1991-09-30

[Stage Direction]
The House proceeded to consideration of Bill C-202, an Act respecting a national day of remembrance and action on violence against women, as reported without amendment by Legislative Committee A.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: There are three motions in amendment on the Notice Paper for consideration at the report stage of Bill C-202, an Act respecting a national day of remembrance and action on violence against women, standing in the name of the hon. member for Westminster-Burnaby.

All the motions are in order and they will be grouped for debate. The vote on Motion No. 1 will be applied to Motions Nos. 2 and 3.


MEASURE TO ENACT
Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster-Burnaby):: moved:
Motion No. 1
That Bill C-202 be amended in the Preamble, in the French version, by striking out line 11 at page 1 and substituting the following therefor:
"faite aux femmes,".

Motion No. 2
-That Bill C-202 be amended in Clause 2, in the French version, by striking out lines 23 and 24 at page 1 and substituting the following therefor: "tion et d'action contre la violence faite aux femme".
Motion No. 3
-That Bill C-202 be amended in the Title, in the French version, by striking out lines 2 to 4 at page 1 and substituting the following therefor:
"commemoration et d'action contre la violence faite aux femmes".
She said: Mr. Speaker, the amendments were simply to bring the French translation more into line with the English in the bill and so I do not wish to speak to them. I would hope we will go to the vote on them.


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


Some hon. members:: Question!


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The question is on motion No. 1, standing in the name of Ms. Black. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The vote on motion No. 1 will also be applied to motion No. 2 and motion No. 3.
Motions Nos. 2 and 3 agreed to.


Mr. Angus:: On a point of order. Mr. Speaker, I think you would find agreement in the House that the seconders of the bill would be the member for Halifax and the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women.


Some hon. members:: Agreed.

September 30, 1991
Private Members' Business Motions Nos. 1, 2 and 3 agreed to.


Dawn Black: that the bill, as amended, be concurred in.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Dawn Black: that the bill be read the third time and passed.
She said: Mr. Speaker, in preparing my speech for today, my assistant and I went through the newspaper clippings we have on the Montreal massacre and on violence against women in general. There was much there. There is so much to say that I cannot possibly include even a small fraction of it in my speech today.
The news photos of the night of the massacre recalled to us the horror and the shock we all felt on December 6, 1989, when we first heard the news report that a man had entered into the engineering classroom at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, separated the men from the women and shot the women with a legally purchased semi-automatic weapon.
Afterward, a disturbing debate took place about whether this was just the isolated act of a madman or if it was connected to the death of 100 women every year in domestic violence situations, connected to the death and the injuries to women as a result of being sexually assaulted by men who hate women, men who do not see women as equal human beings.
Some people sought to reassure themselves that the massacre was an isolated act by a madman so that they could think that it would never happen again. It has happened before, it happens now and it will continue to happen.
The different thing about this massacre was that it was 14 young women killed all at once. Theodore Bundy murdered 36 women. Edward Jackson, a regular churchgoer, a respected doctor and father, raped 32 women. Larry Takahashi was found guilty of raping 16 women, and another 122 rape charges against him were never heard. It is these names we remember, the names of the people who do violence against women.
We do not remember the names of the victims. The victims are nameless and faceless to us, just as they were to the killers and to their attackers. I want to name the names. I am glad and appreciative that the members of this House wish to stand alongside me, and commemorate those who died. They are: Genevieve Bergeron, Helene Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviemick, Barbara Marie Klueznick, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michele Richard, Annie St. Ameault, Annie Tbrcotte, Maryse Langaniere.
I want to express my deepest sympathies to the families of these young women, to the families of the students, one of whom committed suicide shortly after the massacre and to the families of women and young people who have died of abuse, hatred and the madness in our society that does nothing to prevent this violence from taking place. These events have left us all with scars of pain.
December 6 will be remembered as a horrific and grisly day but I and many others wish something positive to come of it.
I want to talk about one of the survivors of the massacre, a young woman whom I admire very much. Heidi Rathjen has become one of the leaders in Canada on the issue of gun control. This young woman, who went on to graduate from the Ecole Polytechnique, has appeared before two parliamentary committees on gun control. She has helped to amass over 500,000 signatures on a petition for stricter gun control. She has engaged in public speaking right across this country about this issue.
Just like Ms. Rathjen, I think we must all become active on the issue of violence against women. We cannot just continue to talk about it. People are dying.
Marc Lepine had a list of 19 women whom he wanted to kill. He called them "radical feminists" and he wanted them dead because he thought they had ruined his life.
These women were high profile, successful people. Talent and hard work counted very little to Mr. Lepine. He felt that they had taken his place in society because he was a male and deserved the best even without their talent, even without hard work, without any of the skills and abilities that had got these women to the place they were. Some people still maintain the Montreal massacre had nothing to do with sexism.
Lepine's suicide note said his rampage was due to "political reasons". He said: "Even if the mad killer epithet will be attributed to me by the media, I consider myself a rational person, forced to take extreme acts." He accused women of wanting to keep all the advan-
September 30, 1991

tages of being women while seizing the advantages that were men's.
These attitudes are out there. Lepine did not invent them. They are the attitudes that promote violence against women. The attitude that women have a place in life and if they step out of that place, they can be targets for abuse from name-calling to being beaten and murdered, that women are a proper target for the rage and the frustration that is felt by some men, that women are not real human beings with real feelings and real ambitions with just as much right to pursue them as men, that men have some sort of right to sex and other services from women are attitudes that must be changed.
This year a newspaper article discussing date rape said: "Meeting a woman in a bar and drinking with her for several hours before going to her place is not a date. That's a pick-up."
A so-called pro-family newspaper blamed violence against women on the feminists just as Marc Lepine blamed them. He blamed everything on the feminists. The newspaper wrote that the cause of violence against women is the destruction of the family. How does this explain the cases of violence that we have all seen in families in the 1800s, even in the 1500s?
Wife beating was legal in Canada and elsewhere at one time. Women could not even receive a divorce even though they had been repeatedly beaten and beaten to a pulp.
Some right wing groups have commandeered the term "family values" to mean something sick and twisted. They do not want to promote the health and well-being of family members at all. They only want to provide a justification to male family members to abuse women and children and get away with it.
A co-ordinator for a sexual assault support centre has said that the issue of violence against women was brought to the forefront by the Montreal massacre, and that many women did not realize the extent to which angry men would take their fury out on women. I think that is especially true of young women. You just do not grasp that anyone, anyone you think is a friend, or even a stranger, would want to hurt you, or would have so little regard for your own wishes.
Private Members' Business
Many survivors of sexual assault are simply in shock that any one would want to do that to them. It does not matter how they dress, how old they are, or who they are, they are targeted simply because they are women.
That crisis centre received 2,327 calls in six months, and it is one of only two crisis centres in a small city. Some calls were from women who had been abused in childhood and were just beginning to come to terms with that abuse.
Chia-Tsu Liu was an abused wife in Toronto who was hacked to death by her husband when she left him and refused to return.
Nina de Villiers went jogging one day and never came back. She had been active in the movement to end violence against women and she was found dead.
A 13-year old girl was doused with gasoline by her former 15-year old boyfriend and set on fire. She had reported threats to the police before this horrible situation but no one had helped her.
Twenty people watched as an 11-year old girl was gang raped at a party in Toronto.
One female Toronto city councillor thinks violence against women is exaggerated because she does not know of anyone among her friends or family who have told her of an assault.
A young woman in my circle of friends told me that she told her mother that she was sexually assaulted when she was 17 and her mother asked her what she had done to deserve that. That same young woman escaped the sexual advances of her uncle when she was only 14 and never told her family. She was afraid she would not be believed.
Mr. Speaker, I hid from my own mother the advances of a family "friend" when I was less than 12 years old.
With society's "blame the victim attitude", many women feel uncomfortable and embarrassed about telling anyone they have been abused. They fear they will not be believed and they blame themselves.
Front line rape crisis centre workers say only one in 20 women who contact them report the crime to the police. When they do, they are often put on trial every bit as much as the assailant.

September 30,1991
Private Members' Business
We have seen recent stories of abuse in residential schools, orphanages, assaults which occurred up to 20 years ago. All the allegations made at the time were hushed up, covered up, and ignored. This is not the way to solve a serious problem in our society. We must talk about it. We must tell survivors of abuse that there is support for them, that they do not have to face this alone and face society alone. We must discuss the solutions and, more importantly, we must act on them.
I hope that the bill I have introduced will go a small way towards that, to call attention to the problem and to implement some solutions. I did not call it a day of remembrance and action for nothing. Without the action the bill is worthless.
There are very few women who are untouched by violence, women of all ages, of all physical types, from every culture, every racial group, every religious and socioeconomic background. All are assaulted. Disabled women and aboriginal women are particularly vulnerable to assault. Not only is there evidence to show that disabled women are more often the targets of abuse, but they are treated very poorly by the courts.
This year a man was acquitted of raping a deaf mute woman who kicked and fought him. She tried to defend herself. The man was acquitted because the deaf mute victim did not tell him- that she did not want to have sex. How is a deaf mute woman supposed to verbalize that she does not want sex? Should not the kicking and the fighting be enough?
Sixty-two per cent of all women murdered in Canada are victims of domestic violence. Yet in Alberta, 911 operators would not send police to a house in which a man was beating down the door to rape a woman because they thought it was a domestic dispute.
One in four women is sexually assaulted. Others who have not been assaulted or harassed still feel fear when walking, particularly alone, at night.
This cycle of violence must be stopped. Marc Lepine grew up being beaten by his father. In one study, 25 per cent of the children in a shelter for battered women said it was okay for a man to hit a woman if the house was messy.
Violence against women is not natural behaviour, it is learned behaviour. We hold up violent heroes for young boys to emulate. We treat women with a lack of respect in the work place and in the home. Women are the butt of jokes. Women are used as objects to sell products.
Women who succeed are often accused of sleeping their way to the top. I do not think anyone has accused a successful man of that.
Boys are given unrealistic expectations of what it means to be a man. Physical strength and power over others is seen as manly. Expressing one's feelings, taking care of others, resolving problems in a non-violent, supportive way, are not considered to be manly attributes. The bravado, the strutting and the machismo put on to male children hurts those male children, hurts women and hurts all of society. Children learn these attitudes all too well and the whole cycle of violence begins again.
Instead we need to teach children that every individual is different. There are men and women who are physically strong and men and women who are not. There are men and women who are intelligent and there men and women who are less so. Whatever you are, it does not make you better or a worse human being than anyone else.
The House of Commons subcommittee on the status of Women, of which I am a member, released many positive recommendations that received all party support at the subcommittee level. These included strong and consistent violence prevention and media literacy education in our schools across the country; gender equality issues should be part of the school curriculum in elementary, junior and high schools; mandatory gender equality training for judges and for the RCMP; and gender sensitivity training programs for members of Parliament. MPs decide which programs stay, which ones go, how money will be spent, what benefits people have. They have a direct impact on the lives of 26 million Canadians, over half of whom are women. I am sad to say that some members here do not have adequate knowledge and sensitivity to the problems women face to make those good decisions about women's lives.
Another recommendation was for an effective, affordable housing policy and to look into removing the assailant from the family home, rather than removing the victim from the home.
It called for a strong rape shield law and for the repeal of the honest belief defence for rapists. The subcommittee called for stronger gun control legislation. Most important, for the short term, the subcommittee called for adequate funding for services for abused women and children. Shelters for battered women are still turning
September 30, 1991

away abused women and their children because of a lack of space.
We can start by restoring the funding to the Canada Assistance Plan which funds, among other social programs, shelters for battered women. We can take action on the subcommittee's recommendations now and not await until December 1992, when the Panel on Violence Against Women reports and probably restates many of the same recommendations that we made on the subcommittee.
I want to extend my warm appreciation to the Minister responsible for the Status of Women for her support and for ensuring the support of her party. I want to extend my appreciation also to the hon. member for Halifax, my friend, for her support and for her party's support and also to the House leader of the Bloc Quebecois for his party's support.
I would also like to thank my own New Democrat colleagues. I want to thank them for their understanding and for their support on these issues. I want to thank the people across Canada who have written some very wonderful letters to me, letters of encouragement and support.
Most of all I want to thank the women who have worked so hard all of these years, staffing shelters for battered women, raising funds for shelters for battered women; the women who have worked in rape crisis centres; and the women and men who have marched in the streets and have lobbied the government on issues of violence against women. These people, these caring men and women will be the real agents for change in our society. Without them, it will not happen.


Mrs. Edna Anderson (Simcoe Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in support of this bill to establish December 6 as a national day of remembrance and action on violence against women.
On December 6, 1989, 14 young women at the University of Montreal were killed by a gunman who did not know them but who singled them out because he hated women. The shock and the horror of the tragic event was felt throughout our country. This tragedy touched all Canadians, women and men alike. Many Canadians felt a personal sense of loss. Many Canadians, and particularly women, lost a sense of safety and security they had fell all their lives. Many Canadians saw in this brutal
Private Members' Business
slaying an extreme example of the terror and the violence inflicted on women every day.
Violence against women takes many forms, including emotional and psychological abuse, physical assault, sexual assault and murder. It does not respect any boundaries but threatens women of all ages, cultures, backgrounds, abilities, geographical locations and economic situations.
Women centred violence exist in a continuum in our society that includes sexless jokes, pornography, harassment, prostitution, date violence, child abuse and incest.
The statistics on violence against women in Canada are shocking. One in ten Canadian women is assaulted by her male partner. One in four girls will be sexually assaulted before reaching the age of 18. Eighty per cent of aboriginal women have experienced violence and almost half of the disabled women in this country have been sexually abused during childhood, while 40 per cent have been raped, abused or assaulted as adults. Nor are elderly women free from violence. Female victims of elder abuse outnumber male victims two to one.
These statistics are considered only modest estimates. Many abused women and girls are often too ashamed or frightened of reprisal to speak out or seek help. Some victims try to bury the violence deep in their thoughts and deny its existence. They do not fully understand the deep-seated trauma that such violence inflicts and that it will, in all likelihood, stay with them for the rest of their lives.
We make a serious mistake if we think that the effects of this violence are strictly personal. Its legacy is widespread throughout our society. Not only do innocent victims pay the price long after the physical abuse is over, but we pay along with them.
When the results of this violence are chronic depression, high incidents of addictions and eating disorders, deliquency, crime and suicide, we all pay and our society is diminished by this cost.
I would like to quote the words of a Manitoba woman who, as a child, endured an estimated 2,600 incidents of sexual abuse at the hands of her father. She said: "My father took away my childhood. I still mourn for it and I will always miss the innocence. I will miss the opportunity to have the choices that were taken away from me. When I think back to certain situations I was put into as a

September 30, 1991
Private Members' Business
child, I keep thinking to myself that poor little girl, that poor little girl".
Violence against women is a thief, stealing away the things that are most precious to us: love between husband and wife, trust between parent and child, the ability to live without fear, and a state of emotional health that allows us to enjoy and participate in life to the fullest.
Many of us take pride in our Canadian sense of equality and fair play. We have long believed we live in a progress society, one that places compassion and respect for people from all walks of life at the centre of our national ethos. But the tragedy at the Ecole Polytechnique and the violence that occurs daily in our homes and on our streets are reminders of how far we have yet to
go-
Violence against women is deeply rooted in our society. It is based on attitudes and stereotypes that encourage the belief that women are subordinate to men. Stereotypical views hold that a man is the head of the household, that a woman must honour and obey her partner, and that children are to be seen and not heard. These stereotypical views create a serious imbalance between men and women and between adolescent males and females. On the other hand, men are expected to control and dominate; on the other hand, women and girls are expected to be dependent and vulnerable.
When such stereotypes combine with a societal tolerance for violence, the result is an exposure and sometimes deadly mixture: men who abuse their power, men who turn on those closest to them, men who use violence as a means of dealing with their anger and frustration.
Canadians have long been tempted to look away, to say to themselves it is someone else's problem, and to believe that the dirty linen of domestic violence should not be aired in public. Some still assume that such violence should be dealt with behind closed doors.
However the truth is that violence against women is not someone else's problem. It is our problem. It belongs to all of us. When we look the other way, we become silent accomplices. When we think of violence as belonging to someone else, we deny our responsibility for its existence. When we do not want to air the dirty linen, we ignore the plight of the thousands of women who need our help and compassion.
When we hide violence behind closed doors we are guilty of encouraging the sexist view of women as persons who can be abused, raped and murdered. As long as some women are beaten by their husbands, as long as others are sexually assaulted on dates, as long as still others experience harassment at their jobs, women are being denied the basic right to security of person.
When a person is denied this basic right she suffers on many levels. She cannot walk the streets without being frightened. She cannot be safe in her home or at a university or in the work place. She cannot function without continually looking over her shoulder and worrying about the people with whom she has to deal.
There is a tragic link between violence against women and the inability of women in Canada to achieve equality in our society. Violence against women is deeply rooted in our socializing processes, our power structures and our institutions. This is a systematic problem touching on all aspects of our society including the justice system, the media, the health system, education and social services.

: y ; * .
It should come as no surprise to us, then, that women are kicked and slapped, hit with hard objects and cut with knives. It should come as no surprise that each year in Canada an average 100 women are murdered by their male partners or that in 1990 there were 27,000 reported incidents of sexual assault. It should come as no surprise that 14 innocent women could be brutally gunned down simply because they were women.
Equality for women goes hand in hand with the eradication of violence. Economic equality will provide women with the freedom to leave abusive situations and rebuild their lives and those of their children. Political equality will allow women to participate in decisions that affect their lives and the lives of their families. Societal equality is key to breaking down stereotypes and eliminating the traditional sexist attitudes that promote violence against women.
September 30, 1991

Our efforts to address violence against women must recognize the social, economic and political structures that currently confine women to unequal roles. At the same time, we must continue to find ways to expand the opportunities and choices available to women.
When Canadians learned about the massacre in Montreal they responded in many different ways. The government provided leadership and vision through its commitment to Canada's first national inquiry into violence against women and its $136 million renewal of the family violence initiative. In a struggle to eliminate violence against women the government recognizes that it is essential to co-ordinate our efforts with provincial and municipal governments, women's groups, service clubs, business and labour and professional associations.
Many Canadian organizations responded to the Montreal tragedy by a renewed commitment to opening career opportunities for women, particularly with respect to science and engineering. The Canadian Federation of University Women, Canadian Council of Engineers, Memorial Foundation, Societe Alfred Dallaire and the Ecole Polytechnique are among the organizations, institutions and corporations that have established scholarships in memory of the victims.


Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, when tragedy invades our lives, we tend to react first with a feeling of horror, a feeling of helplessness, and over all the questioning as to why this has taken place. On that December night almost two years ago, a night that I think all of us will remember with exceptional clarity all of our lives, I remember the particular horror, the particular feeling of helplessness and over all the questioning as to why this had happened.
On that night in December it happened that I was dining with a group of my colleagues and one of our colleagues was late. As we waited for him we wondered why he was late. When he joined us he gave us the terrible news that was just then coming across the television screens and the radio airwaves in Canada. As he told us, one could tell in the crowded restaurant in Ottawa that the news was filtering to other tables, to other people. As we all remember, it seemed to deepen the horror that this took place in the pre-Christmas season when at least on the face of it we are all supposed to be mirroring a feeling of both peace on earth and good
Private Members' Business
will toward all of humankind. When evil takes place, we are left with a feeling of what can we do, how can we combat it, but when good comes out of evil there is always a sense of accomplishment and a feeling that terrible as the originating event was, there is some sense of balance restored if some good takes place.
I think that in both the existence of this bill brought forward by my friend, the hon. member for New Westminster-Burnaby, and in the kind of co-operation that took place among the three parties in the House, from the Minister responsible for the Status of Women and, in some small part, from my own participation, we saw an indication of how a horror cannot be redressed, cannot be cured, cannot be obliterated, but can be the catalyst for something that will, in the long run, please God, improve what is a terrible situation.
The tragedy at Ecole Polytechnique was the most extreme symptom, result, reaction if you will, to an epidemic running not just through our country, but through world society. The fact that we have managed to grow a few blossoms on the graves of those wonderful young women who were cut down at the very beginning of what should have been wonderful and fulfilling lives sometimes does not seem as if it is nearly enough. And, of course, it is not nearly enough, it is just the first few steps of what must be concerted action.
This is a private member's bill supported by all parties and all of us in all parties are happy, I even say delighted, that this has taken place.
But, Mr. Speaker, when the hon. member for New Westminster-Burnaby brought forward this bill, as she herself said in her speech, it is not just to have a day of remembrance, it is to have a day of action.
I am not going to go through a litany of the grotesquer-ies that have taken place against women just since I came into this House. My colleague has given a number of examples, examples that we are all too familiar with. My colleague from the government party talked about the fact that it is not something that can be confined to one particular cultural group, to one particular socio-economic class, to one particular geographic region, it is something that runs rampant throughout the world.
I think that there was always violence against women. I think this was one of the prices that women paid for being in the nurturing position, for being the maintained of home and hearth and, therefore, not being those

September 30, 1991
Private Members' Business
who provided the wherewithal for home and hearth and the protection.
I think that what has happened, particularly in the last 20 years, when we have seen the women's movement become, as many of us who have worked in it have always believed, perhaps the most cataclysmic drive for social change that this world has ever seen. It changes those things that many of us believe to be unchangeable, immutable and many of us feared changes to what we believed was immutable. Many of us feared it because it changed the way families are structured. It changed the way our daily, personal and private lives went on. That is why I say it was cataclysmic.
In the face of cataclysmic change, there is obviously going to be cataclysmic reaction.
Even though there was always violence against women, the influx of women into the work force, the changing of the face of national institutions such as this one-40 may not change the face and its features, but at least it changes it to a degree in its topography.
It frightens people and when people are frightened, they behave in a manner that is unacceptable. Sadly, in the case of this society and societies around the world, some of them are behaving in a manner that is lethal.
I applaud the government and most particularly the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women on the appointment of the blue ribbon panel. When I heard the names of the participants on this panel, I knew that their work would result in the kind of report on the issue of violence against women that all of us, the member for New Westminster-Burnaby and all women in the House, have been asked for in one form or another. Many men in the House as well have supported us on this.
That is only one aspect. I bring forward today, along with my support of this bill, two other areas that need government action, not through the avenue of private members, but through government policy.
The first is one that the government is working on, the House is dealing with, but that all of us are very, very concerned about. I refer to the whole question of gun control.
We all know that there are very strong feelings and opinions on both sides of the gun control issue, but there are certain facts that are just not changeable. They are there.
One fact is that in the case of spousal murder, guns are the single most common cause of death, the single most common. That has to be stopped and it can only be stopped by tougher gun control legislation, legislation with teeth.
The second area that has to be taken care of is that of the rape shield which fell last month under the Supreme Court of Canada. I agree with the Legal Education and Action Fund and with various other women's groups in this country that we do not wish the Minister of Justice to be precipit, because this is a difficult and challenging area of law.
We in this Chamber and the women and men of Canada, the vast majority of whom I know are supportive, need to hear that the minister is working on this, that women in fear of assault will have legislation to protect them.
In closing, I want to once again commend the member for New Westminster-Burnaby, the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women and those men in all parties of this House who continue to be supportive of what is a mainstream, serious and frightening issue. It may be the single most serious issue that any of us have been called on to deal with in our political lives.


Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to join with my colleagues on all sides of the House in speaking just for a couple of minutes on this issue.
It is now two years since 14 young women were massacred in Montreal for the sole reason that they were pursuing a professional career that is stereotypically denoted as a man's job. While this killing justifiably evoked shock and outrage from people all across Canada, a silence surrounds the hundreds of women who are victims of domestic violence each year.
One in four Canadian women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. While 12 per cent of women in Canada are assaulted each year by their partners, approximately 100 of these assaults result in death. The figures for reported sexual assault are assumed to be lower than the actual number of crimes against women committed each year. Many women choose not to report a crime because of the trauma and difficulty involved in
September 30, 1991

prosecuting the assailant. At the moment the penalty for assault is often lower than that of breaking and entering. For example, a few years ago a 26 year old man received a suspended sentence for assaulting a 13 year old girl.
The government condones or appears to condone this warped priorization by failing to grant the necessary funding to women's groups which are working to end these crimes and to provide support for the victims.
Canada is a signatory to a United Nations document which recognizes the need to achieve a peaceful social environment for women that is compatible with human dignity.
Statistics show that most men who commit violence against women come from a background that encourages that type of behaviour. Thus education and positive preventative action is necessary to stop the vicious circle in which so many women and their families are entrapped.
The bill before the House this morning, and I congratulate my colleague for presenting this bill, represents a national day of remembrance and action on violence against women. It would be a positive demonstration of our commitment to end this violence and grant women the right to safety in our society.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed. [Translation]

The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Since we have exhausted the list of items of Private Members' Business on today's Order Paper, the sitting will be suspended for a few minutes, until noon.
At 11.58 a.m. the sitting of the House was suspended.


SITTING RESUMED
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed at 12.02 p.m.
Government Orders


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to order adopted Tuesday, September 17,1991, and in accordance with Standing Order 100,1 do now leave the chair for the House to go into Committee of the Whole.
The House in Committee of the Whole on Bill C-29, an Act respecting compensation in the public sector of Canada and to amend another Act in relation thereto- Mr. Loiselle-Mr. DeBlois in the chair.
-On clause 2: Definitions


The Assistant Deputy Chairman:: Shall clause 2 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Resuming debate. The President of the Treasury Board.


Hon. Gilles Loiselle (President of the Treasury Board and Minister of State (Finance)):: Mr. Chairman, today, members of the Public Service Alliance are back on strike. Services to the Canadian public-including services essential to safety and security-are being disrupted.
The government is therefore asking Parliament to enact the Public Sector Compensation Act and put an end to the strike.
On Friday, the head of the Public Service Alliance broke an agreement he had made with me on September 17, not to strike as long as negotiations continued. This action, Mr. Chairman, is most unfortunate. Only 13 days ago, the parties agreed to return to the table, without preconditions, and to make every reasonable effort to reach a settlement.
During this past week, negotiators on both sides held a total of 35 meetings at the various bargaining tables. Treasury Board negotiators bargained seriously and in good faith, Mr. Chairman, and I say this with no hesitation. The offers we brought to the tables were reasonable and within the government wage restraint policy.

September 30, 1991
Government Orders
The government's wage policy, Mr. Chairman, is well known and has not changed-it was announced in the Budget last February. Its details are a matter of record and familiar to most members of this House. They form part of a series of measures announced in the Budget to bring the country out of the recession while containing the deficit and inflation.
These measures, I may recall, included capping payments to the provinces, freezing total federal program spending, reducing the number of managers, setting inflation targets and constraining wages.
On June 19, before the summer recess, I advised the House that we could not afford to negotiate any increase in wages this year.

I want to remind hon. members that whatever views they may hold on the current situation with the alliance, the government and the country are faced with a fiscal situation that must be addressed. We owe it to the Canadian public to live within the measures announced in the February budget. The deficit and inflationary pressures must both be contained so that interest rates can be brought down and economic recovery can continue.
The measures announced in the budget are working. The recovery has begun and it is now being jeopardized by the strike. I can sympathize with the alliance leadership and understandably they are unhappy with the government's zero and three per cent wage offer.
I said in June, and I repeat today, that the government's offer is not very palatable to the Public Service unions any more than it has been to the government. Yet, we have signed agreements with other unions which have taken what I believe is a very responsible approach. They chose to negotiate settlements within the government's wage restraint program. In doing this, they have agreed to join the ranks of public servants in four other provinces, and that must not be forgotten, that have a wage policy of zero per cent for at least 12 months and, in some cases, for two years.
The Public Service Alliance may be the reason Parliament is now considering passage of Bill C-29, but this union has not been singled out in our application of zero and three. Everyone is subject to the zero, three program.
As I stated in the House last week, performance pay is being suspended for 1991-92, not only for senior management, but for Governor in Council appointees, including the heads of Crown corporations.
When combined with the freeze in salary for this year, the suspension of performance pay results in an average reduction of 5 per cent in compensation for this group of employees. These are harsh, but necessary, measures in times of restraint.

The question of wage restraint, Mr. Chairman, has been a most difficult issue for the Public Service Alliance. We knew it would be and I personnaly wish that the government could offer more money to its employees.
As I have said on numerous occasions, 0 and 3 is not what our employees deserve, and it is certainly not a measure of their contribution to public service. It is, however, all that Canadian taxpayers can afford.
Knowing that the government must remain firm in its resolve to restrain spending, we have been as generous as we could in offering to improve the benefits to employees. The offer we placed on the table last week provided for substantial improvements in areas important to the Alliance, such as employment security and protecting the purchasing power of certain groups of employees.
We offered improved benefits in many other areas, and I wish to review these for hon. members, Mr. Chairman, because there is evidence of the very serious efforts Treasury Board has made to reach a fair and reasonable settlement.
My strong preference has always been to negotiate rather than legislate, and I provided our negotiators with the best possible mandate that we could provide as a responsible government under the circumstances. The Public Service Alliance has been greatly concerned about the employment security of its members, especially as it relates to future contracting out and privatization. I think that the concern has been overstated, because the federal government's Work Force Adjustment Policy is one of the best employment protection plans in Canada. About one half of one per cent of employees have lost their jobs through work force adjustment.
September 30, 1991	COMMONS

The policy provides six months' notice of loss of a job, and employees are given priority for other jobs in the Public Service for which they are qualified or can be retrained.
Retraining can be given for up to two years. Even after being laid off, employees retain their priority for new Public Service job openings for one year. We know of very few other employers, if any, which provide better employment security.
Yet the alliance is asking for more guarantees. In an effort to reach a settlement, we put more guarantees on the table. We told the alliance that we were prepared to guarantee the employment of employees whose jobs are transferred to the private sector as a result of contracting out or privatization.
We also said that those who choose to work for the contractors would receive six months' salary to compensate for lower benefits in the private sector. Finally, we said that a reasonable job offer would be made to any other employees affected by work force adjustments.
On another matter, the alliance argued that some employees would be seriously affected by the zero per cent this year, and that employees earning higher incomes are more easily protected from the increases in the cost of living.
We responded to this concern by offering a one time lump sum payment of $500 to all indeterminate employees in the Public Service earning less than $27,000 a year, which is roughly equal to the average earned income in Canada at the present time.
Some 35,000 employees would qualify for this payment.

The Alliance complained that the government was not commited to the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. This is a complex issue that we have worked hard with all unions to resolve.
In January 1990, when the Alliance withdrew from a joint study and when we saw that the outcome was being delayed further, we decided to go ahead and pay out retroactive lump-sum payments of $317 million to 73,400 Public Service employees. Equalization adjustments worth $81 million continue to be paid yearly.

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These were the amounts, Mr. Chairman, that, based on current data, the government calculated to be required under the equal pay for work of equal value provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act.
Because the method of calculation is presently under dispute before a human rights tribunal, the payments were not being incorporated into salary, but provided as seperate equalization payments. However, Mr. Chairman, in an effort to reach a settlement, we offered to incorporate these equalization payments into the base salaries of our clerks and secretaries. Doing this would provide these employees with a larger salary base from which future salary increases would be calculated, giving them more money and, eventually, a better pension.

Treasury Board offered improved benefits in other areas. It offered to pay 100 per cent of the premiums of the Public Service health care plan. It offered to raise the level of reimbursements claimable under the dental plan. It offered to increase the employer's contribution to the premium for disability insurance to 85 per cent from 75 per cent. It offered to increase the number of work place day care centres to 15 from 10. It offered to improve, among other things, vacation leave, shift and weekend premiums and meal allowances.
There is only a limited amount of money available. The cost of any improved benefits would have to be paid out of the departmental budgets established at the time of the last budget. For this year, it would mean that some departments would have to reduce their rate of hiring to replace public servants who retire.
We made, I am convinced, the best offer that a responsible government can make today. To the alliance, it is not enough. We must not forget that the country faces a $400 billion national debt. The interest on that debt amounts to more than $40 billion a year. The cupboard is bare and the alliance is calling for a mediator. The cupboard is bare and the alliance is asking for more.
The wages and benefits that federal employees currently enjoy are a cut above that of the average Canadian worker. Employees represented by the alliance earn an average salary of $33,500 a year, including equal pay, compared to a national average earned income of $27,100. They have a pension plan that is fully indexed to the cost of living. They enjoy, as I mentioned earlier, one of the highest levels of employment security in

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Canada, and their over-all benefits are at least comparable to other major employers.
This week Treasury Board is publishing in newspapers across the country an outline of the offer that the alliance rejected. The government has a responsibility to Canadians who must be made aware of the serious efforts we made to reach a negotiated settlement.
It is important that Canadians understand the kind of wages and benefits federal employees already enjoy. It is important because the government and all Canadians have endured serious disruptions in service earlier this month, disruptions that began again this weekend as the alliance called its members back to the picket lines.

These disruptions put safety and security at risk, and jeopardize economic recovery. I have already reported to this House that grain terminals could no longer handle this year's harvest, that businesses were facing imminent layoffs because of delivery delays, and essential services were being affected.
We cannot allow these disruptions to resume. The Public Service Alliance of Canada is unwilling to accept the best offer that can be made. The Government must therefore assume its responsibility and legislate an end to the strike.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Gilles Loiselle: Hon. members are already familiar with Bill C-29. We debated its provisions in this House not two weeks ago. I will therefore be brief in reviewing its provisions.
Bill C-29 would extend all collective agreements and compensation plans, so that all strike activities will become illegal. All employees would have to return to work or they could face fines of up to $1,000 a day. Union representatives could be fined as much as $50,000 a day and union itself, $100,000 a day.
As I indicated earlier, the legislation would ensure that everyone is subject to the 0-3 program. This includes the Prime Minister, cabinet ministers, members
of Parliament, senators, Parliamentary staff, the Canadian Forces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The heads and employees of other government bodies that are non-commercial in nature and not normally self-financing are also covered.
The wages of two groups-the Auditing Group and the Computer Systems Administration Group-would be adjusted for the period preceding the current fiscal year, but increases would be limited to zero and three per cent for the following years.
The agreements signed with four unions-agreements that, I am happy to say, are within the 0-3 guidelines- would not be changed by C-29. The bill excludes benefits and services provided under the terms arrived at through the National Joint Council, a union-management consultative body. In this way, Treasury Board can continue to discuss them with all the unions.

Many of the improvements contained in the offer to the alliance relate to items normally discussed at the National Joint Council. These include improvements to health insurance, disability insurance and the dental plans. These improvements were not accepted by the alliance and will not be included in the legislation. To give due regard to the consultative process set up through the National Joint Council, we would like to extend for 30 days the work force adjustment policy and bring these matters back to the National Joint Council and discuss them with all Public Service unions.
The other improvements contained in the offer to the Public Service Alliance would normally be lost to employees. The government is prepared, however, to make one exception. The government agrees that it is easier for higher income earners to protect themselves from cost of living increases when their salaries are frozen.
I am prepared to provide for a one time $500 lump sum payment to all indeterminate employees earning less than $27,000 a year. The cost of this provision will be absorbed within existing departmental budgets.
I am sure that hon. members will agree that these employees deserve special consideration and I urge them to vote in favour of this amendment.
September 30, 1991

In conclusion, the Public Sector Compensation Act is based on the premise that all of us working in the public sector should contribute to national economic recovery. Because of current economic conditions, the government cannot offer more.
It is unfortunate that we were unable to reach a settlement and had to resort to legislation. Parliamentarians, the Canadian public and our employees, the vast majority of whom are hard working and dedicated to public service, hope for a negotiated settlement.
We must now turn our attention to the task of bringing order back to the Public Service. I ask for the co-operation of all members in ensuring speedy passage of this legislation.


Mr. David Dingwall (Cape Breton-East Richmond):: Mr. Chairman, I understand from the rules that because we are in Committee of the Whole members get a maximum of 20 minutes to either raise questions or to make statements and, in this particular instance, the President of the Treasury Board to clarify certain aspects of his remarks.
I would like to begin my remarks by asking the minister if he can confirm or deny as to whether over the weekend representatives of the union attempted to get in contact with him for the purposes of exploring various avenues which were open to both parties concerning this particular dispute.
While the minister is on his feet, will he indicate to the House as to why he and his representatives were not available to respond to the concerns raised by the other side?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Chairman, I am delighted to answer this question. You will recall, as I stated in my opening remarks, that on September 17 we came to an arrangement between the union and Treasury Board, an arrangement that was so positive that all sides in this House agreed that we would postpone legislating and give negotiation a chance to succeed.
We proceeded in good faith. We had during the week 35 meetings at different tables. We made on Thursday evening two new offers and we expected them to be considered. We did not walk away from the table. PSAC did and called a strike, thereby changing the terms under which we had agreed to go back to the table unilaterally.
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Under those circumstances we felt that it did not act in good faith and we have to go back to the original plan and legislate.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Chairman, the minister has confirmed for members of the House that by his very answer, or lack of details and precision in his answer, representations were made to him over the weekend and that the minister as President of the Treasury Board, who stood in this Chamber not more than a week ago and talked about examples of bargaining in good faith, did not make himself available this weekend, or his staff members, to entertain any proposals from the other side in order that there might be a resolution of this particular issue.
I am somewhat puzzled and annoyed that the President of the Treasury Board would not avail himself of every opportunity to try to bring some peace and dignity to the collective bargaining process.
It does not stop there. I understand that the minister would like to be part and parcel of this debate. He will have his opportunity to participate in the debate. We would love to hear from the minister in his usual colourful language.
I want to put on the record that it was not all that long ago that a decision was made by the Public Service Staff Relations Board which charged that this government and this minister were bargaining in bad faith.


Gilles Loiselle: That is not true.


David Charles Dingwall: The hon. minister says: "That is not true". He will have an opportunity to explain the raison d'etre of that particular decision and how it affects the collective bargaining process between the government on the one hand and members of the Public Service on the other hand.
The minister knows very well that they have been bargaining in bad faith. What they offered to the unions to go back to the bargaining table was nothing more than a sham to buy time so that they could come back into this House and provoke a situation across this country. That underlines the Tory agenda. I stood in this Chamber not more than 10 days ago and said as much as that and now, today, we have clear, unequivocal evidence that we are in that kind of situation as viewed by the decisions and the actions of the President of the Treasury Board.

