1991-05-29

Ms. Barbara Greene (Don Valley North):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday was the 73rd anniversary of the independence of Armenia. The contribution of Armenian Canadians to the Canadian nation is a rich one. The preservation of Armenian culture and language is coupled with a deep loyalty to Canada and a determination to participate in virtually every area of Canadian life.
Multiculturalism means we are free to cherish our cultural roots while at the same time play a valued role in Canadian society. Armenian Canadians are a vivid example of this ideal in action.
The dream of the Armenian people has not been crushed. Their struggle for recognition and independence continues.
I call upon our government to follow the lead of the Government of France in recognizing the atrocities committed against Armenians as a genocide and to help defend the human rights of this courageous people who have suffered so much.


FUR INDUSTRY
Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing):: Mr. Speaker, something happened in my riding of Nipissing today that will shatter many stereotypes, instil pride in our community and set an example for many others, for today marks the openrng of the deMidici North Bay Fur Tanning and Dyeing Plant.
This is a plant which will operate as a joint venture between deMidici of Milan and the Nipissing Indian band. It will be located in an industrial park on the Nipissing Reserve itself. When it is fully operational it will employ approximately 50 people of which the vast majority will be native. The production of this world-class facility will be almost totally for export and will bring to North Bay customers which previously would not have done business in Canada.
Indeed the cause for optimism has not left us altogether. Here we have an example where an Indian band aggressively sought a partner to integrate fully its fur trapping activities by developing export markets for manufactured products.
Why did deMidici set up shop with the Nipissing band? Because, in its own words, "the Nipissing Indian Reserve is a progressive community with an excellent work ethic".
That is right. While the Prime Minister is thousands of miles away preaching about the need for investment and competitiveness in his own partisan ways, we here in Ontario are trying to do something about the recession that his government created.


AT AND EAST PROGRAM
Mr. Rod Laporte (Moose Jaw-Lake Centre):: Mr. Speaker, the removal of the At and East program in 1989 meant the closure of the grain elevator at Saint John and put in question the viability of the elevator at Halifax. These elevators are an important link to the viability of the livestock industry in the maritimes. They provide an essential role in the delivery of competitively priced feed grains to the maritimes. The loss of the Halifax elevator would also mean the closure of Dover Flour Mills and would deny grain producers of the only ice-free port on the eastern seaboard.
During committee hearings on this subject, the government agreed to conduct a study into the future of these elevators. The report concluded that both elevators can only be viable in the long term with an increase of export grain moving through these facilities. The report further concluded that this could only be accom-

May 29, 1991
plished by a freight equalization program. That is exactly what the At and East was. The government should openly commit itself to developing some program to ensure the long-term viability of these two elevators.
The APTC, the Atlantic Farmers Council, Dover Flour Mills and virtually every other economic group in the maritimes are concerned about this issue.
It is about time that the government takes this issue seriously and provides some real leadership on this important matter.


THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE
Mrs. Nicole Roy-Arcelin (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, internationally, Canada has a reputation for tolerance and freedom. Our country has been much enriched by the contribution of hundreds of thousands of Armenian immigrants who found a safe haven in Canada. Their dedication and unconditional loyalty have enriched the Canadian mosaic.
Yesterday was a memorable occasion for our fellow citizens of Armenian origin who were celebrating the seventy-third anniversary of Armenia's independence.
I wish to join all Canadians in paying tribute to the heroic struggle of the Armenian people who want to regain the independence they lost under the Communist regime. The events that caused these valiant and brave people such terrible suffering must not be forgotten.


NATIONAL DEFENCE
Mrs. Coline Campbell (South West Nova):: Mr. Speaker, we are told by the government that a new defence policy is forthcoming.
The Department of National Defence is doing a complete review of Canada's defence policy and how it spends its $12.6 billion annual budget. However, the
review process we have seen to date has been unfair and irresponsible.
The government has permitted speculation and rumours about base relocations, base closures and our withdrawal from NATO. These speculations are running rampant without any opportunity for public input.
In my opinion this is unfair to Canadians who want a full and public debate about the objectives of our defence policy. It is unfair to the military personnel who have served Canada so well and unfair to the many Canadians who directly and indirectly depend on the military.
Canadians want a military that serves Canada's defence needs into the next century. Even more, Mr. Speaker, they want a defence policy that is fully debated by all-


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


OFFICIAL LANGUAGES
Hon. Alan Redway (Don Valley East):: Mr. Speaker, according to a recent Gallup poll, 63 per cent of all Canadians and 65 per cent of Quebec residents think that the Official Languages Act is a failure.
Professor Robert Young of the University of Western Ontario advocates that every province should have full control over language, culture and communications because, according to him, bilingualism has not reduced support for independence in Quebec and it arouses anti-Quebec sentiment elsewhere in Canada.
If, as the Prime Minister says, the House of Commons is the greatest constituent assembly there is, then it is time we publicly discussed this issue. However, when we do, let's remember the impact that changes in language rights will have on the French speaking minority outside Quebec and the English speaking minority in Quebec.


THE CANINE CAPER
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, The Canine Caper. It is a real dog's life out there, unless of course you are a dog working for Revenue Canada in which case you get royal treatment.
May 29, 1991

Canadians are going to be howling mad when they hear that the government has built a dog house for 10 dogs for the less than humble cost of $375,000. That is $37,500 for each of the salivating residents of this luxury pad.
Canadians have been telling members of this government to keep their paws off their money. Instead the Tories dogmatically go on wasting tax dollars. Their behaviour is almost Pavlovian.
The political animals across the way are barking up the wrong tree if they expect Canadians to swallow this one.
This time the Tories have bitten more than they can chew. This could well turn out to be a dog's breakfast for them. Tory members of Parliament better watch out the next time they go near a "pole".


DISABLED PERSONS
Mr. Jean-Guy Guilbault (Drummond):: Mr. Speaker, since this is National Access Awareness Week, Integrating Persons with Disabilities, I would like to stress the dedication of many volunteers and agencies in my riding, including the Office des personnes handicapees du Quebec, whose headquarters are located in Drummond-ville, and the Drummondville association for the disabled.
During this week I urge all Canadians to take active measures at the national, regional and local levels to eliminate the barriers encountered by more than 3 million disabled persons, and facilitate access for the disabled to employment, housing, transportation, education and recreation.
Mr. Speaker, as individuals or organizations, as small businesses or large corporations and governments, we should all consider this year's theme-Access is a right- and think about what we can do to make our communities accessible to all persons with a disability.


AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: Mr. Speaker, last evening I attended a reception to commemorate Amnesty
International's 30th anniversary. There I met many people committed to ensuring that all people have basic human rights.
As opposition critic for human rights, I rely heavily on Amnesty International for information.
The organization, though non-partisan, has provided invaluable assistance and information to all parliamentarians involved in the advocacy of human rights.
I think back to a recent incident in which I worked with Amnesty.
1\vo Jamaicans were to be executed, contrary to articles 14 and 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. I, on behalf of Amnesty, appealed to the minister to intervene on behalf of those prisoners. As a result of this, the execution of these two men was stayed.
The 45,000 Canadians who volunteer with Amnesty must feel immense satisfaction with their work.
On behalf of my colleagues in this House, I would like to salute the 45,000 Canadians who work unselfishly to achieve basic human dignity for all people around the world.


AIR CARRIERS
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, a report submitted to the National Transportation Agency of Canada has concluded that the lack of consistent policies among large air carriers regarding services for the disabled may unduly restrict their travels.
The NTA has ordered air carriers to react to this conclusion within thirty days and to comment on the steps the NTA intends to take to remedy the situation.
If the remedy is approved by the NTA, standards for the transportation of disabled persons on board aircraft seating 30 passengers or more will be applied. These standards would come into effect on August 1, 1991.
Mr. Speaker, this conclusion was the result of a preliminary report submitted by two investigators who were asked by the NTA in October 1990 to survey the situation. The purpose of their investigation is to ex-

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amine the policies of air carriers for the transportation of disabled persons.


PROVINCIAL BUDGETS
Mr. Vic Althouse (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, to hear the Prime Minister talk, you would think that the whole world is focused on Bob Rae's projected budget deficit of $9.7 billion.
Why make an international incident of it? Is he concerned if a Conservative premier has a deficit? Not if recent history is a guide. In 1986 when Premier Grant Devine of Saskatchewan, which had balanced budgets under the NDP, ran up a $1.2 billion deficit, we did not hear comments from the Prime Minister or from finance. They did not chide Alberta Premier Don Getty about his 1987 deficit of $4 billion-plus.
Ontario's deficit will be 3.4 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product. Saskatchewan's was double that at 7 per cent. Alberta's deficit took 6.9 per cent of its GDP. Surely the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister are being silly, petty and ridiculous. The country would be well rid of both of them.


FRASER RIVER FESTIVAL
Mr. Stan Wilbee (Delta):: Mr. Speaker, this weekend the annual Fraser River Festival will be held at the Deas Island Regional Park in my riding of Delta.
A very special guest at the festival will be the Minister of the Environment.
This event is put together through the co-operation of the federal and provincial governments, as well as businesses and environmental groups.
The mix of sponsors is reflected in the events which celebrate all aspects of the Fraser River. The Fraser River Festival provides a special opportunity for families to learn more about how both people and wildlife use the Fraser River and its estuary through a variety of displays and entertainment.
It is a very popular event in the lower mainland. Last year almost 10,000 people attended and organizers hope for even more this year.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish the organizers of the Fraser River Festival the very best for a successful 1991 festival.


MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY
Mrs. Barbara Sparrow (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, multiple sclerosis is the most common disease of the central nervous system, usually striking young adults in the prime of their life.
Since the month of May has been designated multiple sclerosis month by the MS Society of Canada, let us pause and remember those who must live with this disease and also those who take care of them.
I encourage my colleagues and all Canadians to support the carnation fundraiser-public education campaign, and I take this opportunity to recognize the worker of the society's many volunteers.
The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada is made up of 160 local chapters in communities all across this country. It is relentless in its pursuit of its goals in finding the cause and a cure of this dreadful disease.
On behalf of the federal government, I wish to express the gratitude of all Canadians to the members and the volunteers of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Jean Chretien (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Acting Prime Minister. The Minister of National Health and Welfare has just announced the creation of a so-called new department of regional development for Quebec. However, he immediately added there would be no new initiatives, no new programs and no new money for this program. Could the Acting Prime Minister tell us what all the hoopla is about? Is the government trying to fool Quebecers?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, the minister of health will be in the House a little later to respond more fully. The intention here is to focus on the regional develop-
May 29, 1991

ment problems and difficulties that exist in the province of Quebec, particularly in so far as they relate to the need for adjustment and restructuring.
The hon. minister of health will be providing a leadership role and working very closely with the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology and Minister responsible for International Trade.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr
Speaker, I am glad to see the Minister of National Health and Welfare just arrived in the House. Perhaps he would care to remember that when he was Minister of Industry, it was his lack of initiative that put the Quebec economy in the catastrophic situation it is in today. In Quebec, more than 12 per cent of the labour force is unemployed. More than 400,000 people are looking for work, without success. In the Montreal region alone,
213,000	people are jobless. Every day, plants are closing down and employees are being laid off at Air Canada, VIA Rail, Canadian Pacific, Pratt & Whitney, General Motors and Canadair. Why doesn't the minister simply rise in his seat and admit that when he was Minister of Industry, he messed up and he is going to mess up again?


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, when Quebecers hear the Leader of the Opposition giving economic advice, they should remember what happened when he was Minister of Finance, which should be some consolation.
Mr. Speaker, what was reported in Le Devoir this morning is simply an administrative measure that gives the minister responsible for economic development in Quebec a management framework. I must say there are quite a few contradictions in what the Leader of the Opposition is saying. He tells us we should look after Quebec's economy, but when we provide a framework for this purpose, Mr. Speaker, he doesn't like it. I don't know what his position will be tomorrow. As far as I am concerned, the federal government has for years been involved in Quebec's regional development through federal-provincial agreements. The responsibility I will have-as soon as a framework has been provided-for
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regional economic development in Quebec will be similar to the responsibilities I had as Minister of Industry.
Mr. Speaker, I think Quebecers have no trouble understanding these nuances, and the leader of the Opposition should be able to understand them as well.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr
Speaker, I think the framework announced by the minister is just a house of cards. I would now like to ask him a technical question. Before embarking on this exercise in public relations, did he consult the Government of Quebec.


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, when the Government of Canada-and I trust the hon. member will agree-defines its administrative structures, I would be very surprised to hear that he did so when he was a minister and his government was in power. We have to consult the provinces on the way the federal government's obligations are to be structured. Mr. Speaker, I repeat what I said earlier. This has no connection whatsoever. Once again, the Government of Canada defines its administrative structures and it does so effectively, something the Liberal Party is not in the habit of doing.


Mr. Paul Martin (LaSalle-Emard):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the same minister, who just gave a fine example of why we have problems with national unity in the country. In announcing the development agency, the minister is doing in Quebec what his government did in the Maritimes with ACOA. It is a smoke screen to hide the cuts in funding for transport, research and development, transfer payments. The Atlantic Region has suffered a net loss of $3.4 billion. My question is: Can the minister promise that starting today, there will be no less funds for all economic development in Quebec? Can he assure us that he is not fooling Quebec as his government fooled the Atlantic provinces?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, first I will tell the hon. member for LaSalle-Emard that it is absolutely not an agency. I do not know where he got that idea from, probably from Le Devoir, but the reporter was careful enough to give both options. Secondly, Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that the Liberal Party, which should applaud the Atlantic Agency initiative, seems to want to

May 29, 1991
Oral Questions
refuse the same opportunity for Quebec. Why would what is good in the Atlantic and in the West not be good for Quebec, Mr. Speaker?


Paul Edgar Philippe Martin: The problem is, Mr. Speaker, that it was good neither for Atlantic Canada nor for Western Canada or any other part of Canada.
It is nothing but window-dressing, Mr. Speaker! Quebec is the businessmen's Mecca. They need sensible policies in order to prosper. The truth of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, that this government spends more time covering up than dealing with the real economic problems of this country.
Here is my question, Mr. Speaker. What good will this do if the minister and his government keep the Canadian dollar at 86 cents, maintain absurd interest rates and do not come up with any adjustment policy for continental free trade?
Mr. Speaker, what we need is not blue patronage garbage, but good policies. When will we get them from you?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to know that for the Liberal Party having Atlantic management is not good for those regions of Canada. I am very pleased to know that.

I want to tell the hon. member for LaSalle-Emard that, in fact, by creating a special administrative structure for the management of Quebec economic and regional development, it will be possible to find Quebec answers to Quebec problems. What is wrong with that?


Hon. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister and deals with the creation of a Quebec regional development department or agency.
Will this department or agency get more money? No. Will the minister institute a consultation process on regional development with the Quebec government and the people of Quebec? Does this government intend to appoint a committee to discuss with the people of
Quebec how these regional development grants should be administered?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, first of all, I do not think that this government feels it has to immediately inject new funds simply because an administrative structure is set up.
I am always amazed that the opposition party the hon. member represents is not aware of the fact that the government of Canada is operating, in Quebec and elsewhere, but particularly in Quebec, under federal-provincial agreements signed with the Quebec Premier in 1988. So, we consider this agency, department or whatever only as a framework already agreed to by the Quebec government in which funding is in accordance with the terms of agreements signed with the Quebec government, Mr. Speaker.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question.
Across Canada, the rates of unemployment are shocking, just as they are in Quebec. Statistics Canada reports today that the number of Canadians receiving unemployment insurance is up significantly to 1.2 million Canadians. That does not even count the number of Canadians who are on social assistance and out of a job as a result of the policies of this government.
In light of those statistics and in light of the comments from the Bank of Nova Scotia reported today that the federal government's economic policies will prolong the economic downturn, I want to ask the Deputy Prime Minister a question.
We have seen how effectively and how rapidly this government can institute damage control about events taking place in Japan when the Prime Minister makes comments on other Canadian provinces. Will the government do some damage control, get Canadians back to work and deal with the real unemployment situation?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member knows that the slowdown was in fact predicted back in 1989. It was recognized then that there were tremendous inflationary pressures within the system that had to be checked. We wanted to do that to avoid the very horrendous kind of recession that we experienced in
May 29, 1991

1981-82 which saw inflation rise to 13 and 13.5 per cent and interest rates to 22 to 23 per cent.
What is encouraging is that we have developed a plan, a program for recovery based on the reduction of interest rates in relationship to our fight against inflation. Interest rates have come down by 5 percentage points in the last year. Employment is increasing, not decreasing. Consumer and investor confidence and business confidence are improving. Housing starts have improved. Housing sales have improved. Statistics Canada reported that it believes the recession has bottomed out.
There are positive signs that the economy is turning around. It is important that it is turning around in such a way that we will have a durable, sustainable kind of economic growth with price stability, and that is what we are all after.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, the facts from Statistics Canada today clearly indicate that the number of people on unemployment insurance is up considerably in the months of February and March, so I do not know how the minister can say that we are on a clear turnaround.
What is this government going to do in terms of innovative programs to deal with the very serious unemployment problem across the country?
I would like to cite one example. Yesterday Canadian Auto Workers and Chrysler came up with an innovative agreement that encourages investment and creates jobs. This sends a clear message to people who are interested in investing in this country and to investors from within this country that these kinds of initiatives can in fact create jobs here in Canada.
My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister. Will the government take that positive message here in Canada and abroad and encourage other corporations to enter into the same kind of innovative job creating investments here in Canada?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the very constructive nature of the question posed by the leader of the New Democratic Party.
Indeed we should all applaud the agreement that was reached between Chrysler and the Canadian Auto Work-
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ers' union. That is precisely the kind of co-operation that we need in working together to deal with the competitiveness issue, to deal with the productivity issue, to deal with the issue of adjustment and restructuring.
It is not a government issue only. It is an issue that all Canadians must face. The Minister of Industry, Science and Technology is in fact on that kind of a mission. He will be introducing a discussion paper which will deal with all the issues as they relate to the competitiveness of Canadian industry both at home and abroad. I welcome the hon. member's support for that, because I think in building that kind of co-operation and that sort of togetherness, we can deal with this issue.
In so far as her earlier comment about February and March statistics is concerned, I would only remind the hon. member that the April figures show a bit of a turnaround. I think the ones that she has referred to are history.


PORT OF HALIFAX
Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, on Monday the Minister of Fisheries said that the crisis in the port of Halifax was due to a surplus of shipping space in the north Atlantic and not to government inaction.
Would the Minister of Transport admit that the surplus of shipping space and more competitive freight rates in the United States are what is squeezing Halifax out of business? Will he commit to a reinstatement today of subsidies to the Atlantic ports?


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I fully understand the member's concern for the fate of the port of Halifax. She can rest assured that we will do all in our power to make sure that the port of Halifax handles its share of goods in and out of Canada. As a matter of fact, the Minister of State for Transport, who was going to be in Halifax today and tomorrow, has been asked to meet with the port authorities to discuss what can be done on the part of Transport Canada to help them, taking into consideration that in the past the authorities of the Port of Halifax have always been veiy innovative in finding ways to make sure that the port is used to its full capacity.

May 29, 1991
Oral Questions


Mary Catherine Clancy: Mr. Speaker, if the government is truly going to do all in its power to assist the Port of Halifax, that will be reassuring, as opposed to empty rhetoric.
If every region of Canada is important to this government, will the minister explain why his government has failed to intervene and undertake the necessary assistance to create a truly level playing field for the hard pressed Port of Halifax? We do not need mere words, we need some concrete action and we need it today. I would like to hear from the minister.


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, I did not have the pleasure of sitting in this House at the time, but I am informed that in a previous sitting of this House in years past, this government introduced some legislation to do precisely that. The most vocal opponent to those measures was a representative from the Atlantic provinces.


Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also to the Minister of Transport. It concerns the crisis in the Port of Halifax caused by the policies of Canadian National.
CN is a Crown corporation. The National Transportation Act clearly states in section 3(d) that transportation is recognized as a key to regional economic development.
My question is how do the rates charged by the CN monopoly contribute to regional economic development when it was exactly these rates that caused the loss of over 400 jobs and over $24 million annually from the Port of Halifax last week? Can the minister please tell me how that is in concert with the stated intentions of the National Transportation Act.


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, an individual, who probably knows more about shipping and the Port of Halifax than the hon. member, mentioned yesterday that a representative of the Halifax Port Authority, one of the officials on the board of directors, indicated that even if CN had reduced its rail rates to zero, it would not have prevented this move by the two companies that decided to take their business away from the Port of Halifax.


Ronald MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is to the same minister.
Will the minister confirm that the real reason the government refused to act and allowed this crisis to develop was to force the province of Nova Scotia to come up with over $4 million a year to subsidize the leasing of new container cars by CN or run the real risk of losing thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars from the economy of Nova Scotia, which has already been badly battered by this government's economic policies? Is that the real reason for the inaction?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, if the member is interested in knowing the real reason for the decision by these companies, it is because of the over-capacity on the high seas. It has nothing to do with the railway rates.


THE CONSTITUTION
Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs. It is about opening up the constitutional negotiating process to the public.
I would like to ask the minister to elaborate on his ideas yesterday of an aboriginal panel to be attached to the constitutional committee next fall. I would like him to tell the House what kind of powers that panel would have and who would appoint the panel. Could he elaborate a bit more on that for us today?
Second, can he tell the House what ideas he might have for expanding that concept to citizens' panels for a number of other key areas in building the Constitution of Canada?


Right Hon. Joe Clark (President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada and Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I think we all recognize that the situation of aboriginal Canadians is not comparable of that of any other group in the country.
Having said that, I would not exclude the possibility of considering the application of the idea of panels or something like that for some other groups. It is a proposal that is still being worked out and considered by the government.



I would welcome the opportunity to discuss it with other members of the House, perhaps most usefully, after the Beaudoin-Edwards report has been tabled, although I would be prepared to enter into discussions before that time.
What I am looking for is a way that would make it clear that the powers of decision at the end of the day would rest with members of the House of Commons and the Senate, but that we would recognize that there are some groups in the country whose interest in this process requires them to be treated as more than simply witnesses and that there is a need for some way for them to be heard very fully and with an opportunity to exchange views with members of the committee.
Those are the goals we are seeking. I am seeking to combine the best elements of a parliamentary system with the best elements of more populist approaches, and I very much need the help of the hon. member and others in the House in designing that kind of system.


