1991-04-11

Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table, in both official languages, an Order in Council appointment which was made by the government.
Pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 110(1) it is deemed referred to the appropriate standing committee.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


PETITIONS
Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, very briefly, I have the honour and privilege to present a petition signed by 40 or so Canadians primarily from the city of Edmonton, who are all supporters of rail passenger services. They call on Parliament to support the NDP's plan to restore VIA Rail services cut on January 15, 1990.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, I move:
That the debate on Government Motion No. 30 concerning amendments to the Standing Orders of the House and on any amendments proposed thereto shall not be further adjourned.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: 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 yeas have it.
And more than five members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Call in the members.


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


POINT OF ORDER
Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, I seek your clarification on a point of order. I refer to Beau-chesne's fifth edition, citation 335 on the sub judice convention. It says:
Members are expected to refrain from discussing matters that are before the courts-It is a voluntary restraint imposed by the House upon itself in the interest of justice and fair play.
It goes on to say in citation 338 (3) that the convention applies to motions. As we sit, the issue of closure is before the Alberta Court of Appeal. The Ontario Attorney General has asked this court to rule that the use of closure is unconstitutional and in violation of section 18 of the Constitution Act.
I seek some guidance since this is before the courts, the whole matter of what we have just done. Is it appropriate that we proceed when closure is still before the courts, in recognition of the sub judice convention?


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make two comments.
First, I think it was very clear from the Speaker's ruling of just 24 or 48 hours ago-I have forgotten the exact time-that one of the prime prerogatives or privileges of this House of Commons is to make and enact its own rules. It was a very important ruling in relationship to the particular issue we have before us,


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and it is a ruling which I think applies in this particular case.
Second, the NDP House leader should be very careful in raising a point of order such as this one today when he will know that his own colleagues and kissing cousins in the Ontario House moved closure last night.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I would just like to thank the hon. member for Kamloops for raising that and the parliamentary secretary. The sub judice convention only applies in criminal cases and when a trial has begun in civil cases. I express regrets that we must carry on.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I do not know if it is another point of order, but I ruse just for clarification.
The parliamentary secretary to the government House leader was inaccurate. Closure was not introduced in the Ontario House at all. He had better do his homework.


AMENDMENTS TO STANDING ORDERS
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Wednesday, April 10, consideration of the motion of Mr. Andre (p. 19027) and amendment of Mr. Dingwall (p. 19156).
Mr. Derek Blackburn (Brant):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in the debate today on what I consider to be an extremely serious matter.
It seems that this government's public relations expertise has just fallen to rock bottom. Here we are debating rule changes in this assembly that would create a better atmosphere in the House and would attempt, at least in part, to re-establish the one element upon which parliamentary government depends in order to be successful.
That element of course is the element of trust. Here we have this morning, just two and a half days into a very serious debate, the government bringing down closure and not allowing those members who wish to speak in this debate the time to make their presentations.
This Chamber will be shut down on the debate tomorrow at 1 a.m. It is not a very good principle to set, in my view, at a time when we are debating changes to the Standing Orders.
I have listened for the last couple of days, both in the House and in my office via television, to the various
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speeches that have been made. I must say that a lot of very excellent ideas have been put forward.
The speakers who have preceded me have attempted to use a band-aid approach on a very serious wound or have tried to treat a disease when in my view the animal, that is the House of Commons, is dead in terms of its being a democratic and viable legislative body.
For the life of me I cannot understand or appreciate any element of the work we do here as ordinary members of Parliament to have any bearing or relationship whatever on the legislative process.
The reasons for this are many, not the least of which is that we are saddled with an archaic institution that still insists on allowing the executive branch of government not only to be part of the legislative branch but in fact to dominate the legislative branch and indeed to control it. Nothing could be more absurd than that kind of situation.
In order to reinforce or to maintain that control the government of the day, whether it is the present one or all the previous ones, uses the ancient institution known as confidence. In order for the government to survive we have allowed the myth to continue in this Parliament that says: "If the government loses the confidence of the House, it must resign."
Yet, in practice this myth in terms of confidence has not been applied and has not been used in this Chamber for I do not know how many decades. Really, it is a hollow myth, a hollow threat, that every Prime Minister and every cabinet uses in order to maintain solidarity in the ranks of the government of the day.
In the meantime it deprives-I am speaking now of confidence-us as members of Parliament to act as legislators. All we do is debate, discuss and vote. If you are in the opposition, you almost always vote against the government. If you are on the government benches, you almost always vote with the government. If you decide to bolt the party line on a given vote and you are a member on the government side, you make absolutely certain that your vote will not bring down the government and that there are enough government members in order to maintain its majority in the House.

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I preface my speech this morning with this general overview on confidence and the fact that we are not really a legislative body of government any longer but strictly a rubber stamp. We are in the midst of change in this country. Whether we like it or not this country is changing radically. At this point in time we do not even know with any degree of certainty whether we are going to have a country in two years' time that includes, for example, the province of Quebec. We do not know if Quebec secedes whether we are going to be part of the west, or whether the maritimes are going to remain within the old Dominion, as it was once called, or the Commonwealth.
Mr. Speaker, this change obviously is coming to the House of Commons as well. Members of Parliament are feeling more and more frustrated. I notice a malaise in this Chamber every day. Next month I celebrate my twentieth anniversary in this House.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: Thank you very kindly. I was elected on May 31, 1971 in a by-election. My opponents back home said: "Oh, well, by-elections are by-elections; you win one and when the general election comes along you will be defeated". I don't know why I have been re-elected so many times, but I know I am not the only one in this Chamber to experience this.
I have been here long enough to know that when I sense this malaise developing in this House-that has been here for several years in fact-one of the reasons for it is because we do not feel as though we are part of a legitimate legislative process. We do not write laws. We are not directly responsible to our constituents for the laws that we vote for or against in this Chamber. When was the last time anyone wrote a bill on this side of the House, or a backbencher on the other side of the House, that actually became the law of the land?
Members say: "Oh, well, committees have been reformed, you can go to committees". What are committees? Committees are just a reflection of this Chamber. Why does the government find find it so difficult to maintain its membership in committees on a day to day basis, and therefore wants more time off? It is not so much that members would rather spend their time in their constituencies-certainly that is one reason-but the other reason, I am convinced, because I feel it on this side of the House, is a sense of uselessness. It is a sense
that you can produce the best report that committee has ever produced, and all it does is gather dust on the shelf.
It is not just the fault of this government. I have seen it with many governments. In all likelihood it would happen-I am quite quite sure it would happen-if my party was in power at this time under our present rules.
The first point I want to make is that I do not like the idea of the executive branch being part of the legislative branch. I think it should be separate. It should be appointed by a Prime Minister who is directly elected by the people. Cabinet should be responsible to him and not to the House. Its duties and responsibilities should be limited, as in the States, as in France, as in West Germany or Germany as it is now called, to simply writing policy and giving policy directions for the legislative branch to legislate for. We should be the framers of bills in this House, and that should be our only job.
Well, how do we do it? It should be done in committees. Committees, should draft bills, or subcommittees of committees should be the real drafters. That is where lobbyists will be heard, that is where technocrats will be heard; that is where individual Canadians and the groups they represent, powerful and less powerful, will be heard. They come to the subcommittees and present their briefs on a given policy. From there, the subcommittee, with its drafters, drafts a bill. The bill then goes to the full committee which examines that bill thoroughly-and I mean thoroughly. That is where the work is done.
Then the bill is presented to the House by the chair of that committee and the subcommittee, the two chairs.
Then we debate the merits. Throw the whips out. They are not needed. Are we not intelligent enough to know after several months of intense scrutiny whether a bill is a good bill for our constituents, for the constituents in Newfoundland as well as northern Ontario, the interior of B.C.? Do we not know as well as the technocrats who draft the bills now whether those bills are going to be accepted?
In a democracy, as I understand it, we should not be telling the people what we think is good for them based on the expertise on the treasury benches and their executive assistants and their deputy ministers and all the other experts. The people of this country should be telling us what they think is good for them. We should be, after listening to them, drafting the legislation and debating it here in this House, not with the threat of confidence hanging over us, that some political party's
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platform is going to go down the tube if the bill is defeated, but debate it here on its merits as we see fit.
I will give you an example. I am an abolitionist. I am opposed to capital punishment on many grounds, but I know that if a bill came to this Chamber, under what I am suggesting is the proper legislative approach, that it will in all likelihood pass. I would still vote against it, but when I went home I would have to assume total responsibility for the position I took.
I could not say it was party policy. I could not say that the New Democrats, generally speaking, across the country, as I understand it, are opposed to capital punishment. I would have to say: "I am sorry, Derek Blackburn, your member of Parliament, is opposed to capital punishment. Even though I know that the will of the nation was expressed in that vote, I went against the will of the nation and the majority. I am prepared at this point in time with the upcoming election to take my chances." That to me is real democracy. That is one example. There are many, many other examples we could use.
I am quite certain that I would not be happy with the outcome of the vote, but I would have to accept it just as our citizens today are anything but happy with the way we legislate up here on many occasions and they are getting tired of sitting back and saying: "Hey look, I don't like what you are doing, but I guess there is nothing I can do about it."
My friends opposite know and we know on this side of the House that the citizens of this country are saying we are tired of not being listened to. We are tired of exercising democracy every four years by going to the ballot box and then it is gone. Nobody is listening to what we think is right. Nobody is listening up there in Ottawa to what we think the country should be doing or where it should be going.
One very large reason for this is because we are not legislators anymore. I am quite convinced that on any given day of any given year regardless of what party is in power, about 20 people run this country. We have executive democracy. We have allowed this country to go from absolute monarchy over the centuries to an abso-
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lute prime ministership as long as there is a majority sitting on the government side.
If I feel frustrated sitting on this side, I am only imagining how I would feel if I was sitting over there. I am not trying to be mean when I say that. There must be complete and utter frustration on both sides of this House because I feel it day in and day out.
I want to give you an example. I went across the street the other day to one of our Parliament Hill offices to have a fairly simple bill-there is a series of private members' bills, that I want to introduce some time in the next session, but the one that I discussed with the woman across the street, the law officer, was a fairly simple one. She said it will take at least two months and possibly four before she would have it for me. I was absolutely shocked. I thought maybe a couple of weeks. I said: "Well, what's the problem?" She said: "I am the only one at the present time employed to draft private members' public bills. There is one other vacancy in the office, but it hasn't been filled." I said: "I wonder how many law officers are employed by the Crown to draft government bills." She said: "a little over 1,700."
That gives us a very realistic aspect of what is wrong in this House. We have 1,700 law officers of the Crown-give or take 100-whose primary responsibility it is to draft legislation for the government. We have one law officer to take care of all the private members' public bills needs in this Chamber. That really should be a question of privilege. I think it is a legitimate question of privilege because that prevents me from carrying out a legitimate function of my office. I will leave it at that for the time being.
Another aspect of what is wrong around here is that committees have no power and no clout. We cannot threaten senior civil servants. When I say that we cannot threaten I mean that we cannot order senior civil servants to do what we think is right.
I went to a meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence on estimates-I am no longer a permanent member of that committee-a couple of weeks ago. Estimates of $13.2 billion this year for defence, I believe. I had seven minutes in which to

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question the Associate Minister of National Defence, on $13.2 billion.
After she had finished her opening remarks, the committee of seven members, I think, had about one hour and ten minutes in which to question that minister, who comes before the committee once a year on estimates. Could you imagine this sham, this charade happening in the United States, in the United Kingdom, or in Germany?
We could begin reforms in this House if we had a real supply power in this House to withhold supply. In the German system the Minister of Finance brings in a budget, the budget goes to a budgetaiy committee of the lower House, that committee has 30 days in which to revise, add to, or subtract from in order to achieve a majority vote in the House. If it does not receive a majority vote, the budget is dead. It does not go back to the Minister of Finance, but is re-written by another committee of the lower House. That original budgetary committee is dissolved. It has no political debts and owes no favours to anyone. When its duty is done it is finished.
Mr. Speaker, I have only 20 minutes today and I think most of my time is gone, if I am not mistaken. I simply wish to sum up by saying that unless we, as members of Parliament take hold of this institution and shake out the cobwebs and get rid of these archaic, irrelevant Standing Orders-and I do not care whether our speeches are five minutes or 50 minutes long, that is not the issue-. The issue is that this should be a legislative body, where bills are truly initiated. The Executive has no business being part of the legislative process.
We could have an Executive outside this House with 10 Cabinet ministers for policy direction and the formulation of policy. The bills should be initiated in subcommittees and committees, be passed in this House, and not be based stringently on partisan political lines. The people of this country are fed up with partisanship. They are fed up with us scoring brownie points in debate here. All we are is a pale reflection or imitation of the Oxford Union 50 years ago. My God, if that is not an indictment of this body as a legislative body, I do not know what is.
We have to change our ways or our ways are going to be changed for us. We are going to lose what minuscule
influence on the legislative process we now have. Then I am confident and convinced that the yelling, the screaming, the lack of decorum, and the way we act like chimpanzees-and I am sorry to insult chimpanzees when I say that-because Question Period is a jungle and a zoo, would disappear or certainly dissipate. After all, when you have no power and no influence and no clout and are paid $100,000 a year, what is left to do but to get up and scream, shout and holler. I am disgusted.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Debate. The hon. member for Scarborough-Rouge River.
I would like to inform the House that, under Standing Order 57, there are no questions or comments from now until 1 a.m.


Mr. Derek Lee (Scarborough-Rouge River):: In any event, I want to point out at the outset that I and my colleagues are not opposed to changes in the rules. I know it is fair to say that we are not even opposed to each and every one of the rule changes proposed here.
There are some reasonably evolved, logically written, new rule changes that will improve the functions of this House. We are not opposed to rule changes that will make committees of the House more permanent or better targeted in their use of resources. The proposed rule change that would abandon the bell ringing when two votes are scheduled at the same time is so terribly logical that one would wonder why the bells were capable of being rung twice in the first place.
Having said that, I want to point out another item. The object of changing these rules is Parliament, not government, and that is a very important distinction. Parliament, oversees and generates the legislation and oversees government. That oversight function is something I want to mention later in my remarks.
Throughout all this I suppose we should not forget the Senate, which also has a legislative and oversight function.
In our House we have two structures that carry on this oversight function and the legislative function. One is this House of Commons and the other is our committees. In dealing with these proposed rule changes we have to assess the impact of these changes on the House, on committees, on the effectiveness of the legislative function, and on the oversight function.
The area I want to address more particularly today is the oversight function of committees. I have to note, sadly, that as we address these rule changes we appear to have abandoned consensus as a necessary part of the rule change process. Why is that consensus important? I would hope that all members would agree that it is important. It is because each of us in this House were elected as equals and we sit here as equals with the same goals. We are all in the same boat as members of Parliament.
There are some basic principles that do not always get articulated that lie at the root of this structure here in Parliament and why we have rules here. For example, what if the government proposed to reduce the number
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of sitting days from the current approximately 175 down to, let us say, 10? We know that our Charter of Rights requires that Parliament sit a minimum once per year, I believe it is. Let us say the government proposed 10 sitting days per year. There really is not any other legal obstacle to the government doing that. I am not suggesting that the government would, but in the current rule changes the sittings are reduced from approximately 175 days down to about 135.
Those principles that underlie the rules in this place are a lot older than this House itself. I just want to articulate a few of them because I have not heard them read too often in the House. Most of us read them, but we have not memorized them. They are of course contained in Beauchesne and probably contained in other parliamentary documents going back years, but they are the rules. I quote:
The principles that lie at the base of English parliamentary law, have always been kept steadily in view by the Canadian Parliament; these are: To protect a minority and restrain the improvidence or tyranny of a majority; to secure the transaction of public business in an orderly manner; to enable every Member to express his opinion within limits necessary to preserve decorum and prevent an unnecessary waste of time; to give abundant opportunity for the consideration of every measure, and to prevent any legislative action being taken upon sudden impulse.
There are some buzz words that I know members on the government side like to hear, like rules that would prevent waste of time. There are words in there that I in opposition like to hear, words that would give me all the time I need to discuss and debate rule changes and legislation.
I know I have 20 minutes here and I accept that limit. I accept my limit and I am going to use most of it here. However, those principles are very important. I think that the government has abandoned some of those principles in proceeding the way it has with the rule changes, not just in imposing closure but in the way it has decided to proceed without consensus.
We have three functions here that permit our parliamentary democracy and our democratic country to carry on. They are the legislative, executive and judicial functions. That is pretty basic high school political science. Let us not forget that we in this country and others before us, our forefathers, had to fight for the legislative parliamentary function. We had to fight for it and our fathers died for that.

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It happened not that long ago in Upper Canada and in Lower Canada, historically referred to as the Papineau and the Mackenzie rebellions of approximately 1837. Those were important events. In that sequence of historical events our forefathers had to pick up guns and went out to fight the King's Privy Councillors who were called the Family Compact and they were through the Governor imposing rules and laws here on the people of what was then Lower Canada and Upper Canada.
They had to go out and fight, and a number gave up their lives. Some were hanged later for treason for fighting for that parliamentary right, that legislative function that we have here now. This Parliament is charged, I assume, with carrying out that continuing legislative and oversight function. That is our job. I get a little nervous here when I see the Queen's Privy Councillor standing in this House moving closure on rules governing Parliament. Somehow, that is a conflict. I almost want to say it is a point of order. I almost want to say it is a matter of privilege. Somehow it is inappropriate for a Queen's Privy Councillor, a member of the executive branch, to stand in this House in the face of all the rights and freedoms we fought for and move closure to impose new rules which impair or run up against those principles I read earlier.
In many respects, as I think about that, I see the government ministers treating the legislative function of Parliament as a branch of government. I have heard that stated in this House before. How could one see it otherwise when in order to accomplish the executive function that the Queen's Privy Councillors have, the minister finds it necessary to come to this House and change its rules and to impose them on this House and to use closure in doing that.
That is why consensus is important. That is why I regret that it is not there.
I submit that we in this country cannot permit the executive branch of government to make the rules for Parliament. They did not let it happen at the time of the Magna Carta, they did not let it happen in 1756, and we should not be letting it happen now. We should not be permitting the incursions of executive authority that have occurred. I accept that they have occurred over the years. It has been a slow process. To the extent that they
have occurred, they are impairing the functions of this House.
In any event, we have to make our own rules in this place and we have to do it based on the principle that we protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. That is why consensus is important.
I ask who is speaking for Parliament in this debate. If anyone hears from the other side, and every person on the other side of this House is a member and a player and a voter in this House, that we have to change the rules because government needs these rule changes to get legislation through, or our party or caucus in this House needs these changes, I say do not listen to them. It is not the government that needs the rules. It is Parliament that needs the rules. I suggest that I am seeing too much of a tilt here in favour of what government needs and not what Parliament needs.
In doing a bit of preparation for my remarks, today I stumbled on a little discussion on the state of affairs in the Australian parliament. It is a little outdated, a little simplistic, but the writer noted as follows:
In discussing Parliament, it is necessary to separate its key constitutional position from the rather subsidiary role which it now performs.
He is saying that in theory it has a pretty good looking role.
Constitutionally, Parliament is the linchpin of the democratic system, a great debating forum in which legislation is discussed and amended, in which policies are debated and criticized, and in which the actions of the government are overseen.
Sadly, he goes on to explain why that is really not what is going on now, and he says:
The government, through its majority, can restrict debating time and force the rapid passage of legislation. Members of Parliament have few staff or research facilities. The "committee" stage of legislative procedure, in which a bill can be examined clause by clause, has proved ineffective as a means of scrutinizing the huge volume of legislation.
Then he goes on. That was a sorry state of affairs. I almost felt a little sorry for them there in Australia. I do not think things are quite that bad in the Canadian Parliament, but I am nervous. We are close.
I was elected in 1988. Since I have been here I have had a feeling that Parliament is not fulfilling all of the functions that it should be. While I am still a rookie, and
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maybe there is more going on around here than has caught my eye, I feel that there is not enough going on.
Among the three branches of the democratic system, we have the legislative, the executive and the judicial branch. Parliament is the one that we, the people, had to fight for and put in place, not the judicial and not the executive. We had to fight to fight for, build and create Parliament. Any rule change that is going to impair parliamentary function is an error and should not be passed.
In a funny kind of way, as we all should be working to protect Parliament, maybe we should be a little frustrated by these evolutionary changes in Parliament that have diminished its role. If you look over your shoulder and look out on the street and read the editorials, maybe you see just a little bit of the fire and of the impetus that gave rise to the rebellions in the last century. Not that we are close to that now, but the people can get angry. I think that a little bit of that is happening right now.
I would like to address more specifically a couple of the rule changes as they relate to the committee oversight function. An example is item No. 52 governing Standing Order 113. Here the government has suggested that witnesses who come before a legislative committee to review legislation after second reading should only be called on technical matters. Where did that term come from? I do not think anybody knows where that term came from. As I search for a rationale or a logic for the term "technical matters", as a lawyer I become a little bit curious about that. It does not come from tradition. I have not seen it as a precedent and I have not even seen a definition, but it means something like dotting the i's and crossing the t's. Somehow that is a most inappropriate restriction to put on a legislative committee. If you have a change in a bill governing tax credits to seniors, surely you have to ask seniors what they think about the bill or how the bill will impact on them and not restrict that group to whether or not the government lawyers have dotted the i's and crossed the t's. There is much more than that.
I am going to move on quickly to a second area that was brought to my attention by the chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations. There is an apparent omission in item No. 53 governing the selection of alternates who would sit on committees. The
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new rules apparently require that the alternates be selected from the envelope involved. Unfortunately, that particular standing committee, the Joint Standing Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations, is not in any of the envelopes. It is a joint committee and, therefore, the restriction on selecting alternates from an envelope has no place.
In discussion with the parliamentary secretary to the House leader, there was an understanding that alternates for that committee could be selected from the entire opposition caucus or the government caucus, as the case may be. I want that to be on the record.
Another of the proposed changes deals with the reduction of sitting days from 175 days to approximately 135. I have already discussed the principles that should provide ample time for debate of issues, but how does that change affect committees?
I suggest that by squeezing more government business into fewer days, this rule change will take away sitting days from committees. That may result in committees abandoning some of their oversight work. That oversight work is extremely important. One of the committees I sit on, the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General, is about to look at estimates involving the expenditures of sums greater than this country has ever spent before. We are advised it will take 13 days just to skate through it.
As I look at the possible parliamentary calendar here, with a possible adjournment foisted upon us, or planned by the government, I am getting a little nervous that we will not have an opportunity to look at those estimates. This is at a time when our government is spending its brains out. The public assumes that Parliament is exercising some scrutiny or oversight on spending. I can tell them that we will be lucky to get a half dozen committee meetings in scrutinizing this expenditure in the Justice and Solicitor General area. So I am a little nervous about that and I hope that members opposite will take that into consideration.
Just because we reduced the sitting days to 135 does not mean, of course, that Parliament cannot sit longer. It is quite possible that the government and all members would decide to sit for greater than 135 days. But I do not like the principle of squeezing the sitting days of Parliament to a minimum. If it serves government, that is

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great, but, as I pointed out earlier, if it does not serve Parliament, it is wrong.
What about some rule changes that would assist Parliament? There are many of those currently being discussed. They have not made their way on to the Order Paper.
I want to conclude by saying that the absence of consensus here is a serious mistake by government members, if they proceed without it. A good rule should sell itself in this House because it subscribes to logic and common sense. If it does not, it should not be passed without consensus.
Those are my remarks, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Jack Whittaker (Okanagan -Similkameen -Merritt):: Mr. Speaker, prior to being elected to this place in 1988 I, through the course of my lifetime, had followed Canadian politics and Canadian history to a extent. Through the course of my readings I read biographies of John A. Macdonald, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Tommy Douglas, Mackenzie King, to name some of them. Through the course of each one of these biographies I came to look on this place, the House of Commons, as a place where the elected members could come and present arguments of their constituents, arguments of groups they were interested in, and in fact their own arguments, before the House of Commons.
I had the impression, perhaps wrongly, that these remarks were important. They were part of our history. Often we look back to speeches of various people within the House of Commons and we hear quoted past remarks of our great politicians.
These politicians have moulded what we have today in Canada, what we as Canadians are proud of in being Canadians.
It has changed the way this country has operated, with the effect of its social programs and its social safety net that is unlike anything else in North America and certainly second to none, I would suggest, in the world.
This was part of the parliamentary process, the process of debate, the cut and thrust. I agree that as times change rules and regulations must change. In law it is the growing tree analogy: as the tree grows so must the branches tend to reach out and encompass or take in the changes of changing society.
The changes that should be brought in are changes, particularly in a parliamentary process, that assist the vast majority of people in Canada to be heard in Parliament, to have their input put before the House of Commons. In looking through these books of history I saw the job of a parliamentarian, the job of an elected member of Parliament: to listen, to sift out and to bring back to Parliament the views and ideas of his or her constituents and to be able to present those to the governing party, if you were in opposition; to your cabinet, if you were a backbench member of the governing party; or, as a cabinet minister, to your cabinet colleagues and to your caucus.
What I have seen since I have been here has shattered some of those illusions I had. What I have seen since I came to this place in 1988 was not free flowing debate, a free flowing exchange of ideas, a free flowing exchange of constituents' ideas and the ability of constituents to have their say through their elected member of Parliament. What I have seen is what has happened here again today: a constant cutting off of the flow of debate by the rules that were set up to streamline the system somewhat, rules that were set up to ensure that legislation ultimately and eventually did get passed.
In the case before Parliament today in the Standing Orders, I believe this is the fourth day of debate on a very important matter not only to parliamentarians, but to all people of Canada.
As I recall, from 1913 through to the election of November 1988 closure was used 21 times in total over those 75 years of Parliament. Since I have been in Parliament, counting today closure has been used 14 times in just 2.5 years. In one case, as I recall, closure was even used in anticipation on an agricultural bill that the opposition might want to debate further. That was a case where although the opposition would have liked to have seen some expansion of the legislation, neither of the two major opposition parties was against the legislation in principle. In fact they were going to put up only a couple of speakers and then let the matter go to a vote.
The government in its arrogance simply ignored discussions with the opposition and invoked closure. The matter was passed on a voice vote without the necessity, but Parliament was not meant to have these matters pushed through or rammed through without proper discussion, with proper airing or without the adequate ability of the 26.5 million Canadians being given the opportunity to look these bills over, give them some
April 11, 1991

thought, to ruminate on them, and to talk to their members of Parliament, their elected representatives, to give their feelings so that the member could come back here and in a speech to the House or in a representation on committee could have input on behalf of his or her constituents.
That has not happened. If we go through the free trade debate in late December 1988, we see that we had closure at every stage of that bill. The goods and services tax, perhaps one of the most unpopular tax bills in Canadian history, is opposed, the polls show, by 85 per cent of the people of Canada. Yet we had this government bringing in closure at every stage of the bill, to the extent that on third reading my leader, who would have been the first speaker for the New Democratic Party at third reading, was not even provided the opportunity of making her remarks on the record.
This is an example of a government with a majority that thumbs its nose not only at the opposition but at the people of Canada. It says: "We were given a majority to Govern and we are going to govern regardless of what the people of Canada think or want". The government also says: "We have been given a majority. We know what is best for the people of Canada. That is what we are going to do and we want to do it in the fastest possible manner without giving people an adequate opportunity to properly digest what we are doing".
The goods and services tax was an example where a schedule was set out and be darned if they were not going to keep to that schedule regardless of the fact that people wanted more information, regardless of the fact that bureaucrats were having trouble keeping up with the legislation and keeping up with the changes as the problems were pointed out in the legislation.
What we have before us are changes to the Standing Orders. Perhaps the majority of people in Canada do not understand exactly what they are; they were just brought before us in late March. They show once again an erosion of the democratic process, an erosion of what I have talked about in history as my belief of what this place is supposed to be about: democracy and the opportunity for people of Canada to have a way.
Government Orders
We do not live in a dictatorship, although I am sure that is what our Prime Minister would prefer us to have because then he would not have to listen to the opposition at all. When I look at these changing standing order rules, I have become somewhat concerned that my voice as an opposition member of Parliament is being cut off.
The people of my riding are not going to be given an adequate opportunity to be heard through me in Parliament because of some of these restructuring changes.
It is interesting, in looking at a recent article in The Ottawa Citizen this morning by Frank Howard, that he refers back to when this government first took office in 1984. Having spent a long time in opposition, it was very aware of the difficulties of the opposition and the need to give opposition members a voice and to make them feel that they were responding to their constituents' needs and wishes. I would like to quote from that article. Mr. Howard said:
The McGrath reforms gave committees more freedom to initiative inquiries to call witnesses.
They were brought in after the Tories had been out of power for most of the previous two decades and still felt sympathy for the ordinary members of Parliament.
He quotes McGrath and says:
I wanted to put in place a system where being a member of Parliament would be seen to be an end to itself and not a means to an end.
Mr. Howard goes on to say:
Too often, MPs felt like nobodys in Ottawa, unless they became cabinet ministers or parliamentary secretaries.
I for one want to have input on behalf of my constituents while I am elected member of Parliament. I want to have opportunity to speak here in the House and to be able to put my case to the House of Commons in a 20-minute speech. I want my party to be able to have the same amount of time as the other two parties in so far as the leaders are concerned. I would like to have the ability to have input from my constituents into committees such as was originally set up by the committee structure and improved by the McGrath commission.

April 11, 1991
Government Orders
What are these changes? One that I think is totally devastating to opposition and very repugnant is the proposal to reduce the numbers of debate on the throne speech down to six from eight. This gives the opportunity to all members of the House, the government members as well as opposition members, to have some input into the plans of the government for the future. It is the first opportunity at each new session of Parliament for members of Parliament to analyse what is the government's proposal for that next sitting. It is the opportunity for the member to get on record, on behalf of himself and his constituents, in the discussions of where this country should go into the future.
The next suggestion is to cut down again the numbers of debate on the budget from six to four. Once again the budget debate provides the opportunity for all members of Parliament to speak on future government projections for the following year, where the money is proposed to be spent and where the money has been spent. When we cut that down and speak in numbers, six to four days, it does not seem all that bad; but when we think about the number of people involved, it substantially cuts down the opportunities of those members to speak.
Turning to the proposal to cut down speeches from 20 minutes to 10 minutes, I think most people in this House know that in 10 minutes you really only have the opportunity of putting forth your preamble and maybe getting to some salient points; but you have very little opportunity in 10 minutes to flesh out your arguments. However, 20 minutes with a 10-minute question and answer period give the member an opportunity of adequately expressing once again his constituents' ideas, his ideas, as well as putting forth perhaps some platforms of groups from whom he has heard within his riding or within his critic area, if he is an opposition member, or within his interest groups, if he is a backbencher of government.
What happens if we also cut down the question and answer period? I personally know that is a section of the debates which I treasure and treasure dearly. It gives me the opportunity of sitting in the House, listening to members' speeches and responding to those speeches with more ideas from my riding or more ideas from my past knowledge or from the history of Canada to try to bring out from other members some of their thoughts. It allows us again an extra thrust that we do not get.
Further, the one thing that upsets me as any, I suppose, is the thought that although I can see the government's point of view and the government backbenchers' point of view in wanting to have scheduled one-week periods in which to work in their ridings-and I do not deny that that on the surface is an excellent idea-it is very difficult, particularly from the perspective of one who lives in the interior of the province of British Columbia, to travel back and forth trying to get into your riding on a regular basis to do the job or the second part of the job that you as a member of Parliament are expected to do: the job in the riding of looking after the case work and looking after the public relations aspects of this job.
The down side of that is the fact that it will cut substantially the number of days that this government is held accountable to Parliament.
As I understand it, the proposal is to drop from a 175-day year to 135-day year. Although with the addition of hours the parliamentarians will spend approximately the same time in Parliament, they will not be given the opportunity of those additional days to pose questions to ministers of the Crown. They will not have the opportunity of requesting things from the minister. They will not be able to put forward their suggestions and their questions to the press, to the media.
All in all I would suggest, again as I started out, that this is a cutting back of democracy. People want change, but they want change to a more democratic society, a more democratic Parliament. These Standing Orders are a further whittling away of that democracy and cannot proceed as such.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being one o'clock, I do now leave the chair until two o'clock this day.
The House took recess at 1 p.m.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.
April 11, 1991

Ms. Beth Phinney (Hamilton Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, despite advances in recent years in services to disabled persons, there are still many areas of federal legislation that must be amended in order to address their rights. While appearing recently before the Standing Committee on Human Rights and the Status of Disabled Persons, representatives from various disabled groups repeated their demand for some form of omnibus legislation to address these concerns.
I call on this government to introduce omnibus legislation to include, among other things, amendments to the Canada Elections Act to ensure the accessibility of polling stations, amendments to the Immigration Act to eliminate discrimination on the basis of disability, and amendments to the Access to Information Act to allow disabled persons equal access to information.
Disabled persons are tired of having their interests put "under consideration". It is time for this government to finally take action that will really help our 3.2 million Canadians who are disabled.


MEDICARE
Mr. Jim Karpoff (Surrey North):: Mr. Speaker, what next for medicare, our most valued national program?
In February, the Minister of Finance froze federal contributions to health. Since then we have had four provincial budgets which have brought about the lay-off of 300 nurses and closure of hospital beds in Newfoundland, a 16 per cent increase in health premiums in Alberta, a freeze on nurses' salaries in New Brunswick, and the determination by Quebec to proceed with user fees.
Yet the minister of health has repeatedly said he will enforce the Canada Health Act to ensure that national standards for medicare are met.
Will he restore universal medicare in Newfoundland and give the residents of Port-aux-Basques back their hospital? Will he restore accessibility to the middle-income families in Alberta who cannot afford medical premiums? Will he prevent the imposition of user fees on the poor in Quebec? Will the minister enforce national medicare standards and will he indicate to the
provinces where they will obtain the funding to meet these standards?


CITIZENSHIP
Mr.   J.W. Bud Bird@Fredericton-York-Sunbury: Mr. Speaker, there are few words used throughout the world which convey the vision of freedom and democracy more clearly than these two words, "Canadian citizenship". It is often said, for example, that a Canadian passport is the most prized document in the international community.
Among Canadians here at home there frequently seems an apathy about the values of our own citizenship, almost as though we have lost our meaning of country, our sense of pride in it, and our sense of patriotism for it.
Surely this is a state of mind that we must revitalize for ourselves and for future generations of Canadians. Surely the common denominator of Canadian citizenship must be reinforced as the mantle under which the rich potential of our bilingual and multicultural heritage can be attained and fulfilled. That is a current challenge for each of us, more important now than ever before.
Otherwise, without such a primary and premium commitment to the unifying spirit and deeper meaning of Canadian citizenship we shall be little more than a collection of separate languages and cultures existing together on Canadian soil. I believe Canada is much more than that and I am confident most Canadians believe so to.


REFUGEES
Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: Mr. Speaker, today, I and other members of the human rights committee met with the president and other representatives of Canada's Kurdish community about the genocide in Iraq which has killed 60,000 to 80,000 of their Kurdish friends and relatives.
Although Canada has responded with financial aid, to date no Canadian supplies have reached the Kurds. Canada needs to take concrete action to end this human tragedy and speak up for the Kurdish people. They suggested than an urgent appeal to the UN and President Bush would end the killings, that Hussein be ordered to cease immediately the genocide of the Kurds in the whole of Iraq, that Tbrkey and Iran be requested to open their borders immediately, that the UN conven-

April 11, 1991
tion on genocide authorize its signatories, including Canada, to take action on ongoing acts of genocide.
Canada should immediately exercise this right.


INDUSTRY
Mr. Steve Butland (Sault Ste. Marie):: Mr. Speaker, industry downsizing, closures, and possible bankruptcies are now commonplace in this country. This can leave thousands of workers and their communities at economic risk, particularly single industry towns.
Employee ownership and/or buyouts are becoming very prevalent in the United States through employee stock ownership. These ownerships are made possible through legislated tax policies. Canada has no such positive tax policy, which encourage workers to have direct ownership, operation and generally control of their own economic destiny.
I am heartened to learn that this concept has been placed on the agenda for the finance committee and I thank them, in particular my colleague from Essex- Windsor.
Social democracy can thrive if given the opportunity. Through appropriate practical incentives, people can directly participate in their own employment future.
I trust all parties, given the present economic climate, will support any forthcoming initiatives.


NOISE POLLUTION
Mr. Harry Chadwick (Bramalea-Gore-Malton):: Mr. Speaker, our homes are our sanctuary from the outside world, but there are times when that peace is disturbed by traffic and other annoyances of the urban environment. To minimize the impact, governments take precautions.
Recently, in new subdivisions in Etobicoke, noise barriers have been erected to protect the subdivision from arterial road noise. It is significant that a level of
government has recognized the effects of noise on one's right to a certain quality of life.
In the future, I am sure that residents will forget the noise from nearby roads because their minds will be occupied elsewhere, by the take-off and landings of aircraft from additional runways at nearby Pearson International. No doubt residents will be wondering about those noise barriers and no doubt thoughts may drift to the inevitable question; if governments recognize the effects of noise on our communities, why do they allow subdivisions to be built so close to airports?


REFUGEES
Mr. Bill Vankoughnet (Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington):: Mr. Speaker, it is important that we continue to focus our attention on the plight of the Kurdish minority of Iraq. Canadians are distressed and concerned by the loss of life and suffering which is affecting these people, particularly the innocent children.
Since April 5, 1991, Canada has contributed over $7 million to international organizations in support of Kurdish refugees. Canadians urge the Government of Canada to continue working with the Secretaiy-General of the United Nations to assist the Kurds in establishing peace and security in their homeland.
The Government of Canada should be commended on its efforts so far. Also Canada should encourage the governments of the coalition forces to transfer defence savings from a shorter than expected war to more humanitarian aid for the Kurds and other Iraqi civilians now suffering from civil conflicts.


CANADA POST
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, Canada Post is playing fast and lose with the truth again. In 1987 Canada Post announced its "rural conversion" program, a euphemism for the "shutting down post offices" program.
April 11, 1991

Canada Post did however promise that post offices would only be closed when there was a "natural opportunity" which occurs when the postmaster dies or resigns.
Now Canada Post is shutting down the post office in Glen Robertson in my riding. The postmistress is not retiring and, as far as I know, she is not dead and has no intention of quitting. She has been told that after five years of being an acting postmaster she is no longer required.
According to the new truth, acting postmasters do not count under the natural opportunity rule of the Orwellian offices at Canada Post.
The minister responsible for Canada Post should seize the natural opportunity to perform a conversion on the authors of newspeak. The savings could then be used to give back the post office to the people of Glen Robertson, Ontario in my riding.


RE-EMPLOYMENT PROJECTS
Mr. Jacques Vien (Laurentides):: Mr. Speaker, last Friday I took part in a press conference to point out the achievements of a re-employment project by 3LM Consultants Inc. It is one of the first re-employment projects in Quebec. Under the Job Entry Program, the federal government contributed $94,380 to finance this project. With this funding from our government, 20 people in my riding who receive unemployment insurance can obtain training and experience to return to the job market.
Mr. Speaker, that is a good example of the effective employment policies brought in by our government with Bill C-21. Our programs meet the needs of the labour market and create interesting, steady jobs adapted to the requirements of our economy.


TAXI INDUSTRY
Mr. Marcel Prud'homme (Saint-Denis):: Mr. Speaker, the taxi drivers serving Dorval Airport are angry, Pierre Bellemare tells us in an article in La Presse of April 11, today.
The representative of these drivers, Mr. Lucien Roy, tells us that each driver will have to pay 84 per cent more plus GST every year to Montreal International Airport in Dorval. These drivers say that income is down by 46 per cent. These costs are rising at a frightening rate, says the spokesman for taxi drivers at this airport. They are asking Transport Minister Doug Lewis to intervene and find a solution to this conflict.

It is the same thing in Toronto where the concerns of the Independent Limousine Owner-Driver's Association and the Airport Thxi Cab Association have fallen upon the minister's deaf ears.
I am pleased that our transport critic, the member for York West has intervened on their behalf. But if the minister will not go half way to meet the drivers, he may have to walk home the next time he wants a drive.
Mr. Speaker, the fee was $1,000 a year to work eight hours a day. It is now over $4,000, and that just to operate their cab. Also, the new flat fee is $6,000 for the limo drivers, which represents a 400 per cent increase.
I hope the minister will read by representation and act accordingly.


EXECUTIVE SALARIES
Mr. John R. Rodriguez (Nickel Belt):: Mr. Speaker, the bits of information we have on Canadian business executives' pay must come from U.S. disclosure rules. This is unfortunate, for many of these earnings are obscene and must fall under public scrutiny.
For instance, the President of Aginco-Eagle Mines gets $5 million when he gets his pink slip.
Or Victor Rice, the man who dwarfed Massey Ferguson and moved it south of the border at the expense of Canadian taxpayers and workers. This job killer has a severance pay that amounts to four times his annual earnings of $2.6 million-over $10 million. That is 10 per cent of the 1990 company's profits, hijacked by an executive supposedly at the service of his shareholders.
They call it a "golden parachute". Imagine, a "golden parachute".

April 11, 1991
Mr. Speaker, I cannot see any parachutes opening on the labour side of the economic landscape. I see only workers falling to earth with lead parachutes, not golden parachutes.


THE DISABLED
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, the Conservative minister from Pierrefonds-Dollard and Secretary of State of Canada has given a grant to the Val-d'Or disabled people's club for a project related to an independent living centre in Val-d'Or.
An independent living centre promotes and encourages the gradual process whereby disabled people take responsibility for the development and management of personal and community resources. It must be open to meet the needs of all disabled people, regardless of handicap or age.
Mr. Speaker, I am aware of the valuable work done by Anne-Marie Desmarais, Bernard Michaud and all those involved. The proposed activities will help meet the objectives of the Disabled Persons Participation Program in the Val-d'Or region.


ANCESTRAL LANGUAGE TRAINING
Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: Mr. Speaker, for many Canadians, the teaching of ancestral languages is essential for safeguarding and preserving their cultural heritage. Unfortunately, with the stroke of a pen, the government has told Canadians that this program will no longer exist.
Since then, the Picai Organization has circulated a petition in my riding, which has a large Italian community, and in the greater Montreal area. This petition asks the government to restore the funds necessary for heritage language teaching. My colleague from Laval-Est and I received this petition containing 22,000 signatures and will send it to the Minister responsible for Multiculturalism today.
I say to this Conservative Government, that if it really believes in multiculturalism, it will maintain the programs needed to promote it and ensure that Canada remains a multicultural country.


NATIONAL UNITY
Hon. Alan Redway (Don Valley East):: Mr. Speaker, should one part of Canada have the unilateral right to separate?
If the answer is yes, doesn't it also mean that a region, district or county has the right to separate from a province, a city from a region and a neighbourhood from a city? What mechanism do we use to negotiate such a separation and how do we settle our differences if we cannot agree on the terms of separation?
If the answer is no, what compromises should we make to eliminate or reduce the grievances that have brought some Canadians to the point of wanting to separate or should they just have to lump it?
The answers to these questions are not easy for any of us, because in the very concept of separation we have a tiger by the tail.


