other day-in the minutes of the finance committee meeting, he consistently pointed out how much OSFI depended on the auditor's report.
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It consistently pointed out that OSFI does not have the wherewithal to do the audit of all the financial institutions that come under federal jurisdiction. He pointed out very clearly his reliance on the auditor's reports.
Now for a whole new creature that is being created in this legislation, we are going to tell him that he will have to do with one auditor's report.
Even in the world of medicine they recognize that a second opinion is also very important for a patient. You go to the doctor, he examines you and says: "Well, it is your liver. If you want a second opinion, it is your kidney."
People have availability to second opinions. I see the member for Mississauga South shaking his head. The dual audit system for the banks has served Canadians well. What we are creating here is the potential for very large and complex financial institutions. Yet we are suggesting and saying to them that you only need one auditor.
We cannot accept that. We believe that if you are giving them all of these new powers, you do not lessen the controls. You do not lessen the hurdles. You do not lessen the safeguards which are needed with respect to the regulatory system. I was accused when I arBgued this on C-4 and C-19 that I wanted to make work for accountants. I want to tell you that given the need to employ, given the fact that we have over 1.5 million Canadians unemployed, I would encourage young people to seek a career in accounting.
I know that the Accountants Association would really appreciate the pitch. If this is the way to go, it is a great opportunity.
I want to say that accounting is one of the professions and if you like it, what a wonderful opportunity. Guaranteed employment.
We do two things. We put a safeguard on the financial institutions of the country. It was interesting that when the banks came before the committee they said they wanted the two accountants and the two auditors. They want the dual audit system. They were not in favour of reducing the audit system to one. They wanted two. They argued that if all these other institutions are going to become more like banks, then the same rule ought to apply to the two audit system. This indicates to the public that there is a system in place, a safeguard system of auditing of financial institutions.

November 27, 1991
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It is not just New Democrats in this comer of the Chamber who argued for the two audit system for financial institutions. There was one Conservative member on the committee who agreed with the requirement for two auditors. The member for Markham voted yesterday with this party to have the two audit system.
My colleague from Cambridge pointed out yesterday in a point of order, because I had erroneously lumped him in with other Conservative members who were for eliminating the two audit system, that other countries of the world with a one audit system are now looking at establishing a two audit system.


An hon. member:: Do you mean we are going backward while they are going forward?


John R. Rodriguez: That is right. They are coming from a one audit system and want to put a two audit system on their financial institutions. While they are going forward, we are taking a step backward.
Again I appeal. I know that them loco ministerio who is sitting over there from Mississauga South loves this position. If you cannot be a Minister of State for Finance you can at least been in loco ministerio. I know that he could run into the back rooms and consult with the officials because this again is his last chance to do something for the depositors the investors and the people of Canada. He could run back now, even as you wait to take the vote. He could go quickly and come back and say: "We will put the two audit system in place".


Mr. Pat Sobeski (Cambridge):: Mr. Speaker, just to clarify, I think he has misled his colleague from Oshawa. The banks had a two auditor system and yesterday, against my wishes, the banks now have an option of going to one auditor. However, the insurance companies currently have only one auditor. Now the member for Nickel Belt wants to bring in two, so it is quite different.
The other thing I would point out is when we were in committee not a single word of debate was raised on this particular point.


Catherine S. Callbeck: Mr. Speaker, this again is a motion which is similar to the motions we discussed on the floor of this House in the last couple of
days regarding the Bank Act and the Trust Companies Act.
This whole issue was raised in the finance committee and it was felt that there was no need for two auditors. As well, the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, who is a very knowledgeable person in this whole area of financial institutions, has indicated that there is no obvious reason to have two auditors.
It may sound like a great idea but if it is not necessary, as the Superintendent of Financial Institutions has indicated, then why should we inflict this added expense on the insurance company? In the long run, it will be passed on to the people who use the services of the insurance company in increased premiums and other ways.
This party believes it is an unnecessary expenditure and if it is unnecessary, then we certainly are not prepared to go along with this.
So we on this side of the House will be voting against this amendment.


Mr. David D. Stupich (Nanaimo-Cowichan):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Cambridge suggested that the member was going too far in asking for two auditors in this case since there is only one auditing firm required now. What he did not hear perhaps was the argument from my hon. colleague to the effect that the new legislation, the whole package of legislation that has been put together, is going to allow the insurance companies to become very much larger institutions than they currently are and they will be able to do everything, including what the banks are doing.
We are looking at a totally different situation. There is an argument going on, Mr. Speaker. The hon. member for Cambridge says they will not be able to take deposits and the hon. member for Nickel Belt says they will be able to take certain deposits. I do not know which ones and I do not think it matters. Certainly one of the reasons that this legislation is being considered by this House is that certain people with the right influence in the right places who want insurance companies to become much larger and much more important in the financial affairs of Canada are urging that this legislation be passed. Indeed, it is working its way through the process.
November 27, 1991

In any case they are going to become larger, there is no question about that. If there is to be an argument made for two auditors, it should apply to those institutions as well.
Yesterday the hon. member for Malpeque said why load them with all this extra cost, and the hon. member for Mississauga South used that same argument as well. They made it sound as though having two auditors is twice as expensive as having one. I argued against that yesterday and suggested that what they are really saying is that two individual audit firms are going to go in as totally separate entities. One is going to do the same work as the other, follow along in the footsteps of the preceding one or take turns leading. They certainly do not have much faith in audit firms if they think that they are going to go in and double the work just for the fun of doing it. If that were to actually happen, it is one reason the government would want to have two audit firms. That would at least beef up the GST revenues, and goodness knows they need a lot more of that these days.
However it would not happen. There might be a nominal increase in the fee having two firms, but there is another argument they used. Something might be missed if there were two firms on the job, since one might assume that the other had covered it. Again, I dealt with that argument yesterday and said that two audit firms would sit down and plan their work. With two of them looking it over, they are more likely to cover everything. Neither member who raised concern about this matter raised the argument that I made. They did not deal with it. They did not deal with the cost. I said that the cost might be a little more, but only because there were two looking over it to make sure it was a complete audit. Neither was that argument dealt with.
It seems to me that I have dealt with the only arguments the member for Mississauga South and the member for Malpeque raised with respect to the tremendous increase in cost of having two and the likelihood of missing something if there are two people looking. There has been no response from either one of those members on those two arguments. It would seem to me their case in favour of reducing it to one auditor has been de-
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stroyed and they have not tried to revive it. I just wonder if either one of them would like to comment on that.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The question is on the Motion No. 3G. The vote on Motion No. 3G will apply to Motion 11C.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 76(8), the recorded division on the motion stands deferred.
Motions Nos. 4, 5, 11 and 12 are grouped for debate.


Catherine S. Callbeck: Motion No. 4.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 347 by adding immediately
after line 38 at page 191 the following:
"(3) A person who in good faith makes an oral or written communication under subsections (1) or (2) shall not be liable in any civil action arising therefrom."
Motion No. 5.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 366
(a) by striking out line 4 at page 198 and substituting the following
therefor:
"366. (1) On the request of the actuary of a";
(ft) by adding immediately after line 15 at page 198 the following:
"(2) A person who in good faith makes an oral or written communication under subsection (1) shall not be liable in any civil action arising therefrom."

November 27, 1991
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Motion No. 11.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 628
(a)	by striking out line 9 at page 338 and substituting the following therefor:
"628. (1) On the request of the actuary of a";
(b)	by adding immediately after line 21 at page 338 the following:
"(2) A person who in good faith makes an oral or written communication under subsection (1) shall not be liable in any civil action arising therefrom."
Motion No. 12.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 642 B (a) by striking out line 39 at page 343 and substituting the following therefor:
"642. (1) On the request of the auditor of a";
(b) by adding immediately after line 9 at page 344 the following:
"(2) A person who in good faith makes an oral or written communication under subsection (1) shall not be liable in any civil action arising therefrom."
She said: Mr. Speaker, this motion has to do with the flow of information to auditors and actuaries. I am pleased to move this motion today because I feel it is very important that there is a free flow of information to the auditors so that they can conduct a thorough audit.
This amendment actually prevents a lawsuit against anyone who gives information to the auditor or to the actuary of financial institutions. We feel that this protection is required. We feel it is important because questionable accounting practices have been blamed in part for the failures that we had in the western banks in 1985 and then of course last year too with the Ontario based Standard Trust. The Superintendent of Financial Institutions told the committee last November that improved accounting practices might have made a difference in Standard Trust.
To take an example, if an employee of an insurance company has information that he knows the auditor needs in order to perform a proper audit or a thorough audit in which the company would rather not disclose or will not disclose, that person might be reluctant to go forward and give that information. However, if he knows there is no way he can be sued by the company then I am sure that he is more liable to go forward and give the information to the auditor which could very well result in better financial statements and seeing problems that
may be small problems now but could develop into major ones.
Certainly we have heard no evidence to suggest problems in the way actuaries calculate the risks in returns in insurance company policies. However we feel that establishing the same sort of protection would increase the flow of information even further. We are not only proposing this amendment for auditors but also for actuaries as well.
I would urge the House to support this amendment for insurance companies and remind all members of the House that we agreed in the last two days to accept this amendment for banks and insurance companies.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, the government would be very prepared to support the amendments if they could be amended in accordance with amendments that I circulated to the opposition.
The amendments are all the same for each of the motions amended. The amendment would read:
"(3) a person who in good faith makes an oral or written
communication under subsections (1) or (2) shall not be liable in any
civil action arising from having made the communication.
In other words, it ties down the relief against the communication and only the communication. I suspect my friend from Malpeque would be delighted to accept these alterations. If that is the case, and with the unanimous consent of the House, may I make those now.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, in light of the fact that when this was first proposed as a motion by the Liberals on Bill C-4, we argued for it because we thought it was a good idea, it was a good amendment, and we supported it. In fact I would hazard a guess that it was the vigorous debate and insistence of the group of this side of the floor which persuaded the government that it ought to accept this amendment.
We have no problems with extending it to the Insurance Companies Act.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The House has heard the terms of the amendment tabled by the hon. member for Mississauga South. Is there unanimous consent for the hon. member to table the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Amendment (Mr. Blenkarn) agreed to.


Mr. Simon de Jong (Regina-Qu'Appelle):: Mr. Speaker, I just wish to put on record some of the arguments in favour of the motion that has been introduced by the Liberals.
As mentioned before, if the government succeeds in its legislation-and it appears it most probably will-we will find sort of the collapse of the pillars. We will have trusts being able to sell insurance, vice versa and so forth. The possibility of conflict of interest, of tied selling, of undue influence on people who are taking their mortgages out, for example with some sort of unwritten requirement that would force them to take a certain life insurance or a certain mortgage insurance policy out, and the temptation for doing things that are not legal are going to be much greater. Therefore of course the need for regulation is going to be much greater.
It is impossible to regulate every instance, every situation. I drew the attention of the House to the hypothetical possibility where in the Royal Bank in southeast Saskatchewan on one desk is the person that deals with the mortgages and on the other desk is the person who sells insurance. It is impossible to police or to prevent the two people from talking to each other, to prevent the person who is selling the mortgages from saying to the person who is selling the insurance: "Joe Smith has just got a mortgage. Why don't you go after it?" That type of activity is not legitimate and should not be legal.
There is a tremendous need for some form of self-regulation. It is the lowly clerk in there who will see abuses occurring and illegal activity occurring. This amendment makes it a little easier for the clerk to step forward and to say: "There is something illegal happening here. There is something wrong with what is happening here". Of course it frightens the clerk to take on a big institution.
After the legislation is passed conceivably we are going to have some very giant institutions. For a little clerk or teller to take on the institution is quite a daunting task.
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The clerk of course is concerned that the financial institution will bring some legal action against that person. The little clerk just feels totally intimidated. He can barely meet all of the expenses during the month, and the thought of being forced to go into court, to go out and hire a lawyer, and to face the legal department of a trust, one of our banks or one of our large insurance companies is just impossible. It is one-sided and unfair.
With this amendment we are offering that clerk, that low paid person, some form of protection. I think it is an excellent amendment. I am glad to see that the government through the persuasive powers of opposition members has accepted the essence of the amendment. I hope it will do what we all hope it will do, that is provide protection for the small people working in big institutions.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: The question is on Motion No. 4, as amended. A vote on Motion No. 4, as amended, will apply to Motions Nos. 5, 11 and 12, as amended.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 4, as amended, agreed to.