Ms. Lynn Hunter (Saanich-Gulf Islands):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs.
Given his response to my colleague, I am wondering as we are both members of the Beaudoin-Edwards committee-the committee has worked very hard. It is working each night this week until 10 o'clock at night in drafting the report-if the minister would be willing to come before the committee to ensure that the Beaudoin-Edwards committee report is as worth-while an exercise as we all hope it will be.


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, if the members of the committee think it would be useful for me to meet with them, I would be delighted to meet with them.


CITY OF WINNIPEG
Mr. David Walker (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.
For several months, Winnipeggers have been waiting for a federal plan to rebuild and revitalize the economy of their city. Instead of action, we have had the end of
Oral Questions
the core area initiative. We have had the unemployment rate double. We have had several thousand aboriginal families living in abject poverty, and still there is absolutely no word from the federal government.
When will the people of Winnipeg hear from the federal government about the plan to save jobs in our city?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the federal government has dealt with this issue on a number of fronts.
First and foremost, it is important to bring inflation down. We are doing that. It is important to bring the deficit down. We are doing that.
It is having an effect on reducing interest rates which, in turn, is spurring investment, housing sales and housing starts. These are the kinds of broad macropolicies that are required in order to get the economy revitalized.
In the agriculture sector, and we recognize that Winnipeg is indeed a very important city in relation to the agriculture sector, we have brought forward a new agriculture policy which will provide security and a safety net for the producers which in turn has a very good impact upon the total economy of Manitoba, and indeed all of rural Canada.
I think what is happening right now is that the fundamental policy changes that we have implemented are having an effect. We stand by our projections of a buoyant growth in 1992 with growth reappearing in the second half of this year.


David Walker: Mr. Speaker, the only thing that this government has reduced has been the size of the city economy. It has not done anything in terms of its macropolicy.
Let me ask the same minister a supplementary question about a specific project.
Winnipeg is ready to expand its Convention Centre into a complex that will act as a major boost to the tourism industry. Twenty years ago, the Liberal government was there to help start this project.
Presently there has been no word from this government. In fact, this government has refused to help the Convention Centre and with its expenses of this project.

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When will we hear from the government about the future of the Convention Centre and its plans?


Hon. Jake Epp (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, possibly I could help the hon. member.
He will know that a number of us have had meetings regarding the Winnipeg Convention Centre. I find it interesting that in his question, he made reference that the Liberals were there to help. Yet, the Convention Centre did not receive any money.


DISABLED PERSONS
Mr. Jim Jordan (Leeds-Grenville):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Secretary of State responsible for the disabled in this National Access Awareness Week.
With recent figures showing that approximately 60 per cent of disabled people are now unemployed in Canada, I want to ask the minister what new and immediate initiatives can disabled people expect from the government as a result of last week's announcements to help overcome the obvious discrimination against employing the disabled in Canada?


Hon. Robert de Cotret (Secretary of State of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague opposite will well know the concern of the government for disabled people. We mentioned that very specifically in the Speech from the Throne.
This week is concerned about increasing awareness. It is the fourth year we have had a National Access Awareness Week. We are in the process of preparing a comprehensive plan for the disabled to ensure that they have greater access to employment, housing, transportation, recreation and education. Those are the themes that we are putting forward this week.
We will have a comprehensive program, to be announced very shortly.


Jim Jordan: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is to the same minister.
Will these new government initiatives contain anything to have employers appreciate the tremendous resources and talents which are wasted by their refusal to bring disabled people into Canada's work force?
I wonder if the minister could be just a little more I specific as to what he has in this comprehensive plan that I will gain for the disabled greater access to recreation facilities, to training, to housing, and all those other things which the rest of Canadians take for granted and are largely out of reach for most of the disabled people in Canada.


Robert René de Cotret: Generally I can respond in the affirmative. Just for the record, I would like to state that in Canada 13.6 per cent of our population is disabled. We have 3.3 million Canadians suffering a disability, physical or mental. It is incumbent upon government to increase the access for those people to the very issues that I mentioned a few minutes ago.
The program will address that and it will also address it by dealing with increasing partnerships in this country, partnerships with other levels of government and also partnerships with industry. That will be front and foremost in the package of proposals that we are going to put forward.
* *


EXTRADITION
Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster-Burnaby):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice.
A British Columbia man charged with 36 counts of sexual assault on boys and girls was held in the Philippines pending the arrival of extradition papers from Canada. The papers had to arrive within 45 days. With one week remaining, they were sent by third-class mail, a slow boat to Manila. They did not arrive on time and Martin Bakker was released.
No one, including Interpol and the Canadian embassy, knows the whereabouts of this man.
I want to ask the minister what she has done to ensure that this kind of outrageous incompetence, with such tragic consequences, will not be repeated.


Hon. Kim Campbell (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, I am very interested that the hon. member knows that the package is on a slow boat to Manila because if that is the case, she is the only one who knows the whereabouts of the package. Nobody else does.
I have indicated that I find the situation very disturbing and horrifying. It is a mistake that was made. We are not sure where. I have asked my department for a full investigation as to how it could have happened. I might add that when the second batch of papers were sent to

May 29, 1991

Oral Questions
the Philippines, the extradition process could be continued, and we hope to apprehend the individual and extradite him to stand trial in Canada.


Dawn Black: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to hear that they will be able to extradite him, if they can find him.
I want to ask the minister what plans she has to locate this man, if in fact he is still in the Philippines. How will she find him? What methods can she use to bring him back here to Canada to face trial on these counts of child sexual assault?


A. Kim Campbell: Mr. Speaker, I have indicated that we have every intention of proceeding with the extradition and to that end we have the full co-operation of the Philippine authorities.


FORESTRY
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Forestry. Is it true that the Quebec Minister of Forestry unilaterally decided to deprive woodlot operators in eastern Quebec of some of the seedlings required for private reforestation, on the pretext that they receive federal funds from the plan for eastern Quebec?


Hon. Frank Oberle (Minister of Forestry):: Mr. Speaker, I cannot confirm or deny any of the reports that we have heard on the news in the last couple of hours. I would have been very disappointed, particularly in light of the very productive and cordial discussions that have gone on between myself and the minister of forestry for the province of Quebec, if he would have taken any precipitous action that would make life, particularly at this point of the planting season, more difficult than it already is for our private wood lot owners.


QUEBEC'S JURISDICTION OVER EDUCATION
Hon. Lucien Bouchard (Lac-Saint-Jean):: Mr. Speaker, the government announced in the Speech from the Throne an unprecedented federal invasion into education and training. In this House, only the members of the Bloc Quebecois rose to denounce such interference. Today, only a few hours ago, Liberal and PQ members of the National Assembly of Quebec almost unanimously passed a motion denouncing the federal government's interference in the sacred field of education, which is in provincial jurisdiction. My question for the Minister of Employment and Immigration is as follows:
In view of this position taken by both the Government of Quebec and the National Assembly, will the government finally withdraw its plan and agree to respect both the Constitution of Canada and the nearly unanimous political will of the Quebec National Assembly?


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, there is absolutely no attempt or intention on the part of the federal government to interfere in a provincial jurisdiction like education. If the hon. member were fair about the Speech from the Throne, he would recall that it fully and frankly recognizes provincial jurisdiction. If the Bloc Quebecois member wants to deny Canadians and Quebecers an opportunity to discuss the need for developing a learning culture in Canada, well, I simply say that Canadians need more than education in brick buildings; they need to develop a learning culture in this country. This is what we want to do nationally-invite discussion.


QUEBEC'S REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, we now see what is behind the mask. Just when this government is promising Quebec a thoroughly renewed federalism that takes into consideration Quebec's aspirations, it decides to launch an unprecedented offensive- something Pierre Elliott Trudeau himself would never have dared to do-and intrude in fields like health, education and regional development. My question is directed to the minister responsible for Quebec and regional development. I want to ask the minister, who

May 29, 1991
Oral Questions
knows perfectly well that the Quebec government has always wanted to be master of its own regional development, I ask the minister, who is so proud of the fact that he voted yes in the May 1980 referendum, I ask him to tell us why he now wants to impose on Quebec a structure that symbolizes federal arrogance and interference?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, last year, when I became responsible for the Department of Industry, Science and Technology, the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Jean was a member of this government, and at the time, I was also given responsibility for regional development. So it is rather surprising that today, he is rending his garments and would have us believe-since I am maintaining the same responsibility, I would ask-I trust the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Jean agrees the minister responsible for Quebec has the right to intervene to help Quebec with its regional development, Mr. Speaker.
Will the minister not only review the case, but review his policy which allows abominations like this to occur? Is he aware of the fact that women and men are concerned about violence in this country and about the fact that victims do not get deals, but convicted offenders do?


Hon. Doug Lewis (Solicitor General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, I met with the corrections officers from all across Canada last evening. I think it is fair to say that this is a group that is trying to rehabilitate people. For the most part their successes are never brought up on the floor of the House of Commons. But, yes, there are some things that escape through the net and those are brought up.
I stand behind a policy of trying to rehabilitate people. I know that there are instances where, when they are brought up in this manner, they look like they are out of whack. But basically, what we are trying to do is put people back in society and that is what the policy is designed to do.
* *
*
* *
*


PASSES FOR CONVICTED PERSONS
Mr. David Kilgour (Edmonton Southeast):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Solicitor General regarding passes for convicted rapists. Larry Takahashi was charged in 1984 with sexually assaulting 138 women across Canada, most of them in the Edmonton area. He was convicted of 16 of those charges and was sentenced to three life sentences.
Will the minister tell the House why he is now being allowed out on a "supervised recreational pass" in Agassiz, B.C. Will he tell us whether he will revoke this pass, especially given the fact that the Parole Board has repeatedly denied all forms of parole.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I am obviously not aware of the case of which my hon. friend speaks. I will undertake to look into the matter and get back to him.


David Kilgour: This is not the first case. We have had Daniel Gingras in Alberta as well, and two people are dead because of it.


EDMONTON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Mr. Scott Thorkelson (Edmonton-Strathcona):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport and concerns the transfer of the Edmonton International Airport to the local authority.
The original memorandum of agreement, which was signed by the Deputy Prime Minister in 1989, was a lease to purchase agreement. Today the document is merely a lease agreement.
My question is this: Given that the local authority plans to spend tens of millions of dollars over the terms of the lease to improve the infrastructure of the airport, will the minister restore the purchase clause in the agreement?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question. I would like to mention to him that with regard to the leases that are contemplated between the Minister of Transport and the Government of Canada and the airport authorities in the various places where we are discussing the possibility of developing the operation of the airports, these leases are going to be for a very long term period. The local airport authorities that will be investing in the improvements of the airport will have plenty of time to fully amortize their

May 29, 1991

Oral Questions
investment. Therefore, we have no intention at this time of changing our policy of devolution of airports, not a privatization of the airports.


QUEBEC'S REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Hon. Andre Ouellet (Papineau-Saint-Michel):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Health and Welfare, the new minister responsible for this new structure.
I would like to ask the minister why, after announcing there will no new money and no new programs, only a new structure, he is indulging in this kind of provocation, while he knows perfectly well that everybody in Quebec, and especially the people involved in regional development, wants Ottawa to withdraw from this area. Why this kind of provocation today?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I have always admired conversions, and I am sure Quebecers would have been delighted if this one had taken place 20 years ago.
Mr. Speaker, I may remind the hon. member that this measure makes perfect sense. When I was given responsibility for the department, and I am referring to regional economic development in Quebec, obviously this responsibility does not come under the responsibilities of the Minister of Health. Considering the needs and priorities involved, we found it it was necessary to have a structure that would, for the time being, administer the same content and the same responsibilities and would make it possible for us to intervene effectively in regional development.
And I trust a member from Montreal will not contradict me on that score, Mr. Speaker.


André Ouellet: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister. At a time when there is talk of a new distribution of powers between Ottawa and the provinces, of eliminating duplication and all the administrative red tape that unfortunately exists now in the field of regional development, when all Quebec spokespersons at the Belanger-Campeau Commission unanimously told Ottawa to get out of that field, I ask the minister why he
heavy-handedly involves the federal government in a field from which Quebecers want Ottawa to withdraw?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I will not comment on the last parts of my colleague's question, because it would be very ironical and Quebecers would take it very badly. I will just say this: I would agree with my colleague if the recommendations of the Belanger-Campeau Report or any approach to constitutional change applied tomorrow morning. But in fact, my colleague is asking, if an agreement for constitutional renewal is reached in two years, whether or not I will then be working as minister responsible for regional development to help Quebec develop its economy. No thank you, Mr. Speaker.


MOTOR VEHICLE SAFETY ACT
Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland -Colchester):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.
Canada has always had a strict safety code that Canadian auto makers must meet. Recent changes to the Motor Vehicle Safety Act have given American cars exemptions from some of the codes and even special status. The same considerations were not given to the Canadian industry and will result in lost Canadian jobs and a double standard for safety.
Will the minister move immediately to correct this incredible situation that allows Americans to sell products in Canada that are against the law for the Canadian industry to sell by creating one standard for the entire industry.


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of any recent relaxation in the regulations, but my hon. colleague is asking a very pertinent technical question that I will be glad to take under consideration.


IMMIGRATION
Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration. The Toronto production of the Phantom of the Opera required a new lead. Apparently the producers thought that no Canadian was qualified for the role, so they hired one Peter Karri. There was only one problem: he was not a Canadian citizen, nor a landed immigrant.

May 29, 1991
Routine Proceedings
He is British. Even though he was living in Britain, his application was somehow magically processed in Detroit, Michigan, in a matter of days.
I ask the minister, why was Carey's application fast-tracked while thousands wait for years?


An hon. member:: Double standards.


An hon. member:: Look at all those hockey players who get in.


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, I will acknowledge that sometimes people do intervene. Members of Parliament often do in order to try to speed up the admission to Canada of someone. In the particular case in question, I will look into it and get back to the member.


QUEBEC'S REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Mr. Phillip Edmonston (Chambly):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. We learned in this morning's Le Devoir that the government is thinking of establishing a department or agency to oversee Quebec's regional development. A question was asked about it but went unanswered. I want an answer. Did the government consult Quebec and the Quebec minister? If so, whom and what was the answer? Finally, was the former Minister of External Affairs consulted?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I answered that question just now, but for my colleague's benefit, I will repeat what I just said. When any government in Canada, federal or provincial, defines an administrative structure, it does not consult other governments. The structure is defined by the government and secondly, it is quite obvious that my colleague is not at all opposed to our setting up mechanisms for regional development in Quebec.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS

[Stage Direction]


Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to section 36(8) of the Standing Orders, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 11 petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



ORDER IN COUNCIL


Hon. Charles Mayer (Minister of Western Economic Diversification and Minister of State (Grains and Oilseeds)):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table, in both official languages, a number of Order in Council appointments which were made by the government.
Pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 110(1), these are deemed referred to the appropriate standing committee, a list of which is attached.


PRIVILEGES AND ELECTIONS
Mr. Chuck Cook (North Vancouver):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the first and last report of the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections in relation to the subject matter of the question of privilege raised by the hon. member for Scarborough-Rouge River in relation to the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General.
The committee heard from the various parties involved in this case: the then Solicitor General, the hon.
May 29, 1991

Routine Proceedings
member for Scarborough-Rouge River and the acting Privacy Commissioner. The committee also sought opinions from the Law Clerk, from Parliamentary Counsel's Office and from three distinguished experts.
After careful examination, the committee recommends that the House adopt an order requiring the Solicitor General to provide to the Justice Committee, within 30 days, the unexpurgated versions of the report by Mr. Weir governing the escape by David Gingras and the report by the Board of Investigations concerning an offender, all pursuant to section 8(2)(C) of the Privacy Act, section 18 of the Constitution Act, 1867, section 4 of the Parliament of Canada Act and section 108(1) of the Standing Orders.
I would also state briefly that I wish to compliment the member for Scarborough-Rouge River for his detailed and important work regarding the supremacy of Parliament, which is important to all of us. Although I sit opposite from him, I compliment him on his work.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


HOUSE MANAGEMENT
Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the third report of the Standing Committee on House Management. I intend to move concurrence in the report later this day.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


Mr. Kindy:: Mr. Speaker, I am not giving unanimous consent to the presentation of that report.


Mr. Speaker:: I wonder if I could perhaps assist the hon. member. There is no need for unanimous consent at this stage. The hon. member might want to consider the rules and later, when the report is moved, the hon. member might want to take advantage then of whatever rights there are.


UNEMPLOYMENT ACT
Mr. Guy H. Arseneault (Restigouche-Chaleur) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-211, an Act to amend the Unemployment Act (temporary community service).
He said: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to introduce this bill to amend the Unemployment Act (temporary community service).
The purpose of this bill is to ensure that individuals in temporary service to the community as jurors or emergency workers are not disqualified from unemployment benefits simply because of their participation in such an activity.

This amendment will ensure that persons in temporary service to the community as jurors or emergency workers are not regarded as disqualified from unemployment benefits because of their participation in such activities.


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

Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I move:
That further to the order of the House made Friday, May 17,
respecting the Standing Committee on Health and Welfare, Social
Affairs, Seniors and the Status of Women, the committee be
authorized to table its report no later than June 21, 1991.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I move that the third report of the Standing Committee on House Management, presented to the House earlier this day, be concurred in.

May 29, 1991
Routine Proceedings


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


An hon. member:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: There is not consent.


PRIVILEGES AND ELECTIONS
Mr. Derek Lee (Scarborough-Rouge River):: Mr. Speaker, if the House gives its consent, I would move that the first report of the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections, presented to the House earlier this day, be concurred in.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, we have not had an opportunity to look at the report. I wish the member would give us the time to reflect on it before concurring in it.


Derek Vincent Lee: Very well, Mr. Speaker.


PETITIONS
Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, once again it is an honour and a privilege to present a petition on behalf of a number of constituents from Kamloops, Clearwater, Logan Lake and Avola, British Columbia, who are concerned that the government has decided to cut back on support for the RCMP. They are concerned that this may result in increased levels of lawlessness and obviously reduce the effectiveness in terms of offering police protection. They are calling upon Parliament to urge the government to restore proper funding to the RCMP so that it is able to fulfil its mandate and role as the only visible and viable police force for communities across British Columbia and remain as a visible and viable symbol of Canadian unity.


Mr. John Brewin (Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, I also have the honour to present a petition to the House pursuant to Standing Order 36. This petition deals with the CBC and expresses the concerns of many residents of Victoria about the cutbacks to the CBC. They urge the government to consider restoring proper funding to the CBC so that it can fulfil its mandate and they urge the government to re-examine its priorities in this area and look to the issue of CBC's service in the capital city of British Columbia, the city of Victoria.


Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour and privilege to present yet another petition from 150 residents of northwestern Ontario, from Schreiber to Thunder Bay to Kenora to Keewatin.
All of these petitioners have one thing in common. They are supporters of rail passenger services. Unfortunately, they have another thing in common. None of them have access to it any more.
The petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to support the NDP plan to restore VIA Rail service, -which was cut on January 15, 1990-maintain and where appropriate upgrade remote services on which many Canadians rely, provide a legislative mandate for VIA Rail and make available to VIA the resources which it needs to become a modem, passenger rail system in a class with those throughout the rest of the western world.
In short, they want to put Canada back on track.


Mr. Brian L. Gardiner (Prince George-Bulkley Valley):: Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure to present a petition to the House today signed by residents from primarily the Prince George, B.C., area.
They call upon Parliament to bring in a fair tax system.


Rodney Edward Laporte: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition presented to me by 132 members of the community of Briercrest, Saskatchewan, which is a small community in the southern part of my riding.
The petitioners are concerned about the loss of their post office and other post offices throughout rural Canada. They know that the post office is an integral part of rural Canada. They call upon this government to reverse its policy on closing or converting rural post
May 29, 1991

offices and to keep the post offices open in Briercrest and other rural communities.


Mr. Jack Whittaker (Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt):: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise under Standing Order 36 to present a petition on behalf of various people in British Columbia.
The concern here is that the federal government is either cutting back on policing or adding additional cost to the tax base of municipalities to come up with extra money for policing.
These people in British Columbia have stated that the federal government is uncompromising in its negotiations with its provincial counterparts by maintaining that their share of funding will be reduced as of March 31, 1991, resulting in additional cost to the taxpayers and municipalities.
The petitioners are urging the government to consider restoring proper funding to the RCMP so that it will fulfil its mandate and role as the only visible police force for communities across British Columbia and remain as a viable symbol of Canadian unity.


Mr. Jesse Flis (Parkdale-High Park):: Mr. Speaker, the petitioners on this petition, through me and through Standing Order 36, want to draw to the attention of this House that many Canadians feel that Marie Sklodowska Curie, a servant of mankind, a scientist whom fame could not corrupt, should be honoured by Canada as she has been honoured by many different countries of the world for her discovery of radium.
There is an organization in Canada using her name to honour her contribution to mankind and to Canadians. It will be very fitting. The petitioners call upon this Parliament to see that Canada strikes a commemorative stamp on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of her birth, which falls on November 7, 1992.
I might remind the House that is when we celebrate 125 years of the birth of our country.
Speaker's Ruling


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


Mr. Speaker:: Shall all questions be allowed to stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I ask that all the notices of motions for the production of papers also be allowed to stand.


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: So ordered.


Mr. Speaker:: Yesterday morning a point of order was raised relating to Government Business No. 1 which concerns the reinstatement of certain bills from the Second Session. Yesterday afternoon, to accommodate a request from the three House leaders, I informed the House of the Chair's decision on the matter, undertaking to return to set in context that decision. I would like to do so briefly at this time.

I do not propose to restate the arguments which were presented yesterday but I would like to thank the hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond, the hon. member for Kamloops, the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands, the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier, the hon. member for Annapolis Valley-Hants, the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russel, the hon. member for Nickel Belt and the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Government House Leader.

Before looking at the terms of the motion itself, two concepts must be examined: the concept of prorogation

Speaker's Ruling
and its effects, and the notion of the reinstatement of the business of one session in the subsequent session.
Prorogation has the distinct effect of interrupting the business of Parliament and, possibly, altering its agenda. Its most significant impact is on the legislative process.