WELFARE
Mr. Ross Stevenson (Durham):: Mr. Speaker, Financial Post columnist Diane Francis has pointed out that in Ontario anyone earning less than $45,000 a year could be better off on welfare.
An unemployed couple with two children could receive the tax-free equivalent of that income through welfare payments, clothing, medical and other allowances. Such information is one reason why working people who pay taxes are so frustrated today.
The 17 per cent welfare increase adopted in January by Ontario's NDP government will be welcomed by those in genuine need. Unfortunately, there are some who abuse this program. These abusers are not just cheating government but dipping into the pockets of all others who pay taxes.
I call on all three levels of government to ensure our welfare programs not only are adequate but affordable and targeted to those in genuine need.
April 11, 1991


NATIONAL CITIZENSHIP WEEK
Mr. Denis Pronovost (Saint-Maurice):: Mr. Speaker, we are celebrating National Citizenship Week for the fifth consecutive year to remind us that Canadian citizenship concerns us all. It is more than a mere formality to obtain the right to vote or a passport. Bearing that in mind, Mr. Speaker, I would call upon the Bloc Quebe-cois members in this House to stop working at destroying our country, Canada, and to start working with us at rebuilding this country, Canada, on a sounder basis to ensure a brighter future to all Quebecers within Canada.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD

['Mr. Speaker, it really depends on when tomorrow starts, at midnight or 10 a.m. tomorrow. We will dispose of Motion 30 some time today or tomorrow; this sitting, let me put it that way, and then it would be my intention to call the adjournment motion for tomorrow. I guess any future will depend on what happens with the adjournment motion.']
Hon. Jean Chretien (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, the United States have challenged the decision regarding Canadian pork rendered by the binational panel on Free Trade. In the speech he gave yesterday in New York City, the Minister for International Trade stated that, if the U.S. appeal goes through it will be very harmful to the Free Trade Agreement and the participation of Canada in negotiations with Mexico and the United States. So, I would like the Prime Minister to tell me if his minister was stating government policy when he said in New York that the Free Trade Agreement would be seriously affected?


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, the exact words of the minister were:

"In the event that this extraordinary challenge was successful, it would be very harmful to the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement and to any support for that agreement in Canada", Mr. Crosbie said: "Naturally, that will affect whether or not Canada enters into any other free trade agreements".

That is the minister's position and that is also the government's position. We take veiy seriously the Americans' decision to invoke an extraordinary provision in a regular case. This provision was negotiated for a very
Oral Questions
precise purpose, and the Canadian government does not agree at all with the decision of the American administration to invoke this extraordinary provision in this case. Such a decision dilutes the impact of an important decision-making process. We will watch and follow this very closely and vigorously.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, the Minister for International Trade was not the only one to say that the free trade agreement will be called into question if the American appeal goes through. A week ago Simon Reisman, the chief negotiator of the free trade agreement said, and I quote: "If there is some way to undermine and attack (the binational panel), then I would say we have to have a fresh look at the whole agreement. That is how important it is".
Given that both the minister and the chief negotiator say that the trade agreement is open to abuse, will the Prime Minister admit that this deal is flawed and do something to correct these flaws rapidly?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I know where the previous leader of the Liberal Party stood with regard to the free trade agreement. We are still waiting to hear whether the new Leader is in favour of or against the free trade agreement. We still have not heard.
The dispute settlement mechanism is an important part of the free trade agreement. Indeed, I think it is probably fair to say that the Government of Canada certainly would not have entered into a free trade agreement if there were not an impartial way to resolve disputes.
Among the negotiated provisions was this reference to an extraordinary provision. It was clear that this extraordinary provision was to be invoked only in the most exceptional circumstances by either of the parties. Fraud on the part of one of the judges is one of the kinds of exceptional circumstance.
We believe that the utilization of this particular clause in regard to the favourable decision to Canada on pork was an abuse of the process. Canada had won that case fair and square. This was an abuse of the process by the Americans, and that is the message I conveyed to the President of the United States. It is the message the

April 11, 1991
Oral Questions
Government of Canada is conveying to the administration of the United States.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what we have always said, that this was not a good deal and that it should be renegotiated.
We have proof today that on the first occasion the Americans have, they will abuse the process.
Does the Prime Minister agree that we should first clarify the kind of deal we have with the Americans before we enter into a deal with the Americans and Mexico? We do not know exactly whether we have a deal or not with the United States.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I see the member for Edmonton applauding. He was one of the supporters of the free trade agreement.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Martin Brian Mulroney: He voted for it and he ran on it. We know he was in favour of it. We suspect his leader was in favour of it, and maybe one day he will let us know.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: We will renegotiate the deal.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Now he says: "Renegotiate the deal."
He says the deal is okay, but he wants it renegotiated. We have a deal. It is not going to be renegotiated. We want it respected, and the Government of Canada is going to make sure it is respected.


Hon. Roy MacLaren (Etobicoke North):: Mr. Speaker, in 1988, the Prime Minister said the dispute settlement mechanism in the free trade agreement was a "genuine shield against new U.S. protectionism, whether from Congress or from the administration".
As the Leader of the Opposition has noted, the Minister for International Trade in New York yesterday said that the U.S. challenge to the bi-national panel's decision "is a response to protectionist pressures from Congress" and that "this move attempts to put politics back in trade."
Will the Prime Minister now acknowledge what the Liberal Party has claimed all along, that the existing free
trade agreement does not in effect "shield" Canada from congressional protectionist interests and pressures? Is the Prime Minister saying that if the extraordinary judicial committee decides against Canada's interest that we should rethink the free trade agreement? Is that what he said just a moment ago?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend is a spiritual supporter of the free trade agreement.
He knows full well that I said no such thing. I did indicate that the dispute settlement mechanism is indeed a shield against protectionism. It is not a guarantee against vexatious political behaviour. We believe that this is an abuse of the process. I have conveyed that personally to the President and we have conveyed it to the administration. We are going to deal with this matter.
We do not take the position, unlike some people, that when we run into trouble we are going to take our marbles and go home. That is not the way we conduct foreign policy and that is not the way-


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I am not going to quarrel right away with my friend from Newfoundland about that statement. But with regard to the position of my hon. friend, obviously we are going to defend very vigorously the interests of Canada. We already won the pork case. The pork case was initiated before the free trade agreement. The problem was there before the free trade agreement. We won on two occasions the requirements of the pork decision. Now there is an abuse of process by the Americans against which we protest very vigorously. I believe the Canadian position will prevail.


Roy MacLaren: The Prime Minister knows perfectly well that the government accepted this process. It accepted it as an integral part of its acceptance of the free trade agreement. The government accepted it. It knew what it was accepting. It knew that this process could be triggered.
The extraordinary judicial panel in effect determines, with the Canadian government's agreement, whether or not the bi-national panel's decision conforms with U.S. law. In taking this step, the United States is not only
April 11, 1991

undermining the dispute settlement mechanism, but it has again demonstrated that Canada did not in fact win secure access to the U.S. markets via the free trade agreement.
I now ask the Prime Minister this: How is any of this different from what was the case before the free trade agreement? Why did Canada cede sovereignty in the free trade agreement when clearly it did not win reciprocal action from the United States?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, let us just go back. My hon. friend said that the Liberal Party would blame every sparrow that fell on the free trade agreement. That is exactly what he is in the process of doing.
In a trade agreement which regulates $200 billion worth of bilateral trade-the largest trading partnership in the world between two countries-the free trade agreement is a very important civilising instrument in regard to the problems that that kind of trade normally engenders, free trade agreement or no free trade agreement. It is a major step forward in that process of protecting Canadian interests.
The dispute settlement mechanism was the first such mechanism ever concluded between the United States and another sovereign nation. No one suggested that it was perfect, even though everyone acknowledged that it was a major accomplishment.
With regard to the provision that my hon. friend raises, it was never intended for this kind of use because the circumstances were clearly considered by both negotiators. Its use in these circumstances is an abuse, and the fact that it has been abused once-and it is an important provision-by the Americans does not justify in our mind destroying an historic accomplishment like the free trade agreement. We will not throw out the baby with the bath water simply because the Liberals ask.


Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Mr. Speaker, this Prime Minister went across this country assuring Canadians from coast to coast that we had achieved secure access to the United States market.
I want to ask this Prime Minister now how he can stand up in the House of Commons and say this is a serious abuse, say that this is, as his Minister for International Trade put it, something that contravenes the intent of
Oral Questions
the FTA, without drawing some implications out of that. In other words, is this government going to do more than just talk about abuse? Is it actually going to do something? If so, what precisely is it going to do?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend knows full well that with regard to any bilateral document, any important document concluded either between individuals or between sovereign nations, depending on the interpretation that a body of adjudication could give, the letter killeth and the spirit giveth life. Any time that spirit is deformed and distorted, an important document can be affected in an unfavourable way.
This is what has happened. The provisions are good. They are not perfect, but the dispute settlement mechanism is widely acknowledged to be a very important one. Canada proceeded pursuant to the rules and we won at every step of the road. At that point in time, the decision ought to have been final. The Americans chose to abuse the process by taking it an extra step. They are going to lose by taking that extra step because the provisions of the free trade agreement require that this matter be resolved in Canada's interests.


Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister said some very important things in that comment. He said that what is taking place on the part of the United States is unfair, an abuse. He has also said, and I hope I am not reading too much into his words, that there is an implication that an abuse of this sort puts at threat the free trade deal.
I want to ask the Prime Minister the question I put to him before: What precisely is this government prepared to do if in fact we see that the hopes of the Prime Minister do not come to fruition? What guarantee can he give us that in fact this abuse, which he identifies, is not going to turn out to be a successful abuse that hurts our pork producers right across this country?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend began by saying that he hoped he did not read more than was said into my statement, and then proceeded to do precisely that. I said no such thing. I said at no time that a failure to win in a given case would mean that we were going to proceed to revoke an important trade agreement.

April 11, 1991
Oral Questions
I said that in my judgment the utilization of the invocation of this clause in these circumstances by the American government is an abuse of the process. It was an abuse of the process and this view is an important one on behalf of Canadians and has been conveyed to our American interlocutors on this.
We are going to follow the rule of law and we are going to advance at this stage all of the Canadian arguments that have successfully been advanced and deployed thus far.
My hon. friend then raises hypothetical questions about what if, what if, and what if. We began this believing we were right to proceed this way to defend the interests of Canadian pork producers. We did that. We won. We did it again and we won then. We believe that by following that same course, we are going to win again.


Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, what precisely this government is going to do is to go from one trade deal, which it is questioning for abuse, to a further trade deal with the United States and Mexico.
We know that a report has been prepared with respect to labour legislation comparing Mexico, the United States and Canada. It is a report by Labour Canada. It was supposed to be tabled today. I want to ask the Prime Minister why it is that this important document has not been tabled in this House today.
What is holding back this government from telling Canadians about this important study? Why is it holding it back?


Right Hon. Joe Clark (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, it is an unfortunate characteristic of the New Democratic Party to attribute the worst motives to everyone with whom they disagree. That is why they are trying to justify on trade grounds a position that at base is simply, in the worst sense of the word, anti-Mexican. That is why they are trying to justify on trade grounds a position that is at base opposed to everything they say they stand for in terms of international development and encouragement of the Third World. That is a despicable position for any political party.
The report will be tabled later today.



Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. I have in hand a copy of a study sent personally to the Prime Minister on February 5 which outlined the potential job devastation, not only for de Havilland, Toronto's largest industrial employer, but for companies across the country that supply de Havilland, the devastation that a foreign government takeover of the company could cause.
The study outlines that suppliers across the country account for $169 million in revenues, specifically $2.5 million in Alberta, $2 million in Atlantic Canada, $6.5 million in British Columbia, $11 million in Manitoba, $82 million in the province of Quebec and $65 million in the province of Ontario.
I would like to ask the Prime Minister why, having received this information personally two months ago, did he insist in the House yesterday that he was not going to reverse the takeover of de Havilland?


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology):: Mr. Speaker, I will repeat what I said yesterday, that the application will have to go first to Investment Canada.
I would like to underline something that the member says. It is usual for her to make a presentation about effects may happen in two or three years. They are not there. What is there today is a company which Boeing proposes to sell to a consortium of European companies. It will have to be assessed very seriously by Investment Canada. The company in 1986 had 4,400 workers and today there are 4,900 people working in the company. We are trying to consider the way that we will deal with that in the future.
I ask the member to not just throw around figures which are not there. They are possible in her view, but for God's sake, could we have the truth, the real truth, here today.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, it is shameful, because the Industry Minister himself received the same study on February 5.1 will tell him what that study says. Suppliers in the province of Quebec alone account for 48.7 per cent, for a total income of $82 million, most of that in Montreal.
April 11, 1991

But the Industry Minister knows that Montreal is the unemployment capital of Canada, as was said today. I would like to ask him this question: In these two months, why has he not faced up to his responsibilities and refused the sale of a company which will be very costly across Canada, which will cost Montreal, Toronto and all of Canada very dearly? Why has he not refused it?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, even if the hon. member for Hamilton East shouts untruths in French or in English, it does not change the facts.
Again, what she is referring to, a study from two months ago, deals with a hypothetical sale because it was proposed to Investment Canada at some point but has not yet happened. Let them try to frighten people, Mr. Speaker, but not in the constant and illogical way that the member for Hamilton East is always doing in this House. I ask her to show the maturity that goes with the position she holds as deputy leader of a political party. She is absolutely unable to give people the straight facts.
Yes, Mr. Speaker, those are Liberal projections, but we had them for 20 years and that was enough.


Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Prime Minister. It too concerns the sale of de Havilland.
Yesterday the Prime Minister boasted:
Canada needs foreign investment and we are going to invite
foreign investment and create national investment.
Will the Prime Minister level with Canadians and demonstrate exactly where that foreign investment is when his government practically gave away de Havilland in 1986 and now the French-Italian consortium will be paying big dollars not to Canada but to a giant American corporation, Boeing, based in Seattle, Washington?
How does that transaction benefit Canadians and Canadian workers?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, if my friend wants to listen to me, I will repeat what I said before.
In 1986 Boeing Canada bought a company for about $890 million which at the time faced big difficulties.
Oral Questions
Today this government put in about $90 million for 500 more jobs than it had at the time. The company spent about $700 million or $800 million on de Havilland since 1986.
It is what I call a good investment. I know that the Liberal Party is against foreign investors. I prefer the message I gave abroad about Canada and the way we want to see money in this country from all countries in the world, rather than the way you did it and almost killed the economy of this country.


Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, Liberals are not against foreign investment.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member.


Sergio Marchi: Liberals are against foreign takeovers. Canadians expect this government to stand up for Canada for a change. That is what we are for.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Sergio Marchi: It is not the foreign investment; it is foreign takeovers.
I return to the minister. The Prime Minister laughs and continues to read householders while Rome bums, but this is his prerogative.
Given that de Havilland is the largest industrial employer in Toronto and that millions of dollars of contract work to Canadian firms are tendered each year across the country, can the Prime Minister or the minister guarantee that if the new deal were to go through present levels of employment will be maintained, research and development will be continued in Canada, the plant will continue to build a full and complete aircraft and Canadian suppliers will be maintained?
Will he give us this reassurance on behalf of Canada and not some Boeing corporation in Seattle, Washington.


An hon. member:: Seattle, Washington.


Mr. Speaker:: I have to point out that that becomes a very hypothetical question. The minister may want to deal with it.


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, first I want to say that de Havilland is not a Canadian owned company. It is already

April 11, 1991
Oral Questions
American. It was sold. If I understood well, the member said that we are trying to sell out the Canadian ownership. It is not a matter of Canadian ownership anyway.
No reasonable manager would give that kind of a guarantee before having first seen the business plan of the company, what the company intends to do in terms of the future. The company already expressed the views that maybe it could invest $1 billion in the new company. I think that is the reasonable way.
I am sure that my friend, if he wants to be objective, will admit that the best way is to refer the case to Investment Canada, which will as it did- do you have something against Italians?


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-St. Clair):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology, and I would ask him to be careful.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: The minister has said that he will not accept a consortium purchase of de Havilland if it proves to be harmful. The consortium has already indicated that it plans to replace de Havilland's new 100-seater aircraft with its own, to leave de Havilland with some research and development and parts assembly, and to eliminate up to 3,000 direct jobs in Toronto and some 20,000 indirect jobs, most of which are in Quebec.
Is that harmful? Is that acceptable? Or, does the minister plan to act?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, yesterday I answered exactly the same question the member asks today.
The deal has not yet been presented to Investment Canada. It will be done in due course. Investment Canada will deal with high-tech companies that have a lot of requests and different considerations and will take into account deals which will be acceptable to us.
I refer my friend to a deal which during the campaign the NDP Government of Ontario said it would refuse. It
was the one with Consumers Gas. When Mr. Rae came to power he accepted the deal because it was a good deal.
I believe that we should have the same attitude about de Havilland, keeping in mind, I am proud to say, that Investment Canada did a wonderful job and will continue to do so.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, to most of us the evidence is clear: Investment Canada has done no job at all.
It is reported that the consortium is asking for between $500 million and $1 billion spread over 10 years in order to support research which is basically connected to the consortium's new 100-seater aircraft to replace the new Dash-8 400 series. That new airplane, by the way, will be assembled in Germany and the rest of it fragmented among four or five other countries.
My question for the minister is simple. Would it not make more sense to use that money to obtain an equity position, a golden share, which would ensure that not only the R and D is done in Canada but the new 400 series will be produced and assembled in Canada so that workers will benefit and Canada will benefit from having at least one plane left that is produced in this country?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, the member, as his party normally does, is always in advance of any decision.
But what happens with that kind of approach? I believe, as I said yesterday, that we work and Investment Canada works with the presentation of an application by the company and any other application made regarding the deal with de Havilland. Investment Canada has already considered two applications, and it could do that again.
I ask my friend to be reasonable for once and to wait for the way we will work. He will see, as usual, that we work very well.


SOFTWOOD LUMBER
Mr. Reginald Belair (Cochrane-Superior):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. As he is well aware, the Minister for International Trade has
April 11, 1991

been collecting data on the memorandum of understanding on softwood lumber for more than four years.
On March 4, the same minister was quoted as stating that he was ready to go to Washington before the end of March to negotiate the termination of the memorandum.
Given that a promise was given, can the Prime Minister indicate to this House and to Canadian lumber manufacturers if indeed the Minister for International Trade has met with his American counterparts and, if not, why not?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, understandably the hon. member takes a very active interest in this issue. He would know that the Minister for International Trade, on behalf of this government, has been consulting actively with the provinces of Canada regarding the position that we would put to the United States to change a situation which is unacceptable to Canada.
Our position is that it is going to be necessary for us to have the agreement and the co-operation of the principal provinces affected by this matter.
There is no announcement that I have to make at this stage on behalf of the Minister for International Trade, except to say that those deliberations in Canada are proceeding and that I think the position Canada intends to take regarding this question with the United States is known to the House.


Réginald Bélair: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister. The softwood lumber industry in Canada is paralyzed by the 17 per cent rise in the Canadian dollar and the 15 per cent export surtax, making a total surcharge of 32 per cent. A hundred thousand jobs have already been lost in Canada.
Mr. Speaker, because this government created the problem, why is it refusing to solve it to help workers in Northern Ontario and throughout Canada?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I believe that it is well known to
Oral Questions
all members who have followed this situation that this problem was not created by the Government of Canada but rather by the practices of some provinces. A problem arose and the government had to deal with it. Arrangements have been made with the United States. The present circumstances are not acceptable for us. That is why we began consultations with the provinces and it is also why we are seeking the support of the provinces most interested in the issue, so that when the Government of Canada makes representations to the Americans, it will be with the support of the great majority of the interests affected here in Canada.


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Mr. Speaker, today Statistics Canada released the latest casualty list of this government's economic policies.
My question is for the Prime Minister. Department store sales are down by over $1.5 billion since December 1990. The combination of the GST and this government's kamikaze economic policies has led to the worst collapse in the retail sector in over 30 years.
How many more retail stores will have to go belly-up or how many more people will have to be thrown on the unemployment line before the Prime Minister comes to his senses and abandons his obscene economic policies?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, as I have said on a number of occasions, we expect that the economy is going to stabilize by mid-year and that we will see a growth in the second half of the year. That is not an opinion that is exclusively held by the Government of Canada. The Royal Bank of Canada, the Conference Board and other economists have stated the same opinion.
There is a slowness in the economy right now, and we do not like to see that. We do see the policies we have been following, particularly the drop in interest rates we have seen continue today of about 4.25 percentage points since the peak last May. That is giving some life to the housing industry. We are going to see this carried through into other sectors of the economy, and it is that which will bring about that recovery.

April 11, 1991
Oral Questions


Ronald MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, only this government would have the nerve to call a 42 per cent decrease in retail sales a sign of economic recovery.
My question is again for the Prime Minister. So far this year bankruptcies are up over 63 per cent. With the news of a one-half billion dollar decrease in retail sales between January and February, there should be no question that those bankruptcies will continue to rise unabated through spring and summer.
Since the Prime Minister and the government refuse to stop this assault on the economy, will they at least give some relief to the casualties by introducing in this House today reformed bankruptcy legislation to offer some protection to those Canadian businesses that are suffering so badly?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I think my hon. friends is very well aware of the considerable work that my colleague, the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, has been doing in bringing about the introduction of the bankruptcy legislation. I would hope at some stage in the fairly near future he will be able to do so.


DECENTRALIZATION
Mr. Larry Schneider (Regina-Wascana):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister.
I am encouraged with the logical relocation of the National Energy Board to Calgary. I am also encouraged by this government's quick action to fill the void in Summerside and similarly in Portage la Prairie.
Coming from Regina, I have seen not only a comparative lack of federal presence in the capital city but have also experienced the ravaging of federal jobs under a previous government, the majority of these jobs going east of our province.
The Conference Board of Canada states that Saskatchewan's economy contributes 3.7 per cent to Canada's Gross National Product, while the federal government spends only 0.8 per cent of its budget in Saskatchewan.
Can the Prime Minister give my community this government's assurances that the government intends to continue with a policy of logical decentralization?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I thank the member from Regina for a very important question.
In point of fact there is general recognition that the decision of the government to locate the Western Diversification Office in Edmonton has resulted, for example, by bringing the decision-making process closer to western Canada in the creation of some 26,700 new jobs in western Canada.
The decision by the government, for example, to locate the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency in Moncton has been described by Premier Frank McKenna as the most important contribution to regional development in the history of Confederation.
We believe that there is an important role for decentralization in Canada. Obviously the case made with such eloquence by the member from Regina would undoubtedly cause the government to examine Regina very carefully as a sight for any future moves of decisionmaking bodies west.


Ms. Joy Langan (Mission-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the the Minister of National Health and Welfare. He is finally sufficiently concerned enough for the safety of Canadian women to send an official to Washington to check out the recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration report on the carcinogenic threat of the Meme breast implant to women in Canada.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member is putting a question which is clearly of very great importance to all hon. members in the House, and I would ask hon. members to listen to her question carefully.


Joy Langan: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Is the minister now willing to suspend the use of the Meme until he has a definitive report? He should be willing to err on the side of Canadian women rather than on the side of manufacturers of implants.
Hon. Perrin Beatty (Minister of National Health and
Welfare): Mr. Speaker, the hon. member will be aware that yesterday she rose in the House of Commons based on a clipping from a newspaper and demanded that we withdraw the implant. My response to her was to request, if she had not yet seen the report, to wait until we have had a chance to look at the report and to analyse
April 11, 1991

the results of the report instead of having a hanging first and having the trial later.
Our official has met in Washington with officials of the FDA. Ele was the only person there who was not an official within the FDA. We have done a preliminary analysis of the FDA report which shows essentially the same data as we found with studies that were done by the Department of National Health and Welfare and the University of Ottawa earlier.


Joy Langan: Mr. Speaker, that would suggest to me that the FDA's report has collaborated those two reports that this minister continues to ignore.
At the same time as we have this kind of information from the FDA, the minister and his department are still circulating documents to Canadians saying that these implants are safe. I would ask the minister to withdraw these documents immediately.


Hon. Perrin Beatty (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, possibly the hon. member is not aware of the two studies that were done, one by my own department and one by the University of Ottawa.
They found that no American threat was posed by the Meme breast implant. If the hon. member would like a full briefing with regard to either of those studies-they are on the public record-we would be prepared to make this information available to the hon. member or to any other hon. member in the House.
The key concern here is very simple. Mr. Speaker, I wonder whether the hon. member who asked the question might listen.
The key concern is simply this. Our responsibility on all sides of this House is to protect the health and safety of Canadians. If, based on scientific information, there is any reason to justify the withdrawal of a medical device from the market, the government will do so. However, that action has to be based on scientific evidence.
Oral Questions TRADE


Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister for International Trade.
Next month Canadian farmers will be facing a flood of low quality U.S. grain coming into the country, costing Canadian producers millions of dollars. At the same time, the United States is using its Export Enhancement Program to steal Canadian markets overseas and to drive down world prices.
In view of the fact that it is violating the spirit of the FTA with regard to the Export Enhancement Program, is the minister prepared to hold up the access to Canadian markets of U.S. grains until the United States starts meeting its obligations under the free trade deal with regard to export subsidies?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Privy Council and Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is being somewhat premature in his conclusion.
The preliminary data has just been exchanged between the two countries. It is still being worked upon. Unless he has some news that I do not have, there has been no decision made. We will have to await the calculations, and then see what happens. There has been no indication that the Canadian border would be open to American wheat at this particular time.


INDIAN AFFAIRS
Denis Pronovost: Mr. Speaker, more than five weeks ago, Justice Rouleau handed down his decision recognizing federal government authority to hold a referendum on the governance question at Kanesatake.

Can the Minister of Indian Affairs tell us today whether he is prepared to announce the holding of a referendum for the people of Kanesatake very soon?

April 11, 1991
Point of Order


Hon. Thomas Siddon (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for St. Maurice has raised a very timely question.
As hon. members know, for several years there has been a serious problem of band governance within the Mohawk community at Kanesatake, where there has been instability and internal disagreement ever since the change in band custom election was introduced in 1969.
I am examining the judgment of Mr. Justice Rouleau of the Quebec Federal Court. I am inclined to favour the holding of a plebiscite very shortly on this question, to be conducted by an independent, impartial agency.
I will have a decision and more details early next week.


PRIVILEGE
Mr. Speaker:: I would like to make a brief clarification further to the statement by the hon. member for Richelieu in the House yesterday and his question of privilege raised on Monday this week.
I first wish to inform the House of the successful meeting I had today with the hon. member and with some officials who participated in moving his office. At that meeting, the hon. member said he was completely convinced that at no time were his rights and privileges as a member violated. It was recognized that such situations are exceptional and unique and it was regrettable if it caused him some concern.
Once again, I wish to thank the hon. member for his confidence and co-operation in this affair. The hon. member for Richelieu has the floor.


Mr. Louis Plamondon (Richelieu):: Mr. Speaker, in turn, I would like to thank you for having met with me in your chamber and for stating publicly that I had found myself in an unfortunate situation. I also wish to reassure the hon. members and my constituents about the confidentiality of the files that were moved from my office. I have received assurances from your legal adviser, who
monitored the move, that it was done under police surveillance and that none of my files were tampered with. I have decided, with your permission, to stay in the office you have assigned me-or rather imposed upon me-because, for the same reasons that led me to object to having my office moved in the first place or to be asked to move, I think it would not be right to spend another $10,000 in this time of restraint to move me back to my old office. I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for your co-operation in this matter and for kindly accepting to see me so promptly.
In closing, however, I must once again denounce the decision of the Progressive Conservative Party Whip to give in to the whim of some 30 conservative members by moving their office at a cost of about a quarter-of-a-mil-lion dollar. The Canadian people will make them pay for that at the next election. Thank you.


POINT OF ORDER
Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. In the House today, reference was made to a report by Labour Canada. I want to advise the House that that report is in the process of being delivered to the chairman of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade, and also to the members for Etobicoke North and Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, who are the respective critics for their parties.


OFFICE OF THE MEMBER FOR RICHEUEU
Mr. Vincent Della Noce (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the member for Richelieu. He has just quoted some figures to which I strongly object. It does not cost $10,000 to move his three machines and a few files. I was among those moved and I know it did cost $150.1 would not want the people to think that we spent $10,000. Moreover, Mr. Speaker, I would not want them to think that we just moved for the fun of it. I moved ouy of necessity and to help this House.
April 11, 1991


REPORT BY LABOUR CANADA
Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order that the Secretary of State for External Affairs just raised, can I take his comments to mean that the report now is a public document and that people are free to comment? Are copies available to all members, other than those he referred to specifically?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, they certainly will be. It is intended to be a public document. This was intended to be a process as undertaken by the government, to make that document public today.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, being Thursday, I would like the government House leader-I think I can guess what he is going to say-in keeping with the practices of this House, to tell us what the order of business is for tomorrow.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, it really depends on when tomorrow starts, at midnight or 10 a.m. tomorrow. We will dispose of Motion 30 some time today or tomorrow; this sitting, let me put it that way, and then it would be my intention to call the adjournment motion for tomorrow. I guess any future will depend on what happens with the adjournment motion.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Andre (p. 19027) and amendment of Mr. Dingwall (p. 19156).
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, this debate, even under the best political circumstances in normal political times, I submit to you would be a difficult one. As the history of Parliament shows, parlia-
Govemment Orders
mentary rule changes are always a topic that is received with great suspicion by whichever party is in the opposition, quite rightly and understandably so. It is the role of the opposition in the British parliamentary system to keep the government honest and to play the basic role of a watchdog on the activities, the actions and the decisions of the government of the day.
Unfortunately, this task is made more difficult for two reasons; first is the nature of the proposal the government is advancing, which has been dealt with by colleagues and which I will deal with in a moment and second, because of the low popularity and the low esteem in which the government finds itself across the country in the opinion of Canadians.
The credibility of the government is at the present, as is shown by a variety of recent polls, extremely low. The credibility of the leader of this government is even worse. What accompanies this phenomenon is the fact that the popularity in the polls of this government is way behind that of the other two major parties. Political analysts are informing us that in the history of taking public opinion polls, the Prime Minister's popularity, at 16 per cent, has never been as low as it is at the present time.
One could even venture to forecast that if an election were called and held 60 days from today, the government party would be extremely lucky if it were to play the role of the official opposition as a result of such an election. Most likely, it would be in third position at best. This is because of the considerable erosion in popularity the Conservative Party is undergoing, as witnessed both in the west as well as in Quebec. Therefore, I submit to you that this government lacks the moral authority that accompanies credibility.
In asking that a package of new rules be accepted and adopted by this House, the government is really asking the impossible. It is requesting the acceptance of a package whose substance is very controversial and it lacks the needed authority to assert its viewpoint. It only has the numbers when it comes to a vote. That is the use of force, rather than the use of reason in parliamentary terms.
It is against this rather depressing political snapshot that I just gave the House that we are debating today the merits and the disadvantages of this package.

April 11, 1991
Government Orders
One must conclude from the absence of speakers on the government side today that even backbenchers of the governing party find it extremely difficult to defend this package. Not one has risen today in defence of this proposal. We are witnessing a profound lack of confidence on the part of the benches on the government side. That says more than anything else.
In all fairness, one has to say by way of a general comment that the government's package does contain a number of potentially helpful proposals and most of them, I submit to you, flow from existing practices. It would be building on existing practices that would lead to some of the changes that we have supported by way of an intervention made a couple of days ago by the Whip of the Official Opposition in this House.
The positive side of this package is poisoned by the over-all thrust of the suggested new timetable, which prevents the opposition from holding the government accountable in the manner that it ought to be in a modem parliamentary system.
As we have heard from other speakers, it is being proposed that we reduce by one-quarter the number of sitting days. This may appear to the average Canadian to be a matter of debatable significance, if we were not to add very quickly the fact that by reducing from some 175 to 135 the number of sitting days, Canadians, through the media and other channels, are denied the information that is generated through Question Period and the scrums following Question Period. We all know from experience that it is through that process of daily questions and answers that an assessment is made of government decisions, programs and intentions that relate to the public interest.
In that respect, therefore, a reduction by one-quarter of the number of sitting days is more than just a statistic, it is more than just a general number; it has a significance that, once translated into political terms, assumes a certain importance.
This leads me to comment also on the fact that this reduction in sitting days in the House of Commons seems to be motivated by an over-all attitude to the parliamentary democratic process which is rather stringent, discipline-oriented and, at times, I regret to say, rather repressive. I do not want to sound like a professional opposition member because we think that we will be, with the support of the Canadian voter, replacing the government. Therefore, we have to make speeches,
keeping in mind the importance of governing in a parliamentary system.
But I would like to draw to the attention of the House that in the life of this Parliament, namely since the November 1988 election, the time allocation motions, in other words, motions of a kind that have restricted or placed a limit to debate in this House, have been invoked eight times. The number of times in which closure- which is really a guillotine-on debate has been invoked nine times, Mr. Speaker.
These numbers have significance if they are compared to a benchmark. I would like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that in the Trudeau government years-the last major change in parliamentary rules that I can recall before the McGrath commission-between 1970-71 to 1984, closure was invoked three times over a period of 14 years. Here, by contrast, closure has been invoked nine times over a period of nine years. Do we not detect a pattern of management of Parliament that is pretty severe and pretty restrictive in resorting to such extreme measures?
The question, of course, is why? It is a subject that we could perhaps debate on another occasion in analysing why closure has been invoked nine times in two years.
Evidently it is the nature of the measures this government has imposed on Canadians through Parliament that has made this type of strategy frequently necessary; namely, the resorting to closure. I submit that this is very regrettable.
The reduction of sitting days also means that Parliament is no longer being seen as the place where political leadership on the part of all the parties involved ought to be expressed, particularly in difficult times of the kind we are experiencing and witnessing today. We seem to be led by a notion, expressed through this package by the government, that Parliament is really not a place where credible thoughts can be expressed, where politicians have a role to play, and where the intellectual capacity of the elected members can come to the fore in a thoughtful and constructive approach to the issues of our times.
The message is in reverse and says that the number of sittings should be reduced and the members should be sent home and be kept away because, in the opinion of this government, Parliament is somehow becoming less and less relevant. That is at a time when Canadians obviously look for leadership from their politically
April 11, 1991

elected members and it is a very distressing trend and a veiy distressing and disturbing pattern.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Caccia:: We on this side of the House do not believe there is a bankruptcy of ideas on the part of elected representatives. But the proposed changes are evidently a reflection on the government's assessment of its own capacity to produce that type of leadership through its own members. In that sense it is a very serious indictment.
Let me analyse for a moment the idea of having members in their riding longer every month, i.e., for one week. This scheme is one that could be described as the steam-engine era scheme, coming from the time when travel was very slow and electronic facilities of the kind we know today did not exist. Fifty years ago, it took two or three days to reach one's riding. You certainly did not have a fax in your office or the telephone facilities and other ways of communicating quickly with your electors, constituents and the like. Neither did you have the capacity to travel back and forth by jet.
So we have a package that seems to be conceived and developed with a steam-engine era in mind during the time of the jet engine and of the electronic era. Mr. Speaker, one wonders, therefore, what kind of historical context this government has in mind when it proposes this kind of parliamentary reform. Has it packaged the product of the 1990s for our consideration? Or is it a product of the 1920s?
Inevitably, even with the highest degree of charity we are capable of receiving from the opposition side sometimes, we have to conclude that this government is using a thought process in advancing these proposals that belongs to the steam-engine era rather than to the jet-engine era in which we live today.
Therefore, something is discordant, anachronistic, and out of sync, to put it in very simple terms.
A new system of committees, the so-called five envelopes, deserves a moment of attention, Mr. Speaker. One can understand that the government would want to re-organize committees in a manner that is more rational and reflects new values and new political policy priorities.
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In that sense, I would applaud the government for having attempted to do so, but one aspect in that new scheme must be criticized and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment will perhaps take it into account; namely, the manner in which the envelope, which now comes under the heading of natural resources, has been conceived. Because you find the environment as a servant to natural resources in that envelope.
I or you or everyone would have thought, and even the parliamentary secretary, that environment would have perhaps been the heading of that envelope, under which all those natural resources would then have come.
Considering the far-reaching statements and declarations the Prime Minister of Canada has made on the environment, sustainable development, and other matters at home and abroad over the last six years, we do not see a carrying-through of the declarations that have been made in abstract terms, which do not find practical expression in the new committee organization. In other words, the environment is relegated to being just another horse, in competition with other interests, rather than being the over-all envelope that takes under its wings, so to speak, the various natural resources considered under that particular envelope.
I would suggest to you, in conclusion, the following thought. It seems to me that when we are elected we campaign and people vote to send their member to Ottawa. That is the idea on which an election is run to find who people will send to Ottawa. The package that is before us for debate and for a vote today does not contain proposals that would increase our accountability through the House of Commons, that would increase our parliamentary effectiveness in this Chamber, or that increase our effectiveness as legislators and our legislative role in committees. Unfortunately, the package seems to weaken these three specific roles. Therefore, the proposals will weaken us individually and collectively with respect to our electors and to the public interest, which we are supposed to protect, promote and enhance on behalf of our electors.
Secondly, as a corollary to that observation, I submit to you that Canadians expect or would expect a different kind of reform at this time in history. One that would turn us into better parliamentarians rather than political campaigners in our respective ridings, that would im-

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prove our ability to examine and improve the quality of legislation put before us, that would improve our ability to understand budgetary processes and the ways of better investing the tax dollars, ways of translating into programs and policies the ideas transmitted to us in a variety of ways by our constituents through this very place at the centre.
Mr. Speaker, I submit to you that we are elected to be active at the centre of this nation, namely on the Hill, in the capital of Canada, not in our respective ridings in the diffused manner being proposed by this package, because that is the essence or the quintessence of the purpose for which we are elected. This package not only disregards this basic fundamental point, it actually weakens the role of the parliamentarian. It is for this reason that, although we would like to be positive about parliamentary reform because it is in the interest of Canadian that parliamentary reform be a continuous process, we have to vote against this measure for a very clear reason, linked to the interest of the population of Canada.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: There are no questions or comments to the hon. member, I regret. I will recognize the hon. member for Hillsborough.


MESSAGE FROM THE SENATE
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I have the honour to inform the House that messages have been received from the Senate informing the House that the Senate has passed the following bills without amendment: Bill C-97, an act to provide borrowing authority, and Bill C-98, an act authorizing agreement between the Government of Canada and the provinces to provide for protection for the income of producers of agricultural products and to enable the Government of Canada to take additional measures for that purpose.



ROYAL ASSENT

['The hon. member will have six minutes remaining after we come back from royal assent.']
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I have the honour to inform the House that a communication has been received as follows:
Rideau Hall Ottawa
April 11, 1991
Mr. Speaker,
I have the honour to inform you that the Hon. William Alexander Stevenson, Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, in his capacity as Deputy Governor General, will proceed to the Senate Chamber today, the 11th day of April, 1991, at 4.00 p.m., for the purpose of giving Royal Assent to certain Bills.
Yours sincerely,
Judith A. LaRocque Secretary to the Governor General



[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Andre (p. 19027) and amendment of Mr. Dingwall (p. 19156).
Mr. George Proud (Hillsborough):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to participate in this debate dealing with the proposal to change the rules of the House of Commons. It is with foreboding that I do so.
My sense of unease is not brought on by the technical nature of the subject matter. I will admit, of course, that there are those who are much better versed than I in parliamentary procedure. But my trepidation stems from a belief that these changes are symptomatic of a more basic problem; a breakdown in the parliamentary system, brought on by a lack of understanding of the underlying principle of the separation of powers and of accountability.
Let us look at what is happening in this country. Provinces are increasingly demanding responsibility for legislation that the Constitution has assigned to the Parliament of Canada. Constitutional reform, once a
April 11, 1991

retirement program for lawyers, has lately become a bitterly divisive issue. Western Canadians and Atlantic Canadians are increasingly demanding a reform of the other place. Certainly, British Columbia organizations are looking to California, seeing what is going on there, and demanding that the public initiate referenda.
I ask myself why this is happening? Why are so many demands to change the basic structures of our nation surfacing at the same time? The answer is simple. The public senses that the parliamentary system in Canada is breaking down and out of frustration are demanding action in their own ways and with their own ideas.
This is not a partisan issue. It does not surprise me that the system is breaking down. The British parliamentary system has been a battleground to fight the tyranny of autocratic governments since King John convened the very first one in 1213. Not a century has gone by without a major constitutional restructuring. In fact, the first signs of parliamentary authority were found only when Parliament took up arms against King Charles I and literally removed the head of government.
We are fond of saying that ours is the oldest parliamentary system on the planet.
We are fond of referring to the mother Parliament in London and to the millennium of history that gave rise to constitutional monarchy, and we are fond of showing that even the United States has based its system on the British system.
This is a re-write of history.
It was only under King William and Queen Mary that Parliament began to win supremacy over the government and only under Queen Anne that the Royal veto was eliminated. In short, it was only in the 18th century that the British parliamentary system began to emerge.
It is worth considering why the British parliamentary system emerged. Parliament had won supremacy over legislation and taxation through a bloody civil war. That civil war had resulted in the Hanoverians replacing the Stuarts on the throne. King George I required legislation and taxation in order to run the government. His claim on the throne was being questioned by the people and King George I was faced with a situation that might have made him more unpopular than our Prime Minister is today.
With hindsight, King George appears to have been the first modern politician. It was he who set the precedent of appointing ministers from the House of Commons.
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He realized that, by putting the most influential members of the House of Commons on the government payroll, he could have them fight for his legislation and moneys on the floor of the Chamber. Furthermore, the public would see these popular figures supporting the new monarch and thereby give him legitimacy.
A cynic would claim that the entire British parliamentary system is based on conflict of interests and would probably claim that today's rule changes are also part of this conflict of interest.
The government House leader states that these rule changes are necessary for members of Parliament to fulfil their duties. Some of these members are bored. They sit there day after day, having little or no say in debate.
I have heard journalists speculate that these rule changes are necessary to deal with the independents in the House, that the Conservative government is hoping for a minority in the next Parliament and wants to change the rules to ensure that legislation will pass through a multi-party legislature. I do not agree. I take the government at its word.
I am sure the primary motivation for the government is concern for the way Conservative members are occupying their time. The opposition benches are now riddled with members who occupy their time by participating in debate on the government's legislation.
By definition, the government does not want members to participate in debate. Let's face it, in the current parliamentary system, Conservative members do not want to participate in debate. If they speak against the government they will have to criticize the Prime Minister. If they oppose him they will be opposing the man who must sign their nomination papers, who will appear on their election literature, and who 80 per cent of the voters will think of when they see the ballot. Thanks to King George I, most of these MPs are in a conflict of interest situation.
The government's solution, which we are debating today, is to lessen the number of hours that Parliament sits. This is to permit, in the government's words, backbench members to have more time to be in their constituencies.
I am a member who recognizes the importance of being in the constituency and I spend virtually every weekend and every break we have in my constituency. The sole reason for this is to obtain advice and input from my constituents on important matters facing Parlia-

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ment. I do this so that I can consider the bills that represent my constituents' best interests in this House.
The cutbacks in opposition days have reduced the number of issues that the opposition can raise. Therefore, the constituent voice will be greatly silenced.
I cannot support these rule changes. Parliament has a purpose and that purpose is to consider legislation. The government House leader is fond of saying that he was elected to govern. But he was not elected to govern. He was appointed to government and his appointment has put his colleagues in a conflict of interest situation. I urge them to rise above partisan politics and self-interest and vote against the motion.
There are issues that are fundamental to democracy: Are the rights of individuals paramount to the rights of the majority? Can the non-elected executive branch over-ride the elected legislature?
The issue of reform in the other place is not that different from the issue we are talking about today. The reason the public wants the other place reformed is because, first and foremost, the system is not working. They want the Senate to be elected to make these people accountable; they want it to be equal to be a check on the House of Commons; and they want an effective check on the executive branch.
I do not expect the government to suddenly realize, after listening to my speech, that the executive branch is different from the legislative branch. After all, just as King George I realized 100 years ago, a government can rule unimpeded by controlling the legislative branch.
I do hope that the members opposite will recognize that they are not the government. They have been summoned to this Parliament as legislators to consider government business that was set forth in the Speech from the Throne. The significance of the introduction of the pro forma bill following the first speech was to tell the government that we reserve the right to consider whatever matter we wish, not just the government's agenda.
I recognize that the members opposite may, out of ideology and personal interest, support much of what the government does. This item today, however, is not a partisan issue and not a government issue. It is an issue of interest solely to the legislative branch.
My honourable colleague, the member of Parliament for Ottawa-Vanier, one of the most distinguished parliamentarians around, has already pointed out to the House of Commons that rules should be initiated by a committee of the Commons. They certainly should not be initiated by the executive branch. This is an issue fundamental to our democracy and I beseech my colleagues to not let the non-elected government override our elected House of Commons.
Regardless of political party, we must continue the fight of the first Parliament of 1213. We must protect Parliament from the tyranny of an autocratic government; otherwise, the Canadian parliamentary system has no future.
We would do well to realize that the only source of legitimacy the parliamentary system has left in the public eye lies in the democratic processes of this House. If the House Leader can change the rules to his political advantage this House would no longer be parliamentarian and he would have tampered with one of Canada's most fundamental institutions.
I say do not allow this government to force the public to lose their confidence in our parliamentary system.