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I want to ask the minister a second question. Can he share with members of this House the amendments that are being rumoured in terms of what he intends to amend in this particular statute?
I am fully aware that he does not have to do that until we get into a clause-by-clause situation, but I ask the minister this because members of the government House leader's office have been informing us that we will be receiving copies of the amendments which the minister intends to table on the floor of the House of Commons. Could we hear those amendments?


Gilles Loiselle: I suppose the hon. member finds some comfort in listening to himself. I could very easily ask him to telephone the president of the Public Service Staff Relations Board and ask him: "Did you or did you not find the government acting in bad faith?" His answer will be no.
He was asked two questions by the union: did the government act in bad faith and, second, did we make every reasonable effort? The board said we have acted in good faith but we had not made every reasonable effort.
We said: "Okay, let's find a way to go beyond that". We were convinced we had made every reasonable effort: 90 days or 60 days of negotiations, 30 days of conciliation with a union that had started initially, the day after the budget, by saying that "this is a political fight. We will never accept it. We want to fight the government".
We tried to bring back the discussion. As for offers that he described as sham, I would like him to go and tell Canadians, the 146,000 of them who lost their jobs-they have been asking questions about them for the last few weeks-how they would like to accept these offers, all of them.
Do he realize that last year only 230,000 some Canadians tried to enter this terribly badly mistreated Public Service! I tell him that our Tory agenda is to try to get the finances of this country in order; not to destroy the Public Service but to protect it. If we had continued going the Liberal way it would have been disastrous for them, by putting our fiscal situation in order at the time of recession, by doing what other Liberal governments have done. We have negotiated. They have not. They
have legislated. We spent 90 days at the table. They have legislated the first day, good Liberal governments. It is because the situation is difficult, and this is what we are faced with. We are committed to try not to raise taxes, not increase the deficit and get the economy to pick up again.
As for the amendments, I do not have the definite list here but I can say that they are reasonably minor. One of them would allow me to proceed with what I have said I would like to do: have this lump sum payment of $500 because the act would otherwise prevent it. There is an amendment which deals with a mistake in conciliation in the French version. It allows me basically to first define compensation.
We are now negotiating with some of our other employees while this bill is in front of the House, until such time as it receives Royal Assent, to continue these negotiations and possibly come to terms. We are bringing in an amendment to correct an oversight in the French version, line 31. We would complete the list of new separate employers because since the bill was printed two new ones have come on stream-it is a minor thing again-the Canadian Polar Commission and the Federal Office of Regional Development. These are the minor amendments we intend to introduce.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Chairman, it is interesting to note that the minister now says on the floor of the House of Commons that it is their intention not to raise any new taxes for the purposes of additional revenue.
May I remind the President of the Treasury Board and his colleagues on the front benches that since 1984 there has been a proliferation of taxes on Canadians across this country numbering some 33 new tax increases.
When the minister stands in his place and makes the suggestion that it is not their intention to raise any taxes and that they are concerned about the public purse and the management of the Canadian economy, I can only say that it is not very believable coming from the President of the Treasury Board.
There was a period of time some years ago when the Canadian economy was flourishing at a phenomenal rate, but there was no decrease in the debt of the national government.


An hon. member:: It was not the deficit.
September 30, 1991


David Charles Dingwall: Now the hon. minister behind him says: "It was not the deficit". They like to change their line of argument when it comes to dealing with individuals.
Second, this minister seems to think that he knows all the answers or would like to know all the answers when it comes to dealing with the unemployed. There are many constituencies in this country that have unemployed.
I suggest to the minister that by playing this group off against another group does very little to enhance morale in the Public Service. It does very little to enhance any economic opportunities outside the Public Service.
To make this catcall that there are all sorts of individuals out there who would like to have these jobs, we all know that. The question is: Why has the government provoked an unnecessary strike on the Canadian people? Why has the government done that?
While the minister is on his feet-because I know my time is limited-would he indicate how many of his cronies, his fat cat friends are going to be receiving their bonuses and the magnitude of their bonuses? What will they be? Will he explain that to the Canadian people?


Gilles Loiselle: I have great respect for the hon. member. I hope he will not get into the habit of throwing away things like that which finally tend to disgrace this place.
I am trying to explain fairly what the opposition is. I do not expect him to agree; I know that from the start. He can throw numbers around and try to convince people of things that are wrong.
I will start with his last question. I have said in this House that the government policy at budget time was that everybody would get a zero year. I have said in this House that from April 1, 1991 to April 1, 1992 everybody will have a zero year and those who get a bonus will not get it. They will get zero per cent for that year. That will come of course at the end of the year because the committee sits then. It will come when it is due. They will not get it anyway.
Second, he talks about raising taxes. Should we have taken the Liberal approach to budget making or to fiscal policy? If we had followed the same route, where would
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our deficit be? It would be $100 billion. Where would our debt be? It would be $700 billion.
We have change the course by cutting $30 billion. Of course we have put the taxes in order. We have made cuts which were opposed each time by the opposition, all of it. We have tried to get our House in order. Each time it was never the right cut, and we managed to get as much income as possible. We have made good progress so that in a few years' time we will not need to borrow any more. It is a tough problem because of what you made of our fiscal situation.
As far as playing one group against another, I would like to remind the hon. member that we are not playing any group. We are asking everyone to contribute his or her share. Is it being against the union to announce to our managers that we will abolish 10 per cent of their positions? Is it being against the union to announce to the provinces that we would cut the growth of transfers for the following year? Is it against the union to put some order, to freeze our operating budgets?
We are asking everyone to make an effort. We did it so as to send out a signal to the others that there was some concern about the recession. There is too much government spending. Obviously, when you have to pay $40 billion interest on your debt, you have a major problem.
We sent out this message, and it was well received because good sound Liberal governments have done the same. Basically this government has tried to be consistent and do a very difficult and unpopular job of getting public finances in order.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Chairman, in his opening remarks the minister alluded, in response to a question, to the offer was made to members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Can he confirm that he will continue to put on the table the $500 lump sum payment to approximately 35,000 employees? Will he guarantee employment for employees whose jobs were transferred to the private sector, the improved benefits including those for the dental, health insurance, disability insurance, vacation leave, shift premiums, et cetera, as well as payments totalling $81 million a year?

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Will the minister agree that that will be included in his amendments?


Gilles Loiselle: Should I? It does not seem to be a very good offer. You call it a sham.


An hon. member:: That is right, and now he wants it assured.


Gilles Loiselle: Maybe I should withdraw it. If he had listened to me, I said just a little while ago that we are prepared to pay the $500 because we find that reasonable, but we will find the money from within the operating budget.
All the other issues can be dealt with. It is provided for in the bill, through the NJC. We will do it then and discuss with all unions the job security issue and the other issues.


Ms. Joy Langan (Mission-Coquitlam):: Mr. Chairman, the President of the Treasury Board said in his remarks that the chair of the Public Service Staff Relations Board did not find him in fact to have bargained in bad faith.
I would suggest that was the minister's interpretation of the ruling that the chair of the Public Service Staff Relations Board made and not the widely held interpretation.
The minister spoke of citizen safety. I have never, in 30 years as a worker who has worked in the area of collective bargaining, seen an employer who has been so provocative, who has been so sinister, who has been so double dealing as the negotiators from the employer's side in this dispute.
Last Friday the minister said Mr. Bean broke his agreement with the government. In fact, last Friday Daryl Bean from my office, late in the afternoon, spent three hours attempting to reach the minister. During a number of those hours we were aware that the minister was on the third floor of this very building. Mr. Bean wanted to speak to the minister about negotiations, about a new package, and the minister refused.
There have been a large number of people over the weekend who have attempted in fact to arrange for a meeting, or at least discussions between the union and the employer over the weekend so that we could in fact avoid this process we are going through today.
There was a call by Shirley Carr to the Minister for International Trade who assured her that he would in
fact pass the message on to the minister. There was a call from Jack Munro who is going to a convention in Toronto today. He was most concerned and called Mr. Spector and was assured that the minister would be advised. Our own leader's office attempted to reach the minister on Friday night.
On Friday, at a meeting between Mr. Capello and Daryl Bean in the evening, there was a meeting set for 2 p.m. on Saturday for further discussions and negotiations. Mr. Capello went to the telephone and returned and said he did not have a mandate to pursue the negotiations and come to the bargaining table on Saturday. This was in spite of the fact that Mr. Bean on Friday night had advised Mr. Capello that he had in fact a new proposal to put before the minister.
I think that the question that was asked by my hon. colleague, the House leader for the Liberals, was a very fair and a very legitimate question. That question was: Did the minister get those messages and, if in fact he got the messages, why did he choose not to make any effort to try and resolve this dispute until it became full blown again today?
There was a meeting on Sunday that the minister spoke to me about earlier, but that meeting was not with Mr. Capello nor with the minister. That meeting was with Mr. Ian Deans of the Public Service Staff Relations Board, who does not have a mandate to negotiate.
Although Mr. Bean had told the minister and told Mr. Capello that he had a new proposal to put on the table, this government took this dispute, put it into the political forum, and then took the weekend off.
I would ask the minister to explain to Canadian people, to this House, and to the Public Service Alliance how, when so much was at stake in this country, the government side could take the weekend off.
The minister said he preferred to negotiate rather than legislate. He said it a few minutes ago in his remarks. We just outlined a whole weekend of people, parliamentarians, people from the labour movement, the President of the Public Service Alliance, and heaven knows who else, who have urged this minister, through various people, to come to the bargaining table. This minister has the temerity to get up in this House and expect us to believe that he would rather negotiate than legislate.
September 30, 1991

The minister spoke about a one time lump sum for all those earning less than $27,000. He was speaking rather quickly, but I think he said less than $27,000. That would be 35,000 employees.
What about the other 120,000 employees who work for this government? Is the minister seriously suggesting that he expects the union to accept worker pitted against worker? Does he expect the union to accept a proposal that includes 35,000 people, but excludes 120,000 people? Does the minister sincerely believe that any union negotiator could take that back to their membership and expect a ratification? If the minister knows so much about collective bargaining, I find it very hard to believe that he would believe that that was possible.
The minister spoke about equal pay for work of equal value and lump sum payments. That is laudable. I really appreciate that the minister believes in the concept of equal pay for work of equal value. If that is the case, I would like to ask the minister another question: Will he withdraw this government's appeal to the Human Rights Board of the equal pay for work of equal value decision?
The minister talked about Treasury Board improving benefits. I share the question of the member from the Liberal Party who asked whether those benefits would be incorporated into this bill.
The minister spoke about the cost of any improved benefits which would have to come out of departmental budgets. I would ask the minister if that means there will be job losses as a result of those improvements coming through departmental budgets.
The Treasury Board ads this weekend say what the union walked away from. I would suggest that the minister should have a meeting with the Public Service Alliance and see what the minister has refused to look at coming from the union.
The minister referred to safety and security being at risk and that the union is unwilling to accept the best offer that can be made. Surely the minister would, at the very least, take a look at what the union's offer is.
If the minister is not willing to take a look at this offer, we can only conclude that the minister has another agenda, and it is not bargaining with the Public Service Alliance of Canada. I would suggest that the other agenda is a fight for the hearts and the minds of the
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Canadian people, and that it is a cynical, devious way to impose its will on every group within the public sector: those who were at the table and those who were not, those who are unionized and those who are not, including the RCMP, the military, CSIS and a three-page list of others.
I think it is time for the minister to fess up and not try and fool the Canadian people about what his agenda is. I would, as the last question in this part of my intervention, ask the minister if he does have an alternate agenda to get this legislation through so that he has everybody encompassed, not just the Public Service Alliance?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Chairman, I wonder if the president of PSAC was in the hon. member's office when he decided, as an answer to our latest proposal, to go on strike.
No? Well he must have been very close then, from what I hear.
We did not leave the table, PSAC did. We made offers on Thursday evening and the following day. As an answer, they went out on strike. We took it that our offer did not seem to be agreeable to them and, therefore, we said: "What choice do we have?"
We had an arrangement. They say we have new proposals now. We had been at this for 90 days before the strike. We had 35 meetings last week, extensive meetings at many tables. Where were these offers? It sounds a little strange to me that suddenly some new offers would emerge that would be acceptable.
Mr. Bean knew, before we went back to the negotiations, exactly what our position was. We said that we had a limited margin of manoeuvre but we would do everything we could to make it as positive as possible, and that is what we did. We do not seem to be able to reconcile this with his request. Therefore, we have no choice but to proceed with the bill.
The hon. member says: "I have never seen an employer who acts in such a provocative way." I could give you names of dozens of employers who had to lay off people all over Canada.


Some hon. members:: Let's hear them.


Gilles Loiselle: They were in a much better financial position than we are. We have a debt of $400 billion, and a deficit of $30 billion, and we are trying, all around our

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budget, to tiy to make these cuts and lower the deficit as we have been over the last few years.
The hon. member said that at the last minute Mr. Bean wanted to make offers. Well, I personally found it rather surprising that he decided to go on strike at ten o'clock on Friday, and to learn, as we are still at the table, on television that the negotiations are over. We did not break the negotiations, he did. Now he can always claim that he could have acted otherwise, but I do not agree with that.
The hon. member says that we are pitting members against members and we may have a secret agenda. We have only one agenda. It is to try to get the finances of this government and of the country in order. It is a difficult agenda. It makes for very, very difficult decisions that affect everybody. Of course, it is at a time when we are in a recession, as we were at budget time, where we knew there would be some recovery in the summer and early fall, but that could be threatened by governments losing control over their finances, because during a recession you have more money going out and less coming in. But these are considerations we took into account. We also saw that there was a great threat to the inflation path, which is a great menace to our employees and to our workers. So we decided to send out a clear signal, to set inflation targets, and to act accordingly.
One of the greatest threats in the analysis that was made of the over-all economy was that the unit labour cost had increased by 25 per cent in Canada over the last few years, compared to zero in the United States, and we were not being competitive.
Therefore, we decided that as part of a package, dealing with managers, transfers, and operating budgets, we would ask our employees to make an additional sacrifice, thereby sending a message which was received.
Most provinces have taken difficult decisions. Some of them have gone beyond. They have not negotiated, as we have, and tried to get the best possible deal. They have legislated. In some instances, zero per cent for two years. Therefore, I consider that we acted, not in a provocative way, but in a responsible way.
The member referred to equal pay for work of equal value. I am glad that she recognized that this government, at least, has done something very important to
conform itself to the law, by giving, in one lump sum payment again, $370 million, which is a considerable effort in our present circumstances.
Then we said that we would continue to contribute to some 75,000 employees $81 million a year. This is our analysis of our commitments.
The member asked: "Will you withdraw your appeal"? What are we appealing? We disagree very strongly with an interpretation that has been given of the meaning of these principles which were approved by the House. We are just trying to get confirmation that our interpretation is right. This is what we are doing.
The alternative proposal would cause a lot of ratcheting, where averages would be made, and would cause all kinds of destruction within the system. We feel that is not at all what the House intended. Therefore, we are proceeding in a way we think is right.
We say that we will be taking these additional resources for the $500 one time, lump sum payments out of the operating budgets, and that some positions will be threatened. Of course. I do not disagree with that. Do we start printing money, borrowing more money, or raising taxes? We are trying to manage within our existing resources. It is tough, but we are doing it. It will mean that posts will stay there, but they will not be filled as quickly as they would otherwise. We will try to come up with these sums through a better allocation of the existing resources.
Again, I would repeat that when the member says we have not made every reasonable effort over the weekend, I would ask where she has been over the last few months. We have been at the table for 60 days. We have been at conciliation 30 days. We went back and stayed for 35 different meetings and not one offer came from PSAC.
In the still of the night, having decided to go back on strike against the solemn agreement we had reached in my office, she says maybe we should sit down and talk. Well, I do not agree with that at all. I think the only way now is for us to legislate.


Joy Langan: Mr. Chairman, I am glad the minister answered one or two of my questions. I noted that he referred to everything I referred to, but chose not to answer most of what I asked.
September 30,1991

I want to make it perfectly clear to the minister that when I referred to Daryl Bean being in my office, I referred to him being in my office on Friday, late in the afternoon. The minister said to me, earlier today, that he was aware that letters went out from the union on Thursday. Do not try to confuse when anybody made decisions about things, or when people decided to start bargaining or not to bargain.
The minister said he wanted to make it clear that he thought it was unfortunate that the union brought in a last minute offer. Well, I would think that if the minister has ever been to the bargaining table: "It ain't over until it is over". People continue to try until the last minute to avoid a labour dispute.
Mr. Bean called a strike, which is very usual. He has a legal right to call a strike and he then had an offer.
All the way through bargaining people change their offers based on what gets put in front of them, what will fly, what will not fly. It is not unusual to have new offers all the way through bargaining to take something and try to change it, massage it so that it will be acceptable to the other side.
The minister should not try to infer that they are the only puritans here who ever tried to settle this dispute.
The minister referred to the Human Rights Commission and that he wanted to make sure his interpretation was right instead of the Human Rights Commission's decision. It is so like this government. If it does not like the Human Rights decision, it appeals it. If it does not like the conciliation, it ignores it. If it does not like the union, then it hammers it.
I think what is important here is for us to take a look at why we are at this point in this dispute. I would really like an answer from the minister: Was it his plan to end up having this legislation passed so that he could encompass everyone and not just the Public Service Alliance?
[Translation\


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Chairman, this is obviously a somewhat philosophical disagreement. The hon. member is giving me pointers on how to conduct bargaining. I would point out that, last Thursday night, we tabled new and improved proposals and that, as far as we were concerned, Mr. Bean had gone to consult with his member-
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ship and would be back to let us know what they said. The decision was his to go on TV at 10 o'clock on Friday to advise us that they were going on strike.
He chose to put an end to the bargaining process, which I deplore because we did try to bargain. Sixty days of bargaining following the tabling of the Budget, 30 days of conciliation, 35 meetings during which the union obviously never intended to accept the government wage policy. As a matter of fact, Mr. Bean stated publicly: "This is no ordinary strike. It is a political strike. We are after the government's skin." Still, we did not make a fuss. We said: "Listen, he is entitled to his opinion. We will give it a try." We could have done like several provincial governments and refuse to bargain, but now we are being blame for not having bargained enough. Those governments, Liberals and others, legislated zero per cent wage increases on the very day of the Budget and, in some instances, reopened collective agreements that had already been signed. And now they come and take us to task! They imposed zero per cent settlements for two years and they come and give us a lecture! And we are told that it was provocation to act responsibly in the administration of our budget! Go and ask the Canadian people who were laid off these last few months how they would feel about accepting such offers. And how do you explain that 234,000 people applied last year to join this public service of Canada which treats its employees so poorly according to the hon. member?
We have bargained in good faith. Mr. Bean gave his answer when he announced they were going on strike. Now, our answer to him is: "We had an understanding. If you strike, we will legislate you back to work. The strike is on and so is the legislative process.


Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Chairman, I want to make some introductory comments and ask some information of the minister before moving an amendment to clause 2. It seems to be something that the minister himself has failed to deal with in the amendments that he has suggested will be moved.
I want to go back to the process. Some time earlier this year, five, six, seven months ago, depending on the particular group in question, the government was in a position to negotiate with its employees. The minister keeps saying that it did negotiate. He tries to deny that

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Government Orders
the Public Service Staff Relations Board made a finding of bargaining in bad faith.
I can only quote from the findings of the Public Service Staff Relations Board: "The insistence on conditions precedent to negotiating terms and conditions of employment at the bargaining table is incompatible with the requirement to make every reasonable effort to negotiate a collective agreement. Accordingly, the board declares that the employer has acted contrary to section 51 of the act and orders the employer to comply with section 51 of the act".
That is precisely what bad faith bargaining is. The board ordered this government to comply with the law of Canada. The government instead chose to use this decision and its legal obligation to go back to the bargaining table as a bargaining tool, another sledgehammer to hold over peoples' heads to force them back to the bargaining table under conditions which would see the bill that is now before us passed very quickly, with little debate and with no amendments.


An hon. member:: Send the Tories packing.


Marlene Catterall: The key issue here is that problems should be resolved by talking. The minister has refused, as President of the Treasury Board, to speak directly to the president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada since last week.
He has not returned calls from the chairman of the Public Service Staff Relations Board, whose responsibility it is to make sure this system works. Mr. Deans is chairman of the Public Service Staff Relations Board and is anxious to offer his services in an attempt to reach a fair settlement here without having to resort to strikes and back to work legislation.
The government has adamantly refused to take a reasonable step of appointing a mediator who might shine some light on this situation, who might actually lead us through the tunnel to a conclusion.


An hon. member:: Where is the mediator, Gilles?


Marlene Catterall: One has to ask why the government refuses to appoint a mediator. I can only conclude that it is precisely for that reason that it does not want light shed on this situation, that it does not want an objective view of the situation made available to the Canadian public which can then determine whether the government is acting fairly. I believe it has already passed judgment on that.
People know it is not fair when somebody earning $500,000 gets a bonus of $80,000, which is equivalent to the full and entire salary of four Public Service employees.
I want to touch on a few things that the minister has touched on before I come to some questions. I want to touch on this very generous "$500" that is being offered to the lowest paid employees.
I wonder if the minister when he responds to some of these points can tell us why he thinks it is fair that somebody earning $26,999 under his offer would get a signing bonus of $500, but the person earning $27,000, one dollar more, would get no such bonus. The person earning $26,9999 ends up earning more than the person earning $27,000. That seems like a little bit of an "Alice in Wonderland" scenario and perhaps the minister could explain it to some extent.


An hon. member:: That is Tory economics.


Marlene Catterall: The minister knows perfectly well that $500 on a $20,000 income that gets spent entirely on goods and services that a family needs-you do not have any money to save and you have no money for luxuries- does not pay the increase in costs brought about by the goods and service tax for that same family or individual in the past year.
The minister also knows perfectly well that if people were out on strike for a matter of seven days, the savings to the government were far more than the cost of that $500. The savings were far more.
Members across the way keep shouting: "Where are we going to get the money, where are we going to get the money to treat people responsibly who are responsible for no more in their payroll than 3 per cent of the entire national budget".
I guess I would ask the minister to look at the other 88 per cent of the budget and say: "Are these the people who really have to carry the burden of this government's mismanagement of the economy?"
In six consecutive budgets this government, increasingly tightening the ratchet, has said to the people: "We are going to get rid of public servants", and it brags about cutting 90,000 jobs and affecting 34,000 individuals, "we are going to restrain their pay so that they are losing
September 30, 1991

money against inflation." They are actually losing purchasing, not just staying even. That is going to solve the government's deficit and debt.
People might have believed that in the government's first budget in 1988 or its second budget in 1989 or its third one in 1990, but by 1991 and 1992 they are starting to get a little suspicious that this government does not know what it is doing. It keeps proposing the same solutions and it never solves the problem. The problem continues but it keeps proposing more extreme versions of the same solution.
Anybody who has not been able to solve the problem in six years knows it is time to start looking for another solution.
I would like to hear the minister explain why the employees of the government get nothing this next year, but people on contract-and people on contract are earning more than the entire payroll of the Public Service Alliance-have no limits placed on them. I would like to hear the minister's explanation for that.
Finally, I want to talk about pay equity. I make it absolutely clear that for the Liberal Party, pay equity is not negotiable. I resent, on behalf of every woman in Canada, that this government is placing pay equity on the bargaining table to be bargained away in exchange for other benefits. This is a legal right that women in Canada have, the right to equal pay for work of equal value.
We will be proposing amendments that require Treasury Board to immediately implement a roll into salaiy of those equalization payments which it has been making to women instead of full wages and salaries in recognition of the work they do and to, within a year, fully implement pay equity.
There are a number of issues that will be raised, but given that we are now on clause 2, I want to talk particularly about the bonuses. The minister has done an absolutely phenomenal amount of skating in the last week, having introduced a bill just two weeks ago that specifically exempts bonuses and any other type of premium differential, other emolument or benefits paid in respect of circumstances specified by the Treasuiy Board, i.e. $80,000 extra for people who are already making $500,000.1 did not hear him mention, and maybe
Government Orders
I missed it, that he is taking that exception out of the bill now.
Having specifically exempted those bonuses from the application of the zero, three per cent budget guidelines, he was then faced this week with having to say: "Well, no, no, no, they are not going to get any increase on those, they are not going to get any bonus or any performance pay or any of that stuff at all."
Until I see it in legislation, I do not really know what the minister means and I do not think anybody out there knows what he means. They know that two weeks ago he tabled legislation that exempted bonuses from the zero per cent freeze and the 3 per cent cap and then they saw him this week trying to skate around that and pretend that he was going to do something else. If he is going to do something else, let him do it in legislation.
Before the President of Treasury Board responds to some of the points I have made and allows me perhaps the opportunity to make other changes, I know it is highly unusual to move amendments to the definition clause of a bill, however there is really no other place in the bill where this is dealt with.
I move:
That Clause 2 be amended at page 3 by deleting lines 2 through 6
and substituting the following therefor:
- amount of pay-
What we are taking out is that this bill does not include allowances, bonuses, differentials, premiums or other emoluments or benefits paid in respect of circumstances specified by Treasuiy Board. That makes it very clear that the commitments and statements the minister made this week that zero and three apply to bonuses are in fact true in legislation and not just in rhetoric.
The minister has often commented-and I would not use personal examples except that the minister uses it so often-that he has been through a 20 per cent reduction in his salary. I suspect that that 20 per cent reduction was not on a $20,000 salary. The next time he uses that example he might want to tell people exactly how much he was earning after his 20 per cent reduction and how that compares to so many of the people who are now without a contract.
One final comment: One thing I have found most discouraging this week was when the President of Treasury Board refused to speak directly to the president of the Public Service Alliance and communicated through his staff. He had staff report that they were prepared to

September 30,1991
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give this $500 bonus to 35,000 members of the alliance. Wow, 25,000 of those were women! How any employer can brag that 25,000 of 35,000 of its lowest paid employees are women and that it has not implemented full pay equity, I fail to understand.
You have the motion moved, Mr. Chairman, and I would appreciate the minister's comments on some of the points I have raised.


Steve Eugene Paproski: The Chair will consider the amendment moved by the hon. member for Ottawa West and will take the admissibility of this motion under advisement.
That being said, I again recognize the President of the Treasury Board.


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Chairman, the hon. member has made a great number of points. I will try to address them as succinctly as possible. I think one of her first points was to deny that we had made, I would say, an honest effort at negotiating.
I would like to remind the hon. member that this sounds a little strange inasmuch as we have reached settlement with some of our unions within the zero-three range. We have reached agreement with unions. We have even obtained conciliation board reports recommending acceptance of settlements within the zero-three range.
It is not so far-fetched. We have made efforts and we have been successful. For example, with PIPS the board report recommends acceptance of a settlement within the range. Therefore, I should not think that we were not throughout the exercise failing to try to achieve a settlement. Far from it. We have tried from the start. We knew that the zero-three perspective was not a pleasant one, and we understand that.
The hon. member referred then to article 51 in which she said that we had been found, therefore she concludes, guilty of acting in bad faith. I would insist that this is not the case. The union asked the Public Service Staff Relations Board two questions: Did Treasury Board act in bad faith and, second, did they make every reasonable effort?
Article 51 contains these two possibilities. The board came to the conclusion that we had not made every reasonable effort, not that we had acted in bad faith. I think that should be clearly stated.
The hon. member then said that I refused to meet with the president of PSAC. I must admit that we have been in touch with PSAC at the table away from the table. My negotiators have been talking to Mr. Bean on an ongoing basis. I have been kept fully informed. I met him before we decided to sit down, and I told him how it would unfold and what the limits were of our mandate. He agreed to sit under those conditions, that he would bring his members back and we would end the legislation. Then the negotiations took place and the information was that no counterproposal was coming. What is the point of having a mediator? We had our proposal on the table and the answer we got is that they went back on strike. Therefore I do not see any point in having further negotiations since we have not been making progress for the last few months.
The hon. member mentioned once or twice the bonus question. I suggest that her salary and her allocations are higher than those of many members of PSAC, and I suppose there is a reason for that. So is mine.
We have also chairmen of large corporations who have to compete in the real world. Of course when somebody gets $300,000 in salary it is seen as a very high amount. I must say that it is. That being said, managers also have a component which is performance pay. This is a valid way. We have set out a board to grant them.
What will happen for 1991-and I would like this to be very clear-is that we have frozen everything. We have frozen everything. These bonuses are given at the end of the year, from April 1991 to April 1992. They will be evaluated and, whatever the recommendation, they will get zero. I cannot recommend them now, but I guarantee at budget time the decision was everybody would have a zero year.
We will come to members of Parliament. We begin on January 1. This is our year. Bringing it forward will cause all kinds of problems, like it will cause Parliament to have a higher increase but for a shorter period of time. We said let us maintain it as we have with the unions. They did not get their contract ended at budget time. Some of them ended in August and others in September.
September 30, 1991

For the managers, they already started in April to have their salary frozen. Their bonus will be paid at the end. They will be paid zero dollars.
I would like that to be put to rest. In my view even for our managers in the Public Service, I think it is a good idea to have this combined salary and performance pay. This is a very good way of rewarding our managers. This was done anyway by taking the money from within. That being said, this year they will also get zero, which is indeed going back 5 per cent.
She talked about the money we could have saved by people being out on strike and not being paid. I would tell her with respect that when people are out on strike-public servants are important persons-they create a vast amount of destruction in the country. This has occurred, so it is far from clear at this time that the over-all balance will be positive. When you have in the grain industry the destruction we have seen, when we have in the airports the destruction we have seen, there is much less money coming into the government. In the end we may end up losing and not gaining any money.
As far as saying that $20,000 is not much money, I would not disagree with her at all. Of course it is not much. That is why these agreements, these salaries have been negotiated in the past. That is where we are through good negotiations.
I would say that this year we will freeze everyone, but we understand that for a certain group of people it is more difficult. We decided to make an effort within the capacity we have by freezing and taking the money from within the operating budget.
We can throw more money out, pay more money, grant higher salaries, but the alternative is a greater problem for us or for any government down the road. Next year we will be paying close to $41 billion in interest on the debt. We can of course go out and borrow $1 billion and make people happy for a little while, but this is a road to disaster. Our own employees would be very quickly threatened. They cannot be immunized from the overall problem that is facing this economy and they should be part of the solution, as other Canadians are part of the solution.
She referred to people on contract. If they are hired on contract, they usually have the same treatment as the
Government Orders
indeterminate employees and other contracts where you try to get, whatever contract you give, the lowest possible cost.
As for pay equity, I would like to know where her party has been all these years. We are the government that has given $317 million for pay equity and which year after year is committing $81 million for pay equity, not the Liberal Party. This problem has been an ongoing one and at long last we are doing something about it. The member should congratulate us instead of blaming us.
The member said that I took a cut. There was a decision taken by the Quebec government. I must say that I do not remember how much money I was making. I can probably confirm that it was not $50,000 but, whatever it was, it was a substantial cut. I did not like it. It was certainly much worse than a freeze and it went throughout the system. Some of those who had lower salaries did have to take this in their stride.
As for cutting off, why cut at $27,000? Of course there has to be a cut-off point, but we are managing as you will see in our proposal a gradation so that we will try not to have people pass over others and so on.
Basically the hon. member has raised a number of points. I have tried to answer most of them. I would like to go back to the basic principle. We made this decision at budget time because we needed to be sure that the finances of this country and our management would not be derailed. There was a recession with far fewer taxes coming in and far more money going out. There was a danger that when the economy started picking up again, the governments would be there scooping all the money available. We did not want that. We sent out a clear signal that we were committed to clear inflation targets.
Do you know what, Mr. Chairman? It works. The recession is ending and the economy is picking up again. That is why we cannot allow this strike to disrupt this very fragile recovery.


Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Mr. Chairman, I find it a very unusual process we are going through today, listening to the minister. The government sounds like it is willing to negotiate. It sounds as though somehow the Public Service Alliance has forced them into this horrible situation of back-to-work legislation. It some how

September 30,1991
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tries to give us the impression that it has been reasonable.
However, the whole record of what has happened since budget day in February indicates that the government itself has been reluctant to negotiate openly, has been stonewalling and is trying to have its own definition of what the Public Service Staff Relations Board ruling was all about.
When it knows that there is an offer by the Public Service Alliance, and it has known for a number of days now, it is refusing even to look at that offer.
The minister any number of times today has said: "Mr. Bean called the strike". Somehow he says that that means we do not have to negotiate any more. The government knew at ten o'clock Friday morning that there would be a strike. Their negotiator had meetings scheduled even after the strike was called, and they met. The government had not said: "Okay, there is a strike. We stop meeting". They actually had a meeting at seven o'clock Friday evening. At that time, after the strike had been going on for over five or seven hours, depending on which part of the country you were in, the government said: "We are walking away from the table". It did that knowing that there was something coming from the workers, from their union.
It is as if this government does not want negotiations to succeed. It is as if it was afraid that it might get an offer which was reasonable. We know that any progress that has been made to date has not been made at the government initiative.
The government said: "Zero, that is what we are offering". We will have an amendment today which says that it is going to give a lump sum payment of $500 to those at the lower end of the pay scale, not to be rolled into their wages, not to count for their pension plans or any other benefit they may have in the long run, but it will give them this lump sum payment.
It did not do that out of generosity, because that has not been the government position from day one. It did in in reaction to public opinion. This government knew it was being devastated by public opinion on how it was treating its employees at the low end of the pay scale. All of a sudden it starts to move.
Why did it go back to the negotiating table two weeks ago? Not because it wanted to negotiate, but because it had a ruling by the Public Service Staff Relations Board that indicated it was violating its own laws, that it had not made every reasonable effort to negotiate a collective agreement.
Again, the government knew it was not winning the battle of public opinion. It could not defy its own laws. As the ruling of that board stated, it is an employer like other employers and should be expected to follow the laws of Canada.
When I listen to the minister saying: "Well, it's the union's fault. It wanted too much. It said our budget was political and it was going to fight this political budget", I think he should actually listen to what he is saying. It did not want to negotiate. It refused to negotiate money until it had to negotiate money. It was not going to do anything for the employees at the low end of the pay scale until, again, the public forced it into it.
Now we have a situation in which members of cabinet have been called, people in the Prime Minister's Office have been called saying: "Get back to the negotiating table". My colleague from Mission-Port Moody went over to him earlier and said: "You know you've got an offer. Why don't you go see what it is".
I hear one of the Conservative backbenchers, pardon me, he is a member of the cabinet now and that is the Prime Minister's mistake, saying: "Why didn't the union make that offer Friday morning?" The point is, we have had time.
This government did not announce to the public that it was bringing back this legislation until this morning. It had time Friday to consider this offer. It had all day Saturday to consider this offer. It had all day Sunday to consider this offer. It is unreasonable for the government not to make every reasonable effort to resolve this dispute in a peaceful manner.
Whether there was a strike Friday afternoon or not, the government has had the ability to listen to its employees, to sit down with its employees. As the heckling and hackling from across the way indicates, that is not its chosen route. It does not want to sit down and negotiate. It does not want to work in good faith.
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The minister does not have to withdraw the legislation from the House. He could be meeting right now. He could be sitting and trying to work this out, but that is not the government's way. That is not this government's way.
I find it ironic that at the same time that the Prime Minister and others from the government have called upon Canadians to try to work things out with regard to the Constitution, saying we should be listening to each other, talking with each other and not prejudging the situation, this government is not doing exactly that with its own employees. It is refusing to talk. It is refusing to consult. It has prejudged the situation because it will not even look. It will not even meet with the workers to see what the workers are now offering.
I find it ironic that this morning we have some indication that with the mediator we are having some progress in the talks between CUPW and Canada Post.
One of the things that has been suggested over the last two or three weeks is that we have a mediator to try and resolve the dispute with the Public Service Alliance. The government has refused to do that, and yet it was its own Minister of Labour who insisted that Canada Post and CUPW sit down with a mediator and try to resolve their dispute. Again, the federal government is saying: "We don't play by the rules that everybody else must play by". It does not play by the same rules that it expects everybody else to play by with regard to our Canadian Constitution. It does not play by the same rules that it expects Canada Post and the postal workers to play by. It sets its own rules. That has been its approach from day one.
I am going to give the minister a chance to respond. I want to ask him a very simple question: What harm does it do if, while we are proceeding with this legislation, he should sit down and meet with the senior people from the alliance and hear what they have to say? What harm would that do to the public of Canada?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Chairman, I do not share at all the inteqrretation put on our negotiations by the hon. member. He seems to forget that this did not start Friday; it started some months ago. We have been at the table with PSAC for 90 days. We were at it again this week. What good faith can we have in PSAC?
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Let me read you a document signed jointly by the two of us:
PSAC has agreed-and directed its members to return to work at
that time and for as long as negotiations continue.
It left the table. We did not. We put new offers which it did not want, and we feel it is useless to continue this process because it has acted in bad faith, indicating to us that it was not at all interested in pursuing these negotiations. We did not walk away from the table, it did.


Rodney Edward Murphy: The minister has refused to answer the question I asked. I cannot force him to do that in the House.
I do not think we should spend time worrying about whose fault something is right now. If you take a look at the Public Service Staff Relations Board ruling, whether the minister likes it or not, many people would certainly perceive that he and the government were found guilty of bad faith bargaining, whether the words were specific or whether it was general, saying that the government did not make every reasonable effort to negotiate a collective agreement, and those words are found in that ruling.
I again ask the minister the question that many reasonable Canadians would ask: What harm does it do him, what harm does it do the government, to sit down and meet with the leadership of the alliance-while this legislation is proceeding, if necessary-and why will he not do that for the benefit of the public of Canada?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Chairman, while we had chosen to negotiate-that is why I find my colleague's accusations strange-several other governments facing situations similar to ours chose to legislate.


Mr. Blaikie:: Answer the question!


Gilles Loiselle: That is precisely the question. The government chose negotiation. It did so in good faith. We returned to the table; we made new proposals and the union chose to leave the table, saying that our proposals were unacceptable-I suppose so, otherwise why would they have quit? Therefore, I do not see how this process could serve any purpose whatever, except to waste our time again.

September 30,1991
Government Orders SPEAKER'S RULING


Steve Eugene Paproski: Before recognizing the next speaker, the Chair, after considering the motion presented by the hon. member for Ottawa West, declares it in order.