According to Beauchesne's Edition, Citation 167:
"(1) the effect of a prorogation is at once to suspend all business until Parliament shall be summoned again. Not only are the sittings of Parliament at an end, but all proceedings pending at the time are quashed. Every bill must therefore be renewed after a prorogation, as if it were introduced for the first time."

Bourinot's fourth edition, pages 102 and 103, states this in even more explicit terms:
The legal effect of a prorogation is to conclude a session; by which all bills and other proceedings of a legislative character depending in either branch, in whatever state they are at the time, are entirely terminated, and must be commenced anew, in the next session, precisely as if they had never been begun.
Thus prorogation gives Parliament the chance to start anew in dealing with the business of the nation.
While the effects of prorogation are clear, there have been many occasions when the Government has sought the permission of the House to reinstate legislation considered in the previous session. This has always been considered an extraordinary procedure. In fact, on two separate occasions, July 22, 1977, and March 22, 1982, the House amended its Standing Orders to permit certain bills to be reinstated in the next session. These and other instances of reinstatement-including several proposed in this Third Session-have been dealt with by unanimous consent.
In the situation before us, the Chair appears to be facing an "unprovided case" as I understand the terms of Standing Order 1. In considering this case, I am mindful of the words of one of my predecessors in his ruling of March 23, 1966:
It is only in exceptional circumstances and when there is little doubt about it that the Speaker can intervene and of his own initiative, amend the resolution proposed by an hon. member.
I have carefully reflected on the learned ruling of Speaker Macnaughton on June 15, 1964, which I commend to the attention of hon. members. I have had, reluctantly, to conclude that this is indeed one of those exceptional instances to which Speaker Lamoureux referred.
The Chair can find no precedent for the reinstatement of bills by way of motion, following notice. Hon. members may wish to refer to a ruling on June 13, 1988, which offers certain useful parallels. However, despite the unprecedented nature of this situation, the Chair has found nothing in the rules of the House or in our practice which precludes such an approach and accordingly will allow the motion to proceed.
However, if this approach to the reinstatement of business is acceptable, the form of the motion poses some difficulties. Some hon. members contend that the motion must be divided so that a separate debate and a separate vote can be held on each item of business addressed. The Chair views the subject of the motion as the reinstatement of business, not the individual items of business to be reinstated, and therefore concludes that a single debate will give members adequate opportunity to express themselves on the motion.
Nevertheless, the effect of the motion is to reinstate several distinct pieces of legislation and members must be afforded an adequate opportunity for assent or dissent on each of those items. Accordingly, separate questions will be put on each of the bills to be reinstated.
The reference to Bill C-73 also causes some concern since it was reinstated by unanimous consent on May 23, 1991, and has now been disposed of by the House.

Citation 424(1) of Beauchesne's Fifth Edition notes that the Speaker:
"has the unquestionable authority to modify motions with respect
to form".
Accordingly, no question will be put on this item. [English]
In summary, government motion No. 1 will be dealt with in the following manner: there will be a single debate and five separate questions will be put, namely, on the reinstatement of Bill C-26, Bill C-58, Bill C-78, Bill C-82, and Bill C-85. No question will be put on Bill

Government Orders
C-73. The enabling and final paragraphs of the motion will, as appropriate, form part of each question put.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS

[Stage Direction]


Charles James Mayer: Mr. Speaker, I move:
That debate on the motion relating to the reinstatement of certain
bills introduced in the Second Session of the 34th Parliament,
Government Business No. 1, 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.
When debate ended, the hon. member for Ottawa- Vanier had 10 minutes remaining.

could not receive unanimous consent because they are indeed not very good bills, a new element has been introduced into the debate-closure. It is now using its majority, the tyranny of the majority, to impose upon the rest of us its will.
That is far from being democratic. Here we have an abuse of power by the majority because the government happens to have the numbers and it can impose upon the minority a process which, to say the least, is objectionable.
Obviously the Conservative government in power has become an old hand at closure. The media do not pay attention to it any more. The government uses closure, abuses it, anytime for anything.
It should be noted that in the five years, and I have the statistics to give the House, the Conservative government has used time allocation 31 times to limit debate, compared to previous federal Liberal governments which used time allocation 29 times in 19 years. Between December 1986 and December 1990 the Conservative government used closure 18 times. In the 77 years before 1984 governments, all governments, used closure 19 times.


REINSTATEMENT OF BILLS
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Tbesday, May 28, consideration of the motion of Mr. Andre (p. 655).
Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, I must tell you that we are very disappointed with the ruling on Motion No. 1. We had serious reservations about this proposal, but we will put up with it because we have no intention of appealing your decision. We accept, somewhat reluctanctly shall we say, that this government be once again allowed to disregard the principles of parliamentary democracy with yet another special measure. We consider it special because they used a motion to reintroduce or reinstate five controversial bills which were found wanting last session.
Mr. Speaker, as I already explained, every item on the Order Paper at the time of prorogation is supposed to die on it. However, since the government has introduced a motion to reinstate these bills, we have to consider them now.

Since I began my remarks on the government's heavyhanded motion to reinstate certain bills, for which it
Most recent, this government used closure to terminate debate on changes to our Standing Orders, many of which placed greater limits on the opposition, limiting debate and our ability to better oppose the measures the government puts forth.
Now the Tories want to re-introduce certain bills at the stage these bills were abandoned like hot potatoes. When they prorogued the House, they abandoned those bills. They knew what they were doing and yet they proceeded because they said: "We have the numbers." Again, that is a tyranny of the majority.
There were good reasons why these bills were abandoned. They were abandoned because they were flawed. They were controversial. They were publicly opposed by many. They were obviously not a priority for this government, since it let them stand not for months or weeks but for years. Some of those bills have been standing on the Order Paper of this House for years; they cannot be a priority. What is the hurry all of a sudden? Why could the government not go back, take the comments made on the debate on these bills, readjust the proposals and come back with an amended proposal?
May 29, 1991

Let me emphasize that the Official Opposition has agreed to the reinstatement of certain bills at the stage at which they died. We did it unanimously, which was the way to do it. The traditional way in Parliament is to go to the opposition and say: "This bill died at prorogation, not because we did not want to have it, but because of the circumstances and would you please accept that it be re-introduced". We did; Bill C-73 is an example. Last week we were asked for unanimous consent and we gave it, but not for the five other bills under study at this time.
Instead of taking the opportunity to introduce better bills, bills which are more responsive, considerate and constructive, the government provided the opposition with absolutely no alternative but to oppose this motion No. 1, which is a grab bag of five bills which the government wants to reinstate.
One of them is Bill C-26.1 want to go through the five bills because I think it is important.
Bill C-26, an Act to amend the Railway Act (grain and flour subsidies). As we have said in this House in debate, the bill will devastate economic things in the east. It will have an impact on parts of the agricultural and transportation industries and cost jobs in southwestern Ontario and in Atlantic Canada. We said that in this House. Was it adjusted? No.
Bill C-58, an act to amend the Young Offenders Act and the Criminal Code. Here we had an opportunity to make much needed changes to the legislation. We have approved and endorsed that. Instead of providing greater opportunities for the rehabilitation of our children, this bill steps away from it and that is hardly a sign of progress for our justice system. It is a cop-out.
Look at Bill C-78, an act to establish a federal environmental assessment process. Clearly the government wants to get this through, since it was promised by the previous minister. He is in the House right now and I salute him for what he ever did on the question of the environment. Unfortunately he was moved.
Many of us know on this side, and I remember when I spoke about it, that the bill was flawed and could be improved. The government did not improve it. It came back with the same bill; no improvements, nothing. With its numbers it is going to impose that on the House again. Bill C-78 is full of loopholes. It gives the govem-
Govemment Orders
ment total discretion to decide whether an environmental assessment process should be implemented.
There is a lack of guarantees for the Canadian public that every project under federal jurisdiction will undergo present or proper assessment. One clause of the bill gives the Governor in Council the power to make the regulations determining which projects will be assessed. When we were considering the bill in this House during the last session, we had no regulations to study to determine how strong or how weak they would be. Such a clause leaves the government open to political lobbying. Can we hope in such a case that those lobbying for environmental protection will prevail over those lobbying to have the project exempted from the assessment process?
That is the key to that bill. That is what we were saying in this House. Did they listen over there? Did the government amend the bill? Did they make the bill a little more sensitive? No, not a thing.
Finally, I want to talk about Bill C-85. Bill C-85 is a bill concerning the privatization of certain airports. The government wanted to give municipal authorities some control over these airports.
We mentioned in this House in debate-and I was the one who made the point-that the protection we were looking for was basically with one small aspect of that bill concerning protection of official languages.
We had serious concerns that the principle of institutional bilingualism may be compromised if and when local authorities take over the management of airports. It is a point that we wanted to make because we are worried that this government, not having too much direction, is possibly going to get rid of official languages and give it to the provinces or to other jurisdictions. The government wants to get rid of it like a hot potato. We said that we will try to convince it to look at this bill and do with Bill C-85 what we did with Air Canada, that is subject this group or these airports to the entire impact of the Official Languages Act.
The legislation in its form at this time provides that Part IV, Part VIII, Part IX and Part X of the Official Languages Act apply. These parts relate to communications with and services to the public, responsibilities and duties of Treasury Board in relation to the official

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languages of Canada, the Commissioner of Official Languages, and the court remedy.
Why did the government exempt Part V, Part VI and Part VII? Part V dealt with the fact that English and French are the languages of work in all federal institutions. Officers, employees and employers of all federal institutions have the right to use either of the official languages at work.
Part VI gives English and French speaking Canadians equal opportunities and the right to gain employment or advancement in the federal institution of their choice.
Part VII was a commitment of the Government of Canada to enhance the vitality of English and French linguistic minorities in Canada and to foster pro-recognition and use of both French and English languages in Canada.
It is difficult to understand why the government chose not to apply these parts of the Official Languages Act to Bill C-85.
Do I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that the Official Languages Act was passed some three years ago, I think it was July 1988? We are now into the spring of 1991 and we still have no regulations pertaining to that bill.
That may be part of the problem. If it is, government members have the power to move. They have the numbers. Why do they not use their numbers to impose upon the issues that are important? Indeed, why do they not use the numbers to do the right thing instead of using them all the time to try to get things done their way and doing things which in our view are not democratic or parliamentary?
We object strongly to the motion of closure being put on this Motion No. 1. We will vote against it.


Brian L. Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, I suppose I should say that I regret having to rise in the House today to debate the particular motion before the House which is currently being considered.
Before commenting on the substance of the motion, I would like to go through the course of events that has brought us to this stage now.
As you know, Mr. Speaker, we are not dealing with a nebulous concept such as some some of the practices of
Parliament. What we are dealing with in the House today is a very serious move by the current government to ram through a motion which will enable it to bring back to the floor of this House and its committees, legislation that by all rights should have been started fresh in this Parliament when the House prorogued just a short time ago.
Let us go through what we have dealt with so far. As the previous speaker mentioned, we are dealing with five bills which originated in April 1989 with the throne speech beginning the government session after the free trade debate. Those bills were introduced and made their way through the usual processes and readings in this House. The members on this side, and undoubtedly on the other side as well, had concerns about these bills and were bringing them forward in the House and in committee.
For whatever reason, the government did not feel they were important enough, or felt there was so much opposition to them, it did not make it a priority of this Parliament to deal with those bills prior to prorogation of the House.
Following prorogation, the House returned with a throne speech and, rather than seeking unanimous consent of the House to reintroduce these bills, as was done with one bill, the government has now introduced a motion which will in essence go back in history in but a day's time for this legislation to be dealt with.
With the introduction of this motion, questions were raised by members on this side of the House about the nature of this motion and the procedure the government was following. I read the brief ruling on what this government is doing this morning and heard it read in the House this afternoon. I think the government is putting the Speaker in the position of making difficult rulings. While we will, and have to, abide by the rulings, we hear in the wording of this ruling that the Speaker of this House is really giving an important and serious signal to the government about this kind of action.
I noted that the decision said that these were exceptional circumstances and unprecedented. These were the words used for the ruling that has allowed this particular motion to be before the House. What next? We have, of all things, a closure motion brought in a short time ago by this government meaning that by tonight when we
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vote on this particular motion, the five bills that are before us are going to be back into the process and system.
In a short time today, through this motion, the government has been able to abrogate a great deal of the responsibility and duty that a government in our parliamentary democracy is supposed to accept, or we were led to believe should accept, when bringing forward legislation. That has put these bills in a difficult and unfortunate situation. Of course we will continue to debate them in committee and in the House when they make their way through the various stages.
This is not really a great deal different than if the government was to introduce in one day a series of bills and by motion, through closure, pass all that legislation quickly in one day. Why bother having Parliament sit and debate and have legislation reviewed by committee? There is no sense, from the government's point of view, in bothering to debate any of this legislation at all. What we might get from this government is that we might sit two days a year: one day in the spring and one day in the fall, and that would be about it. I think what that really is doing is challenging a lot of the duties and responsibilities-not just of Parliament-but of the government of the day, to ensure that when it is the government's job to bring forward legislation that it is brought forward in a reasonable and timely fashion and the rules that we have got accustomed to in this House are followed.
As you know, the rules of this House are there for a reason, to give members of Parliament time to deliberate on various motions and legislation being brought forward by the government. It gives Parliament through its committees an opportunity to hear from various groups and individuals who have particular concerns or expertise in an area. By doing that, we end up with better legislation because it does give people in a particular sector, for example people who are affected by a proposed law, it gives them a chance to make their views known. There is that important public input into the legislative process that we would not have. That is why we follow some of those old-fashioned principles, and I don't think there is anything wrong with some of the old-fashioned ideas about how Parliament has run itself.
We know that there is a need to balance the demands and needs of modem government against time, especial-
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ly the time that Parliament and parliamentarians need to debate and review legislation. Finding that blend is often a difficult course to follow. I suggest, though, that this particular case is an example where the government has not taken the opportunity to try to find that blend or that balance between a modem government and the demands, needs and responsibilities of Parliament.
When we see what the government of the day has done, I think it just adds more and more to the concern that many Canadians have that Parliament and the government rides roughshod over the concerns of many Canadians. It is no wonder that people would start to feel that way when they see and hear what is being done, particularly by this government.
I would hope that after the next election, when the New Democrats form the government, that these are not the kinds of rules or motions that we will bring forward to this House. These are the kinds of rules that have really led people to seriously question our form of government.
Many in this Chamber, and probably most Canadians, would appreciate some of the approaches and attitudes toward Parliament that members from all sides have had, but in particular, Mr. Stanley Knowles. He was an outstanding parliamentarian from our party who really gave most Canadians an opportunity to see what it meant when Parliament was run the right way.
I am afraid that the government today is not helping any of us in this House in attempting to defend the institution of parliamentary democracy in which we all participate, argue and defend. It is often very difficult to do when we have a government doing exactly as it is doing today. It is attempting to accomplish, in a two-day debate or within a few hours, what traditionally should have taken some time to ensure that the bills before us are given the time needed for a proper course of debate, a proper review in this House.
I am hopeful that as this session of Parliament goes on, as we have heard the calls from the government members opposite, from the cabinet ministers in particular, they are talking about a new non-partisan approach to dealing with the issues in this country. Hiding behind those words while using motions and closure, as the government is doing now in this Chamber, does not lend any effort to a non-partisan role and leads members on this side of the House, and I think rightfully so, to

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challenge what the government is doing with this motion and with closure on these bills.
In wrapping up, the point I wanted to make as best I could was that the government, through this motion, the use of closure, is actually ramming through bills in this House that should have had the proper time for debate and review. This government has really thrown out the window a great number of very important traditions that Parliament has established over the years. It just gives rise to more and more resentment for our form of government and, in particular, against the Conservative government that is in office now. I hope it can learn a lesson in this session of Parliament. If not, I hope Canadians teach the government a lesson in the next election campaign.


Mr. George S. Baker (Gander-Grand Falls):: Mr. Speaker, this particular motion before the House of Commons is a very interesting motion. As you know, everything that is done in the House of Commons is done by a motion. Somebody has to put a motion to do everything that is done in the House of Commons.
The House of Commons has evolved over the years as an institution with a procedural framework that is there for a particular reason. It is difficult to understand, I am sure, as people would wonder, why we have traditions such as the Leader of the Opposition being separated from the Prime Minister by two sword lengths. That is kind of difficult to understand in this day and age, or why somebody in the gallery is not allowed to take notes.
The traditions in Parliament have evolved over years and years and years. The procedure has its basis in the prorogation or the dissolution of Parliament. It is such because a Parliament has got to start and a Parliament has got to end. A Parliament ends with a general election. The adjournment of the House is usually made and then the dissolution takes place.
The Speech from the Throne, together with the budget speech, form the two main segments, the two pillars of the House of Commons and of every legislative body under the British parliamentary system. They are there for a reason. The Speech from the Throne calls members back to the House of Commons to tell members why they were called back to the House of Commons. In other words, it outlines the government's legislative reason for bringing parliamentarians back here to Ottawa.
What becomes of the Speech from the Throne, and why would we call it a Speech from the Throne entrenched with its tradition of outlining a legislative program, if the government of the day in 1991, using its majority, says: "We don't need a Speech from the Throne because we are going to use our majority to bring back bills that were presented to the House last year, or the year before or the year before that"?
The Speaker has made a ruling. I respect that ruling. I would respectfully submit that if there is anyone who is really in a mood to condemn the procedures adopted by this Chamber, then the condemnation should be on the shoulders of the government of the day.
This motion now before the House is an historic motion, perhaps the most revolutionary change to the rules of procedure brought into this House at any one moment in time in our history. The government has said that: "We will take five bills that were before the House of Commons in the last session", which could be two years ago, "and we want them now brought into this House at third reading, at the committee stage. We want them brought in and we want them at the position they would have been if the House did not dissolve". That is what the motion says. In other words, it is going to bring back five bills in one motion and it is going to put them where they would have been if the House did not dissolve, as if nothing has happened.
What do we have? Let us take any of the bills. There is a bill to amend the Railway Act; a bill to amend the Young Offenders Act; a bill to amend the Crown Corporations Act; a bill to amend the federal environmental assessment process; a bill to amend the act concerning the port wardens of Quebec and Montreal; and a bill relating to certain matters of employees' pensions and labour relations in connection with the transfer of certain airports to local authorities. Montreal, that is Dorval, is being transferred to a local authority. Vancouver is also being transferred and so is Winnipeg and some other airport.
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There are six bills. One of them is already passed so we are left with five. Take for example the federal environmental assessment process. The government can take it because it is not worth very much. It is through the House of Commons, with all of its rules, with its checks and balances, that the government is accountable to the people of Canada. Every member of Parliament sits down and speaks to the second reading, the principle of the bill, and is given certain assurances by the government. The bill then goes into committee. All of a sudden, the members discover the government is not prepared to do really what it said it was going to do.
Just suppose the members of the House of Commons then say: "We are now going to stall this bill". That is a legitimate rule of procedure. There are not very many rules left on which a private member or the backbenchers in this House can exert any pressure. The accountability of the Government of Canada to the people of Canada has eroded over the years because of these rule changes.
A minister no longer needs to know what is going on in his department because of this erosion. A member's power in the House of Commons has so decreased over the years that the House of Commons has merely become an institution of lists.
Here we have the members of the House dealing with bills and having the power to say: "We are not going to pass this. The government has fooled us. To the Environmental Act it is not prepared to accept amendments. We are going to stall it until dissolution".
Along comes dissolution and along comes the government again next year and calls the bill as if it has passed all of these procedures and gone into committee. In other words, the government can do whatever it wants. It does not have to go back to the beginning again.
We have environmental bills. We have the Clean Water Act; we have the Clean Air Act; we have the Environmental Contaminants Act; we have the Fisheries Act. We have acts coming out of our ears to protect the environment and then we ask under this legislation: Is this going to now solve the problem of, say, polychlori-
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nated biphenyls being used in transformers on telephone poles? "Oh, no" says the government.
Is this going to solve the problems we have in all of our wilderness areas of the use of aerial spraying of herbicides, for example, or insecticides such as fenitrothion, Matacil or any of these toxic substances sprayed over large areas? The groups concerned discover that this bill is really not going to solve that problem.
Those of us who were interested asked the question: "Will the bill be able to solve the problem of the total destruction of our fishing resource on the east coast of Canada by foreign nations, licensed by the Government of Canada? The answer was no. We are still giving out the licences to the Russians and to the fleets from Japan, Cuba, Denmark, Poland and Germany; some of the countries which operate massive factory freezer trawlers within Canadian waters, destroying our environment and the fishing resource. All because the Government of Canada has decreed that fisheries in this nation shall take its guidelines from the Department of External Affairs.
I discovered just the other day that France has not even paid its bill from 1987 for its licences. The federal cabinet met two years ago, I discovered, and passed an Order in Council forgiving the French $450,000 of their licence fees and they promised to pay the remaining $355,000. They have been doing so since on the instalment plan. They paid three times two years ago. This year the federal government got a cheque on March 27, and France still owes for its licence fees back in 1987.
The Soviet Union still has not paid the $997,000 it owes for its fees for last year. Here is a Canadian fisherman who cannot get a licence unless he has his fees paid for. Here are men and women today who look out at the ocean and see nine foreign nations fishing 12 miles off their coast and they are not allowed to get a licence. Why? To protect the resource of Canada.
We look at this legislation and we do not want it to go through because it does not cover the polychlorinated biphenyls in the transformer, it does not cover the fenitrothion in the forests and it does not cover the fishing resource which is being destroyed by nine foreign

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nations licensed by the Government of Canada through the Department of External Affairs.
We went through that two years ago and last year. Now we know what the government was up to. It was up to passing something that really did not mean all that much. As an example, and I am just using it as an example, now the Government of Canada can come along and say: "By a majority vote, we are going to bring back a bill introduced two years ago that went through all those stages and we are now going to take that and have it marked 1991 as if it has passed all the stages again in 1991 that took place two years ago."
The entire framework of the passage of legislation and the accountability of the government to the people of Canada have suffered an incredible blow by this decision of the Government of Canada. Somebody can ask today a legitimate question: Why do we have a Speech from the Throne? The Speech from the Throne outlines the legislative program. Why do we have mechanisms in place to protect the people of Canada against bad legislation? Now that all goes down the drain because the Government of Canada, by using its majority, can say: "We will bring back a bill from last year, from two years ago, from six years ago, from 20 years ago, from 50 years ago" because we see dissolution under the rules of procedure going back to Erskine May. The rules of procedure always dealt with dissolution and prorogation in the same paragraph. That is the way it is presented. Everything on the Order Paper comes to an end.
There has only been one exception to that and that was when there was unanimous consent, and this dates back quite a number of years. Everybody concerned in the House of Commons was saying: "Well, we have gone through all of these hearings on a particular bill and everybody really wants this bill, it is good for Canada, it is good for us, so let us all agree now to bring it back at the same stage as we had it before." That is legitimate. It is a legitimate use of the majority vote of the House of Commons.
The House of Commons can do anything it wants with a majority vote. This motion, which deals with five bills before the House of Commons, is not a legitimate use of the authority of the majority of the House of Commons and it strikes another blow against the accountability
function of the House of Commons on behalf of the people of Canada.