Bernard Valcourt: Motion No. 4A.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 351 by striking out line 41
on page 193 and substituting the following:
"(b) in the case of a life company, loans owing to the company by any".


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, this is a very technical amendment. It ties the particular amendment down to life insurance companies. One of our problems is that we are now putting life insurance companies, property and casualty insurance companies and friendly societies all in one bill.
This particular amendment specifies that the change is to life insurance companies. It is really an amendment for clarification and should carry without any problem.

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


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 4A agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Motions Nos. 5C and 11B.1 are grouped for debate.
Hon. Bernard Valcourt (for the Minister of State
(Finance)) moved:
Motion No. 5C.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 370:
(a)	by striking out line 12 on page 199 and substituting the following:
"370. (1) Any oral or written statement or";
(b)	by adding immediately after line 15 on page 199, the following subsection:
"(2) The actuary or former actuary of a company who in good faith makes an oral or written statement or report under section 363 or 369 shall not be liable in any civil action seeking indemnification for damages attributable to the actuary or former actuary having made the statement or report."
Motion No. 11B.1.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 632:
(a)	by striking out line 26 on page 339 and substituting the following:
"632. (1) Any oral or written statement or";
(b)	by adding, immediately after line 29 on page 339, the following subsection:
"(2) The actuary or a former actuary of a foreign company who in good faith makes an oral or written statement under subsection 627(1) or section 631 shall not be liable in any civil action seeking indemnification for damages attributable to the actuary or former actuary having made the statement or report."


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, in the course of a great deal of consideration in the Senate committee it became apparent that something ought to be done specifically to protect actuaries and former actuaries from lawsuit if they were only fulfilling the actual requirements set out in the statute to report
to the superintendent with respect to the actuarial status of a particular company.
Since most of these actuaries are employees and the effect of making a bad actuarial report may well lead to the dismissal of the actuary in one form or another, it is felt that we ought to protect the actuary from this kind of action by the amendments set out in Motions Nos. 5C and 11B.1.
I think this is in line with the other four amendments we just passed dealing with other employees including the amendment concerning auditors. Therefore I suggest that it pass in the same fashion.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, I notice that this motion came to us from the Senate. I recall, when I was looking up the testimony in the minutes of the finance committee when we studied this bill, that of Mr. Paul MacCrossan, president of the actuaries union. It is a very strong union. I guess that is because there are so few of them in the country. He made this pitch to the finance committee when we were studying the bill. The government did not buy it at all. Mr. LePan from the department did not buy it and the members of the finance committee did not buy it. There was a lot of debate around the idea.
We are providing freedom from liability for civil action not for an employee, as was the case put forward by the member for Malpeque. This is not the same type of thing. We are exonerating a whole class of actuaries. We are identifying a group and saying it is exempt. We are protecting them if they make a good faith statement, written or oral. Where does competency come in? Are they free from liability for civil action if they were incompetent but said: "I made it in good faith"? Where is the line? What is good faith? Are we prepared to deny people who may have the possibility of a good civil action against an actuary by protecting the actuaries with this?
I raise the question though I know the member for Mississauga South cannot speak again on this. I would hope he could, on a point of order, rise and give us a bit of enlightenment on why what was not good enough for the finance committee was good enough for the boys over in the Senate. Why did they buy that argument? Why have the government and the minister changed their minds? This intrigues me and I would appreciate if
November 27, 1991

the member could get up on a point of order to explain why.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It is only fair that the House have some explanation.
These motions were never placed in the finance committee. They were discussed but no one was prepared to move them at the time. As a consequence they were never moved.
In the Senate a pre-study hearing indicated that there was more reason to do it than had been explained to the finance committee at the time.
One of the advantages of having the other place is that in it there are some people who have been involved with these companies in a senior management position. It is useful for the government to have their advice. We talk about the other place being useless and tired and so on. However, may I suggest to my friend from Nickel Belt that it may be that some senators are also very expert in the area of how institutions like insurance companies operate.
That is why there are a number of amendments coming from the hearings in the Senate that we think are exceptionally useful. This is one of them. We are prepared to accept the kind of release that we were prepared to accept with other officers and employees.


Catherine S. Callbeck: Mr. Speaker, I want to say a few words on this amendment, which we support because it will protect an insurance company actuary from being sued if he or she blows the whistle on the company.
Actuaries are the people who calculate the risk of insuring an individual and they come up with an appropriate premium for that person to pay. Therefore, they have a great deal of information about a company. They are in a position to know if a company is either breaking the law or is in troubled waters.
This is why the actuarial profession is seeking protection for an actuary who blows the whistle. For example, an actuary may tell the Superintendent of Financial Institutions that a company is not being run properly or is not being run according to statute or the law.
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Unlike auditors, who work only temporarily for a company and then move on to another company to do another audit, actuaries are generally employees of the insurance company. They become identified with the company. An actuary who blows the whistle on his company therefore would probably lose his job, put his reputation at stake and has a great deal to lose.
We on this side of the House support the amendment. I want to also mention that Monday and Tuesday we suggested another whistle blowing amendment to the trust and the bank acts. It protects the individuals who give information to the auditor in good faith, information that would allow the auditor to prepare a more thorough audit and be more accurate.
We will be supporting this amendment.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The question is on Motion No. 5C. A vote on Motion No. 5C applies to Motion No. 11B.1.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 5C agreed to.


Bernard Valcourt: Motion No. 6A
That bill C-28 be amended in clause 408 by striking out line 48 on page 216 and substituting the following:
"Common shares, had total assets in an amount".


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 6A agreed to.


Bernard Valcourt: Motion No. 7A
That Bill C-28 be amended in clause 441 of Bill C-28 be amended
(a) by adding, immediately after line 24 on page 239, the following:
"(d) provide information processing services in Canada that the company has developed for its own use and that are an integral part of the company's operations to entities in which the company has a

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substantial investment that do not provide information processing services to other entities,";
(b) by relettering the subsequent paragraphs and any crossreferences thereto accordingly
Motion No. 7B
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 441 by striking out lines 44 to
46 on page 239 and substituting the following:
"and services respecting risk management and claims adjustment, operate rehabilitation and training".


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, both of these amendments have resulted from very extensive work in the Senate on this particular bill. They are amendments that improve the technical workings of the bill.
The first amendment allows a company to do its data processing for its subsidiary companies, from one company to the other, without a problem. That is the type of thing we have allowed in other bills. This particular matter was not corrected and caught at the time.
The other one operates in connection with risk management. It is a redefinition of very technical matters that I think are important.


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


An hon. member:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The question is on Motions Nos. 7A and 7B.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motions?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motions Nos. 7A and 7B agreed to.
Hon. Robert de Cotret (for the Minister of State
(Finance)) moved:
Motion No. 7D
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 461 of Bill C-28 be
amended
(a)	by striking out line 36 on page 245 and substituting the following:
"amount to an account from which a payment can be made to its shareholders, if";
(b)	by striking out line 29 on page 246 and substituting the following:
' 'the transfer to the account from which a payment can be made to the shareholders".
Motion No. 7E
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 463 by striking out lines 23
to 26 on page 247 and substituting the following:
"A is 10 per cent of the aggregate unappropriated earned surplus of the participating accounts".


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Again, both of these are technical amendments. One amendment will allow a company to transfer money from one account to another in order to make payments to shareholders and the other one removes a $2 million cap on transfers but retains the cap calculated in accordance with their provisions of the section.
These are technical amendments that were organized in our review in the Senate. I would appreciate if they could pass without any further debate.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, I want to raise my concerns about 7D. I presume it originated in the Senate. Clause 461 in the bill says: "or transfer an amount to the stated capital account". I presume, if this is an insurance company, that it may have shareholders and will have policyholders. The guys who are the policyholders ought to get their fair share of any money in the participating account.
We did not discuss that in the finance committee. I noticed the amendment in 7D changes it to an account from which a payment can be made to its shareholders. I just want to raise that issue.
Again, if the member for Mississauga South can stand up and explain this I would appreciate it. Does that mean there is a possibility that policy holders could get less money than the people who are the shareholders, especially if you have demutualized an insurance company? This is a real concern. We are setting up a capital account. The mutual companies wanted to have this legislation because they argued for the ability to be able to increase their capitalization. We said this was a good idea. Now it has turned out that it is a different kind of an account. It is an account from which moneys can be paid to shareholders. I have a real problem with that because the policy holders in a mutual company are the ones who put the money in and are the real owners. That was one of the things we were concerned about when we discussed it in committee.
November 27, 1991

Lo and behold, when it went over to the boys in the other place they came up with this little thing where you take out the capital account and you make an account where you put money in to pay shareholders as opposed to policy holders.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. My friend is getting carried away with himself. If he takes a look at 461, the statute will read: "A company that has share capital may, from a participating account maintained pursuant to section 456, make a payment to its shareholders ", and then the new section will say: "or transfer an amount to an account from which a payment can be made to its shareholders". In other words, it could pay the money to the shareholders or it could transfer that money to an account from which it could pay its shareholders. There is no effort to deceive here, this is just a question of wording. The current wording that was there was to transfer an amount to the stated capital account. This is an amount that can still be transferred to shareholders because it is money that was from shareholders for shareholders only. It is being transferred in this fashion and goes into an account, but then it can be further paid out to shareholders at a later day.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Does that satisfy the hon. member for Nickel Belt, the point of order?


John R. Rodriguez: No, Mr. Speaker. We had a concern in the Insurance Act about one of the arguments made by witnesses before the committee. They wanted the process for demutualization.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: This has nothing to do with it.


John R. Rodriguez: Well if they demutualize they are going to have shareholders and they are going to have policy holders. That is the way it is going to work.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. My friend will remember that an insurance company with common shareholders as the owners of the company, also issues participating policies. The participating policy holders are entitled to what we, in common parlance, call dividends. This is essentially a dividend rest account. Certain other provisions in the bill are set out as to how that money is to be handled and under what circumstances it can be paid out. In other words, it is not a free
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pay-out because there are certain requirements to keep money on account on behalf of the participating policy holders, to act as a backing for those policies.
This is a very technical matter and I would be delighted to have one of our senior people explain it better than I can because I do not profess to be the expert on everything.
I want to say that this is just a technical change in this particular provision that came from our hearings in the Senate.


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


An hon. member:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member for Nickel Belt has a few more words he would like to respond on.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, I just have one more suggestion. I think we should bring in the minister and have him explain it.


An hon. member:: Good idea. It sounds fair.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motions Nos. 7D and 7E agreed to


Catherine S. Callbeck: Motion No. 9.
That Bill C-28 be amended by adding immediately after line 14 at
page 256 the following new clause:
"489. (1) A company must use plain language in all contracts related to financial services, applications for financial services and related documents which it provides to its customers who are natural persons.
(2)	Subsection (1) does not apply to words or forms of documents that are prescribed by law.
(3)	Subsection (1) does not apply to contracts, applications for financial services and related documents where the price of the financial service or the total liability assumed or to be assumed by the customer exceeds two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
(4)	Proof that reasonable efforts have been made by the company to comply and maintain compliance with subsection (1) is a complete defence (a) in a prosecution under subsection (1), or (b) in a dispute about whether subsection (1) has been complied with.