Mr. Charles A. Langlois (Manicouagan):: Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege today to take a few minutes in the House to comment on the project submitted by the government to change the hours of sitting and work schedules of the House. I would also like to give you and the House the viewpoint of a member who represents a riding that is very far from Ottawa and also very large; it extends over nearly 750 miles of shoreline on the north side of the Gulf of St. Lawrence; it contains three large communities-Port Cartier, Sept lies and Havre Saint-Pierre-within a distance of about 150 miles and 20 or so villages, some with fewer than 500 people, on another 550 miles of coast.
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Mr. Speaker, my home is in Sept lies and when I arrive in my riding, if I want to go to the eastern most part of it, the Blanc-Sablon region, I still have 550 miles to go, which means a day of flying to get there and another day to return.
I would also like to draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, and the attention of the House to the fact that the riding of Manicouagan also includes the Ungava Bay region, with Inuit villages located 600 or 700 miles north of Montreal and Sept lies.
This is to tell you that for a member who represents a riding like that, a developing riding, a riding with countless needs, a riding where in some places we have to start from scratch, the present schedule of the House makes the member's work extremely difficult.
I would like to point out to the House that our constituents elected us not only to spend many hours in the House of Commons making laws, although that is important work; they elected us to be able to talk to us, to be able to spend time with us elected members, to be able to express to us their concerns and familiarize us with their needs and to work with them to set up services; to work with them in dealing with federal government bodies to prepare projects for improving conditions, improving federal government services in our regions.
I touched briefly on how one gets around my riding. I would also mention that the communities in two thirds of my riding are not connected by road. Some places in my riding are accessible by boat only in summer, or by plane, and in winter, when the boat service is discontinued, these villages in my riding are accessible only by plane.
I would also like to point out to the House, that the villages throughout the eastern part of my riding are not connected by road. So if I as member of Parliament for Manicouagan want to visit those villages, meet the people and spend time with them, in many cases, most of the time, I have to go by snowmobile, or by boat in summer.
Mr. Speaker, you will understand that for a member from a remote region, whose riding is extremely large, it is extremely difficult to travel there. Spending whole weeks here, week after week, day after day, while the House sits is very inconvenient and obviously makes doing our job as members of Parliament extremely difficult.
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Mr. Speaker, I think that the changes that the government proposes to the schedule of the House make very important improvements. Sitting for three consecutive weeks and then being able to go to our ridings for one week, for me in any case, for a member from a remote region who has to represent a very large riding, for me-I will be able to work much more effectively and productively for my constituents, the citizens of my riding. During the three weeks that the House sits, when the members are required to be in Ottawa, during those three weeks, we will be able to work effectively, both in the House and in committees.
So, Mr. Speaker, being here three weeks at a time will enable us to deal directly and strictly with the business of the House, the standing committees and the legislative committees and concentrate our work and effort on the proceedings of the House, the committees, on the process of making, amending and reviewing legislation.
During the fourth week, we can return to our ridings, take time to meet our constituents, attend their meetings, arrange to meet them, help them prepare projects, help them in their dealings with various federal government bodies.
I would also like to give some thought to the future. It might be said that it is fairly easy for me to travel from Ottawa to Sept ties or from Sept ties to Ottawa every week because air travel that way is easy. It is true about commuting between Ottawa and Sept-iles. But in a foreseeable future, someone from the Lower South Shore could be elected to represent the riding of Manicouagan in Ottawa. Imagine for a moment, Mr. Speaker, what it would be like for a person living in Natashquan, having been elected as member for Manicouagan, to leave Ottawa Friday afternoon on the 4 p.m. flight to Quebec City, then catch a plane to Sept-iles and, Saturday morning, get up and travel to Natashquan, and to have to be back in Ottawa by Monday to attend the House proceedings.
You will understand, it would make it almost impossible for anyone from that part of the riding to efficiently fulfill his or her obligations as member of Parliament in the best interest of his or her constituents.
In that sense, Mr. Speaker, the proposed schedule is certainly making the job more attractive for people who live in small communities allowing greater flexibility and making the organization of their work schedule easier. This could encourage people from small localities to run

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for office and fully participate in the democratic process, the electoral process of this country.
The way the business of the House is scheduled at present, it is very difficult and, therefore, less interesting for people living in remote areas to run in a federal election.
Mr. Speaker, yesterday I heard the member for Kingston and the Islands make an extremely and outrageously partisan speech in which he mentioned that while Tory members were in the opposition they were free to go back and forth between Ottawa and their constituency, whatever the business of the House was. I found that remark, coming from an experienced parliamentarian like the member for Kingston and the Islands, not only extremely out of place, but also untrue.
I think that if we go back a few years, we will find that Tory members who sat as the opposition in this House formed a group of faithful parliamentarians who followed the democratic process, who followed the parliamentary and legislative process very seriously. Indeed, I am inclined to believe, Mr. Speaker, at the sight of today's opposition benches, that what the member for Kingston and the Islands said yesterday is true of the Liberals who are now in the opposition. Because, Mr. Speaker, we must realize that that is probably what they are doing now. There is no doubt they come and go as they please. Even when motions to amend a bill are introduced and come to a vote, we see members take part in the debate and then leave without caring to be present and vote when the vote is called.
That is why, Mr. Speaker, I found irrelevant and astonishing to say the least, the remarks of my friend from Kingston and the Islands.
So I wanted to tell you, Mr. Speaker, and to tell the House and the Canadian citizens that when the opposition claims that the Progressist Conservative Party, the govemement, present these changes to the rules of the House only for electoral purposes, it is completely erroneous, completely false. These changes will help to modernize the way the House conducts its business and to bring it up to date. I can understand why some Liberal opposition members are against these changes. I understand. I can understand them since they have been here for so many years, it is hard for them to accept changes
that would make our parliamentary work, our debates more up to date, more efficient, and that would leave the members free to spend more time with their constituents.
Some are blaming us for not consulting our constituents, and are criticizing the government for submitting legislation to the House without having consulted the people. For my part, Mr. Speaker, I think the proposed changes will precisely allow members of Parliament to go back regularly in their ridings and meet their constituents, let them know the government's policies and hear their comments on policies and legislation being drafted.
That being said, Mr. Speaker, I close my remarks by telling you that I will vote against the amendments introduced by the opposition parties and that I entirely support the government's proposal suggesting changes to the rules of the House and of committees.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I regret there are no questions or comments. The hon. member for Hamilton East has the floor, on debate.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
At a time when Canadians are looking for real leadership in Parliament, I think it is disastrous that we are sitting here debating a motion that would cut 25 per cent from the heart of Parliament.
The Prime Minister and the Government House Leader claim they want parliamentarians to be more accountable to the people. Mr. Speaker, we also want Parliament to be more accountable to Canadians and want the Government of Canada to be accountable to Canadians, as we held the Prime Minister to account today, asking him why, when he had evidence in his hands two months ago about the devastation a foreign government take-over of de Havilland would have, he was blindly going ahead with the take-over. We held the government to account on the farcical statement of the minister of industry that he would leave it all up to Investment Canada.
Since the birth of Investment Canada there have been approximately 914 applications for foreign take-overs and do you know what the government's batting record is, for Canadians? It is 914 to 0. The government has
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never turned down a foreign take-over on the grounds that it might be against the interest of Canadians.
How accountable was the Prime Minister last summer when the barricades were up at Oka and he could not be found anywhere in the country? How accountable was the Prime Minister during the Christmas period when he was about to take us into a war, yet would not allow Parliament to speak?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: A point of order.


Charles A. Langlois: Mr. Speaker, may I simply remind my colleague from Hamilton East that this debate is on changes to the working procedures of Parliament. It is not a trial on accountability of the government. I would insist the member come back to the real debate and stop politicking on this issue.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member is a long-time member. She knows relevancy when there is relevancy and I would hope that she would get back to her-.
The hon. member for Hamilton East has the floor.


Sheila Maureen Copps: I would argue most strenuously that the intent of the changes to the Standing Orders is to tear the heart out of Parliament.


Charles A. Langlois: You know that is not true.


Sheila Maureen Copps: The member says it is not true. Sitting days of the House would be cut from 175 days to 135 days. There would be 40 days in which the government cannot be held to account during Question Period.
Canadians already feel that parliamentarians are overpaid and underworked and now the government is about to embark on a plan to cut the workload of this House by 25 per cent. The member says the cut is not relevant. I would say it is relevant that, when the government and the Prime Minister lead us into a war, we have a chance to debate the issue in Parliament. Surely that is the whole reason we were elected: to come to Parliament and to hold the Prime Minister and the government to account. We were elected to hold them to account for the fact that in every part of this country Canadians are asking this Prime Minister for an economic plan to bring jobs back.
We are talking about 1,400,000 Canadians who want to work, but who, because of the policies of this government, have no jobs. There is one place where those
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Canadians invest their trust in their members of Parliament to come and plead their case before the Canadian people. I dare say that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Industry will take their boot straps to the case of de Havilland and will pass that case along as another foreign take-over, like the 914 take-overs they have already passed, but we should have a right to question them in this place.
This government's portrayal of these decisions as reform is nothing less than a fraud. It is a fraud to say to Canadians that, by permitting the Prime Minister to hide behind the defences of the Langevin Block, we will get to the real issues facing this country. It is a fraud for the Prime Minister to say that by cutting our sitting days from 175 to 135 we will have accountability for the people of Canada. It is a fraud for the government to claim that it is making this change to assist in the democratisation of Parliament.
The government has a well-constructed plan to shut Parliament down so that the Prime Minister can continue in the presidential style to which he has become accustomed. He does not like Parliament. He would like to be like Ronald Reagan and George Bush. They do not have to come in and be accountable on a daily basis and the Prime Minister likes their system. He wants to move toward their system, where the presidential style does not call on the accountability of Cabinet, it does not even call on the accountability of Parliament. This is the first time in the history of the Canadian Parliament that rule changes are being brought in by closure.
This government is not interested in real debate. It is no wonder that reformers, or so-called reformers, are having an impact on Canadians when they say they want to democratize the system. They look at the Prime Minister and they see what kind of government he has run behind closed doors for the last six years. They see the role of Parliament being stripped away bit by bit because members on all sides of the House are losing the opportunity to state the case for their people.
My party will not stand idly by and watch the Prime Minister destroy another Canadian institution. We saw what he did with the trade agreement. The results of that were evident in the House today. In fact, we now not only have the Minister for International Trade, but the chief Canadian architect of the agreement and now

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finally, the Prime Minister, admitting that the Americans are breaking the spirit of the free trade agreement.
Well, surprise, surprise. What the Prime Minister does not realize is that as we speak, Canadians are ciying out for the government to bring leadership out from behind the back doors and out to the front doors and to the floor of Parliament and to the floor of the union halls and meeting rooms across the country, but it is not going to happen by closing down Parliament.

I imagine the hon. member is interested in the background. If he is, he should know that it is the first time in the history of our country and of many governments that a government applies closure to ram through bad rules that will silence members in this House.
The Prime Minister claims to be modernizing Parliament.


Marcel Prud'homme: He wants to close it down.
Mme Copps: Mr. Speaker, he is not modernizing Parliament. This is a fraud, a sham. The fact of matter is that he would rather have a presidential system, with no question period. He wants to be like President Reagan and not have to be accountable. He does not want to come here and answer the real-
The hon. member is whining. I made the point in this House today that Montreal has become Canada's unemployment capital. We also know that, on many occasions, the policies of this government have brought the Canadian economy down. We know, for instance, that the mind of this government is already made up to dispose of de Havilland and to give Boeing the go ahead to sell the business to the governments of France and Italy. This will certainly cause many job losses in Montreal.
Figures have even shown that nearly half of the raw materials used by de Havilland come from Montreal and Quebec. When I raised the matter in the House, the so-called Minister of Industry said these were wroug figures, pure liberal fabrication.
Do you know what the source of these figures is, Mr. Speaker? These figures showing that 50 per cent of the raw materials used by de Havilland come from Montreal and Quebec were obtained from the Boeing company. They did not originate from the Liberal Party or the
Opposition but from the Boeing company, and this is one of the reasons why we must have a question period, to expose the fraud and this government's lack of industrial policies.
I want to be in this House and do my duty and speak on behalf of the people who are unemployed in my riding and in Montreal, because, as you can see, not one conservative member has the courage to rise to speak about the failure of the economic policies of this government. They sit quietly, as if this was going to be the greatest parliamentary reform, when then know full well that, in fact, this means the closing down of Parliament.
Since this government came to power, the Prime Minister has attached our systems, our institutions, the economic and social fabric of this country on many occasions and now he is closing down the last place where we could really speak out for the ordinary people.


Charles A. Langlois: That is incredible!


Sheila Maureen Copps: The hon. member shakes his head and says it is incredible. I think there may be a lack of respect for Parliament, because if there is one place where the unemployed of Montreal will be able to air their problems, it is here, in Parliament. When the hon. member claims that by cutting Parliament's discussion time by 25 per cent, we will help democracy, I would like him to tell me how that can be done.
Mr. Speaker, when Parliament was not sitting, when we were about to go to war and the Prime Minister remained behind closed curtains in the Langevin Block, without having the courage to recall Parliament on such a fundamental question as war, did the member speak up for the right of Parliament? Did the member get up to say there is one place where a decision should be made on this matter of going to war and it is not in Sherbrooke or in Montreal but here in the Parliament of Canada?
It is true that Canadians are becoming increasingly cynical because they see the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers ignore Parliament's role. They ignore the role of Parliament, Mr. Speaker, even in constitutional matters. We saw the Prime Minister tie members' hands regarding the federal parliamentary committee. He told the Beaudoin-Edwards Committee to go and find out.
April 11, 1991

But instead of being able to examine the range of problems affecting us, as the Belanger-Campeau Commission and even the Allaire Report did, Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister allowed us to examine only one small point, the amending formula.
Mr. Speaker, if we really want to have what it takes to save Canada, which should ultimately be the responsibility of the Parliament of Canada, we should at least be able to have an all-party parliamentary committee that would have to look at all constitutional issues. Why is the Prime Minister still trying to deal with the Constitution behind closed doors? It is the same kind of attitude we find today with changing the Standing Orders of the House. It is an attempt to silence the minorities in Parliament.
The fact that he has the nerve to go ahead with a motion of closure, Mr. Speaker, is another expression of the contempt that he is showing for Parliament. Perhaps he could help me say it in French, but it shows contempt.

Introducing closure exposes the contempt that the Prime Minister has for Parliament, that on this most fundamental issue of our right to speak here in the Canadian Parliament. He does not care what minorities have to say. He does not care what the opposition parliamentarians have to say. We can see the evidence of contempt as he introduces closure at a time when we as minority members of Parliament want to have our right to speak.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member will have six minutes remaining after we come back from royal assent.



THE ROYAL ASSENT

[Stage Direction]
A message was delivered by the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod as follows:
Mr. Speaker, the Honourable Deputy to the Governor General desires the immediate attendance of this honourable House in the chamber of the honourable the Senate.
Royal Assent
Accordingly, Mr. Speaker with the House went up to the Senate chamber.
And being returned:
["I would hope you would take into consideration that Mother's Day is on May 12."]
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I have the honour to inform the House that when the House went up to the Senate chamber the Deputy Governor General was pleased to give, in Her Majesty's name, the Royal Assent to the following bills:
Bill C-79, an act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act-Chapter No. 20.
Bill C-93, an act to amend the Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act-Chapter No. 21.
Bill C-98, an act authorizing agreements between the Government of Canada and the provinces to provide for protection for the income of producers of agricultural products and to enable the Government of Canada to take additional measures for that purpose-Chapter No. 22.
Bill C-97, an act to provide borrowing authority-Chapter No. 23.



[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Andre (p. 19027) and amendment of Mr. Dingwall (P. 19156).
Mme Copps: Mr. Speaker, I did welcome the interruption, and I will tell you why. On our way to the other place, the member for Abitibi told us the real reason why the Tories want these amendments to Standing Orders. Do you know what he said? The hard-working member for Abitibi said in this House that we should somewhat lay off criticizing the new rules because they will give him an extra week off.
An hon. member:: A month!
Mme Copps: Yes, a month. That is what he said, Mr. Speaker. The Standing Orders are good because they give him an extra week off every month. How strange to hear the members opposite argue that they need that week to go and work in their riding, when we know that what they really want is to reduce their workload by 25 per cent, earn the same money and be less accountable in this House and across the country.

April 11, 1991
Royal Assent
That is a disgrace, Mr. Speaker, and I hope that the member for Abitibi will address this point when he is ready to discuss his so-called reasons for supporting this motion for closure.

I would like to talk about one other element. I realize that I have a very short period of time left, so I will try to be as brief and as concise as possible. The Prime Minister and the government have stated on dozens of occasions that they would like to do everything they can to encourage more women to come to Parliament and, in particular, more women with responsibilities.
This particular motion is not only an abrogation of the rights of Parliament, it is also despicably anti-family and anti-women. I will tell you why. One of the reasons that the government is bulldozing ahead with this particular motion is so it can not only have a month that is cut by one-quarter in terms of the workload, but it is also planning on having evening sittings.


Mr. Belsher:: My family lives in British Columbia.


Sheila Maureen Copps: I hear the member say his family is in British Columbia. I certainly have every sympathy for him spending time with his family. I also know that if he were the primary care giver for his family, he would find it extremely difficult to spend three weeks in one city and one week a month in another city.
In about a year my daughter is supposed to start school. Should I enrol her for three weeks in Ottawa and one week in Hamilton? Should I tell her that when we have night sittings: "Gee; I would love to spend time with you".
I want to bring women to Parliament, but in fact because of this crazy system that we are adopting, we have to sit later nights. We start at eight o'clock in the morning. We already sit until 6, 6.30 or 7 p.m., depending upon the evening. I can tell you as one who is trying to raise a child, it is not easy.
This particular measure will make it more difficult because parents of school-age children and parents who are the primary care givers of their children cannot live three weeks in one part of the country and one week in another part of the country.
The member says: "Who is the primary care giver". You are talking about bringing more women to Parliament. The fact is, whether we like it or not, women still tend to be the primary care givers for the children. I
suggest that a new schedule which calls for later night sittings and which splits the parliamentary calendar into three weeks in Ottawa and one week allegedly in the riding, although we hear from the member for Abitibi that it is one week's vacation-


Charles A. Langlois: You are talking for yourself.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Yes, I am talking for myself, and I am talking for other women who would like to be able to take an equal place in participating in Parliament. I hope you have a chance to speak for yourself. I can only speak for myself, and I can tell you that as a direct result of this measure, it will be more difficult for me to recruit good women candidates with dependent children to come to Parliament. The very simple logical question is: What do I do when she goes to school? Do I put her in school three weeks in Ottawa and one week in Hamilton?
The parliamentary calendar that we have has only been in existence for the last number of years. The Speaker will know this because he lived under the old days of the night sittings. In the old days with the night sittings the longer the evening went, the more the quality of the debate deteriorated as the quality of the libation increased. That is a fact of life. I am sure the Speaker and others who went through the experience of late night sittings in the past will know that later night sittings do not necessarily improve the quality of the debate. They usually improve the quantity of the verbiage.
I am suggesting that when we adopted the calendar that had a five-day week here in Ottawa and a weekend in the riding, it gave the chance for people like myself who have small children to spend some time with their children. This particular measure is going to take that away from us.
Not only that, but what about the employees of Parliament? What about those employees who are called upon every night to sit late, two or three extra hours late, because this government is changing the rules of Parliament? Have those employees been taken into consideration, and the fact that it will wreak havoc on their family life?
If this government is truly sincere about bringing more minorities into Parliament, and in particular allowing women of childbearing age to take their rightful place in Parliament, then surely the calendar of Parliament should reflect the capacity for an ordinary family life. Heaven knows, it is hard enough to carry on that life as it
April 11, 1991

is, but this particular measure will set back the cause of bringing women to Parliament.
I urge you, and I urge government members with some backbone, to ignore the jackboots of closure that have been imposed by the Prime Minister today and to respect the fact that any time the parliamentary rules are changed, they should be changed by the consensus among all members, so that in fact we can raise the quality of debate in this place and we can also give all Canadians the chance to come here and represent their constituents.


Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak on this bill today. It is a bill that is going to be very damaging to something that people have fought for long and hard for centuries, and that is the right to a parliamentary democracy.
People have fought and died. We must remember that others are continuing to fight and die for what we have, and which the government now proposes to diminish, the right to hold the rulers accountable for how they govern, how they use the resources of their people, and how they plan for the future of the nation.
What we have here is the tyranny of the majority imposing on the Canadian people and on their representatives in this House a gag for 25 per cent more of the time.
It is seven centuries since people first fought and risked their lives to establish parliamentary democracy. It is the reason why the distance between our two front benches is two swords' lengths, so that kind of destruction is not necessary in the parliamentary system any longer. We now want to give up a large portion of what has been so hard won over so many centuries.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General spoke the other day about the importance of being here to speak for the people we represent and the importance of a government being able to implement its agenda. He talked very eloquently about something that I agree with entirely, which is the importance of election campaigns, the importance of going to Canadians with a platform and a program.
Royal Assent
He stopped short of what election campaigns are really all about It is not telling people what we are going to do and then going off blindly and doing it for the next four or five years, regardless of what happens or how circumstances change.
What it is really all about is listening to people and hearing the values that are important to them, letting them comment on what we are proposing to them and taking those comments into account when we come into this House to make the rules, laws and decisions about how we are going to spend their money.
The government claims it has a mandate to implement its agenda and a responsibility to ride roughshod over parliamentary democratic procedures to implement that agenda. In fact, that is not the entire responsibility of a government or Parliament. It is to reflect the views of Canadians about what kind of a country they want.
It is to reflect the values that members have heard from their constituents and it is to apply those values to changing circumstances. It is not to blindly follow a political agenda that does not have anything to do at times with what is good for the country.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General was right about one thing: We are here to speak for the people we represent. What these changes to the Standing Orders do is merely to strangle our right to speak on their behalf.
The tyranny of the majority is something that democracy always has to be on guard against. That is why we have a parliamentary system where there is a government and an opposition.
The role of the opposition is to hold the government accountable. When we established parliamentary democracies or as we developed them over the centuries, we did not say that once we elect a government it has the right to do whatever it wants to do.
It has the power. That does not give it the right to do whatever it wants to do regardless of what is said in this House and by Canadians. We have this Parliament where every day the government can be held accountable for its actions. It can be called upon to explain its actions. At times, it can be called upon to change its actions.

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Government Orders
A wise government does that. It does listen and respond. Where possible, it attempts to seek the consensus of the nation and Parliament.
I do not know how we are going to improve our ability to speak for our constituents by being here eight weeks less a year. It may be very attractive to us not to be in the spotlight every day. I suspect it is more attractive to the government-


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I apologize to the hon. member for interrupting her.
There have been discussions among the parties, and I believe you will find consent for the following motion:
That on Friday, April 12, 1991 when Government Notice of Motion dated April 10, 1991 is called for debate no dilatory or superseding motions shall be receivable by the Chair and that at 2 p.m,. April 12,1991 or when no further members rise to participate in the debate, whichever comes first, said motion shall be deemed demanded put and carried on division.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Members have heard the terms of the motion. Is it agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: So ordered.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I could get some clarification from the government House leader on when the House is likely to reconvene. Can he give us an end point beyond which we will not recess? We appreciate that we are not supporting this motion, but at least we can give planning as to the maximum time of the recess period.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, it is the intention now to call the House back on May 13.
The reason for the flexibility in the motion is there may be a change in one or two days in either direction of that. There are a couple of things for which it would be useful to have that flexibility in order not to have to recall the House in order to get it.
I would give this assurance to the House leader of the New Democratic Party and to the leadership of the Liberal Party that should there be any change with
respect to May 13, it will only be after consultation with the leadership of both parties.
Mr. Riis Mr. Speaker, I think that is the assurance we are seeking. However, I guess what the minister is saying is that it might move a day or two around May 13. It would not be a week or a month or two, but simply a day or two. We can at this point be considering returning on May 13.


Harvie Andre: That is correct.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I would hope you would take into consideration that Mother's Day is on May 12.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Andre (p. 19027) and amendment of Mr. Dingwall (p.9156).
Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, given the interruptions, perhaps you could remind me how much time I have remaining.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member will have until 4.40 p.m.


Marlene Catterall: Can I clarify that, Mr. Speaker. I thought I had just barely started.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Pardon me, the hon. member will have until 4.50 p.m. Sorry about that.


Marlene Catterall: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Cutting our time in this House by eight weeks, by 25 per cent every year, means 40 less Question Periods. It may be very comfortable for the government to escape the scrutiny of Parliament and of the public, but I do not think it is in the interests of good government.
How do we hold a government accountable if it is not here? How do we ask the questions that our constituents are asking us every day on the telephone or in letters? How do we look at the spending? How do we look at the actions of the government, and insist on explanations for Canadians so that Canadians can understand what their
April 11, 1991

government is doing, and understand what they like about it and what they do not like about it so that they can exercise their responsibilities as citizens to provide comment on what the government is doing and to judge it at the next election?
It is this House that is the medium by which Canadians are informed of the actions of the government and the meaning of those actions. It is by the House that the media inform Canadians. Without this House sitting, the agenda of the media is set by the government and the actions it takes outside this House.
That may be very convenient for the Prime Minister and it may be very convenient for the cabinet. I suggest it is not in the best interests of the Canadian public.
There are serious issues confronting this country. Close to four million Canadians will be unemployed this year. This government wants to be out of the House every fourth week so it does not have to confront that fact.
The economy of this country is in decline and this government wants to be out of the House one week out of every four so it does not have to deal with that issue. We are losing jobs in this country on a daily basis. No wonder the government does not want to be here to answer the questions of Canadians and the opposition about that fact.
We have seen what instability does. We have seen what on-again, off-again democracy does in the weeks since December. We have seen this government fail to call back Parliament at the regular scheduled time and we have seen this House in the ignominious position of debating the merits of a war, after our Prime Minister and our government had already committed Canadian lives to a war.
We have seen the House then adjourn. We have seen it come back weeks later for a very short period of time, and then off again. Now we see that we are going to be out of here again for another month. We only have to look at what has happened in those months since December to know that democracy does not work when you have a democracy you can switch on and off like a light switch.
I happen to sit on the environment committee. That is a committee that has done excellent work over the last
Government Orders
two years. It has produced three very progressive reports on the condition of the atmosphere. There were strong recommendations and policy for the government with all party concurrence. Yet, that committee has met less than one-half the times it was scheduled to meet in the period of time the government has been pulling us into Parliament and pushing us out of Parliament. It has not once looked at the spending estimates for the environment department so that this government can be held accountable on how it is allocating the resources of Canadians to protect the environment, an issue that Canadians say is their highest priority for the use of their resources.
When is the environment committee going to have an opportunity to meet, to review those estimates and to have the minister in front of it and in front of Canadians to account for the priorities he is setting for the environment? It is not going to happen. Again, for the second year in a row, there is not going to be a report from the environment committee to Parliament on the appropriateness of those estimates and the appropriateness of the priorities for spending on the environment.
That is what happens when we get a Parliament in, Parliament out revolving door. That is what we are going to have.
I do not know about other members of Parliament, but I am pleasantly surprised by the number of my constituents who regularly and consistently watch Question Period. If they do not see it in the afternoon because they happen to be retired and have the opportunity to see it, they watch the reruns at night. They use the watching of Question Period to contact me about issues, with information and with their views. Yet, when Question Period is on this week but not on next week, I think we interfere with that rhythm of people keeping track of Parliament, keeping track of what each and every one of us is doing and holding us accountable to them for our actions in Parliament and our actions on their behalf.
In these changes to the Standing Orders we are told that committees are going to be able to call technical witnesses when they are reviewing bills. We are not here to pass bills because they are technically correct. We are here to pass them hopefully because they are in the best interest of the country and because they reflect some kind of policy and some kind of forward looking agenda for where Canada is heading.

April 11, 1991
Government Orders
We do not get that perspective on bills introduced in the House by hearing from technical witnesses. We get it from hearing from people who have knowledge, insight, and thoughtful analysis to bring to us on the purpose of a bill, on the implications of that bill and on the long-term effects and when we do that job conscientiously.
Numerous times in this House and in committees I have seen bills being put through a review by a committee which includes members of all parties and coming back to this House stronger and better. It is wrong to disrupt that process and to say that our only purpose is to look for the technical aspects of a bill and to hear from technical witnesses.
Legislative committees perform an important role. It is very clear from the fact that the Environmental Assessment Act went off to a legislative committee and has not come back to us that the inadequacies of that bill have become evident through that examination; not through an examination of the technical aspects of the bill, but of the implications for how well it does its job to protect the environment of Canada from now into the next century. It is evident that members of the committee have concluded that it does not do that job very well. That is why that bill is not back. That is why inevitably that bill will die before the next Parliament. The government itself through that examination has recognized that it is an inadequate bill.
The government wants to stifle the ability of the opposition to set the agenda in Parliament and to bring forward issues that are of concerns to Canadians that the government chooses not to bring forward. We do that through opposition days, as the members opposite know, where we the opposition parties get to choose the topic of the day and to put forward a motion. It is a rare opportunity, but it does happen. Now the occasions on which we will be able to do that are limited.
I want to talk about closure.
The word Parliament indicates that we are here to speak on behalf of our constituents. Yet, in this session alone this government has used closure to limit debate more often than any government since Confederation. In fact I believe in the first year of its mandate it used closure more often than all governments since Confederation.
That is stifling the ability of my constituents and the constituents in every riding across this country to be heard in the Parliament of their country. It is their Parliament; it is not our Parliament. That is what should guide our decisions as to how this House operates.
My colleague has talked about the implication for employees of the House of Commons. I have not heard one member of the government address that issue. I suspect that is the last thing that was given any consideration when these changes to the orders were brought in and the government decided that it was more convenient for its members not to be here every fourth week. The last thing it thought about was the several thousand people who work on this Hill to make our work possible and what it would do to disrupt their lives, their working conditions, probably even the amount of remuneration they receive in many cases.


Ross Belsher: Parliament is not here for their lives.
Ms. Copps He does not care. "Parliament is not here for their lives" is what he said.
Mrs. Catterall The member opposite can say that he does not care about their lives. Any responsible employer cares about the lives of its employees, their ability to live a decent life, to make a decent living, but this government does not.
I want to close by talking about making the Government of Canada irrelevant. I spoke to a group of immigrants last week and they said: "Why do we have a government that seems intent on tearing things down instead of building things?"
I said: "That is your impression because the only government you have ever known in this country is the government we have now" That is not the kind of government we have always had in Canada. We have had governments that build. We have had governments that provide, that bring in pensions for seniors, that start a medicare system. We have had governments that built railways across this country because that is the only way to build a nation and built a national broadcasting system. Yet, we have seen a government now that seems determined to tear down the infrastructure that holds this country together from ocean to ocean to ocean.
We can think of the magic of a handful of people in the eastern part of this continent actually having the temerity to think that they could build a nation over a period of

April 11, 1991

a century and a quarter and actually doing it. We can look at the infrastructure, the network of communications and transportation that helped make that happen. Another important part of what made this nation possible was the infrastructure of government.
Politicians had a vision. That vision was carried out by a Public Service which for many decades now has been known as one of the best in the world. Without it anything we decide in here would not happen. That infrastructure of nationhood is now under attack.
Finally with this item before us, with these changes to the Standing Orders, the very institution to Parliament itself is being eroded. Parliament will become a now you see it, now you don't institution, instead of something that Canadians know is there day after day regularly looking after their business, representing their views, hearing their concerns, reflecting their values, and building their future.
I oppose this motion. The consequences will be terribly damaging to freedom and democracy in this country. I regret that the government prefers not to be here, not to be answerable to the people of Canada, as much as it obviously does.


Mr. Peter L. McCreath (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State (Finance and Privatization):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have an opportunity to rise to participate in this debate, though I am a bit dismayed by some of the comments made by the hon. member for Ottawa West. I cannot help but notice that maybe she is influenced in her observations by the fact that she does live in Ottawa and does not have a problem.
She just made the suggestion that this government wants to stay away from Parliament to hide from the people. Guess what, Mr. Speaker? The 77,000 people I have the honour to represent are not in Ottawa. They are somewhere between Hubbards and Woods Harbour in Nova Scotia. I can be accessible to the people who have sent me here by being in my constituency. I can be accessible to the people who want to be involved in the action, who want to have an opportunity to tell their member of Parliament their views, and who want to come to me with their problems, to seek my assistance,
Government Orders
to seek my support, and to do the various things they have elected me to do.
What we are here to talk about today is modifications in the rules of the House. Quite frankly, I think that the government is to be commended for the initiative it has shown in trying to bring this about. It is regrettable that this was not brought about through a spirit of co-operation, notwithstanding the commitments made by representatives of other parties in the House on which subsequently they did not deliver.
It is unfortunate that we ended up in a debate. I could not help but observe this morning, as mentioned by the hon. member who just spoke, that it is regrettable closure is being used to implement these rules. On the other hand, if the name of the game from an opposition perspective is that you oppose whatever the government puts forward for as long as you can to prevent it from happening then you can establish, presumably in the minds of the public, that the government is not fit to govern because it cannot accomplish anything. What kind of message does that send to the public about the way its Parliament functions?
For example, I noticed that it was the New Democratic Party in particular which felt that, no matter what, Parliament had to come back this week to be here because these rules had to be dealt with, had to be fought. Yet, I noticed when the vote was taken this morning that 19 out of 44 NDP members voted. Where were the other 25 to stand up for democracy and justice? Probably they were where a lot of our government members would like to be, back in the constituencies, accessible to the people, doing what can be done to usefully assist.
We have a serious problem in this country with respect to the image of politicians and what the public thinks of us. In my judgment one of the main causes of that is the way this place functions. The adversarial nature of this place is phenomenal. If only as a fluke of fortune or luck, once in a while the government should luck into doing the right thing. Yet, I have noticed in the two and a half years I have been here that no matter what the government does, in the eyes of the people on the other side it is wrong. Not even by a fluke can it once in a while be right. It is always wrong. Everything the government does is wrong in the eyes of the opposition.

April 11, 1991
Government Orders
I could say what kind of credibility that sometimes lends to opposition members. They can run out and take opinion polls. If the government tries to act in a responsible manner, deal with the deficit, deal with the national debt that is going to cripple the future of our young people, they can stand back and say that they are against dealing with that. They say that they are not against dealing with that, that they are against cuts. However, it is pretty tough to get rid of a debt and a deficit without making cuts or, conversely, by raising revenues. They are against raising revenues and they are against making cuts, but then of course they would also criticize the government for the deficit.
How do we have any kind of credibility with the public if all we have is a situation of constant bickering back and forth between the parties on both sides of this House? I think it is incumbent upon all members of this House-one member earlier in the debate made the comment- to come here and represent people. They have a responsibility to stand up and be heard in this House. I believe very strongly that that is correct. I support the fact, however, that there is no reason that one need speak for 20 minutes to make the point. The notion of reducing the length of speeches from 20 minutes to 10 minutes gives more people the opportunity to speak.
It it is important to note that the rule changes being proposed here are not going to limit the number of hours this House will be available. Opportunities will be there for members to speak. I think the kind of thing we have to look at is how much of the time of this House is absolutely wasted with dilatory nonsense of one sort or another.
I was appalled, the week before Easter, to sit in this House and watch as my hon. friends in the NDP insist that we have the Speaker stand and read a motion into the record for an endless period of time. How do we engender the respect of the people who have sent us here if at a cost of thousands of dollars an hour we are going to use up the time of Parliament, time when members should be standing and speaking out on behalf of the people who sent them here, on foolish nonsense like that? That is why the public has lost respect for politicians. It has become so predictable that no matter what the government does the opposition is going to complain about it.
It is interesting that we have an opposition in this particular Parliament that not only complains about what the government is doing but rarely offers an implementive alternative to replace it. I think we have a very serious problem in this adversarial nature that seems to hold sway in the way this place works.
We have a further way to go. The business of votes and the manner in which votes are handled in this House have amazed and shocked me since I have arrived. First of all, we play this game of trying to keep everybody stuck in Ottawa because we never know when there is going to be a vote. It may be over something really important like whether we should adjourn or not adjourn or whether we should have a vote later or whether we should have a vote now. However, let us not let members of Parliament go back to where their constituents are because we can keep them captive here in Ottawa to do nothing instead of being accessible to the public.
It is eminently reasonable that we work out a system so votes only take place at certain times. After all, there is one vote that really counts, and that is the vote that takes place on election day. The nature of the political system is that the people have a choice. They have eight weeks during a campaign to decide who they want to govern the country for a mandate of four or five years. Once they have made that decision, members have an obligation to get on with the job. The name of the game and the way this place functions are such that opposition members will stand over there and make out that the government is doing such terrible things they have to defend the public.
We must bear in mind that the public makes the decision. It so happens that in 1984 and 1988 it chose the Progressive Conservative Party to lead the country. When the next election comes it has the option to chose somebody else. Who knows? Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but that is the right of the public and the essence of democracy.
When opposition members who are representative of the minority suggest that it is their responsibility to determine the nature of government in the country, surely we have an extraordinarily dangerous situation.
We have a responsibility to balance the need and the opportunity of members of Parliament to come to this place to speak on behalf of the people who have sent them here with at the same time the obligation of the government to govern. While the government in terms of the executive branch may be the cabinet, as members of Parliament we are part of the government in the eyes of the public. When it sees us standing here and bickering back and forth like a bunch of kids in the


April 11, 1991

school yard it says: "What is that, a Parliament of fools, or are these the people we sent to represent us?"
I cannot help but be amazed from time to time by the attitude of the public toward politicians. As politicians we are them; each one of us comes because a group of Canadians for whatever reason chose us to come here.
Did Canadians chose us to come here because they thought we are a bunch of incompetents? No. The attitude toward politicians in society is amazing. They chose us for the right reasons. They chose us because they thought we were upstanding, they thought we were intelligent, they thought we were committed to the community, and they thought we were prepared to work hard. I happen to think that is why we are here. I think members on both sides come here with dedication to Canada, sincerity and concern to do the job.


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



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


Mr. Len Hopkins (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke) moved:: That, in the opinion of this House, the government should take the necessary measures in order that working spouses accompanying military personnel posted outside Canada may be eligible for unemployment insurance benefits.
He said: Mr. Speaker, this is a very important motion in my view or I would not have put it on the Order Paper. We call upon the Canadian Armed Forces to give outstanding service for this nation and outstanding service in the international community and they give it well.
I think the Parliament of Canada and we who serve here should be prepared to look after the members of the armed forces and their needs and to try to make things smooth for their families. It is very hard on families of military personnel, not only when they are overseas on particular duties such as during the Persian Gulf war, but indeed when they are away from home for long periods of time on training exercises.
Private Members' Business
As I said, they perform these roles very well. We, as parliamentarians, should pay them the kind of respect during the normal times that we tend to suddenly give them when they are needed in the world or in the nation for specific reasons of great import.
This motion today has been one of great interest to me for a long time. I have had the great fortune to teach in a Department of National Defence high school and to be head of the history department and a vice-principal. As a matter of note, when I left that job on CFB Petawawa in December 1965, to take up my duties in this House, my first pay cheque as a member of Parliament was $5 less than I was getting as the vice-principal of General Panet High School, Canadian Forces Base Petawawa.
When spouses go overseas with their husbands they may have had a job here in Canada for five or ten years and they will lose all their unemployment insurance rights. If they go to Germany and are there for two or three years nothing is intact for them when they come back. They go out to look for another job and have no benefits during that period of time. The purpose of unemployment insurance is to bridge the gap between unemployment and employment.
So, not only are we saying to these spouses, when they go to Germany, for example, or to a military attache's office in another nation of the world, that they will not qualify for unemployment insurance and that they can either stay back, separate their family, and keep their job in Canada, or not receive UI benefits when they go overseas.
There is an exception to this approach. The claimant who resides temporarily or permanently in any state of the United States contiguous to Canada is not disentitled from receiving benefit by reason only of such residence if he or she is available for work in Canada and is able to personally report at an office of the Unemployment Insurance commission in Canada at such time as the commission may direct.
Then a claimant who resides temporarily or permanently in the District of Columbia in the United States, in Puerto Rico, the American Virgin Islands, or in any state of the United States with which Canada has a reciprocal agreement is not disentitled from receiving benefit by reason only of such residence if he or she proves entitlement to benefit under the agreement between Canada and the United States.

April 11, 1991
Private Members' Business
So we have a reciprocal agreement. So, if a Canadian Armed Forces couple ends up going down to Colorado Springs, for example, to work in NORAD headquarters, the spouse can then collect unemployment insurance by virtue of this reciprocal agreement with the United States. This is not the case if they go to Europe, for example, where many members of our forces have been resident outside the country for a number of years.
There are some rather interesting items here that I do want to put on the record.
If you live in the United States, Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands, we mentioned that we had a reciprocal unemployment insurance agreement with the United States, which applies to all states in the United States, including the District of Columbia, which I mentioned, Puerto Rico, and the American part of the Virgin Islands. So if you are living in any of these places and were paying Canadian U.I. premiums before you became unemployed you may be entitled to Canadian benefits. It makes no difference whether you are living there permanently or temporarily.
The same thing applies to Americans or to Canadians who have moved or returned to Canada after working in insurable employment in the United States. They can apply in Canada to collect American unemployment insurance benefits.
There is one very important part that I want to get on the record. We have to keep in mind that Canada has no reciprocal agreements with any other countries. Canadians can collect regular U.I. benefits only in Canada, the United States, Puerto Rico, and the American Virgin Islands. How does the reciprocal agreement work for Canadian citizens in the United States? We have mentioned that. They can go to offices there if they are not close to the Canadian border. If they are close to the Canadian border they can go to UIC offices here in Canada.
Even if you live too far away to work in Canada you may still qualify for Canadian regular unemployment insurance benefits. You must have permission to work in the United States and, in most cases, this requires the
possession of a valid work visa. You must be willing to work, be actively looking for work, and must have been paying Canadian U.I. premiums for the required number of weeks during your qualifying period. You would claim through state employment security offices and your claim is sent to the inter-state claims office in Belleville, Ontario. Eligibility rules and the rate of benefit you could receive remain the same as they would be if you were applying in Canada.
But claimants applying from the United States cannot receive benefits for as many weeks as claimants who are applying for regular benefits from within Canada. Qualified claimants in the United States can receive a maximum 38 weeks of benefits. They are not eligible for what are called regionally extended benefits, which allow claimants in Canada to draw benefits for up to 50 weeks.
There are some special rules for Canadian government personnel in the United States. For example, there are special rules for dependents, not only those of Canadian government personnel posted to the United States, but those of military personnel. Dependents include spouses, unmarried children under 21, unmarried full-time students under 25, and unmarried children who are physically or mentally disabled.
Under a 1980 agreement, dependents can look for work and receive a written offer of employment. The U.S. State Department must then approve the offer before the job can be accepted. You do not need a work visa and, as long as you are available and looking for work, you can be eligible for Canadian U.I. benefits. You can apply at an American employment security office; that is your privilege.
Another point deals with maternity benefits and that point is a rather interesting one. Maternity benefits can be paid anywhere in the world. This is a big difference.
During the last 52 weeks a person must have accumulated 20 weeks of employment insurance under Canadian U.I. rules and can then apply for maternity benefits at any state employment security office in the United States.