Paul Edgar Philippe Martin: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise in this House to speak against a motion to reinstate a series of legislation which in its content and substance is inept and incompetent.
I am especially pleased to do so following upon my colleague who is not only one of the finest orators in this House, but undoubtedly one of the finest orators in this country. What he has said about this motion and the specific pieces of legislation contained therein were comments with which I am sure all Canadians, certainly all Newfoundlanders, would agree and stand proud to be with him.
I will use Bill C-78 as the specific example of why this motion should not pass, why this legislation should not be reinstated, why it should be allowed to die on the Order Paper, as indeed under the proper legislative process it should be allowed to do so if this government had any understanding of what democracy was all about.

I am pleased to speak to the motion for the reinstatement of Bill C-78 concerning the environmental assessment process. The very principle of environmental assessment is the basis of a new perception of our global ecosystem whose resources are not unlimited.
According to the Brundtland Report, the environmental assessment process plays a key role in the search for sustainable development. I unconditionally support the principle of an environmental assessment legislation in Canada.
However, Mr. Speaker, Bill C-78 is so flawed it will in fact undermine our existing standards for environmental assessment.
As Steven Hazel, from the Canadian Arctic Committee, said, and I quote: "With Bill C-78, Canada now has environmental guidelines that have the force of law and a bill that is no more than a set of guidelines".
Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, Mr. Hazel is right and that is why I am against this bill being sent back to committee.
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Bill C-78, this government's incredibly incomplete environmental impact assessment bill, this government's view of the way in which a modem society ought to approach the environment, spent five months in committee.
There were briefs presented by environmentalists, by industrialists, by legal organizations, by aboriginal groups, by virtually every segment of Canadian society. Virtually without exception, every single witness opposed the bill.
These were witnesses chosen by ourselves, but also chosen by the government to come and defend its bill. Yet, upon reading, upon sitting there, and upon questioning, they unanimously said that this government has no idea of the way that a modern society ought to evolve in the treatment of the air we breathe and the water we drink.
The reasons that were given ranged from the fact that the bill was vague and incomplete to the fact that it attacked the very integrity of the ecosystem.
A great number of groups presented very serious amendments and they were extensively discussed. Indeed, with the former minister we sat and discussed them. We were told on numerous occasions that the government would be bringing forth amendments.
We were told that the bill would be made whole. We were given promise after promise that the press releases of the government would eventually come to reality, and the bill would be changed.
Appointment after appointment was broken. Amendment after amendment which was promised was never delivered, and there were rumours of cabinet fights, divisions and debates.
Unfortunately, in this government the environment minister does not count for much. Senior ministers, such as the minister of health, the minister of energy, and the minister of foreign trade consistently came in and said: "This Conservative government cares not a whit for the environment".
Now, we find ourselves in the situation we are now in. The bill died on the Order Paper. In its supreme arrogance and lack of understanding, this government comes to us and says: "we would like to reinstate it", of a bill unanimously rejected by the people of Canada.
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If there has ever been a government which is out of touch with reality, it is this one. If there has ever been a demonstration of that fact, it is in this government's treatment of Bill C-78.
The premise of the bill, to begin with, is entirely wrong. With the world-wide presentation of the Brund-tland report some years ago, the notion of sustainable development became the fundamental principle of environmental assessment. The term "sustainable development" is now learned by children in grades 1, 2 and 3 in every school in every province of this country. Yet, the term "sustainable development", as if the government was afraid to express the words, does not appear once in the bill. If there is any indication of how far behind the thinking of this government is, it is surely that.
There is no modern country that does not understand that it cannot have a sound economy in an unsound environment. There is no modern country that considers the environment to be in opposition to the economy. There is no government, except for this one, that does not understand that the air we breathe, the water we drink and the soil in which our food grows are not free goods; that in depleting them as the country is we are not only devastating the environment but we are devastating our economy.
If you wonder why our health costs are rising, take a look at the air we breathe and the water we drink. If you wonder what is happening, why there is such a huge deficit-if you think the economic deficit is great, I simply ask you to examine the environmental deficit which we are in the process of leaving to our children.
Today's most successful nations-Germany as an example-are nations which understand the total integration of the economy and the environment. Japan, not necessarily a nation known for its environmental awareness, has nonetheless cut its wastage by 42 per cent. It has cut its energy costs by 30 per cent and is now one of the most energy-efficient nations in the world.
Those are environmental objectives. Yet this government seems to wallow in some 1850s philosophy that simply says that we can produce and produce garbage and simply waste resources as if it makes no difference.
Sustainable development is vital to Canada because our economy is so terribly dependent on natural resources. Sustainable development must be the cornerstone upon which modem legislation is built. Therefore, it only stands to reason that sustainable development must be the cornerstone upon which the environmental

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legislation of this government or any government must be built.
There are other problems as well with Bill C-78. The scope of the environmental assessment in this bill has been narrowed-not widened but narrowed-to the point where those of us in this country who would seek to involve every project that affects human beings find ourselves in the situation-and I will elaborate upon this-where the government can declare exemption after exemption, as it has done in the case of Kemano, Rafferty and Point Anconi.
The assessment is not mandatoiy. In other words, this government can decide who its friends are and who its enemies are, and treat them differently.
Closer examination has demonstrated that, outside of the United States, there is no government that has brought in an environmental bill with this amount of discretion, without objective standards of assessment, with no way that anyone can plan ahead and no time limits on the assessment.
When the business community appeared before us, the conclusions they drew were exactly the same as those of the environmentalists who appeared before us. They said that they cannot live with this bill. They also said that it was impossible for us-


An hon. member:: I agree with the hon. member, absolutely.


Paul Edgar Philippe Martin: The member opposite stands up and speaks for all that side of the House and says that I am right.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Paul Edgar Philippe Martin: Mr. Speaker, I do not understand that interjection. That side of the House has stood up and unequivocally agreed with me. I want to congratulate that side of the House. I congratulate the members opposite. For once in their lives they understand what a terrible thing they are doing to this country.
Oh my God, this is indeed a great day for Canada. Finally, for the first time in my history in this House an intelligent word has been spoken on that side of the House.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Paul Edgar Philippe Martin: Mr. Speaker, I do not understand how other members can come in and start to laugh. I suppose they find the environment a laughing matter. Oh no, please stay, do not leave.
The environmental assessment process in this country must not be open to political manipulation. We must have clear rules that people can understand. Environmentalists must know how they are allowed to go forth with their objections or their modifications. Indeed, members of the business community must be able to plan and arrange their financing. Yet, that is not what the government does.
This government stands up here day after day mouthing vacuous statements about how it will get the economy moving. Yet, it turned to the business community and said: "We will not give you a bill that will allow you to plan. We will not give you a bill that will allow you to finance. We will not give you a bill that will enable you to create new jobs. We will not give you a bill that will enable you to compete around the world. We will give you a mishmash of political statements that essentially will reward our friends and destroy our enemies." That is not the way to run a modem country.
As far as the environmentalists are concerned-that vast army of people from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the great north who, every day for little pay, totally concern themselves with the protection of this planet- when they come forth and say they want intervener funding, when they say they want to be able to come to the table, they want to be able to match the great governments and the great corporations with their war chest, they want to be able to provide intelligent and profound objections, they want to be able to show how projects can be mitigated. Does this government say: "We will provide intervener funding"? Does this government say: "We will provide you with the ability to be able to stand up to your opponents"? No, not at all. This government says: "This country is for the rich and the
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large institutions. Go away, little interveners. Go away environmentalists." There is no money provided in the bill for intervener funding. It is an absolute disgrace.
The essence of democracy in a modem state is that third parties must be allowed to come forth and complete the process of investigation. All the power and knowledge does not solely exist within this House, it exists in thousands of communities across this country, people who have deep knowledge. They have to be provided with funding. It is the way to operate a modem state. The fact that this government refuses to do it is one more proof that what we are seeing on the opposite side is simply the finest 16th century thinking that the world has ever generated.
When we take power in two years, I can guarantee that no member of Parliament will have to stand up and wonder if the water that he is drinking is safe.
Mr. Speaker, you are asking me to sit down and I am certainly going to bow to your will, but let me simply say that Bill C-78 is a very flawed piece of legislation. Defeating the bill would not leave a legislative vacuum. Unfortunately, Bill C-78 is weaker than the existing guidelines which have subsequently been strengthened by court decision.
My feeling is that if we have to go with Bill C-78 or none, go with none. Go with the existing guidelines that were introduced by a Liberal government.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, this government should recognize, as we all do, that this legislation will create more problems than it would solve. This bill should immediately go back to the drawing board. The environmental assessment principle is so important that it would be harmful to continue to examine such a half-baked piece of legislation.


Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to participate in this debate today, but I must say that I am getting rather tired of having to deal with closure and its effects, and the way that this government mistreats the precedents and the practices of this House.


An hon. member:: A new definition of democracy.
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Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: A new definition of democracy, as the hon. member says. That is what this government is trying to introduce to Canada. Frankly, I think it is time we exposed the fraud that it is trying to perpetrate on the people of this country by moving this kind of motion today and then closuring it. I suggest it is perhaps one of the worst outrages that has been perpetrated in this House in many years.
I want to deal with the propriety of the motion that the government has introduced. I suggest that it is contrary to all the practices of this House for the last 124 years. It is a breach of the proprieties of this place. While the Speaker has ruled that the motion is in order, and I respect that ruling, I suggest that it is still morally wicked of the government to proceed with this motion and particularly then to apply closure to the motion and thereby curtail the debate on it.
What the government is doing by this, and let us make it perfectly clear what is happening here, is short-circuiting the legislative process on five bills. On one of those bills it is doing something that I suggest is completely unprecedented- frankly, the whole practice is unprecedented-and that is declaring the bill to have been passed by this House. In other words, tonight, when the vote occurs on this motion, a bill will be deemed to have been passed by this House which has never been introduced or debated at any stage in this session of this Parliament.
I suggest that this wrong. It is wickedly wrong. It is a gross violation of the constitutional principles on which this House has operated on since Confederation. Indeed, it is contrary to the whole practice of British parliamentary tradition for 900 years. Nothing like this has ever been tried before. I suggest it is wrong. The government knows it is wrong.
That is why there is not a single minister in this House showing his head. They are so disgusted and ashamed of what they are doing that they have all run for cover in the lobby or into their offices. I suggest that it is their obligation to be here and listen to this debate. They should be ashamed of their actions. I see every one of them has fled.
I want to thank the three members on the other side who are here to listen to this debate. I think it is wonderful that they are participating in this way.

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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member has been here now for six years-


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: No. Two and a half-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Two and a half years. It seems like six years anyway. I just want the hon. member to know, and I do not think I have to direct this to him, because he is knowledgeable about the procedures of the House of Commons, that you do not talk about who is and who is not in this Chamber. The fact that they are outside watching you on television, or looking after constituency work, I would hope that the hon. member would carry on with this very interesting debate. The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, I was careful at the end to make reference to the presence of the three that were here. I thought that I was referring to their presence, not to the absence of the other 160, but that is beside the point.
I want to turn to the arguments advanced by the parliamentary secretary yesterday in the course of the procedural argument about the propriety of this motion. I want to say how outrageous his arguments were and I want to expose them for what I suggest is a fraud on the people of Canada in what he said.
I want to turn, first of all, to page 651 of Hansard for yesterday where he said:
We have precedents. We have precedents of reinstating business in
this House of Commons. We are dealing today with a different
process but the precedents are very clear.
There are no precedents for this kind of motion to be debated in this House. I searched back to 1938-the parliamentary secretary was invited to produce his precedents-and I could find no precedent where a motion to reinstate a bill had ever been debated in the House. On the occasions when such a motion was presented to the House, it was agreed to by unanimous consent. There was never a debate. There was never the moving of a motion and a vote. There was never closure used on such a motion. Every single time the very particular and special procedure of unanimous consent of all members was sought and obtained before any bill was reinstated.
The principle of unanimous consent is a very fancy, unusual practice. It may happen often, but it is very fancy and very unusual. It is very particular, and it allows this
House to do almost anything that this House could possibly do.
It has been used in the past to allow the government to get around having to go through all stages of a bill. What the House is in effect doing is saying that we agree that this bill has passed through the stages up to a certain point. Beyond that point, we will then discuss it.
They are saying to the government: "You do not need to go through each of the stages with debate". It is a short-circuiting of the normal legislative process, but it has always been done by unanimous consent. Yet, here the parliamentary secretary said there were precedents. He was asked to produce a precedent. He has never produced a precedent. There is no precedent. This is a violation of all past practice.
The hon. member for Kamloops, in an extremely able submission, pointed out that even the Precis of Procedure, in this House, an excellent publication that I know members of the staff of this House have worked on for many years. They have produced an excellent volume. It has indicated that the practice of this House through 124 years has been to require unanimous consent for the reinstatement of bills.
Yet, today we are witnessing a gross breach because it is not one bill that the government is moving on here. It is five bills. It already has two by unanimous consent in this session. Since May 13 when we started again, two bills have been reintroduced by unanimous consent.
The second reading stage was avoided on both of them. I think on one report stage was avoided as well. Fine. We agreed to that. All members of this House agreed. Every single one permitted the bills to go to that stage, but that is not the case today.
Now we have five bills being moved forward in this way. The government says: "Not only are we going to force those five bills to be put into the House at these stages, but we are going to move closure on the motion because we are not going to permit discussion of the merits of this motion and the putting of the five bills". That is a particularly disgraceful aspect of the current proceedings.
The second point he raised was at the bottom of page 651. He said that there were precedents for another matter. He said:
Mr. Speaker, I believe that if you check through your precedents
you will find one which says that what has happened here is that the
House has taken action on a part of a motion and therefore that part of
the motion becomes mute, becomes silent.
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Again, he did not produce the precedent. The Speaker rooted through what the parliamentary secretary referred him to and his guess is as good as mine on this point. I do not know what he is talking about. He never produced any authority, and yet he makes these blanket statements designed to hoodwink the Canadian people into thinking that this is somehow normal and regular.
It is not normal or regular. If this was so usual or common, the parliamentary secretary surely would have cited a precedent from the British Parliament. There are 400 years of records he could have dug through to find some precedent that might have supported this.
He is always telling us how much we should emulate the British Parliament, what a great institution it is, and how if we only followed British practice we would be way ahead. Yet he is not following British practice in this case. If he is, he has no authority for saying so. He has not produced a single tittle of evidence to support this gross breach of our practice and I suggest that it is totally inappropriate.
Then we go to his other suggestion. The first point was that what we were doing was unprecedented and therefore out of order:
If we were to take argument that any time a decision, action, or process is new it is therefore out of order, or because it is different it is unprecedented, and therefore cannot be done, the judges, lawyers, the Speaker of the House, I, in my role as parliamentary secretary to the House leader, the House leaders of the Official Opposition and the New Democratic Party, would not be able to proceed because all we could do if we were to rely on precedents would be to simply follow what our predecessors have done.
Well, our predecessors have done quite a lot. There is lots of room within the sphere of parliamentary practice and precedent for the parliamentary secretary to work. What he does not want to do is allow this House to debate bad bills that this government in its incompetence, bungling, and fumbling wants to introduce into this place.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: He is ashamed-and he should be-to produce these bills in this House and allow them to be discussed because he knows that if we have a full debate on them the Canadian people will, as they have so often with this government, rise up and say: "Let us get rid of this bunch. How long can we stand to see our country tom apart by this Conservative mob? They are no good".
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They are at 14 per cent in the polls. That is the evidence of their incompetence and the distrust and dislike they have sown across this country from one coast to the other and to the other. I tell you, Mr. Speaker, they have had enough.
If the parliamentary secretary had any courage he would be in here allowing debate on these bills and introducing them in the proper course. Instead, he brings in a motion and says we want to deem all these bills virtually passed. "We will limit debate on that motion. We will put closure on it and shut off debate so Canadians cannot hear how badly we are performing. They are going to hear how awful we are as a government. We do not want our faults exposed in this House". That is what they are doing by this.
Let us look at the things they have left out. Let us think of the bills they did not put in this motion that were on the Order Paper. What about the conflict of interest bill? Where is that? I think it was introduced in November 1989, and we have never seen it. It has never been called for debate. The Prime Minister in the last election said we will have special conflict of interest legislation so that members of Parliament are not found in conflict. We want to run an honest administration. Yet no administration has ever had as many members charged with criminal offences as this one has.
That is the kind of thing that should have been dealt with in this legislation. The government introduces it and then does not call it. It sits on the Order Paper. Why did it not bring that back in and deem it to have had first reading in this motion? I know why. The government's own backbenchers, the ones who are having trouble, the former members who have been convicted are saying they cannot have that kind of bill. That is why we do not have it.
Yet the government should be introducing this kind of legislation and proceeding with it. We have asked it to move on it for two years and nothing has happened. It is afraid to proceed with that legislation and it should be ashamed of itself.
It will move with other taxation measures that impose taxes and charges on the people of Canada, and take away their benefits. It will proceed with its weak-kneed environmental legislation. We have just heard from the hon. member for Lasalle-Emard in a very capable speech about what it will do on this issue. We heard from

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him how bad the environmental bill was and that is one of the ones it is proceeding with under this special order.
I say to you, Mr. Speaker, it is wrong, it is unprecedented, it is improper, and the government should not be carrying on in this way. As the hon. member for Halifax says, it is pernicious. I quite agree with her.
He then says, and I quote again the parliamentary secretary who obviously does not know what he is talking about, on page 652: "It is part of our practice and to reinstate this particular bill at this stage is completely in order". He is talking about a bill that is going to be introduced under this motion when it carries tonight. I am sure the members who are not here now will reappear and vote to put these bills back on the Order Paper. One of them will never appear on the Order Paper because it is going to be deemed to have passed. That is what is happening with this other one.
The parliamentary secretary says: "Part of our practice and to reinstate this particular bill at this stage, that is the stage of having been passed, is completely in order and is consistent with what I have said earlier, that in fact what we are dealing with is not a cutting off of debate, but a continuation of a bill at a stage it was at prior to the prorogation of the House".
In all the precedents I looked at back to 1938, and I will lay a bet with the minister at any time, there was never, ever a case where a bill was put to the point where it had passed this House. Every precedent I looked at back to 1938, and frankly there were precious few reinstatements in the period, brought the bills back to no more than the completion of the report stage, or its former equivalent, completion by the Committee of the Whole.
In other words, there was always a debate allowed at third reading of every bill that was reinstated. But here in this motion today, we have a bill that is deemed passed by this House, so there will be no debate at any stage on this bill.


An hon. member:: That is terrible.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: It is a national disgrace.


An hon. member:: It is a travesty.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: If this kind of thing was reported in parliamentary journals around the world, the Canadian Parliament would become a laughing stock because of the outrageous conduct of the government in introducing this motion. It violates all the constitutional principles of debating bills at three readings in the House of Commons. That is the standard practice in every British parliamentary institution and has been for hundreds of years, and this government is violating that practice.
Who is to blame for this practice aside from all the members on the other side? The government itself had a choice.
They had a choice. Remember those words. Hon. members opposite may remember them because they came up in a debate. They had a choice. They chose to prorogue the last session and leave the business unfinished on the Order Paper. They sent us away through April and early May and said: "We do not want you in Ottawa. We do not want questions every day. We do not want to listen to you. We do not want our sins exposed to the people of Canada on national television here on the floor of the House of Commons".
They sent us home instead of sitting around and dealing with that business. They could have had us here debating Bill C-26. They could have had us here debating Bill C-58. They could have had us here debating Bill C-78. We could have debated Bill C-82, or at least the other place could have continued with it. We could have debated Bill C-85, but no, no, the government decided that we should go home. It got this House adjourned and sent us home.
Members went back to their constituencies and did their thing for a month. Then the government said: "Well, we are going to prorogue the session now". It did so on May 12, by proclamation of the Governor General, and brought the last session to an end.
We in the opposition had nothing whatever to do with it. We were never consulted. That was done by the government; it was its choice and at its time. It ended the session and thereby killed everything that was on the Order Paper.