MEASURE TO ENACT
Mr. Gilles Bernier (Beauce):: Mr. Chairman, I welcome the opportunity this afternoon to speak to Bill C-29, introduced by the President of the Treasury Board.
I have been covering my riding for many weeks. In fact, in three months, I took part in 12 open-line shows and heard a number of comments from the average working man in my riding and, and today, Mr. Speaker, we are proud to support a bill that although it may hurt one group of citizens, those citizens enjoy considerable security, unlike many others who have lost their jobs, are living on welfare and are constantly looking for work, not just in Beauce but across Quebec and Canada.
When I was elected a second time in 1988, this government was elected to make certain decisions. Canadians and Quebecers were saying: "You must reduce the deficit, you must deal with the deficit and with excessively high government spending. You must control inflation. Interest rates are too high".
Since that time, since November 21, 1988, we have taken steps that were not popular but they were necessary. The Prime Minister has said, both inside and outside the House, that our government was faced with a disastrous situation as far as the country's finances were concerned. We know this government's record, and we know the measures we took were not popular. However, we had to do this, we had to take corrective action, and I think we are on the right track.
Mr. Chairman, we are now experiencing a recession. Economic recovery may still be fragile and perhaps hardly noticeable, but at least there are encouraging signs across the country and especially in my region. I would like to point out, however, that this recession is a global phenomenon. Today, if the government does not take the necessary action, it may end up like other countries that have faced problems even worse than those we are facing today.
It is not easy to defend the government's bill. It isn't easy to tell people: You won't get a raise this year. Your wages will be frozen during the first year, and you will get 3 per cent the next year and 3 per cent the year after. It isn't easy, but in the circumstances it is the sensible thing to do. It takes a lot of courage to support this kind of decision by our government but I do so willingly, because I know it is in the best interests of the people of Beauce and the people of Quebec.
In Beauce yesterday afternoon, I saw 132 people at a meeting, where I was asked all kinds of questions about this bill. Finally, I asked how many of these 132 men and women, all adults, had job security. One had job security: he was a federal employee who worked in Quebec City for Agriculture Canada, so he wasn't even a resident of my riding. So out of 132 people, 131 did not have job security.
Mr. Chairman, today we are faced with a situation that will get completely out of hand if we do not take corrective action. When we talk about the problems facing all regions across this country-in Quebec for instance, in Central Quebec, Abitibi, the Gaspe, the Montreal area, the Lower St. Lawrence-in all these regions the economy is in trouble, and people are doing everything they can to keep existing industries alive.
In the private sector, sacrifices are made to keep businesses afloat, to avoid going bankrupt. Some employees have accepted not just a wage freeze but wage cuts to keep jobs that pay $6.50, $7.00 or $7.50 an hour, so I think our federal employees are not being treated that badly.
Mr. Chairman, let me give you some figures. I believe that federal public servants now, if I am not mistaken, have an average annual salary of $37,621-yes, that is the average-fully indexed pensions, one of the best job security plans in Canada.
Furthermore, they have a dental plan fully funded by the government and benefits like health insurance and disability insurance. I asked the people of Beauce whom I saw yesterday, "How many of you have such benefits?' ' Not one. These programs are fully paid for by the government. Sick leave with full salary, generous leave and vacation benefits, family benefits like paid maternity leave.
So, Mr. Chairman, when we talk about wall-to-wall protection, of course there is room for improvement. If we were in a better financial position, we could give
September 30, 1991

them increases of 2, 3 or 4 per cent this year, but we decided to set a zero increase for one year.
Mr. Chairman we have a job to do here, all of us, whatever party we belong to. We must consider the interest of the country, that is, the interest of those who live here. I am encouraged that many people support us. You will read the editorials this morning in the various newspapers, and I know that the English-language editorials throughout the other provinces encourage us to continue this debate and end this purely political strike.
Mr. Chairman, there are ways to solve these political strikes. Mechanisms exist, customs and traditions must be observed. It is called democracy. In two years, if these public servants are not satisfied, they will vote against the government and will express their opposition democratically, not by coming to invade Parliament with people who are not even public servants but have been brought together to disrupt the atmosphere of Parliament.
Here is what the editorialist of Le Soldi, which is quite a serious newspaper in Quebec, called our civil servants this morning: the government's spoiled children. That was not written by a Conservative MP but by an independent editorialist, who more often than not has been strongly critical of the government. "Donahue closes brand-new plant in Matane." "Massive layoffs at Dom-tar." "Number of welfare recipients and unemployed reaches new high." "Montreal's economy literally collapsing." That was how he began his editorial.
Day after day, the headlines are full of layoffs the private sector is forced to go through. But I must tell you that I do not believe that Conservatives dominate the political situation in England, Germany and France, but they still have the same recession we do.
Job security has become a priceless asset in recent years, what with two recessions. This protection is even more valuable in the public sector, sheltered from the economic difficulties related to competition and productivity, which can lead private companies to lay off workers even though they have a job security clause on paper.
Government Orders
The only ones who have not been hit by the recession in the past two years are public servants at all levels- municipal, provincial and federal. Name me some people who have been hit by the recession! Mr. Chairman, the people of Beauce listening to us today are shocked at the attitude of public servants who act in this way and do not agree to make the sacrifice imposed on other Canadians and Quebecers.
Here is another editorialist, Pierre Gravel in La Presse. As far as I know, he is not connected to the Conservative Party. "Nothing works any more. A miraculous eleven-day strike was not enough to establish a productive dialogue between Ottawa and its 150,000 public servants and nothing indicates that a new miracle will produce results in the short term."
His editorial, which is too long to read in full, Mr. Chairman, says: "The confrontation has ceased to be just a labour conflict between the government and its unionized employees and again become what it always was: an essentially political debate with the government over its budget priorities."
.
In the present situation, exacerbated by constitutional tensions, Canada cannot afford, Mr. Chairman, to have its public service tied up for a long period of time. Neither can it put up with its devastating effects on industrial or business concerns which are already in a sorry state.
Therefore, the government must have the courage, the guts, of seeing its logic through and must pass as soon as possible special legislation to suspend the right to strike of civil servants and to set their conditions of employment.
About the union members, and I will close with this, as far as the author of an editorial published in La Presse this morning is concerned: "they must understand that it is no longer on the picket lines that their political fight is to be fought but at the place where democratic societies pass judgement on governments' decisions, that is in the polling booth. Make your views known at the next election."
Now, I have a piece of advice for Mr. Daryl Bean, president of our civil servant's federation. I heard Mr. Bean say on television this week end that they were going out on strike, leaving the table because the other side as bargaining in bad faith-a fact the President of the Treasury Board denied earlier-and that there would be acts of violence. I think that his role is to prevent such acts of violence and to tell his members to demonstrate publicly but peacefully.

September 30,1991
Business of the House
Mr. Bean even declared to a Hull radio station this morning-I heard him-that he would defy the law and was ready to go to jail. I hope, Mr. Chairman, that the legislation can subdue these people who are giving Canadians, Quebecers and people from Beauce a bad image with their exaggerated demands.
Why does the government offer zero-three-and-three to civil servants while the inflation rate is at 6 per cent? We were asked that question. That fact of the matter is that this country and this government are facing a difficult financial situation. Members opposite know it full well, particularly those from the Liberal Party to whom we owe this accumulated deficit going back to nearly 25 years. The wage restraint policy affecting government employees is but one of the steps taken by this government to reduce the deficit and the inflationary pressures. We are going to succeed, no doubt about that, Mr. Chairman.
I must warn you that my colleagues are going to speak in favour of this bill. We will pass it, even if it hurts, because we are not here to win a popularity contest but to administer public funds as best we can with the tools at our disposal.
In my opinion, based on what civil servants from my area told me over the weekend and last week on the phone, in letters or in person when they came to meet me at my office, people are not ready to go on strike, they do not want to strike. Daryl Bean makes decisions alone with his senior executive for the major cities, but in our area, in the riding of Beauce, our civil servants accept their working conditions. Sure we have secretaries earning $27,000 or $28,000 a year, but in our area, some heads of families do not even earn that much. They do not get half or even one quarter of that amount in UI or welfare benefits.
So, when I see hundreds of people lined up at Employment and Immigration offices today to try and find out if there are jobs left in Quebec and in Canada, I tell myself these people must be protected.
There is one thing the opposition failed to mention earlier: four unions did accept the zero-three-three formula which was also put forward in seven of the Canadian provinces. I am referring to the civil service unions representing engineers, controllers, translators, physicists and merchant officers. All of them have accepted the policy. They submitted to it. How many of the strikers would rather be back at their desks, working and receiving their salary at the end of the week? There
are thousands of them, but they are forced today to follow the lead.
That is why, Mr. Chairman, there is a degree of urgency. I hear that the legislation could be in effect by the end of the week but that is much too late. We should be sitting night and day to put an end once and for all to this strike that should not be going on in the present political circumstances.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Jim Hawkes (Calgary West):: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman. There have been consultations and, in the best fashion of this House, we are trying to create a little better sense for members about the orders for the rest of the day.
I think you will find acceptance for the following motion.
I move:
That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, during the proceedings in Committee of the Whole on Bill C-29, an act respecting compensation in the public sector of Canada and to amend another act in relation thereto, whenever consideration of a clause, schedule or any amendment is completed, it shall forthwith be stood until later this day for further debate or amendment, or for the question to be put, and
That any amendment tabled with the Chair prior to 9 p.m. this day be deemed proposed and be put without further debate at 10 p.m. this day.
If members were to adopt this motion, that would in effect put forward until ten o'clock this evening any amendments that any members want to make on the bill. Then, we would have any standing votes needed to take place to separate on any of those issues take place at ten o'clock, therefore leaving members free during the day to attend committee meetings, of one kind or another, that normally occur on a Monday.
That would not, by the way, disturb the votes that have been deferred until 6:15 this evening with the six o'clock bell. Those votes would take place at the scheduled time of 6.15 p.m. All votes on Bill C-29 would then take place at ten o'clock this evening.
Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan) Mr. Chairman, I just want to confirm that we have had the discussions and to ensure that the people watching understand that this in no way reduces the amount of time available for debate on this very important issue. In
September 30, 1991

fact, it ensures maximum debate within the time that the House has allocated to us.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Chairman, just to clarify, I assume that this will not preclude members of Parliament from introducing their amendments, and thereafter, giving a short, succinct explanation of those amendments.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, as we move along with clauses, all of that is possible.
Under the normal rules for Committee of the Whole, if ten o'clock came because of the closure, then no further amendments could be put. What we are saying is that if that happens, we want any amendments which have been tabled prior to nine o'clock this evening to be at least considered by the House. They become votable, even though we never get to that particular clause where that amendment could then be put. We are making it a fairer system for all members because of the time constraints. There is more time for debate, and any amendment can be put. That is the thrust of what we are trying to do.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I understand the intent of the hon. member is that there will be an adjudication on each of the amendments that are put forward. What I am suggesting is that members would be given a brief opportunity just to explain very succinctly as to what the substantive point in their amendment might be at any point in time.
Since the President of the Treasury Board has, I believe, circulated copies of his amendments to members of the House, and we will be doing the same with all parties with regard to our amendments, perhaps we could have just a brief moment or two to explain what that amendment would be.
Perhaps the hon. member might want to agree with our amendments. Then he would be in a better position to persuade his colleagues of the rationale and the good sense that we are putting forward.
Business of the House


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: In terms of the spirit of this motion and the House at this time, I think it would be wise for members, as early as possible this day, to indicate to the Canadian people and the House that they do have amendments, and what the thrust of them are, so that we can have time to consider them.
I am worried. At ten o'clock we do not want to start with explanations of amendments during the formal amending process.
I think there would be a tendency in the House to relax a little our usual fairly relaxed rules about relevance and let people speak, when they get the floor, to things that are on their minds that affect any part of this bill. This is my sense of what we are willing to do today.


Mr. Rocheleau:: Mr. Speaker, you will understand my concern, since 26,000 federal public servants live on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River. If I understand correctly, we will be able to table amendments to the bill this afternoon. But to do so, we need authorization and the right to speak. Can the Speaker assure me that we will have the right to speak this afternoon?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I may point out that members do not have to rise in the House to table amendments, according to the terms of the motion regulating today's debate.
As far as recognizing the hon. member is concerned, the Chair will be alert, but there are many members who wish to speak, and of course I will try to recognize as many members as possible.
The hon. member for Hull-Aylmer.


Gilles Rocheleau: Mr. Chairman, I think you will understand that some clarification is required when tabling an amendment. I would have liked to speak this afternoon or this evening, since there are considerable implications for constituents in the Outaouais region.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The Chair will bear in mind what was said by the hon. member for Hull- Aylmer.
A motion has been moved by the Government Whip. Does the House give its consent?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
[Stage Direction]
September 30, 1991
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: It being two o'clock, when debate is resumed I will recognize the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier.

It being 2 o'clock p.m., it is my duty to rise, report progress and request leave to consider the bill again later this day.
Progress reported.


STATEMENTS PURSUANT TO S. O. 31
Mr. Doug Fee (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, Constable Irving Kurz of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was honoured this weekend by the Red Deer Chamber of Commerce when it selected him as citizen of the year.
Constable Kurz has dedicated over 1,990 hours of volunteer time, setting up a program for victims of crime. He is recognized nationally for the instigation of this program.
In addition to this he works as a volunteer in a host of other organizations which include the Alberta Mental Health Association, the Red Deer Native Friendship Society, the Alberta Family and Community Support Service Review, Red Deer and the Intercity Suicide Prevention Council, the Central Alberta Women's Emergency Shelter, the Sexual Assault Centre, the Family Violence Committee and the Volunteer Week Steering Committee.
Red Deer is very proud of its volunteers and the numbers of hours those volunteers donate each year. Even by our standards, Irving's record is outstanding. Constable Irving Kurz is an asset to his community and exemplifies the very best qualities of those who serve Canada and the uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.


SOCIAL SERVICES
Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Mr. Speaker, did you know that this government is denying millions of dollars to Canadians who qualify for certain programs?
For example, I met a gentleman of 81 years of age who should have been getting the supplement, yet he had not been. It was made retroactive for three years but he lost 13 years of compensation he should have had.
In another case, I met a widow of a veteran who raised five children, the oldest being 12 years, by herself and did not get any of the assistance to which she was entitled. Through that process she lost her home. She is trying to get some of that money back to educate one of her children and she cannot even get that.
When will the government stop this practice? When will it start being fair to Canadians who deserve the money they should get?


REFORM PARTY OF CANADA
Mr. Garth Ttirner (Halton-Peel):: Mr. Speaker, over the past weekend it was interesting to hear the leader of the Reform Party take some credit for the constitutional proposals introduced in this House by the government almost a week ago.
Included in this self-attributed victory was the issue of property rights which are now proposed to be entrenched in the Constitution. It would be very nice if Preston Manning stopped rewriting history. I wonder where the Reform Party leader was on July 1, 1960 when Prime Minister John Diefenbaker proclaimed the Canadian Bill of Rights by saying: "Every individual has the right to life, liberty, security of person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law."
The right to own property was on the Conservative agenda 31 years ago, as it is today. Canadians, in particular western Canadians, will be very familiar with the work done by the Chief, and no doubt are surprised at what Mr. Manning said.
It makes one wonder what the Chief would say if he were in this House today, probably something about the south end of a horse, looking at it from the north.


PUBLIC SERVICE
Mr. Jim Karpoff (Surrey North):: Mr. Speaker, the Canadian public does not support the federal government's autocratic and authoritative method of dealing with its public servants. The public knows that the civil
September 30, 1991

servants are dedicated, hard working and deserve respect and fair treatment.
The public wishes the government to return to the bargaining table and offer its employees a fair and equitable wage settlement. Thousands upon thousands of residents in my riding of Surrey North and British Columbia have signed petitions opposing the back to work legislation, urging the government to return to the negotiating table and enter into a fair contract.
It is time for this government to come to its senses, to show some leadership, and to settle this strike fairly and equitably.


CROSS-BORDER SHOPPING
Mr. Ken James (Sarnia-Lambton):: Mr. Speaker, no one can deny the strong correlation which has developed between the rise of cross-border shopping and the level of taxation on gasoline in Canada. This relationship is supported by a number of recent studies and surveys on cross-border shopping.
In Ontario, John Winter Associates developed a model for cross-border shopping based on consumption patterns. Close to the border there is a 15-minute convenient zone where consumers are willing to cross the border for every-day items, such as gasoline, on a weekly or biweekly basis.
A recent Ontario small business survey of seven border community regions found that one-third of those interviewed confirmed shopping in the United States in April 1991. Of this figure, 80 per cent purchased gasoline on a regular basis in the United States. Consistently gasoline was the most frequent cross-border purchase.
These results represent a very dangerous trend for Canadian consumers. It is now time for the federal government to act to rectify this situation. Retailers in our border communities look forward to such action.


GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Ms. Catherine Callbeck (Malpeque):: Mr. Speaker, across Canada this fall, certainly across Prince Edward
Island, minor hockey associations are gearing up for another season.
This year the GST will be a factor many of them would rather not have to face. Hockey associations must pay GST on expenses like ice time and hockey equipment. They are not eligible for a tax rebate.
These are non-profit organizations. An extra 7 per cent in expenses therefore must come either out of their budget, from the players or their parents. That is the bottom line.
This policy is unfair and stands in sharp contrast to the government's stated goal of recognizing the important role of non-profit organizations in Canadian society.
I call on the government to review the effects this new tax is having on non-profit organizations like minor hockey and figure skating associations and to establish a policy that treats these valuable organizations with the fairness they deserve.


HIGHWAYS
Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland-Colchester):: Mr. Speaker, one of the most pressing issues facing Nova Scotia today is the construction of a four lane highway from the border of Nova Scotia on to Truro. This highway has a high rate of accidents, all too often resulting in deaths and injuries.
Nova Scotia is unique in that it has only one main highway into the province and this highway also serves as the only road on to Newfoundland.
With the elimination of the railroad in Newfoundland and the reduction in rail service in Nova Scotia, the burden on the present system is no longer acceptable. The Hon. Kenneth Streatch, Minister of Transport for the province of Nova Scotia is in Ottawa today to negotiate with the federal government for funding to proceed with the highway.
As one who travels this over-burdened route regularly I can personally attest to the unacceptable situation first hand. I urge the federal ministers involved to come to agreement with the province so that this project can proceed quickly.


CANADA POST
Rodney Edward Murphy: Mr. Speaker, I found it interesting that earlier we had indications from the mediator appointed in the postal dispute that he is

September 30, 1991
making some progress in his talks with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and Canada Post.
I find it ironic that this government has refused the same request in connection with its own employees. It has refused to appoint a mediator in the dispute between the Public Service Alliance and Treasury Board.
I wonder how the Minister of Labour can ask, and order, Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers to sit down with a mediator when the very same government refuses to use a mediator to try and resolve the Public Service dispute.