November 27, 1991
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(5)	The failure of a company to comply with subsection (1) does not affect the enforceability of any document referred to therein and may not be asserted by a customer or a company as a defence in an action or proceeding based on a document referred to in subsection (1).
(6)	As used in this section "customer" includes a natural person who is a guarantor or provides security to a company.
(7)	Subsections (1), (2), (3), (4), (5) and (6) shall come into force on the day which is two years after the coming into force of section 1 of this Act."
She said: Mr. Speaker, this is a motion called plain language. What it actually does is require an insurance company to put various documents that must be signed by a customer in plain language. If that customer is getting an insurance policy, or any other document from an insurance company that they have to sign, they can actually pick up the document and read it.
I am sure that most of us in this House have received documents from an insurance company that were very, very difficult to read, had very small print and long sentences in legal language. In other words, it was not in day-to-day language that the average person could understand.
This amendment would require insurance companies to put these documents in everyday words, short sentences, so that a document can be read by a customer and the customer can understand what they are signing.
I know the industry is proceeding along this line. I know that there is a trend to make simpler documents. I certainly want to commend the companies in various financial institutions that are doing this. Yesterday the hon. member from Mississauga said that it is too difficult to do. But it has been done. In the United States at least 10 states have passed this legislation. New York was the first in 1978, and reports by experts from New York say that the results are really remarkable. We have also had this legislation passed in one province of Canada, Alberta in 1990.
I can agree that it would probably be difficult. But the fact is that it has been done, so there is no reason why it cannot be done here in Canada.
I think it is a reasonable amendment. It is giving insurance companies two years to get their documents
translated into simple everyday language. It is also only for customers who borrow less than $250,000.
It is certainly something that is can be done. As I said, it has been done in at least 10 states in the United States with good results and it has been passed in the province of Alberta. I think this legislation would go a long way in providing a better service to the customers of financial institutions.
One of the main objectives of the Liberal Party during this whole study of financial institutions was to come in with legislation that would better serve the Canadian public. I would encourage all members of this House to support this plain language amendment.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, I spoke to this matter yesterday on two occasions. I just want to say that I appreciate very much the spirit with which the amendment is made. Unfortunately it is pretty difficult for us to judge what language is "plain".
When I talk to the Minister of National Revenue he boasts about how plain the language is and how easy his forms are to fill in. The other day I was given the privilege by my daughter of helping her do her income tax. She is a single parent and I had to wade through the form.
The book that the minister produces in his plain language has various paragraphs underlined in yellow and so on. I waded through the form and was getting a bit frustrated. It was written, as we will all appreciate and as the minister says, in plain language. It was simple. It was easy. Anybody could do it.
That is why I am not the chairman of the finance committee. I was having a hell of a time. When we get to these plain language matters, I think we all appreciate things being simpler. I had difficulty on the minister's plain language income tax form.
If we were to put this in, we would just be encouraging one lawsuit after another with people claiming that the language of the document was not plain enough for them. I do not know whether Shakespeare wrote in plain language, but I suppose it was plain enough for the time.
November 27, 1991

Some of us had difficulty when we were at school doing English that involved Shakespearian plays. I guess they were not plain to us. If the member could tell us what is plain and what is not plain, what is complicated, what is difficult and what is easy, I suppose that is all in the eye of the beholder. It would be very, very difficult to ever define plain language.
One of these days, when we as drafters of legislation and legislators get our act in order, when we draw legislation that is in plain language, then we can expect the citizen to do the same. Until we can do it, I suspect it would be too much to ask the citizens to do better.


Ms. Beth Phinney (Hamilton Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Malpe-que for this amendment.
I cannot think of anything more sensible than having a document written in plain language. I have certainly had a lot of people come into my office. I have had personal experiences when I have had a terrible time reading the documents. People are suffering, and they make mistakes in judgment because they cannot understand the document.
I am surprised at my colleague across the floor who says he does not understand what plain language is. It was used in 10 states in the United States and it has been successfully used since the 1970s in New York. Why can he not pick up the phone or get his staff people to pick up the phone and find out what plain language is, if he cannot understand what plain language is as he just suggested.
This motion is so sensible that it is most certainly not going to be accepted by the Conservative Party because it just seems so easy and logical. I imagine that it will not be accepted by the hon. members across the floor.
Again, I congratulate the member. I hope my hon. colleague and all members support the amendment.


Michael James Breaugh: Mr. Speaker, I think the concept of plain language for legislation is laudable.
I am a little confused, sitting back in the comer this afternoon. I listened to the member for Mississauga South indicate clearly that he liked the idea of plain language amendments and accepted it in some circum-
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stances. But I think if I am right, he is not going to accept plain language here.
In other words, having made the argument that it is a good idea is not good enough. That perhaps speaks to what happens inside this Chamber.
The second thing is I think the concept is laudable. We had better get it into the record what this amendment says this afternoon. It is laudable that a company must use plain language in all contracts related to financial services, applications for financial services and related documents which it provides to its customers who are natural persons.
That is great. I like that. What I do not like are the weasel words which come after, that subclause (1) does not apply to words or forms of documents that are prescribed by law. What is the use of writing something in plain language if you do not have to, if it is in a form prescribed by law? It seems to me that kind of mitigates the original idea.
Subclause (3) says that subclause (1) does not apply to contracts, applications for financial services and related documents where the price of the financial service or the total liability assumed or to be assumed by the customer exceeds $250,000.1 do not enter into a whole lot of those kind of things but it sBeems to me that for $250,000 I ought to be able to understand what I am signing.
In subclause (4) it says:
Proof that reasonable efforts have been made by the company to comply and maintain compliance with subsection (1) is a complete defence-
Holy mackerel, if they try, that is a complete defence. "In a prosecution under subsection (1)-or in a dispute about whether subsection (1) has been complied with", I am losing the plain language part of this amendment real quick.
If you turn the page to subclause (5), the plain language amendment, it says:
The failure of a company to comply with subsection (1) does not affect the enforceability of any document referred to therein and may not be asserted by a customer or a company as a defence in an action or proceeding based on a document referred to in subsection
(1).
Are you with me, people all across Canada? It is a plain language amendment we are talking about. I think the lawyers are starting to froth at the mouth already.

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In subclause (6) of the plain language amendment, it says: "As used in this section "customer"-get ready for this one-"includes a natural person". Wait a minute, there are other kinds of persons around. It is "a natural person who is a guarantor or provides security to a company". There has to be something wrong with that one.
However, if you were worried so far go to subclause (7) of the plain language amendment. This is the one you should read carefully. It says: "Subsections (1), (2), (3), (4), (5) and (6)"-


An hon. member:: No (7).


Michael James Breaugh: Six of them, "shall come into force on the day which is two years after the coming into force of section 1 of this act". Wow, that is tough legislation.
Where I come from plain language means that at the end of a discussion both parties understand what was said. I do not think it quite meets that criteria.


Hon. Kim Campbell (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I might add some comments to this discussion on the very important concept of plain language. I think that the amendment put forward by the hon. member for Malpe-que has some very important ideas in it.
I can understand why some of the colleagues in this House would not want to accept it, and as part of the government I would say that it is not an amendment we want to accept. I think that there has been some confusion in the debate. I would like to address the point raised in the amendment because she addresses a very important area of public policy.
When the amendment says that the requirements would not apply to a form prescribed by government it is simply to make it clear that there are certain kinds of forms which financial institutions must use which are prescribed by government. It is simply to save them harm from complying with the law.
The question about plain language is a very interesting one. It is one that the legal profession has been wrestling with very seriously in a variety of areas of commercial law. There is no question that the need for plain language exists. The debate within the legal profession or in the area of the law is between plain language and the concern about giving up the use of what are called
"terms of art". Those are legal terms around for which there is an established jurisprudence so that everybody knows what they mean. We are gradually, slowly transferring ourselves from some of those arcane "terms of art" to plain language. The motivation behind the hon. member's amendment is very admirable and is very consistent with the concern lawyers themselves have about the accessibility of the law, legal terminology and contractual language to ordinary people and of not making these things purely the purview of people who are legally trained.
The question is whether it should be required in statute. I think my colleague, the hon. member from Mississauga East, makes a very good point in asking: "How do you define it for the purposes of the statute?" I know that one of the hon. member's colleagues asked what they are doing in the United States. I would like to find out whether there is a statutory definition of what "plain language" is or whether there are regulations.
What usually happens is that new forms are devised, an insurance policy or of a loan document or a mortgage document, which are then agreed upon. Many then become forms prescribed by government. The problem with the hon. member's amendment is that it creates an obligation without making it clear how someone meets that particular obligation. However, I think there is no question that there is a growing acceptance of the need for plain language. It may be-I would like to see the examples-that in Alberta what has been done is that certain forms have been prescribed and certain language has been prescribed.
What the hon. member raises in her amendment is certainly an important issue of public policy. In the Department of Justice one of the areas that we fund is research on the issue of plain language in the law to try to make it more accessible.
I would be concerned to have it in the statute now, without knowing how this was going to be defined. However, I would certainly be willing to undertake on behalf of my government to work with my colleague, the minister responsible for financial institutions, to explore this issue further if this amendment fails. I have no criticism of the polity underlying it, but I have more reservations about whether this wording should go into the statute now.
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November 27, 1991

As with the hon. member who just spoke I have no difficulty with the use of the term "natural person". It is one of those nice terms of art in the law. We all know what it means, but maybe in itself it is an argument for finding a more plain language explanation for it.
The what he calls the weasel words but what I would call the qualifications of the hon. member's colleagues reflect the fact that we are still perhaps not quite ready to entrench this principle in the statute. However, I want to compliment the member for Malpeque because I think she has put her finger on a very important issue of public policy that all of us who deal with legislation should be conscious of. I want to indicate to her that I am quite prepared to take the meaning of the amendment on advisement and work with my colleague to see whether we cannot as a matter of policy push for the use of more accessible language in the documents that are so important to Canadian people.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, I have no hesitation in supporting this amendment. Frankly I am rather puzzled at the minister's response because basically she says she supports the spirit of the amendment but she will not move it forward by way of legislation. The fact is that plain language as a premise should be entrenched in the law. Frankly I do not think it should be the purview of only lawyers to sit down and determine what is plain language.
We are legislators who are charged with the responsibility of developing laws. My colleague, the member for Malpeque, has enshrined a very important principle, which is to advise by statute that when forms are provided by financial institutions they be in language that everybody can understand. That is simple. That is plain language. That is clear thinking and clear speaking. If the minister supports the principle she should be prepared to support the amendment and allow it to move forward. Once it has moved forward presumably the specifics of how it will be regulated can be dealt with at the regulatory stage.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


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


John R. Rodriguez: Motion No. 10
That Bill C-28 be amended by adding immediately after line 49 at
page 272 the following new clause:
502. Notwithstanding anything in sections 495 to 501, no company may acquire or increase a substantial investment in
(a)	a bank;
(b)	a body corporate to which the Loan Companies Act or the Thjst Companies Act applies; or
(c)	a body corporate incorporated under the laws of a province if the activities of the body corporate are substantially similar to those of a body corporate described in paragraph (b).
He said: Mr. Speaker, this is the last opportunity to appeal to members regarding the concerns we are trying to express in this motion.
The concern we have is about the concentration of activity. In previous amendments on Bill C-4, Bill C-19 and Bill C-28, we raised our concerns about the concentration of ownership. We said that these bills, once they are enacted and are in force, will allow one of the greatest concentrations of financial activities that we have ever seen in the history of this country.
Therefore, we went back to the green paper and picked out a sliding scale of ownership that would to a large extent produce wide ownership for large financial institutions, including banks.
This motion arose from our concerns about the concentration of activity. Therefore, we put into this motion an amendment that will prevent insurance companies