An hon. member:: Shame, shame.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: That is provided for in the law. The government is entitled to do it if it wants. We did not sit around and say you should not have done that. We said:

"That is your executive act and responsibility", and the government ended the consideration of those bills at the stage they were at at the time.
Having done so, it started a new session and now it is saying: "Well, we are going to pretend we did not do what we did. We are going to pretend we did not prorogue the session in relation to these five bills. We are going to reinstate them and we are putting them back where they were. One of them was passed by the House of Commons. We are going to say it is passed again, and pretend there was no prorogation".
The government made the choice to prorogue and now it is saying it will pretend it did not happen, at least on these bills. However on others it does not like, such as the gun control bill and the conflict of interest bill, it will just continue as though they are dead. It will do what it wants with them later and come up with new bills on those items.
Of course, we have not heard anything about conflict of interest. It was not mentioned in the throne speech. It was a big item during the election campaign in 1988, but we have seen absolutely nothing since. It is just like day care and all the other broken promises that this government has made over the years. I do not want to go through that kind of list.
Finally, I want to turn to one more point that the parliamentary secretary made in his argument. He said:
Yes, we could go back and go through these five bills again. We could debate them once more at tremendous cost to the House in time, at tremendous cost to the taxpayers of Canada who are saying to us as members of this House: "Quit fooling around, get serious, do some business, cut out the partisan games".
The government has been talking all this non-partisan nonsense, saying that this House has to stop being so partisan. Then it comes and does a trick like this, breaching every parliamentary precedent, I suggest, that ever existed. It is breaking new ground, limiting debate and cutting members off from their opportunities to speak.
This House has not been slow in passing bills. This government has got away with closure something like 14 times already. This is the fifteenth time it has used closure in this Parliament. We have had bills moving through this place at record speeds.
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The evidence of that, if the hon. member argues that point, is the number of lengthy adjournments we have had where the government has sent us away: "We do not have anything more that we have to do today. Thank you. You members can go home for a month or two months". That has gone on repeatedly in this Parliament. The hon. member knows that.
This government is a dry well, a dry hole when it comes to new innovative ideas. It has not got any. It does not want Parliament sitting here debating rehashed ideas and junk legislation which it is bringing forward to keep us occupied.
What it is doing is saying: "We will limit debate. We will jam everything through in three weeks and then our members can go home to try to revive their electoral fortunes". That is what is going on here. This is part of exactly the same game: ram the bills through five at a time in one motion like this, two days debate, and then some of them will never get discussed in the House and the others are at least at a stage where we can get the debate finished in two days. That is what is going on here.
The people of Canada are being hoodwinked by the parliamentary secretary's smooth talking words about non-partisanship in this House and the need to get together and co-operate on business. He says: "Co-operate as long as it is on my terms and if I suggest it, it is non-partisan. If it comes from the opposition, it is partisan, and we are not going to play those games". That is the kind of message we are getting from this government and it is dead wrong. It is cheating. It is deceiving the people of Canada.
We are not here to be told that our suggestions are partisan and the government's are not. No one is more of a partisan player in this House than the government House leader, and members on the other side know that perfectly well. His parliamentary secretary is falling into the same bag of tricks.
We on this side of the House will oppose this kind of abuse of the procedures and practices of this place.


Mr. Len Taylor (The Battlefords-Meadow Lake):: Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to be speaking on this day, especially following the hon. member from Kingston who so eloquently put the argument about the nature of the debate we are having today.
Here we are debating a motion of closure dealing with bills from another Parliament. It seems to me that the decision the government has taken in this case is very, very peculiar and probably sets a very dangerous precedent for governments of that ilk down the road. Hopeful-

May 29, 1991
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ly the only solace that the Canadian population can take in this is that the next government it elects to sit on the other side of the House and support the will and the needs of the people is going to be a government which cares about the people, understands democracy and will produce what the people want.
Under the leadership of Prime Minister McLaughlin we expect that is exactly what will be delivered.
The matter has seriously been addressed by my colleague from Kamloops and by other members who have spoken today. I want to add a few words specifically about one of the bills included in this list before us. That is specifically Bill C-78, the environmental assessment legislation, which I consider to be the most important piece of legislation that this government could deal with either now or in the future.
We are trying to deal with that legislation now. We had dealt with a considerable amount of witnesses' testimony and work that was put into Bill C-78 in the previous session. I am totally surprised that the government would seek to reintroduce Bill C-78 as if no testimony and no work had been done on that legislation. Virtually every witness who appeared before the committee argued strongly-and I was on that committee-for substantial amendments to Bill C-78. Almost every witness who appeared before us provided us with many pieces of paper containing strongly worded, very technical amendments to Bill C-78.
I brought with me today just one-third of the briefs of witnesses' testimony that appeared before us.
These were witnesses such as the West Coast Environmental Law Association, the Canadian Bar Association, the Rassion Academy of Aquatic Science, the Canadian Environmental Law Association, the Sierra Club, the Canadian Wildlife Federation, and a whole host of others.
They were witnesses who came to us and not only said that this bill needed amendment but suggested the amendments to us.
I am quite surprised that the government decided to reintroduce this bill because even members of the
department were indicating that the bill would have to be amended.
I am not normally a betting man, but I am willing to bet that when this bill comes back before us the government is going to make some amendments to it because of the evidence that it has heard and agreed to.
This was an ideal opportunity for this government. It was an opportunity which it has completely missed, an opportunity to take the wealth of information that was presented to us, to review Bill C-78 in the context in which this evidence was presented and redraft the most important bill that this Parliament is going to have to deal with, rewrite it and present it to us in a new form, a form that perhaps the members of the opposition could accept and deal with quickly because of its importance.
Is the government going to take the opportunity given to it with the proroguing of Parliament? No. It is going to sit back and, in the lazy-handed way that it has dealt with this legislation so far, it is simply going to throw it back on the table and then take its lumps on it.
There are going to be a lot of lumps on this one, because you cannot compromise on the environment in Canada. The people of Canada and certainly the New Democratic Party are not going to sit here and allow this to happen without expressing concern.
Bill C-78 is a fatally flawed piece of legislation and it has been told to us, as I indicated, by many who appeared before us.
I have a couple of comments that I want to put on record from the Canadian Environmental Law Reports. They relate to an article that appeared in the March 1991 issue, written by Ted Schrecker who, according to this, is with the Department of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario.
He talks about the substantial need to amend the bill as well, arguing that the legislation in front of us is actually weaker than the environmental guidelines which have caused this government such incredible distress over the course of the last year on things such as the Rafferty-Alameda dam in Saskatchewan, the Oldman River in Alberta, and the James Bay II project in northern Quebec.

May 29, 1991

Because of lack of time and because the arguments are so extensive, I jump to the conclusion of this piece by Ted Schrecker.
He concludes: "It is hard to escape the conclusion that it would be preferable were the government to scrap the legislation". After reviewing and examining all the contents of Bill C-78, he concludes it would be better to scrap the whole thing, start over again and deal with a real commitment to the environment.
The government had many opportunities, some of which even I presented to it, to deal with Bill C-78, to substantially amend it and to rewrite the bill so that we could deal with it in this House.
Prior to the prorogation of Parliament, after the suggestions of the Minister of the Environment I presented to the Department of the Environment and to the committee studying Bill C-78 my own 111 amendments, which I considered minimal to salvaging the existing bill.
The government has had many weeks to examine the amendments that I and others have put forward, but I would like to consider that it would at least look at the ones that I, a parliamentarian and a member of the study committee, put forward. These amendments could have created a very substantial and stronger bill.
Some of the changes included in the 111 amendments which I gave to the government are as simple as the establishment of a parliamentary auditor on sustainable development, and the inclusion of the words "sustainable development" in the preamble of the bill. That is something not very difficult to do, but it does not exist in the existing bill.
The government had the opportunity to present a brand new bill into this House, and it chose not to.
My amendments also wanted to include all areas of federal jurisdiction within the context of environmental assessments. That means expanding it to include Crown corporations and foreign aid programs of this government. My amendments also included the ability to order parties to comply with mediated agreements. There are all sorts of provisions in this legislation which call for mediated agreements, but there is no compliance required. What good is mediation if it can be ignored?
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The legislation in front of us right now does not have any provisions to allow for a halt to any project should it be found to be environmentally damaging.
We can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a project will damage the environment, but unless the Minister of the Environment has the political will to move, the legislation does not provide any opportunity to halt the project or halt the damage being done or would be done to the environment. This is a major, a fatal flaw in the legislation that the government had an opportunity to correct and chose not to.
I am also suggesting we close a lot of the loopholes in the legislation that give broad discretion to the minister to exempt virtually anything he wants from the assessment and to include joint federal-provincial endeavours under the terms of the existing legislation.
I also wanted to see intervener funding included in this act because it talks about public participation, but public participation cannot occur unless the public has the funds to participate in that project.
Most important to me, I would like to greatly expand the aboriginal rights provisions in the context of environmental protection and ensure that they are written directly into the act so that there would be no guessing, no need for interpretation of what aboriginal rights means in terms of the application of environmental assessment to land not only held for the Indian people, but also land in which the Indian people themselves have an interest.
I would also like to ask the government to include, through my amendments, the power to force groups or developers to participate in the process and abide by the decisions. In other words, there are no provisions in this act that actually would force a developer to work through the environmental process. To me, that is very important in all of this.
I would be very interested to hear the Minister of the Environment or the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment, who sat through most if not all of the committee hearings on this bill, come into the Chamber and argue in this debate why Bill C-78 has to be brought back in in its original form. I cannot believe that either the new Minister of the Environment or the parliamentary secretary could actually stand and defend the bill as it stands now.
The testimony has been overwhelmingly against the bill as it exists. The department is planning a significant number of amendments to this legislations which will

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substantially improve it. Perhaps their amendments will not be ones that I will agree with wholeheartedly, but they are amendments that will take the bill from .0 to at least .5 on a scale of 10 in terms of acceptability to the Canadian environmental community.
The bill as it stands is a big zero and the testimony says: "Throw it out or substantially amend it". The government has indicated a need or desire to amend it, but instead it brings it back and it includes it in this package which, very peculiar as it is, is put in front of us to look at holus-bolus. I do not want government members in the Chamber today who are looking at this list to say: "We have done all this work. How can we afford to lose it? Bring back the bill and start up where you left off".
Where we left off on Bill C-78 was precisely the point which said: "Start over. We have the evidence which shows us how to do that, so start over". The government gave up that chance, gave up that opportunity, and just decided in its lazy fashion to bring it back, introduce a couple of amendments hopefully to appease the members of the environmental community and then get on with business.
In the meantime, we are going to continue to have massive developments in this country go without adequate environmental assessments. We are going to have parts of our environment, sea, land and air, subjected to environmental catastrophes that need not happen if we have the proper and adequate legislation in place to deal with it before the dangerous times occur. That is what Bill C-78 is supposed to do: to get in before something happens, not after.
This government is great at dealing in crisis. It is in crisis constantly but, by golly, we have to do something and this is a legislative opportunity to prevent a crisis from occurring. As far as the environment is concerned, there is nothing more important.


Mary Catherine Clancy: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to this motion. I have two major points to make: one general and one specific.
My general point really echoes the arguments of my colleague who spoke earlier today and spoke so eloquently, the member for Kingston and the Islands. He talked about the unprecedented action of this government in taking bills that had died on the Order Paper of the last Parliament and ramming them through, doing something which has never been done in this House in its 124-year history and, indeed, for which no precedent can be found in the British House of Commons in its nearly 1,000-year history.
I can only say that the government should hang its head in shame. One wonders today why the government prorogued the House of Commons last time. Why did it prorogue? We heard a Speech from the Throne which did not appear to tell us anything new or different. It did not appear to give us any new blueprint for Canadians. It was remarkably low on specifics about its program. Yet we had the prorogation. One presumes it was because the government wanted to get away from here, take some time, regroup and come back with some fresh ideas.
Instead of fresh ideas, we have today this pernicious- and I underline that word-motion of the House leader ramming through five bills. We are just supposed to pretend that prorogation did not take place. We are just supposed to accept the government's decision that these bills will come to this Parliament in the state in which they were supposed to have died in the last Parliament.
My learned colleague from Kingston and the Islands, although only in this House as I have been for two and a half years, not six, is certainly much more of an expert on procedure than I am.
There is one thing which has taken up, to some degree, our time here in this House recently, time that all of us as members of Parliament on both sides of the House have used in talking to the media. It has been discussed on television and in the newspapers across the country. It is the theory of a less partisan style of politics in the House of Commons.
I believe it was here, in this very House, that Sir Winston Churchill responded to the question of the neck of England being wrung like a chicken by saying: "Some chicken, some neck". If I may paraphrase Mr. Churchill, if I may take the liberty of doing so, may I say to the government members present: "Some form of non-partisanship". If this is the best that can be done, I am afraid that the people of Canada, already disappointed with the direction in which their government is leading them, will only have that disappointment increased to a point of
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absolute disbelief and disrespect for this venerable institution, the House of Commons.
We, on the opposition side of the House, have listened to the pious mouthings on the other side, about how partisanship must be dropped in the best interests and the honour of the country. What happens today? Today five bills are being rammed through with the government's favourite Draconian measure, closure. This evening we will be forced to vote on these bills because of a total disregard for the history of this Chamber, for the tradition of British Parliaments and, most specifically, a contempt for the people who are represented by the members of this House.
I would like to get a little more specific. There is one bill among these five that is of particular interest to me as the member for Halifax, and indeed is of interest to all Atlantic Canadian members. I refer to that wonderful Bill C-26.
For those who are not quite so aware what Bill C-26 is about, let me refresh your memories. Bill C-26 is the bill that takes away the At and East grain subsidies, the subsidies to the Atlantic ports. Today in this House I heard the Minister of Transport say that this government would do everything possible, everything possible, to assist the beleaguered ports of Atlantic Canada, and particularly the port of my home city, Halifax.
The Port of Halifax has a long, honourable history. In 1749 Cornwallis founded that city. From 1749 until this government got its hands on it, the Port of Halifax thrived. Haligonians, because of their port and the spinoff from it, managed to survive in good times and bad. That is coming to an end because of the policy of this government.
For weeks now I and my colleague, the member for Dartmouth, have been pleading with the government to do something about the absolutely unacceptable situation in the Atlantic ports, and particularly the Port of Halifax. The unfairness of freight rates between Halifax and central Canada have been a rallying cry for Atlantic Canadians since Confederation.
We have talked a lot about what various people gave up when they entered into Confederation and what we sacrificed to become Canadians, what we are proud to have sacrificed to become Canadians, because being Canadian is, to us, the single most important facet of our
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lives. Being Canadian is intrinsic to our existence. It is what we stand for, it is what we believe in.
However, we are human. We know what we gave up in Confederation. One of the things that we in Atlantic Canada gave up, and particularly in Halifax and Nova Scotia, was the thriving north-south trade. We gave it up because we said: "We want to be part of this country. This country is important to us, we are committed to it and we will stay committed to it".
Look at the polls. From then until now, who have been the strongest federalists in this country? Who are the ones who remain most strongly committed to the concept of Canada? Every time-and my colleague from Newfoundland knows this-they are Atlantic Canadians. Atlantic Canadians believe in this country, they want this country to succeed, despite the fact that governments, and most particularly this government, seem to take some perverse pleasure in kicking us when we are down.
I refer again to the comments made today by the Minister of Transport. He said: "We will do all we can, all that is in our power". That is what he said. I heard him. You heard him, Mr. Speaker. You were there. He said: "We will do everything in our power to assist the Port of Halifax".
One of the things in the power of this government is to take Bill C-26 and consign it to the garbage can where it belongs. This bill has an interesting history. On July 15, 1989 the At and East subsidy was cancelled, flat out cancelled without legislative enablement. It was just cancelled. The government in its wisdom said: "That is it for the At and East. It is gone". Since that happened, the grain elevator in Saint John, New Brunswick has closed and the grain elevator in Halifax is working at a quarter its capacity.
Has there been a bill to enable this cancellation? No, indeed, or at least not passed. Bill C-26 was introduced in the very late fall of 1989 and immediately received strong opposition from this side of the House. I want to pay tribute to my colleague, the hon. member for Lambton-Middlesex, who certainly increased my knowledge in the area of grain subsidies and the history of the At and East subsidy and its role in bringing Ontario grains to the Atlantic ports. Without the assistance of the hon. member for Lambton-Middlesex, I

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would not have had the knowledge or learned the facts and figures I needed to know to make representation in committee and in this House against the cancellation of this subsidy. I definitely want to say thanks to him.
This bill went to a legislative committee. With my colleague from Lambton-Middlesex, and the support of witnesses in the grain industry and the transportation industry and the support of the mayors of Saint John, New Brunswick, Halifax and Dartmouth, we stopped this bill cold in the legislative committee. It stopped there. It did not come back for third reading. There was lots of time. This bill was stopped cold in the legislative committee months before last month's prorogation and the government did not attempt to bring it back.
What does the government do? It reintroduces the bill under this pernicious, and I use the word again, pernicious motion. Is it not interesting? Is it not ironic that on the same day, the very same day that the Minister of Transport says: "We will do everything in our power to assist the Atlantic Canadian ports, and in particular the Port of Halifax," that Bill C-26 raises its ugly head, the ghost of Christmas past. Bill C-26 is back here being rammed through with closure by this government.
If this is everything that is in the power of the Government of Canada to help the Port of Halifax, it is no wonder that the government party is at 8 per cent in the polls in Atlantic Canada, 8 per cent. I have been hearing for days and days that the Conservatives are at 14 per cent. Well, not in the Atlantic and Bill C-26 is part and parcel of the reason.
Atlantic Canadians are committed to this country. They are committed to federalism. A poll last week told us that Atlantic Canadians have the strongest belief in the country in bilingualism. Atlantic Canadians, the most tolerant people in this country, are absolutely right.
Atlantic Canadians have taken just about every brickbat and every bomb that the government can throw at them. However, there comes a point. The point has come with this bill not only being reintroduced when the government did not have the face to bring it in for third reading after its disgraceful behaviour in the legislative committee, but being rammed through, forced through on the same day that we hear these wonderful promises
from the Minister of Transport. This is unacceptable. It is unacceptable to Atlantic Canadians.
All of us stand here in front of you-there are three members here from the Atlantic in the House now, my colleagues from Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba-and say: "This must stop". We have heard the eloquence of the member for Kingston and the Islands on the unprecedented behaviour of this Parliament, unprecedented in Canadian or British parliamentary history.
We have heard the eloquence of the member for LaSalle-Emard on the question of the environmental bill that is supported by virtually no one in the environmental sector in this country.
We will hear more, and we will hear it soon, but I say that if this government does not want to see people marching in the streets, this government had better look to its own advice. We are supposed to be in a less partisan House of Commons. The people of Canada know when the wool is being pulled over their eyes and they will not accept it.
The people of Canada understand when this government is trying to hide behind empty phrases and foolish words and at the same time is continuing to attack certain regions and certain sectors of this country. Mr. Speaker, 8 per cent; just wait. Very soon this government will deservedly be in a minus position.


David Walker: Mr. Speaker, after the fine speech given by the member from Hamilton just a minute a go, it is hard to know where to continue on in this type of debate.
I guess what it brings to mind, and the reason for joining in, is that as the rules of the House of Commons were changed since the last session, it takes a while for the impact of these rules to begin to sink in for individual members, particularly those of us who are new to the House of Commons.
What has struck me, as I have watched the House reorganize itself, is just how democratic the motive behind these changes has been. I do not say that loosely and I do not say that without some sadness. I think it is important that the members of Parliament maintain their confidence in this institution and show Canadians how it can work.
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When we returned and looked, for example, at the case of the reorganization of the committee system in the House of Commons, we found ourselves into one battle after another to make sure that people across this country had an opportunity to discuss the issues before a committee. We have found out that they are all cut back and have less of a mandate. They are not able to generate the discussions we thought they would at one time.
In the case of international human rights, we found it in fact to be cut entirely from the mandate of the human rights committee. I know there are many Canadians and groups such as Amnesty International, which yesterday celebrated its 30th anniversary, which look forward to having a chance to speak to a small group of parliamentarians in the subcommittee on international human rights. The fact that opportunity is being taken away from them because of the change in rules and the change in the structure of committees is something that will be regretted in the months to come.
I know too that in the health and welfare committee there is a great deal of concern. There are huge areas to be discussed, from poverty, to changes in the health care and income support systems in this country. If they do not have a broad representation from all the parties in the House of Commons and if they do not have an opportunity to listen to the groups coming in, they will be pushed very hard to develop the expert reports we have seen from the House of Commons committees in the last few years.
The House reconvened last week after the Speech from the Throne. I guess one of the reasons why the government does not wish to have this House sit as regularly as it did before is that it is watching the decline in the fortunes of the government since the House was reconvened. If we think back, it was only a few weeks ago that the House heard the Governor General in the Senate chamber deliver the Speech from the Throne, outlining all the commitments that the government was going to be making.
Then we found out within a few hours that in fact no matter what the government's publicly stated agenda was, it was breaking rules on immigration and the Prime Minister was on a trip overseas. It is similar to the one of the last Conservative Prime Minister whose government fell around the jokes created by a trip overseas to Asia.
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Here is our Prime Minister right now making as many errors and showing as bad judgment as his colleague, the Minister responsible for Constitutional Affairs. It is a government which has been plagued by stupid mistakes, by bad judgment, by not understanding the true wishes of Canadians to be governed responsibly. In changing the institutions, it simply wished to restructure the House instead of dealing with the real issue: if Canadians had a chance to deal with this government directly in a general election, these guys would be dismissed out of hand as being one of the most inappropriate and undemocratic governments seen in the history of this country.
Although we have to struggle to deal with the government every day in Question Period and try to show Canadians just how incompetent it is in so many areas, we must remind the country that we, too, share in the desire to see that the House is restored to being the focal point of public debate and to see that the rules are restored in a way that makes it not only easy to criticize the government, but easier to work together as a team on all sides of this House to produce good legislation.
The government decided to ask us to restore legislation, and it actually did that with several pieces of legislation, including the Railroad Act, the Young Offenders Act, an act to provide for the dissolution or transfer of certain Crown corporations, an act to establish a federal Environmental Assessment Process, an act to amend an act to provide for the appointment of a port warden. Some of these are small pieces of legislation and others are very important.
The government is operating in an undemocratic fashion by pushing these pieces of legislation forward for the last two years, rather than by going back and facing the basic faults in its legislation and facing the very serious and thoughtful amendments put forward by other members of the House of Commons, including my colleagues from Newfoundland and from Kingston and the Islands. The government wishes to start as if these amendments were never presented and the legislation is perfect.
The role of the opposition is to be a thoughtful opposition and a thoughtful critic of what the government is trying to do. But the lack of opportunity, as posed to us in this particular case, makes it very difficult for an opposition party to continue to deal with the

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government when we do not feel the government is being honest in its motives.
with the end product of a bad system and not the system itself.
We could go through a number of these cases. Thke, for example, just how controversial the Young Offenders Act is. You cannot deal with the Young Offenders Act in isolation.
In this country right now, we are going through a crisis on questions of safety and security. We find that Canadians are very concerned that they cannot walk down their streets. We have women who are extremely worried about violence in the home. We have, for the first time, reporting systems on violence against women. We have a caucus colleague here, who is supported by this caucus, who wants a royal commission on violence against women. There are several groups now, for example social policy and social planning groups across this country, which are interested in safety issues. The Young Offenders Act is sort of the tip of the iceberg. But if this government only wants us to deal with the tip of the iceberg, how will we ever get at the heart of the matter?
We see the reports from Statistics Canada this week that violent crime is up dramatically in almost every Canadian city, with the exception of Toronto. We read in the newspapers of this rise in crime-such as today, about a couple of particularly violent people who are allowed to be out on parole-and that upsets Canadians.
We cannot deal with the issue of safety and security by only dealing with the issue of criminality. The issue of security is that of using the role of the federal government to make sure that our society is safer and to make sure our larger cities are safer. Jail is the end product of a system which is unsafe. It makes people in this country feel unsafe in their daily activities, whether it is walking to work, walking home in the evening, living in an apartment by oneself, being an elderly person going out on payday when the old age cheque comes in, or on payday if they are between 55 and 65, and finding themselves in confrontation with people who wish to take away their grocery money.
In our city this happens frequently. We need to reach out, but we cannot reach out if the government presents us with situations where we cannot have good discussions about this. If you take away the committee system and if you take away opportunities to debate specific pieces of legislation brought forward , then we are left dealing
Let me continue on for a minute with the question of safety. If you want to deal with the question of young offenders, you have to deal with gangs, race relations, employment opportunities and training and education issues. There are a whole number of things which come into play. The fact that they have failed is the reason that we have to deal with the issue of the Young Offenders Act.
The government came back to us and said: "We consider this to be all finished. It has passed report stage." We said: "Well just a minute. Let us discuss what we are trying to do here in the House. Let us listen to Canadians. Let us realize that Canadians are looking at safety for an unsafe city and nobody is there to protect them. We would like to use this opportunity to expand discussion, to see that our amendments are taken seriously and produce a wider debate in this House of Commons."
In the case of the federal environmental assessment, this party has taken the environmental process as being the benchmark of good government. When the so-called green plan was put forward we stood up in this House and, at that time, said: "This is a fraudulent process. It is not well thought out in its legislative framework. There has not been consultation with groups and with the provinces, and the minister does not know what the government really means by certain sections. We do not even think the money is in place." We stopped and said: "Let's review this environmental review process because this is a test of faith among Canadians for how the system should be working."
If you ask Canadians what really makes them proud in this country they will tell you that the one thing that makes them the most proud is the great sense of wilderness, the unspoiled space. We have a country so large and so full of resources that they do not want to see it put at risk. They ask the federal government to please show leadership. They ask the government not to get into discussions on devolution but to show leadership and assert the federal assessment process on environmental matters.
The government provides a piece of legislation which is very weak and one in which the Canadian people do not have confidence.