SEARCH AND RESCUE
Mr. Peter L. McCreath (South Shore):: Mr. Speaker, much concern is being expressed in southern Nova Scotia that the search and rescue and fisheries patrol helicopter will be removed when the current contract with Cougar Helicopters expires next year. I understand that while DFO has not withdrawn its support and funding for the service, Transport Canada has decided to withdraw its support. The result is that the contract will not be renewed.
The presence of the helicopter based in Yarmouth has directly resulted in the saving of several lives, including a group of 10 persons recently. Similarly, the presence of the helicopter has had a very positive impact on reducing illegal fishing activities throughout the western Scotia-Fundy region. The helicopter has effectively done what it is supposed to do. The need continues to exist. I urge DFO and DOT to get together to work something out to ensure that this essential service continues.


FUEL ECONOMY
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, the concern of most car drivers is to get the most out of the amount of gasoline purchased. The more efficient the car, the greater the savings to the driver. In addition, less gasoline burned means less pollution.
Some car companies, not the big three, continue to prove that the car industry can produce more fuel efficient cars, however, the 1992 car models show an over-all decline in fuel efficiency. Clearly we need fuel
economy standards set and enforced by the federal government.
The environment committee urged the government to do just that, but the government's reply last week was disappointing. We have to wait until the end of 1992 when legislation may be submitted to Parliament, with no certainty that it will become law or to what model year it will apply. Years and years could go by before the consumer will benefit from improvements in fuel economy.
Why this lack of political will on the government's part?


PUBLIC SERVICE ALLIANCE
Mr. Denis Pronovost (Saint-Maurice):: Mr. Speaker, the Public Service Alliance of Canada decided without further consultation to have its members go on a general strike for a third week. Admittedly, the government is imposing a wage freeze for the first year of the contract, but the union's logic denouncing this famous 0 per cent is costing its members nearly 6 per cent of their annual salary. Each week on strike means a loss of 2 per cent of their annual salary.
Yes, Mr. Speaker, the government is offering 0 per cent, but the Alliance is imposing a 6 per cent loss on its members. This strike is going nowhere. Even schoolchildren realize that the union leaders Daryl Bean and Johane Hurens are using their members as hostages, not to improve their working conditions but for political reasons, to shake the government and support their accomplices in Parliament, the NDP members.
It is time to assume our responsibilities and to end this masquerade, which is in bad taste.


HEALTH CARE
Mr. Reginald Belair (Cochrane -Superior):: Extendi-care Hearst, a nursing home in my riding of Cochrane-Superior, will face a crisis situation in mid-October if funding is not increased. The funding for all nursing homes in Ontario is $34 per day per patient less than funding for municipal homes for the aged. This is unfair
September 30, 1991

and will undoubtedly result in a reduction of staff at Extendicare Hearst or possible closure of the facility.

The rising cost of living, of supplies and of salaries for the medical staff, as well as the extra burden imposed by the GST, weigh very heavily on the finances of this centre. In short, if this establishment does not receive additional help, it will not be able to give its 61 residents the level of care they need. This situation is likely to worsen their health and seriously affect our seniors' quality of life. I therefore urge the provincial government to rectify this situation immediately.


GUN CONTROL
Mr. Scott Thorkelson (Edmonton-Strathcona):: Mr. Speaker, Canadians want to know where the Reform Party stands on gun control. Does Preston Manning want to strengthen Bill C-17 or does he want to weaken it? Does he want to abolish it? His supporters think so.
Would the Reform Party put this issue to a national referendum? This is the usual Reform Party position: put a difficult issue to a referendum; until then be all things to all people. What kind of leadership is this? It is not leadership. It is abdication of leadership.
I challenge Preston Manning and the member for Beaver River to come out from behind the bushes. Tell Canadians in detail where they stand on Bill C-17. Come clean with Canadians on gun control.


WELFARE
Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Winsor):: Mr. Speaker, today we read that more than 600,000 people in Quebec are on welfare. At least one quarter of that number are children. We are seeing a dramatic drop in the standard of living of all Quebecers. Six years ago, Moisson Montreal supplied food banks with $1 million worth of food. This year it will be $6 million.
Oral Questions
This increase was caused by nothing else except the federal government's bad management. Plants are closing everywhere, as a result of the high interest rates maintained by John Crow, the Bank of Canada's resident miser. Pretty soon 200 workers in Port Cartier will be out of a job.
It is time the Tory government admitted its mistakes. Emergency economic assistance should be given to regions it has wrecked.


WORLD SUMMIT FOR CHILDREN
Mr. Rey Pagtakhan (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, this is the first anniversary of the World Summit for Children. The summit, chaired by our own Prime Minister, promised the children of the world that 50 million of their number would be saved from death within the next decade.
Tragically 14 million children did not live to see this anniversary. They led lives bankrupt of the care and comfort necessary for survival. They died from starvation or preventable diseases. Many were the victims of war.
Everyone, especially children, want to believe the 71 world leaders including our Prime Minister honoured their promises. Honouring promises begins at home.
I ask the government to table in this House the agenda for bettering children's lives. How will cuts to social programs help our children? Will cuts in Third World aid help world children?
We have the means to help them. I urge this government to now show the will to keep its promises.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Jean Chretien (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.
The government's handling of the Public Service strike is taking a terrible toll on the Canadian economy. The prairie pools estimate that the strike by grain inspectors and weighers is costing western farmers $36 million in

September 30, 1991
Oral Questions
lost sales a week, every week. There is great danger that the farmers might lose their markets abroad.
I would like to know from the minister: Why did not the government at least designate grain inspectors and weighers as essential workers as they have done with at least one-third of the Public Service?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. Leader of the Opposition knows, these designated employees are agreed upon by both parties and so far in this particular case indeed it has not occurred. This is something we will have to look at because I would not disagree with him that the impact is very traumatic for farmers, some of whom have been trying to get the message to us that they are in a very difficult position.
That is why I was hoping that through going back to the negotiating table with PSAC, putting new offers on the table, we would get somewhere. I think everybody agreed to that. That is why we agreed to a suspension of the legislation. Unfortunately we got our answers on the television cameras by people reneging on a very solemn agreement and going back on strike.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, at this very moment, 26 cargo vessels are anchored in Vancouver, and Canadian farmers are desperate. The minister said they were unwilling to reach an agreement with these essential employees-the weighers and inspectors. I want to ask the minister how many times they tried to get this agreement? According to our information, the government didn't try very hard, and one strongly suspects the government wanted to pit the farmers against the unions, to satisfy their right-wing agenda.


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I don't think the present situation is helped any by statements that may be clever politically but do nothing to solve the problem.
I may remind the Leader of the Official Opposition of a statement made by Mr. Daryl Bean even before we brought down our Budget, which means before the then Minister of Finance announced the government's position on wages. He said they would start getting ready for a strike the day after the Budget speech, if the federal government dared to cap public service wages. The next
day, he added that he didn't care whether the government brought in legislation or not. It didn't make the slightest difference because he had no intention of obeying the legislation.
If you think this creates a climate that is favourable to negotiations, I can't say I agree. We tried to resume negotiations in a spirit of calm, within a restricted mandate, because raising taxes or increasing the deficit was out of the question. We are trying to reduce spending, and we have done so in all areas, as many other governments have done, including liberal governments in similar circumstances. However, instead of negotiating as we did, they brought in legislation immediately. We tried to reach a settlement through the bargaining process.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I would like to tell the minister that in no case did the provincial government give bonuses up to $60,000 and $80,000 a few weeks before they made that decision.
If the minister were serious-he was just telling us that he knew since before the budget that the union was in a mood to have a confrontation-why was he negligent in not making sure that in between there was a mediator who would have been able to make some suggestions to the government and the union to resolve the difficulties? Why did he sought confrontation rather than mediation?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, the only thing we sought to confront was the deficit and the debt of this country.
The Leader of the Opposition, and I am surprised at his position, tried to make cheap political gains by talking about the bonus. It is not true. He knows it very well. I can reaffirm here in this House very solemnly that none will get an increase in salary and nobody will get any dollar in bonus. That should be put to rest.
As for taking these difficult decisions, our choice at budget time because of the recession with less money coming in and more going out was not to say: "Well, let us carry this over, borrow the money the Liberal way". We decided to tighten the belt. We did not tackle the union. We took 10 per cent of manager jobs away. We capped the transfers to the provinces. We took many, many difficult decisions including the zero, three. We wanted to show leadership. Provinces have followed and it is working.
September 30, 1991


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, what this country needs right now is a spirit of tolerance and understanding. Yet the government is pursuing an agenda of confrontation and dissension among Canadians and with its own employees, bent on increasing what little sagging popularity it has left now.
I ask the minister: When will the government start managing responsibly and stop disrupting the lives of Canadians? I appeal to him, even now at the eleventh hour: Will he appoint a mediator? Will he try to settle this fairly and justly?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I think of the two, the employer and the employees, particularly PSAC. It is PSAC which is not being responsible. When you see things as we saw Saturday and again this morning in a veterans' hospital where people are prevented from providing services to people badly in need, this is not being reasonable.
As for the mediator, this is a process which can be useful-of course, I would not deny that-providing there is a chance we can get some agreement.
We sat with PSAC for 60 days of negotiations and 30 days of conciliation. They went on strike. We said: "Well, let's go back and have a last try at it". We were at it for 35 different meetings. We put offers on the table, very important offers given the restraint we have to live under, on Thursday evening. We got the answer the next day: they were on strike. What had they agreed to? They agreed not to go back on strike until negotiations were terminated, and they were not.


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, the minister knows very well that the Public Service Staff Relations Board ruled that the government wasted months not bargaining well. I urge him, now that he has mentioned the chance of negotiations, if there is even a chance, surely we can spare Canadians the agony that they are going through and the agony that his employees are going through and appoint that mediator and take that small chance, however little it may be, instead of publishing advertisements all across the country, at great cost to the taxpayers. They are only bound and determined to tell Canadians what to believe at their own expense.
Oral Questions
I ask the minister: Will he immediately withdraw these ads, concede that there is a chance, appoint a mediator and use this money to reach a reasonable settlement?


Gilles Loiselle: Surely, Mr. Speaker, the hon. member will agree that the citizens of Canada who have been considerably disturbed by these strikes have a right to know what we have offered. Let them decided about that.
As far as, again as the hon. member said, going back to the negotiating table, I will read a joint agreement from Treasury Board and PSAC which said: "It will remove its picket lines and direct its members to return to work at that time and for as long as the negotiations continue". We did not leave the negotiating table; they did.


Hon. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, the President of the Treasury Board said today that the government's only option was to go ahead with back-to-work legislation. I believe that it is this government's last resort. It is a failure for this government. The strikers have said that they would return to work if the government named a mediator. Will the government appoint a mediator immediately and sit down at the table?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I already explained that the government would not accept a mediator because PSAC had already shown its bad will by refusing to follow a very clear negotiating process. They left the table. During months of negotiations, in the 90 days leading up to the strike and at 35 intense meetings, they never put a single proposal on the table. All of a sudden, faced with this legislation, they show that they have a particularly fertile imagination. Personally, I have lost confidence in the leaders of this union. I deeply regret it, and we will be prepared to negotiate, if you want. But when the conditions of the agreement we have are respected, the public servants will be at work.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, the government's continuous refusal to reach beyond and sit down at the table ensures that Canadians are going to lose confidence in this government. In fact, they already have lost confidence in this government.

September 30, 1991
Oral Questions
I would ask the President of the Treasury Board again, if the minister truly wants to see a resolution in the interest of those farmers for whom he has expressed concern and for whom we all have concern, if he wants to see a resolution to this for small business and those who may be hurt: Is the government's position so weak that he refuses to go in front of a mediator? Why will he not appoint a mediator now and sit down with one?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, if our intention had been to deal with the unions without negotiation it would have been very simple. We could have legislated. Many other provinces have done the same. We chose to negotiate. We have done it in an open way. We thought there was a fair chance of explaining our position.
Canadians across this country have been going through a very difficult recession. Hundreds of thousands of them have lost their jobs. We wanted our public servants to make an additional effort. I know they deserve better conditions, but paid how; by increasing taxes or increasing the deficit? This is the greatest threat to our Public Service, a mismanagement of the fiscal situation.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, all we are asking on this side of the House is that this government make an extra effort.
We know that the legislation can be passed within 48 hours, yet there is nothing preventing this government now from continuing to negotiate. Tougher agreements than this have been negotiated in 48 hours.
Will the minister use the remaining time to negotiate an agreement with the Public Service Alliance, rather than settle for the failure of back-to-work legislation?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, we are certainly committed-I made it very clear this morning- to proceed with the legislation. We will see how events unfold until then, but the legislation is going to go through.
Now that it is inevitable, I hope for the good of our own employees who are losing pay-and this is again a
sad result of these strikes-we will deal with it expeditiously.
As I have said, if we go back to our original agreement which was applauded by everyone in this House, we will then consider what to do.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Agriculture.
This afternoon in Rosetown, Saskatchewan, over 1,500 farmers are gathering to protest the lack of action by the government because they face the worst financial crisis in a generation for Canadian farmers.
Last winter, the government committed itself to providing a third line of defence financial assistance to these producers. When is the government going to provide this
assistance?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, indeed the hon. Minister of Agriculture will be attending this meeting in Rosetown. He will be putting forth very clearly the litany of programs and support that this government has provided to the agricultural industry.
The hon. member knows that a third line of defence program was announced this spring that has exceeded $500 million. He also knows that moneys will be flowing very soon under the Net Income Stabilization Account program and under GRIP. Something in the order of $1.5 billion plus will be flowing into the hands of the farmers before Christmas.
The moneys that are flowing under the programs that have been established under the safety net program, the special program designed with the farmers in the spring, will provide in excess of $2 billion over the next 12 months.
That is not chicken feed, as we say out in western Canada. Those are real, hard, cold dollars. I think it clearly demonstrates that we are in fact dealing very co-operatively with the producers of Canada, recognizing the very serious difficulties they face primarily due to the trade war.
September 30, 1991


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, last year the Farm Credit Corporation seized over 600 farms in Saskatchewan worth over $160 million.
The Deputy Prime Minister knows that most of the programs he has been talking about now do not provide the support for the losses that farmers suffered in the 1990-91 crop year. They are asking for special assistance, a third line of defence. The government has not met that commitment.
When is the Deputy Prime Minister going to stop stonewalling? When is he going to stop taking up more and more time? When he is going to stop the smoke and mirrors show that he has been putting on and provide the cash that the farmers are asking for?
These farmers are not rallying 2,000 or 3,000 at a time for the fun of it. They are rallying because they are in a desperate financial situation, and they are asking the government for help.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure whether the hon. member understands the significance of $2.5 billion, because it is $2.5 billion that will flow into the hands of the agricultural industry over the next 12 months.
Some $550 million to $600 million has indeed been provided under a special third line of defence program that was announced in the spring. There is money that is now flowing under the Net Income Stabilization Account. There is money that will be flowing under the Gross Revenue Insurance Program, GRIP, the interim payment of which will be in the hands of the producers sometimes between the middle of October and the end of October.
That is cash.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Those farmers haven't received one red cent, and you know it.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: They may not have received the cash, but that is cash that is flowing to the farmers right now. Why would the hon. member try to discard that? $2.5 million is not chicken feed. That is hard, cold cash and the farmers will appreciate it very much, I am sure.


Mr. Jerry Pickard (Essex-Kent):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Agriculture, but in his absence I will direct it to the Deputy Prime Minister.
Oral Questions
The drought committees in Essex and Kent counties, comprised of the Federation of Agriculture, the National Farmers Union, commodity groups and agricultural sales groups, have all worked very hard for two months to put together reports of the impact of the drought in Kent and Essex counties.
When the Essex County committee requested to meet with the minister to present this very comprehensive report, it was asked to meet with the minister's policy advisor.
Will he today make the proper commitment and make certain that the federal Minister of Agriculture takes the time to meet with the farm community and the individuals who are showing tens of millions of dollars lost this
year?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows, there is a process in place which evaluates these situations. It is a third line of defence committee that is composed of farmers, representatives of the provincial government and the federal government. The work of that committee is ongoing.
As a matter of fact, my understanding is that it will be meeting in Winnipeg, I believe, later this week. It is my understanding that there will be-


An hon. member:: The wrong province.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: We are dealing with this on the basis of a national program, and the third line of defence committee does not deal only with the province of Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan or Alberta. It deals with the national situation.
It is under that auspices that we will attempt to ascertain the losses and to determine what sort of cash flow will be necessary, what kind of cash flow will be in the hands of the producers, and evaluate it on that basis. That is the established process to avoid the business of ad hoc programs which that member and other members have sought to discontinue. We agree with that. We have a process in place. Let us follow it.


PLYWOOD INDUSTRY
Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Deputy Prime Minister.

September 30, 1991
Oral Questions
In recent newspaper accounts, the U.S. trade representative implicitly threatened to levy a retaliatory tariff on Canadian plywood entering the U.S. Her remarks were, and I quote:
Unfortunately, history proves that in our dealings with the
Canadians in timber issues, nothing less than a hard headed
approach by our government appears to ensure fair resolution of
disagreements.
Has the minister investigated this issue? Will he ensure that Canada will not be bullied by the Americans when it comes to plywood like we were with the softwood surtax?


Hon. Tom Hockin (Minister of State (Small Businesses and Tourism)):: Mr. Speaker, I do not think it is helpful for the hon. member to tremble every time an American speaks about trade with Canada. I want to give him some facts to help him relax and he will not be so concerned.
We have removed the surtax. This has had a very strong positive effect already on the Canadian ecpnomy. We have marshalled our arguments very well. We do not think the Americans have any possible reply which will stand up. Thank heavens we have the bi-national panel to enforce it.


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Health and Welfare.
At the meeting of the provincial, federal and territorial ministers of health held in Winnipeg, the standards of the Canada Health Act were upheld, including the prohibition of user fees.
The province of British Columbia did not send its minister of health to this important meeting and the premier of B.C. continues to advocate user fees.
My question is: Has the federal minister of health informed the premier of the province of British Columbia that user fees in that province will not be tolerated?


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, I do not want to comment on any declaration coming particularly from a premier in a province where there is an election.
I want to repeat what I said in Winnipeg. I said that of course we are opposed basically to any user fee. As long as there is none applied-and there is none to my
knowledge, no user fee in the country that is being applied now-there is no reason to to do or say that we will do something. But if anything occurs, I will take my responsibility.


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister. The reduction of Established Programs Financing to the provinces and territories continues to cripple their ability to uphold the standards of the Canada Health Act.
What assurances were given to the ministers of health at their recent meeting that the federal government will restore and maintain the federal funding for health care?
Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of National Health
and Welfare): Mr. Speaker, I am delighted that the member quoted what has been said in Winnipeg. However, he missed a part of the declaration which said that we should take into account the fiscal reality of the country. It was also in the declaration by the ministers of health.


AIRLINE INDUSTRY
Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. It has become painfully obvious that the Canadian airline industry is in a serious nosedive, thanks to the government's combined policies of deregulation, open skies, and its high interest, high dollar monetary regime.
Given that our two remaining national air carriers, Air Canada and Canadian, will continue to struggle to survive unless there are some major concessions from the federal government, what immediate plans does the government have to assist our airline industry and to protect the tens of thousands of Canadian jobs that are dependent on it?