November 27, 1991
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from owning substantial parts of banks. It will prevent them from owning trust companies. Our view is very straightforward. We believe that when this country set up the pillar structure for financial institutions, it was a wise decision. We had banks doing things that were related to banking, and we put them under a bank act. We had trust and loans under a separate pillar, insurance companies under a separate pillar, co-operatives under a separate pillar and investment brokers under one. Of course, we lost that last pillar in 1987. That pillar has come down and with predictable accuracy. Anyone standing in this Chamber in 1987 could have predicted very accurately that these investment brokers would have ended up in the stables of financial institutions. That is exactly what has happened. They have ended up in those institutions.
Of course, to give the facade of separating the investment brokerage business from the banking business they put up what are called fire walls which, as Gerald Corrigan in the United States said, often become walls of fire.
Here we are in 1991. We have learned nothing whatsoever from the experience of the United States. We are collapsing the remaining pillars. We will still have a Bank Act, we will still have an Insurance Act, but that is all for show. All the synergies that can go on across the pillars will go on and eventually melt them down. I think that is the expression I have been using. You will see one of the greatest meltdowns in financial institutions in this Canada.
If insurance companies think they can survive as a small insurance company, they are sadly mistaken. When these bills are enacted this will be a game where only the large and powerful will survive, where it will be very difficult to regulate the large and the powerful. It will be a new horizon. It will be a new day for financial institutions.
We constantly heard from witnesses appearing before the Standing Committee on Finance about globalization. They said they wanted to be able to compete globally. When 60 per cent and 70 per cent of the profits of these large, global financial institutions start coming from outside Canada what will then be the encouragement for them to pay attention to what goes on at home? When all of their efforts to accrue their profits remain beyond the borders of Canada how well will they serve the consumers of Canada?
If you recall, I described the banks as lions. I described the insurance companies as mongooses. I described the trust and loan companies as cobras. I have said in this scenario that the mongoose will eat the cobras and then the lions will end up eating the mongoose. It is not insignificant that the Royal Bank of Canada has a lion as its symbol and it is holding the globe to its chest. That is exactly what is going to happen. One morning consumers will wake up and find that they do not have the competition in this country that brings about, we are told, lower prices for their products. We will find that there will be a concentration of power and there will be a concentration of activity.
In fact The Economist recently appealed very vividly in an article to the law makers in Ottawa to return to the wide ownership concept. I call on members to support this amendment. Let us get on with making sure these animals are back in the cage and that we get back to the pillar system of regulation.


Catherine S. Callbeck: Mr. Speaker, this amendment, Motion No. 10, put forth by the New Democratic Party would not allow an insurance company to own a trust company or a bank.
If we look at the present situation in Canada today, at least 20 insurance companies now either own a trust company or they are part of a conglomerate that owns a trust company. That is the present situation: at least 20 insurance companies now own a trust company or are part of a conglomerate that owns a trust company. Also, banks and trust companies can buy insurance companies. It is only fair that insurance companies should be able to own trusts or banks.
I think that is a very logical argument. It is straightforward. We will be voting against this amendment.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, I too wish to put on record some comments and they will be short.
The amendment that we are proposing today is similar to the amendments that we had when dealing with the banks and when we were dealing with the trust companies as well.
Basically we feel uncomfortable in that we have seen the erosion of the pillars and now the total collapsing of
November 27, 1991

the pillars. I have been involved in this exercise on and off since the early eighties. The fundamental question I come back to is that it is our job as parliamentarians to be concerned about the public interest. We have to demand of the government introducing this resolution to show us that this is in the public interest.
It might be in the interest of the banks. It might be in the interest of the insurance companies. It might be in the interest of the trusts or whoever. In the end it is our job here to determine whether it is in the public interest. After all, when everything is said and done members of this House, this body, are the ones who have that responsibility. We are the only ones who have that responsibility.
Are we exercising that responsibility? There has been a lack of explanation in the House on the part of the minister. He has never indicated that he was introducing this legislation or this amendment and so forth because the public will benefit from it. He has never indicated how it is in the public interest. We have never had an explanation in terms of the public interest. We have had explanations in the following terms: they are doing it over here and that is why we have to do it this way as well. We have heard all those types of arguments but never the most fundamental one, that is: Is it in the public interest?
When I started out on the question of the reform of the financial institutions in the early eighties, I tried to come to an understanding of that in my own mind. I could see some of the arguments and reasons for collapsing the pillars and the conveniences at times, et cetera.
Still, I really wonder whether it is in the public interest to have the institutions that can conceivably grow out of this legislation be so strong and whether in the end the public, especially the Canadian public that has invested in these institutions, that have used these institutions and that have allowed these institutions to grow to the size they are now, will be best served with the passage of this legislation.
The government has failed to convince me and I suspect the government has failed to convince the Canadian public as well.
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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is the House ready for the question?


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The question is on Motion No. 10. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


@Acting Speaker: Pursuant to Standing Order 76(8), a recorded division on the proposed motion stands deferred.


A. Kim Campbell: Motion No. 10A.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 542:
(a)	by adding, immediately after line 26 on page 297, the following: "(d) issuing annuities to its members and their spouses and
children;
(e) if the society is permitted to insure risks falling within the class of life insurance, issuing policies to its members and their spouses and children, or accepting or retaining on the direction of a policyholder or beneficiary policy dividends or bonuses, or policy proceeds that are payable on the surrender or maturity of the policy or on the death of the person whose life is insured, where the liabilities of the society in respect of the policies or the amounts accepted or retained vary in amount depending on the market value of a fund consisting of a specified group of assets;";
(b)	by relettering the subsequent paragraphs and any crossreferences thereto accordingly;
(c)	by striking out line 48 on page 298 and substituting the following:
"(6) A society that issues policies described in paragraph (l)(e) or accepts or retains amounts so described shall, in respect of those amounts, (a) maintain separate accounts; and (b) establish and maintain one or more funds consisting of assets that are segregated from the other assets of the society and that are specified as the assets on the market value of which the liabilities of the society in respect of those policies or amounts depend.

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(7)	For the purpose of establishing or maintaining a segregated fund required to be maintained by subsection (6), a society may, subject to the regulations, transfer an amount to the separate account maintained in respect of the segregated fund.
(8)	A society may, with the approval of the Superintendent, return the current value of an amount transferred pursuant to subsection (7) to the account from which the amount was transferred.
(9)	A claim against a segregated fund maintained pursuant to subsection (6) under a policy or for an amount in respect of which the fund is maintained has priority over any other claim against the assets of that fund, including the claims referred to in section 161 of the Winding-up Act.
(10)	The liability of a society under a policy or for an amount in respect of which a segregated fund is maintained pursuant to subsection (6) (a) does not, except to the extent that the assets of the fund are insufficient to satisfy a claim for any minimum amount that the society agrees to pay under the policy or in respect of the amount, give rise to a claim against any assets of the society, other than the assets of that fund; but (ft) to the extent that the assets of the fund are insufficient to satisfy such a claim, gives rise to a claim against the assets of the society, other than the assets of that fund, that has the priority referred to in subsection 161(2) of the Winding-up Act.
(11)	In addition to the powers that a society may exercise pursuant to subsection (1), a society may hold and otherwise deal with real property.
(12)	A society may".
Motion No. 10C.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 554:
(a)	by adding, immediately after line 10 on page 303, the following:
"(a) a company or other entity that is engaged in the insurance
business;";
(b)	by relettering the subsequent paragraphs and any crossreferences thereto accordingly;
(c)	by striking out line 29 on page 303 and substituting the following:
"pursuant to subsection (1) unless (a) in any case, the society";
(d)	by striking out line 32 on page 303 and substituting the following:
"Superintendent; and (b) in the case of a body corporate that is a company or other entity that is engaged in the insurance business, the society controls the company or entity or would thereby acquire control of the company or entity.
(3) Notwithstanding paragraph (2)(b), a society need not control an entity incorporated or formed elsewhere than in Canada in which it has a substantial investment and which it would otherwise be required to control pursuant to that paragraph where the laws or customary business practices of the country under the laws of which the entity was incorporated or formed do not permit the society to control the entity.
(4) For the purposes of subsection (2), "control" means "control within the meaning of section 3, determined without regard to paragraph 3(l)(d)"."


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, these are technical amendments in a sense but they are rather long. They deal with friendly societies, giving the friendly societies the powers that we believe they ought to have. They are really the powers they had under the existing legislation.
Members of the finance committee will remember when we were putting this bill through that the friendly societies were not too organized in terms of then-representation. After considerable discussion in the hearings before the Senate, it was felt that the bill had to be altered slightly to handle the business powers of friendly societies including their investments.
That is the reason for Motions Nos. 10A and 10C. I think they should pass without further debate.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The question is on Motion No. 10A. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 10A agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The next question is on Motion No. 10C. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 10C agreed to.


A. Kim Campbell: Motion No. 13.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 660 by striking out lines 27 to 30 on page 350 and substituting the following:
"(a) appoint the actuary of the provincial company forthwith after the Superintendent makes an order for the provincial company under section 657;
(b) appoint the auditor of the provincial company for the purposes of this Act forthwith after the Superintendent makes an order for the provincial company under section 657; and".


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, this is a technical amendment with respect to the appointment of actuaries and an actuary conduct review committee. It is also really a technical amendment to clarify transitional provisions.
I would suggest that this motion pass through without any debate.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The question is on Motion No. 13. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 13 agreed to.


A. Kim Campbell: Motion No. 14.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 715 by striking out line 18 on page 385 and substituting the following:
"(c) paragraph 593(a) of An Act respecting".
Motion No. 15.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 716 by striking out line 6 on page 386 and substituting the following:
"(c) paragraph 593(b) of An Act respecting".
Motion No. 16.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 719 by striking out line 21 on page 387 and substituting the following:
"(c) subsection 595(2) of An Act respect-".
Motion No. 17.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 723 by striking out line 29 on page 391 and substituting the following:
"(c) subsection 596(1) of An Act respect-".
Motion No. 18.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 723 by striking out line 26 on page 392 and substituting the following:
"(c) subsection 596(3) of An Act respect-''.
Motion No. 19.
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 743 by striking out line 16 on page 401 and substituting the following:
"(c) subsection 602(1) oiAn Act respect-".
Motion No. 20.
Government Orders
That Bill C-28 be amended in Clause 749 by striking out line 12 on page 406 and substituting the following:
"section 451, 542 or 593 of the Insurance Compa-".
Motion No. 21.
That Bill C-28 be amended:
(a)	by adding, immediately after line 12 on page 413, the following:
"Amendment to this Act if Bill C-34 is assented to
760. If, during the third session of the thirty-fourth Parliament, Bill C-34, entitled An Act to revise and amend the law governing cooperative credit associations and to provide for related and consequential matters is assented to, then, on the later of the coming into force of section 490 of this Act and section 1 of that Act, paragraph (e) of the definition "service corporation" in subsection 490(1) of this Act is repealed and the following substituted therefor:
(e)	any other Canadian financial institution incorporated or formed by or under an Act of Parliament, or any central cooperative credit society to which the Superintendent has, by order under subsection 473(1) of the Cooperative Credit Associations Act, applied Part XVI of that Act, that has a substantial investment in the body corporate,";
(b)	by renumbering the subsequent clauses and any crossreferences thereto accordingly.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The question is on Motion No. 14. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 14 agreed to.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. If you inquired I think you might find unanimous consent to move the following motion. I move:
That Clause 529 of Bill C-28 be amended by striking out lines 1 and 2 on page 291 and substituting the following:
"twice the annual salary of the related party and $100,000".
This motion is an amendment that makes this bill the same as the other two bills. Therefore I think you will receive unanimous consent, Mr. Speaker.