May 29, 1991

If you watched television last week, The Journal on CBC, you would have seen the treatment of the B.C. forests. It may not be the scare scenario sent out by German television but let us assume that there is a problem there. Where is the environmental review process? The famous dam in Saskatchewan which has led to several court cases, the Rafferty-Alameda dam, is another example of the federal government's flawed process.
We find that there are people who now have to take the federal government to court over the Oldman dam in Alberta.
We could go across the country, one province after the other. We could look at the future developments in northern Quebec, northern Ontario and northern Manitoba. The purpose of the opposition is not to obstruct government but to co-operate with the government when the interests of Canadians have been thought about and taken into account. We all heard in our constituencies that people are concerned about the integrity of government and integrity in the governmental process.
Do we hear a thoughtful response to integrity? No, not at all. What do we hear?


An hon. member:: The government does not even know the word.


David Walker: It is a faint memory from its parents and it certainly has lost it. The government does not know that Canadians do not want to hear about more things being rammed down their throats. They want this government out and if the government is going to stay, they want at least a few responsible pieces of legislation.
The member for Kingston and the Islands, who is our watchdog on the way that this government tries to ram one thing down our throats after another, can tell the Canadian people that so many pieces of flawed legislation are presented to this House of Commons that it is a record in Canadian history. Because of the influence of members such as this, we strive to review pieces of legislation and to improve them. We want to see a better environmental review process. That is why we are forcing the government today to explain to us, more clearly, why it does not want to start over again and produce a better piece of legislation but rather wants to push ahead.
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My guess is that its green plan is to fill all those green seats over there with the Conservatives. It does not care about the green of Canada, it cares about the green on the government side.
I want to say that there are going to be a lot of empty spaces there after the next election. That is going to be green for Canadians because all the members sitting there are going to be gone. They are going to be gone because they are irresponsible. They are going to have to face the music.
All these pieces of legislation that have been presented, including the ones today to be hurried up, are just going to be a testimony to how little they understood what was going on in the country.
When the Prime Minister returns from his overseas trip-and trip is a good acronym for what he is doing; he is falling all over himself and being a total embarrassment to all Canadians-he is going to find out once again that the measures of the people he left in charge are being rejected by Canadians. What people want is a working organization.
There was grand talk in the Speech from the Throne about the reform of Parliament. There were discussions about free votes, about making Parliament a more responsible organization. There was an expression when I was in university which said: "The next day is the first day of your life." Today has to be the first day. If you are going to reform Parliament, do not wait for a report from a committee. Do not wait for some grand scheme from the Prime Minister's Office or the Privy Council Office. Start out by saying: "Today we are going to do things differently. Today we are going to respect Parliament. Today if the opposition wants to bring to the attention of the government that these pieces of legislation should be reviewed, we are going to take them seriously. We are not going to just jam them down everybody's throat".
When we hear and see the government taking this seriously, then we will know that in fact we have a more democratic institution.
As I think about these issues and as I look for signs from my colleagues as to whether we will be successful today in stopping the government in its actions, I can hope that many more will join me in speaking out against the government's actions. We will be able to see that each and every one of these pieces of legislation today

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will be returned to the committees and to the proper stages for full consideration, and that the precedent of ramming these things down our throats will be stopped.
There are many other things I could refer to, but I see there are many colleagues who wish to join me in this debate. I thank you for the opportunity to ask the government to stop what it is doing and to reconsider the arbitrary nature of the new rules of the House of Commons.


Mr. Brian Tobin (Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take advantage of this opportunity to join in the debate this evening with my colleagues from Winnipeg, Kingston and The Islands and with others in the House.
We see the decision by the government today to put this motion before the House as the confirmation of the destruction, and that is what it is, of our parliamentary system of government.
We have heard a lot of talk in the last few weeks, including discussion in the throne speech-


David Walker: On a point of order. Could the Speaker indicate who is representing the government in the House right now?


An hon. member:: Riding roughshod over Parliament.


Mr. Hawkes:: Mr. Speaker, I think it is against the rules and precedents of this House to call attention to the presence or absence of members. The previous comment was out of order, I believe.


Mr. Dionne:: It is also mandatory that a minister of the Crown be in his seat at all times when Parliament is in session.


An hon. member:: Hear, hear.


An hon. member:: All afternoon there has been no minister in this Chamber.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: On the same point of order, the hon. member for Annapolis Valley-Hants.


Mr. Nowlan:: Mr. Speaker, I just want to confirm and support completely my hon. friend from Northumberland-Miramichi.
The nerve of the government Whip. He has a lot of nerve, and he can use it in his own government caucus. We are debating the motion before the House, which is a
complete abrogation of tradition and history of this House.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order! I think members from both sides have had an opportunity to raise points of order and messages were sent back and forth. The hon. member for Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte has the floor again.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, I think the points of order that have been raised illustrate the point that I tried to make at the beginning of my speech. That is the following.
Parliament is being systematically destroyed by the government. Canadians watching this debate are wondering what the fuss is. The Government of Canada has introduced a motion putting a series of bills that died on the Order Paper at various stages of progress in the last Parliament before this Parliament, after a new throne speech, and has deemed those bills to be reintroduced at whatever position or progress they had made in the last Parliament.
In hundreds of years of evolution of parliamentary government, such a motion has never been put before any parliament anywhere in the British parliamentary system because it is a form of executive dictatorship.
It is a government saying: "It is does not matter whether Parliament has proposed,"-government proposes and Parliament disposes-"we are going to introduce these bills. We are going to deem them to have been already considered by this Parliament and we are going to dispose of them in advance of a proper examination of the legislative matters put before the Parliament of Canada."
This government has been talking about trying to introduce a measure of civility into Parliament. It is trying to introduce a measure of non-partisanship in Parliament. That is what it has talked about. What it is really talking about is: Will you give a particular party, the governing party, a break? Will you be gentle as we go into the night with a particular party, the governing party?
This governing party should not ask for gentleness from the opposition. It should not ask for understanding from the opposition. It should not ask for compliance
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from the opposition. It should not ask the opposition to accept being manipulated by the governing party when the institution is being destroyed. Parliament is being destroyed by the governing party today.
That is why Canadians are cynical. Canadians have a profound sense of fair play. It does not matter whether you are talking about a Canadian on the farthest point on the east coast on the craggiest rock in Newfoundland or a Canadian in St. Louis du Ha Ha, Quebec or a Canadian in Prince George, British Columbia. They understand the institution.
They understand that this is the place that belongs to the commoners. It does not belong to the Prime Minister in his ornate chambers at 24 Sussex. It does not belong to the Leader of the Opposition and it does not belong to the leader of the third party. It does not belong to independence. It does not belong to corporate Canada and it does not belong to Bob White.
It belongs to the people. Any time you tear up the rules of Parliament, any time you take short-cuts in Parliament, any time you say that hundreds of years of tradition of Parliament can be done away with, you do not short-change the opposition. You do not-short change corporate Canada.
You don't short-change the Canadian Federation of Labour. You don't short-change me. You short-change the people, because it is their institution. It is their Chamber, to ensure that their voice is heard and they have a chance to comment on the decisions of the governing party of the day.
The governing party of the day regrettably for the country-a country in desperate need of leadership on the constitutional front, a country in desperate need of leadership on the economic front- does not have the confidence of the people. Even as a member of the opposition, one who wants to replace the governing party, I say it is regrettable for Canada that at this time in our history only 14 per cent or 12 per cent or 8 per cent of Canadians have confidence in the government of the day.
What does this government do? Does it attempt to lay bare before the people of Canada its agenda? Does it attempt to persuade the people of Canada and the [DOT] elected representatives of the people of Canada of the
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value of its agenda? Does it say that it has a vision for Canada and such a profound belief in our vision for Canada that we are prepared to debate it and to defend it?
No. It uses the tyranny of the majority. It uses the temporary trust given to this party as a consequence of an election two and a half or three years ago to bulldoze its legislative measures through the Parliament of Canada, to deny the people of Canada a chance to be heard, to deny the elected representatives of the people of Canada-not an opportunity to speak, but their obligation to speak, their responsibility to be heard in the proper examination of bills.
We may as well be blunt in this Chamber. What do we have? We have in Canada today the worst possible combination of governmental systems. We have a Prime Minister who wants a presidential system, a Prime Minister who wants to rule with absolute power and who assumes that the members of the Conservative Party are automatically supporters of every government measure, a Prime Minister who takes for granted that the members of the Conservative Party will support any and every government measure, a Prime Minister who sees not a Parliament with all it entails but sees purely a majority, a Prime Minister who has hauled off the velvet glove and exposed a brutal fist of a party with a majority in a parliamentary system, and who wants to behave in a presidential fashion.
However, a president who attempts to act in that fashion has imposed upon him the checks and balances of a congressional system. He is subject to the veto of a congressional system. There is no veto in this place. The greatest power belonging to the people in this place is the power of public opinion. The only ability the opposition has to represent the people is through Question Period and debate. We do not have the ability to out-vote the government. No matter what is proposed, we do not have the ability to stop the government. Only an appeal to public opinion, only in examining legislation in detail to point out its flaws and suggest improvements and put pressure on the government through an appeal to public opinion can opposition parliamentarians influence the government.
We cannot out-vote the government. No matter what it proposes, we can only expose its program and examine it.

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If we take away that ability to expose, to examine, to debate, to propose amendments, to make changes, to seek to improve, to stop dead in its tracks what is worthy of being stopped dead in its tracks, we do not have a Parliament any more. We have a lovely gilded Chamber, rich and ornate, reflecting the history and evolution of the country, but absolutely neutered in its responsibility to reflect and echo the voice of the peoples of Canada in every region of this country.
That is what has happened today. This is serious business. As this governing party sinks deeper and deeper in the polls, it becomes increasingly removed from the people of Canada and from the values and views of the people of Canada, increasingly withdraws into Fortress Ottawa, increasingly withdraws into its offices and the sheltered existence of a member of Parliament, a particular one who cannot go home any more.
As this party finds itself reduced to that state, it increasingly takes away from Parliament and from the people the responsibilities of members to be heard. It shuts this place down.
What are we reduced to? We are reduced to the Speaker sitting in his chair presiding over a debate, quietly, pleasantly nodding his head, hoping for order. We are reduced to members like myself and others in the opposition, the independent member from Nova Scotia, feeling a burning sense of outrage, and raising our voices in anger, hoping that our anger will reverberate, resonate, and echo across this land because only the people can put a stop to this tyranny.
We are reduced to government members not even caring in the face of this unprecedented action, not even caring about the destruction of the institution, hidden away in their offices, wondering whether they have any future after this Parliament.
Where are the media? Well, if it cannot be said in four sentences, if it cannot be reduced to an eight-second television clip, if it cannot be reported as a sensational front-page headline, if the story cannot be told in the space given to a columnist, newspaper journalist, or a television reporter then it is a story not worth telling. The story that is unfolding in this Parliament today does not make an easy headline. It cannot be described in an eight-second clip. It is the story of the destruction of a tradition that is 800 years old, the British parliamentary tradition.
It is the end of the bloodless revolution. It is a bloodless counter-revolution bred by indifference when
the institution is dismantled, regrettably with the acquiescence of the Chair. I hope that members are paying attention to this debate, particularly members who are here for the first term. I have only been here a short while, a little more than a decade. It does not take long to begin to understand that the statues out on the grounds of Parliament Hill, of McGee and Diefenbaker, Pearson, St. Laurent and Laurier, leaders of this country, are more than just bronze relics collecting dust. They are part of the institutional memory of this place. They stand and give testimony to the struggle to build a country. The one behind the Library of Parliament, of McGee, who died at 43, is a testimony to the struggle for Confederation itself, to the contract entered into by many peoples, to the institution in which the voice of a country could be heard.
Those kinds of parliamentarians would be absolutely outraged, would feel a sense of betrayal. They would suggest, I am sure, that what is being done today by the government in the name of efficiency, in the name of making it easier, in the name of ducking one's responsibilities, is a betrayal of the parliamentary evolution in this country.
I hope Canadians will understand that the debate today is not a procedural argument. The debate today is not about whether the government should have an easy time reintroducing four or five bills. The debate today is not about whether or not the government should have an easy time reintroducing four or five bills. The debate today is not about whether or not the opposition has been denied some ability to tackle in greater measure four or five pieces of legislation. The debate today is about whether or not a government half way through its term, a government at record low levels in the polls, a government showing record disdain for the views of the people and the Parliament of this country will be allowed in the interest of its own partisan convenience to destroy hundreds of years of parliamentary tradition.
Mr. Speaker, I suggest to you the people of Canada, when they become aware of what is happening here today and when they become aware that their institution is being destroyed, will not stand for it. I say to you that unless this Prime Minister is absolutely convinced that his record is beyond redemption and therefore it makes no difference, unless this Prime Minister and this party want to wear the label of tyrants-dictatorial tyrants-in the history of this country, then the government should recant, come to its senses, withdraw this bill and show
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some basic respect for democracy, some respect for Parliament and ultimately, respect for the will of the people of Canada. It should withdraw this bill immediately.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, I guess I am happy to participate in the debate. I am sorry the debate is here. I just want to share the views in perhaps a more restrained way than my hon. friend from Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte. I agree with almost everything he said.
I have sat here through this debate and I should be somewhere else, as most members should. It is a beautiful night outside here at the House of Commons in Ottawa. Summer has hit finally and most of us should be somewhere else.
I think the intervention of the hon. member for Miramichi, who is a member of longstanding, who pinpointed and really cuffed the ears of the government Whip, illustrates the reason why I wanted to participate in the debate on this motion. I argued before the Speaker made his ruling that this is one of the more fundamental rulings that, as far as I am concerned, has ever been made by the Chair, which is going over a period of time. The precedent that this sets will affect in a most adverse way the whole reason why we are here.
Number one, I will come down to the procedural point because, quite frankly, I want to take on the Chair. I just want to mention that I could not believe-I am just horrified-that the Chair made the ruling it made. It is the grossest interpretation of the rules that we have ever had. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, the Chair forgot something.
We had a Prime Minister some years ago who wanted to do certain things in terms of our Constitution. He wanted to patriate it. Thank God he did. With all the criticism that he gets for having patriated the Constitution and the revision of history that in effect Quebec was left out-and of course, with a separatist government it was never going to sign anything-he at least brought our Constitution document back here. This gave us the opportunity to have something called Meech Lake.
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Having said all that at one time, the Prime Minister, with the persuasion of premiers and/or public opinion decided to go to the Supreme Court to see if the Constitution Act 1982 was valid. The Supreme Court of Canada said, among other things in a most interesting decision, a little vague in some definition: "Oh, yes, Mr. Prime Minister of the Government of Canada, you can do what you are going to do but there is something called a convention. The convention says you should get some approval of the provinces".
Without going into that too far, this fundamental issue we are debating tonight, and I agree with my hon. friend from Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte, is not the five or six bills that are there to be reinstated. We all know there is to be reinstatement. I thank the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre who, in effect, asked if there was a government minister in the House.
I know I am sort of moving around and have not zoned into what I want to say. But that intervention by the member for Winnipeg North Centre asking that simple but fundamental question about the whole parliamentary process: "Is there a minister of the Crown here?" and finding out there was none, illustrates the problem we are debating here in the House of Commons with this notice of motion.
I cannot believe it, knowing a lot of my good friends on the opposite side, that they have amnesia in terms of parliamentary tradition. I know tradition can suffocate us all, but it is not tradition for tradition's sake. It is tradition for the sake of the people. As has been said here before in the debate, the whole reason we exist is not to come here and make crazy speeches or stand up on points of order. It is to try to represent the people to see if the public purse is being spent in the way it should be spent, according to the mandate the public has given to the government and/or the bills given to the government.
The very fact that there is no minister of the Crown here responsible for the public purse is a denial of the very reason why we exist. I was going to be rather restrained earlier tonight, but we had the government Whip, who may be able to whip all the eunuchs on the government side into submission, having the nerve to come up here and try and defend this fact under another

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rule of the House. This may be debated another time because of the intervention of the member for York Centre. The very fact that the government Whip should have known better, but who obviously does not, is one of the reasons we are debating this notice of motion tonight. No government in the history of the Parliament of Canada, no government in the history of the Parliament of England has ever tried to have this motion debated in their respective Houses of Commons.
For some 20 years I sat as an hon. member of the opposition with a government party called the Progressive Conservatives, and I do not regret that too much. But, my goodness gracious, Mr. Speaker, if I had not bolted a year ago, I think I would have bolted tonight, when I heard the government Whip answering the member for Winnipeg North Centre on the fundamental reason why we are here: do we spend the public money in a proper way?
The whole essence of the thing is that it is not answered unless you at least go through the formality. We know the minister of the Crown here, and I am glad she is here-or another minister-is not going to really listen and/or take all the points of view. It is at least, however, a recognition of the principle of the power of the purse. The people send us here, pay us good money, give us good pensions, give us good perks and we are supposed to debate the public purse. My gosh, this is the first time in the 26 years I have been here that I have not seen a minister of the Crown to, in effect, defend the Crown, defend the spending of the public money, as the member for Winnipeg North Centre mentioned.
The Associate Minister of Defence had better not laugh. She has a beautiful smile and she is a lovely person. But I am suggesting that one of the reasons the government is in total trouble today is because they do not understand certain basics. One of the basics is Parliament. The Prime Minister never earned his spurs. He did not come up through the ranks. He won the leadership of my party. I supported somebody else. That may have been part of my problem. But he never earned it, he never sat here. I agree we sit here too long.
But for the government Whip to come in here and try to justify the unjustifiable was something.
I am going to get down to the motion. I know the public watches this on television and they might not understand this. I quite agree with the earlier comments of other colleagues. I am not going to get into the different bills involved. Quite frankly, sitting in the opposition, understanding the procedures of the House, I have sometimes wondered: why do all bills die in a prorogation and then you have to bring them back?
This is why I am horrified by the Speaker's decision. There was a timetable with the opening of Parliament and a prorogation. The timetable was like a person going to the gallows, it helped to focus attention on the bills in question. We know a lot of bills go through by consent, others are debated too long, some are debated fairly, but then comes the end of Parliament. A summer recess is okay, but we come to a prorogation which is the termination of that session, historically-for 124 years in this Parliament-it was time to focus attention on what was left on the Order Paper. It was the time that government and opposition got together and, often by unanimous consent, agreed on a legislative package of bills which were read and approved.
I listened to my hon. friend, who is a good parliamentarian and one of the better, as far as I am concerned, from Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands, make a very passionate speech about two or three hours ago condemning the government. I am not going to agree with everything he said because the opposition has to bear some of the responsibility for what we are facing tonight. The opposition has to decide when it is going to draw the proverbial line in the sand. When is the opposition going to stop agreeing and doing things by consent?
We cannot adjourn Parliament as we adjourned it three or four times in this most unusual year of Parliament-on, Parliament-off, Parliament adjourned, Parliament called back. In my experience I have never seen a more hiccup period of Parliament. We hiccup on for two or three weeks, then we hiccup off, then we take another lozenge and come back and hiccup this way and that. The opposition had better smarten up, it had better decide what it is going to agree on.
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I know there is competition between Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and the other party which thinks it is going to be Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, regardless of what Premier Bob Rae is doing in Ontario-and I am not going to get into that of course-but the opposition has to decide before it agrees to adjourn. It has to say: "Okay, government House leader, we will agree to adjourn but what bills are we going to pass? What bills are we going to turn over to a new Parliament."
From what I understand as a result of some of the discussion and debate here today, I do not think that was discussed or defined very well. I am suggesting that the opposition had better start to decide whether it is an opposition to a government that it, from its point of view, quite properly, and from the public point of view, has properly condemned. It had better decide whether it is really going to oppose, not obstruct but oppose, or whether it is going to be a hypocrite and oppose in rhetoric and then cave in when the moment of truth comes.
I do not know if this debate is going to go its full course. I know that, from a government point of view, we used to discuss this. We would say: "Oh don't worry about the opposition, it is going to cave in at about eight o'clock or nine o'clock. Don't worry fellows, at eleven o'clock you will be able to catch your planes."
There is some of that feeling here tonight. The government will start to pick up its ears. Government members are as human as any of us in the opposition or in the independent row. I am the dean of the independents. They are all there to my left. I start the row here. They are all human and they do not like to be here either. They want to know if we are really serious or not. Already, when this motion was put this afternoon, I saw two chairpersons over here talking to opposition members, obviously looking for consent on certain things. Either the organizational committee is meeting tomorrow to set up the committees or whatever.
The opposition has to decide, if this government is as odious as it says and the public and polls believe, to oppose, not obstruct but oppose. The opposition cannot oppose by making a rhetorical speech in the House of Commons on rule changes. In effect, this opposition has already been sandbagged on the rule changes that came in before we got out on one of those hiccup pauses. It got
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bamboozled on the rule changes and now we have a motion like this and I really do not know if we are even going to carry the debate until eleven o'clock.
I will come back to what I said before, as Prime Minister Trudeau found out-and thank God he brought the Constitution back. I used to be a lawyer, and I am not going to argue with the Supreme Court decision about the convention, which in effect said: "Mr. Prime Minister, you can do what you are doing legally, but the convention says you should have some approval from the provinces."
There was another federal-provincial conference and we all know what happened. Thank God the Constitution came back, for which I give Prime Minister Trudeau full credit. All the talk about Meech Lake, all the things said by the present Prime Minister and his revision of history, is totally intellectually dishonest. If we had not had the repatriation of the Constitution, we never would have had the opportunity for Meech Lake, even though it was botched a year ago today. Even then, with the Prime Minister speaking, with a majority government, the Supreme Court said: "Hey, Mr. Prime Minister, there is such a thing as a convention".
I am fundamentally disappointed and sick in my heart that the Speaker of this House, a friend of mine, made a peremptory decision to allow this motion to stand in order. I said in the preliminary debate before he made his ruling that there are no precedents. I asked the government parliamentary secretary: "What precedent do you have for what you are trying to do"? The parliamentary secretary knew, and I knew before I asked the question, that there was no parliamentary principle. There was no parliamentary precedent to try to do what we are doing here.
I have been in Parliaments before where, by consent, before we prorogued we made a House order putting bills A, B, C, D and E in the same position in the new House as they were in the old House. Also, when the new House came in, by consent order, we agreed to elevate certain bills into the stage they were at before prorogation. All of them by consent. However, we have, this time, a complete abdication and ignorance of the fundamental parliamentary tradition allowing the opposition to speak and hold the Parliament and the government to a time clock-and if it does not beat the time clock and get all the bills through by prorogation it would be able to make a deal, or at least try to make a new deal,