[DOT]' v-VT-*** '	:			.	'
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If someone qualifies and is going abroad she can claim maternity benefits in Canada before leaving or at any Canadian consulate or embassy around the world.
Mr. Speaker, you can see a rather interesting situation occurring here. Suppose a number of couples on CFB Petawawa, CFB Borden, in Halifax, or in Calgary, are posted to Europe. Before they leave, the spouse in house A may find out she is pregnant. So she can make arrangements to collect unemployment insurance for the period after she arrives in Europe.
The next-door neighbour may have four or five children in the family, which is a very expensive operation to run today, and the spouse has to quit her job in Canada, live on one income in Europe, and still raise those children, but she does not qualify for unemployment insurance benefits.
So this situation creates a real dilemma. I do not think it is a very fair way to have been treating the Canadian Armed Forces on this issue over the years. I feel we should be taking a very serious look at this issue again and should be reviewing the legislation accordingly.
We have to understand that jobs are very limited. For example, in Lahr, Germany, there might be a number of jobs at the Canex operation and at all its related facilities. Even teachers who go over find it very difficult to work into the system because, normally, when they get there the positions are already filled for the year and, unless someone becomes sick or must resign for one reason or another, openings do not come up very readily.
We are putting them in a situation where the competitiveness for the few jobs, compared with the large number of personnel and their spouses on the base, results in not a great deal of opportunity for them. It would be very humane for us to take a good look at this issue and let those forces families know that we do appreciate the kind of image they are projecting for Canada because I have always said that our Canadian forces are not only good soldiers, but also professional people, such as nurses, dentists, doctors, engineers, and some very well-trained tradesmen in every occupation. The Canadian Armed Forces are probably one of the biggest training schools we have in Canada, if we look at them in that way.
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Not only are they good soldiers because of all this, but they are also good diplomats, because they know how to conduct themselves abroad and they give Canada a good image. They are also good politicians because they have to deal with people of many different nationalities. It is their job to try to bridge the gaps and get along with those people and they do it very well. I have always said that our Canadian forces are good diplomats, soldiers, and politicians combined, all rolled up in one ball of wax.
I am making two strong recommendations today, Mr. Speaker, and I know that your heart is in this issue because you have been very close to the forces personnel over the years, yourself. I recommend that we pay unemployment insurance benefits in a normal way to the spouses when they go into areas where they do not presently qualify. Or suppose they do qualify for unemployment insurance, having the required number of weeks, and all their records intact. Suddenly, the other spouse is posted out of the country and they leave.
Why is it not possible for the government and Parliament-I am sure it would be accepted on both sides of the House very readily-to keep all their unemployment insurance records intact during their absence from the country, be it for a year and a half, two years, or three years?
When they return to Canada their unemployment insurance records will still be intact, in the same way as if they had never left the country. Then they will be able to draw UI benefits when they return to Canada and use those as income until such time as they find a job. I think that is a fair solution if the government does not want to change the approach and pay unemployment insurance benefits overseas under the normal process.
The arguments that might arise against this recommendation might include that, first, we cannot afford to do so. We have to remember that the government has considerably increased the contributions for both unemployment insurance clients and the employers. We also have to remember that, under normal conditions, the Government of Canada would not be paying into that unemployment insurance fund nationally. So the government is a shareholder in the unemployment insurance field.

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Private Members' Business
What about the spouses of business people who go abroad to represent a company, for example? The argument might be made that, if someone is posted to Mexico or Italy on behalf of a Canadian corporation why should their spouse not qualify for the same benefits? Well, perhaps we can look at the same approach, because we are living in a mobile world today.
There is a big movement today on the part of Canadian citizens around the world and we, as Parliament, must continue to update and modernize our legislation to fit those new practices that work their way into the operations of our nation generally, whether public or private.
Of course, we will hear the argument, as we did before the Public Accounts committee when we were studying Public Service 2000 and the foreign service officers came before our committee, as well as others in the Public Service and union groups, stating that they are in the same position. When their spouses go overseas they cannot collect any benefits. So you will hear about all those situations.
Today's motion deals with the Canadian Armed Forces and, because we depend upon the Canadian forces to do excellent work for this country, I think we have a duty to try to make things easier for their family lives. As we know, when people cut down from two incomes to one and go abroad, doing so does not make things easier for them. If they cannot draw unemployment insurance at the same time we are cutting back on their privileges there as well and are not giving them the same opportunity to receive income as people who do not have to fulfil those important duties abroad.
I submit this recommendation to all my colleagues in the House and to the government. I loiow the hon. member for Burlington has had a very soft spot in his heart for this type of issue, as does the hon. member for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception, who has been a distinguished serviceman himself and knows this subject on a very personal basis.
It has been my privilege to work very closely with virtually thousands of Canadian Armed Forces families. So I would ask that the House give this motion some very serious consideration and I hope that we can also look at the motion in a humanitarian manner to try to use it as a
good morale booster for our Canadian forces in showing them that we, as a Parliament, do care about what they are doing, internationally and domestically.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment and Immigration. Then I will recognize the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan.


Mr. Bill Kempling (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, I was talking to the hon. member this afternoon and I told him I had put a similar motion down in this House in 1973. It had a little different thrust to it. My concern was that Canadians were overseas on some of our bases, working for Canadian contractors. Unemployment insurance was being deducted from their wages, but they could not collect it.
My point was, if it cannot be collected, do not deduct it. The matter was talked out by a parliamentary secretary who is now a federal court judge. So I will end the story there.
I rise in connection with the motion of the hon. member for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke. The sense of the motion is that the government should make changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act so that spouses of Canadian military personnel posted overseas would be eligible for unemployment insurance benefits.
I recognize the validity of the problem the hon. member is addressing in this motion. The service man or service woman is transferred overseas, let us say to Germany, and the spouse who wants to accompany the serving member is forced to give up a job in Canada. That creates problems.
The dilemma, of course, is faced not only by the serving personnel of the armed forces and their spouses, it is also faced by people who work for External Affairs. It is faced by advisors who go overseas on missions for CIDA. It is faced by Canadians who work with international agencies operated by the United Nations. In the private sector it is faced by employees of an increasing number of Canadian businesses that do business abroad.
This is a problem with which we have become familiar, as increasingly greater numbers of families rely on two incomes. Nevertheless, the method proposed by the hon.
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member for solving this problem is not one which the government can responsibly support.
The most basic difficulty is this. An extension of the unemployment insurance to cover these circumstances would render the program incompatible with the fundamental purpose of unemployment insurance. Unemployment insurance is designed to insure workers in Canada who have lost their jobs so that they can look for employment. It is structured and financed on the basis of certain assumptions.
When one works in the Canadian job market, one insures oneself for loss of work in that job market. Employers and workers pay into a fund to grant protection in these circumstances. If a person decides for one reason or another to live and work in another market, in another country, he or she is no longer covered. In that respect, the Canadian system is the same as the system in other countries. That is the way it works in the U.K., the United States, France, Germany and a multitude of other countries that operate unemployment insurance programs.
The second problem has to do with the basic criteria which apply not only to the spouses of service people, but to everyone who participates in the UI system. The fact that an applicant pays premiums and then loses his or her job does not automatically entitle them to unemployment insurance. One must be eligible and have met two basic conditions.
First, it is necessary to show that the applicant is actively and continuously trying to find another job. It is incumbent upon every person claiming benefits to confirm this on a bi-weekly basis.
Second, if a job does come along, one must be in a position to accept it.
Let us examine each of these requirements in the context of the particular situation referred to in the motion.
In the first case, I would argue that the need for an applicant to show that he or she is looking for work is not only reasonable, it is fair. That could be said because it applies, not just to one group, but everyone who participates in the program.
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If we are to exercise a responsible degree of control, we need to enforce this basic requirement.
The question that arises is how can someone living in a different country and in a different job market meets this requirement. In the case of Canadian service personnel or his or her spouse posted in the United States, that obstacle can be surmounted.
Since the early 1960s, we have had a reciprocal arrangement with the United States. It allows continued coverage by the UI systems of both countries for the spouses of federal and military personnel serving across their home borders. Control is not a problem in that situation. American UI authorities have agreed to verify that Canadians in their system are in fact looking for work and that work is available. Once that is confirmed, the cheque is issued here in Canada.
Similarly, our Canadian employment centres perform roughly the same function for American workers on this side of the border. The system benefits both countries because there is a substantial exchange of human resources in both directions. It works well because we are neighbouring countries with similar labour markets and we are willing to make arrangements that are easy to administer.
Unfortunately these conditions do not apply to other countries in which Canada has military personnel. We have no such reciprocal arrangements with them. Flow could the spouse of a service man or service woman posted to Germany or Cyprus fulfil the requirement that he or she is looking for work? The machinery for verification just does not exist.
Let me now turn to that second requirement, namely that the applicant for UI is in fact a valid candidate for employment; that he or she can accept work. How do you meet that requirement? The answer is simple; you don't and you can't. In most cases, the wives and husbands of military personnel are not eligible to work in the host economy. They may be eligible to work on Canadian military establishments overseas, but eligibility to work for a foreign employer is limited. Exceptions can be made, work permits may be offered, but it is not automatic and it requires special authorization. It is granted only for selected occupations.
It may be said that we are mostly talking about work on Canadian bases overseas. Let us be realistic, not many

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opportunities exist in that area. A large proportion of the civilian jobs on Canadian military establishments overseas are held by nationals of host countries.
Another basic difficulty also arises. The motion says:
- the government should take the necessary measures in order that
working spouses accompanying military personnel posted outside
Canada may be eligible unemployment insurance benefits.
I do not know precisely what measures the member has in mind. Presumably he is suggesting that we alter the rules so that employment abroad becomes insurable. We know what difficulties we would face on that measure. His other option is to extend the qualifying period.
My time is getting on here. He has 20 minutes and I only have 10. But I want to say there must be reciprocity in any arrangements we make. As far as I know, not a single one of the countries in which we have a military presence, pays UI benefits or anything like them to its own citizens while they are in Canada. An arrangement of this kind would have to be reciprocal and it could not and should not be done on a unilateral basis by Canada.
Let me say this to the hon. member if I could just get his attention for a moment. I think something can be done. I am not sure what it is, but we have to work within the act as it is and I am sure he understands that. There may be some way that we can put something in play within the regulations and, in fact, there is a book UI and You Outside of Canada.
We should look at the whole area and see if there is some way we can come to some arrangement on this. We may have to change some of the regulations in the act, but it is going to take some time.


Mr. David D. Stupich (Nanaimo-Cowichan):: Mr. Speaker, I have some sympathy for the parliamentary secretary who had to respond to this. It is obvious from the way he spoke that he has a great deal of sympathy for the motion. The fact that he introduced a similar motion some years ago and suggested that maybe there was some way of changing it so that it could be accommodated within the legislation shows that he wants to do something. Yet he was given a script that tells him it is impossible and undesirable and should not be done even if it could be done.
As I listened to the mover of the motion, I could not help but think that perhaps his alternative was a better way of going. The parliamentary secretary talked about the problems of dealing with foreign countries, but the alternative proposed by the member suggested that the spouse who was moving, not because he or she wanted to go, but simply because he or she was following a spouse. It was not their choice.
That is the case certainly with the military services, especially during peacetime. They do not have a choice. They go where they are sent. The same thing would apply to employees or the spouses of employees of external affairs and perhaps even Crown corporations and organizations like that where the individuals concerned are not serving their own personal interests, are not serving the interests of a corporation, a private corporation, or a corporation held in the private sector, but rather they are serving Canadians. They are serving all of us.
For that reason, I think the mover of the motion and the parliamentary secretary feel that Canada should be able to do something. The fact that other countries do not have reciprocal agreements is not reason enough for us not to want to have them.
The mover of the motion suggested, as an alternative, that the spouse who is losing the credits that he or she has accumulated be allowed to carry those forward and when that person returns to Canada, it would be as though they had never left as far as UI is concerned. The time that they had worked would be to their credit. They would be able to draw on whatever credits they had built up and would be able to take advantage of unemployment insurance benefits if they had put in enough time. In that way, they would have something to carry them forward while they were looking for work. I believe it was the mover who said that it is not always easy to find work and certainly that is the case at the present time in Canada.
If a person could carry forward credits, when he or she returned to Canada it would be possible to start from that point in time as though he or she never left Canada. By carrying forward the credits, if work was found right away, so much the better for that person and for the UI fund. If work was not found, it would be something to carry the applicant on while he or she was looking for work. If that person's circumstances had changed to the
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extent that he or she did not want to look for work, then he or she would not benefit any more than anyone else would.
It seems to me it would, on Canada's part, be playing fair with people who are leaving the country for quite an extended length of time serving Canadians, not serving their own interests or serving the interests of a private corporation.
I would support this motion and urge the parliamentary secretary to carry back to his government the possibility of accommodating the goal of the mover of this motion by using his alternative rather than paying UI benefits abroad.


Mr. Greg Thompson (Carleton-Charlotte):: Mr. Speaker, just for the sake of the people back home listening, the motion reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should take the necessary measures in order that working spouses accompanying military personnel posted outside Canada may be eligible for unemployment insurance benefits.
I guess most of us know what that means. It simply means extending benefits to those outside of Canada. With the exception of the United States, we do not recognize benefits outside of this country. In the case of the United States we do for a number of reasons, some of which the parliamentary secretary touched on. The reason that we do recognize that particular situation in the United States is because of a reciprocal agreement between Canada and the United States. The reason for that reciprocal agreement is simply this: There are some similarities between our labour force in Canada and that of the United States; there are similarities in labour laws, there are similarities in many of the other social programs that the Americans have and we have. The close geographical proximity of the two countries makes it a more manageable and a more workable system so that when individuals do receive their lay-off notices, being a Canadian citizen living in the United States, they are eligible.
In relation to our soldiers, our Armed Forces personnel overseas, certainly at no other time in the history of this country since the second world war does the sensitivity of this issue makes us reflect on the current situation. We know the role our Armed Forces have played in recent weeks and we want to ensure that they are given every opportunity, as other Canadians, to enjoy the benefits that we enjoy at home.
Let us go through just some of what the member who proposed this motion mentioned, and attempt to put a
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little logic into it. We do not disagree with what he is attempting to do. Perhaps, as the parliamentary secretary mentioned, at some point in the future we can accommodate this motion, and we can improve the situation we presently have. But the member mentioned, when putting forward the motion, and I quote him: "Jobs are very scarce in areas like Lahr, Germany, for example, where we do have a number of Canadian troops". That is an argument that none of us can dismiss, because jobs are very scarce for the spouses of military personnel in areas in Germany and other parts of the world. That is a reality we cannot dismiss.
But, in saying that, would a change in the Unemployment Insurance Actrectify a shortage of jobs in a foreign country? I suggest that it would not.
Although the emotion of the particular question is very acceptable, it does not change the circumstance. How we can accommodate that situation on foreign soil is beyond me. Many of the military personnel who are sent to other parts of the world go for three or four year periods, and that certainly goes beyond the qualifying period of unemployment insurance in this country.
If a solution in the short term is found, it does not completely eliminate the problem. Unemployment insurance only lasts for so long and after that the individuals are still in that foreign country in a labour market that is foreign to them.
Just to pose another element into the question, many Canadians who are serving in areas overseas are not eligible to work in those respective communities anyway, because of particular labour practices, questions of legitimacy of some of the workers in relation to their unions, for example, and the licensing of some of the individuals who would like to work in those communities in those foreign countries but for particular reasons cannot.
This motion does not recognize that under certain conditions the Unemployment Insurance Act does take care of Canadians serving abroad, and spouses of Canadians serving abroad. For example, there is no restrictions on the maternity leave element of the Unemployment Insurance Act. People who are serving overseas can plug into that particular aspect of the Unemployment Insurance Act. Maternity leave is very much a part and parcel of our present legislation, so we do not have to improve that side of the question. In relation to that, the adoption elements whereby parents who are adopting a child are given special consideration

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under the unemployment insurance act also apply to individuals and spouses of individuals serving overseas.
Those special benefits under the UI Act are there and have been there, but can we improve what we presently have, as the parliamentary secretary mentioned? I think we can. If you take a look at Europe and the European Economic Community, the closeness of that community and what they are doing, I think we have to take our hats off to them and say they have done a great deal in terms of labour strategy, industrial strategy and trading arrangements between those countries in Europe, but they have not come to grips with the situation which we are addressing here.
Despite some of the progress that countries in Europe have made, they have not overcome all of the hurdles that we are experiencing here today. In time they will. As the global community in a sense gets smaller, our policies sort of parallel each other and we come closer in our methods of doing business and paralleling particular laws and regulations in respective countries, I have to assume that part of that tells me that in fact we are going to make some progress.
The question that is before us is certainly a legitimate question and is one that is near and dear to all of us. Again, going back to my opening statements, if we frame this within the present context of what our military people have done for us in recent weeks, there is no question that improvements can be made, but we have to be very careful as to how we make them.
We cannot isolate one particular problem without addressing another. The arrangements we have made with the United States of America in relation to this perhaps in future years will happen between us and some of the Europeans countries.
The cost of the UI program is borne by all Canadians who are presently working. That is something we have to remember. Every worker in Canada is contributing. Every employer is contributing heavily to this plan. I think it is incumbent upon us to make sure that those dollars are spent well and spent wisely and that they are monitored properly. Presently we do not have a system to monitor a program such as that if it is extended into countries where we do not have the closeness and
harmony as we do with our neighbours to the south at this time. A lot of it has to do with sheer geography.
I am convinced that as communications continue to improve, as does our ability to dialogue with countries across the world, we will in the very near future accommodate the question in the motion put forward by the hon. member.


Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-TVinity- Conception):: Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by reading the motion so that we can start from the beginning of this very interesting and, I think, timely subject. The hon. member of Parliament for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke has proposed:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should take the necessary measures in order that working spouses accompanying military personnel posted outside Canada may be eligible for unemployment insurance benefits.
To me this is a special motion for special people and I want to tell you why I say that.
I said earlier it was timely. If the members present in the House could remember as we stood here and sat here and debated the United Nations motion toward the end of November just before Christmas, I do not think there was any doubts in the minds of anybody here that the men and women who were serving in the gulf at the time and who would be serving over Christmas and beyond were very special people. They were very special people because they were representing our national interest, despite any political differences we may have had about sanctions or whatever. They were representing the interest of their country at a time when all families were together putting their lives, if necessary, on the line in the national interest of this country.
There is nothing more special in the world then that. But there is another special part of the Canadian Forces that, in my mind, relates to the time. If you count the rotations and consider the changes of ships' companies, I am sure we had well over 4,000 Canadians serving in the Persian Gulf if you totalled it all up. They were men and women of different ranks, different services and from every province in Canada working together for one simple Canadian cause, the national interest. They represent a microcosm of Canada and also represent an example that we could all follow in what they are doing, in what they have done and what they will continue to do
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in the future as long as they wear the uniform of their country.
If somebody would deny this particular motion on the basis that if we do it for one we have to do it for all, I would ask them to remember Christmas of 1990 when they were with their families and the men and women of the Canadian Forces were serving their country away from their families.
The second aspect of this that I think we should consider is that the members of the Armed Forces have already been short-changed by the unemployment insurance business. I do not remember the exact date and I regret I did not have time to check the records, but it was, I believe, in the mid-1980s, about 1985 when those members of the Armed Forces who, having paid into the unemployment insurance fund, at the end of their career in the Canadian Forces, were they not able to find employment, could not draw unemployment insurance. They were able to, previous to this change in regulations, draw unemployment insurance, which was a pretty sensible thing because they spent a lifetime paying into it.
This change removed the opportunity or removed this benefit from those members of the Armed Forces who had paid in as well as the members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I recall vividly the disappointment that this had sent through the members of the forces, not only the disappointment, but the disbelief that their government would do this to them. I may say that there are veterans' organizations, including the Canadian Armed Forces Pensioners' Associations and two or three others, which are still trying to get more fairness out of the system by having this aspect of the Unemployment Insurance Act repealed. In fact, it was not a change in the act but a change in the interpretation. I know how tenacious they are and I know that they will continue to do it.
There were two things I heard here that concerned me. The hon. member for Burlington, and I know where his heart is on this particular issue, talked about people who decided to leave the country. I am sure that he would recall that those members of the Armed Forces whose spouses leave with them do not decide to leave the country. They do not have any options.
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You may say: "Well, why should a spouse of any organization be entitled because of this particular move?" I think it is an acceptable thing today that people in all professions rely on two salaries. When you move to another country and cannot draw that salary, I do not think there is any question that despite any allowances, which seldom makes a difference in the income that people make as a family, that second income is going to be sorely missed.
This, of course, will have an impact on the morale of the people and how well they serve their country. Not that they would serve any less, but in my mind it creates another disappointment. It is the kind of disappointment that I think we can address.
The second objection I heard to this was put forward by the hon. member for Carleton-Charlotte. He suggested that even if you did draw your unemployment insurance for one year, and if you were on a posting for two or three years, then you would run out in two or three years. I am sure he did not expect us to buy that logic. It was a good try, but we are not asking for anything that other Canadians do not get. We are just asking for the consideration of what the Unemployment Insurance Act does for people in Canada, and if a spouse has to move, to be considered essentially as if that move was forced and caused the loss of a job.
Another argument I heard was that it would be difficult to change the Unemployment Insurance Act. Well, we have short memories if we talk about the difficulty in changing the Unemployment Insurance Act. I recall sitting in this House when massive changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act, called Bill C-21, were was brought forward. It did not bother the government to change the Unemployment Insurance Act for the things that it wanted, so I say that of the arguments put forward, this was the third very obviously fallacious argument.
It remains a fact of life. In fact, we will be talking about this very shortly when we talk about the changes in the Standing Orders of this House. The privilege of being in government is that basically, within reason, you can do what you set your mind to do. You get flak from the

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opposition and that is what the opposition is for, to keep the government honest.
The argument that you cannot change the Unemployment Insurance Act because it is going to be too difficult or it is going to cause impediments or this, that or the other thing, I do not accept. I think when government decides it wants to do something for any group of people or for organizations or for businesses, then that is what government does. That is why we are in the House of Commons, to debate the things the government wants to do. It is not the opposition that puts forward bills, it is the government that does this. So if we are dealing with principles, and if we are dealing with the logic that these are special considerations for special kinds of people at a special time, then I think the rest of the detail can follow without any difficulty whatsoever.
If one can accept that there should be changes, and if the changes cannot be as traumatic as is put forward by members of the government to actually treat a spouse as if that spouse had lost his or her job, then at least the consideration should be, as an option, that those who qualify for unemployment insurance when they were leaving, by having enough weeks to qualify, would be allowed to keep this status intact while they were out of the country. When they return to Canada, their UI status would continue again as if there had been no interruption.
I think this is fairly simple to achieve. I think the hon. member for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke mentioned this as an option as he put forward his motion. I think as a minimum that the government should be able to do this.
There were other arguments put forward by members of the government, but I think I covered the major ones. By way of conclusion, I would just say one more time that this is a special consideration for special kinds of people at a special time, and I think because of that, it deserves very special consideration.


Peter L. McCreath: Mr. Speaker, I realize there are only a few minutes left in the debate, so I will just try to make two or three points.
I would like to compliment the hon. member for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke for bringing forth the motion. I totally respect the good intentions that moved him to bring forward the motion. However, I do feel there are some very serious problems implied or underlying it that make it impossible, really, for this House to support it.
I have to assume that he was unaware of these when he put the motion forward. Otherwise, one might reasonably question his intent, and I certainly would not do that.
Such a motion if indeed implemented in law would quite frankly violate the Canadian Charter of Rights. It is my understanding of the Canadian Charter that all Canadians have a right to be treated equally before the law.
If there is a Canadian serving abroad in the Armed Forces to whom we are prepared to give benefits that we are not prepared to give Canadians serving abroad in other contexts, be they for the Government of Canada, with CIDA, with the trade missions or whatever or just serving abroad with commercial enterprises, then it seems to me we would definitely subject ourselves to a Charter challenge. It would not likely succeed.
It is important to point out that the disadvantage that accrues to the spouses of the Canadian Armed Forces when they are posted abroad and inevitably lose their employment at home is not a circumstance in which they are singled out.
This is something that happens to anybody if he or she is in a situation where their spouse is transferred abroad and wants to accompany that spouse. That is part of the process. Increasingly in this society, we have married couples in which both are working.
We have to recognize that the unemployment insurance program in Canada is intended to serve the needs of Canadians within the Canadian context and to respond to the labour market in Canada.
Unemployment insurance, by the way, is paid for in Canada by Canadian companies or Canadian companies working abroad. It is the people employed by these Canadian companies, the Canadian government or whatever and their employers who pay the premiums for unemployment insurance.
The idea of unemployment insurance is to protect them in the event of unanticipated job loss or discontinuity in their employment. It is in response to a Canadian circumstance that we have unemployment insurance. If Canadians go abroad, obviously they are taking themselves out of the Canadian marketplace and can hardly
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reasonably expect themselves to be treated as though they are within the Canadian marketplace.
I believe one of my colleagues has already made the point that we have a reciprocal agreement with the United States which allows Canadians to participate in the unemployment insurance program if they are in either a border situation or, indeed, if they are in the United States.
For example, if a Canadian was posted to the Canadian embassy in Washington, he or she could conceivably continue to draw Canadian unemployment insurance while at the same time checking in through the employment office in the United States. There is a reciprocal arrangement. Of course, he or she would have to be eligible for employment in the United States by having a green card or landed immigrant status, just as the reverse would apply as well.
I think it is instructive to note one improvement that has been made by this government and was made in Bill C-21, which I thought I heard the hon. member for Bona Vista-Trinity-Conception disparaging only a few minutes ago, was the provision that defined just cause to include a person who was forced to leave his or her employment because their spouse had been transferred.
Indeed, the issue is far more complicated than it might initially seem. I think it is important to note that Canadians who are abroad are not necessarily disqualified. Employment and Immigration Canada puts out a very instructive little pamphlet explaining unemployment insurance benefits for which Canadians employed abroad with Canadian companies are eligible such as, for example, maternity benefits or adoption benefits and so on.
I see the clock is winding down, Mr. Speaker, and I want to summarize. I want to compliment the intent of the hon. member but, quite frankly on reflection, he and other members of the House will realize that it is simply not possible to implement the precise change that he proposes.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has
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now expired. Pursuant to Standing Order 96(1), the order is dropped from the Order Paper.



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[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Andre (p. 19027) and amendment of Mr. Dingwall (p. 19156.)
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: When debate ended, the hon. member for South Shore had spoken for 10 minutes. He has 10 minutes remaining in this debate.


Peter L. McCreath: Mr. Speaker, when the clock ran out on me, I was making the point that one of the biggest challenges we all face is as parliamentarians and as politicians. "Parliamentarian" sounds like a much nicer word than "politicians".
The point I was making is that the public has lost its respect for politicians. There is nothing more ironic in this fact than the fact that, if we all reflect on how we got here, we got here because people chose us to come. We are reflective of our constituents. They chose us not because they thought we were dishonest, sleazy, crooked or out to rip off the public purse. They chose us because they thought we were outstanding members of the community. They thought we were committed Canadians. They thought we were committed to serving our fellow citizens. They thought we were intelligent. They thought we could exercise good judgment. They thought we could participate as active, constructive members of a particular political team whose banner we represented in the election campaign.
It always amazes me that they chose us for all the right reasons and then it seems instantly we are transformed following election into people who are beneath public contempt. I cannot help but think, as I was mentioning

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earlier, that a big part of the reason for this is the manner in which this place often conducts itself.
That is why I support the proposed rule changes. I believe the intent of the rule changes is to make the time available to us in Parliament function more effectively so that as individual members we have an opportunity to stand and articulate the concerns of the people who sent us here to participate in important debates involving great issues of the day in our country. That is what we are here to do.
When we are not here doing that, I contend that where we should be is in our constituencies so that the people who elected us have an opportunity to have access to us on a continuing basis. They can see us. They can talk to us. They can have us meet with them in their places of business, in their homes or wherever, in order that we may have a better opportunity to understand their problems, to understand their views and indeed to bring them forth here and articulate them in this Chamber, in our caucuses, in committees or wherever.
One of the problems we have in the current system is what Canadians frequently see of what goes on in our jobs as members of Parliament. They see what goes on in this Chamber. They see Question Period, which seems sometimes to be less than a high level of intellectual debate. They see an opportunity for the same question to be asked five, six, seven or eight times in a row, even though it has already been answered.
They ask: "What is the point of all that?" They do not understand the amount of time that members of Parliament spend, for example, in their offices responding to correspondence and responding to telephone calls. Then there is the role we play in committees. These rule changes also propose some changes in the functioning of House committees.
I have been very distressed since I came here. Like a lot of new members, I did not know an awful lot about the committees and how they operated. I discovered we had standing committees and we had legislative committees. What I have found in practice is there seems to be an attempt to use committees not as a means to investigate problems or to do in-depth research, but indeed to continue the partisan game back and forth.
I have seen legislative committees frequently turn into national touring shows for the hearing of witnesses and so on. Clearly the intent of a legislative committee is to look simply at legislation in the context of the principle that it has already been approved by the House of Commons. The legislative committee has a technical function.
It is the task of standing committees, if they are working effectively, to identify key questions, concerns, problems, issues, or whatever within the context of the committees' mandates; to investigate thoroughly and comprehensively; to come up with recommendations that perhaps challenge government; to put forth constructive ideas; or to add to the volume of knowledge that may or may not exist with respect to serious problems in our country.
I think the rule changes will contribute to making Parliament a more effectively place.
One issue we often hear discussed is the subject of free votes. We hear demands that we should have more free votes in Parliament. Perhaps that is a good idea. I am not sure exactly how a parliamentary system of government would work if members of Parliament had the complete freedom to vote how they wished on every issue. Perhaps there is a circumstance in which it is possible for us to have far fewer questions of confidence and to have more members of Parliament who are members of the government, that is to say cabinet ministers or parliamentary secretaries, vote as they feel appropriate on issues.
I reflect on the very limited number of free votes we have had in this Parliament since I have had the privilege to be here. I note that we have seen a free vote on the government side, on the part of government backbenchers, but we have not seen it from the other side. We have seen pretty solid blocks on the other side. Obviously a free vote system would not work because it simply becomes a guaranteed means for the defeat of legislation.
I am troubled when I hear the comments of people who are not in this place. I am listening to the recent declarations of the Reform Party that is emerging in the west with simplistic values that seem to be popular with the public which do not delve a little bit deeper to see what is the implication of what is being proposed.
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One that I find very extraordinary but very popular at the moment is: "Let's cut everything 10 per cent across the board in all government programs". That is what we are hearing from the Reform Party. Yet if we delve a little deeper, we find what that means. It means a 10 per cent cut in veterans' pensions. It means a 10 per cent cut in old age assistance and family allowance. It means a 10 per cent cut in EPF payments, transfers to the provinces.
We heard an incredible howl-and we are still hearing it-about the fact that the government has frozen the growth of transfer payments to provinces at 3.7 per cent. Can we imagine what the impact would be if instead of freezing the growth by 3.7 per cent we actually effected a cut of 10 per cent? I wonder if Mr. Manning and his Reform colleagues would be prepared to go around as part of their party platform and indicate exactly which universities would be closed, which hospitals would be closed, which schools would be closed, and so on and so forth.
Similarly with these issues with respect to how Parliament functions, I think we have to probe a little deeper. I think we need to have a little more respect for the people on the other side of that camera that is focused on me right now. I know there are a lot of people out there right now in my South Shore constituency, watching and judging their member of Parliament as to whether he is acting and speaking responsibly or whether he is acting in some other fashion.
We have to be mindful that what we do in this place is observed by our constituents from coast to coast, particularly our seniors. Since I have become a member I have discovered that many of our senior citizens watch the debates of the House of Commons. It is appropriate that they should, but what we should show them is a responsible group of legislators and parliamentarians not bringing forth a succession of dilatory motions, but increasing trying to use our time constructively and effectively to do the work of Canada and the business of Canada.
In conclusion, the purpose of this debate today and the purpose of these rules is to assist not only in making this place work more effectively, but in helping us win back the respect and confidence of the people of Canada who sent us here.
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Mr. Simon de Jong (Regina-Qu'Appelle):: Mr. Speaker, I too wish to join in the debate on the proposal brought forward by the government House leader to change our Standing Orders.
It is with interest that I heard the remarks by the hon. member from South Shore. I paid particular attention to his comments. In part I heard his frustrations as a member sitting in the back benches of government with how the House of Commons works. I heard his concern that to the Canadian public we look like a bunch of fools, particularly during Question Period, and his concern that this institution does not function in an efficient and effective manner. I feel certain from his comments that he genuinely believed these changes would correct all that he perceives to be wrong with the House of Commons.
I sympathize in many ways. When I first was elected to the House of Commons I certainly had a certain sense of idealism. I wanted to make a contribution, to help govern this country. I wanted to have some input not just in terms of speaking on the floor of the House of Commons, but also in the work of the committees to try to create better legislation. It was not from the point of view of trying to create political points for myself or my party, but a genuine desire to help and participate with my fellow Canadians who have been given this tremendous distinction and responsibility to represent their fellow citizens in this the House of Commons of Canada.
Over the 12 years I have been here I must say that I have grown disillusioned and at times even cynical. Certainly what the government is proposing with its changes to the Standing Orders just increases my sense of cynicism about how this place really functions.
I was one of those who had some sense of optimism after the report of a former member, Mr. McGrath. The major essence of that report was an attempt to allow members of Parliament irrespective of their political affiliations to play a more important role in helping to shape legislation. It proposed a more powerful committee system, a committee system that was more independent from the wishes of the government, a committee system that in fact could at times be used as a check on the government, a committee system that would allow its

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members, whether they were members of the opposition or government members, a more independent role.
Of course, what we have in front of us today are proposals that in fact go in the opposite direction, that would greatly restrict our committee system, that would give the government much greater control over the committee system, and that in many ways in fact even begins to choke off the important work committees can do.
We have seen how this government has dealt with committees in a most disdainful manner. When committees dare to oppose the government, even if they are controlled by government members and have a chairman appointed by the government-and there have been some examples where a committee in its investigation and its deliberation has come to the conclusion that the government is doing the wrong thing and has reported as such-this government has come down on them with a vengeance. Committee chairmen have been fired from their jobs. Committees have been shut down so they do not meet any more.
Part of the problem we are finding, to which the former speaker had alluded, comes from the fact that this government and this Prime Minister have a very thin skin. They cannot tolerate criticism. They cannot tolerate opposition. They will use whatever force is necessary to push through their legislative agenda.
The recommended changes that we have in front of us today are just an extension of the government's belief that it is here to push through its legislation. It is an extension of the government's belief that the opposition in this House of Commons has no legitimate role to play and that individual members of Parliament have no legitimate role to play.
The rules that are being introduced today limit the role of the committees and severely restrict the opportunity of individual members of Parliament to make some meaningful contribution to shaping policy. It is an executive government operated by a few public servants and a few select in cabinet. It does not want to see opposition. It can hardly tolerate the House of Commons. That is why it wants to restrict the number of days we will sit. Its only objective is to push through its agenda.
I was hoping when I was first elected in 1979 that a new age of politics could begin to be developed in the 1980s. In fact, what we have seen in the eighties, particularly
under the rule of the Conservative government, is certainly not new age politics. It is reactionary politics. It is politics of a few determined to impose their will upon all representatives of the people gathered here in the House of Commons.
Let me get to a few specifics. Of the 64 amendments being proposed to the Standing Orders, there are some that are just window dressing. Others, however, are really important.
For example, the government is proposing that unanimous consent no longer requires what it states, that every member of this House being equal has to consent to changes in the orders of the day or whatever the government is proposing. There are certain parts of parliamentary procedure that require unanimous consent, meaning again that every member can say no, to ensure that the majority does not have its way, that this House operates according to certain procedures, and that any deviation from those procedures requires unanimous consent.
The government is proposing that we really do not need unanimous consent any more. It is proposing that unanimous consent means 25 or less members standing in their place objecting. That of course is a direct blow not only to the major opposition party or to the second opposition party, my party, the New Democratic Party. It is also a particularly severe blow to smaller groups: the Bloc Quebecois, the Independents and the Reform Party member.
The government is wanting to change the rules to protect itself against small-perhaps to the government they are irksome-splinter groups in the House. Democracy does not work that way. These people were also elected. They also represent their constituents. They should also have the same power and the same rights as any other individual member of this Parliament.
It is not a Parliament just of government members and members of the major parties. It is a Parliament of individual members of Parliament. We were elected not as Conservatives. I was elected as a New Democrat. My friend was elected as a Conservative. Our names are on the ballots. People vote for the person, not for the party. Otherwise, all we would have on the ballot is just the party name. Our names are foremost on the ballot. People vote for individuals and as individuals we occupy our seats in this House of Commons and, as such, we should all have equal status and equal rights. Of course
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the changes being proposed today would wipe out that basic concept.
There are also some other changes. The government reduces the number of committees and, to make certain that none of these "uppity" committees go too far astray, it is going to control how the committees meet. We have some 28 committees under the five major envelopes. There will only be some 10 committee rooms in which these 28 committees can meet. The government is restricting how the committees can meet by restricting the number of committee rooms they can meet in. How silly, how terribly silly.
Guess who will decide who is able to use the committee rooms? Some super committee that the government is proposing will determine what committee will be able to meet. How outlandish, how totally outlandish. What an idiotic way of trying to thwart the rightful work of committees of this House of Commons.
Then we come across another little change buried among the 64 subamendments. The government now decrees that the only people who can testify before the committee will have to be "technical witnesses". First of all, who determines who is going to be a technical witness. Of course, the government members will.
What does that mean in practical terms? It means that, for example, when we were considering the GST legislation, only tax experts and tax lawyers would have been allowed to appear before us. Senior citizens could not because they would not be considered technical witnesses. Farm people could not. Consumer association people could not. Working people could not because they would not be considered technical people.
What is the meaning of this change to the Standing Order? Might I suggest the change is to prevent ordinary Canadians from having any input into legislation. The government gets embarrassed when senior citizens storm up the Hill protesting the deindexation of their pensions. The Prime Minister gets personally very annoyed when some senior citizen wags her finger in his face and tells him: "No more, Charlie Brown". He does not want any of this. He does not want the riff-raff of the Canadian public to be up on the Hill, to be appearing before these committees considering legislation. No, he just wants to
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keep it clean. Only technical witnesses are going to be allowed.
For example, when we are considering plant breeders' rights, only geneticists will be able to testify, not farmers, not people who are concerned about the morality of this issue, like people from the churches, people concerned about the environment, no, because they are not considered technical witnesses.
I hear the gentleman from Ontario saying "I am out to lunch." When I was on the finance committee, he came before us with all those petitions that, when he was a columnist for one of the Toronto papers, he had garnered. He came in full flurry before the committee. What a change we see today. But under the change that is being proposed in these Standing Orders he would not have been able to appear before our committee because he was not a technical witness.


Mr. Turner (Halton-Peel):: That is not exactly right.


Simon Leendert de Jong: It is absolutely right, my friend. It is absolutely right. Go back and have a look at the Standing Orders and see how they would have affected your performance back then when we were discussing tax reform. You would not have been allowed to appear before us because you were not considered a technical witness. A journalist is not a technical witness when it comes to tax reform. What are your credentials? Are you a tax lawyer or a tax accountant? Of course he is not, so therefore, he would not have qualified to have appeared before our committee, let alone introduce all of those petitions, the people's voice as represented in those petitions and those little pieces of clippings that people had cut out of his column and sent in. That would not have been allowed.
But that was the people's voice. That was the concern of the public about some of the tax changes introduced and they, of course, had a right to be heard.
I understand that the government is concerned about the Reform Party. I have been reading some columns in some of the daily press suggesting how the government is trying to co-opt reform.
I am not certain that this is reform or not. I am somewhat disappointed at the member of the Reform Party not opposing more vigorously these changes and realizing the implications of these changes. Certainly in

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my part of Saskatchewan we want to see parliamentary reform.
My constituents want me to become more independent as a member of Parliament. They want to see all members of Parliament become more independent. They want a greater democracy. They want to be able to have some input into their legislation. They want to be able to have a government that is sensitive to their needs. After all, this is in a democracy isn't it?
They are outraged when they see a government just blindly, in a pig-headed fashion, moving ahead despite the fact that the vast majority of the public might be opposed to things like the GST, the goods and services tax.
They are outraged when they see a government so pig-headed in its determination to drive through its legislative program that it totally ignores public opinion. That is the cause of the anger of the public. That is why the public thinks that Parliament in Ottawa is no longer an institution that can meet their needs. They are absolutely right.
Democracy has suffered in the decade of the eighties. The responsiveness of this government to public opinion has gone to zero.
Government members want to spend more time going back home to the constituents. I do not quite understand why. When they get back home and really meet their constituents, they are almost tarred and feathered. They say they have to be more responsive and therefore we need more time to spend with our constituents. I have no problem with that at all. I think it is a tremendous idea.


Garth Turner: It is time to listen.


Simon Leendert de Jong: I hear Conservative members say: "It is time to listen." I wish these government members would listen. I do not know what they would do when they go home. If they really would have listened, we would not have the GST or the changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act. We would not have had the shut-down of VIA Rail and the plundering of the CBC or the destruction of the national institutions in this country.
The government does not listen. I suspect government members feel that if they spend a bit more time at home, they might somehow or other be able to convince their
constituents of the rightness of what the government is doing. I doubt that very much.
We have seen a government determined to push through its legislative agenda. We look at the figures, for example, on the question of closure, which is the instrument that the government uses to shut down debates when it feels that debate has lasted long enough in the House of Commons.
We begin to realize that between 1913 and 1988, the time of the last election, closure was used 21 times. Since 1988, which is not quite three years, this government has used closure 13 times.
For Parliament to work and for this institution to regain the respect of the Canadian people, we need parliamentary reform that would allow individual members of Parliament to have a greater say and a greater input.
We need freedom from our Whips and the political tags. In essence, we are no longer living in an age of ideology. It is practicality, that new measures work. Are they practical? How do they affect people? Very often, public servants do not realize the effects of the legislation. It is through public input and communication that we begin to discover the effects.
Madam Speaker, you have indicated to me that my time has expired. Let me say in closing that we need genuine parliamentary reform. Unfortunately, what is being proposed to us today does the very opposite. In fact, it does not reform Parliament, it restricts Parliament even more. I am afraid that the passage of these changes to the standing orders will be known historically as a black day for Parliament.