John R. Rodriguez: I have just one comment to make, Mr. Speaker. Fulfilling the commitment we have made to all parties in the committee, we would do this for the trust and loan companies as well and all other groups.

November 27, 1991
Government Orders


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Nickel Belt has another matter to put before the House.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, I think if you seek the unanimous consent of the House you will find that there is consent for the introduction of the following motion:
That Clause 14 3 of Bill C-28 be amended by striking out lines 11 to
23 on page 81 and substituting the following:
Publication in newspaper.
(3) In addition to the notice required under subsection (1),
(a) where any class of shares of a company is publicly traded on a recognized stock exchange in Canada, notice of the time and place of the meeting of shareholders shall be published once a week for at least four consecutive weeks before the date of the meeting in a newspaper in the place where the head office of the company is situated and in each place in Canada where the company has a transfer agent or where a transfer of the company's shares may be recorded; or
b) where the company is a mutual company, notice of the time and place of the meeting of policyholders of the company, together with information on the means by which any policyholder can receive the notice referred to in that subsection, shall be published once a week for at least four consecutive weeks before the date of the meeting in a newspaper in the place where the head office of the company is situated and in each region of Canada in which more than 1 per cent of the total number of policyholders entitled to vote at the meeting reside.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Before I deal with the motion of the hon. member for Nickel Belt, I am going to deal with the motion moved by the hon. member for Mississauga South.
Is there unanimous consent for the member to move the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


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


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is there unanimous consent for the hon. member for Nickel Belt to move his motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


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


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred divisions on the report stage of the bill now before the House.


Mr. Hawkes:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There have been discussions all day long among the three parties. I think you might find unanimous consent to suspend the ringing of the bells at this point to move on to Bill C-34, I believe it is. Upon the conclusion of Bill C-34, and if the point comes where we need to vote, there would be a 15-minute bell and we would then vote on all of the necessary motions related to Bill C-28 as well as on any that might arise in terms of Bill C-34 at report stage.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, we have no problem with that at all. I think now that we are on a roll we might as well see it through.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Agreed and so ordered.


CO-OPERATIVE CREDIT ASSOCIATIONS ACT MEASURE TO AMEND
[Stage Direction]
The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-34, an act to revise and amend the law governing co-operative credit associations and to provide for related and consequential matters, as reported (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Finance.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: There are six report stage motions set out on the Notice Paper for report stage on Bill C-34, an act to revise and amend the law governing co-operative credit associations and to provide for related and consequential matters.
Motions Nos. 1 and 3 in the name of the hon. Minister of State for Finance are in order and will be grouped for debate. The vote on Motion No. 1 will apply to Motion No. 3.
November 27, 1991

Motions Nos. 2 and 5 in the name of the hon. Minister of State for Finance are technical in nature. They will be grouped for debate, and a vote on Motion No. 2 will apply to Motion No. 5.
Motions Nos. 4 and 6 in the name of the hon. member for Malpeque and the hon. Minister of State for Finance are in order and will be debated and voted on separately.
I will now propose Motions Nos. 1 and 3 to the House.


MEASURE TO AMEND
Hon. Elmer M. MacKay (for the Minister of State (Finance)) moved:: Motion No. 1
That Bill C-34 be amended in Clause 292 by striking out line 35 on page 144 and substituting the following:
"accounting principles, the primary source of which is the
Handbook of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants."
Motion No. 3
That Bill C-34 be amended in Clause 307 by striking out line 47 on page 151 and substituting the following:
"auditing standards, the primary source of which is the Handbook of
the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants."


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, the first two amendments involve the clarification of the standard of care required in the CICA Handbook. It is similar to amendments we have moved before and accepted without debate.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The question is on Motion No. 1. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 1 agreed to.


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: Motion No. 2
Bill C-34 be amended in the French version of Clause 299 by striking out lines 39 and 40 on page 147 and substituting the following:
"des actions de l'association, d'une centrale membre de celle-ci ou
d'une filiale de Vassocialion".
Motion No. 5
Government Orders
That Bill C-34 be amended in the French version of Clause 474 by striking out lines 19 and 20 on page 241 and substituting the following:
"(2)a)(v) et, pour Vapplication de ce dernier sousalinia, du paragraphe 444(3). A ces fins et".


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, these are technical amendments involving the French version only. They are designed to make sure that the bill reads the same in French and English and should pass without debate.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The question is on Motion No. 2. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: If it is agreed on Motion No. 2, it is also agreed on Motion No. 5.
Motion No. 2 agreed to.


Catherine S. Callbeck: Motion No. 4
That Bill C-34 be amended in Clause 308 by adding immediately after line 29 at page 152 the following:
"(3) A person who in good faith makes an oral or written communication under subsections (1) or (2) shall not be liable in any civil action arising therefrom."
She said: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to move this amendment today. It is one that is similar to the one I moved on the Bank Act, the Trust and Loan Companies Act and the Insurance Act. I am pleased that it has been accepted by the House on those three bills so I am hopeful that members will agree to it for the co-operatives.
I feel it is important because it will provide for a free flow of information to auditors so they can conduct a thorough audit.
What it does is prevent a lawsuit against anyone who gives information to an auditor or an actuary. I think it will make for better statements and auditors can do a more thorough review because there will be all kinds of information coming forth that will be very helpful in this regard. It will also point out problems that may be small problems right now but could become very large problems and eventually cause bankruptcy.

November 27, 1991
Government Orders
Because of those reasons and the ones that I put on the record for the Bank Act, the Trust and Loan Companies Act and the Insurance Act, I have moved this amendment and I am hopeful that the House will accept it.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, the government is prepared to accept the amendment with one exception of amending wording.
I would like therefore to file an amendment to the motion. I believe the amendment will be accepted by my friend from Malpeque as it has in every other bill we passed with the same amendment. It only ties down in more precise language the exemption from liability. I expect it will be accepted unanimously.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, we accept the amendment. We accepted it as it applied to the other bills as well.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Amendment (Mr. Blenkarn) agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The next question is on Motion No. 4, as amended. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 4, as amended, agreed to.


Gilles Loiselle: Motion No. 6
That Bill C-34 be amended in Clause 475 by striking out lines 16
and 17 on page 242 and substituting the following:
"tral to
(a)	an association of which the central is a member; or
(b)	a deposit protection agency, or the government of the province in which the central is incorporated, if the agency or government is designated by the Minister."


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, this is an amendment that will assist provincial centrals by allowing them to create certain security arrangements subject to the approval of the minister. It makes the operation of a deposit protection agency that is usually a
provincially incorporated deposit protection agency able to take security as well. It is the kind of thing that we think is necessary to make this bill work effectively.
I think the amendment ought to pass without any further discussion.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The question is on Motion No. 6. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 6 agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred divisions.


[Stage Direction]
Call in the members.

And the division bells having rung:
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Before the Chair takes the votes on Bill C-28, the Chair got so excited because there was such co-operation it forgot to put the concurrence motion.


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: that the bill be concurred in.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


An hon. member:: On division.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of Bill C-28, an act respecting insurance companies and fraternal benefit societies, as reported (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Finance.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The first question is on Motion No. 1.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the motion lost.


Mr. Gagliano:: Mr. Speaker, I believe you will find there is unanimous consent for applying the result of the vote that was just taken to Motions Nos. 6, 3, 36 and 10.
Regarding Motion No. 9, if there is unanimous consent, the same vote could be applied, except that the Liberal caucus would vote in favour.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Does the House give its unanimous consent?


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member for Calgary Northeast, on a point of order.


Mr. Kindy:: There is no unanimous consent, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Angus:: Mr. Speaker, perhaps the hon. member might want to reconsider if his name can be recorded in the appropriate fashion for the particular motions that he wishes to vote differently on, rather than have us all

November 27, 1991
Government Orders
go through the process time after time so that we can get on with our business.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Does the hon. member give unanimous consent?


Alex Kindy: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The next question is on Motion No. 6. A vote on Motion No. 6 also applies to Motion No. 7.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare Motion No. 6 lost. Therefore Motion No. 7 is lost.
Before the taking of any more votes, I would like to say that members should not be walking in and out of the Chamber. If anyone wants to leave now before the next vote is taken, then he or she should leave the Chamber. Otherwise it is very difficult for the officers at the table to take a proper vote.
The next question is on Motion No. 3.


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if we could try once again to see if there is unanimous consent to apply the votes as outlined by the Whip of the Official Opposition.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the motion lost.
The next question is on Motion No. 3G. The vote on Motion No. 3G applies to Motion No. 11C.


PAIRED-MEMBERS
[Stage Direction]
Members
nil/aucun
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the motion lost.
The next question is on Motion No. 10.



[Stage Direction]
Members
November 27, 1991
[Stage Direction]
Government Orders
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the motion lost. The next question is on Motion No. 9.
The House	divided on Motion No. 9, which was
negatived on the following division:	
Anawak	(Division No. 83)
 YEAS Members Arseneault
Bevilacqua	Callbeck
Crawford	Dingwall
Duhamel	Flis
Gagliano	Gauthier
Grey (Beaver River)	Guamieri
Harvard	Kindy
LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands-Canso) Lee	
MacAulay	MacLaren
MacLellan	Maheu
Manley	Marchi
Marleau	McGuire
Nault	Nunziata
Parent	Peterson
Phinney	Proud
Prud'homme	Speller
Stewart	Vanclief
Walker	Wappel
Wood-37 Andre	NAYS Members Atkinson
Attewell	Beatty
Belsher	Bertrand
Bjornson	Blackburn (Jonquiere)
Blenkarn	Bourgault
Boyer	Brightwell
Browes	Campbell (Vancouver Centre)
Cardiff	Chadwick
Champagne (Champlain)	C ha rest
Chart rand	Clark (Brandon-Souris)
Clifford	Cole
Collins	Cooper
Corbett	Cote
Couture	Danis
Darling	de Cotret
Della Noce	Do mm
Dorin	Duplessis
Edwards	Epp
Fee	Feltham
Ferland	Fretz
Friesen	Gray (Bonaventure-iles-de-la-Madeleine)
Guilbault	Gustafson
Halliday	Harvey (Chicoutimi)
Hawkes	Hicks
Horner	Horning
Hughes	Jacques
James	Jelinek
Koury	Larrivee
Layton	Lewis
Littlechild	Loiselle
MacDonald (Rosedale)	MacKay
Malone	Marin
Mayer	McCreath
McDougall (St. Paul's)	McLean
Monteith	Moore
Nicholson	Oberle
Porter	Pronovost
Redway	Reimer
Ricard	Richardson
Robitaille	Saint-Ju lien
Schneider
Scott (Hamilton-Wentworth)
Siddon
Soetens
Stevenson
Tetreault
Thorkelson
Tremblay (Lotbiniere)
Van De Walle
Vezina
Vincent
Wenman
Wilbee
Worthy-107
Scott (Victoria-Haliburton)
Shields
Sobeski
Sparrow
Tardif
Thompson
Tremblay (Quebec-Est)
Valcourt
Vankoughnet
Vien
Weiner
White
Winegard
.PAIRED MEMBERS
nil/aucun


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the motion lost.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I must have been asleep at the switch. Had I stood when I should have on behalf of my caucus, we would have voted in favour of the amendment. However, I blew it.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: We all get caught that way once occasionally.


Gilles Loiselle: that the bill, as amended, be concurred in.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


An hon. member:: On division.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Pursuant to special order made Tbesday, November 26, the House will now proceed to the consideration of third reading of Bill C-4, an act to revise and amend the law governing federal trust and loan companies and to provide for related and consequential matters, together with Bills C-19, C-28 and C-34 respecting financial institutions.


TRUST AND LOAN COMPANIES ACT
Gilles Loiselle: that Bill C-4, an act to revise and amend the law governing federal trust and loan companies and to provide for related and consequential matters, be read the third time and passed.
Government Orders BANK ACT

November 27, 1991


MEASURE TO ENACT
Gilles Loiselle: that Bill C-19, an act respecting banks and banking, be read the third time and passed.