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or it goes back to start again. That is the way the system works.
That was a convention of this House for 124 years. It was a convention, and is still a convention in the House of Commons in England, the Mother of Parliaments, for all its hundreds of years. Some may ridicule the member from Kamloops as the parliamentary secretary did in his rebuttal yesterday claiming that his argument was extreme. It is not extreme.
Once the government has this precedent on the books, why should it worry too much about what the opposition says at any time about any bill? It can say: "Let them debate until the cows come home. Then we will have a prorogation some time, and then we will bring in an omnibus and ominous motion to put all the bills that we, the government like, put them all in one hat and throw them into the House of Commons. With a majority government we do not have to worry about debating each individual bill. We can put them back on the Order Paper at whatever stage they are at".
That, to me, is a convention that breaches fundamental rules of this institution. I am sad that the Speaker has made that ruling that forces us to debate this issue tonight.
There are so many things that can be said. That type of ruling ignores the practical working of this House, just by what has happened tonight and for the government Whip to say what he said. I cannot draw attention to the interest of members. This is not a sexy issue in terms of the public but as far as I am concerned, this is one of the more fundamental rulings the Chair is ever going to make and I am sad. I have sat here and missed three opportunities to participate in a small way, knowing that the ruling has already been made and knowing full well that the government majority is going to have its day because you have turned the clock back and you really make this place a charade by this type of ruling.
I know it is useless to talk now. The government's motion will pass. I just hope the opposition decides to oppose and I hope the debate continues until the appointed hour when we vote. I hope that having been sand-bagged on the rules changes and on this notice of
motion, somewhere in the collective opposition there is going to be a willingness to say to the government: "Hey, we know you have the numbers, but we are not going to give this by consent".
We all know, if you have been around here long enough, that three-quarters of the things done here are done by consent. I just cannot believe that having been sand-bagged on the rules changes, on this motion and some other matters that there is still going to be that receptive nature to do things by consent. The opposition has been whip-sawed enough and it should tell the government to change its ways because nothing is going to be done here by consent with this type of motion.


Mr. Dan Heap (TVinity-Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have a chance to speak on this motion, although, like the previous speaker, I am sorry that it is necessary to do it. I cannot match the eloquence of either the member for Annapolis Valley-Hants or the member for Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte but I agree with the point they are making, that this motion of the government is a step toward destroying the power of Parliament as a place of real debate by people elected by the people of Canada.
It is only one step in a long process but what is happening, to put it briefly, is that the government has invented a totally new rule yesterday and today in Parliament. It never discussed the rule with the opposition, which was the usual way, until the last few years, of changing the rules. It just announced that it is going to do it differently. It had prorogued the last session, that is to say it ended it, and according to all the experience of centuries in this and other Parliaments, that means the legislation died. It could be brought in again and started afresh with fresh debate, and previous governments have used that system to good effect.
Now the government is just saying it is not going to bother with that, it is going to run five bills through, which have no connection with each other; five bills it wants through, in one motion, limiting the debate to one day by closure. In other words, each person gets a chance to speak for at most 20 minutes and he has to talk about five different bills which have nothing to do with each other. After people have spoken until eleven o'clock this night, it is over.
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That is not by itself dictatorship but it is part of a pattern of dictatorship. I remember nine years ago when the same Tory party was in the opposition and it objected wildly to the then Liberal government doing something like that. The Liberal government brought in a motion to control or regulate the oil companies. The Tory party objected wildly on behalf of its friends in the oil companies and it shut down this House for two weeks. It hijacked this House by abusing a rule that was then customary. It was not written in the books. It was a customary rule. The Speaker, a member of the government party, had to uphold the rule until the opposition party blackmailed the whole House into agreeing to change the rule.
The rule was simply this: Because the opposition had demanded a recorded vote according to its rights, it refused to come in. It refused to re-enter the House to let the vote take place.
Nothing was done for two weeks in Parliament. This is the same Tory party that is now complaining that we debate things. "We waste time," it says "debating." It wasted two weeks doing nothing in order to blackmail the government party and the Speaker of that day into agreeing to change certain rules, including the rule that it had used to get those changes.
The rules were changed by agreement then and once since then. In the last three years this government has not wanted to waste time getting agreement to change the rules. It just lays it down and says: "This is how it is going to be. Like it or lump it." That is what it did yesterday, and the Speaker liked it.
We can lump it. That is the government's attitude. No more attempt to have rational discussion. Just: "We are the boss. Do what we tell you."
Debate is slowly being cut down to next to nothing. It means that the people who elected opposition members to speak for them in Parliament are being cut out of their voice. Bills will be passed so quickly that the public will not have any idea of what is happening because the newspapers do not publish the full detail of the bills.
A few people may find out but the general working public will not know what is being done to it by the government in Parliament with the opposition being more and more, month by month, gagged by this kind of rule change, one-sidedly.
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Previous speakers have made that point, as I say, very powerfully and eloquently. I want simply to agree with them in that outline and then take the matter a little bit deeper.
Why is the government doing this? This government is clearly the ally or the tool of the Business Council on National Issues. This is a group formed in the mid-1970s. It is composed of 150 of the chief executive officers of the biggest corporations in Canada. They are worth, perhaps, $1 trillion, one thousand thousand million dollars. That is a lot of money in Canada.
Some of them are American-owned companies. They are calling the tune for this government. They asked for a free trade agreement, and they got it. They asked for cuts in the social programs, and they got it. Their third demand was for an increase in the military. We will see whether they get that.
In order to do what the Business Council on National Issues, made up of the richest corporations and the richest men in this country, is demanding, this government is using these more and more dictatorial measures.
It has rammed through the goods and services tax, which takes off the tax from the owners of property. Not one penny of the cost of the property of the manufacturing company is in the form of tax. Only the work of the workers turning steel into washing machines, leather into shoes or cloth into clothing is taxed in the goods and services tax.
The workers must pay more as workers and as consumers while the owners pay less. That has been the progress of this government for the last seven years and it was the progress of the government before it, but it did not move as quickly.
This government is dismantling Canada Post. It wants to privatize it so that it will enrich some of its friends who will be able to buy it up for a song. It is chopping down the unemployment insurance system which has established and stabilized the life of this country for 45 years.
It has completely withdrawn any government responsibility for the funding of it and it has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars out of it for training purposes which have nothing to do with the original mandate of unemployment insurance. There may be people out there in the public who will say "who cares?" The people on bread lines care. The working people who know that wages have gone down in the last 10 years care. The people in Toronto and metro Toronto who cannot buy a

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home, cannot rent a home, care what this government is doing to them.
There will be others, the comfortable ones, who will say: "Well, fair is fair; the Tories won the election in 1988". Was it fair? In the last two weeks of that election there were huge and expensive advertisements, the estimate is that they cost more than $50 million. That would be two or three times as much as the Tory party or any party would be allowed to spend in the constituency campaigns in 295 constituencies. That would have been illegal if it had been spent by the Tory party. It was not spent by the Tory party, it was spent by its friends in the Business Council on National Issues and by the subordinate groups of sometimes smaller businesses that it directs.
With the help of that $50 million spent by the richest people in Canada and in the United States on that last two weeks advertising campaign, letters were sent to their employees saying: "If free trade loses the election, you lose your job". That is quite a threat. I was shown some of the letters by working people in my riding.
With the help of that, this government now feels it can do anything it wants to do and tell the opposition to go jump in the lake. It can do anything that the Business Council on National Issues tells it to do on behalf of the richest class in this country, to the detriment of the working class in this country. By "working class" I do not mean people such as I was when I worked in a factory wearing dirty shirts and dirty jeans, working with dust and grease and ink, and so on; I mean all the workers, including the mental workers, school teachers, and many professionals who are becoming mobilized into the same situation as wage and salary workers. Almost all of them are being hurt by the changes this government is making in the laws. The government is ensuring its power to make those changes without opposition in this Parliament by the way it changes the rules.
When it comes to the next election, if it takes $100 million instead of $50 million to buy the advertisements and mislead and intimidate the public, the Business Council on National Issues will do it.
The richest class in this country has seized control of this government and it will not listen to the opposition or to the public. It believes-it is very confident, very cocky-that it can do it again and again throughout this Parliament and again in the next election.
Some of my colleagues have been saying: "You will not be back in the next election". One hundred million dollars can buy a lot of brainwashing, especially through the very powerful companies that own so much of the newspapers, radio and television, and that are destroying the small publishing companies, the small printing companies and the small weeldy community newspapers which might have a more independent opinion. It is doing that through the GST and through extortionate raises in postage rates for small papers.
Parliament is not in itself the power in this country. Parliament is only an instrument, an instrument used by somebody. A few centuries ago when "Bad King John" thought he could do anything he liked, the barons got together, got him out on the island of Runnymede and presented the charter to him and said: "We would really like you to sign this". He looked around and he did not have enough of his own men to fight the barons and so he signed it, the Magna Carta. A few centuries later, King Charles I forgot about that. He thought he could tax people without the permission of Parliament. The English common people who fought the civil war cut off King Charles' head and established the principle that Parliament shall rule over taxation. No king or queen ever tried that again in England.
My friend says it was tried in the States.
We are getting this presidential style of executive power, copied in Canada by the present Prime Minister, from the dictatorial presidents of the United States: Reagan and Bush. It is done at the behest of the same rich corporations in the United States and in Canada. They are running the show and calling the tune.
Someday, and I do not think it can be very long, the people of Canada are going to decide that it is enough; electing people to Parliament is a waste of time. The Prime Minister senses, or his pollsters have told him, that the people are getting fed up with Parliament.

No wonder, when they see that the people who represent them are either on one side where they just vote like trained seals for anything the Prime Minister calls for, or are on this side where we are more and more gagged and cannot speak out against it to tell the public what is happening and to warn it of what is down the road.
The food banks are growing with people who cannot feed their children properly. Some people cannot find a decent place to live in our big cities. Four hundred thousand jobs have been lost as a result of the trade deal and the recession. The recession was made worse in Canada by the government's high tax policy, which was not to keep inflation down. Inflation was already down. The high interest policy and the high tax policy were to make sure that Canadian goods would not compete in the U.S. market and thus make the U.S. partners unhappy.
This makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. The working people in Canada, which forms the huge majority of the Canadian population, are not going to stand for it indefinitely.
Last summer a small handful of Indians got fed up with delays, and delays, and delays for 200 or 300 years in their land claims. The government turned out 4,000 Canadian troops against them. What will happen this summer? A month ago, the workers at Caterpillar Tractor in Brampton occupied the plant; a sit-in, in order to demand a better settlement than they had got from a company which was making high profits in Brampton but had decided to close down. Because of the free trade deal it was profitable to move to Alabama where unions are practically prohibited by law.
The Rae government of Ontario negotiated that situation to a peaceful conclusion. There was no violence at Caterpillar Tractor thanks to Bob Mackenzie, the Minister of Labour in the NDP government.
It does not change the situation, which is growing worse and worse for working people in Canada. It does not change the situation in which they see that it is no longer possible for them to express their will through elections which are perverted by third party advertising and through a House where the opposition is being gagged.
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If this government continues to follow this course, it will build up the conviction in the people of Canada that they cannot do what they need to do for themselves through Parliament. They will have to use other means. That will be a sad and painful day for Canada. The responsibility for it rests on the people across the other side of the aisle.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: Mr. Speaker, I have been in this place now for some 13 years. I have seen good days and I have seen bad days in the House of Commons. I have never seen a worse day than today. Unless we smarten up we are going to destroy our own institutions.
The government should be the custodian of Parliament and the opposition should be its watchdog. Today, this Parliament was treated by the Government of Canada in absolute and total contempt.
For hours this afternoon there was no minister of the Crown in this House. I am glad the Minister of Justice is here to hear what I am saying because she should be the one most concerned about how the laws of this country are promulgated.


Mr. Della  Noce@: Spit it out, spit it out.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: If you have something to say, Mister, get up and say it.
Maybe we need another Cromwell around here for a little while to clean out some of these people who have no respect for the democratic process.


Mr. Della  Noce@: We let you speak. That is democratic.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: You let me speak? I thought I had a right to speak in this place. I thought I had a right to speak anywhere in this country. You let me speak? You are damned right you let me speak, because you cannot stop me. If you want to try, come across here right now.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: What we have seen today in this House should never be seen in this House. It is an absolute disgrace and it falls squarely on the so-called government of this country.
If we go on like this, bunching bills together, having one or two members of the government party sitting in this Chamber with no ministers here, no one account-

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able, then we are going to fall into anarchy. We have seen this happen over and over during this Parliament.
This has been, in my years in Parliament, the worst day of Parliament that I can remember.


An hon. member:: That is right. They are arrogant.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: The arrogance of that crowd opposite is boundless. Not only if it does not like the rules does it abuse the rules, but it does not even have the good sense to try to change the rules properly.
What has gone on here today is very disturbing to anyone who has any notion of how this institution is to function and protect the fundamental rights of the citizens of this country.
The rights of the citizens of this country were not protected today when business of government was being carried on in this House without a minister present, with sometimes not even a member of the government in the House.


Mr. McDermid:: Where were you?


Maurice Adrian Dionne: I was here, Sir.


John Horton McDermid: You were not here all the time.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: Where were you? You must have been wearing invisible clothes.


An hon. member:: He just snuck in.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: It is obvious that there is not much point in saying anything to these people over here because they do not have any sensitivity for this institution.
If this institution falls because no one has stood up and spoken for the rights of the members of this Parliament, then every Canadian will have lost and we will have a system of anarchy.
From the Chair on down, we have to guide and guard the rights of the people in this Chamber and we have to ensure that the basic rules of this Chamber are adhered to and are enforced.


An hon. member:: They are now.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: Not today they were not.


Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg St. James):: Mr. Speaker, I was going to start off by saying that in the less than three years I have been in Parliament, I do not think I have witnessed heretofore the kind of anger I have
witnessed tonight. There is a lot of anger on this side of the House. There is a lot of frustration. We saw the anger just a few moments ago.
I think I know my hon. colleague from Miramichi, and he is a gentleman. Rarely have I seen him raise his voice. Tonight we have seen it. It is a measure of the deep frustration and the deep anger that is felt on this side of the House.
We are dealing with very serious business here. We are dealing with a government that is deliberately gagging the opposition and showing utter contempt for this House and for our democratic institutions and for the people of Canada.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Repugnant.


John Harvard: Yes, as my colleague from Kingston and Islands says, it is repugnant. What it is doing is repugnant.
i have noticed that we have not had the pleasure or the benefit of any of the government members speaking to the issue.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: They are ashamed.


John Harvard: Are they ashamed of their own measure? Are they ashamed of their own motion? I would have thought they would be proud of this and that they would stand up and support it and speak to it. No, they sit there silent. They say nothing. Absolutely, nothing.


An hon. member:: Absolutely ashamed of themselves.


John Harvard: I really think that is just another form of contempt of this House and of this Parliament.
What are we talking about here? We are talking about a pernicious motion that would allow this government to go back more than 100 years to the first Parliament and resurrect some bill that died in the first or tenth Parliament or twentieth Parliament. Resurrect that bill and just continue on with it at the stage at which it died.
I suppose that the government would say: "Oh, no, no, we would never do that. We would never do anything like that. After all, we have great respect for this institution. We have great respect for democracy."
It has done it. It has never been done in this country before. It has not been done in our Mother of Parliaments. The government feels it can do this. I think it tells us how out of touch this government is with the Canadian public. It is out of touch. All you have to do is read
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the papers, watch television, listen to radio and read the polls and you will discover how people feel about this government.


An hon. member:: Fourteen per cent.


John Harvard: It is totally and completely out of touch. What it is doing in the House here today is just another example of that. It would not do anything like this. No government would want to resurrect a bill that was deemed dead some time in the past. This is what this government is doing.


An hon. member:: It does not have anything else to do.


John Harvard: It seems to me that this government does not want any kind of opposition, no kind of irritant. If there is an irritant, if there is an obstacle, if there is an impediment to its juggernaut, then by God it is going to move it out of its way. It is so arrogant it believes that what it does is right. It is hardly even worth debate. If there is going to be any debate, it will not put up with it very long, because it has a Draconian device, a Draconian mechanism called closure. If you deign and if you dare say anything in opposition to the government's proposals or to its motions, it will cut you off.
It will gag you with something called closure. The government has used it over and over again.
I believe it has come to the end of the line and I know that it has come to the end of the public's tether. People are fed up. They are sick and tired of this arrogance, this approach.
When Canadians went to the polls in 1988, they elected a Parliament. They elected 295 representatives. Regardless of party stripe, they expected us to do a job. In the case of the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party, who found themselves in opposition after the election, they expected us to do our job to fulfil the role of opposition. They want us to oppose. They want us to scrutinize. They want us to examine everything that this government does.
We are all imperfect human beings, but I do think that we try hard. The government obviously takes a different tack. It has a different idea. It apparently feels that when Canadians went to the polls and made their collective decision in 1988, they had elected a government with a
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full and complete mandate that was more or less a dictatorship. It did not have to pay attention to the traditions of this House. It did not have to pay attention to the opposition, to rules, or to regulations. After all, it was given this mandate, this right to rule, this right of Tory rule which should not be questioned.
Canadians disapprove of this style of government, they disapprove of it vigorously and they will show their disapproval at the next election.
A motion like this does not draw a lot of public attention. A motion like this should draw considerable public attention, but it does not. One of the reasons it does not is that we live in the television age and television relies on pictures with lots of action, lots of movement. Television does not like talking heads. Even if the talking heads make a lot of sense, television is not really interested.
We talk about this matter in the House of Commons and it is not going to turn Peter Mansbridge on, it is not going to turn his producer on. You can say the same for Lloyd Robertson and for the anchorperson over at Global. This is not good television. However, just because it is not good television does not detract from its importance. Not on your life.
We are talking about a tradition, a convention in the House that should be respected. After all, we have rights on this side of the House. We have a job to do and I would hope that this government would show some respect for the opposition. It can do its job. It can push through its agenda as much as it likes, but it should show respect for this side of the House.
The government may not realize it, but this side of the House is just as important as that side of the House. The government has its role, it has its function, and we have ours. Unfortunately, I think we find ourselves in a situation where, because of the kind of presidential system adopted by this Prime Minister and by this government, we do not have the sufficient checks in the system that we should have. Maybe the founders of our parliamentary system never thought we would come to this stage. Yet we have.
We are going to have to rethink this process. We cannot continue on with a government that continues to batter away at this House and batter away at its tradi-

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tions. There is only so much there. After awhile there will be nothing left.
How far can the government take it? If the government in effect says to heck with this House, to heck with the opposition, to heck with precedent, if that is the view of the government, how much more down the road can it go? We all know how low it is in the polls. What if we have not had an election by the summer of 1993? What if we have not had an election by the fall of 1993?


An hon. member:: Heaven forbid.