Fred J. Mifflin: Madam Speaker, I rise to discuss a subject that is very near and dear to the hearts of all parliamentarians.
I use the word "parliamentarians" advisedly as opposed to the vernacular of "politician". A politician may not necessarily be a parliamentarian, but a parliamentarian should be a politician by definition. Those of us who are speaking on this subject this evening, in days past, later on into the evening and tomorrow morning will be concerned about a number of things but I suppose the thing that would concern them all is the thing that
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concerns me the most. That is why I am here in this House.
I have heard it said many times by many members and many Prime Ministers, this is the highest court in the land. Madam Speaker, I know you share with me and with all other members the tremendous elation and feeling that you have been sent by, in my case, over 100,000 people to represent them in the highest court in the land. One derives a great sense of duty and responsibility from that feeling. It is a feeling of pride. It is a feeling of elation. It is a feeling of responsibility. It is a feeling of, I would not say fear, but the burden of that responsibility to make sure that you are representing your constituents in the best manner. I have yet to see one of my colleagues, from either party, not representing their constituents to what they consider to be the best of their ability.
I find it somewhat bothersome that the image of a politician as opposed to a parliamentarian has been undoubtedly, if we are to believe the media and if we are to believe our constituents, somewhat tarnished in the last year or two. Probably it has been going on since politics began. I find it disconcerting because we try to do our best but somehow the best either is not enough or the message does not get out that what we are doing is for the betterment of the country.
When I stop to reflect on it, I can understand the sense of frustration with the people who are running the country because the country is not in good shape right now. It is in very poor shape. I am one of 295 people who is responsible for that, and I have to take my share of responsibility. I happen not to be in government. If I were in government, I am sure I would feel the same sense of frustration. It is a feeling that our people, the constituents, have out there of why have you allowed the country to get into this kind of mess. The prime problem is the unity problem. It is the biggest problem that any country in the world could have. The next problem after that is peoples' needs. Do they have enough money? Do they have enough health care? Are they getting enough education and can they educate their children enough so that they can make it a better world to live in?
Those are the two basic problems I think our country is facing. At Christmas time we were faced with an intema-
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tional crisis and now we are faced with debating the rules that allow us to handle these problems, and the rules that hopefully will allow us as parliamentarians to cope with the problems in our country in a much more effective manner, a manner that gives credibility to those people who are out there watching us, who are watching me tonight, watching you, Madam Speaker, who watched our previous speaker and will watch the next speaker.
I am sure the question they ask themselves is whether or not we are sincere. Are we trying hard enough? Do we know what we are doing? If the answer to all these questions is yes, then why can we not do a better job?
I think how we work here, the rules that we follow should be related to how we do our work, how we do our jobs. What I want to do in the next 15 minutes is to create a highlight type of presentation to just run through my reasons for being here, what I think this House does, what Parliament does, why we need the rules and what they are supposed to do, and then maybe summarize some of the major rule changes that concern me, and some that I am pleased with.
Let me just begin by saying that in my mind, no matter how you look at it, it does not matter what the terms of references say or what the specifications say, the purpose of any Parliament is to run a country. It is to levy taxes, it is pass laws, but it is to run a country. To run the country you have to pass laws. In order to pass laws, you have to have some kind of rules. Otherwise you never have laws. Or if you do have laws, they may not be the right kind.
Parliament has an obligation to its people. We as elected members, as parliamentarians, have an obligation to ensure that no legal requirements are imposed on Canadians, except that Parliament itself has approved or authorized the executive to enact.
While we want the executive to enact these laws, and we delegate to the executive the authority to make these laws, it is still Parliament's duty to hold the executive accountable for the exercise of that awesome authority. That is the whole purpose of the rules, to hold the executive, to hold the government accountable for what it is it does.
The rules that have allowed us to go about our work began when this Parliament first sat as a country in 1867. Those rules in turn were derived from the rules of the

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legislative assemblies of Upper and Lower Canada which was the Canada before Confederation in 1867.
For the next 100 years, not a great deal of change took place. In the 1940s and the 1950s there was concern about parliamentary reform. My history books tell me that we had some procedural committees formed. It was not until 1955 that any change of note at all took place. That change, as I understand it, gave a fixed period of days for Parliament to sit and I am sure to the relief of many in the House and outside the House it limited the length of speeches that parliamentarians could make.
The next change that took place, if we look at it as a quantum change, was in the mid-1950s. There was a crisis when the government of the day was unable to get supply approved by Parliament and it had to resort to a Governor General's warrant. Like many crises, this caused a special committee to be struck on procedures and organization and resulted in 1968 in some important reforms. Many of these reforms are with us today. It resulted in for example 25 opposition days, it resulted in standing committees and Oral Question Period was institutionalized.
The rules that we have today were derived from the third, if you like, quantum change that took place in the rules of this House back in 1985, rules that I may say came under the auspices and the leadership and the guise of this present government which was in power at the time. They basically were contained in a special committee report of the House of Commons. While they were not all enacted, as I understand it, many of them were.
What are some of the changes? My constituents who have been watching this on television are probably fed up with the kinds of changes and some of the technicalities that we are discussing. I just want to summarize that we are looking at 64 amendments. Some of these amendments are highly technical, some of them are good, some of them are housekeeping, but I look at the changes in three major senses and in order of importance.
The first one is the parliamentary timetable. The proposals would have us reduce the annual sitting of this House from 175 days to 134 days. That is a reduction of 25 per cent. Some of the time would be made up by adding an hour of business to each sitting day. Under the proposals there would be a timetable set up. The end
result is that we are going to be sitting for 25 per cent less time.
The theory, as I understand it from the speeches I have heard from the government side, is that the change would allow us more time to be in our ridings to listen to our constituents and that the streamlining would allow certain other things to take place here.
But I have spoken to my constituents about this matter and, almost without exception, their feeling is that, at a time when the country is facing a constitutional crisis- and, as I alluded to at the beginning of my presentation, there are also rising tensions amongst native peoples, we have international problems, a recession, unemployment in my riding is over 20 percent and there is a lack of jobs, there is concern about the goods and services tax, there are difficulties because of the freeze or reduction in transfer payments to the provinces, which, in the case of Newfoundland, means that, because we are not a wealthy province, we cannot make up the difference, so the loss has to be passed on by a reduction of the health services and the reduction of education services-my constituents find it very difficult to understand why a proposal would be put on the table that would allow this Parliament to sit for less time to discuss these overwhelming problems, at this, of all times in our history.
I just talked about the first 100 years since 1867 and if there was a time for this House to be sitting more and not less, I think people would understand that. But for me to go back to my constituents and tell them that I am not familiar enough with the issues so must spend more time in the riding and for them to say that I have been representing them here for two-and-a-half years and do not understand that one of the big problems in Newfoundland is the lack of good fishing policy, which is ruining the fishing industry in Atlantic Canada, then I think they would say that I should not be here.
I know what the issues are in my riding. I speak to my riding two, three, four, five, or sometimes twenty times a day. I visit the riding most weekends and last year I did so on 40 out of 52 weekends. I am not alone. Most other people do the same thing. You probably do so, Madam Speaker, in order to see people, to attend functions, to hold meetings, to act in your ombudsman role, to talk to people to show them you are there to discuss some of the
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difficulties Parliament is having and to try to explain some of the issues. I did a lot of explaining on Bill C-21 on the goods and services tax. You also try to give reasonably both sides of these arguments.
So it is going to be very difficult for me to explain that, when this country is looking for leadership-and they see leadership here, in the highest court in the land-the government is proposing a 25 per cent reduction through these rules. They believe such a proposal is unconscionable. They believe there is a recipe for the rebirth of Canadian values and it will not be found by choking debate in this House.
This new parliamentary timetable reduces the number of sittings the government will have to face during Question Period. Question Period is a movable feast. Sometimes, when people are watching Question Period, I am sure they wonder what their elected members are doing here and I wonder that myself sometimes; I have to be honest. I am sure that, from where you sit, Madam Speaker, you have to wonder more than perhaps we all wonder, because you have to adjudicate at times.
Well, you can understand, Madam Speaker, that a member can get carried away with an issue or may want to put some feeling into what you say. In holding the government accountable for some of the things we, in the opposition, do not like one gets carried away because there is emotion involved. We do not put an act on here. When you get up and hold a minister accountable and do not receive any kind of answer at all you would be less than human if you did not get mad. When you get mad you do things you would not do if you were operating under a normal emotion. It is not an act. We mean what we do here and I would like more time to hold the government accountable, not less.
If I were in government, would I want less time? I do not know and I am not going to make any statements about why the government needs more time in then-riding; that is for them to say. I think the standard reply is that they want to spend more time with their constituents and it is related to the polls, but I am not going to draw any conclusions about that. I want to speak as a parliamentarian, not necessarily just as a Liberal politician, at this particular point in this debate.
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The proposal to cut speech lengths to about one day's debate at second or third reading, I find very objectionable. I was sent up here by the constituents and by the members of the riding of Bonavista-Trinity-Conception. They elected me, presumably, because they saw in me someone who they thought could come and represent them as a voice in the House of Commons in Ottawa. That is what I am paid to do, to come and speak on their behalf. I have tried to represent them when I have the time to speak and the opportunity to speak, when I can get on during Question Period or make a statement in the House of Commons. It is not for me that I am doing so; it is for my constituents.
I believe, as an individual, without looking at rules or reading bits and pieces that have been put together by research staffs, I believe myself I am here to represent their views as often as possible. I think my constituents would expect that this House has traditionally recessed during the summer, during Easter, and during Christmas, at which time we have all returned home to spend some time with our families, visit our constituents, attend social functions, officiate, open buildings, mediate, and carry out the functions I mentioned earlier.
I would find it very difficult to try to rationalize or try to give a good reason why, at this particular point in time, I, as their voice in Ottawa, should have either a weaker voice or a voice that is heard less frequently. I do not think they would buy it, so I am not going to try to sell it. But I am not going to try not to sell it not only because they are not going to buy it, but because I do not believe it myself. I believe my job is to be here to follow the issues, to watch the legislation, and to do what I started by saying. In order for this legislation to be proper law and in order for the Executive to do its job properly, they have to be watched and they are best watched here, not somewhere else.
The second type of reform is the revised committee structure. I am a bit concerned about that. I belong to a number of committees in this House and am rather proud of what we have achieved, quite frankly. I am proud of the work we have done on the defence committee. We have put together three reports, two on maritime sovereignty, and have recently put together a report on arms control, both of which are very important subjects.

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I am concerned that the new structure will be cumbersome. and that the committees will lose a very important principle they now have, which is essentially that they are not tasked by the government and are largely responsible for doing what they, as a committee, believe they should do. I would not want to change that principle for anything.
With respect to technical reforms, I would say that the most significant is the abolition of permitting votes on first reading of bills and the provision of a device to circumvent, in my mind, the requirement for unanimous consent to waive rules concerning the conduct of the business of the House.
I am going to summarise because I know a lot of other people want to speak on this subject. I also know that my time is very close to expiring.
I have a great deal of respect, and I know that respect is shared by all my colleagues in the House, for the late Senator Eugene Forsey. I perhaps knew Senator Forsey better than many others because he was bom in Newfoundland and I had built up a rapport with him. I would see him frequently in the House and we would chat about informal things and sometimes about formal topics and subjects political.
I cannot do better in a conclusion than quoting Senator Forsey. He once said or wrote that Parliamentary control of delegated legislation is not possible unless there resides in the Houses of Parliament power to disallow such legislation.
I will read it one more time, Madam Speaker. "Parliamentary control of delegated legislation is not possible unless there resides in the Houses of Parliament-" in the other place as well as in the House of Commons "-a power to disallow such legislation".
That is why we are here and why we have rules. The proposed rules would, in my mind, detract from this very important and all-assuming principle.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Resuming debate. The hon. member for Abitibi.


Guy St-Julien: Madam Speaker, I am really pleased to take part in this debate. We all know the Government House Leader has tabled a motion to
amend the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, after a series of fruitful discussions with members of all parties-Liberals, New Democrats and Conservatives. The series of reforms includes in particular changes to the schedule and to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons so that it can do business more expeditiously. I would like to give a few statistics about changing the parliamentary calendar.
The present parliamentary calendar provides for 175 sitting days. The average number of sitting days in 1991 is 155. The new calendar provides for 134. The calendar always provided for an average of 155 days or 881 hours a year. The new calendar provides for 134 days or 897 hours a year. Madam Speaker, I would like to mention how many days other legislatures sit. Let us take provincial and territorial governments for a period of three or four years: the Yukon Territory, 39 days; New Brunswick, 42 days; Prince Edward Island, 45 days; the Northwest Territories, 51 days; Newfoundland, 59 days; Nova Scotia, 62 days. Alberta, 73 days; Quebec, 74 days; Saskatchewan, 79 days; Ontario, 84 days; British Columbia, 89 days; Manitoba, 98 days.
I could also give some statistics for Canadians who often ask us for figures, especially my constituents.


Vincent Della Noce: Don't forget Australia!


Guy St-Julien: Now, for other countries-
Australia, as my colleague from Laval-Est was saying, 77 days in 1991. The U.S. House of Representatives sat 144 days, or 814 hours, a year on average from 1961 to 1989. In the United Kingdom, they sit 170 days on average.
Madam Speaker, the new schedule will enable members to divide their time better between their parliamentary obligations and their obligations to their constituents, thus meeting their constituents' desire for more direct contact with their member of Parliament. Although the reform provides for fewer sitting days, the number of hours per day will increase.
The situation today is very different from what it was when the Standing Orders of the House were written, Madam Speaker. These days, members are asked to be in their ridings more often and on the other hand, Parliament requires more of them.
The changes made to committees respond to members' desire for a better adapted and more efficient
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structure of standing committees and a clearer distinction between standing and legislative committees.
The committees of the House will belong to one of five categories, each with four or five standing committees and two legislative committees. Members will thus be able to hone their knowledge in areas covered by the various committees in a given category, because the substitution rules will be more flexible.
The proposals also contain a provision to allow cameras in committee meetings with the approval of a majority of members. The government proposes that the House of Commons accept the recommendations from the Committee on Privileges and Elections regarding the process for Private Members' Business, which will enable ordinary members to present more bills and motions.
Madam Speaker, Parliament's task is to debate issues and to make decisions and the Standing Orders of the House guide this process. They govern the proceedings of the House and establish a framework in which the government carries out its legislative program and the opposition holds it accountable. They were designed so that Parliament could do business in an orderly way and members could debate issues and make decisions by majority vote.
The modification to the Standing Orders before Parliament is the result of a year of discussions and great co-operation among the House leaders. It is the most important series of changes proposed in the modem history of the Canadian Parliament.
Madam Speaker, with the proposed schedule, the House will sit on average 134 days per year, as opposed to an average of 155 days over the past 10 years. But the members are expected to sit approximately the same number of hours during the year. The changes to the schedule will give the members, especially those from the West and the Northwest Territories as well as from Northern Quebec and Ontario, more flexibility in planning the time they can spend in their riding. Government policies and legislation are more complex and Canadians show an interest in an increasing number of issues. While the opposition can use an attendance reporting system and not have to worry about keeping most of its members in Ottawa these changes will help all members to fulfill their obligations in Parliament and their ridings,
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so that both Parliament and constituents receive all the attention and services they deserve.
Madam Speaker, I listened to the speech the hon. member for Manicouagan made today about the difficulty of serving a huge riding. The riding of Manicouagan covers 450,000 square kilometers. My riding of Abitibi covers 550,000 square kilometers, with a population of 85,000, and it is hard indeed. We spend a lot of time here, in Ottawa, Madam Speaker. As my records show, and the hon. members are welcome to check, I am often present during the week, but when the week-end comes, we leave on Friday evening, spend Saturday and Sunday working in our riding, then come back to Ottawa. We have huge ridings.
For many summer is a time for holidays, but we Northerners head out north, in northern Quebec, in particular in the Nunavik area, to visit the Inuits and Crees and work with them to find solutions to their problems. It is the same thing for the member for Manicouagan, because we cannot get away when the Parliament is sitting.
The opposition parties are fortunate. Both the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party had their leadership convention in the past few years. We know there is a secret pact between them. It is rumoured in town and at home. It is a "one third, one third, one thid" system. We saw it in action today, during the vote. There is one political party in this House that I will not mention which had only 18 members present out of 44 tonight to vote on this important issue, that is-


An hon. member:: They can be mentioned. It is the socialists!


Guy St-Julien: My friend said they can be mentioned, they are the socialists, the comrades. However, opposes the rule changes and that is the Liberal Party. Today, out of 81 Liberal members, only 44 were present. Madam Speaker, with the "one third, one third, one third" system, we notice which members are often in Ottawa. We look across the room and wonder where the members have gone. We know why that is. They spend two weeks a month in their riding, and as many as three in some instances, because they do not need to stay here, so they can travel. Now they refuse a change which would give us, the members from large ridings, the opportunity to spend a week in our ridings to meet with our constituents.
Earlier today, I heard the member for Hamilton East say that we had met, that is true, on our way to the Senate for the royal assent and that I told her that I

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would be happy to go and spend one week per month in my riding for a working holiday. Upon our return to the House, she forgot the word "working" and mentioned only the word "holiday". That is pure partisanship! But when she went away for the leadership convention, she was away for a long time. It was not mentioned in the House at the time, but now we can pursuant to the rules.
Madam Speaker, it is very important that we spend one week per month in our ridings. When I go back to my riding on Friday night, 50 weeks or so every year, I often work Saturday morning and afternoon to meet with my constituents or travel up North. I sometimes drive 400 or even 800 kilometers in one day and a half during the week-end to Matagami or Lebel-sur-Quevillon. I have a huge riding.
That is why, Madam Speaker, we must have the opportunity to return home because it is important. Therefore, I will vote in favour of that motion, those amendments.
There is another thing that I would like to say to you. The other day, I noticed that three opposition members, three liberal members were away on a trip to Taiwan in the middle of a budget period, when it was most critical to be here if they wanted to take the government at task for that budget. But they chose rather to accept the invitation of Taiwan Chamber of Commerce to go there, all expenses paid. In other words, during the budget debate, those three liberal members, who were here today criticizing the government and saying how important it is to be in Ottawa, were absent that very week.
Madam Speaker, I have another thing to say to you, namely that your servant, the member for Abitibi and several of my colleagues from the province of Quebec want to obtain the privilege that Liberal and NPD members already have to go away one week a month. I will vote for these amendments, for the people back home, for the population of Abitibi, Madam Speaker.


Leonard Donald Hopkins: Madam Speaker, this package of rules that we find before us today is really going to change the operations and the face of Parliament itself. I would like to deal with
the many comments I have heard from several people in this House today, being very concerned about the image of politicians today. It is obviously bothering some of them. If members of Parliament are themselves prepared to face the issues, defend themselves on charges that are made about them, whether it be in the media or elsewhere, I think that we are doing ourselves a service. The members of this House have a tendency to sort of let eveiything flow by, but, you know, when you are in that kind of contest, some of the tar and feathering sticks.
There is another thing I want to really bring out here, and I do not think it has been emphasized enough in this debate. The hon. member for Vanier brought it out in his speech the other day, and it is this; rule changes in this House have traditionally been done by parliamentary committees. The members of this House are the ones who have to work in the system. They are the ones who know whether the system will indeed work or not.
Madam Speaker, it is just like you sitting up there in the Speaker's chair. You have to be able to read what is going on in the minds of members here on the floor of the House of Commons. You have to be able to judge that in order to keep a firm hand on the House. You have to sit out here for a while in order to be a good judge from the chair, and indeed it helps, as the Speaker himself has done, when you have had the privilege or opportunity of sitting on both sides of this House from time to time. You know what it is like to be in the opposition and you know what it is like to be in the government. As a result, our Speaker is able to judge the mood of this House very well and he is also a good judge of the mood of the Canadian people.
It is the same with members of Parliament, sitting here in this House. Many, many meetings went into the McGrath report. I remember Senator Lefebvre's report when he was a member in this House, and how hard he and a number of members worked in bringing in the Lefebvre report. The McGrath report was a follow-up to that one.
If those kinds of reforms had been introduced in this House, they would have worked veiy well. They were done by people who knew how the place operated.
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I resent very much, as a member who has been in this House for 25 years and who has seen many rule changes taking place and many personalities handling those rule changes, and I think it is incredible that the government House leader has taken it upon himself to put his name, with the backing of the government, to a large number of rule changes and to enforce them on Parliament rather than doing it by a consensus which has been done in the past.
I was almost brought to tears yesterday when the Minister for Fitness and Amateur Sport stood in his place and was telling the House how hard the government House leader had tried to get agreement on rule changes. He could not get any co-operation. Give me a break.
I have worked with the government House leader in other capacities in this House. I know how he agrees. His agreement consists of it either being his way or the highway. That is the way he operates.
I remember very well, as an example, leading a delegation of parliamentarians from this House to one of several North Atlantic Assembly meetings in a European country. When it came to the plenary of the whole at the end of the three-day meeting, the member who is the present House leader of the Conservative government, the hon. Minister of State for Finance and Privatization and another person who was in this House at the time left the Canadian delegation.
They would not sit in the seats allocated for the total Canadian delegation and went over and sat about 50 feet away from the Canadian delegation. On some issues, they even voted against what the members in the official delegation were voting for.
The late Hon. Allan McKinnon was a member of that delegation. He sat with the Canadian delegation and did his homework as a gentleman should.
I know about what they speak about this House leader. No co-operation. If he does not get his own way, then he will ram it down the throat of Parliament.
That is why we are in this debate tonight. That is why we were in it yesterday and the day before. That is why we are going to have this debate choked off at 1 a.m. Closure is on the books.
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That is the way this minister operates. Do not tell us that the system is going to be more efficient. Do not tell me that the rules are what is causing the disruption in this House. Do not tell me the rules are responsible for the conduct in this House.
I remember very well in that famous summer of 1984 when the present Prime Minister travelled around this country telling Canadians that he was going to bring a sense of decency and decorum to the Canadian House of Commons. We remember that.
I have sat in this House under five Prime Ministers and I have never seen one of them act in the arrogant manner in which this Prime Minister has when he ridicules other members of the House and expects to have decency and decorum.
The way the Prime Minister has operated in this House, and he has been an example to some of his other ministers, is what is causing the lack of decorum in this place. There is indeed a lack of decency in here and it comes down to the fact that the government is arrogant. It does not need these rule changes to make the House work. The Conservatives say they want to go home and visit their constituents. That is fine. I do not think there is anything more important than visiting our constituents.
There used to be a policy in this House where members in the opposition would pair with members of the government if they wanted to go home for a while. In those days that pairing agreement was absolutely honoured. That was when a handshake meant a deal. There was nothing wrong with it. If the member sat in his or her seat when the vote took place, they usually got up after for the benefit of their constituents and said: "I did not vote on this issue because I was paired with a minister", or "I was paired with the hon. member for Norfolk-Haldimand", or wherever in Canada.
That is the kind of relationship that is lacking in this House. The government House leader can bring in all the amendments and all the changes to the rules of this House that he likes, but if the human factor is not there, if the sense of decency is not there, and if there is going to be smart aleck conduct on the floor of the House no rules are going to settle that.


An hon. member:: Oh, oh.

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Leonard Donald Hopkins: The hon. member is getting a bit upset, but I would suggest he look over some of the background of this Parliament. People think that because television is in the House, this Parliament has suddenly become a very bad place to be or a bad place to watch.
For heaven's sake, if we want to even take a brief look at the history of the Parliament of Canada, I remember sitting over there in the fifth row when the famous Munsinger debate took place in this House. It was a fierce debate. Personalities entered into it, a viciousness. There was no television in the House. It was for real.
I remember one person, whom I will not name, who sat just two seats away from where I am now. He was virtually jumping six inches off the floor with every second word he said because he was angry. It lasted two days; two days of absolute tension in this House. After that it sort of died down. People realized that it was a real tempest in a teapot.
Let us take another example. The rules of the House had nothing to do with what took place in this Parliament in 1917 during the conscription debate. If you really do an in-depth study on that famous debate in this House of Commons, the debate went on all day and all night for several days. During that particular debate, believe it or not, Madam Speaker, they had a bar in each lobby. As the night went on the debate got a little more interesting. That was not televised. There was no television in the House then.
The point I am trying to make is this. People seem to think that because television is in this House, there is more grandstanding, more tenseness in the answers, someone trying to put somebody else down. It has always been like that. This Parliament has not changed because you have elected a group of personalities to this House. Everyone in this House has a certain amount of ego, whether they want to admit it or not, because they have been leaders in their communities from which they came. When they come in here, they are not going to sit down quietly back in the comer and have nothing to say. There is going to come a time when they will get into very aggressive debate.
Changing the rules in this House is not going to change the conduct of the members of this House. Each member in this House holds it unto himself or herself to improve their conduct if they want to be more respected and, as a result, to look more decent in front of the public. But the leadership must come from the Prime
Minister, as he promised in 1984. When he stands up and aggressively starts to put people down, naturally he starts a rhubarb because no one is going to tolerate it.
I was listening to a debater last night who was talking about spending so many hours on airplanes and how difficult it is to travel long distances and represent his constituents. It is true. I have known many members of this House who went home every weekend to British Columbia, and it is a big deal, but it is also good. It shows that members are interested in their constituents and they are there to serve them and to listen.
The other point I want to emphasize as I say that is that one thing is listening to your constituents; the other thing is doing something about it. I think there are many times that even if there is nothing you can do with their requests, if you at least treat them with a sense of decency and try to solve their problem, they will still respect you for it because they know they have had their day in court.
We had an issue here in this House a few weeks ago that would not be cured by these rules. That was when the public accounts and supplementary estimates were tabled in this House. It was a time when the opposition parties were asking for Mr. Spicer to come before a parliamentary committee. The government, and they talk about democracy, referred those estimates to a committee that had never had a chairperson for months. What an insult. What a way to run Parliament. Rules would not have changed that. It was all in the attitude of the people who did it. Eventually they did get a chairperson for that committee, but they would not have done it had there not been a big uproar about it. That is no way to run Parliament.
We see House management in the committee changes, which has a host of things to do from looking after the committee schedules to other items relating to the management of the House of Commons, which would be in the same envelope-in other words the same time-frames-and the public accounts committee, just two of them. That will work because you can only have two committees sitting at one time.
Where you have five committees in one group, if the government is willing to refer estimates to a committee that has no chair, what is to prevent it from looking at those five committees, making two of them very busy so that there is no slot for a third or fourth one, when a very important issue comes up that might be embarrassing to
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the government? It could use the block system to blot it out, keep it off the record and so on.
The committees should be televised, but the committees have to be given far more control than they are given under this system. If they are just going to have technical advice, that is not enough. There has to be some wide-open explanations about legislation because if people are going to watch that on television they want to know what that legislation is about.
I see you giving me the high sign, Madam Speaker. I am going to abide by your request.
If we look at the work that this House has accomplished in the last couple of years as outlined in the speech delivered in this House by the hon. member from Vanier, we will find that there has been a lot accomplished at a time when the government is complaining about the opposition holding things up. It is absolutely not true.
Here we have the government coming in, in a dictatorial fashion, in an non-traditional fashion, not been practised in this House. The government is bringing in its own rules and using the majority to put them in place and say you like them or you can do whatever you like about them.
That is not the way to bring about decency in this Parliament. There is going to be disruption from time to time in the future simply because there was no consensus on them by having consultation with all members of the House.
It has to start over there as well as over here. If we want decency and we want people in this House to be respected then we have to earn it, but the first way to do it is to start by looking in a mirror.


Denis Pronovost: Madam Speaker, I wish to take part for a few minutes in today's debate which concerns us all.
I have just listened with great interest to a veteran of the House, a member who is far from being a novice in parliamentary affairs. We can of course, make use of certain of his comments. However, there is one thing that we must not forget when debating a subject as
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fundamental as the reshaping of the rules which regulate the House, there is one objective that we must all keep in mind as parliamentarians: How must the House operate so that its activities are democratic, efficient, and so that it serves the best interest of all Canadians?
The basic question is not how the opposition can defeat the government in the long run, or how the government can crush the opposition, as a few members of the NDP and the Liberal Party have already said today. That is not the basic question. We are then faced with a very serious problem, me must find a way to maintain the democratic balance and permit opposition and independant members to question the government on its actions, to criticize it, since this is the essence of democracy.
Certain countries of the world envy us a lot, Madam Speaker, as you know very well, because close to two-thirds of this planet's inhabitants, unfortunately, do not have a democratic Parliament. If you go to Africa-a region you know quite well Madam Speaker-, you will find that most African countries are ruled by a one-party system and do not have this kind of debate.
However, what must be kept in mind about the reform we are now proposing-and I want to appeal to those watching this somewhat sterile debate, perhaps, and who wonder why we talk about such a thing for a week. What you must keep in mind is that the government is trying to make the Parliament of Canada efficient, so that it will not be paralyzed by any member who comes along.
We are almost 300 members in this House, 300 strong-willed individuals, each with our own personality. To lead all those people at the same time, we need some order, Madam Speaker. The opposition must be allowed to express itself, but at the same time the opposition does not have the right to abuse the government, no more than the government has the right to commit abuses.

I listened very carefully to a comment made by the hon. member for Regina-Qu'Appelle. In reply to me he explained that the new rules will not permit members of the Bloc Quebecois to do their work in this House. As the rules are now, any member of the Bloc Quebecois can stand and paralyse the whole process, not only during one hour but during one day or one week. If one

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member of Parliament wants to paralyse the Parliament he is able to do it by refusing his personal consent.
The hon. member for Regina-Qu'Appelle, as a member of the New Democratic Party, was trying to defend a member of the separatist party in this House. It is quite curious to see a member of the NDP trying to support a member of the separatist Bloc Quebecois, in order to help and give a chance to a party that wants to destroy this House, that wants to destroy this country. That NDP member wants to give those guys more chance to destroy this country and to paralyse the Parliament of Canada. It is quite curious.

Madam Speaker, the members from the Bloc Quebecois have the right to speak in this House. Although they are not an officially recognized party, they can rise at any time to raise questions of privilege, points of order or speak in a debate like the one today. Members of the Bloc Quebecois have the right to be in this House. However, given their numbers, they are a very small group in Parliament compared to all the elected members here.
Why listen to the NDP member for Regina-Qu'ap-pelle who would give full rights to an independent member in this House to pursue his ultimate objective?

Members of Parliament sitting here under the colours of the Bloc Quebecois want to prove to the people of Quebec that this Parliament cannot work, that this government cannot do the best thing for the people of Quebec, and that Canada is not a country in which they are able to be proud of being Quebecois and being proud of being Canadian. The Bloc Quebecois is here to prove to the people of Quebec that this country will never function, that it will never work.

Madam Speaker, I do not intend to give the Bloc Quebecois those extra chances. I think that the Bloc Quebecois has the right to be represented here, to rise in this House, but not to spread trouble in the Parliament of Canada. I will never allow a member of the New Democratic Party, which is supposed to want to keep Canada united and come up with a renewed federalism
in the next few months-I will never accept such a thing although it is presented in the hallowed name of democracy.
. Several opposition members have said that this government often used closure, Madam Speaker, and gagged the opposition, stifled the right to speak.
The Liberal government that preceded us did exactly the same thing and it was quite legitimate, Madam Speaker. Many people watching us now will wonder why a government member would agree to prevent other members from speaking. The reason is quite simple. If we listened to the opposition members, there would never be any closure and they could talk for hours and even days and weeks on the same subject. During that time, the Parliament of Canada could not function or pass laws, legislation that would be extremely important for Canadians.
I think, that it is very important to keep this essential fact in mind. The Parliament of Canada cannot be like a nursery school, although on some days one feels that it is. You have surely noticed that yourself. I say very sincerely that without order, if we cannot make Canadians again trust the Canadian parliamentary system and how this House operates-the regulations proposed by the government and largely accepted by the opposition, because several opposition members have risen in this House to say that they accepted many of the rules presented-


Vincent Della Noce: The rules must be obeyed!


Denis Pronovost: My colleagues, including one from Laval, have just told me that rules must be followed, and they are quite right. For example, a little while ago in this House, we saw New Democratic members try to delay the proceedings of the House and paralyze it-and it costs $250,000 for every hour that we sit here-by rising for and against the same motion. We even saw New Democratic members, try to delay the proceedings of the House, loudly demanding that a private member's bill from a member of their party be presented in the House and as soon as the Speaker rose to call for an oral vote, the same New Democratic members who had insistently demanded it and wanted to bring all parliamentary
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proceedings to a halt, voted against their own member so that the bells were rung to summon everyone.
How many times in the past, Madam Speaker, have we urgently had to call back members from all over Canada to come and vote when it could have been settled on Thursday evening, which would have given the same result. But all members had to be called back from across Canada. That is expensive, Madam Speaker. You can imagine that, when members have to rush back to Ottawa from British Columbia, Saint-John's, Newfoundland, Atlantic Canada, Ontario, and all around the country, including from Abitibi, it costs the taxpayers a bundle.
I think that, for that reason, it is important that we adopt the new schedule the government has proposed, which we will do as early as tonight, Madam Speaker.
I have another point to make. The riding Madam Speaker represents is both urban and rural. That of the member for Outremont, not too far from us, is essentially urban. In fact, it covers such a small area that you could walk through it, while Madam Speaker, in her riding of Saint-Hyacinthe, would need a car. My colleague, the member for Champlain, must travel by plane to go from one part of his riding to another. Personally, I have to drive at least two hours to go around my whole riding.


Mr. Hogue:: When the weather is fair.


Denis Pronovost: If the weather is fair, of course. Can you see the problem we are faced with today and why members need to spend more time in their ridings? They need to be there not only to attend social functions and events of all kind, but also to get together with constituents who have problems to discuss, Madam Speaker. That is perfectly normal in any Parliament. Many citizens make appointments and may have to wait several weeks before they can meet their member and talk about their problems, the Canadian policy or their troubles with the federal bureaucracy.
As you know, we often hear reporters who work on the hill-I used to be a reporter before I came here-say: "Parliament is about to adjourn, so you will be on holidays." Quite the contrary, Madam Speaker. We work
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very hard here, of course, but once in his riding, a good member, whatever his or her allegiance, has to put in at least 60, 70, 80 and even 90 hours a week. It is very important to mention this.

I ask members of the New Democratic Party to be very sensitive to what they have said about the Bloc Quebe-cois before. The member for Regina-Qu'Appelle is trying to convince me as a Canadian that those new rules will impeach the Bloc Quebecois, will not give the right to the Bloc Quebecois to destroy this House.
It is quite curious to hear that a member of the New Democratic Party is happy with the fact that a member of the separatist Bloc Quebecois is able to paralyse this House at any moment of the day, at any moment of the year. That is how it works now, and the member for Regina-Qu'Appelle wants that to be maintained.
I cannot accept that as a Canadian. I am ready to accept that at any moment a member of the Bloc Quebecois can rise in this House to speak freely, but with the same rules that apply to all the members of this Parliament. For one member to be able to paralyse the whole Parliament, especially seeing the NDP defending the Bloc Quebecois on that question, is unacceptable.

In closing, I would like to mention, Madam Speaker, that most parliaments in the world, democratic parliaments that is, sit much less than the Parliament of Canada. Even countries like France, where there are no provincial governments, manage to have much shorter sessions than we do. We can do it, to make our Parliament efficient and avoid falling into anarchy like Italy.


Vincent Della Noce: Do you have something against Italy?


Denis Pronovost: Madam Speaker, I was thrilled to be able to take part in this interesting debate. In conclusion, I must say that I fervently wish that Parliament will adopt this resolution unanimously so that we can at last have rules permitting a more efficient Parliament in Canada, whose mandate it is to serve Canadians who spend more than a $1.5 million a day for its operation. It is of the

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utmost importance that we use those dollars well. I thank you for being so patient, Madam Speaker.


David Stupich: Madam Speaker, there is a lot to cover in all of these rules and I do not intend to try to cover the whole area. The one topic among all of them that I want to discuss is the section dealing with committees.
I came to this House after almost 23 years of experience in the provincial House of British Columbia. I am often asked by people in my own constituency which is larger now than it was before, by people here, and by all over: "How do you feel about making the change? What differences have you noticed?" I always reply that the first difference I have really noticed is that in the federal House the committees seem to have some role, some raison d'etre, some function.
That was not generally the case in the provincial House. Once a year in the provincial House we would get together. The selection committee would recommend the names of the people who were going to sit on the various committees. Someone would be designated as the person to call the group together for a meeting. The committee would meet, elect a chairperson, elect a deputy chair and a secretary, and generally with something like 13 out of 15 committees would never meet again until they were reconstituted a year later.
There was nothing that they could do on their own. They could take no initiative. The only time a committee could actually do anything, even hold a meeting, would be if the minister responsible for that area of discussion, assume it was agriculture, moved a motion in the chamber referring some particular topic or question to the committee for study. Once that motion was passed by the House the committee could start holding meetings, but not until then.
There were a couple of exceptions. The public accounts committee, for example, was ready to roll as soon as it was named, as was the one dealing with private members' bills and standing orders. But with every other committee, they never met unless the minister in charge moved a motion in the House.
In the federal House here in Ottawa it is different. That is something I noticed as soon as I came and
something I appreciated. The committees did their own work. They started meeting almost immediately and started looking into whatever committee members thought was worth while, would be in the interest of Parliament, in their own interest of educating themselves as members or in the interest of the House. I appreciate the difference, thought it was very worth while and, as I say, it is always my first comment when I am asked what is the main difference between operating in the legislature in British Columbia and operating in Parliament in Ottawa?
What concerns me about the changes in the rules is the changes that are being made with respect to the operation of committees. They have been working well. It does not mean that the opposition members get their own way. They can bring in minority reports. They can even get those reports printed, which was not the case provincially. Nevertheless, they do hold their meetings. On occasion, even government members will vote with opposition members on something the committee is doing or the committee wants to do. They operate as a separate group and by and large, in my experience, they seem to vote not party line but in the interest of the work of the committee itself, and that is another difference I welcomed.
Some of the people taking part in this debate have expressed the wish that debate in this House could be the same way. Committee members speak individually without keeping to a party line as we in this Chamber seem to. That is the way committees work and I have enjoyed that aspect of my work as a member of different committees, but that too is changing with the way the rules are presented to us now.
The government apparently is not satisfied with the way the committees have been working. They want them to meet less frequently.
They are cutting down on the opportunities for committees to meet. Twenty-eight committees are going to be divided into five envelopes with two committee rooms assigned to each one.
In some cases, there will be six committees in one of these envelopes and in other cases, seven. Seven committees will be fighting for the opportunity to meet in just two committee rooms which cuts down on the opportunities for those committees to meet.
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Deciding which committee is going to get a committee room will be left to a new committee, the Standing Committee on House Management. That committee is going to have the right to say which two committees in each envelope are going to have the right to meet. They will not be able to meet if they do not get a room. If they get a room, they will meet.
The Standing Committee on House Management will be controlled by government members, as are all committees. This is an important committee. The government will make sure that the committee is following government policy and direction rather than simply leaving things to chance.
When we look at some of the committees, we might wonder whether the Standing Committee on House Management is going to be guided by the interests of the House generally, or by the members. Is it going to be guided by the desires of the government at that particular point in time?
In each of these envelopes, there are two legislative committees. One would expect that in the event there is legislation to be considered by any of the committees in these envelopes then that particular legislative committee is going to have an opportunity to meet.
The government will be anxious to get the legislation through the committee and back into the House. There will be pressure on to get those committees meeting and to get the legislation passed through the committee and back into the House. This will leave five other committees that are waiting for an opportunity to meet in a room that may be assigned.
How often is that going to happen? How will the Standing Committee on House Management, controlled by the government, not be able to select those committees that are working in the interests of the government at that particular time? This means, perhaps, dealing with a subject that the government would like to have dealt with by the committee or, alternatively, avoiding a subject that the government does not want discussed at that time.
It may not want international affairs talked about. If that is the case, this House management committee would make sure that that particular committee did not have a room to meet in. Effectively, it would stop it from meeting. That is not the case now.
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Now, there is sometimes a contest for rooms but the active committees do get rooms when they want them.
Beyond that, the legislative committees are going to be restricted to calling witnesses on technical aspects. That is not the case right now. The legislative committee can hear witnesses on any aspect of the work they are doing.
It is an opportunity for the general public, for groups with an axe to grind or for groups that feel its members have particular knowledge of something-whether they have or not. They feel they have. They want to express their opinions, try to have some influence and effect on government policy and legislation. They can make application if the committee agrees, and the committee will meet with them.
The way this reads now, through the changes that are being proposed, it will only be if someone decides that they are dealing with technical aspects only. It is not clear who makes that decision. Is it going to be the chair of the committee? Is it going to be the committee itself under the control of the government members? Is it going to be the House management committee?
What is a technical witness? Is he or she someone who comes from within the ministry or the department who is going to give evidence as to what the legislation was intended to accomplish? Is that what is meant by "technical" witnesses? There is no definition that I am aware of. There might be one somewhere, but none that I am aware of.
It would seem to me that it is cutting down the opportunities for that legislative committee to really look at the legislation. Mr. Speaker, you and I know that on occasion these committees do bring in useful amendments that are accepted by the government. This does happen. Under the new system, if the only witnesses they are allowed to hear are witnesses that are hand-picked by some group outside of the committee and presented to the committee as the ones who are going to be heard, there will be little opportunity to hear, not necessarily contrary views, but any views that are helping to develop legislation that will serve the interests of the people.
It occurs to me that we are going to get to the point where the only way in which legislation can be examined by anyone other than witnesses approved by the government, or some person representing government, will be when it gets to the Senate, the other place. The Senate will still have its committees. The Senate will still have its opportunities to have witnesses of any kind that a committee is prepared to hear. In those Senate commit-

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tee hearings, as they have done in the past, it will be much more important in the future that they make opportunities for the general public-and I am not talking about everybody coming in-but people other than those designated as "expert witnesses" or "technical witnesses", people with technical ability or knowledge to be heard.
The Senate will be able to go beyond that. They will be the only ones that will be able to, with respect to a legislative committee. Yes, our standing committees will still be able to hear other witnesses. But when it comes to legislation that has been referred to a legislative committee, then one of the principal roles and the principal opportunities of the legislative committee, as I see it, in my rather limited experience in this House, is to serve Parliament and to serve Canada. That will have been lost to it by the change in the rules that will allow that committee to hear only technical witnesses.
As I have said, the definition of that is open. Who is going to select the technical witnesses? Who will they be and will they be picked by that same House management committee that is controlling everything else?
I said I would not be long and I do not intend to be. I wanted to deal only with this matter of committees, and I have tried to explain that too. In my experience, the committees of the House of Commons are serving the House of Commons very well. They are not just serving Parliament itself, but they are serving the people of Canada very well.
While some of the other changes are important and have been dealt with at great length by members in the House from both sides, I do not think there has not been enough attention paid to what is happening to the committees. That is the thing that disturbs me most. There are other things that are important, but the thing that disturbs me most is that the one feature of the House of Commons that I have enjoyed in contrast to my experience in the legislature in B.C., is the way in which the committees serve. The committees' role, their opportunities are going to be cut down. The possibility of them meeting is going to be up to the House management committee controlled by the government. They may not be able to meet at all unless the government
wants them to meet. When they do meet, what they are able to do is going to be curtailed by the fact that they can hear only technical witnesses.
I will leave the rest to my colleagues to deal with. I wanted to deal only with this matter of committees.
We will be voting on the amendments to committees as a separate item, as I understand the breakdown of the vote. I hope the government will decide to take another look at the damage it is doing to the committee system in the House of Commons.