INSURANCE COMPANIES ACT
Gilles Loiselle: that Bill C-28, an act respecting insurance companies and fraternal benefit societies, be read the third time and passed.


CO-OPERATIVE CREDIT ASSOCIATIONS ACT MEASURE TO AMEND
Gilles Loiselle: that Bill C-34, an act to revise and amend the law governing co-operative credit associations and to provide for related and consequential matters, be read the third time and passed.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There have been some discussions. I was under the impression that what we would do this evening is we would allow the minister to complete his remarks at third reading and then call it a day. He was not standing because I was rising on a point of order.
I just wonder if we could put that to the House. I understand the minister's remarks are around 15 minutes, and perhaps we could agree not to see the clock at 7 p.m. to allow him to just go over a couple of minutes if it is necessary to complete his remarks.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Then I will recognize the hon. Minister of State for Finance.


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on what I consider to be an important occasion. Today marks the end of a long and sometimes tortuous journey that began some six years ago. That journey has led us to the legislation that is before us today. This legislation marks a major work of reform, the reform of the legislation governing Canada's financial institutions.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Order, please. The Minister of State for Finance is making some very important statements. I would appreciate it if those who do not want to listen to the debate in the Chamber would go behind the curtain, please.


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, first of all I want to say that I am very much aware of the contribution made by former ministers and the finance committee, both in this House and in the other place, and I am very grateful to them. In particular, I want to thank the other House for its pre-study of the legislation. I also want to pay tribute to the efforts of very many individuals and groups, from both the industries concerned and the public at large.

This final stage of financial institutions reform includes four bills. The first of these is Bill C-4 which applies the principles of reform to the federally chartered trust and loans company. The other three bills are Bill C-19 which applies these principles to chartered banks, Bill C-28 which applies them to federally chartered insurance companies, and Bill C-34 which applies them to federally regulated co-operative credit societies.
In each case, the basic approach taken in the bill is the same. There are differences between the bills, however, because each applies the underlying principles of the reform to a different type of institution.
Bill C-4, the Trust and Loan Companies Act, or Bill C-83 as it was known during the previous session of Parliament, is particularly important because it serves in many respects as a model for the other new statutes.
Bill C-19 which applies to the chartered banks will, in conjunction with Bill C-4, ensure that banks and trust and loan companies will be restricted from retailing most insurance products in their branches. This ensures that insurance will continue to be sold by qualified licensed insurance brokers and agents working independently of any deposit taking institutions.

November 27, 1991

Our general approach to the question of ownership of financial institutions has been to allow for a mixed ownership regime. We have maintained the principle of wide ownership for Schedule I banks including the six largest Canadian banks. This ensures that no one person or group of associated persons can own more than 10 per cent of any class of Schedule I bank shares.
Narrow ownership is permitted for trust, loan and stock insurance companies, although large companies will be required to ensure that at least 35 per cent of their shares are widely held and publicly traded within five years.

Bill C-28 affects insurance companies. Some of the reform is intended specifically to meet the needs of this type of institution. Insurance companies will be given broader powers so that they can make consumer and business loans.
Furthermore, this bill recognizes the important place held by mutual companies in the financial system. They will be given new powers to obtain capital by issuing debt instruments and preferred shares.

Finally the legislation recognizes the position of participating policyholders and establishes new rules for communicating with them and seeking their approval for decisions taken at company meetings.
Bill C-34 applies the general principles to a fourth part of the sector, the federally regulated co-operative credit associations. To an even greater extent than the other parts of the sector, some of these institutions operate under shared jurisdiction with the provinces. Currently one federal association is governed by the act, while six registered centrals are governed by both the federal act and legislation of their province. Local credit unions, however, continue to be incorporated provincially and are governed solely by provincial legislation.
This legislation grants associations the power to provide a range of services to their members that is
Government Orders
comparable to that which may be provided under the other bills.
The new legislation also permits associations to provide services in the fulfilment of the trade association function which they serve with respect to other co-operative institutions.
In adapting the investment rules set out in Bill C-4 to federally regulated co-operative financial institutions, this legislation takes into account the import liquidity function served by these associations.
Finally, this bill will increase the access of federal associations to capital by permitting them to issue preferred shares to non-members. These shares will be restricted from carrying full voting rights, however, to ensure that control of associations remain within the co-operative system.
All the pieces of legislation I have mentioned have benefited from the open, intelligent and co-operative committee forces they have gone through, both in this House and in the other place.
I believe, and hope all will agree, that the government has been receptive to the suggestions made and the concerns raised. The record can speak for itself. A total of 172 amendments to C-83, the precursor of C-4, were made in the previous session of Parliament.
Bill C-19 was improved by 70 amendments, Bill C-28 by 141 and Bill C-34 by 62 amendments at committee stage. Further changes have been introduced to reflect the findings of the prestudy in the other place. In fact, 11 of the government's amendments introduced at report stage were the result of prestudy in the other place.
I am greatly pleased by this evidence of how well the system can work when people with positive and constructive attitudes buckle down and make it work. Yet, despite all these changes the basic policy thrust and principles behind the reforms have remained unchanged. They remain unchanged because of the overwhelming support they received from participants in the committee process.

The goals of the reform are clear and accessible: to better protect depositors and buyers of insurance; to benefit consumers by increasing competition and widening the array of services provided by financial institutions; to increase the capacity of our financial institutions

November 27, 1991
Private Members' Business
to compete at home and abroad; to enter into discussions with the provinces concerning harmonization since powers related to financial institutions are shared. These goals are important, Mr. Speaker, and I am glad that we have been able to express them in the legislations and regulations.

I know that members of the House are familiar with the general outline of the proposals. We have already dealt with them in our earlier debates. Nevertheless, I do want to speak specifically about certain issues.
The first is the issue of self-dealing. Tougher rules will be implemented. The self-policing role of directors and auditors will be made more effective through mandated roles and responsibilities. The Superintendent of Financial Institutions will have increased powers to require information that will enable problems to be anticipated. The superintendent is, therefore, being given new access to needed information which has not previously been available.
Second, consumers will find shopping for financial services more convenient and will benefit from a wider choice of financial products since banks, trusts and loan companies and insurance companies will be allowed to compete more directly with each other. By opening new avenues of growth for our financial institutions, the new provisions will strengthen the ability of these institutions to meet the new challenges that have evolved in the global marketplace.

Financial institutions will be able to diversify by owning institutions whose operations are concentrated in other sectors of the industry. Banks, for instance, will be able to acquire trust and loan companies and insurance companies will be able to own other financial institutions. Because of their wide ownership, mutual insurance associations will be able to own chartered banks. Important changes in the ownership structure of financial institutions will be submitted to the approval of the minister of Finance, who will determine if these changes best serve the interests of the Canadian financial system.

Together these proposals set out a framework for fair competition that will allow all institutions to have good opportunities for participation in a broad range of financial sector activities.
These bills and their regulations cover a very wide spectrum of changes because of the size and importance of the financial sector and the wide range of institutions in the situation which have to be covered.
After all, looking at the sector as a whole, there are more than 3,000 Canadian financial institutions with assets of some $900 million. Of the 25 largest institutions with total assets of $760 billion, 23 are chartered and regulated federally. It is not just the sheer size of the sector which is of importance. We must not forget that the health of these institutions is a key to the vitality and strength of our economy as well as our security as savers and investors.
The activities of these institutions affect our mortgages and our purchases of goods and services. The financial sector shelters and invests savings, and makes available investments needed for new and expanding industries.
I believe that these institutions will operate more effectively and competitively, and will meet the needs of Canadians more efficiently as a result of the reforms we have put forward.
We have recognized the importance of financial institutions in developing a legitimate and regulatory approach that protects the public while encouraging and not inhibiting innovation and competition. We have done this while also recognizing the competing interests within the financial community itself.
While we have sought as wide an agreement as possible, not all interests could be completely reconciled. In such cases, we have looked to find a reasonable balance.

Mr. Speaker, I will conclude my comments by saying once more that the thrust of our proposals is to strike a fair balance which meets individual, federal, provincial and commercial criteria as well as being a measure of prudence.
Those proposals reflect also the public interest. They reinforce and give the financial institutions the opportunity to progress and thrive while contributing to the strength of the Canadian economy.


* *


Mr. Speaker, I want to thank members of Parliament who worked with the government to allow the speedy passage of those bills which constitute this important legislative agenda.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being 7 p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 30(6) the House will now proceed to consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


Mr. Bob Speller (Haldimand-Norfolk) moved: that Bill C-250, an act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act, be read the second time and referred to Legislative Committee H.
He said: Mr. Speaker, today I would like to bring the attention of the House to an inherent part of rural Canadian infrastructure, namely, the mail delivery by rural route carriers.
The purpose of my bill before the House today is to make clear the injustices that presently persist against rural route carriers. As a private member, I have done all that I can in a legislative sense for these workers.
Therefore, it is my hope that the minister responsible for Canada Post will take the concerns of rural mail carriers of Canada seriously, act quickly to end the injustices that this House will discuss this evening in the Canada Post Act, and help these workers who are now facing these injustices.
As you know, I am from a rural part of the country. There are a number of rural members in this House today. I would call on these rural members after this debate is over to have a talk with their rural carriers to let them know where they stood on this issue in the House.
As the spokesperson for rural Canada within my party, a person in charge of a rural caucus, I want to say that in discussing with my colleagues here on this side of the House and looking at this issue, we have felt very strongly that mail rural carriers in rural Canada are not treated fairly.
Rural carriers provide service to 1.2 million rural and many times isolated households in Canada. Like their city counterparts, the rural route carrier sorts and
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delivers mail. The difference between the two is that the city mail carrier, an employee of Canada Post, enjoys employee benefits.
The rural carrier is denied the most basic rights of any worker in Canada. Benefits such as sick leave, unemployment insurance, maternity leave and even bereavement leave are denied.
They are denied the protection of the Canada Labour Code. So many Canadians have the opportunity to have protection under this code while the workers of rural Canada, mail delivery workers, are denied this basic right. They are denied workers' compensation. They are denied the opportunity to fall under the Employment Safety Standards Act and they are denied unemployment insurance.
In 1985 a group was formed. It called itself "rural route mail carriers of Canada". It attempted to obtain working conditions for these letter carriers. More importantly, it was organized to develop lines of communication with Canada Post. As we have seen in recent Canada Post labour disputes they are sometimes difficult to open up. I assure you that an attempt was made by these rural carriers to open up lines of communication so that Canada Post could find out for itself the situation these letter carriers were in.
Then and now, no one in authority was willing to meet with the letter carriers in order to resolve these numerous day to day problems. Canada Post has proved to be very frustrating for rural carriers who as a result have become bitter and yet they are determined to win the rights and benefits they so much deserve.
The unwillingness on the part of Canada Post Corporation to meet in any meaningful way with the rural carriers of Canada motivated these carriers to initiate action that would see fundamental changes to existing statutes.
This has been tried by way of labour board hearings and legislation. It is important to note that the employee status of rural carriers has been considered on four different occasions..
In 1987 the Canada Labour Board ruled that these letter carriers were employees of Canada Post. The board found that rural route carriers were fully integrated into the overall operation of the corporation and performed similar functions to those letter carriers in the cities. In other words, the board concluded that an employer-employee relationship existed. However Canada Post, in an attempt to get around this situation, appealed this decision to the Federal Court.