John Harvard: According to the law of the land, we are supposed to have an election. Will this government find some reason to postpone the election? Will it find some reason? Is it possible that this government would decide, in its self-interest, that an election in the fall of 1993 would be an unfortunate irritant, an unfortunate obstacle? This may sound kind of apocalyptic, but if it can do whatever it likes with the traditions of the House, why not postpone an election? We might as well try the whole ball of wax.
I hope this debate can continue. I would hope that something would strike the government and it would realize, for once, that it has gone too far. It has really gone too far. This is an example of trampling on Parliament, trampling on the rights of the opposition, and of course by extension, trampling on all Canadians.
I suppose we should not be surprised. All we have to do is look at the record of the government. We can recall all the stories the government put out about the proposed free trade deal back in 1988 and how it was going to be a Godsend for us, it was heaven-sent to us. Of course, if we rejected the free trade agreement the country was going to fall apart, its economy was going to fall apart. Remember those days? Well, here it is, more than two years after the implementation of the FTA and yes, the economy is falling apart.
We are cognizant of what this government tells the public. What did it tell us about the goods and services tax? The then Minister of Finance told us that prices were going to go down. After all, manufacturers would not be paying the old 13.5 per cent manufacturers' sales tax anymore. Of course, since they would not have to apply the old tax anymore, that saving would be passed on to the consumers. Remember that story? Remember how the government told us that story over and over again? Do not worry about the GST, it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. If we could only get rid of the old MST and apply the GST, it would do wonders, lower
prices, boost the economy, increase exports. Remember all that? Remember that wonderful story the Tories told us. They went from one end of the country to the other and told us it over and over again. It did not matter what Canadians said. As many as 85 per cent of Canadians said: "We don't believe you. We think it is a pack of lies. We do not think manufacturers will pass on the savings, certainly not all of the savings. So we do not believe you." But the government said: "No, we are moving ahead. We are going to bull our way through this."
The government did move ahead despite all the petitions, protests, hearings and speeches in the House. Despite how bad the polls were against the GST, the government said: "No, we are going ahead with this bill." And they did.
Here it is, just a few months after the implementation of the GST, and what do we find? We are discovering surveys, which of course the government would like to question, which say prices are not going down, prices are going up. Why have the prices-or at least most of them-gone up? It is because-surprise, surprise, surprise-the manufacturers did not pass on the savings from the removal of the old manufacturers' sales tax. In other words, a lot of the manufacturers just took the 13.5 per cent and put it in their pocket.
That does not surprise me and I do not really think it surprises any Canadians, except maybe this government, particularly at a time when the economy was in recession. Why would beleaguered and besieged manufacturers not reach for anything, including the old manufacturers' sales tax or the removal of same, and take those savings and not pass them along to the consumers of Canada but put the money in their own pockets? It makes a lot of sense, particularly in an economy where you are trying to survive. So that is what the manufacturers did. It came to no surprise to anybody in the country except this government.
Mr. Speaker, I guess I am hoping against hope, but I would hope that the government would rethink this motion. It is a bad motion, it is going to hurt this Parliament and it is going to increase the cynicism that is felt in this country. People are already in a bad mood. They are in a sour mood. They are down on us. They are down on all of us. They are particularly down on the Prime Minister. All of us in this House feel that. We are all getting a blast from the people because of how
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Canadians feel about the Prime Minister and about this government.
I wish the government would do some rethinking because this place is very important, in fact this is the highest court in the land. This is really the place where the decisions should be made and this is where the voices of Canadians should be heard.
In my final words, I would love to hear the Conservatives stand up and defend this motion. I am prepared to stay here until the bells have to ring at eleven o'clock. I would be more than happy to hear what they say. I want to hear their defence of this motion, but I doubt whether they will be speaking. I wish they would withdraw this motion.


Derek Vincent Lee: Mr. Speaker, I usually begin my debate by saying how pleased I am to rise and address the motion before the House, but in this case the pleasure I would ordinarily take is less than normal here.
As I have watched and listened to the debate this evening, I have taken note of the absence of participation in the debate by members opposite. I am not suggesting that there are not members opposite, there are lots of them, but over the last couple of years, having had an opportunity to work with a lot of the members on the government side, I have a feeling, in fact I think I know, that they are a little cautious about participating in this debate tonight because I do not think any one of them can really articulate the reason why their government wishes to proceed in the way it is this evening. There is a feeling there, I can feel it on this side of the House, amidst all of the rhetoric that they are a little bashful about this. They may even be a little sad about it. But I would like to remind the House of six or seven lines from Beauchesne's, which may have been referred to earlier in debate, and I am sure members have read it all before. It is on page 1, chapter 1, paragraph 1. It is the first thing you read in Beauchesne's.
The paragraph recites what for all parliamentarians are the principles of parliamentary law. I know we have all heard it but I cannot get through my remarks without putting this on the record one more time. I know, Mr. Speaker, you have heard this many, many times. However, this particular paragraph articulates the principles of
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parliamentary law. I will just read it very quickly. The principles that lie at the basis 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-
There are two other items, but I cannot help but note that the cardinal, number one principle of parliamentary law, that I read when I first came to this place, "to protect a minority and restrain the improvidence or tyranny of a majority" is precisely the principle that is at stake here tonight. To be technically more precise, it is probably the issue that was at stake when the motion was first put and its propriety was debated here in the House.
I have to say respectfully that I am really in doubt as to whether or not the way the process was handled was really in the best interests of Parliament. I know the Speaker has made a ruling. I know that I and my colleagues are not in a position to challenge that ruling, but I really have a fear that something is out of order. What has happened here is that the government has proceeded in a way that I feel breaches that fundamental principle. It is one of three or four principles, all we have in this House to protect the minority-the rules and the principles. What is happening here tonight clearly breaches, tramples that first principle.
When Parliament set up shop here 123 years ago, it adopted a concept that had been in being for many years before that. I mentioned it before here in the House and others have. The process goes back to the year 1215 when the 25 bold barons went to the king and said: "I am sorry, you may not proceed in this manner any more without the approval of our group".
That group eventually became Parliament. Over time, the king developed his court and his councillors. The living modem vestige of those counsellors is today's Privy Council, the Privy Councillors, the king or queen's councillors, who sit in this House today.
I have believed for months now that the king's councillors who sit in this place have a very special role in this place. One of the things they do not do is tell Parliament what to do. They lead the government here but they don't act for the king here. They cannot do that because

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the king cannot come in to Parliament. That has been a rule of Parliament for many years.
When the Privy Councillors do something like they have done here today, representing the king-we have a new king, by the way, and we know who the new king is-they, as representing the king, are telling Parliament how it will structure its work. From their perspective, from the king's perspective, from the Privy Council's perspective, Parliament is an obstacle.
It is at best a means to an end, but usually it is an obstacle. I do not blame the government for viewing Parliament as an obstacle. Its job is to propose legislation and get it through the House.
What is really happening, and I know it was discussed earlier, is that the bills the government is proposing to be revived are, as I speak now and as things were yesterday and last week, dead. They did not exist except in the history books. The government is saying is that it wishes to take those bills that are dead and bring them into this Parliament and revive them just as they were before they were dead.
In addition, we are discussing closure here tonight. Closure is not the issue. It adds insult to injury that in making this proposal the government wishes to do it by closure. As ugly as closure is, it is not the closure issue I am discussing here. It is the concept of reviving bills that are dead.
Maybe some of this is my fault, and I will explain this in a minute. Maybe it is the fault of some of the other members that this has occurred. I recall about six or eight months ago proposing for discussion that private members' bills be revived in a new session of Parliament. There was a lot of favourable response to that at the time and there were reasons I made that proposal, but I will not go into that now. At the time one of the objections was that it could not be done because in a new session the old bills are all dead. The government bills, the private members' bills, and the motions are dead. They cannot be revived. It is a sacred principle. It cannot be done.
I did not accept it as a principle that could not be looked at again. I still do not say that the government could not re-address that principle, could not look at it more closely. I think we should in Parliament. We have an obligation to rethink the processes here. We are in a
period of reform constitutionally. There is no reason we cannot rethink processes here in Parliament.
Now it is eight months later and the same people who told me it could not be done, that private members' bills could not be carried over, have now come to this House, and with the concurrence of the Speaker, are saying they can and will revive dead bills. Somebody has it wrong somewhere. Maybe I got it wrong then and maybe I have it wrong now, but I do not think so. I think the government has it wrong now.
There are five bills. One of them, Bill C-73, was in the last session a miscellaneous privatization bill. I spoke in the House, as did my colleagues on both sides of the House, and that bill died. As we began this session there was a sense that maybe there was some interest, some good reason to revive a bill that had gone a great distance in the House, had basically gone through the system and at the present time was capable of obtaining unanimous consent in the House for reintroduction. That consent was had.
Bill C-73 happens to be listed among the bills in this motion. I know the Speaker has deleted it from this motion because Bill C-73 has already been disposed of. That was all done with unanimous agreement. A few days ago I thought it looked rather good for Parliament to be able to get something like that done in isolation. Was I surprised to show up here in Ottawa last night to see what the government had done with this motion.
What is wrong with what the government has done? I will try to articulate it again.
The bill is dead. The five bills are dead and do not exist. We have rules in this House that regulate how we do our business. The whole system of rules includes the business of first reading, second reading, third reading, referral to a committee where appropriate and other procedures. Those procedures have been in existence for time immemorial; certainly since the beginning of this Parliament.
Those rules are in place. I do not know whether they are sacred rules, but they are real rules that we have followed forever in this House.
In view of the principle I read earlier in Beauchesne's about the need to protect the minority-that is not just the minority here but all minorities-how can the government proceed as if it did not matter and it was just another item of business? What if the government was to propose tomorrow that 10 new bills be simply adopted
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and be deemed to have been read three times and passed in this House?
If I am to take the Speaker's ruling today to mean that the government majority can do whatever it wants, then the government can do that too. Members opposite shake their heads. I say: why not? If the government can abandon the rules that dictate how we introduce and pass bills in this House and trample a fundamental principle of Parliament, if it can do that today, why can it not do it tomorrow? There is no rule. There is no principle that remains to protect us, the opposition, the minority. It does not exist. I cannot find it. What if the government did it? Let us wait and see.
I wish what was being proposed was a reform that had been discussed, debated which achieved a large consensus, maybe even unanimity. It is not a reform. It is retrograde and it is destructive and it comes from, not a lot of members in Parliament, but from cabinet, the Queen's Privy Councillors who sit in this Parliament.
This is a sad day and I know it will be revisited. I want my constituents to know that if there was anything I could do to stop this today, I would. That is why that principle supporting the minority is the number one item on the number one page in the number one chapter in our rules. However, there is nothing I can do. I can simply talk. I can debate. I can encourage members opposite to change their views.
In any event, I put that respectfully to the Chair and to my constituents. The rules have been breached and the rules that protect the minority have been breached, the rules in this House. To quote Sir Edmund Blake from 1873-1 happened to read this last night in some casual reading I was doing and you have heard this before-he said: "The privileges of Parliament are the privileges of people and the rights of Parliament are the rights of the people".
It is not just our little group here on this side of the House of Commons that is affected by this. It is everybody on the street. There are some members of the public here in the House tonight.
I want to make a confession on behalf of a lot of members, including members opposite. In this year of a
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huge deficit, a huge national debt, the Canadian public expects all members of Parliament to embark on the very old process of budget estimates, reviewing the government's spending. This is a process that is integral to our oversight function in this House. I want the public to know that we will have a total of five days to review the billions of dollars of spending of this government.
That is a very cynical result of the prorogation that this government has just embarked on. I wish the members opposite well in their attempt to rewrite the rules of Parliament, to trample on the rights and privileges of the minority which we are. I wish them well. It is a sad day. I hope that, before the vote, some of them will change their minds.


Mr. John Nunziata (York South-Weston):: Mr. Speaker, I too would like to make some very brief submissions on the resolution before us.
I concur completely with my friend and colleague who just spoke. I concur completely with all my colleagues who have spoken, and I would go so far as to concur completely with the Independent Conservative member for Annapolis Valley-Hants from the province of Nova Scotia. He was his usual eloquent self, and he has a lot of experience in this House.
He was shocked. He was extremely shocked at the actions of this government, at what is taking place here. That drove him to stand up and give one of the finest speeches I have ever heard him deliver in the seven years that I have been here in the House.
My experience in this House does not match the experience of the member from Nova Scotia, but the point he was making is a point that has been repeated time and time again by members on this side of the House. The issue is very simple.
We are now in the Third Session of the Thirty-Fourth Parliament. What does all that mean? The Thirty-Fourth Parliament is the Parliament that was constituted as a result of a general election that took place two years ago when some people in this country made that terrible mistake and elected a Conservative government. They

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are the same people who wish they had the opportunity to withdraw their vote and vote again.
I will not be overly partisan with regard to this particular matter. We are in the Thirty-Fourth Parliament. I was initially elected to the Thirty-Third Parliament in 1984, on September 4,1984. Mr. Speaker, I know that you were probably elected in the First Parliament back in 1867.
In every Parliament there are a number of sessions. What is a session of Parliament? A session of Parliament begins with a throne speech. I have heard a few throne speeches over the last seven years, and I heard another one a few weeks ago when the government said: "This is a new beginning. We are going to do this. We are going to do that. This is part of our program".
It was met with a big, huge yawn from one end of the country to the other. People in Canada said: "So what? Who cares? The government is incompetent. The government has lost the moral right to govern. We want an opportunity to turf this government out". In effect, the throne speech meant absolutely nothing.
In order to begin a new session of Parliament, other than the session that begins with the election of a new Parliament, we have to prorogue-not to be confused with pirogies. Mr. Speaker, you might be familiar with pirogies. We can eat pirogies but we cannot eat a prorogation.
Prorogation took place on May 12 of this year. Prorogation simply means that the government has completed an agenda that it set forth in the throne speech. It is turning the page and embarking on a new agenda. When that happens, the old agenda dies. It is the end of the old session. The Second Session of the Thirty-Fourth Parliament died and we started a new session.
There were a number of bills still on the Order Paper, six or seven pieces of legislation. Those pieces of legislation are not important for the purposes of this argument, except to say that they were at various stages of the legislative process. All were introduced. Some were debated at second reading. Others had gone to committee. Some had come back for third reading. I
believe one or two may have been sent over to the other place where the beloved senators sit.
As a result of prorogation those bills should have died.


Some hon. members:: They did die.


John V. Nunziata: They did die as a matter of fact. They died but they were not buried. They ought to have been buried according to 124 years of Canadian parliamentary history. How many years of parliamentary history?


An hon. member:: Eight hundred.


John V. Nunziata: Eight hundred years of parliamentary history. If you go to the father of Parliaments in Great Britain, or should I say the person of Parliaments in Great Britain, and you go back 600, 700 or 800 years, you will not find a precedent, not a single, solitary precedent, no justification, no rationale, no legal jurisdiction at all, for what government members are trying to do.
What are they trying to do? They are trying to say: "Well, we prorogued but we were only half kidding. We were joking. We were pretending. We really are not starting a new session of Parliament. We want to complete the old session, because we do not want these bills to die. We want to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and revive these bills", not reintroduce them as they ought to do. They should reintroduce them at first reading, proceed to second reading, to a legislative committee, back to this House for third reading, report stage and off to the Senate.
No, they want to revive or resuscitate these pieces of legislation at the stage they were at when they were supposed to die.
You have made a ruling, Mr. Speaker. It is not often that I disagree with a ruling that you have made, but I am afraid you have made a terrible mistake by concurring in the wishes of the government and allowing this process to take place. In a few short minutes, the bells will start ringing and the House will be called upon to decide whether the government can in effect revive those dead bills.
We know that the government has a majority. We know that the government members will filter in from all over Parliament Hill in order to vote. They will effectively allow those bills to be revived.
May 29, 1991

What are the consequences of this particular ruling and this particular procedure that is taking place? As I have indicated, there is no precedent. There is no tradition. There is no convention. What this government is doing is in effect trampling on the rights of the minority. Those of us in opposition have a responsibility under parliamentary tradition. We are Her Majesty's Loyal and Official Opposition. It is our role to oppose, to hold this government accountable, to provide alternatives to the government of the day.
By allowing government members to do what they are doing, we are being denied our rights in the opposition. What are those rights? Those rights include debating certain pieces of legislation. We have no opportunity to debate six or seven or eight pieces of legislation, if this motion carries.
Members opposite wake up and say: "Well, they have already been debated". They have not been debated in the Third Session of the Thirty-Fourth Parliament. They may have been debated in a previous session, but they have not been debated fully and completely. The parliamentary process will not be followed with respect to these eight pieces of legislation.
In effect, we are being denied the right to debate and we are being denied the right to vote on certain pieces of legislation. What kind of precedent will be set as a result of this? Today they want these five bills. What is to stop those characters opposite tomorrow from saying: "Well, when Joe Clark was Prime Minister, he had a good idea. When the present minister of constitutional affairs introduced this bill, it had reached second reading back in 1979, we thought it was a good idea. Why do we not revive that bill?" It may have gone to third reading, it may have gone to the Senate, but it died when the government died.
Well, it can effectively say, and the precedent will be set: "We like that piece of legislation so by a vote in the House," as we are about to do in a few short minutes, "let us revive that piece of legislation at the stage it was at in 1979." That is the precedent that is being set. In fact, this government, as a result of the precedent you set, Mr. Speaker, and because of what the government is trying to do, will be able to revive, resuscitate any piece
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of legislation that died over the last 124 years of Canadian parliamentary history.
Now is that due process? Is that in keeping with the Canadian parliamentary tradition? I submit it is not. You yourself, Mr. Speaker, are playing host today, yesterday and tomorrow to a group of parliamentarians from Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. You invited them to visit our country so they could see how the parliamentary process works.
They are watching from the gallery and they are probably wondering what the heck is going on in the Canadian Parliament. This may have been possible under previous Communist regimes in the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia, but not in Canada, not under Canadian parliamentary tradition. The power of the majority is being used in a summary and callous fashion to walk all over and destroy the rights of the minority.
Mr. Speaker, you were called upon to assist this government in trying to extricate itself from its own incompetence and mismanagement. It mismanaged the Second Session of the 34th Parliament. It was not able to adequately and appropriately govern. It made mistakes. If these bills were so important to this government, why did it prorogue the last session of this Parliament? The Conservatives should have completed their agenda and then come forward to the people of Canada with a new throne speech and a new vision for Canada.
We are now being asked to deal with the mismanagement of this government. I have seen a lot of mismanagement and incompetence over the last seven years from this Conservative government. I have seen, time and time again, the Conservative government trample on the rights of the opposition. I have seen closure motion after closure motion after closure motion. We objected on this side of the House and we objected. This is far worse than any closure motion that has ever been allowed in this House, in terms of the terrible and horrible precedent that this particular government motion will set. It ought not to have been allowed, but somehow the government was able to convince the Chair without citing a precedent. If we do not abide by the law of stare decisis, the law of precedent, then I do not know what is going on in terms of due process. You know as well as I do, Mr. Speaker, that in this place precedents play an extremely important role in the governing of the

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workings of this House and indeed the Canadian judicial system.
The government, when called upon by the opposition to cite one single precedent in the last 124 years of Canadian parliamentary history, was not able to cite one single solitary precedent. Yet, I do not know how the government did it, but it convinced the Chair that this motion was in order. We will be voting on it in a few short minutes.
I ask in closing that government members come to their senses in the few years and the few short months that remain in terms of the life of this government if they are to leave this place with any bit of respect from the people of Canada. If they have any iota of dignity, then let them at least preserve it. They have destroyed the country and now they are trying to destroy Parliament and the workings of Parliament.
I call upon decent, hard working Conservative members, if there are any across the way, to vote against this government motion that will set such a dangerous precedent for years to come in this House.


Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: Mr. Speaker, in concluding a debate significant to the very survival of this House, I would like to say that on May 23, it was not the Opposition that decided to prorogue the House and have a Speech from the Throne. It was the government's decision. The government knew perfectly well that by proroguing the House and having a Speech from the Throne, all bills before the House would die on the Order Paper, ending the current session. The government would then be able to make a fresh start with a new agenda.
After the Speech from the Throne, we saw there was practically nothing on the government's agenda. And now it comes back with a number of bills we would have had plenty of time to consider if the government had been really interested and serious about the business of this House. After all, before the House was prorogued, we adjourned for nearly a month, and if we consider the number of days the House has sat so far in 1991, it is quite ludicrous.
With a new session, Canadians were expecting some new initiatives, a new agenda from the government that would put the economy back on its feet and restore
national unity and the confidence of Canadians. Nothing happened, Mr. Speaker. His Excellency the Governor General read a good speech to an attentive audience, but there have been no bills or initiatives to reflect what was in the speech, Mr. Speaker. The only thing we can see, Mr. Speaker, is that they want to reinstate certain bills which had already been introduced in the last session.
If the government was really serious about these bills, negotiations should have taken place before prorogation, as is usually the case. Many times before, my colleagues the government and NDP whips, the Speaker and myself, as Liberal whip, have had discussions to reach unanimous consent on several issues. But if the Speaker starts to innovate either with this motion, with the rules that were rammed down our throats or with regard to committees, of course we will have to go by the rules and insist that they be strictly adhered to from now on. But, as the government will realize, that is not going to make life easy for them because, from now on, there will be no more co-operation, at least from this side of the House, the Official Opposition.
I will close on this, Mr. Speaker, and I hope that the government will think twice before the vote because it will be doing away with the co-operation of the Official Opposition in this House.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Pursuant to decision made by the Speaker on Tuesday, May 28, 1991, the Chair will now put the questions separately on the five motions to reinstate certain bills introduced in the Second Session of the Thirty-fourth Parliament: First, on the motion to reinstate Bill C-26; second, on the motion to reinstate Bill C-58; third, on the motion to reinstate Bill C-78; fourth, on the motion to reinstate Bill C-82; and fifth, on the motion to reinstate Bill C-85.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Accordingly the first question is on the motion to reinstate Bill C-26.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.
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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.


Some hon. members:: Yea.
TUrner (Halton-Peel)
Venne
Weiner
Wilbee
Winegard
Van de Walle
Vien
White
Wilson (Etobicoke Centre) Worthy-110


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


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.


PAIRED-MEMBERS
[Stage Direction]
Assad
Bourgault
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the motion carried.
[Translation\


Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, I believe there is unanimous consent to apply the results of this vote to Bill C-58, Bill C-78, Bill C-82 and Bill C-85.


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, I think there may have been a problem with translation. What we would like to do is apply the vote as just taken to the following motions in the same manner that this one was taken.

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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I believe that is	NAYS
what was said in the translation.
Members


Mr. Harb:: Mr. Speaker, I was unfortunately delayed. Had I have been here, I would have voted with my party.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The next vote is on the motion to restore Bill C-58.



[Stage Direction]
Assad	Bourgault
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the motion carried.
The next vote is on the motion to restore Bill C-78.



[Stage Direction]
Assad
Bourgault
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the motion carried.
The next vote is on the motion to restore Bill C-82-.



[Stage Direction]
++NAYS
Assad
Bourgault
Members
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: 
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the motion carried.
It being 8.55 p.m., the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 8.58 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Thursday, May 30, 1991