Mr. Scott Thorkelson (Edmonton-Strathcona):: Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to speak on a particular aspect of these rule changes to the Standing Orders, that of Private Members' Business. I believe the changes that have been proposed to Private Members' Business are very good. They are positive changes, but I would urge the government to go even further.
I would like to give a bit of the history of Private Members' Business and talk about the reasons why we might increase the number of items that are made votable and to increase the number of hours of consideration given to Private Members' Business.
In Canada, at the time of Confederation, it was accepted that private member's bills were as important a source of legislation as bills tabled by the government. The rules adopted on December 20, 1867, gave precedence to Private Members' Business on three days of the week and to government business only on two days. From 1867 to 1906 the House operated under a set of rules that permitted fairly broad participation by individual members in all stages of the legislative process. The introduction and discussion of private members' bills consumed a considerable proportion of the House's time and private members' bills constituted a substantial portion of the legislation receiving Royal Assent.
In the early years the government made no serious moves either to increase its control of the House's time or to accelerate the pace at which legislation made its way through the House. Gradually however the time set aside for Private Members' Business started being encroached upon to enable the government to complete its legislative agenda.
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At first, this was done "by leave of the House", although it became so customary that eventually the rules of the House were changed. During the period 1927 to 1961 numerous changes were made in the rules governing the introduction and discussion of private members' bills. Not only did such bills lose the pre-eminence that they had sometimes enjoyed over government bills during the 19th century, but the opportunities available to introduce and to discuss them were so severely restricted that their utility as a vehicle for initiating legislation was effectively ended.
The growing role and size of government, the increasing complexity of modem legislation, and the fact that much legislation had a financial component, all contributed to the growing pre-eminence of government. As you know, Madam Speaker, private members are prohibited by the Constitution from introducing bills with a financial initiative attached to them. This development was aided by the increasing cohesion of political parties which tended to restrict the activities of individual members. The government's need to use so much of the legislative time available has meant that the time for Private Members' Business has gradually, but inexorably diminished.
In Canada, during the 30 years from 1944 to 1974 only 14 private members' bills were passed, excluding bills to change constituency names.
There are several procedures in the British House of Commons whereby private members may table legislation. The most significant of these is the ballot. At the beginning of each session the names of 20 members are chosen and a priority established. These members are entitled to have their own bills discussed on Fridays which are set aside for Private Members' Business. In the late 1960s a number of very contentious moral issues, capital punishment, abortion, reform of laws respecting homosexuality and so on were successfully dealt with as private members' bills, although in several cases additional time had to be provided by the government.
In Canada, the 1984 Special Committee on the Reform of the House of Commons, the McGrath committee, made a number of recommendations to reorganize Private Members' Business in the House of Commons. Several of these proposals were adopted. A selection process was established whereby 20 private members'
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bills and motions were selected by ballot. From these a committee of members, the privileges and elections committee today, designate up to six of these votable.
The government has accepted the committee's recommendation where there would be 10 bills drawn and 10 motions drawn and 3 bills designated votable and 3 motions designated votable. I would call on the government to allow more items designated votable, perhaps 4 or 5 bills could become votable out of 10 and 3 or 4 motions out of 10 could become votable. Each of these votable items can be debated for a maximum of three hours. I would argue that as bills are more important than motions, we might restrict the number of hours that votable motions are debated to two hours.
Mr. Speaker, as you know a number of private members' bills have been passed into law including relatively controversial ones such as Bill C-204, the Non-smokers' Health Act, sponsored by Lynn McDonald. Nevertheless, certain defects have continued or become apparent. I believe we can go a long way to addressing these. Those are: the lack of time and the lack of the number of items being designated votable.
Now, why do private members put forward bills? They often put forward bills that are of particular interest to their constituents or other interest groups. Ideas for these bills arise from the problems dealt with and the complaints received by their offices. We all get a good knowledge of what is going on in government and in our constituencies by interacting with people and helping them solve their problems.
A member may wish to publicize his or her concern with particular issue. Certain members champion or adopt a particular cause or issue or carve out a particular area of specialization on their own. Private members' bills are a way of making the public and other politicians aware of the member's interest or concern.
They are also a means for members to assert their own individuality and sometimes deal with matters differently than their own parties.
Many government members will usually tiy first to see if the government will introduce certain legislation, although in some cases the individual member may not always receive credit for his or her work behind the scenes. The bureaucracy may be opposed to a particular measure, or the government may not have room in its

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legislative agenda. In such cases, the member may introduce a bill on his or her own.
Private members' bills are often used, especially by opposition parties, to advocate party positions. This can be perfectly acceptable, but there are, at the same time, concerns over the use of private members' bills to bring forward official opposition, or for that matter government policies or businesses.
More importantly, private members' bills are an important source of ideas. They are presented by members who are often reacting to public concern. Government ministers, on the other hand, are often insulated from the public. Many individual members have or develop expertise in particular areas, or by virtue of their contact with voters are made aware of problems in a unique way. Private members are not captive or influenced to the same extent by government departments; while this can deprive them of expert advice, it also can mean that they are more receptive to innovation and public concerns.
Private members' bills are an important alternative source of legislation to government-inspired bills. Sound ideas emanate from the back benches of Parliament. Moreover, since private members are politicians, they are inherently more attuned to public opinion than are civil servants.
Certainly, the government does not have a monopoly on sound ideas. With members of Parliament active as ombudsmen, they may be just as or sometimes more attuned to the popular view of their interest areas than are ministers or public servants.
Government inactivity is often a motivation for private members' bills. Private members' bills provide an important outlet for individual private members. It allows them to leave their own stamp on the legislative process. If the system were changed so as to improve the chance of success of private members' bills, this would help restore the power of Parliament, as well as revitalize the role of individual members.
Private members' bills allow members to act as individuals rather than as part of a team, yet they still can belong to a team. They provide an outlet, and most importantly, encouragement for individual initiative here in the House of Commons. In an effective private member system, there would not be votes along party lines, nor would party Whips try to get their members to vote a particular way. This would mean that it would be up to the bill's proponents to gamer support. This is, of
course, much closer to a true legislative system where individual members vote as they see fit on individual issues.
Many voters would be very proud of a member who managed to sponsor legislation successfully.
No matter what changes are made to the procedure rules governing Private Members' Business, it is essential that they be accompanied by changes in attitudes. Governments have to stop feeling threatened by an individual member's initiative. They must stop feeling threatened by bills that may not accord perfectly with their own legislative platform. The same is true, perhaps even more so, of bureaucracies that often hinder and thwart private members, consciously or not. Governments and parties have to sincerely allow members a free rein on private members' bills, not insisting on party lines.
Members themselves have to change. They have to be responsible for tabling bills and to avoid silly, petty and poorly drafted ones. If members only tabled bills that they seriously felt should become law, it would have an effect on the seriousness with which all private members' bills are taken. Members also have to make more of an effort to attend and participate in Private Members' Business.
The biggest problem facing private members' bills is lack of time. Every session, hundreds of private members' bills are introduced but only a few are selected by ballot and not enough of them are given enough time to be debated. Once again I call upon the government to allocate one or two more hours a week or consider alternative schemes to increase the number of hours of consideration given to Private Members' Business.
One alternative would be to have two half-days during the week set aside for Private Members' Business. It is conceivable that two morning sittings could be created to deal with Private Members' Business. The advantage of this idea is that it would minimize the disruption of existing House business and time. As we know, an hour here and an hour there prevents real continuity in discussing Private Members' Business.
Of course reform of Private Members' Business is part of a larger issue, the issue that we are discussing tonight, the general reform of the House of Commons, increasing the effectiveness of Parliament and of members of
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Parliament, enhancing the role of individual members and eroding the dominant role of party discipline.
The power and clout of private members cannot be legislated. It is possible to create opportunities to bring forward their concerns in the form of private members' bills, but much will depend on how they choose their issues, develop expertise, and use the system.
The attitudes of all members of Parliament and of the government will also determine whether the system succeeds or fails. The quality of private members' bills has to improve if there is a real possibility that they might become law and not form a pretext for debate.
There is some evidence that this has happened since 1985 when the McGrath commission reforms were instituted. I must compliment the Prime Minister and cabinet of the day for accepting many of those recommendations, for they have worked extraordinarily well.
Members of Parliament fulfil an important ombudsman role representing their constituents to the federal government. In doing so, they often become aware of areas that need to be addressed or reformed before the government does.
Private members' bills are a way for ordinary members to take advantage of the opportunities afforded them to initiate changes.
Writing in 1974, a newspaper columnist said: "Unless you subscribe to the quaint notion that the only people in Ottawa who are capable of thinking are those that inhabit the Treasury benches, you have to be concerned about the short shrift given private members' bills. It is one more argument for the real reform of the parliamentary procedure".
I think the rules of the House of Commons which have been presented are fine rules. I especially would applaud the government for accepting the recommendations given to it by the privileges and elections committee concerning Private Members' Business. I would encourage it to go that one step further in the future.


Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg St. James):: Mr. Speaker, I bring an official opposition perspective to this issue, and I do not apologize for that one little bit. Let me
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explain. The premise of these rule changes is to limit debate, choke off debate. In the government's view if you delay legislation you make this House, this institution, more inefficient. In other words, it construes delay as inefficiency: "Delay is inefficiency".
Delay in this particular institution is not necessarily inefficiency. In fact, it is an absolutely vital part of the democratic process that is played out within these four walls.
When an issue comes to the floor of the House time must be given to have that issue percolate, to give people an opportunity to express themselves, to arouse the public. All of that takes time. Yet, those people on that side of the House would like us to believe that is delay or inefficiency and that the best way to pursue the political process, to pass legislation, is to do it in a great hurry: "Let us have no delay because that would be inefficient".
They are wrong. The role of the opposition is very vital to the democratic process. Believe it or not, our job which is much different from the job of those people over there is equally important. We have to have our time to do our job as they have to have time to do their job.
Speaking of delay and inefficiency, I suppose if we wanted to include cost effectiveness in efficiency it would certainly be more cost effective if I did not go home every weekend, if I did not get on the iron bird every Friday and go home. I would certainly save the taxpayer several hundred dollars a week. I guess, according to the thinking of some people, that certainly would be cost effective. But, would it really be good politics? Would it be good representation if I just sort of hunkered down here and I went home only once every four weeks or every three weeks?
The fact of the matter is that when you are in public life not only do you have to be here debating issues and taking part in the legislative process, but you also have to be back home. You have to be with your people, you have to mingle with your people, you have to be seen by your people, you have to be touched by your people. It is all part and parcel of the democratic process. It is very

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important. It is not necessarily the most efficient thing in the world, but it is a vital part of democracy.
I know that when I look at this package of changes I look at it rather cynically. I really wonder whether we would have this package of changes before us today if the government were not low in the polls, if it were not sitting at 15 per cent, 16 per cent, or 17 per cent in the polls. My guess is that if government members were riding high these changes would not be made or these changes would not be proposed. I gather they believe that the only way to political salvation is to shut this place down, rob the opposition of a political platform, and go home to see if it can find their political salvation. I think they are wrong on two counts. They are wrong on this package of changes and there is no political salvation for them. They are beyond redemption.
Let us look at the amount of time we devoted in debate to the goods and services tax.
I pulled out this legislative document, Status of Bills and Motions, and what does it show? It shows that when it came to Bill-62, the GST legislation, debate at second reading was on January 29, 30, 31, February 5, 6 and 7, 1990.
It seems to me, according to my arithmetic, six days for the GST at second reading. Then there was a debate at report stage on April 3 and April 9; two more days. There was a time allocation debate because this government is very prone to time allocation and of course closure. On the time allocation debate two more days, April 4 and 5, were devoted to that. Then there was concurrence at report stage on April 9,1990. Then there was debate at third reading on April 10.
I have added it up and it looks to me as if there were about 12 days of debate in the House devoted to the GST. It seems to me that this government is saying that is too much time.
The GST, when it comes to tax legislation, was a watershed for this country. We had never had this kind of a tax in the country before. In this House of Commons we spent about 12 days debating. Is that too much? I do not think so, yet this government is saying: "That is too much. That is inefficient. That is delay. We have to limit debate".
As one of the previous speakers pointed out, we now face the irony that there will be more ventilation of an issue in the unelected other place than there will be
here. Does that make sense? For the life of me, I cannot understand that.
I also want to touch on this matter of limiting witnesses before legislative committees to what is going to be called technical witnesses. There is a presupposition in that. There is a presupposition that the principle of whatever legislation is being debated, whatever legislation is going before the legislative committee, has already been fully explored some place else, presumably before a standing committee, so why would we want to go through the principle again or to debate the principle again? "Let us just sort of tinker with some technical aspects of a bill and we will leave that to the legislative committee". Does that make sense?
What guarantee is there that when a bill goes before a legislative committee the principle has been fully explored? Is there any guarantee that this matter would have been dealt with, particularly its principles, at the standing committee or elsewhere? I do not think so. It is a sham, but this package of changes is just another example of the erosion of the erosion of our democratic rights.
I want to enter a little positive comment here. There is a provision in this package at a certain point-I think it is after six or eight hours of debate-to reduce speeches to 10 minutes. I do not think it is a bad idea at all. Maybe it is because it is because of my journalistic background or maybe it is because of my broadcasting background, but I would submit that in a majority of cases if you cannot say it in 10 minutes you probably will never say it.
I would think that after six or eight hours there is not going to be anything lost to the public if speeches are limited to 10 minutes.
I want to touch on a couple of omissions; omissions not commissions. First I want to touch on free votes because we do not have many free votes in this House. We do not have enough free votes in this House and this package of changes is not going to help the situation at all.
People out there for better or for worse-and I happen to think it is for better-want to give their public representative, their members of Parliament, a greater role and a bigger voice in this House. What they are really saying to the political parties and to all of us is that party discipline has gone too far, that party discipline is excessive. The pendulum has swung too far in the direction of party discipline. That pendulum has to be pulled back to give members of Parliament more individ-
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ual expression, particularly when it comes to sensitive regional issues.
Constituents are not stupid. The voter is rather sophisticated. Voters know that parties must stand for something, that parties cannot go in every direction on every issue, that there is many times, perhaps a majority of times, when a party has to speak with one voice. I will just pick one example. When it comes to something as fundamental in a government program as a budget, the governing party in that particular case must speak with one voice for better or for worse.
There has got to be some elasticity in the system, some room for the parties to speak with one voice, but also room for members of Parliement to speak with their particular voices, voices that represent a particular point of view of a particular region of the country.
What is happening now is that members are being asked to be nothing more than puppets. I do not think that is what we are supposed to be. After all, this is supposed to be the highest court in the land.
I think there is something that members have to look at when we ask for the right for free votes. We are not asking to defeat the government on each and every occasion that we want a free vote. All we want to do is to say that we do not like a particular piece of legislation, take it back, redraft it, improve it, and then return it to the House. We are not asking to defeat the government, to kick the cabinet out, to cause an unnecessary election or anything like that. All we are asking is for us to focus on a particularly egregious, bad piece of legislation; to send it back to the shop and fix it up. I do not think that is too much to ask for. I really do not think that is too much to ask.
I want to touch on the proposal of three weeks on and one week off. A part of it is appealing. Certainly that one week off is simply off from this place. It is certainly not off from work. I can assure you, Madam Speaker, that if it goes through I will be spending the so-called week off in my riding and in my riding office. I am sure I will work just as hard during that week off as when I am here for the three weeks.
My concern, though, is that unless we do a very good educational job of explaining what it is all about-and politicians tend not to be good at that-people are going
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to look at it cynically. They are going to say to themselves and to us: "Oh, it is just a way of reducing your workload. It is a way of giving yourself another break, another holiday". That bothers me because we are in low enough esteem now.
I am also afraid that this approach of three weeks on and one off from the House will be abused politically, that House leaders, particularly on the government side, will do all kinds of stage managing of sensitive issues around this provision of three on and one off. I can just imagine the government thinking: "How could we perhaps introduce something that is unpopular and is going to cause a lot of flack for the next few days? Maybe we will introduce it just as we are shutting the House down for a week".
You see, there is even cynicism in me, as there is among voters. That worries me, it worries me a lot, because if we politicians are not thought of in a good light, nor will this institution itself. In other words, as we go so goes this institution.
There is also the matter of the televising of House committees. A good idea, Madam Speaker, a very good idea. I said this the other day and I want to repeat it here. If we come to the televising of House committees, I want no part as a parliamentarian, and I don't want to see any other parliamentarian either on this side of the House or that side of the House, deciding which committee is going to be covered with the television camera, be it a permanently installed television camera or one that is hand-held and moves around the committee room. That must be decided by the media and the media alone.
I do not tell the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Winnipeg Free Press or any other newspaper or any other publication in this country which committee meeting they are going to cover. They have to decide what is in the public interest. They have to decide what is news and what is not news on a particular day. That is not my decision, that is not the business of the government, and it is not the business of this side of the House.
I know that there is a predisposition in this House that would give some politician the power to decide which committee is going to be covered by television and which committee is not. If we go down that road, that will open

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up an unbelievable can of worms. That is a Pandora's box, and we cannot allow ourselves to fall into that trap.
The media is far from perfect. The media makes mistakes every day. But I would rather, in this particular instance, have the media make those mistakes, for better or for worse. That is not our business.
In closing, Madam Speaker, I want to touch just briefly on legislative planning.
The way we conduct business in this House very often does not make any sense. It does not matter which party is in power, it seems to be the same old way. That old way is always keep the opposition guessing, keep the opposition off balance, and if we can give the opposition a matter of just hours' notice about the next piece of legislation to be debated, well, that is well and good for the government.
As I said at the beginning of this speech, the opposition has an important, vital role to play in this democratic process in this House.
Yes, we are adversaries, but there has to be a team approach. We need to have our resources and our time to think through legislation so that when it comes to debating, we know what we are dealing with.
I would like to see much more legislative planning in this House.


Mr. Chuck Cook (North Vancouver):: Madam Speaker, I represent a riding at the far outpost of the empire, North Vancouver. There are many of us in this House who represent ridings as far away.
Let me describe how I get here. When I leave my home, it takes a good 40 minutes to get to the airport. If I want to catch a plane, I had better be there 40 minutes to an hour ahead of time. I am already into my day with an hour and a half to two hours. To fly from Vancouver to here is a minimum of a full five hours. Then, of course, there is the extra approximately 40 minutes to get downtown from the Ottawa airport and to the House of Commons.
When I come to Ottawa, I have already spent seven or eight hours just to get here. That procedure is reversed when I go back to my riding. I am not the worst off by any stretch of the imagination.
Those people from the interior of British Columbia have to oftentimes overnight in Vancouver and fly from one to three hours the next morning to get back to the voters who elected them. The same thing is true to a certain extent in the maritimes and Newfoundland.
For that reason, I am veiy highly in favour of three weeks sitting and one week off from here. The one week off from here is important for several reasons. What a lot of people in this part of the world forget is that the Rocky Mountains are much more than a geographic barrier. They are a mental barrier as well.
I find that the minute I start thinking what I read in The Toronto Star, The Ottawa Citizen or the Montreal Gazette is important, it is time I went back to British Columbia to find out what the real people are thinking and concerned about.
Believe it or not, the people in this country do not all agree with the Montreal-Toronto-Ottawa access. What these regions consider important is not necessarily important in the other regions of the country. In many cases, it has no bearing at all on that thinking.
Can I find that thinking out, sitting in Ottawa? There is no way. We have to go home and spend time with our people.
I have not been able to accept a speaking engagement on a TUesday or Wednesday night in years. The reason, of course, is that costs me practically a week here. No matter how I slice it, it is a day to get here.
If I take an early morning plane, then I can make it here by five o'clock or 5.30 in the afternoon when the business day is over. If I take an afternoon plane, I am here very late at night. If I take the "Red Eye" out of Vancouver at eleven o'clock or twelve o'clock at night, I may get to Ottawa by nine o'clock the next morning. Believe me, my mind is still exhausted over Saskatchewan. I may be here physically, but not in the best mental shape.
No matter how it is sliced, if we come from the far outpost of empire, it is a difficult thing coming here, doing our work and staying in touch with our constituents. That is why three weeks here and one week off will make a tremendous difference.
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There are also the time changes involved. There are three hours difference between here and the west coast. I would recite a bit of an antidote.
When the Pope was in North America, his doctor made the statement that for every time zone change of an hour the Pope went through, generally speaking it took the average person at least two days for their biological clock to adjust to that time change.
When I read that, I started thinking about my travel schedule over the previous six months and I came to the conclusion that if I stopped flying immediately, by 1995 my biological clock would be back in the proper rhythm. Unfortunately, it does not happen that way. It is a very difficult thing for members from a long distance away. I am not the only one. If you have a tight little Winnipeg riding, that is fine. You can take about a two hour flight and you are home in your riding. If you are from Montreal, one hour. No wonder you have no sense or understanding of what it means for those members who are a long distance away.
I have heard a good many insensitive speeches in the last three days on this subject. Most of them demonstrated a total lack of understanding of what a good many members go through in terms of doing their job here, representing their people, as I said, at the far outpost of the empire.
I heard some rather cynical speeches, I thought, from some NDP members. They have been doing the three and one for over a year now. Just check them any day and you will find out that about one third of them are away visiting their ridings for that week. To hear somebody be opposed to this one week in four off is simply not fair.
I can think of a great many very terrible movies I have watched at midnight in the city of Ottawa, having got off a plane, got home and it is really only nine o'clock at night west coast time. I wish they had better movies in Ottawa, really, particularly late night ones.
In any event, that is part of the story. The real part of it is the fact that that week off is extremely important to all members if they only knew it. Get out in your ridings, meet your people, be available for speeches, breakfasts or whatever. What happens, of course, is your constituents will very rapidly get to know when you are in town.
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They do this, I might add, in Australia. The Australian members have found that after a week at home they come back to Canberra to rest up because everybody in the riding knows you are there, knows you are going to be home for the week, so there are breakfasts, luncheons, dinners. They plan their events around when their member is definitely going to be in the riding. We cannot do that now, but with the three weeks on and the one week off, we will be able to do it. It will be better for all of us, particularly those who come a long way.
Oftentimes, I feel sorry for myself on the plane until I think of some of my colleagues. There are places in Saskatchewan you cannot get to from here, and they have members. Some of the members from Manitoba fly into Winnipeg and then get into an automobile and drive for two or three hours to get home. Try and do that on a Friday night, spend Saturday and part of Sunday at home and then drive three hours back to the Winnipeg airport and try to get to Ottawa.
That one week off in four, I think, is necessary for the health of the country, for the health of the members and also to give the public a real chance to get at their member.
I would dispute what the previous member said about the government attempting to bring in nasty little bits of legislation two days before the week off. I do not think it is going to happen. If it does, it means every member goes back to their riding and will get the fallout from that legislation in their face when they are there and have to explain it. So that does not matter. But a week in four to spend in your riding is particularly important to anyone who has a ridiculous travel schedule to get between Ottawa and their riding.
The only other point I want to make in my particular remarks on the bill is that I am highly in favour of the new committee system for these reasons. I have chaired enough committees here with enough members over the years. One the greatest faults of the whole thing is that so often, in order to make a quorum or to cany on your committee business, you get a stranger who is put on that committee. He does not know the background of the committee. He does not know what has been discussed and, invariably the floaters, as I would call them, are the ones who want to take up most of the time uselessly talking about things they know nothing about. With the new committee system you will have groupings of members. If you are interested in the finance envelope and all

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those committees, you will become knowledgeable in each one of those areas and will be of use to a number of committees within that particular envelope. The same will happen with the social services committees.
In that sense I am highly in favour of it because it means more knowledgeable members of Parliament dealing with issues with which they are concerned.
Frankly, there are some other things on which I could agree with the opposition. I find it offensive that the House leaders of all parties have reserved so much power and responsibility to themselves. I do not agree with that. It should be spread out to committee chairman and private members to a much larger extent. First of all, I do not think it is necessary and I do not think it is healthy.
However, I would do almost anything to get that week in four home in my riding, to have an opportunity to take speaking dates when everyone knows you would be there and when there would be a full week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Monday to conduct business in the riding which many members from way out of town now have difficulty in doing.
For those reasons I am going to be voting for these rule changes and with heartfelt thanks for the changes that are being made. They are all very worth while. For those members with their tight little ridings close to Ottawa, fie on you. Those of us from the far outposts of empire deserve that week off.


Sergio Marchi: Madam Speaker, I am gratified to be given the opportunity to say a few words in terms of the rule changes. I would like to preface my remarks by simply having a complimentary word for our House leader, the member of Parliament for Cape Breton-East Richmond who put forward in response to the government House leader in a very brilliant and articulate way this past Monday, in a speech close to an hour and a half to two hours, trying on our behalf and for the benefit of Canadians to dissect a number of the rule changes that are being proposed. I know that all of the members of our caucus are very appreciative of his efforts and those members of our caucus who assist the House leader such as the hon. member for Glengarry- Prescott-Russell and the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.
I would basically like to structure my words in the time allotted to me in three ways. First, to touch very briefly on the full question of closure which I find ironic given the context of the debate this evening. Second, the timing of the proposed rule changes themselves. Third, obviously a few comments on the actual changes that are being contemplated.
On the first aspect I mention that I found it very ironic for closure to be ushered in during a debate about rule changes, rule changes that purport to give greater relevance, greater significance to both this Chamber and to individual members of Parliament. At the same time we have a government that has used closure a record number of times, but becoming much more cold about the whole situation as it introduces closure on the very time that members of Parliament are debating how we can make this place and members in this place function better on behalf of the country and on behalf of Canadians.
I believe if the Chamber is to be made more accountable, if members of Parliament are to be given greater latitude, greater authority and greater flexibility with which to discharge their responsibilities, it would seem to me that their constituents would win if we did not always have the club that has been known in parliamentary language as "parliamentary closure". This is a very fancy way of abruptly closing and choking debate when debate can foster new ideas in new directions. So I find it very ironic that, while we are trying to improve the lot of the House of Commons, closure is being allocated on the other end.
The second aspect-and I say this in a non-partisan way, as a member of this place-is that I find the timing of this debate to be circumspect, to say the least. If I was a member of the Canadian community looking on, by my parliamentary channel, I would see a House of Commons seized by parliamentary rule changes and the debate herein.
I find the timing ill-advised because the country is currently wrapped in what can best be described as a crisis on two tracks, one being the economic track and the other being national unity. We know the situation with respect to the economy, wherever Canadians live.
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We know that close to 1.5 million people are unemployed; we know plants have been closing; we know de Havilland is being sold, and we know there is double-digit unemployment in my own city of Toronto, which happens to be the heartland of Ontario and the capital of the manufacturing industrial heartland of Canada.
Canadians are in trouble and Canadians are hurting; small businesses are either downsizing, going bankrupt, or going south of the border; Canadians are looking to this government and to this Parliament to inspire a nation, to try to stimulate an economy, and to collectively try to pull ourselves out of the economic pit we find ourselves in.
Instead, we are engaged in what some Canadians are suggesting is a navel-gazing exercise. As important as it is to be reforming this place with a view of hopefully improving it, at the time, be it on the economic front and on a national unity front, when we have one province contemplating whether it wishes to leave the Canadian family, other parts of the country are wishing-in to the Constitution, and Canadians of neither English nor French background want to be encompassed by the debate, we are contemplating rule changes.
The changes are very distant from the causes that are gripping Canadians today and are very far removed from the malaise in which Canadians find themselves. I am sure the changes will certainly fuel the cynicism in which Canadians all too often hold this place and the members that occupy it.
To make matters worse, not only are we debating proposed rule changes at a time when the country is going through one of its toughest times since Confederation, but as soon as we are finished the debate on rule changes, rather than having the expectation of then getting on with the business of Canada, this House is going to adjourn, as proposed by this government, which will close the lights in this Parliament.
On the one hand, Canadians see a Parliament engaged in itself, rather than engaged in the business of removing Canada from this economic and constitutional malaise. Then, of course, after we have finished the business of rule debates and rule changes, we will close Parliament on the excuse that the government has to get ready for
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the Throne Speech, which will not be delivered until the 13th, 14th, or 15th of May.
So it is no wonder that Canadians would view this debate as being very much ill advised in terms of timing. I would share that commitment. As much as I have a commitment to improving this place, I have to question whether the timing of this particular debate could not have waited until the issues of the nation were better resolved and whether our forces and energies as members of Parliament would then have been better focused on addressing the issues that are involving Canadians from one coast to the other coast to the other coast.
The third issue on which I would like to spend a few minutes relates to the actual changes and can be divided into three areas. Firstly, the new parliamentary timetable that is being advocated; secondly, the revised committee structure; and, thirdly, the technical orientation.
I think the latter two are of somewhat more of a technical orientation and I have the biggest concern, as an individual member of Parliament, with respect to the new timetable. That new timetable would suggest that the annual sittings of the House would be reduced from 175 sitting days to 135. Notwithstanding the fact that some of those sitting days will then be increased by an hour or so to make up for some of that loss, there is still a House of Commons sitting for less hours overall, over the long-term.
We can say quite rightly and quite legitimately that we need to spend time in our ridings and that we need to be with our constituents and responding to them. I would agree with that and I think there needs to be the time for the Members of Parliament to balance the two communities: the one in Ottawa where this Parliament is our factory and in the riding, which also happens to be a workplace of utmost significance.
I believe that when this House is closed we remove a forum that has been vital for Canadians. We recall the summer that just went by during which we had the situation of Oka and during which the situation in the Gulf intensified, and this House of Commons was closed. There was no apparatus for Canadians to look into these issues, beyond the press releases that were issued by the government and the Prime Minister of the day.

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I recall during that summer when Canadians were asking why Parliament was not open for business then, of all occasions, when it had been brought back a few summers ago on such flimsy excuses as a number of people coming in on the east coast, as one illustration, or as dealing with the Correctional Service. However, when there was a true and real emergency during a crisis, this Parliament was not open.
Therefore, I would lean towards having this place be in operation more often, be more alive, and be in closer concert on the television set in the living rooms of Canadians than having this place closed, thereby removing an outlet that is the forum and the centrepiece for parliamentary democracy in this country; a democracy that people in other countries are dying and starving for.
The other aspect of the parliamentary timetable is that of the 25 allotted supply days would be removed from the opposition. That is a fancy way of saying that there would be less days when the opposition dictates the agenda of the parliamentary day.
That reduction erodes the accountability portion of an opposition. We on this side are not arguing in a purely opposition mode because we know that one day very soon we will be on the other side of the Speaker, in the government benches, and the members on that side will have their roles reversed. So we are trying to speak to the traditions of an opposition in a democracy and the democracy of any country is only as strong as the rights accorded to its opposition. When the rights of the opposition are eroded so is the definition and power of the word democracy.
Therefore, why have fewer opposition days in which the opposition can dictate the agenda for a change.
I have been in the House for six years. I have lost every single vote in the House of Commons. I accept that. The government has a parliamentary majority and I accept that.
But it is not only important who wins the votes, but who wins the debate, has the force of debate, has the force of right on one side, has the ideas, has the clarity, and has the convictions. Therefore, votes are one thing, but debates are a very different subject. Therefore, I oppose quite strenuously the attempt to remove the ability for of opposition on behalf of Canadians to set the parliamentary agenda on any day against a parliamentary government-in this case, a majority government-that
has all the power, all the clout, and all the tools at its disposition.
I would also suggest that two out of the eight Throne Speech debate days be removed. Now the government says that the day of the Throne Speech is one of the most important days in any parliamentary calendar. It provides political inspiration to the government and the party and is intended to provide political inspiration and leadership to a country. The Throne Speech supposedly ushers in "a new agenda". Therefore, is it not logical that, if the government attaches such importance to an undertaking in a Throne Speech, this House, this chamber and its opposition should be accorded the fullest possible time in which to try to explore important undertaking on behalf of Canadians?
It seems illogical, on the one hand, for a government to adjourn for a month to prepare a Throne Speech and to then suggest in its proposed rule changes that there ought to be less debate surrounding one of the most important initiatives a government can take in the parliamentary agenda.
The proposal also goes on to say that two out of the six budget days ought to be removed. Once again, the introduction of a budget is another centrepiece of any government program and of this chamber, of media, and for a country, in terms of the fiscal and monetary policies that will be dictating its course, for not only months but years to come.
Therefore, if a budget is that crucial to the livelihood of a country and its people, why not provide this chamber and the opposition of the day, whoever is in that unfortunate position, the opportunity to try to account again for the parliamentary program, in a budgetary sense, of that government.
It seems to me that we have a contradiction when a government flags the important days of a budget and a parliamentary Throne Speech, then at the same time tries to advocate greater relevance for this place by removing the debate surrounding these important initiatives.
The proposal also talks about limiting a Member of Parliament's speech and cutting it in half after a number of hours. I suppose there are two schools of thought. One is to try to move the debate on. On the other hand, if Members of Parliament are to occupy a more relevant role in this chamber and are to try to be somebodies in
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this chamber, then cutting one's time in half is not going to do it.
If a Member of Parliament wishes to eloquently discuss an issue affecting one's riding, one's country, or one's Parliament, then 10 minutes- although it is true, Madam Speaker, that if you cannot say something in 10 minutes it is not worth saying- is not not enough time to put some points in this country as a national federal politician because some statements cannot be put eloquently in 10 minutes or less.
How do you speak, Madam Speaker, about a Meech Lake constitutional package, for instance, in less than 10 minutes? How do you speak about a Persian Gulf crisis in less than 10 minutes? How do you describe how one feels when one looks at the Kurds, in less than 10 minutes? Sure, we can discuss some aspect for five minutes and that is plenty of time. But on many other issues, ten minutes does not do justice to the substance of the day. And who is to decide which issue deserves five minutes and which deserves unlimited discussion in this beautiful chamber we ought to protect, in every sense of the word?
Therefore, on some of those changes, I am opposed, because, if you look at this chamber, it is a magnificent chamber. I remember the very first time I came here as a visitor, in early 1980. Seeing the chamber was very different from viewing it from a distance or reading about it in the newspaper. It reminded me of the first time I went to Maple Leaf Gardens. You can watch a hockey game, as many Canadians are doing this evening, and you can say it is a great game. Then you go into Maple Leaf Gardens and there is an ambiance, there are lights, and there are pictures on the wall. It is history in action and it gives you a different sense.
That was the same feeling I had when I came up and sat in the visitor's gallery and looked at the lights, the wood carvings, and the history that embodies this place. It is truly a remarkable place, that is the envy of the world, that we sometimes take for granted, that sometimes does not work, in which we sometimes do not listen to each other on enough occasions, that sometimes becomes too partisan, yes, but that has also lost a bit of relevance over the last few years, that has sensed a loss of power in the last few years, and that is concentrated more in the executive of a government.
If we are to give a sense of better purpose to this magnificent place and if we are to give a greater sense of
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purpose to individual Members of Parliament, who have been elected by a large number of Canadians, who have their franchise to make important decisions on their behalf, then we cannot contemplate some of the changes being proposed to us in these rule changes we are debating.
If we want Parliament to be more responsive, if we want it to be more relevant, and if we want to give the opposition a chance to hold the power and the government in check, then we have to approach it in a very different sense from that by which this government is approaching it. Unfortunately, I get the sense that this is a government that does not have the intention of spending too much time in this place.
But that view is short lived. This government has come and this government will go. This opposition will also change. You and I will one day hopefully be looking on a very different parliament and we have to look at a parliament in its long-term context. This Parliament does not belong to this government, this opposition, or this Speaker. We are simply custodians for a four- to five-year period. What we are doing this week is possibly changing the way this place operates for years to come.
With that sense in mind, we ought to move in the right direction and with dignity. We ought to restore some of the respect and dignity of this place and of the members who occupy it, which have so regrettably been lost and eroded in the last number of years.


Mr. Murray W. Dorin (Edmonton Northwest):: Madam Speaker, I want to thank you for the opportunity to participate in this debate.
I am hoping this evening to talk about a couple of points that are not necessarily contained in this package but might be, because when we examine the rules and rule changes we can consider what changes we are making, but doing so also gives us an opportunity to talk about some changes that we might wish to make in the future.
Some members have talked about some of these rule changes, both positively and negatively. Most have dwelt on the amount of time Parliament may or may not be sitting, either more or less, or in a different way. Frankly, I do not really believe that aspect is particularly relevant. I do not mean that as a negative comment toward the people who have spoken, but it seems to me that the changes being proposed here are not particularly revolu-

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tionaiy and will not change the nature of how we operate in any substantial way. That is why I would like to suggest a couple of changes a little further along that might change things substantially.
Part of the problem, I believe, is that there is a substantial gap between what the public believes we do here and what goes on. One of those gaps, if you like, has been brought closer to the forefront in recent times under the Spicer commission and other forums in which the public has increasingly been saying that they believe there should be more free votes in Parliament, less ties to party lines, and less control by the party or the leaders of parties.
That is probably an interesting point and a good one, but, in part, it reflects the fact that most Canadians do not understand exactly what Parliament does and what kinds of matters it deals with. That is not to say anything negative about them, because frankly, until I got here, neither did I. But the issue is not free votes. In my opinion, virtually every vote we have had in the time I have been here has been free. I know that the votes usually break down along party lines, but I think we have to explore how that happens.
When I examine the last two years of Parliament, in this session, I see that we have introduced approximately 100 bills. I looked through those bills and determined that of those bills, only 14 had what I would call substantive votes.
I want to explain that a bit. We have a lot of votes around this place which involve such things as voting when to adjourn or not to adjourn, whether someone can speak or not speak, whether or not to move to Orders of the Day. If we examine the votes which occur on substantive issues, and even though in some cases there may be several votes involving the same bill or issue, we call that one vote, because obviously it is essentially consistent. We may have moved to Orders of the Day and done a number of other things to trigger the vote, so several votes may be involved. But we can narrow it down to how many issues Parliament divides on which are substantive. Of the 100 bills, about 85 per cent of them passed through this House on division or on a voice vote. In other words, no recorded vote was demanded. It was supported by the House.
Only about a dozen bills, in actual fact, required a formal division by the House. In some cases more than
one division is taken, but as I say we will look at them one issue at a time.
Of those 12 or 14 bills, four or five were divisions triggered by something else. On the Broadcasting Act, Bill C-40, there was substantial support in the House but because cutbacks had been announced to the CBC the day before, there was a protest vote, so to speak, which triggered the formal vote.
On the borrowing authority, by and large no one in this House plans to vote down the borrowing authority. But sometimes it can be used to send a message to the government or to extract other things.
If we really narrow it down to this session of Parliament, of the 100 bills, in my opinion, we have had only four or five substantive votes. One, everybody would realize was on the GST, and we may have voted several times involving that issue but really there was only one issue involved. There was another vote involving some income tax amendments, including what we call colloquially the clawback. There was Bill C-21, amendments to the unemployment insurance, and there was the privatization of Petro-Canada and perhaps one or two others.
What I am saying is that on virtually every issue on which there was a substantive vote, where people voted because they were voting in terms of the issue, the vote did break down on party lines. That is relatively natural, because if we are talking about privatizing Petro-Cana-da, one can presume that most members of the Conservative Party would be in favour of that, most members of the New Democratic Party would not, and so it is only natural that it would break down along party lines.
If every vote was formally and officially a free vote, the question is would there be any difference. I suggest that, no, there would not. The reason is that for a whole bunch of issues out there which the public is concerned about, no vote is ever held-or if it is, no vote is ever held that would have any effect on the issue.
Consider three or four of the controversial issues over the last five or six years that I have been involved in while I have been here in Parliament. For example, consider the CF-18 contract, when Petro-Canada purchased Gulf or the issue of Sikhs and turbans and whether or not RCMP members would be allowed to wear turbans. None of those things were decided by a vote of Parliament, they were all decided by executive
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decision, by decisions of cabinet ministers involved or by the cabinet as a whole. None of those issues which the public was interested in and which were important to them were decided by a vote.
I am suggesting that it is not a matter of free votes or not free votes, it is the matter of what comes to a vote in this House. That is determined, by and large, by the executive, by the government, the cabinet. In actual fact very few votes are held on substantive issues that are not going to break down on party lines or are not going to pass through the House without a declared vote.
This whole issue of allowing more free votes of freeing members from party lines to support their constituents, is a bit of a red herring.
The question becomes, what can we do about it? One of the things we can do is try to educate the public as to how this place works, but after about 125 years that this Parliament has been in existence I am not sure that anything is going to really change in the future.
One of the other things we might do is allow more issues to be voted on. This could be done by allowing individual items coming from members of Parliament to be voted on.
We have had various changes in Private Members' Business since I have been here. However, because of the system we now have, none of these changes are likely to bring substantive issues to the table. Among other things, first of all, there is the lottery system, which means our name has to be drawn to have our item even selected. Then, there is another system that decides whether that item is going to come to a vote.
I would like to suggest that one of the things we might do is consider allowing bills to be introduced at committee stage.
One of the complaints that has been made is that there are some restrictions in terms of allocated times for certain stages of the bills. I suggest that we might want to consider abolishing second reading altogether. Perhaps we could restrict it to an introduction and response on the bill by each party. Automatically the bill could be sent to committee to be studied.
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At that time, we could gather the information and examine it carefully. When it comes back to the House, we could have the substantive debate. Part of the problem now is that in making a commitment or virtually deciding in advance of any study how people are going to line up on a particular bill or issue, we pre-determine how they are going to react when we get to committee. In my view, it prejudices the kind of debate or examination that might take place. We could avoid that by sending bills to committee automatically after only minimal discussion.
I have been involved in the changes made in the committee system. Some of them have been good. I have been on one of the committees which has worked as well as any of the committees of the House; that is, the finance committee. The reason it has worked well is that members have chosen to take an independent view from the government from time to time. That has been supported by all members, including the opposition members.
What has not happened in our committee or in other committees is that opposition members have not taken independent views from their party's position. As a result of that, the system has not been very balanced. That is not an argument against the parties or the individuals, it is because they have no real vested interest in doing so.
One of the reasons for that is because the position of their party has already been made known at the second reading vote. It seems to me that if we would introduce bills and have them referred to committee, they could be considered in a serious way in committee. Then they could be sent to the House.
In making that examination, we would not necessarily have the committed points of view and partisanship that goes along with it. I recognize that I have not thought out all the ramifications and how this might work, but I do acknowledge that I have been looking essentially at the United States system where by and large bills are introduced at committee stage. Once bills pass that hurdle, they then get considered by the House as a whole. It seems to me that if we were to allow both private members and the government to introduce bills, then they would have to compete for the attention and support of committee members. Those members would

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then decide those things that needed to be moved further along.
In a parliamentary system, a government-the cabinet and the executive-will have to move those things and decide support. That would have to be preserved. It is preserved right now. The House of Commons and the cabinet through the House can invoke closure, if you like, on a bill at committee stage and have it brought back to the House.
They have the ability even in our current system to set the priorities. What I would like to suggest is that rather than having a system of Private Members' Business where first the bills have to be drawn and then decided by a committee of Parliament which of them have priority and which get voted, in advance of that stage, bills would have to come through the committee involved. If I decided that I had a bill I wanted to present that involved labour, for example, I would have to convince the House of Commons committee on labour, employment and immigration, I believe it is called now-we change the names around here so often I have trouble keeping track-that my bill was worthy of support. In terms of the priority of that committee and the agenda and the other things it had to do, my bill would have to compete for their attention. It would consider my bill. It might examine it; hear witnesses and decide that it could move forward. Only after that would it then compete for House of Commons time, either in a separately allocated period of time within the private members' period that we now have, or perhaps in conjunction with other bills and other time in what we currently call Government Orders.
I think this would be helpful because it would allow committees to consider matters right from the very beginning and would allow committees to decide some of their own priorities, leaving the government the ability to bring forward those items that it decided was a priority.
The other thing it would allow is items to come before committees and, perhaps, the House to be voted on by people who are really interested in it. As I tried to point out in my earlier remarks, the issue is not free votes. If every vote was officially and formally a free vote, in the past two years, chances are virtually no votes would have been different. Mine would not have been. I can think of one bill in six years as a member of Parliament that I
might have opposed and voted differently from my party and the leadership.
As I have said, the reason for that is these items never get presented. If a bill is introduced by a minister and warning signals are picked up by the House leader, because that is the House leader's job, to know that this particular bill might not gamer the support of virtually all members of the government, that bill simply sits on the Order Paper.
The public, of course, never sees government members voting against government bills. That is because the government does not bring a bill to be voted if there might be substantial opposition to it or danger of losing it. It then becomes the responsibility of the minister responsible for the bill to work out whatever problems there are so that at least all the government members, if not the opposition members, are satisfied.
I do not think that the number of days and hours that we sit here, more or less, is important. By changing those and changing how we allocate them to the calendar might make it more convenient for members, including me, and I am all for that. I do not think it is going to make a substantial change to the way this House does business or to the way the public perceives us. What will make a change is if we decide to have issues aired and perhaps voted that the public thinks are important.
As I said earlier, I do not think that most debates really contribute all that much to whether a bill is advanced or not. Again, in my six years as a member of Parliament, I can probably count on one hand the number of debates that were true debates and actually affected the thinking of members. The opposition parties want to keep the debate going and the government wants to respond in kind, so we present speeches, not for making arguments or changing people's minds, but to fill up the available time. We all do that and we are all guilty, including myself.
We would be far better off spending less time on time filling and more time on substantive debate on issues that people are truly interested in. In fact, that might be part of overcoming what I call the gap between the current attitude of the public that Parliament does not respond to the things they are interested in. They also believe that we are always voting for and following either our parties or our leadership or what we are told by the Prime Minister or the leader or whoever it happens to be. It is not how much time we spend in debate, or even
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how we vote at the moment. The issue is what gets on the agenda.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Debate, the hon. member for Okanagan-Shuswap is next, then it will be the hon. member for Portage-Interlake, and then it will be the hon. member for Lambton-Middlesex.