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I presume that the hon. member knows that Air France is not a Canadian airline and that it had to lay off a large number of employees last week. I presume he also knows that the four or five American airlines that have had to do the same thing are not of Canadian origin. Therefore the aviation industry throughout the world at the present time is in great difficulty because of the gulf war last year, the tremendous increase in gas prices and the number of people who are not travelling at the present time.
September 30, 1991


Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, the minister ought not to be concerned about Air France, he should be concerned about Air Canada and Canadian and start at home.
Given that the government continues to maintain that an open skies agreement is part of the answer, can the minister explain to Canadians how Air Canada and Canadian will be assisted by allowing the large American carriers which he just quoted to come into Canada, fly across our country freely without any restrictions? Why not say no to cabotage and yes to a healthy Canadian controlled airline industry?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, I presume that the hon. member is aware that at the present time American carriers handle over 60 per cent of transborder traffic and earn $500 million more annually from this market than do Canadian carriers. About 13 million passengers move annually between the two countries, generating $2.3 billion in revenue. Scheduled air services between Canada and the U.S., including local and regional services, are provided to 84 cities.
The present open skies agreement is flawed. We have entered into open skies discussions with the Americans because we want to improve the level playing field for Canadian airlines and give them a better lease on life.


RAILWAYS
David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister of Transport. Canadian National is scheduled to sell its rail line from Truro to Sydney, Nova Scotia by the fall of 1992.
Will the Minister of Transport explain to the House why the Government of Canada is allowing Canadian National to privatize this essential transportation link in Atlantic Canada?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, CN has been given a mandate by this government to be as commercially profitable as possible. Therefore, CN is properly trying to find all the means of making sure that it will be competitive and will be able to stay in business. They are examining at the present time the possibility of making the line more profitable and therefore they are examining the possibility of privatizing that line if they can get a good deal that would provide improved service for the area. No decision has been made.
Oral Questions


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is for the same minister.
The minister knows that this railway line is the lifeline for many of our industries; coal, steel, lumber and fish, in order that they can move their products to essential Canadian markets.
I ask the minister why the sale, why the cause of uncertainty? Will he not now do the right thing and order CN to rescind this privatization order and keep this railway line intact? Will he tell them to do that?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, again I repeat that the intention of CN is to improve the performance of that line to give better service to the clientele at a better rate, making themselves more competitive and making the industry they serve more profitable and therefore be able to maintain better commercialization.
There is no cause for alarm. CN is examining the situation and the possibility of improving the service at a better price and I think they should be commended for doing that.


CHILD CARE
Dawn Black: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of health.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child requires the government to ensure the development of institutions, services and facilities for the care of children.
In recent weeks the government House leader and the minister of health have made contradictory statements on the government's willingness to fulfil its many promises to Canadians on a national child care program.
Since the Prime Minister has committed Canada to ratifying the UN convention and it is now the first anniversary of the UN summit on children, which our own Prime Minister co-chaired, will the minister tell Canadian parents and their children who have been waiting for so long when will you implement their national child care program? When, Mr. Minister?


Mr. Speaker:: I know it was probably a momentary indiscretion but I would ask hon. members when they put their questions to address the ministers through the Chair.

September 30, 1991
Oral Questions
Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of National Health
and Welfare): Mr. Speaker, I believe we are particularly sensitive to the problems of children, who are the most vulnerable part of Canadian society. I think we have done a lot but we we want to do still more, particularly at different levels.
With regard to the question on child care, I want to remind my colleague that we did in 1988 present something that was turned down particularly by the Liberals in the Senate. So far, we have presented the exemption of tax for Canadians.
We are looking now at new strategies, bearing in mind that since 1988 many problems have arisen on the issue of children, particularly in terms of child poverty and violence. Last year we put $136 million in these areas. We want to do more.
At the same time we have to take into account and put in perspective the previous comments of the President of Treasury Board. We can only do what the fiscal reality of the country allows us to do.
I hope that she will not ask me to raise taxes, Mr. Speaker.


Dawn Black: Mr. Speaker, Article 24 of the UN charter guarantees a child's right to health care services. Article 27 guarantees a child's right to an adequate standard of living. Article 28 guarantees the child a right to an education.
How can this government comply with those articles since it has deindexed the family allowance, capped the Canada Assistance Plan which funds child care services, cut back on funds for medicare and cut back on funds for post-secondary education? How can this government comply with those articles of that UN convention?


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I repeat what I said before. We all agree in this House that all that can be done for children should be done. But I think a lot of members of Parliament agree that it has to be done in light of the country's capacity to pay. We have to provide the resources.
I am surprised that my colleague and her party does not understand that we can spend money forever, as did
the former government, but there is a time when we have to pay for the services we give. We need the resources. We still believe, as do a lot of Canadians, that the better we manage the fiscal reality and the resources, the better service we will give to Canadians. It cannot be sorted out in the way that will not consider both, Mr. Speaker.


RAIL SAFETY
William D. (Bill) Casey: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport and it concerns railway safety.
The CN rail crossing at Stewiacke, Nova Scotia is a complex intersection of five roads intersected by a rail line. Over many years there have been a total of 11 accidents resulting in deaths and injuries. The residents of the area have been demanding barrier gates for years and even decades.
I wonder if the minister could give us an update. Is there any progress towards eliminating this dangerous situation?


Jean Corbeil: I am glad the hon. member has raised this point. Like the hon. member, I am also very concerned about railway safety. This particular item has been raised with my department and a decision is being made. I think the hon. member will receive a very favourable answer very shortly.


RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Deputy Prime Minister in the absence of his colleague, the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology.
I am sure the minister is aware that the National Research Council has been looking at a proposal to establish the Institute for Instrumental Diagnostics in the city of Winnipeg, a very important research development for the entire country.
The governing council of NRC met last week to make a decision which was contingent upon the federal government providing $7 million of special financing to take care of the capital cost.
September 30, 1991

I would like to ask the Deputy Prime Minister in that capacity or as Minister of Finance if the federal government has now committed its support to that new research centre, and can he tell us if the decision has been a favourable one so we can go ahead and start this important work in the city of Winnipeg?


Thomas Hockin: Mr. Speaker, allow me to answer on behalf of the Minister for Science.
In no way are we pulling back from Winnipeg. I am happy to tell the hon. member that NRC's presence will remain very strong there. It is a question though of whether we will have a new institute or not. The whole question of expanding NRC programs and putting them into a new institute is what they are currently reviewing. What they are reviewing is an expansion and not a withdrawal. Their commitment to stay in Winnipeg for its present services is, of course, very firm.


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I never thought the question of withdrawal of services was the issue. What I was asking about was this: Is this federal government prepared to match the offer of the National Research Council to establish a special Institute for Instrumental Diagnostics, which is a field of substantial growth around the world, which Canada can take a world-class leadership role in, for the sum of $7 million contribution? Compared to other contributions that have been made, I would say that is a good bargain.
I want to know this, perhaps from the Minister of Finance: Has he committed through his own department to make that commitment so that the NRC can go ahead and expand and develop that new research centre in the city of Winnipeg?


Thomas Hockin: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend knows that the NRC is resolved to continue the strength of its program in Winnipeg. There is no doubt about that. However, in terms of creating a new institute, it has not made a decision to do so.


GREAT WHALE PROJECT
Mr. Paul Martin (LaSalle-Emard):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment. Three weeks ago, on the Great Whale issue, the court ordered the government to meet its responsibilities arising from the James Bay Agreement. My question is, Will the Minister finally get with it? Will he comply with the federal court's judgement?
Oral Questions


Hon. Jean J. Charest (Minister of the Environment):: It
is done, Mr. Speaker.


Paul Edgar Philippe Martin: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Minister of the Environment. When? You have had three weeks to make this announcement and you have been forced into it. The reason that this-


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member must address the question to the Chair. The hon. minister may want to answer it.


Paul Edgar Philippe Martin: Mr. Speaker, Great Whale is only one project. There are two others, one in Manitoba and one in Ontario. It was a year ago that we asked this government to appoint a panel to study the cumulative effects of the three projects.
It has been a year and the government has not acted. It is still sitting on its duff. When is it going to act?


Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, first, in the case of Great Whale, the Federal Court ruling was quite clear in ordering the federal administrator to act immediately in enforcing the ruling. As I previously answered, that has been done.
The decision on whether to appeal or not has not yet been made. We are examining the ruling. The Department of Justice is examining the ruling and we will be informing the member accordingly.
Now on the issue of doing an assessment on the cumulative impact of different projects on James Bay and on Hudson Bay, we have had discussions with the provinces and we will continue to have discussions. I am happy to inform the member that we have not abandoned the idea of undertaking such a project. Quite the contrary, we expect to be able to make an announcement as soon as we have completed our discussions.


THE ECONOMY
Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance.
The government has claimed that the recession is finished, but the growth of output figures which were released today show that recovery in fact is very slow; only .2 per cent in July, the same slow rate which existed in June.
Will the government not try to speed this recovery up to help people across this country, to get people back to work, to reduce interest rates significantly and to see to it that the value of the Canadian dollar is brought down to help our exports so that people are helped across this country?

September 30,1991
Oral Questions


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, what is encouraging is that this is the fourth consecutive month in which there has been an increase in the Gross Domestic Product and I think that is a clear indication that we are on the road to recovery.
What is also very encouraging is that the output of the goods producing industries expanded by .6 per cent, led by a strong growth in the manufacturing sector. The manufacturing sector is showing strength, expanding in July for the fourth consecutive month. Since its trough in March, we have experienced an increase in the manufacturing sector of 5.1 per cent.
We have never said that this was going to be a robust turn around. We said that we would have a recession that would be much less severe than the one in 1981-82 and that has been the case. The peak to trough decline in 1981-82 was over 5.5 percentage points. In this particular case, it is about 2.5 per cent to 2.8 per cent. So the decline was not as severe and it was not as long. We have had a good second quarter and we anticipate, for the third and fourth quarters, we will have moderate recovery and that is what the statistics are proving. We should be very satisfied with that.


Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, if this government is satisfied with the rate of growth, which will not decrease unemployment in this country, then this government should quit today.
Is the minister prepared to accept a .2 per cent rate of growth per month, which is not one month now but two months in a row of slow growth? Is he prepared to accept that when it means that unemployment in this country will stay over 10 per cent until well into next year?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, of course I am not prepared to accept that and I certainly have not.
What I am saying is that we are on the road to sustainable recovery and durable recovery which will produce growth at a rate of about 3.5 per cent. Incidentally this seems to be one of the best anticipated growth
rates of all industrialized countries in the world, certainly of the OECD. That I think is good news.
He asks about interest rates. Interest rates have come down by more than 5.5 percentage points. We saw a 9 basis point decrease last week. We expect, with the inflationary pressures receding, that interest rates can come down further still. If that is the case then we will be on the road to sustainable recovery with price stability, and that is the goal and the objective of this government. It will provide jobs. It will provide sustainable growth and will preserve the integrity-


SEARCH AND RESCUE
Peter L. McCreath: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.
I have received a number of calls from people in southern Nova Scotia who are concerned about the speculation that the search and rescue helicopter and fisheries patrol helicopter contract will not be renewed when it runs out.
I wonder if the minister could assure fishermen and others in southern Nova Scotia that this very important service will continue to be there and operating out of southern Nova Scotia.


Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency):: Mr. Speaker, the helicopter contract in question was entered into several years ago. The period of the contract does not expire until March 1992.
There was certainly no decision made that once the contract expires there will be no further helicopter service there. The contract and the experience are now being evaluated by the department, and a decision will be made before next March as to whether this service will continue. It is a $2.35 million annual contract providing about 700 hours of fishery surveillance and it is available for search and rescue work.
I understand the feelings of the hon. member with respect to this matter. Certainly his views will be given every consideration when the time comes for a decision to be made with respect to this matter.
September 30, 1991


MARKETING BOARDS
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott -Russell):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance.
Last week the minister tabled his economic union document in the House in which he says about marketing boards, and I quote: "The balance of risk is now clearly shifting against the desirability of many of our internal barriers and our ability to sustain them". He refers to marketing boards as being some of these so-called barriers.
I want to know from the Minister of Finance and former Minister of Agriculture: Is he still in favour of marketing boards or has he now changed his mind?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure what that has to do with it.
The hon. member raises the point in the document. I might draw to his attention at page 55 that any modifications to the common market clause would also take into consideration the fact that equalization or regional development programs would not be affected, or any programs that were declared by Parliament to be in the national interest. If it is so deemed to be declared in the national interest that marketing boards should be categorized as such then it will certainly be exempt.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Are you in favour or not? Yes or no?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: If the hon. the Leader of the Opposition would wait and be patient for my answer, these are proposals that are advanced for the purposes of debate and discussion. The hon. Leader of the Opposition said with respect to the internal market that the programs did not go far enough.
It would be interesting to hear what he has to say about it.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY
Mr. Speaker:: I draw the attention of hon. members to the presence in the gallery of a delegation from the Bundesrat led by Mrs. Eva Ruehmkorf, Minister for Federal Affairs in the Land of Schleswig-Holstein.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.
Tributes


Mr. Speaker:: I also draw the attention of hon. members to the presence in the gallery of the hon. Ken Streatch, Minister of Transportation and Communications for the Province of Nova Scotia.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


TRIBUTES TO THE LATE JEAN-THOMAS RICHARD
Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, with respect and affection, I wish to point out today the death of an outstanding fellow citizen, Jean-Thomas Richard, my predecessor in this House for 27 years. Bom in Sandy Hill, where he always lived, Jean-Thomas Richard married Margaret Maloney and was the father of John, Michael, Maria, Suzanne, Pierre, Tom and Adele.
A lawyer by profession, he was a member of this House from 1945 to 1972. The riding was called Ottawa East and in 1972, Mr. Speaker, I had the honour to succeed him.
A hard-working man of the people, always available to his constituents-it would be hard not to admire and respect him. I know that he had many friends in this House. Those who had the privilege to really know him as more than the energetic, ever-present member of Parliament that he was, will attest to his kindness, friendliness, honesty and generosity of mind and spirit. He was present. He was also at the service of his fellow citizens.
Few challenges would have deterred Jean-Thomas Richard in his 84 years. One might even have thought that he would have defied death itself. His name Thomas suited him. He questioned a lot. He doubted everything.
I join all citizens of Ottawa-Vanier, Mr. Speaker, in extending to the Richard family our sincerest condolences.

Twenty-seven years in the service of his constituents in this House stands by itself as an achievement of note. J.T., as we called him and as he was called affectionately by his friends, sat in your chair, Mr. Speaker, on many occasions on Friday afternoons. He always ended his Friday duties by bidding his fellow parliamentarians "a

September 30,1991
Tributes
good safe trip home and a pleasant weekend with your families and your constituents".
Speaking for all those who loved him, speaking for all citizens of my riding of Ottawa-Vanier, we say to his family, his numerous friends, Jean-Thomas Richard will be sadly missed. He was a great Canadian.


Right Hon. Joe Clark (President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada and Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Richard had left this House by the time I was elected, but I had the privilege to know him while he was a member of Parliament and understood and respected the very long and dedicated service that he gave to this country.
On behalf of the government and my party, and personally, I want to associate ourselves with the words of regret just expressed by my colleague for Ottawa- Vanier.
The Richard family has maintained a very active interest in public affairs and public life in the country. Even after his departure from this House of Commons, Jean Richard maintained a very lively interest in the affairs of Parliament and the affairs of the economy and most particularly in the integrity of this country.
My wife's family lived at the time in parts of what was then his constituency. They did not at that time agree on political questions, but Jean Richard was very much admired and respected by all of the people he served for so long in this House of Commons.

On behalf of the government, myself and the Progressive Conservative Party, I wish to lend our support to what the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier said and offer the family of Jean-Thomas Richard our sincerest condolences.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my colleagues in the New Democratic Party caucus, I would like to associate us and my colleagues with the remarks made by the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier about a former member of Parliament from his constituency, Mr. Richard, and say that we join with all members of the House in expressing to his family our sympathies and condolences and join with those members of Parliament here who remember this particular member of Parliament. I am not one of them.
It is unfortunate that it is only on occasions like this of sadness and bereavement when we get to reflect and sometimes even come to know about those who have served before us in this place.
I hope that the long and distinguished record the hon. member had will be a comfort to his family as it was a service to Canada.


Mr. Len Hopkins (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke):: Mr. Speaker, it is with very serious and sincere intent that I rise today to say a few words about the late Jean T. Richard. He had been in this House for several years before I arrived here as a new member. I must say that having come here as a new member, Jean T. Richard was a great adviser and he had put in many years as a very successful practising politician.
He was one of those members who is what we consider today a good old time politician who had lots of time for his constituents. He would take the odd day and would take a travelling tour of eastern Ontario and visit several other ridings.
Those of us in this House know how important it is that MPs from whatever party go out and visit some of the ridings that have not seen a member for some time and to visit other members in the region. It creates a great rapport. I think we would be well served today if some of us took on some of those practices of these excellent old time practising politicians. They certainly knew their work and they did their homework.
He was very proud to be a member of Parliament in this House. He served Ottawa-Vanier well, as has the present member, who has spoken so well about Jean Richard this afternoon.
I valued Jean Richard as a great friend and a great adviser. He was a hard worker in this House. It is rather ironic today that we should be paying this tribute to him today when we have this Public Service legislation before the House. Jean T. Richard was always up on his feet when a Public Service bill of any type was before this House of Commons. He represented his constituents extremely well.
I want to say that it is very, very important that we recognize long time serving members such as Jean T. Richard at this time. It brings home to all of us the
September 30, 1991

realistic feeling that he is one who has put a great deal into this House. He served eastern Ontario well. He served the Public Service community well and he had a great feeling for Canada. He was a bilingual person who spoke anywhere he was asked to go in the country.
I want to extend my personal feelings to the members of his family today. He was a husband, father and grandfather for whom we can all have a great deal of respect and admiration.


PRIVILEGE
Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of privilege and I ask your guidance in terms of how we can best deal with this issue respecting an ad that appeared in The Ottawa Citizen today, September 30, 1991, concerning the government's dispute with the Public Service Alliance of Canada.
I understand from the minister's comments earlier this morning that this ad also appeared in other papers across the country.
I have provided you with a copy of this advertisement. The section of it that causes me concern is this. The advertisement begins with a description of the offer made by the Government of Canada to the Public Service Alliance of Canada and it refers to:
A wage offer consistent with the Government's budgetary
guidelines -
It goes on to describe those guidelines as applying to:
- Public Service employees, Ministers, Members of Parliament and Senators, as well as their staffs, the Canadian Forces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; 0 per cent in the first year, and 3 per cent in the second year.
My concern about this ad arises from the fact that it describes the wage offer to the alliance as a wage offer consistent with the government's budgetary guidelines. It then goes on to say: "Guidelines which apply to all the following," as I have just read.
In fact, the government's budgetary guidelines, to the best of my knowledge, did not apply to the Canadian Forces and to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and
Privilege
may not, except by inference, have applied to the staff of members of Parliament and senators.
It is my view that in stating that the budgetary guidelines do apply to those two groups, in particular the forces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the government, in this advertisement, is anticipating passage of legislation which is still before this House, still subject to amendment, and still subject to whatever disposition this House may make of it and whatever disposition the other place may make of it.
To state that these guidelines, as offered to the Public Service Alliance, do apply, I believe is not consistent with actions that have been taken by the government in Parliament, and indeed pre-empts decisions that this House may take in its debate today and tomorrow.
I would ask, Mr. Speaker, that you have a careful look at this advertisement, in particular that section of it, and determine whether there is a question of privilege, in which case the proper motion would be moved.
I know, Mr. Speaker, you have dealt with similar situations in terms of public advertising, anticipating decisions of Parliament in this and in the previous Parliament. I wonder if you could advise as to whether there is a question of contempt involved in this advertisement and what the appropriate action would be if you find so.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, on the same question of privilege, I would urge you to take this matter very seriously as you have in the past when it has been raised in other forms, that the judgment of the House of Commons not be anticipated by the government, either by the kind of ad which has been referred to by the hon. member, or in advertising, or in any other way.
To do so is, in my judgment, a breach of the privilege of the House of Commons. It does not enable us to do our job as we are called upon to do. That is to make decisions when government is, in the course of advertising or in the course of placing the kind of ads referred to by the hon. member, basically predicting what the outcome will be and anticipating what the outcome will be and declaring the process of this House to be irrelevant.
It is basically saying that it will have its way and it is so confident of having its way that it can take out this kind of ad. I think that shows a contempt, not only for this

September 30, 1991
Privilege
House, but for the entire democratic process. I hope that you would take these things into account when you render a judgment on whether or not this is indeed a question of privilege.