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As aB result, the decision was squashed by the Federal Court after careful consideration. The court based this decision entirely on section 13.5 of the Canada Post Corporation Act and that is why we are here today.
Obviously the only course of action that can be taken now is to introduce legislation that recognizes the employee's status of these hard-working and dedicated public servants. Make no mistake, these men and women are public servants. They do serve the public exactly in the same way as letter carriers do in urban centres. Without a doubt, the delivery of mail is still considered a public service in this country. It certainly makes no differentiation between unionized mail carriers and the rural mail carrier. Unfortunately there are some fundamental differences.
For example the contract awarded to a rural carrier averages $16,000 a year. This figure is rarely negotiable. In many cases the rural carrier receives no extra payment for routes that have become amalgamated. Moreover, the rural mail carrier receives no pay increase for increased households, CODs, registered mail, parcels, special deliveries or electronic mail.
Finally, increases that we all face in Canada today such as gas price increases, insurance premium increases, the hiring of labour to deal with extra workloads, have lowered the real income of rural carriers. Canada Post does not recognize that rural route carriers are essentially going through the same difficulties that all Canadians are going through. That is the cost of putting together a business and trying to run a business in a business-like manner.
To understand Canada Post's attitude about the problems faced by the rural carrier is to understand the corporation's fiscally responsible manner of operation that it seems to have come to. I know that the minister has spoken in the House about this on numerous occasions claiming that Canada Post is becoming fiscally responsible. It is becoming a money-maker and as a
result, as we pointed out on this side of the House, it has lost in many areas in terms of service to Canadians.
Canada Post, to be fair to the corporation and to outline for the Canadian public its position, takes the position that in order to "organize and manage its service requirements in a cost-effective and business-like manner, a formal tender evaluation process best ensures both fair competition among suppliers, and the best value for the corporation and its customers".
Thus, according to Canada Post, and I will quote again, "in every competition all technical, commercial and financial elements of the tenders are taken into consideration. The final decision on a tender is based on the ability to obtain maximum value for each purchasing dollar". In other words money, money and more money is the bottom line. The result is that we in rural Canada, who so depend on that mail lifeline and that service, are being adversely affected by this attitude of Canada Post.
Ideally the formal tender process takes more into account than the bottom line of a dollar. In the end the winning bid reflects expertise. Expertise combined with commercial and financial elements, I believe, should all be involved in the decision on who delivers the mail. However rural route carriers have found that within Canada Post Corporation the process can be less than ideal. The many letters that I have received from rural carriers across this country portray a public corporation that puts money before people and is ultimately exploitive.
I would like to take this opportunity now to read from some of these letters. I believe it is the best way really to reflect the injustices that are out there within our rural communities.
One woman from southwestern Ontario writes, and I quote:
I am still a rural route contractor for route 1 and have been so for nearly 16 years. I have just renewed my contract for another five years in May of 1981. However one year after receiving this contract, our postmaster retired and we have just become another one of the corporation's rural postal outlets.
November 27, 1991

We have all experienced this problem throughout Canada, the injustices of the closing down of these rural post offices.
She goes on to say:
When we were first notified of the 'structural change-over' (as they like to refer to it), every letter said that the rural route would not be affected in any way. Then less than five days before I was to start, I received a letter from Canada Post Rural Services informing me that my route would emanate 16 kilometres from my home. I was told that 1 would be responsible for servicing the rural post office, prime sorting all of the other town's mail as well as my route, carry all parcels, flyers, registered items, Priority Post items, of both routes. Canada Post's offer for performing this service is based on 30 minutes to separate the town mail from my rural mail plus a few cents mileage for the additional kilometres driven. The length of my route is 34.6 kilometres. I service 85 rural customers and deliver no less than 15 different kinds of flyers weekly. However since I have been moved to the rural outlets in another town to sort the mail, the number of kilometres travelled per day is 67.8.1 am carrying mail now for 153 townspeople plus my own 85.
Needless to say, the volume of flyers alone for this many customers fills my car on Mondays and Tuesdays, and I am afraid to think of what will happen when the Christmas mail gets into full swing.
This is something they just threw on to this lady. You do understand the seriousness of this.
When I phoned Canada Post to try to get their co-operation to explain to them that the job of sorting the mail takes at least two hours, and that some days I have to make extra trips to town as my car will not hold the town's mail plus my rural mail, I was told that I could hand in my notice of 60 days if I was not satisfied.
This really shows the exploitive nature of this corporation and how it is now running with this new mandate set out by the government. She says:
I have answered their offer in writing with a counter-offer for additional payment and I am still waiting for a reply. I cannot quit as this is my only source of income. My husband's employment was terminated so we are forced to accept Canada Post's abuse and extra workload without fair payment.
I apologize for rambling on so long and I am sure there are others in worse circumstances. But I am becoming so weary and so depressed that I wanted you to be aware of what Canada Post is capable of doing.
That really says it all. If Canada Post was fair, if it really wanted to provide the service to Canadians in rural Canada as they do in urban Canada-and make no mistake, this should be a basic right of all Canadians, to
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have the proper mail service-they would address injustices such as this.
I want to go on to another letter, which is equally disturbing.
I am the only contractor out of our post office. I am up to about 268 mail boxes and 57 kilometres. I have been doing the mail for about 13 years, but as soon as my contract is up I am packing it in. Unfortunately, that is not more than three more years. I deliver an average of 13 flyers per week, and as you know without compensation. My friend who is a letter carrier gets paid per flyer when he delivers them. Canada Post can make me deliver as many as they want and I cannot do anything about it. A contractor in the next village to us is quitting in June when her contract is up. We have all had enough. The only reason I don't quit now is because Canada Post is hanging on to about $2,000 of my money. I had to give them that instead of a letter of credit because my bank wouldn't do a letter of credit for such a small amount. I had to give Canada Post 10 per cent of a year's contract price or they would not let me have my contract renewed, which I had to tender for after all these years of service. That is gratitude for you.
What these examples illustrate is that in many of the economically depressed rural areas across Canada, people desperate for jobs enter into unfair and exploitive contracts with Canada Post in an attempt to secure some kind of livelihood.
You know the problem is out there. In effect, many rural carriers are exploited by Canada Post's formal tender evaluation process. In an attempt to win a contract, the experienced courier is forced to submit a bid that does not reflect the work, expenses and costs involved in the job. In most instances, the contract is awarded to the lowest bidder and the carrier with the experience, who wants only to make a fair living, loses. He is not the only one to lose. All rural Canadians lose when these letter carriers do. What is more problematic is that many of the problems faced by rural carriers are due to the vulnerability of living in rural Canada.
To a greater extent the rural carrier must contend with a persisting attitude on the part of Canada Post that it is dealing with a rural, unsophisticated, pseudo-entrepreneur. Obviously I find this very disturbing, mainly because the nature of the job dictates that people and service rather than money must be a priority.
I believe that rural route carriers face discrimination and injustice because of their contractual relationship

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with Canada Post. This is compounded by subsection 13(5) of the Canada Post Act, which says:
Notwithstanding any provision of Part I of the Canada Labour Code, for the purposes of the application of that part to the Corporation and to the officers and employees of the Corporation, a mail contractor is deemed not to be a dependent contractor or an employee within the meaning of those terms in subsection 3(1) of that act.
Therefore, I urge the minister responsible for Canada Post to introduce legislation that would repeal this discriminatory subsection. I urge him to do so on a priority basis. The importance of the repeal of this subsection is two-fold. First, as it now reads it has implications with respect to section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in that it prevents a rural route carrier from receiving equal pay for work of equal value. Certainly the hon. members can see the hypocrisy of a Crown corporation whose legislation contradicts our charter. Second, an amendment to the Canada Post Act would ensure that Part I of the Canada Labour Code would apply to rural couriers in the same way that it applies to all employees of the corporation and most Canadian workers.
I see I only have one minute left. Canada Post, in its desire to act like a private corporation, has put money before people. I call on all members of this House to support me in this motion and I call on the minister to take action immediately to rectify this situation.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I like both the hon. member for Winnipeg-Transcona and the hon. member for Crowfoot. However, I had the hon. member for Crowfoot down first, so I must recognize him.


Mr. Arnold Malone (Crowfoot):: Mr. Speaker, I thought you were going to recognize the hon. member for Winnipeg-Transcona first. I probably should tell him that I am not ready yet, or something like that.
I thought that today might be a refreshing day and that something very unique and different would happen. I was hoping that I would hear a Liberal member of Parliament come to this House and put forward a Private Members' Bill that would talk about cutting the expenditures of money. That would have been an unique idea, very rare and never before experienced. That is really the case. Never before have I seen a Private Members' Bill from the opposition side that advocated the cutting of money.
He talks about an injustice and an unfairness. Quite frankly my first criticism is the lack of evidence to establish that fact. I begin with some prepared comments
that I would like to make today, I think that can be established and established clearly, as is also the case with numerous court hearings on this matter. They came to the same conclusion that the allegations of injustice simply are not justified.
I express some sympathy for the individual who signed the letter he read into the record. For a person who is earning $16,000 as their sole income it is obviously a significant hardship. It is not the intent of a rural postal contractor to serve as a person's sole job.
Most of these positions are part-time. They are coupled with people's other occupations. There may be extreme cases where this is some people's only job. That is not the intent of the work at all.
In many parts of Canada we examined the whole question of rural routes. At least in certain parts the activity is redundant. It is redundant with a community lifestyle in which people go to town for repairs or to purchase food. They visit their small villages, hamlets, or towns so frequently that a more legitimate question for Canadian society to ask is why if they are visiting a place where the post office is do we have a rural post office service and rural delivery in the first place.
I come from a very large rural constituency whose north section could be described as a farming area, some of it receiving rural delivery. The southern half could be described as a ranching area. My constituency is about the size of the province of New Brunswick.
I say to the hon. member for Haldimand-Norfolk that in many ways I could build a case to say that Canada Post has its criteria wrong in terms of how it establishes rural routes. If we look at the tax base of the ranching industry and the tax base of the oil and gas industry that co-exists with that ranching area we will find that there are enough tax dollars there so that instead of using the frequency of the number of persons per mile to justify a rural route probably a long and hard look should be taken at the opposite perspective.
I have constituents who travel 60 miles one way to get their mail. In other words, a return trip of 120 miles. In the farming areas most of those people are in town on a very regular basis, or members of their families. The very long hauls are where a postal service is more needed.
I am rising on the matter raised by my hon. friend for Haldimand-Norfolk. He asks to repeal section 13(5) of the Canada Post Act and seeks to change the status of Canada's rural route carriers and make them full-time employees of Canada Post Corporation.
November 27, 1991

Bill C-250 is a piece of legislation that runs contrary to anything that can be considered reasonable or appropriate for rural contractors and rural Canadians. Rural Canadians want to get their mail in a timely and efficient fashion. The passage of Bill C-250 would jeopardize that standard by changing the mutually beneficial relationship between Canada Post and its contractors.
Furthermore, this relationship has been scrutinized and has come through with flying colours. It has been repeatedly verified and supported by the courts, and it is on firm legal ground. Indeed, one decision by the court ruled the challenge to section 13(5) as frivolous. The truth is that Canada Post has been, is and will continue to be a major player in rural Canada.
So will its rural contractors. It is a beneficial relationship that has developed over time and they have provided a vital link in Canada Post's growing services. The Crown corporation operates in a fiscally responsible manner when selecting suppliers and contractors for many of its products and services.
A formal tender and evaluation process ensures an adequate and fair competition and allows the corporation to consider the most cost effective and market sensitive package submitted. Quality service and delivery are the key factors in Canada Post decision making.
This process gives all Canadians a chance to do business with Canada Post and everyone wins.
Members will no doubt realize that since becoming a Crown corporation in 1981 Canada Post has made major strides in becoming a profitable business answering to the myriads of calls in its giant client base.
As a corporation Canada Post serves some 6,000 communities across Canada. Many of its customers live in rural areas and depend on timely, effective and efficient postal service to deliver their products, send their bills and receive payments and social assistance cheques.
Canada Post's 100-year relationship with its rural contractors ensures that this vital connecting service continues. Still, since becoming a Crown corporation in
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1981 Canada Post has striven to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of its personnel, equipment and service. It has done so.
In the last decade Canada Post has deliberately invested in high-tech equipment to get mail moving faster, cheaper and more efficiently. It is succeeding where its predecessor had failed.
The latest Ernst and Young performance results indicated that 98 per cent of letter-mail is being delivered on time in the major cities cross Canada. In achieving this Canada Post has also improved its performance in rural Canada because much of the mail going through major urban centres is processed faster and more efficiently.
That is the kind of performance all Canadians, rural and city dwellers, have come to expect and to rely upon. By repealing section 13(5) of the Canada Post Corporation Act and making rural contractor employees of a Crown corporation my hon. friend seeks to change, without just cause or legal precedence, the nature of this positive relationship which is so critical to the answering of the business and personnel needs in rural Canada.
My hon. friend wants to turn back the clock on profitability and efficiency, two of Canada Post's most prized and hard won accomplishments. When Canada Post hired its rural contractors, its intent was clear: "Deliver the mail and do it on time". The contractors readily accepted the terms. They wanted to deal with Canada Post on an individual and not on a collective basis.
No one forced them to do it. They did it out of their own free will and business sense. Now someone else wants to change the rules. Is the federal government in the business of changing job descriptions, of rewriting contracts to make jobs? Do we expect our Crown corporations to do the same?
Where is the bottom line? Who do you think is going to pay for all of this?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member's time has expired. He is a little over, and I regret that I will have to cut him off.