Mr. Lyle Dean MacWilliam (Okanagan-Shuswap):: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on the proposed changes to the Standing Orders. I think that these changes are really very severe. Some have called them Draconian distortions of the parliamentary and democratic process here in the Chamber.
As has been presented many times this evening, the changes that have been presented-and there are man-y-by the government through the House leader are changes that are essentially going to muzzle Parliament. If the changes are brought to fruition, Parliament will essentially cease to be accountable to the Canadian people, at least as much as it is at this point. There is some concern across Canada that we are already not accountable enough.
I can see that these changes would not be the reformation of Parliament but, in fact, the deformation of Parliament. The Prime Minister's assertion that the aim of these proposed changes will be to allow the members to be more accountable and more available to their ridings really is the greatest hypocrisy. While members may, with these changes, be able to spend more time in their ridings, I think it will be a moot point since the government will not be as accountable to the concerns brought up by the people in the ridings when they talk with their member of Parliament. I will get into that in just a little while.
If the aim of the government is really to increase accountability and the democratic process, I suggest we are going about it in the wrong way. What it is going to do is increase the distrust and the anger that is already out across Canada, the anger that Canadians feel in regard to their lack of access to Canada's Parliament. If these changes are brought to bear, which undoubtedly they will because we are speaking on closure debate tonight, this government and particularly this House leader is going to become known as the Grinch who stole democracy.
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The first argument in support of my concern is that the changes that the government is proposing reduces the actual sitting time of this House by some 40 days, or if we want to do it on a percentage basis, by some 25 per cent. The committees, and this has been discussed many times tonight, as they are currently structured, will certainly not meet as often. I want to point out that today was the first day in literally months when the standing committee on communications of which I am a member met, even though there have been many veiy important and critical issues that have happened in the whole area of communications and broadcasting. Thke, for example, the situation with the CBC. Canadians right across this country have rallied against the CBC cuts and have spoken strongly about their concerns. They faced the shock of these cuts. Yet this committee has failed to meet on these very important changes that are being proposed to the CBC. If these changes are brought forward through the changes in the House Standing Orders, these committees will have even less opportunity to meet.
Under the old rules, committees meet infrequently enough. Some of them are much more active than others. Some of them are essentially completely inactive. The argument I am trying to make is that under these proposed new changes, these committees would meet even less often and would also be restricted in who could actually address the committee. The government is restricting it to what it calls those witnesses that it wants to call forward would be witnesses who would have some technical expertise.
No longer would it seem that community advocacy groups or individuals who are concerned about proposed legislative changes would have access to the standing committees as they do now. Those committees would be restricted to calling forth witnesses who would be of witnesses of technical expertise.
I think that is a very serious restriction on the public's right to voice their concerns, their opinions on the legislation that is before us, on the legislation that is being imposed by the government. Lord knows that with the technological changes facing our society, with the vast amount of legislation that is before the House, legislation which in some cases is extremely technical,

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and the changes very profound indeed, one has to rely upon those witnesses, both expert and lay person, who want to come forth to the committee to give their concerns, to raise their objections to the changes. I submit that with the restrictions on the committee structure, this is not going to be able to take place.
I want to reflect back to when I served for a couple of years as the member of the legislative assembly for the North Okanagan back in 1984 to 1986. During the two years that I was provincial MLA, with the government of the day under Premier Bill Bennett, the committee structure there did not work at all. I can recall being very excited about being nominated to the select standing committee on environmental issues and was very excited with the opportunities that that presented. I was literally shocked to find that the committee met only once over the two years I was there and that was to basically select a chairperson and a secretary and subsequent to that did not meet at all. As a result, there was virtually no opportunity to have a decent review of the legislation before us.
That was a very difficult situation. I suggest there was a lot of poor legislation that came through during those years simply because the public did not have access to a procedure of appeal through the committee structure to allow them to present their concerns about some of the legislation that was coming through.
I want to say that I think we are in danger through the changes that are being presented in these changes to the Standing Orders of approaching that kind of very unacceptable situation here in our federal institution.
Another argument I want to present is that I think that the changes are being proposed are an attempt by this government to seal the lips of the opposition. There is going to be a reduction in the number of opposition days, the number of days that opposition parties have to propose their topic for the agenda of the day, for their motion to be debated.
There is going to be a reduction in those days where the opposition has its own day in court, so to speak. There is going to be a reduction in the number of days of debate on the throne speech and on the budget.
The end result is really veiy convenient, if you look at it from the government side, I guess, a very convenient muzzling of the opposition voice in terms of the democratic process. Opposition and government members may have more time to go to their ridings, find out what their constituents think and how they are feeling. We are actually reducing the ability of the forum where those views could be aired. We are actually reducing the effectiveness of the parliamentary forum with the changes that are proposed.
I have heard a lot of comments made previously by one of the government members who resides in British Columbia about how difficult it is to get back and forth to the west coast. I certainly agree with him, as a member also from British Columbia. I am from the interior of British Columbia. My riding is in the central southern part of the province, the Okanagan-Shuswap.
It is indeed a lengthy trip back and forth between the Kelowna airport, either through Vancouver and Calgary, and then on through Toronto, or directly to Ottawa. I figured it out that on an average trip, depending on the connections, it takes B.C. members, particularly if they are having to make the jog up into the interior of the province, between nine and eleven hours to get doorstep to doorstep. There is no question that with the length of travel, some of us travel more often in a month than some of the airline pilots log. There is no hiding the fact that it is difficult indeed for most members, particularly the members from the western provinces.
As well, you are dealing with three-hour time zone changes which are pretty disruptive to the old biological time clock. I would be the first to admit that. But even with the difficulties that are imposed on the westernmost representatives in this federal Parliament, I would still submit that it is a mistake for these changes to come through which reduce the parliamentary voice of opposition members in this institution through the reduction of the hours, only to give us more time back in our ridings.
I try to split my time up each month and take a week out, if I can, when I do not have duty days here in Parliament, and spend that week-and I must submit, probably most weekends also-back in the riding. There is no question, there is a lot of travel.
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I think if you want to be an effective representative, despite whether your riding might be an hour away in Montreal, or nine or eleven hours away up in B.C. or the Yukon, if you do want to be an effective representative of your constituency, you can do that under the current parliamentary structure. You can continue to be effective representatives and yet still have the kind of parliamentary forum that we need in order to have an effective debate of the issues, and in order to have an effective opposition.
If you do not have an effective opposition, you have the next thing to dictatorship in this country. I think it is extremely important that the opposition voice not be muzzled by the kinds of changes that are being proposed in these changes to the parliamentary rules.
The other argument I want to submit is with respect to the reduction of speaking time. It is proposed to reduce speaking time down from 20 minutes to 10 minutes with respect to members speaking on legislation before the House.
I go back to the point I made before. Often we are dealing with legislation in this House that is extremely difficult, extremely complex, very technical. I submit that Bill C-40, the Broadcast Act, when it came through had a lot of intricate detail in that legislation. There is simply no way that a person can stand up and in 10 minutes give a detailed and thoughtful explanation as to why he or she may support or oppose the legislation, to give the details of that information and fully explain the reasons for either supporting or opposing the legislation. Ten minutes is simply not enough. I often think 20 minutes is not enough. We need more time to speak. But the rules that are being proposed take us to a reduced time allocation, and I think that is a serious mistake.
Last, the fifth point, and I think probably the most insidious changes that these changes to the rules suggest, is the government's ability to override unanimous consent. Through this, the government is trying to override a very fundamental principle of Parliament that essentially one person can make a difference.
I want to explain myself on that. I do not think one person should be able to take the decision away from the majority. That is not what I am suggesting. Regardless of whether it is a strong majority government or a minority government, one person, as a public representative, a federal representative in this Parliament, should be able
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to force the government to play by the rules, play by the book and use the democratic process.
The greatest irony is that by using closure, this government will in fact be able to impose those kinds of changes which muzzle the voice of the opposition, closure that has been used during the last three years no fewer than 13 times. It does not sound like a lot, 13, but when you look at it in terms of the historical precedence in Parliament, over the last two or three years the use of closure 13 times is more than half of all the times that closure was used in the House during the previous 75 years of government. In the last three years, we have used closure far more than during those previous times.
I think the people across the country are beginning to look upon the Canadian political system with a certain amount of disdain. I do not think that these changes are in the best interest of Canadians. They are certainly going to harden that feeling against Canada's parliamentary system.
When we go back and look at the history of this last Parliament, people have seen the government using closure on the free trade debate and the imposition of free trade despite the fact the country did not want it. Closure was used on the GST debate. Now, in addition to using that process of closure, these rule changes essentially allow the government to cloak its actions in secrecy; 40 fewer Question Periods, fewer opposition days, and the many other changes that are being mentioned.
I think the changes, in short, are going to turn this parliamentary system into kind of a legislative sausage factory, if you like, a kind of a legislative assembly line where really there are no inspections, no taste tests and there is no ability of the opposition to slow down or to stop dead in its tracks poor legislation or to provide the opportunity in order to make that legislation, if it is supported, better.
In concluding, forcing these kinds of changes that are proposed and proclaiming that it is so, that all members of Parliament can participate more in their riding activities, I think is ludicrous and is really hiding the fact. The fact of the matter is that the changes are being brought to bear because this government does not want to take the kind of heat that it has been taking and, quite frankly, it should be taking in bringing through the

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Draconian legislative measures that it has brought through in the last three years.


Mr. Felix Holtmann (Portage-Interlake):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to just enter the debate in a very brief way because I think everyone should have an opportunity to participate in what I consider to be a very historical debate in this House of Commons.
I submit that the whole world is in a change. We see the world changing, not only going from one-party systems in the East Bloc but hopefully to a multi-party system where there is a democracy as the Canadian people have known it for some 125 years. They would like to have that opportunity.
Let me tell you, I am not going to speak for more than five minutes because I do not need 20 minutes to say what I think is important in terms of how this place operates. I have a lot of respect for the last speaker, the hon. member for Okanagan-Shuswap. His party would like to form the government next time. If it does form the government the next time, he probably would be happy as can be with such a move as has taken place in this House.
I submit that the change this government is asking for, although I respect that it is not perfect, I think it is going to take us out of the 18th century. I follow the U.S. congressional and senatorial system on television through C-Span, through the communication devices today. With all respect to the systems that we have in place here and in England, I do not see that adversarial activity that I see in this House of Commons. There seems to be a lot of respect for each representative, a great deal more respect than we show each other in this House.
I ask myself why are they not using every kind of motion and different methods of changing legislation as we do rather than just good honest debate. That is what we should be doing. Colleagues across the way, you and I should be debating. We should not take the time for petitions. In my view, you should send the petitions up to the desk-you don't have to take time to announce them-and stand in your place and debate the legislation that is put forward.
Obviously, your position will be different. But I do not believe that we have to get at each other's ideas in the
adversarial way such as I have experienced in the last six years.
We do not have to talk for 20 minutes, with all due respect, to put a point across. The committees should sit and debate positions in a manner that is not adversarial. I have not experienced that. I wonder why.
Even in this Chamber I would like to see changes. I would like to see changes to your dress, Sir. Put an ordinary suit on, like the Speaker in the U.S. Congress. That is not going to show any less respect for our institution. We do not have to dress people up in a different way. In my view, we could even go further, and I would have no difficulty with that.
But let me tell you something as I see it. I have not sat in opposition. Heaven knows, that likely could happen some day. I am not advocating that, but should the day come, because I may disagree with a piece of legislation that has been proposed by the government, I would not see myself as trying to present petitions all day to stall the debate on that legislation, or presenting dilatory motions to stop the debate on the legislation because I disagree with it. Should not that time be spent on debate?
I hear from across the way they should storm the Chair. Yes, I understand that the Tory in the past in opposition have stormed the Chair. That is nonsense. I do not agree with that. I would not be a part of such an action.
That is what has happened over the years, I believe, to the deterioration of our House of Commons, a place that is so important. We have lost respect for different people in this Chamber from time to time because of something they said. I don't think that action has been very helpful.
I must submit, as a sitting member of the government side, that I have seen wasted hours of debate in this House, wasted hours of debate by playing silly games. Maybe my five minutes is up, but my point is, with all due respect, that we have wasted hours and hours and hours of debate in this House of Commons by playing games.
Now, now, you are falling into the role again, with all due respect. We have wasted hours of debate because of a procedural wrangle.
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Those 20-some hours that I believe the change adds up to would probably not have been lost to anyone. Who knows who the opposition is going to be next time? I am not conceding defeat but I am saying that the people opposite in this House today obviously hope that they are going to govern after the next election. That is their goal, there is no doubt about it. But, surely to goodness, when they are there some day-heaven forbid, some may say-we do not want to spend this time on silliness.
The House of Commons in England. I have not been there as often as some in this Chamber. In the United States Congress and Senate, there are not many times when people are able to speak for 20 minutes, because there are many more of them than there are of us. They may get to speak for five minutes and will then yield three minutes to someone else to bring their point of view across to the floor.
I am just wondering if we are not so hung up on this institution and its historical way that we should not think of changing it and making it more effective. Although this is not a perfect package and there is probably more change to come as years go by, I believe it is moving in the right direction. I think members opposite will concede that we are not still going to run the House of Commons as we did 20 or 50 years ago. Changes are taking place.
This is a vast nation to represent and I do not think anybody is upset about the time he or she has to spend in this place. But I like honest, fair debate and when the day is done the vote is taken and we go on to another issue. That is something I have lacked, but I have nothing but respect for our members opposite. I even disagree sometimes with members on our side of the House and I think that is healthy. I do not think that is totally antiquated anymore; that is our democracy and our freedom.
I believe we have moved away a little from operating this House and have created it as too adversarial. I hope the change that does come forward works more effectively for all sides of the House, albeit there may be less time in hours, but in the end I do believe in the representation we have in this House and the honour we should attribute to one another, not in the adversarial approach. Make your point, let us get on with it and take a vote on it. That is the way I see it and I believe I will support this.
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Hon. Ralph Ferguson (Lambton-Middlesex):: Mr. Speaker, I have to commend the member for Portage- Interlake. There are some things he and I agree on. I think we have the same taste in what we do not like, such as so-called modem art, when you see something that looks like the side of a bam, where they ran out of one pail of paint and had to dive into another. He and I agree on that. We agree on what we should be doing with steaks. I would rather see a vibrant living picture or piece of art and I am sure you would, too; something that would reflect nature and the delicate hand of mother nature.
But I do have to say that I disagree with him saying that he would rather have something like the American congressional or Senate system, where the speaker wears a suit, the same as everyone else.
Mr. Speaker, you and your Chair are the symbol of the tradition of this House, a tradition that instils the tradition of a democratic parliamentary system, which respects the Chair and the Speaker, who is elected by the members of this House of Commons.
Mr. Speaker, we are all commoners and are elected by commoners to represent them in this House and I would not want that changed. I want to state the respect in which I hold you, Mr. Speaker, the other Deputy Speakers, and the Speaker himself.
One of the things I am very concerned about is that, as I look back at the record of this government and at the number of times they have used closure, going back to 1986-1987, they have used it 35 times. Yet the member from Portage-Interlake said that every member should have a chance to speak.
When I look at the record of this House and, again, at the number of times closure has been applied by this government, the successes of the legislation, the effectiveness of the legislation, the impact of the legislation on the economy and society, and at how this government has used the application of closure, I realize that this government is becoming more and more one that governs by corporate decision and that responds more to big business than to the wishes of the people who elected its members.
The government is going to use its majority here tonight, as we near the end of this session, to bring about changes that will cut the sitting days of this House and will deprive the members of this House of an opportunity

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to fully represent the wishes and needs of their constituents.
As I reflect on this package of real changes and on the cut in the number of sitting days involved, and as I look back on the last two and a half years and on the fact that closure has been consistently used by this government rather than allowing each member to speak and allowing full debate, I could not help but think back to about 35 years ago next month. I want to quote from Hansard of that time:
The first duty of Parliament is to remain a Parliament, not to become a subservient and ornamental body.
Parliament has a right that is certainly paramount to the convenience of the Prime Minister and has the right to live. It also has the duty to defend itself and to not allow anybody to invade its rights and privileges. It is the will of Parliament, not of the government, that is the will of the nation.
When the Prime Minister says he speaks for the whole country he is mistaking the echoes of his own words for the voice of the Canadian people. Parliament is and must remain the authorized exponent of public opinion and public will. The sovereignty of the people is delegated to the Parliament, not to the executive.
When I say Parliament, I mean the minority as well as the majority in Parliament. However, I do make an appeal to the Prime Minister that this Parliament and this institution should be a temple of freedom, not a place where frustration becomes a means whereby rights are swept aside and where rules are misinterpreted in order to achieve a temporary advantage.
Those words accurately reflect what we are seeing here today and were uttered by the late Rt. Hon. John Diefenbaker, who became Prime Minister. After a statement such as that, I wonder what he would say if he was here today and listened to this debate and saw the further erosion of the role of the members of this institution.
Closure was applied on three agriculture bills in second reading. First of all, we had the bill on plant breeders' rights. Let me tell you, the jury is still out on that one. The opposition insisted there were far too many years of protection and of the continued corporate acquisitions that are taking place in society today, and of the takeovers. We may well rue the day when we provided the legislative foundation for a few veiy powerful corporate structures to control the world's food chain.
Then, of course, the government applied closure to the Advance Payments of Crops Act and the Prairie Grain Advance Payments Act. We tried to tell the
government they were wrong and numerous witnesses in committee supported us in the Official Opposition, but rather than allow the adequate debate of second reading and, even worse, rather than listen to what we in the Official Opposition had to say, this government bulldozed ahead with their majority of trained seals, who actually believed their minister rather us on this side, who actually had the base of experience and knowledge of the industry.
If the members had listened to us in the Official Opposition they would not have suffered the embarrassment of having to reinstate those interest-free loans. That must have been a terrible embarrassment to them because they had to turn around and eat humble pie last fall due to the huge crop and the low prices of grain in Canada.
Not only was the government proven wrong and embarrassed, but their credibility has fallen to even further lows. Only experienced farmers can tell them what is going to happen, but perhaps it was fate itself that intervened and their embarrassment is certainly justified because of their unwarranted application of closure before all members on this side of the House had the opportunity to speak.
As if closure on the Advance Payments of Crops Act was not enough, the government applied closure again on Bill C-48, the Crop Insurance Act, when it came before this House. We again opposed it and they again invoked closure at second reading and again in committee. The witnesses all asked that the government not proceed with the legislation. Of course, that bill has now been replaced by the GRIP legislation or the safety net legislation.
That legislation has been flaunted as the greatest thing since sliced bread, but when I compare that program to the programs of the farmers in the country to the south of us I believe it will be found lacking. A safety net is slung just a little bit above the ground. It may cushion the landing somewhat, but it will not enable the farmers to survive continuing years of low prices. This is just another example of this government not listening to the Official Opposition or to the witnesses in committee.
We have another example: Bill C-26, the At and East legislation that eliminated the rail subsidy for grain being
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transported by rail into Atlantic Canada during the winter months when the St. Lawrence Seaway is closed.
Those people needed grain down there over the winter and they did not have storage in which to hold it all. This legislation was originally put in place to enable the railways to supply that grain in order to keep the Atlantic industry alive, their flour mills going, and their elevators in use.
We opposed that legislation at second reading, in committee, and at report stage. Do you know, I believe they finally realized when we reached report stage what a blunder would have resulted from this legislation. Not only were elevators and flour mills in Atlantic Canada faced with closing, but a huge loss of jobs and a traditional market for grain from western Canada would now be filled with grain from another country. What a blunder.
In fact, the elevators in the minister's own riding in Georgian Bay were demolished because of this ill-conceived legislation. The only good thing I can say about it is that the government apparently must have realized its blunder because it never brought that bill forward from Report stage for passage on third reading. I suspect the government is simply trying to avoid further embarrassment over the error of its ways. The damage was done and those elevators were demolished and it is doubtful whether they will ever be rebuilt.
Surely, if this government had listened to the opposition and had paid attention to our concerns instead of marching to the tune of the corporate elite and their idols to the south, it would not have approved the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement in its present form. The Conservatives would not be as embarrassed as they are now over the pork ruling that Carla Hills has rejected. They would have had a fairer agreement; one that would absolutely forbid the use of subsidies to steal our grain markets with export enhancement subsidies. Now they are so embarrassed that they have not been able to screw up enough courage to demand consultation, as provided for in the Free Trade Agreement, or to demand compensation for our grain producers, as provided for in that agreement, which they negotiated.
We have seen these things happen, as I have outlined here tonight. One would think that, rather than cut back on the number of sitting days, the government would
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have wanted to increase them in order to give the opposition more time to point out the blunders and mistakes in the legislation it has brought forward and to then amend that legislation, in keeping with the advice of the witnesses in committee and with the amendments proposed by the Official Opposition.
I am alarmed about the erosion of the role of the members of this House and of the democratic system of government that has served this nation so well since Confederation. With the problems facing this nation today, whether national unity, the economy, the millions of people who are out of work in this country, the state of affairs across rural Canada, the closing-down of our post offices, or the boarding-up of businesses in the small towns and villages across this nation, surely it is time this government should not be cutting back on the time permitted for Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Rather, we should be calling Parliament more often and it should be sitting more often to make sure the needs and aspirations of the people of this nation are adhered to.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, it is close to 10 p.m. on this Thursday, April 11. Canadian unity is in a state of crisis, our citizens are losing their jobs, agriculture is in serious difficulty, there is a 16.6 per cent unemployment rate in my riding, and the government has decided that the hottest topic for us to talk about is whether we should change our rules, to give ourselves more time off.
I wonder if the Canadians who are watching this debate tonight or who will read Hansard during the next few days will be impressed by the choice of subject of today's debate; a choice made, of course, by the government across the way.
As you and I know, Mr. Speaker, under our rules, the government brings forward the legislation we deal with. The House collectively decides how it disposes of the legislation.

Mr. Speaker, tonight we are talking abaut amending the Standing Orders in this difficult period when we could be talking about something else. Have you noticed, that when the House sits, when Parliament is debating hot issues, important issues of the day, it is rarely advantageous to the government? This is not peculiar to the period we are now in. I think that historically, when Parliament sits, having the House and its members

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question the government and hold it accountable certainly does not always make them popular for doing so.

I have in hand a public opinion poll dated March 21, 1991, which speaks of the level of popularity of the various political parties. Without making a diatribe about all of them, suffice it to say that, according to that particular poll, the present government had a popularity rating of some 16 per cent according to the Gallup organization.
It is no coincidence that the people are upset with governments that choose, in difficult times such as the one we are living in, to debate this particular issue instead of all the other issues that could be on the public agenda.
I have listened with attention to the member for Selkirk-Interlake, whom, of course, I respect very much. The member for Selkirk-Interlake always has a grass-roots approach to stating matters and I agree with many things he says. Tonight, though, I will have to part with some of his statements, such as when he remarked how we should modernize our so-called institution by removing some of the traditions we have. I will use the Speaker's attire as one and perhaps the Clerks attire, the Mace, and those other objects of tradition that we have.
They are not only part of a fetish we have for conserving old museum-like ideas, but represent in our parliamentary system 1,000 years of parliamentary democracy. Every one of those objects is a part of those traditions and every time we see those objects we remind ourselves of those years during which people fought to achieve the freedom we have.
That Mace on the table represents an ancient object that was not a decoration with which to represent authority, but something with which people would arm themselves. We all know there was also a time when that object was necessary for the physical protection of the institution.
Today, that object is still necessary, not because we want to club a member over the head with it, although I suppose that, from time to time, that temptation might arise on the part of some, but to remind ourselves of the fact that the Mace stands for those years when people fought to give us the freedom we now have.
The role of the opposition and of Parliament in this type of democratic institution is to debate. It is not a luxury to debate the important issues of our country. This is not the pure legislative chamber they have in certain democracies. I will use the example of the United States. It is partly that, of course, but it is also a place where we can raise the aspirations, the feelings and express the grievances of those who sent us here.
You might recall, and I say this to all colleagues in the House, a couple of years ago when Patrick Watson produced the television series entitled, I believe, The Struggle for Democracy. I watched that series very closely. In one episode they dealt with the October crisis of 1970. I watched attentively the interpretation of that particular episode.
It was interesting to note that Mr. Watson, when presenting this issue, was telling us that in 1970 the democratic rights of people were removed by the invocation of the War Measures Act, that this particular action was decided by the government and adopted, according to him, very quickly by the House of Commons with little debate.
I will not get into the issue as to whether or not the action was appropriate at that time. I happened to think that it was, but that is a subject we can debate at some other time. That is not the issue I am bringing to your attention. Mr. Watson was basically transmitting the message that the opposition and Parliament as a whole had not questioned the government properly, had not held the government to account, had not opposed in such a way as to make the government justify what it was doing. For that, according to him, the opposition was to blame, not the government, because it had failed in its duty to question. That is our job, to question the government.
Similarly, Mr. Watson made the same criticism of the press. They had not held the government to account as it is necessary to preserve democracy. It is not a foreign concept, it is the same in our courts. I am not a lawyer, but we watch how our courts operate, with both sides producing the most eloquent argument that they can for the position they strongly believe in.


Mrs. McDougall:: Some people better than others.
April 11, 1991


Don Boudria: Some people better than others, says the Minister of Employment and Immigration. Quite true, but the point is that the adversarial system in Parliament and in the courts has not exactly been wrong. As a matter of fact, I would like to think that it has been good. It has been good because we have been able, I, as an opposition member, and I speak with lots of experience because I have not sat on the government side yet-hopefully that will change soon-and other members as government members saying what they believe in. Ultimately the public reacts to our debates, the people listen to what we have to say, the media report what we have to say, editorials are formed, people's thoughts are gathered and eventually the process changes when it is not sufficiently appropriate to meet the expectations of people, or at least generally it does.
It is not perfect and, yes, there are days in which time goes by here and there is delay. I have seen a lot of that. I have seen that as an employee of this building, I have seen that as a member of this Parliament and I have seen that in my previous role as a member of a provincial legislature. But all of that process is not useless. The process is used to express the wishes and the aspirations of those who sent us here.
Governments have been known to change their minds about policies in the past. The opposition, and even government backbenchers, have raised important issues in this House repeatedly. Because people in the media have reported on those debates repeatedly, and because constituents have phoned their members of Parliament to express their opinion on what they heard, what had been said in the House and what had been reported in the media repeatedly, ultimately that has served us well.
It is a delicate balance that we have. I recognize that. Others in the past have recognized that. The rules of this House were changed some years ago, after the report of the Lefebvre committee, now Senator Lefebvre, who was a great member of this House. Senator Lefebvre chaired this committee which reported on proposed rule changes. The House decided to adopt the rules. The rules had been adopted unanimously at committee and the House decided to adopt them. They did not decide to adopt some and reject others, but they adopted the report.
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In the case of the McGrath rules, again a very distinguished member-a different political party, but nevertheless a man I have a lot of respect for-presided over a committee in the mid-1980s and again, we looked at what had been proposed and agreed to unanimously by the committee. But this time the government set off on a dangerous precedent.

And I said so then in the House, Mr. Speaker. The government chose parts of the McGrath Report to adopt and of course left out others. Fine. I said then, Mr. Speaker, that the government today chooses parts of a report. The precedent is there. From now on, whole reports will no longer be adopted. The government will change the rules as it sees fit, because the door had been opened to it that day and today is the second step. Today, we see a whole series of changes with which the opposition members of Parliament do not agree.

Those rules, unbalanced as they are, give advantage to the government, make the government less accountable. There are fewer Question Periods in which this government can justify to the people of Canada what it does and does not do for them. If that process makes a few bills pass more quickly, well, I suppose there will be two or three people, perhaps, who say is that not great, instead of passing 12 bills in a given period of time, they have passed 13 bills in that period of time. Does that in itself better serve the people of Canada? Are they not better served by perhaps one or two bills less being passed, since 85 per cent of them are passed unchallenged anyway. One Conservative member admitted to that earlier tonight.
If some of those bills are not passed because they are wrong, because the opposition indicated as much to the government, and because the people reacted, is that not better government? Is that not better for the people who sent us here? And is that not the reason why we were sent here, to serve our constituents, not to serve ourselves, or not to say when we retire or are defeated that under our particular stewardship, more legislation had been passed than the term before by some other government whose name the people will already have forgotten anyway? Is that not why we are here?

April 11, 1991
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Together with my colleagues, I do not approve of these rule changes. We do not approve of the fact that this time today, at this crucial period in our history, was utilized for no other purpose than to change the rules. The purpose of the change in the rules, of course, is to make the government less accountable. We do not think that is a proper thing to do. We will not agree to them.
Even at this late hour, I still have a very cautious little bit of optimism in me that perhaps I can convince the government to repent and to do the right thing. Let me give it one more opportunity by asking it to vote at least for the following proposition.
Therefore, I move:
That the amendment be amended by deleting the number "21" and
adding after the words "proposed amendment numbered 24" the
following:
* 'and by substituting for the words " 11.00 o'clock p.m. " the words "12.00 o'clock midnight" in proposed amendment numbered 21".


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I will recognize the hon. member for Chambly and have a look at the amendment.


Mr. Phillip Edmonston (Chambly):: Mr. Speaker, I too would like to speak against the Standing Order changes. I would like to speak from my experience of coming here just a little over a year ago.
I came into this Parliament with the desire to serve my constituents to the best of my ability-


An hon. member:: What a crock.


Philip Edmonston: I hear the cynicism of the other side because they say: "What a crock". I do not believe that to be a crock and I do not think it is fair to myself. Neither is it fair to other members who sincerely believe they are here to represent their constituencies.
I would like to mention that I believe in this Parliament. Maybe some of the other members here on the government side do not. If we take a look at the changes to the Standing Orders, we would see that they do not believe in Parliament.
The reason we have these proposed changes is because the government wishes to shoot the messenger rather than change its practices. All we have done is brought out, as an opposition should, facts and figures showing
where the government has made mistakes. No government is perfect. This one surely is not perfect.
As a reward for what we have been trying to do as good parliamentarians, where we normally have 175 days where we would have Parliament convene, we have now 134 days if these changes are passed. This will seriously affect our role in the opposition and I even think the role of government members because I believe that when the government members are sitting here in Parliament they are much more responsible to their constituents and to all Canadians.
That does not have that much to do with Question Period, because I do not believe that there are any real questions asked that often in Question Period. Perhaps the minister on the other side would agree there are not always that many answers which are forthcoming either.
There are some things that do occur during Question Period which I find to be very productive. I will give you and example, Mr. Speaker, of some of those things, as one of my colleagues would know doubt have asked me, if I heard him correctly. One of those examples is that we are able to discuss things with ministers many times behind these curtains in a much more expeditious way than sending letters or memos. Many times we have a false impression of what the government is doing without making a statement in the House. We can find out from the minister exactly what is going on and save him some trouble and save us some trouble. That is what I call democracy. I think, Mr. Speaker, you can easily say that is what is serving your constituents best.
When we reduce the sittings of the House from 175 to 134, we reduce the opportunity of people like myself, parliamentarians, to directly speak off the record with ministers who are here and resolve issues which are important to people in our riding.
I can give an example. I can mention the Minister of Transport, for example. I never brought this up in the House before now because I did not feel it was appropriate.
Much to the credit of the Minister of Transport, I contacted him during the period when the House was sitting just after Question Period and informed him of a problem that they were having at Dorval airport where some of the taxi drivers were taking pay-offs in order to get the most lucrative trips.
April 11, 1991

The minister saw to it that the system would be changed and that those taxi drivers would be put out of that dispatch service. There was no big question in the House, and there was no major brouhaha. He just competently attacked the problem, and I thank him for it.
If the House sits less frequently, these types of opportunities to bring problems and situations to the attention of the Minister of Transport or the other ministers will not come up as often. It is very difficult when we are dealing with letters, secretaries and the minister's assistant to the assistant to that assistant. It is almost a kind of jungle that we have to cut through. It is unfortunate and should not be that way if we are all parliamentarians. I find it works very well.
There are people who listen as well on the government side, not always, perhaps, but frequently enough that if we can grab them after Question Period, things work out all right.
That is particularly why I am distressed with these rule changes. We will not have as much of an opportunity as we had in the past.
I am also concerned about the committee system because I like participating in committees. The reason why I like doing that is because we have more than a one minute question that we can ask. We can foul it up, and the minister who is there can foul it up. Many times we can discover things that we would not normally discover during Question Period.
I recall just today questioning the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. I found it very interesting to learn that some of the people who were participating in writing a report on decriminalizing misleading advertising came from firms that had been guilty of misleading advertising. I never knew that, and the minister never knew that. He just found that out today.
That was not done in Question Period or in a press conference. That was done in the consumer affairs committee. I enjoyed that because it was informative and it was fun.
I am trying to think back to a committee that I found particularly enlightening. We are able to have one round of about 10 minutes when we can question the minister or any witness and we can follow it up with a second round of about five minutes. We can keep some flow and some continuity.
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I think that is the kind of thing that the McGrath committee wanted to maintain back in 1985. He was a Conservative, but he wrote a very good report dealing with making parliamentary members more effective.


Mr. McDermid:: What do you mean: "He was a Conservative, but he wrote a good report"? What is the inference?


Philip Edmonston: My hon. colleague asked me about the inference when I said he was a Conservative but he wrote a good report.
The fact is that I have seen very few good reports coming from this government. I have seen some, but I have seen very few. I would be willing to say that as much as there have been some good reports, most of them have not been very good.


An hon. member:: You are a socialist.


Philip Edmonston: It is not a question of socialism.
If we take a look at the committee system as it stands now, it is a pretty good system. It works very well as far as getting information out and resolving problems.
When we have the committee system as the changes propose we can only call technical witnesses. What is a technical witness? What is a technical witness supposed to do when we require information from someone such as a minister or minister's assistant, a consumer's group or a group that is responsible for helping to write a regulation, a standards making group. These people have a lot of information to give. To have a committee which can only call technical witnesses is unfortunate and it would really gut the committee system.
That is unfortunate as well for people who are used to being called before committees, for consumer groups that have had a chance many times to tell committees what they have learned on the barricades, as I call it, or in the real world and for people who can come before government and explain their side of a story without being called socialists or without being called partisan in any way. I think we need more of that and that we do not have that much of it in this Parliament.
In addition, we add all the activities of the past year wherein the government has not been very respectful of members' rights to dissent. With respect to closure motions, even now we will be entertaining a closure motion when it is actually being debated before the courts. It seems at the minimum to be a contempt of court action because it is presently sub judice, but we are still engaging in closure.

April 11, 1991
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I do not really think that is fair. I do not think it looks good to the rest of the Canadian public because I think they would like us to be here as well as in our ridings and, when we are here, to earn our money. I do not think we will be earning our money by reducing up to 20-some per cent of the time we are here when we should be here and we are reducing that time.
I have just one final remark. The government should understand that we in the opposition are only trying to better serve our constituents. We are only trying to make this place work correctly. By protesting these rule changes we are not trying to score cheap political points. We understand that there is a majority over there with this government. It is a majority which is abusing its majority status to stifle dissent, to stifle any information that can come in from our side which could help the government and particularly to prevent independent groups from having their views presented before a committee of Parliament.
Having been here only a year and having had to work much of my time in my riding because the former member from my riding was not there that often, I appreciate the chances I have when I do come here actually to participate in all the committees and in the House.
The problem is one of what kind of participation. Should we just sit here as a government would obviously want us to do and nod our heads in agreement? We cannot do that, not when the government is wrong, but we can do that when the government is right. However, there are other more meaningful things that we should be able to do in the committees as well as in Parliament.
My minister friend on the government side pipes up occasionally whenever I try to be generous with his side. I wish he would just perhaps open his ears sometimes and understand that I am not trying to score points with him or with the government. I am just simply trying to say things as I see them and to present in a matter of fact way or in a common sense way why these rules changes are going to work against the rights of the constituents that we are supposed to represent.
I do not think that there is an urgency to pass these rule changes right now. I believe that the system is not broken. There is no need to fix it. There is no urgency. There are a great deal of other problems that Canadians are expecting us to tackle. If we were to make a list of things that our constituents would want us to deal with, I believe that probably the economy would be number one. Perhaps the Constitution would be down to number five or six. Obviously unemployment would be very high up. Yet our constituents, Canadian voters who are watching us now, are a bit mystified as to why we are talking about rules changes and democracy and what they have to do with their everyday existence.
It has to do with democracy. It has to do with their representation either directly before committees or to this government through their elected representatives, those of us on the government side as well as those of us on the opposition side.
When these people see us on television discussing something into the wee hours of the morning-because I suspect we are going to be here that long-I am embarrassed that we have to be spending that time on a subject which seems to be of such arcane interest. Really, there are better things we could do with our time.


An hon. member:: We won't sleep.


Philip Edmonston: My colleague says that we will not sleep. I do not think we will have time to sleep. We have some interesting debates coming up later on.
Why not look at the other issues before we look at changing the Standing Orders? Why do we have to deal with this right now? Surely there are enough things on our plate with which to deal without having to bore to a certain extent the viewers and listeners with what the government has imposed upon us.
We will probably have three or four more hours of debate. Then the government will just cut it off. That is very typical of this government.
They say that it is part of democracy, just as ramming through the GST, cutting off debate and cutting down the committee system. Yet, what did they do when a Conservative fellow presented a good report dealing
April 11, 1991

with the committee system back in 1985? I knew Mr. McGrath personally.


An hon. member:: We are improving it.


Philip Edmonston: I do not believe they are improving it. I believe that when we have this House management committee, for example, it will actually decide which committees meet. That strikes at the very heart of the McGrath report which wanted the committees to have as much independence as possible.
I am not going to go into all the jargon of why this is wrong. Most people will see that it is wrong and that this government has had a very bad year. It is reeling from its almost single digit polling result and desperately wants to cut off dissent. Temporarily this government will be able to reduce dissent, but it will not be able to cut it off.
It is all the more surprising-I remember watching television-when the Conservative Party was storming the Chair, complaining about its rights being abused, making the bells ring, engaging in all sorts of extra-parliamentary and parliamentary opposition. It was kind of guerrilla warfare. Today, when that party is in government, the hypocrisy is that it is doing exactly what they accused the Liberals of doing for so long, and that is what I call hypocrisy.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I have had an opportunity to look at the amendment to the amendment and I find it in order.


Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, I am really pleased to take part in this debate. We all know the Government House Leader has tabled a motion to amend the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, after a series of fruitful discussions with members of all parties-Liberals, New Democrats and Conservatives. The series of reforms includes in particular changes to the schedule and to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons so that it can do business more expeditiously. I would like to give a few statistics about changing the parliamentary calendar.
The present parliamentary calendar provides for 175 sitting days. The average number of sitting days in 1991 is 155. The new calendar provides for 134. The calendar always provided for an average of 155 days or 881 hours a year. The new calendar provides for 134 days or 897
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hours a year. I would like to mention how many days other legislatures sit. Let us take provincial and territorial governments for a period of three or four years: the Yukon Territory, 39 days; New Brunswick, 42 days; Prince Edward Island, 45 days; the Northwest Territories, 51 days; Newfoundland, 59 days; Nova Scotia, 62 days. Alberta, 73 days; Quebec, 74 days; Saskatchewan, 79 days; Ontario, 84 days; British Columbia, 89 days; Manitoba, 98 days.
I could also give some statistics for Canadians who often ask us for figures, especially my constituents. Australia, as my colleague from Laval-Est has said 77 days in 1991. The U.S. House of Representatives sat 144 days, or 814 hours, a year on average from 1961 to 1989. In the United Kingdom, they sit 170 days on average.
Mr. Speaker, the new schedule will enable members to divide their time better between their parliamentary obligations and their obligations to their constituents, thus meeting their constituents' desire for more direct contact with their member of Parliament.
Although the reform provides for fewer sitting days, the number of hours per day will increase.
The situation today is very different from what it was when the Standing Orders of the House were written. These days, members are asked to be in their ridings more often and on the other hand, Parliament requires more of them.
The changes made to committees respond to members' desire for a better adapted and more efficient structure of standing committees and a clearer distinction between standing and legislative committees.
The committees of the House will belong to one of five categories, each with four or five standing committees and two legislative committees. Members will thus be able to hone their knowledge in areas covered by the various committees in a given category, because the substitution rules will be more flexible.
The proposals also contain a provision to allow cameras in committee meetings with the approval of a majority of members. The government proposes that the House of Commons accept the recommendations from the Committee on Privileges and Elections regarding the process for Private Members' Business, which will en-

April 11, 1991
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able ordinary members to present more bills and motions.
Mr. Speaker, Parliament's task is to debate issues and to make decisions and the Standing Orders of the House guide this process. They govern the proceedings of the House and establish a framework in which the government carries out its legislative program and the opposition holds it accountable. They were designed so that Parliament could do business in an orderly way and members could debate issues and make decisions by majority vote.
The modification to the Standing Orders before Parliament is the result of a year of discussions and great co-operation among the House leaders. It is the most important series of changes proposed in the modern history of the Canadian Parliament.
Mr. Speaker, with the proposed schedule, the House will sit on average 134 days per year, as opposed to an average of 155 days over the past 10 years. But the members are expected to sit approximately the same number of hours during the year. The changes to the schedule will give the members, especially those from the West and the Northwest Territories as well as from Northern Quebec and Ontario, more flexibility in planning the time they can spend in their riding. Government policies and legislation are more complex and Canadians show an interest in an increasing number of issues.
While the opposition can use an attendance reporting system and not have to worry about keeping most of its members in Ottawa these changes will help all members to fulfill their obligations in Parliament and their ridings, so that both Parliament and constituents receive all the attention and services they deserve.
Mr. Speaker, I listened to the speech the hon. member for Manicouagan made today about the difficulty of serving a huge riding. The riding of Manicouagan covers
450.000	square kilometers. My riding of Abitibi covers
550.000	square kilometers, with a population of 85,000, and it is hard indeed. We spend a lot of time here, in Ottawa. As my records show, and the hon. members are welcome to check, I am often present during the week, but when the week-end comes, we leave on Friday evening, spend Saturday and Sunday working in our riding, then come back to Ottawa. We have huge ridings.
For many summer is a time for hollidays. But we Northerners head out North, in Northern Quebec, in particular in the Nunavik area, to visit the Inuits and Crees and work with them to find solutions to their problems. It is the same thing for the member for Manicouagan, because we cannot get away when the Parliament is sitting.
The opposition parties are fortunate. Both the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party had their leadership convention in the past few years. We know there is a secret pact between them. It is rumoured in town and at home. It is a "one third, one third, one third" system. We saw it in action today, during the vote. There is one political party in this House that I will not mention which had only 18 members present out of 44 tonight to vote on this important motion. However, another party opposes the rule changes and that is the Liberal Party. Today, out of 81 Liberal members, only 44 were present. Mr. Speaker, with the "one third, one third, one third" system, we notice which members are often in Ottawa. We look across the room and wonder where the members have gone. We know why that is. They spend two weeks a month in their riding, and as many as three in some instances, because they do not need to stay here, so they can travel. Now they refuse a change which would give us, the members from large ridings, the opportunity to spend a week in our ridings to meet with our constituents.
Earlier today, I heard the member for Hamilton East say that we had met, that is true, on our way to the Senate for the royal assent and that I told her that I would be happy to go and spend one week per month in my riding for a working holiday. Upon our return to the House, she forgot the word "working" and mentioned only the word "holiday". That is pure partisanship! But when she went away for the leadership convention, she was away for a long time. It was not mentioned in the House at the time, but now we can pursuant to the rules.
Mr. Speaker, it is very important that we spend one week per month in our ridings. When I go back to my riding on Friday night, 50 weeks or so every year, I often work Saturday morning and afternoon to meet with my constituents or travel up North. I sometimes drive 400 or even 800 kilometers in one day and a half during the week-end to Matagami or Lebel-sur-Quevillon. I have a huge riding.
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That is why we must have the opportunity to return home because it is important. Therefore, I will vote in favour of that motion, those amendments.
There is another thing that I would like to say to you. The other day, I noticed that three opposition members, three liberal members were away on a trip to Taiwan in the middle of a budget period, when it was most critical to be here if they wanted to take the government at task for that budget. But they chose rather to accept the invitation of Taiwan Chambre of Commerce to go there, all expenses paid. In other words, during the budget debate, those three liberal members, and I would like to mention the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott- Russell most specifically, who were here today criticizing the government and saying how important it is to be in Ottawa, were absent that very week.
Mr. Speaker, I have another thing to say to you, namely that your servant the member for Abitibi and several of my colleagues from the province of Quebec want to obtain the privilege that Liberal and NDP members already have to go away one week a month. I will vote for these amendments, for the people back home, for the population of Abitibi.


Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to participate in this debate for the second time this evening, especially after the speech by the hon. member for Abitibi. I must tell the House that it is the fourteenth time this government has cut off debate on government bills or motions in this House since the 1988 election.
It is absolutely horrible, Mr. Speaker, that a government can be so-what is the word?


An hon. member:: Ridiculous!


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Ridiculous, yes, that is possible, ridiculous by moving this motion once again. I am sorry to hear it and after rereading the details of the closure motions that the government has brought in this House, I am proud to take the floor to denounce the government for it.
Mr. Speaker, at the end of my speech in this debate yesterday, the hon. parliamentary secretary to the Solicitor General of Canada asked a question during the period for questions and comments.
He said:
I would just like to ask the member, who understands rules and procedure veiy well, why he chose to give us a history lesson instead of dealing with the technical difficulties he sees in the rule changes. Why would he do that when we are debating rule changes, and he does not deal with that?
Mr. Speaker, I am sorry that the hon. member is not here tonight. I hope that he is watching the debate on television; otherwise he may read it tomorrow in Hansard.

Perhaps I could switch to the other official language. The hon. parliamentary secretary is really going to miss something because I want to go through the details of the changes that the government has proposed to the Standing Orders. Before I do, I want to say something about the use of closure by the government.
The government has given notice of closure. It gave notice of closure yesterday and so we are debating this motion under the closure rule. As of the end of yesterday, 13 hours and 9 minutes had been spent discussing this motion. One hour and 58 minutes of the time spent on the discussion was spent by the Speaker having to read the motion out to the House. We can thank the members of the New Democratic Party for their great co-operation and brilliant tactics in forcing that rather childish episode on the House. They insisted that the Speaker read this motion instead of waiving the right, dispensing as we call it here, of the reading in order to delay the House and obstruct the proceedings of this House. They really should be hiding their heads in shame at this particular moment for that tactic. It was really childish and silly.
However, take that away and we have 11 hours of debate on this motion and the government is up on its hind legs proposing closure. The parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, who is the mastermind behind this scheme, knows perfectly well he put the deputy House leader up to it, and after a very reasonable speech, the poor hon. gentleman went off giving notice of closure in another disgraceful episode, number 14 in this Parliament. Who knows how many more times we are going see it because the government has indicated clearly that its view is that matters should be debated for a very brief time.

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So we had basically 11 hours of debate on a major set of rule changes. The Minister of State for Privatization yips away over there that there was lots of consultation. Sure there was lots of consultation, but it never went to a committee. Every major rule change that we have ever had to deal with in this House is a product of a committee report and this one is not. It is the first time the House has been subjected to major changes, certainly in the last 34 years, without a major committee report.
I want to go back to 1969.1 mentioned this debate the other day in the course of my speech when major changes that imposed the time allocation rules in this House were adopted. That debate went on for 12 days: July 8, 9,10,11,14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22 and 24, 1969. Closure was moved on the 24th. There were a total of 38 hours of debate before the debate came to an end on that particular change of rules. What a contrast.
Here we have a government which has no particular legislative agenda at the moment, is in no need to rush us out of this House and yet is just absolutely convinced that the only way it can continue to run the country is to get the members of the opposition out of Ottawa, close this place down and get us away so that it does not have to listen to the criticisms of its dreadful policies.


Ralph Ferguson: They want to avoid Question Period.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: They want to avoid Question Period, they want to avoid criticisms of their policies, they want to avoid everything.
Let me turn to the rule changes themselves. This may be a little technical and perhaps a little tedious, but I think it might be helpful, particularly to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General who was clearly very unhappy that I did not go through this the other day. So, to please him, I am happy to do so.
The first thing in the rule changes that we have opposed, and is opposed in our amendment, is the schedule that the government has suggested: three weeks on and one week off. I do not want to claim that it is always three and one; in some cases there are four weeks on and one away; fives weeks on and one away; and occasionally six. But there is clearly more time away than has been the case in the past. The number of sitting days is reduced to 134 from 175.
As members of the opposition we object to that. We feel that Parliament should be here more, not less, so that criticisms of government policies can be made, so the opposition can do its duty in calling the government to account. That is our principal objection to the policy.
We acknowledge, and I think that all hon. members will acknowledge, that more time with constituents is not in itself a bad thing and, indeed, many of us are quite happy to spend time in our ridings. But we were elected to serve in this House. We feel that is our primary obligation and we are prepared to meet that obligation.
Second, the government is proposing a change in the rules relating to petitions. Instead of unlimited time for their presentation, the government has put a maximum of 15 minutes on them. I have got to point out that if you take a quick look at the statistics for the period from April 1989 to February of this year, that is almost a two-year period, the average time per day on presentation of petitions in this House was eight minutes. Yet the government was so offended by members presenting petitions, because of course the petitions were so damaging to the government and its dreadful policies, that it felt it had to put a limit on it so we could not obstruct government business. It has insisted on a 15-minute time limit on petitions. That is the change in the rules in relation to those.
Then there is the issue of quorum. The quorum of this House at 295 members is 20 and it has been 20 for years and years, in fact since 1867. The House has grown in size since 1867 but the quorum has not increased. Yet this government with 160-odd members-it has had some defections I know, people are jumping off like rats from a sinking ship-cannot maintain a quorum in this House. In fact, the government decided that what it would do is change the quorum rules so that if there is a loss of a quorum on a day, instead of losing the item of business and having to reinstate it with a vote the next day, it would simply automatically have it go on to the Order Paper. That is the rule it has proposed and which we have suggested should be excised from this package. In other words there is no particular damage done if a quorum is not here on a particular day.
The only time there has been a lack of quorum in this Parliament was one Friday, a supply day. There was a quorum call and the government pulled all its members. The government Whip thought he would pull a trick. He said: "This is an opposition day", little realizing that opposition days are devoted to government business, the business of supply. So he pulled all his members and had them stay in the lobby. They did not come in and the House was adjourned for the want of a quorum. There they were on Monday morning with no business of supply on the Order Paper, and they looked so stupid. They were clearly embarrassed. The Whip was red-faced. The government House leader was embarrassed. He had to
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move the business of supply again and have a vote and put it on the Order Paper. It took up about an hour of time.
I can understand why they would want to change the rule after such a humiliating experience, but it was generated by their own folly. It was an unbelievable exercise.


Don Boudria: It actually happened?


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: It actually happened and it was their own stupidity and they blamed the opposition for that. They say: "The opposition is calling quorum on us all the time. Why should we have to keep 20 members in the House?" That is the argument they are putting forward. They have 160. Surely it is not too much to expect 20 of them to be here.
Then they have cut back on the throne speech. Eight days debate on the throne speech was too long. Since I was elected in November, 1988, we have not completed more than one throne speech. We had a throne speech in December 1988 for the short session that dealt with free trade. We debated it for a day and went on to the free trade debate and that was that. We never went back to it. The session of Parliament was prorogued. Then the second session started and we had a full eight-day debate on that. Apparently eight days was too long for this government. Their members obviously were not interested in discussing its policies because after all it is government policy that is announced in the throne speech.


An hon. member:: But there wasn't much in that speech.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: The hon. member for Saskatoon-Dun-dum says: "You can't blame them. I wouldn't want to debate the policies either. They are such a disaster".
Nevertheless, at least from their point of view, what they did was say that they want to cut that back; eight days is too long; six days will do. And so there is the rule change.
They did exactly the same thing with the budget, so I do not have to repeat myself; six days reduced to four.
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"We do not want to debate the budget too long, it is too embarrassing. The opposition is able to turn up too many problems, too many bad policies in our budgets if they are allowed to debate for six days. We will cut them back, we will cut it down to four days."
It was exactly the same thing with supply days. To have 25 supply days in a year is too many. The opposition can raise 25 embarrassing subjects; 25 embarrassing debates. The government looks stupid, the government looks incompetent, the government looks like it is blundering. They say: "We do not want that; we want to look good. So if we do not have those debates, we can introduce our own bills and discuss those instead. We will not look quite so bad". That is the attitude of the Tory government and that is what it has done. It has cut the supply days from 25 back to 20.
Then there is the closure rule. They moved closure tonight. I see the hon. member for North Vancouver, the chairman of the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections, does not enjoy my speech. I can understand why. He must find this very embarrassing. He should have had these rules referred to his committee. Then we would have had a decent discussion and had some public input on it. Unfortunately, his government would not co-operate with him to get them referred to committee. I am sorry he was unable to achieve that.
Curtailing debate or closure. Here we have a closure rule imposed on us today under Standing Order 52. For years and years and years, I think since the 1920s, the time for the adjournment on a closure debate was one o'clock in the morning. And so we will go until 1 a.m. or very close to it, tonight. But now the government says: "Oh, no, that is too late for our members. We cannot expect them to be in the House of Commons at 1 a.m. even if we choose to impose closure". It should be an inconvenience to the House to impose such a Draconian rule as the closure rule, but not to this government. It said: "No, we will just change the rules and move the time back to 11 p.m. It is much easier to finish at 11 p.m. That will make a shorter debate, and we do not mind cutting the debate back, cutting the opposition off on its chances of chastising and condemning our disastrous policies". So the government cut it back by two hours.

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The hon. member for Ottawa Centre says, quite correctly, they should blush for that, and I quite agree.
Then we have the time allocation rule. The government decide that time allocation rules are too generous. What is the rule now, for those on the other side who have forgotten? The rule is that if they cannot get agreement with the opposition, they may propose a motion to limit the time for debate. The motion is debatable for two hours and thereafter the government may allow within the motion for not less than one full day of debate.
The government has cut away the two-hour debate. That is gone. No two hours of debate to condemn the government for moving time allocation. Then the additional day can be the same day it proposed its motion In other words, it has saved itself 24 hours out of the time allocation process. It has become a more Draconian rule than it was before.
How many times has the government used time allocation in this Parliament? Eight times. Fourteen times for closure, eight times for time allocation. Twenty-two times it has cut off or curtailed debate in the course of this Parliament. It is a record. No government ever before has been this Draconian in its treatment of Parliament, this high-handed in its treatment of this House.
Then we turn to curtailment of debate on third reading of bills. What was the previous rule? The first member speaking for the government had unlimited time. The second member speaking from the opposition had unlimited time, and thereafter all members had 20 minute speeches with 10 minutes of questions and comments. What is the new rule? It is 40 minutes for the government, 40 minutes for the opposition, five hours of time with 20-minute speeches and then 10-minute speeches thereafter with no questions or comments. That is the new rule, shorter, curtailed debate. Limit the opposition, cut them off, make everything squeezed up so it happens faster. We are not going to have any protracted debates anymore on second or third reading of any government bill because this government is trying to shut the opposition up. That is the effect of its rule change.
As the hon. member for Lambton-Middlesex says, it is the suppression of democracy.
Finally, we have the borrowing bill.
After cutting the budget debate from six days to four, it then proposed to limit the debate on the borrowing bill to two days. Everyone knows the borrowing bill is the government's instrument by which it borrows billions and billions of dollars from the Canadian public. It gives the government the authority to borrow this money.
Clearly, it is a bill on which members may want to speak and address the general financial policies of the government. It is considered an extension in many cases of the budget debate, but it does not have to be. It could be moved on its own.
Yet, this government has included a rule that limits debate on the borrowing bill at second reading to two days. There is no need for closure or anything. It is just two, short, ordinary days in this House.
In this pile of changes, every single one is designed for one purpose; that is, to reduce the opportunities to the opposition to participate and criticize the government in this House. I know that every change on its own is relatively minor. The parliamentary secretary knows what I am saying is true. I know he wants to agree with me, but he is reluctant.
If he agreed with me, he would be in the Prime Minister's bad books. What we have here is a situation where each of these small changes, minor perhaps in itself in each case, adds up to a significant and substantial curtailment of the rights of the members of this House, particularly those in the opposition who want to criticize the government.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General wanted a detailed explanation of the changes. I hope that the speech I have given tonight has explained those changes in detail. Each of the changes I have listed was contained in the original amendment that we proposed to the government motion. We are asking that the government consider adopting this and scrapping those particular changes.
The others, we can live with. We do not like them all, but we can live with them.
There is one other that we have offered a change on. The subamendment that has been moved tonight is on the closure rule. We are willing to compromise.
Again, I hope that the parliamentary secretary will go out into the lobby to plead with the Prime Minister to make a change in this in particular and agree to the subamendment. Instead of ending the closure debate at one o'clock in the morning, we have agreed to move it
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back to twelve o'clock midnight in order to help the government along and give us at least one extra hour of debate over what it is proposing.
I know that the parliamentary secretary does not mind staying up until midnight. I am sure he could convince some of his colleagues to do the same. Then, perhaps we would have at least the opportunity to get one additional hour when the government, on its own volition-and only a minister of the Crown can do this-moves closure.
It is a government initiative. If the government chooses to use closure, surely it is the one that should know it has to be here until 1 a.m. Not this government. It wants to end it at 11 p.m. We are prepared to compromise. We will saw off at 12 p.m. and carry on in that way. I think it is a reasonable compromise. I hope that the parliamentary secretary will deal with his colleagues and convince them of the rightness of our thoughts.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I regret that the hon. member's time has expired.


Hon. Warren AUmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace):: Mr. Speaker, I am extremely pleased to participate in this important debate.
After 25 years in this House, I feel I have some insight into the value of the rules and the purpose of those rules in attaining the goals of Parliament.
If we are going to evaluate these proposed rule changes that are before us, we have to evaluate them alongside the traditional goals of Parliament to see if the rules are appropriate in meeting those goals.
What are the goals of Parliament that have been pretty well agreed to by experts over the years? We must remember that Parliament, as a body, is now over 700 years old. It developed in. Britain and in other Commonwealth countries as time went on.
The principle purpose of Parliament is, first of all, to scrutinize legislation. I say that in recognition of the fact that most legislation-about 90 per cent-that is presented in this House is presented by the government. It is only a small percentage that is put forward by the opposition because that is the way things work.
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The government controls House time. One of the most important roles of Parliament is to scrutinize the legislation of the government.
Another important role is to scrutinize the administration of the government, whether the government is administering this country and the legislation of this country in an efficient way, in a sensitive way, in a way that is appropriate and meets the needs of the Canadian people. That is another important role.
A third important role of Parliament is to scrutinize the spending programs of the government. There is much concern in the country today about the large deficit, the large national debt, as to whether money is being spend wisely or not. Another important role of Parliament is to scrutinize the spending programs of the government.
Fourth and probably last is the role in scrutinizing new taxation proposals. Of course we went through a lot of that last year in attempting to scrutinize the government's proposals for the new GST, goods and services tax.
How do we go about doing the scrutinizing? We do it through debate by presenting opposing views, by picking holes in the legislation, by asking the government to explain. However, and this relates to one of the changes proposed by the government, in order to properly scrutinize long complex legislation-and legislation today is often long and complex; the bill on the goods and service tax was very long and complicated-it takes time.
As I said over and over again, the debate in this House is not necessarily to convince members on the other side of our arguments. The purpose of debate in this House, especially through the use of the media and television, is to convince the Canadian people of our arguments, to make an impact on public opinion outside this House. Then the public can go back and say to the government: "Look, we know you have a big majority in Parliament, but through the debate in the House of Commons we see that there is weakness in that legislation. We see that that legislation is bad for the Canadian people. We want you to change it". Then maybe you do get changes.
We have seen changes in legislation over the years because public opinion was aroused, but you cannot

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bring matters to the attention of public opinion if you are only going to have a one-day debate or a two-day debate or if you use closure over and over again so that you do not really get into the subject matter of legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I must say-and you would know this because you have been here a good deal of time yourself-that very often it is only after the second or third or fourth look at a piece of complicated legislation that you see new aspects, that you see things you did not see the first time that could be very harmful to the Canadian public.
We do the scrutinizing, first of all, through debate. We do it by proposing amendments. That means we must have sufficient time to propose amendments. We do it through questions in the Question Period. We do it through questioning after the various speeches of members in this House. A good reform was brought in a couple of years ago which allowed for a 10-minute question period after each member's speech to make him accountable for the things that he said. Before we had that particular provision, members very often got away with saying all sorts of wild and silly things. Nobody could pick them up on it.
It is true that at that time we could beg the permission of the member to ask a question, but if he refused nothing could be done about it. Now it is written into the rules and that is a good thing. That is another way we hold people accountable for what they say.
We also do the scrutinizing of legislation, of administration, of spending programs and of taxes through the committee systems. In the committee system we are supposed to go into greater detail than we are able to do in this particular Chamber.
The other advantage of course that we have in the committees is that we can invite experts of all kinds to come in and comment on the legislation and can crossexamine them, and there is more informal procedure.
By this system, by these tools, we are supposed to do our job. I might say that Parliament has been able to do this more effectively when there are minority governments.
I know there are down sides on minority governments, but when we have minority governments-and on three occasions while I have been here we have had minority governments: in 1965, my first election, in 1972 and in
1979-the government is hostage to the House, has to respond to the elected representatives of the people, and cannot get away with ramming things through. They always have to get the agreement of one of the opposition parties and maybe two of the opposition parties.
In assessing these rules we cannot assume that we are always going to have majority Parliaments such as we had following the 1984 and 1988 elections; large majorities in both cases. But we have to make the rules, keeping in mind that we will also have minority Parliaments. If the political situation continues as it is today, according to the polls, we are likely to have a minority Parliament after the next election. Right now there are five parties in this country which are doing very well in the polls, and this could result in a minority Parliament.
I said there were down sides to minority Parliaments. Sometimes elected representatives of the people put pressures on the government that it does not like to have. On the other hand, it makes the government very responsive to the elected representatives of this country and every member counts, even on the government side. I was on the government side in minority Parliaments and more attention was paid to me then as a new member than much later when we had a majority, because they needed to convince me that every bill was right. They had to do that with all members of the House.
Another thing that is necessary in making Parliament effective is a proper flow of information to members of Parliament as opposed to government members. When I say "government members", I basically mean cabinet. If backbenchers on the government side and especially members of the opposition are going to properly lock horns with ministers who have huge public services to serve them in their departments-offices filled with assistants, researchers, economists, sociologists and statisticians-if we are going to properly challenge ministers, we need to have enough information on our side. That is why it is important that the committee system function properly and that we get the right experts before those committees.
It is also important that we have a properly financed and operating parliamentary library with a parliamentary research staff and that we also have enough proper staff in our offices. It means that members should have an opportunity to get back to their constituencies to talk with the people in their ridings in order to get feedback
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on the different proposals put forward by the government.
I referred to the goals of Parliament and the tools we need to accomplish those goals. Now let us look at the rule changes being put forward by the government to see if it will really advance those goals or not.
In the first place they will reduce the number of weeks that we sit in a year by eight weeks. Parliament will sit eight fewer weeks than we do now according to these rule changes. What does that mean? It means that we will have 40 fewer Question Periods, 40 fewer times to question the ministers, to hold them accountable, to make them answer as to why they are doing this with respect to their administration and why they are doing that, why are they spending money this way or that way. We will have 40 fewer times to question the government in Question Period.
It also means we will have less opportunity to debate bills, to put opposing views, and less time to refer matters to committee. It is true that the committees might sit when the House is not sitting, as they do now, but things have to be referred to committees.
From my experience what happens when we shorten the timetable of the House. I said I allow for the fact that we need sufficient time in our constituencies, but I think this is going too far. That particular measure to shorten the parliamentary timetable so that we sit fewer weeks does not help us accomplish the goals of Parliament.
Next, these new proposals before the House would shorten the specialized debate and shorten the budget debate. The budget debate now, according to the rules, should go for at least six days. It would shorten that to four days. The speech from the throne debate, in which we discuss the general policy of the government, would be shortened from eight to six days; again less time for members of this House.
One must remember that this is a very large country from Victoria, British Columbia, from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland, from Windsor to the Northwest Territories, and that there are problems which differ from region to region.
The fact that maybe 10 Liberals are able to speak and 5 NDP members are able to speak does not mean that we have a proper view with respect to legislation. Of the 10 or 15 Liberals who might speak 5 may come from Ontario, 2 from Quebec, and there may be only 1 or 2 from the outer reaches, from the Atlantic area or from the west.
Because of the kind of country we have, we need those eight days to debate the general policy of the country. We need those six days to debate the budget, which has impacts in various parts of this country and on different communities.
Also, they would reduce opposition days from 25 to 20. Let me explain for Canadians who do not quite understand. How we spend the time in this House is decided by the government. Except for the Question Period each day when we are allowed to ask questions for 45 minutes, the government decides whether it is going to call bill a, bill b or bill c. If it wants to avoid a controversial measure it can very well do so. For example, if it has found that bill a has provoked a lot of criticism in the country, it can avoid it altogether and call bill b and it can then call bill c.
The opposition, although the government consults with the opposition, has no power in determining government bills, the business debated in the House. In order to compensate for that, we have had 25 opposition days where the opposition can decide on the subject matter to be debated whether or not it is embarrassing to the government. On some of those opposition days we can demand a vote of confidence or just a vote on the subject matter of the opposition motion.
The government is going to reduce that from 25 to 20 days. Again, how does this meet the goals of Parliament as I described them? Next it will cut the length of speech time. For second and third readings of bills, after five hours the time would be cut in half, from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Mr. Speaker, and you would know this as an experienced member of this House, there are many issues that you cannot deal with in 10 minutes.
I can recall very well, in trying to put the arguments forward with respect to the abolition of capital punishment, that there was no way that I could deal with all the arguments for that particular controversial measure and at the same time in my speech deal with the arguments

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raised against so that I could rebut those arguments. There is no way one can do it in 10 minutes.
I know that we have had 10-minute speeches at the end of debates for a certain time, but this is going much further. As I say, it will restrict members of the House to properly scrutinize the government's legislation, to properly scrutinize its administration, its spending program and its taxes. Again, I do not see how that change meets the goals of Parliament.
The government is also putting forward new rules that would facilitate the use of the guillotine. The guillotine is another type of closure, a way of closing off debate. I have to remind you, Mr. Speaker, and the Canadian people that this government has used closure and the guillotine more since 1984 than it has been used by all governments since Confederation. Since 1984 it has closed down debate by the use of closure and guillotine more from 1984 to this date in 1991 than was the case from 1867 to 1984.
On many occasions we only had two or three days of debate on very important bills. Then I can remember in the committee on the unemployment insurance bill, which was again a massive social change for this country, the government put closure on the length of time the committee could sit and listen to witnesses. Of course, we had to turn down many people and many groups who wanted to participate in that discussion because they were going to be hurt very much by the cutbacks to the unemployment insurance system.
As my colleagues have said, there are some positive things in these rule changes. On the whole, the purpose of these changes are to cut back the rights of Parliament, and in particular the opposition, in scrutinizing legislation. It also hurts the government backbenchers. If we sit less, we have shorter speeches. A government backbencher wants to put on the record the views of his area, of his constituency or of his region with respect to a bill, whether he comes from northern Ontario, Cape Breton, northern Saskatchewan or from a big city like Vancouver. He may not have the opportunity to do so and, if he does get the opportunity, he only has 10 minutes. It not only hurts opposition members but it also hurts government members. They will learn it because they may very well be in opposition after the next election. They will be extremely saddened by what they are trying to do tonight by the use of closure, again ramming through these rule changes.
The rules of Parliament traditionally have been developed by consensus. In this case that was not done. The rules of this place, unlike ordinary legislation because ordinary legislation can be divided along great policy lines, great philosophical lines, should be based on a consensus. It is not always easy to get unanimous agreement so it should be based on consensus.
I see that I have three minutes left. There are things that could be done which might radically change the face of this House and make it a really effective Parliament in which to do the sorts of things I referred to at the beginning of my remarks. I personally believe that if we change the rules so that a government could not fall unless there was a specific want of confidence motion or a specific motion put down by the Prime Minister that Parliament be dissolved, we would get amendments to legislation, improvements to legislation, which would be beneficial to the Canadian people.
If as members of Parliament both on the government side and on the opposition side we knew that we could sometimes defeat legislation without defeating the government, that we could amend government legislation without defeating the government, I think we would have better legislation. It would be an end to that old rule, that old tradition, that old convention we have that every time we defeat a government bill or we radically change a government bill the government must resign and seek a new election. I think the day of threat that the government has of dissolving Parliament if we do not support its legislation should be over. There should only be an election if the opposition very purposely puts a clear motion of want of confidence in the government. The government should only be able to dissolve Parliament if it puts before the House a motion to dissolve Parliament and go to the people.
It is true that if it has a majority it will easily pass that, but that is what we would be debating. For example, let me refer to the bill whereby the government decided to count as income for unemployment insurance severance pay and retirement income, which a lot of members on that side did not like as well. I can remember the member for Annapolis Royal and other members opposed the legislation. We would have been able to amend that legislation and make it better legislation. I think it would have been better for the government in the long run. The former Minister of Employment and Immigration lost her seat in Kingston basically because of that particular legislation. There were a lot of former public servants, members of the RCMP, of the correc-
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tional service and so on, who just did not like that legislation.
There are many things that could be done. For example, with respect to the length of speeches, if we had a rule somewhat similar to that of the United States where at the end of your time-and let us say the time is 20 minutes as it is now-you had not finished your speech, you would be able to table a paragraph on the record to complete the speech. I think that would be very helpful.
I see that my time is up. Let me simply conclude by saying that most of these rule changes that are being proposed to this House will not help Parliament do the job that it is supposed to do for the Canadian people. This package of rules changes is just another knife in the back of democracy.


Mr. Ron Fisher (Saskatoon-Dundurn):: Mr. Speaker, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to be speaking on this motion in this debate. Within a couple of hours it is going to be arbitrarily passed, because of course of the motion of closure. This may very well mark one of the last 20-minute speeches that many of us will be making in this Parliament, including myself, as this legislation goes through.
There have been all kinds of references to the rules in this House, references to some of the more minor ones, references to some of them which are more profound.
I had a very interesting experience with some of the rules of the House in the wee small hours of the morning during the debate on the gulf war. I will get to that in a minute. I committed a breach, within a very short period of time, of two rules of this House which the present Clerk reminded me of at the time, and I thank him very much for that. Actually, if you break the rules once you get a warning, if you do it twice, there is a penalty. I will not go into a description of what the penalties are, but if anyone cares to ask me-if anybody is watching on television, as I am sure they are, they were certainly watching at 3.30 in the morning in the middle of January-what the penalties are I will be only too pleased to let them know.
On the surface of it, it would seem that those two rules were rather trivial and yet, if one looks at what they
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represent in this House, they are very profound as well. The first rule I broke was to walk down the aisle between what was, at that time, Madam Speaker and the person who was speaking. I was reminded by Mr. Marleau of having broken a rule and I was not aware of it. After he mentioned it to me I was.
I was speaking to one of the Clerks at the table and the Clerk on the other side had the information which I was seeking. So I walked around to the other side of the table and I broke the second rule which was to walk between the Speaker and the Mace. There is a penalty for that too, although the first time is a warning. It seems rather trivial, but I think they are both the epitome of what this House is all about and why we have rules at all.
In the first case, I was extremely impolite. I had walked between the person who was speaking and you, Mr. Speaker, the symbol of authority in this House. In the second case, I walked between what is your symbol of authority and yourself. Both represent something which is of long tradition and which I really do believe sort of summarizes what this place is all about: civility, tradition and respect; respect for ourselves, respect for the job we have, respect for the House, respect for the people whom we represent and respect for the country of which we are all a part.
Of course, there is a reason for those rules beyond the respect for everything I have just mentioned. There is not an organization in the civilized world and certainly the parliamentary procedures, the general rules which we are talking about, whether they apply to your local hockey association or your local Rotary Club or the House of Parliament or what, do have such a civilizing and modifying affect on our behaviour. In a general sense, without going too far beyond, I guess the present context of this House, which is the British parliamentary system, many of the rules which we have adopted are part of tradition.
But what on earth is wrong with tradition? Someone mentioned that they thought it would be better if Mr. Speaker were to be wearing a suit as they do in the United States. Mr. Speaker, there are reasons why you wear what you wear and, without going into it, I think if anyone cares to realize what that is and the authority that it represents that is fine too.

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The basic assumption of all these things, whether it is in your local hockey club or in the House of Parliament, is that the majority shall rule and, within this House, we certainly recognize that those on the other side of the House have the majority. However, absolutely essential within that concept is also the necessity that the minority be heard. That is the bearing on which these rules have so much importance.
The rules of the House have evolved in this House and elsewhere to protect the rights of the minorities. It means that in the case of the opposition in the House of Commons, the rules have evolved, although I would suggest in the first four years of this government some extremely good changes were made. The McGrath commission made its report and some very good changes were made which made it much more possible for the minority, for the opposition in this House to be able to be heard.
I would suggest that if the major proclivities of the present government had been in effect at that time, there certainly would not have been those kinds of rule changes. A good proportion of what we are talking about right now is an attempt by this very same government to revert to the days before the McGrath commission, to take back some of the ability the opposition has, some of the ability which the minority in this country has to be able to express themselves and to be able to function in the manner which the tradition of the British parliamentary system has dictated the opposition should be able to do in order to protect the minorities within the country.
Probably one of the most significant things that has been said in this debate in so far as why the government would possibly want to make these changes came from some member opposite who said that it really was a shame that during Question Period it was primarily the opposition which was able to exercise any kind of activity during Question Period, that really it was an infringement upon the rights of the backbenchers of the government side, not to be able to get involved in Question Period.
That too is part of tradition. Question Period is not for the government. Question Period is not to give government backbenchers an opportunity to get involved. Question Period is an extremely valuable tradition which probably, on the basis of the proclivities of this present government, would never have been instituted in the British parliamentary system if all governments had thought this way. Sometimes, I guess, if you were on the government side, and even sometimes I wonder when I
am on this side, how on earth the parliamentary system ever evolved to the point where there was a Question Period.
What it signifies is that over time, through tradition, those who cared about the rights of people, those who cared about the rights of minorities, generously decided that yes, indeed, they would give the opposition the ability to be able to question the government. Certainly the parliaments of the world are far richer for that evolution having taken place and for that ability to have come about.
The very fact that someone in the government on the opposite side would even suggest-I do not know whether they are a member of the cabinet or not-that the backbencher should be able to be far more involved with Question Period, I think is symptomatic of how this government would really like to be able to throttle the opposition. It would like to control it and it would like to be able to cut it down.
In an attempt to do that, in addition to all the things it has have done since 1988 when I came to this House and of which we are all aware, it has used closure many times. In almost every instance, it has used closure so it is certainly no surprise that in ending this debate, it would be bringing in closure.
The very idea that the government would even have done that is so much in opposition to what this whole parliamentary system is about, that it should have brought in closure as many times as it did; that it would even suggest that there should be less of an ability of the opposition to debate things as they are now, which it is certainly doing within this legislation, is just something that I cannot understand. A government which five or six years ago brought in rather exemplary changes is now bringing in these kinds of changes.
This government, when in opposition, was able to ring the bells, holding up this House for 14 days over something with which it disagreed. I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, and I will not speak for anyone but the New Democratic Party, but I suspect there may be other parties in this House who at the time of the introduction of free trade, of the changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act, of the GST, would probably on all those occasions and even more have willingly rung the bells for 14 days had we had the opportunity. But once these people got into power, ringing the bells for 14 days, holding the House up for 14 days for what they thought at the time was a good cause, and certainly what we
April 11, 1991

would have thought was a good cause, was not something they allowed the opposition any more.
The longest the opposition can ring bells now is for 30 minutes at any one particular time. That too gives us a comparison of how well the previous governments, how judiciously they viewed the ability of the opposition to function compared to what this government does. It is not any surprise that they have done this.
Some of the changes which they are proposing are changes to the calendar, where ostensibly we will be sitting for three weeks and having one week off. I am not convinced, in spite of all the arguments from the other side of the House that if these rule changes are brought in and that is one of them, that that is the way this House will conduct itself. At the present time we have a calendar. I do not know how long that particular calendar has been in effect in this House, but we have one. We are all aware of it. I do not think there has been any six-month period since I have been here when we have adhered to the calendar.
In 1987, at a time when presumably there was a similar calendar in effect, the government called the House back in emergency session to deal with an immigration problem in August. The House sat continuously until September 1988, in spite of what the calendar said.
I have a suspicion that in spite of all the fine arguments made on the other side of the House that this House at times will be sitting more than three weeks and may very well, despite the calendar, be away from this House for more than one week at a time.
Other changes being brought in are adjustments to business within the days of the calendar. There is a suggestion that the presentation of petitions will be limited to 15 minutes a day.
Previously someone else pointed out that on average the length of time taken for petitions has only been eight minutes a day anyway. I guess that is one change of which we probably ought to be glad and something of which we should be only too willing to take advantage. There are times, when presenting petitions from my constituents, I felt I really would like to be a little more explicit about their concerns. I am sure that the expansion of the length of time for presenting petitions to 15 minutes from the average eight is something that will be very welcome.
Many previous speakers have referred to the restructuring of the committee system. It is, again, just part of the government's methods of being able to limit the
Government Orders
ability of the opposition and of the minority to function as well as they have been operating up to this time, particularly since the implementation of the McGrath commission, with those changes having been made and the ability of the committees to function having been expanded by the government in a previous session of this Parliament. I suppose they are now backing off on that expansion.
I suppose the government members find that, in spite of the fact they thought it was helpful for the Canadian public to be able to function in a more democratic way, they themselves find it is not all that effective for them. I am sure it is an embarrassment for them when the committees do their work well. I was, myself, a member of one of the committees where that happened. When these changes go through that is something that will certainly not be able to occur as well within this House any longer.
There is a suggestion that only technical witnesses will be able to be heard. If we have a committee that is looking into the social problems of this land does that change mean that someone who is poor and who, I would suggest, would probably be one of the more technical witnesses a committee could possibly hear from, would be excluded because he or she is not a social worker?
Does this change mean that, if a committee were to examine a subject that concerned labour, they would not be able to bring a working person to the committee so that the members would be able to hear them? I would suggest that someone who is a working person and whose daily life is being affected by changes within the Commons ought to be heard by a committee and not only by the Minister of Labour or the Deputy Minister within the department.
There has been a suggestion that one of the only ways in which the Canadian public will be able to get their views across will probably be through the Senate committees because so far, at least, the government has not gone to the extent of limiting the ability of Senate committees to be able to hear witnesses and operate in a much freer way.
I am also told that the new system, which is certainly going to be passed here, will require fewer meeting rooms. I would suggest that perhaps, Mr. Speaker, through your good graces, you would put pressure on the government to re-establish the Reading Room, also part of the tradition of this House, presumably with fewer rooms being required. Perhaps the Reading Room could be restored to its original splendour.

April 11, 1991
Government Orders
I have already referred to reduced speaking time. This may be the last 20-minute speech that I will be able to give in this House for a considerable amount of time. It is worthwhile mentioning that, because I can remember that, when I was working on the legislation that changed the unemployment insurance, I had the opportunity to speak for 40 minutes on one occasion.
That sounds like a long time, but even that was an insufficient amount of time to be able to get the concerns of the people I was representing across the House to the government; namely, those who were going to become unemployed and those who find themselves restricted as far as employment is concerned. Certainly, the reduced amount of time is not going to be able to give the members an opportunity to represent themselves.
In conclusion, I see that my time is almost running out. The rule changes are not going to cure what is wrong with this House, which began in 1984 with this present government.
If the government really wants some changes in this House, let it listen to the people, as it has not done on almost every occasion. Listen to the people. The opposition will not have to be as strident or insistent in its work and this place will run much better.


Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre):: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.


An hon. member:: I like your tie.
Mr. Harb You like it, eh? Made in Canada. The hon. member likes my tie and I am willing to take it off right now and pass it on to him if he can convince his colleagues to retract their initiative in terms of the House sitting arrangement.
I stand to state my opposition to the government proposition to reduce the number of days we are sitting in the House for quite a few reasons.
First, I find it somewhat outrageous at a time when we have all those very different types of issues before us as a country, as a nation, that we are cutting down on the number of days we are spending here in order to do very important business for our country.
If we are to compare ourselves to the private sector, for example, any corporation, in the private sector, and if management is to make such a proposition, I can assure you that in that time that company will be out of business.
The difference between us and any private sector company, of course, is there is no one really out there to
measure the productivity of the House between elections. There are the people at large or the shareholders of the country who can measure our productivity around election time.
If the government is running out of subject matter, I might suggest a few tonight that the government can look at. It looked like it had run out of propositions, out of legislation and that is why it wants to cut down on the number of days.
I might suggest, for instance, for the government to look at the economy instance, and look at the possibilities of commitment to full employment at a time when we have over 1.6 million people who are unemployed. Look at the question of the high number of bankruptcies in our society. If we look at the western world and western nations, we are ranking pretty high out there. Look at some sort of an incentive encouragement to small business whereby we can encourage small employment and we can help small business to survive this tough economic time.
There are other questions such as the environment where the government can spend and continue with some sort of a commitment to deal with the issue of the environment, help clean up our rivers, our lakes and also to an extent the harbours in Atlantic Canada.
There is also the question that deals with national unity at a time when we are seeing the debate raging from coast to coast. I think it is only fair for us as parliamentarians to sit here and debate this issue seriously.
There is also the question of our social programs and the maintenance of our social programs. The latest statistic shows there are between 130,000 to 250,000 people who are homeless, who do not have homes. Finding a solution to that is only fair and it is something that the government should take very seriously and deal with it.
There is subject matter such as education and literacy at a time where we have high illiteracy rates, approximately 38 per cent according to the latest statistics, and the drop-out rate when it comes to our youth is approximately about 30 per cent which means, in other words, in our society nowadays for every 100 students who enter school, approximately 30 of those who drop out before the age of 18. That to me is a priority. It is a priority for our society and should be a priority for our House and for our government.
If my colleagues across tell me: "Well, we are running out of subject matter to deal with", these are a very few and I am sure if they are to provide the opposition parties with the time necessary, we can, in fact, help
April 11, 1991

them out even to draft legislation to deal with those issues.
The reason why we want to reduce the time that we are sitting here to allow MPs to go back to then-constituents and meet with them, I think, is a legitimate one, and I would have loved to have spent 100 per cent of my time with my constituents. But the fact of the matter is that we were elected to perform our duties inside of the House and also as well outside the House with our constituents.
Certainly there is a need to find some sort of a balance. There is no question about it. That is why we have constituency offices and capable staff in our constituency offices who can be our representatives at the constituency level. Of course some of my colleagues will say there is no substitute for a good MP. There is no doubt in my mind that might be right to a large extent, but people understand that we have a very important job to do here, and they expect us to be here.
I am also quite unhappy about the way it was handled. As my colleague mentioned a little earlier, the House is going to be limited to a maximum of 15 minutes a day to introduce petitions. To use the GST as an example, if we were to introduce all those petitions at once in the House of Commons it probably would have taken us quite a few days. My understanding is that in excess of 200,000 Canadians from all across the country signed petitions against the GST. They want the government to know about their views, and they expect their member of Parliament to present those petitions. I believe it is only fair to allow a member of Parliament enough time to introduce those petitions in the House.
As my colleague indicated, the average time it took in the past couple of years was approximately eight minutes. The time allocation of 15 minutes perhaps might not be a bad idea, but as an over-all arrangement I am against it because I do not think we should put a time limit on voicing the concerns of our constituents.
I could go on and state why the House should not be off for one week every four weeks. I basically get paid in order to serve my constituents. I would suggest my constituents and all of our constituents expect us to spend time in the House.
I truly believe that three years from now, when the Liberals form the government, my colleagues on the other side of the House will perhaps come back to haunt us by telling us: "We told you so". I am willing to take the risk and say: "Yes, but there is a price for democra-
Govemment Orders
cy". I truly believe that it is the wrong thing for the government to do at a time when perhaps we should look at every free bit of time to deal with the issues of the economy, the Constitution, the environment, education, illiteracy and so on.
After I have gone through this presentation, I hope my colleagues across the way will have a little meeting with the House leader and the Whip and come back here just before twelve o'clock and reverse their decision. Then we will go home happily.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The first question is on the amendment to the amendment standing in the name of Mr. Boudria. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment to the amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: All those in favour of the amendment 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:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Call in the members.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the amendment to the amendment lost.
The next question is on the amendment standing in the name of Mr. Dingwall. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: All those in favour of the amendment 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:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Shall I dispense with the ringing of the bells?


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Call in the members.


Mr. Speaker:: I declare the amendment lost.
In accordance with the provisions of Standing Order 57, at this time it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith all questions necessary to dispose of the motion now before the House.
Pursuant to agreement announced by the Speaker on Wednesday, April 10, 1991, the Chair will now put the question separately on three groupings of the main motion.
Accordingly, the question is on the first grouping. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the proposal relating to Private Members' Business, namely those numbered 38 through 45 and 60 through 64?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
First grouping agreed to.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The next question is on the second grouping. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the proposals related to committees, namely, those numbered 46 through 59?


Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, I think you will find that there is unanimous consent to apply in reverse the result of the first vote to the third and fourth votes.


Mr. Hawkes:: Mr. Speaker, I agree to apply the result of the vote in reverse.


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I think the Whip of the Official Opposition mixed up the first and second vote that we took. Perhaps we could assume he was indicating that the preceding standing vote taken by the House would apply in reverse to the remaining motions, the one dealing with committees and the one dealing with everything else.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: That was my understanding. Is it agreed?
Government Orders


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the second grouping carried.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the third grouping agreed to. Accordingly, I declare the main motion carried.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being 1.08 a.m., this House stands adjourned until later this day at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 1.08 a.m.
[Stage Direction]
Friday, April 12,1991