Private Members' Business


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate. I was looking forward to hearing the other half of that speech prepared by Canada Post.
I do not have the other half because I am not here to represent Canada Post, but instead the people who Canada Post allegedly serves and who have concerns. Some of those concerns could be addressed by the legislation that we have before us if it were to be passed.
I am speaking about Bill C-280. The purpose of this legislation, although I am sure the mover of the bill referred to it, is to ensure that rural route carriers would be guaranteed the right to organize and become a full member of a union under the labour code and the Canada Post Corporation Act.
At present, rural route carriers hired on contract are not permitted to be members of any union. Rural route carriers, who are very familiar with postal service in rural communities, do not have any way to formally appeal any decision that adversely affects rural services.
This is something that the hon. member who just spoke perhaps should have taken into account unless, as is probably the case, he has seen his way through to defending the emasculation of rural post offices and rural postal service that has taken place during the rule of this government. If these rural postal workers had the status of people who were unionized, they could resist changes in rural postal service, not just on their own behalf, but on behalf of the communities in which they work. They are not able to do that now, they are simply terminated. Their contract comes to an end and if they do not like what is going on they have absolutely no recourse and their communities have no recourse through them.
One of the things that would happen if this bill is passed is that the corporation's extensive cuts to rural postal services might be slowed down in time for there to be something left of rural Canada by the time a new government is elected in the next election.
As I understand it, the Canada Post corporate plan calls for the closing down of every rural post office in Canada by the year 1996. This bill would get in the way of that plan and I think that recommends it to the House or at least to those who are concerned about that corporate plan.
Another strong point of this legislation is the fact that many rural route carriers have put in years of quality service to their communities and to Canada Post. At present, they have no access to seniority privileges or pension plans. We think that these employees deserve an opportunity, which this bill would provide them, to negotiate benefits.
An example which was provided to me by our post office critic is that of Joe and Blaine Young who served Rural Route 2 in Westport, Ontario for 25 years. At that time, they had missed only one day of delivery due to weather. They recently lost their bid to service Rural Route 2 to another bid that was only nominally lower in price. So you can see the kind of injustice which can be done to people who have served their communities well, who have the kind of seniority that along with merit would protect them in any other situation. Yet for a few cents, Canada Post can decide that couple, who served their community well, literally through rain, sleet, snow and hail, all these 25 years, one-quarter of a century, can simply, bingo, be gone and some entirely new person, new to the community, et cetera, or whatever can be brought in.
This is the kind of thing that we would like to see prevented and that we understand the hon. member's bill would prevent. It is the position of the NDP, even though it is a private members' bill, and I can assure the hon. mover of the motion that I speak on behalf of all my colleagues here, that Canada Post should encourage efficient and long-term service to rural routes by recognizing seniority and long-term quality service. Neither long-term nor efficient service will be encouraged when bids from contractors with proven track records are passed over in favour of bids that are nominally lower in cost.
I had some experience of this myself. I do not have any rural routes to speak of in the new riding of Winnipeg Transcona, but when I represented Winnipeg-Bird's Hill, I had rural postal routes. Whenever, in the name of this sort of seeking the bottom line, there were changes to the various contracts, there were always problems that came to my attention. The people who the community knew were reliable and who had done the job and knew what to do were sometimes replaced by absolutely new people. I do not see that postal service is the kind of thing that people should be trying to cut each other's throat for in terms of getting these contracts. People who
November 27, 1991

do a good job should be paid well to do it and should have a measure of job security that is not now available.
If the hon. member for Crowfoot wants to say that this has worked for a long, long, time, yes, it worked for a long, long time when we did not have a government and a Canada Post that were dedicated to the kind of bottom line philosophy that we have now.
As long as you did not have that kind of Canada Post and that kind of government, this system may have worked. However, now you have a situation where these people are vulnerable to the new climate of competition. It is really another word for dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, let's have a nasty, brutish society, instead of the one we have managed to build up over the years.
What we are talking about here is, as it is with so many other things, when we get into what might seem to be simply a rural issue or a postal issue, we find that at the heart of it is a philosophical debate going on in this country between those who would sacrifice the Canadian way of life to this greater god of competitiveness. Sooner or later we will all be running around working eight days a week, 24 hours a day, to keep up with whatever country is psychotic enough to want to be even more competitive than their neighbour. Leisure and justice and all the other things we thought we were building toward will be completely eliminated from our way of life. This bill, in its own small way, will go some way toward putting the brakes on that sort of thing, at least as far as rural Canada is concerned.
It is clear from what has happened to the post office over the last few years that in this greater world of competitiveness, rural Canada is dispensable. It is not unrelated to what we saw here today when we had the farm coalition here asking for the kind of aid that would help them to get through a very difficult time. Hopefully, by the time some solution is found at GATT and prices go up a bit, or whatever the long-term solution might be, there will still be some farmers around to benefit from the solution.
One suspects that the farmers of Canada are a bit like the rural post offices. The government has decided they are dispensable. In the big rationalization, in the name of global competitiveness, many Canadians-whether they
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work in rural post offices or farm the land or work in other traditional areas-have been targeted for elimination in the name of this great new world order. I think we will find when it finally comes to fruition, that it is a very nasty world indeed.


Mr. Michel Champagne (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Forestry):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak to Bill C-250, tabled by my Liberal colleague across the way.
First of all, Mr. Speaker, let me say that I am totally opposed to the principle of the hon. member's bill. I am opposed to it because I believe that the Canada Post Corporation is not in the business of creating jobs but should concentrate on making itself a going concern and ensuring that Canadians across this country receive their mail within a reasonable timeframe and receive the kind of service they have come to expect.
When the Progressive Conservative government came to power in 1984-the occasional history lesson is useful-hon. members will recall that the Canada Post Corporation had a deficit of close to $600 million. Those $600 million were paid by all Canadian taxpayers, despite the fact that we were just coming out of a recession, at a time when Canadian families had lost their jobs and at a time when taxpayers were telling us: Listen, Mr. Prime Minister, we are sick and tired of seeing Crown corporations that are running a deficit. We are sick and tired of seeing departments spending more than the government receives in revenue. We are sick and tired of agencies and even governments-at the time it was a Liberal government-that are poor managers and are mortgaging the future of our young people and the future of Canada
At the time, the Progressive Conservative government told all its departments, through the Minister of Finance, Mr. Wilson, and told all its Crown corporations: You will have to pay your own way as much as possible.
The Canada Post Corporation is no exception to this rule. Starting with a deficit of around $600 million, as I just said, it has made profits totaling nearly $200 million in the last three years. That is efficiency. It proves that with the right decisions and good managment, a deficit can be changed into a surplus.

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It also shows, Mr. Speaker, that any Crown corporation, whatever services it provides, can make money for all Canadians. It also shows, Mr. Speaker, that a Crown corporation like Canada Post, even though it does not always make the right decisions, can provide more services at lower cost, creating profits that will enable the government or even the corporation to improve the services that it will provide to the public and to be more competitive.
That is what Canadians asked us to do, Mr. Speaker. That is the mandate for which we were elected. The mandate of the Minister responsible for Canada Post was to make that corporation profitable and that is what Canada Post set out to do. We must say that we are proud of its successes and we hope that it will continue that way.
We are at a time when revenue is extremely important and I think that Canada Post has done a great deal in that regard, at least for now.
The reason I am against the Liberal member's bill is that I consider it unfair to give special advantages to some people. Let me explain.
In most rural areas and small villages, the rural postal contracts awarded by Canada Post are often one of the few ways that people who want to bid can obtain federal government contracts and get back some of the money they pay in tax every year.
Mr. Speaker, when I took office as my government came to power in 1984, dozens of people came to see us. Dozens of people from my riding said, "Mr. Champagne, it makes no sense that for decades, rural postal contracts have gone from father to son and we have never had a chance as taxpayers to bid. Although we are Canadians who pay our taxes, we have never had the chance to serve the country with a Canada Post contract, not with such a profitable contract that everyone would envy us, but a contract on which we could have bid, a contract where we could be more efficient and offer good service."
People came to my office, saying: "When will the government change this attitude? When will the government change this way of doing business? We wrote to the minister who was then responsible for Canada Post. He had discussions with officials of that corporation and they came to the conclusion that we should indeed go with public tenders in each community and each area covered,
so that all Canadians interested in that type of contract could get involved."
Today, Mr. Speaker, we see new faces providing services for Canada Post in all our communities. We also notice that more people are interested in the activities of that corporation, because when they see how we proceed, when they see that they can bid on that type of contract, they look carefully at what that corporation is doing, and not in a negative way, Mr. Speaker. It is not negative, because even today people call to ask if we know when the contract for such and such a rural route will expire. Of course, we refer them to Canada Post, since it manages those routes. But you can see the interest generated by the Corporation's decision to call for tenders and to give each taxpayer a chance.
If we restricted rural routes to big contractors, as the member wants and as they originally were Canadians, my constituents and taxpayers, would never have a chance to bid on those contracts.
I believe that Canada Post did not want to favour a particular segment of the population, but rather to give each and every one of us the opportunity to bid. The member should understand that. Mr. Speaker, is the Liberal member saying that we should only protect the contractors and forget the others, that it wouldn't hurt them to pay taxes like everybody else, that it doesn't matter if they want to have the same chances as any other Canadian to be able to bid on tenders? It doesn't matter, Mr. Speaker, that the people who got the contracts first can take advantage of all the services and benefits offered by the Canada Post Corporation.
Mr. Speaker, I am against this bill because we are in a country where free enterprise exists, and I am against this bill because we are in a country where every Canadian has a right to make an honest living. Setting criteria and imposing restrictions that prevent other people from being able to bid and making a company like Canada Post Corporation a going concern is certainly not going to help us build a prosperous country with less unemployment and less injustice.
Canada Post made the right decision. It is only normal for Conservative members to object to this kind of bill, because to us, every Canadian is important and every Canadian has the right to earn a living in a democracy, in a society that supports free enterprise. That is why, Mr. Speaker, I am opposed to the hon. member's bill.
November 27, 1991


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: There being no further members rising to debate, the time provided for consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired.
Private Members' Business
Pursuant to Standing Order 96(1) the order is dropped from the Order Paper.
It being 7.50 p.m., this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 7.50 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Thursday, November 28, 1991