Mr. Speaker:: Are there any further members rising on this matter?


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, I was having a conversation. I wonder if I could just get the member to repeat the gist of what he was saying.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, initially I thought that the reluctance of any government members to rise had to do with the fact that what they are now being criticized for is the kind of thing they so righteously and self-righteously criticized when they were in opposition.
The fact of the matter is that it initially was not my question of privilege. I was saying that to take out the ad that was raised in the initial question of privilege by the hon. member for Ottawa West is to anticipate the outcome of the debate in the House of Commons. This declares the process irrelevant, the taking out of an ad on the basis of what the government thinks will happen in the course of the debate. I find that to be a violation of the privilege of the House of Commons.
We cannot do our job, as real decision makers, if the government, by taking out ads, is acting as if the decision has already been taken.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, I am at a considerable disadvantage. I wonder if you might just give us a few minutes to get a copy of the ad and see what the member is talking about.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Ottawa West has risen in the House on a question of privilege and has brought to the attention of the Chair an ad which was placed in one or more newspapers which reads:
To all Canadians: Here's What The Public Service Alliance of
Canada Walked Away From
It goes on to describe the consequence of the attempted negotiations which were taking place.
The hon. member for Ottawa West has referred to, specifically, the opening paragraph, which reads:
A wage offer consistent with the Government's budgetary guidelines
which apply to Public Service employees, Ministers, Members of
Parliament and Senators, as well as their staffs, the Canadian Forces
and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police: 0 per cent in the first year,
and 3 per cent in the second year.
Whether this is anticipating legislation may depend on how one wants to look at the wording. But clearly, the hon. member's intervention is incorrect because her argument is that the Canadian Forces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and maybe staffs of members of Parliament and the senators, were not included in the government's budgetary guidelines.
Now that is the issue that is in front of us. I am prepared to step this down for a few minutes and I will listen to the hon. member for Calgary West, say in 10 minutes or as soon as possible, unless he wishes to argue it now.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, as you were talking, somebody did bring me a copy of the ad. I think I am prepared, at least in a preliminary way, to deal with it.
The ad states, I think, rather clearly that the President of the Public Service Alliance has called for a resumption of strike action rather than respond positively to the following offer made by the Government of Canada. So it is an offer made by the Government of Canada.
It is my understanding that all parts of that offer exist within the possibility of present control. For instance, the part dealing with members of Parliament and senators is dealt with by the Parliament of Canada Act. As for the Canadian Forces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, there are acts that allow the government certain prerogatives when it comes to these issues.
We may, indeed, be superseding those acts with a piece of legislation that is before us, but at the moment, there is nothing in the offer that was not possible for the government to bring into being. That is my preliminary understanding. I will be glad to check that one more time, but I do not think there is anything inconsistent within the parameters of government responsibility today. The government is responsible for these issues and this indeed was an offer.


SPEAKER'S RULING
Mr. Speaker:: I am going to deal with the matter now because of what is before the House and I think it is better to deal with it rather than delay.
First of all, the hon. member for Ottawa West is raising a matter which has been before the House before and especially in a ruling which I had to give many months ago with respect to certain ads that were published by the Government of Canada relating to the
September 30, 1991

goods and services tax and which was done in quite explicit language and, in my opinion, quite improperly. They were printed in such a way that anybody reading it would assume or could easily assume that the legislation had, in fact, been passed by the House of Commons and would come into effect on a certain date which was stated in the ads. After listening carefully to certain remarks I decided then that the ad was not appropriate because it was doing exactly what ought not to be done, and that was making a very clear indication to anybody reading it that the legislation had in fact been passed.
I decided that it stopped just short of a contempt for reasons which I explained in that judgment. Nonetheless the matter gave the Chair a great deal of concern and, as has been said on a number of occasions since by both sides of the House, it is a matter that we should watch very carefully.
That is of course the point that the hon. member for Ottawa West and the hon. member for Winnipeg Trans-cona are making, that this is much the same.
I want to thank the hon. member for Ottawa West for bringing the matter to my attention and, as I say, these matters are not always easy to be absolutely sure of at first glance, but a principle and a serious one is of course involved.
I have had a chance to consider the ad very carefully. First of all the ad is, as the hon. member for Calgary West said, indicating an offer made by the government to the Public Service staff, the Public Service Alliance, during the discussions which have been taking place over a number of days.
The paragraph to which the hon. member for Ottawa West takes exception reads:
A wage offer consistent with the Government's budgetary guidelines which apply to Public Service employees, Ministers, Members of Parliament and Senators, as well as their staffs, the Canadian Forces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police: 0 per cent in the first year, and 3 per cent in the second year.
It may well be depending on how one wants to analyse that sentence-and I do not intend to be a grammar teacher here-that the hon. member for Ottawa West is
Privilege
pretty close to the mark when she says that this might give somebody the idea that the Canadian Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, members of Parliament and senators' staffs were included in the government's budgetary guidelines. I would say that is an argument which certainly is a credible one.
One might also argue on the other side that it depends on how you read it. But I certainly have to say in my view that the hon. member for Ottawa West has put forward a credible argument and I think that, depending on how much one knows about the background, the sentence in itself does create some confusion.
But I have looked at the ad carefully and where it falls away from being exactly the same or even nearly the same as the ad on the GST is that this is not talking about in my view legislation which "has been passed or is in place". It is talking about an offer made under circumstances in which I think it would be reasonable to assume the government would then have to do whatever was imperative to place that offer into effect in the event that the offer was accepted. I find that it stops short of the contempt that the hon. member for Ottawa West is asking me to find.
However, I again say that there is some confusion even in my mind, and I of course am not in a position to argue the facts on it, about that original paragraph. I do not think it is a confusion which leads to a contempt, although it certainly may lead to a question of debate in the House.
I want to thank the hon. member for Ottawa West for bringing it to my attention. I thank the hon. member for Winnipeg Transcona for intervening, and I thank the hon. member for Calgary West.
I would ask hon. members, whenever possible, when dealing with those who write these ads to take care that what is in the ads is accurate and to take very great care that what is in the ads does not anticipate beforehand something that this House may or may not do.

Routine Proceedings



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS

[Stage Direction]
September 30, 1991

Mr. Michel Champagne (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Forestry):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the Government's response to 14 petitions. [Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


Mr. Terry Clifford (London-Middlesex):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to present to the House in both official languages the first and second reports of the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association.
The first report concerns the 19th annual meeting of the delegations of the Canadian and European Parliaments. I want to ask all my colleagues in the House to take special interest in this report as it deals with the forestry and the great whale projects. The Europeans have a great deal of interest in these projects.
We recall what they did to the fur industry and so I would urge support in these and being aware of what the European Parliaments are studying about Canada.
The second report deals with the bilateral exchange in Turkey and the U.S.S.R.
This took place in June 1991. I would like to say, particularly to the Minister of Agriculture, who is in Brussels, that there is a great deal of interest in Turkey for Canada.
The GAP project is one in which Canada could become very much involved as Tbrkey expands its agricultural capabilities and I would hope that we would become involved.
The U.S.S.R. is open to Canadians. It would like to have a delegation of Canadian parliamentarians there in the very near future.



CRIMINAL CODE


Hon. Ralph Ferguson (Lambton-Middlesex) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-302, an act to amend the Criminal Code (offences against the foetus.)
He said: Mr. Speaker, as a member of Parliament, as a father and a grandfather, I believe very strongly in the sanctity of human life.
It is my commitment to the constituents in my riding to work to protect the rights of the unborn. That is the purpose of this bill. I am honoured to present it in this House today.


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

Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, it is my duty to submit a petition, pursuant to the Standing Orders, which calls upon the government to give up or reject wage control and to reaffirm its support for the free exercise of all Canadian workers right to collective bargaining.
Mr. Speaker, the present government is prepared to deprive Canadian workers of their right to collective bargaining, to threaten them with lay-offs, especially by contracting out to interfere with the conciliation and arbitration processes, and to legislate them back to work.
These petitioners are asking that action be taken without delay to correct this situation.


Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, I have here before me, in accordance with the rules and regulations governing such, three petitions to present to the House.
September 30, 1991

Two address the question of the work stoppage, the strike today. These petitioners deplore the fact that the government has botched up this whole process. They note that the workers want to get back to work so as not to disrupt what is happening in Canada today. This is a good point, they indicate, to appoint a mediator so that we can get them back to work and get the country moving again.


Ron J. Duhamel: My second petition deals with the 3 per cent administrative tax which some people consider perhaps even illegal, certainly immoral. That is the one, Mr. Speaker, you will recall, where you have to pay up front for the student loan that you need in order to continue your post-secondary education studies.
The petitioners are particularly angry when the government talks about competitiveness and all of those buzzwords and when it taxes students in spite of the fact that they have already been penalized with the goods and services tax on books.


Mr. Jim Jordan (Leeds -Grenville):: Mr. Speaker, I have a duly approved petition here from residents of the community of Westport in my riding. I believe that every resident in R.R. 2 Westport has signed this petition.
What they are petitioning against is the manner in which Canada Post awards rural route contracts these days.
We had a loyal, faithful rural route carrier who had been in business there for 25 years. He missed one day in 25 years and found that his contract was taken away from him on the basis of a few dollars. This is inherently the problem when a government would have a position where it would base it strictly on money.
The petitioners are asking that the minister in charge and Canada Post re-examine the basis on which rural route contracts are awarded so that contracts will not be awarded solely on the basis of money.


Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to present a petition today signed by numerous residents of various communities across Ontario and Quebec.
These residents are opposed to the federal back-to-work legislation. They reject the imposition of wage
Routine Proceedings
controls. They call on the government and this Parliament to reaffirm its support for the free collective bargaining process in Canada and call upon the government to withdraw this bill and proceed to the negotiating table where these matters should be settled.


Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I too have a petition signed by a number of Canadians. These citizens are asking this House to demand that the government reject this bill which purports to force government employees back to work.
These petitioners call upon Parliament to reject wage control and to reaffirm its support for the free exercise of all Canadian workers' right to collective bargaining.


Ralph Ferguson: Mr. Speaker, I rise today, pursuant to Standing Order 36, to present this petition to the House. It asks that the government take immediate steps to ban methylcyclo-pentadienyl manganese tricarbonal from all automotive fuels in Canada.
I was shocked when I read in the June issue of the Canadian Medical Journal that a substantial percentage of infants in the city of Montreal are iron deficient. We are aware that medical researchers in laboratory tests using animals find that when there are iron deficiencies the uptake of manganese is increased. This would indicate these infants in Montreal and across Canada, whose blood brain barriers and immune systems are not yet in place, may be victims of this insidious neurotoxic substance that will accumulate in their systems over a period of time.
In the name of the children of Canada, I ask this government to ban methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonal now.


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present further petitions asking Parliament to acknowledge that it is the federal government's high interest rate-high dollar policy and 33 new taxes or tax increases since 1984 that are the source of inflationary pressure, not wage demands; that the wage compensation package proposed by the government has no

September 30,1991
Government Orders
flexibility and treats everyone the same whether a clerk, deputy minister or president of a Crown corporation.
We have learned that well in this past week.
The petitioners ask Parliament to reject the imposition of wage controls and reaffirm support for free collective bargaining for Canadian workers.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition here signed by several hundred petitioners, Canadian citizens from Sault Ste. Marie, the district of Algoma, North Bay and a number of other communities throughout Ontario, in which they deplore the imposition of 33 new taxes since September 1984 and state that these increased taxes have deepened the recession and caused inflation.
They call upon the government not to impose wage controls and to reconfirm its support for free collective bargaining for Canadian workers.


Mr. John Manley (Ottawa South):: Mr. Speaker, I also have a large number of petitions to present today pursuant to Standing Order 36 from Canadians from many parts of the country: New Brunswick, the Northwest Territories, Yukon, the national capital region and from northern Ontario, all protesting the government's action in raising taxes 33 times since 1984 and proposing to terminate the collective bargaining rights of public servants across Canada.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour and the privilege to table a petition signed by a large number of Canadians opposed to the way the Conservative Government is mistreating its public servants by refusing to negotiate with them.
The petitioners now avail themselves of their ancient and undoubted right to ask the House of Commons to reject the wage freeze requested by the Conservative Government.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Michel Champagne: Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all questions be allowed to stand.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to the order passed on Tuesday, September 17, 1991, and Standing Order 100, I do now leave the Chair for the House to go into the Committee of the Whole.
The House in Committee of the Whole under the chairmanship of Mr. DeBlois, resumed study of Bill C-29, an Act respecting compensation in the public sector of Canada and to amend another Act in relation thereto.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Order, please. Upon recess, the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier had the floor.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Chairman, the amendment in front of us is quite simple and will allow members of the government and the President of the Treasury Board to tell us what their offer is made of.
In fact, Mr. Chairman, the amendment proposed by my colleague for Ottawa West suggest to apply the wage freeze to the following definitions, and I quote clause 2, page 2: "-does not include-and this would be eliminated from the bill-any allowance, bonus, differential, premium or other emolument or benefits paid in respect of circumstances specified by order of the Treasury Board."
The object of this amendment is specifically to give the President of the Treasury Board the opportunity of being
September 30, 1991

clear about the position of the government regarding bonuses, premiums and other benefits.
You will recall that last week, there was quite an outcry when we learned that big shots, people already so well paid that they needed a yearly bonus, were about to receive or had already received bonuses which in the case of Mr. Lawless of CN Rail amounted to $84,000, when his annual salary is a mere $365,000. Not bad! The bonus for Don Lander would be about $62,000 for an annual salary of $250,000. Nothing to complain about! And the list goes on. Atomic Energy of Canada: $50,000 on a $208,000 salary.
The general public and the Public Service employees feel somewhat disgusted when they see how generous this government, which refused to recognize the needs of its own employees, could be, how it could so freely give away the taxpayers' money to the big shots at Crown corporations.
Mr. Chairman, that is the first thing you have to acknowledge. Were it not for this government's lack of integrity, as we perceive it back home, we could still be at the negotiating table today. The civil servants and the unions were shocked, Mr. Chairman, and I don't blame them. It is insulting to be told that legal, logical collective bargaining is out of the question, while the government tries some new tricks, as was the case with the chairman of Canadian National and the chairman of Canada Post.
I think Bill C-29 which is now before the House, Mr. Chairman, puts an end to 25 years of collective bargaining between civil servants and the federal government. Things will never be the same. The Conservative government has now created such an awful mess that I do not see how we can solve this, unless we go back to the table and negotiate in good faith and, after this unfortunate experience, go back and rewrite, review, and revise all the legislation relating to the civil service, such as the Public Service Employment Act, the Public Service Staff Relations Act in particular, and the Financial Administration Act.

Parliament passed the Public Service Staff Relations Act in 1967. It established the Public Service Staff Relations Board. Parliament set the bargaining process in motion with a deliberate preference for the operational principle of the adversarial system. It was a choice that was made by this House in 1967.
Government Orders
Certain areas are restricted from collective bargaining and others by arbitration. Certain members of personnel were excluded from union membership. Others were designated as those who performed services essential to the public health and safety and could not join their fellow unionists in the event of a strike.
Public Service unions were given two possible routes to resolve disputes. One is binding arbitration. The other is the appointment of a conciliator who assists in nonbinding recommendations for settlement. If an impasse exists and no resolution is possible, Public Service employees have a right to withdraw their work, that is they have a right to strike.
In my opinion, public servants have a good case to make when they complain that collective bargaining granted to them in 1967 is too restrictive.
Those of us who have been in this House for some years know and recall how this Progressive Conservative Government in 1984 said: "We are going to review the Public Service Staff Relations Act. We are going to try and give you more in terms of flexibility".
I want to remind the House that under the Public Service Staff Relations Act, such things as bargaining, promotions, demotions, staffing levels, or what we call classification positions, lay-offs and pensions are nonnegotiable. You cannot bargain on those things. Those are things that can be bargained under the Canada Labour Code, but they cannot be bargained under the Public Service Staff Relations Act.
Federal public sector employees are usually dead last when compared to the private sector, when compared to municipal or provincial employees' salary packages. The last time I looked at it, it was clear to me that this so-called fat cat image that was promoted by some right-wing politicians in Canada was making people believe that Ottawa public servants and 75 per cent of the others who work outside of Ottawa-the National Capital has about 25 per cent of the total public servants of Canada- were fat cats, that they were over-paid and under-worked.
In those days the government did not help the image. I can recall and I am sure everyone in this House can what Mr. Mulroney was saying about public servants in 1983.1 will not repeat it because I thought in those days that it

September 30, 1991
Government Orders
was wrong to do this kind of goading of public servants in trying to score with the right wingers of Canada.
This government has definitely, definitely goaded, provoked public servants into a situation which, in my view, is not their fault by the government's sole responsibility. The Public Service Staff Relations Board said the government did not negotiate in good faith.


Mr. O'Kurley:: They did not say that.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Read the judgement. Read the decision. I can quote it for you. Page 10 of that decision: "This board, in general, shares the view expressed in the cases cited above. The obligation provided under the Public Service Staff Relations Act to bargain in good faith and make every reasonable effort to conclude a collective agreement is not substantively different for this employer than it is for any other employer in any other jurisdiction-" and so on.
Whether you like it or not, the Public Service Staff Relations Board said clearly, at least to my ears, in English and in French that this government did not bargain in good faith.
I come back to my original thought. This Mulroney government has destroyed any chance of employer-employee peace in the near future. Further, it has abandoned good faith bargaining with its employees. In my view, it has purposely, deliberately provoked the Public Service of Canada.
[Translation\
Mr. Chairman, thousands of loyal and competent employees in the Public Service are affected by this legislation. That includes clerks, secretaries, librarians, information officers.
I would like to go back to the three or four points that were raised this morning. We talked about pay equity. What is pay equity, Mr. Chairman? I have here a definition of that term. Pay equity: the obligation to pay the same salary to men and women in the same organization if the work they perform is deemed to be of equal value. The value of the work is based on a combination of the following factors: 1) skills and knowledge; 2) physical and mental effort; 3) responsibilities; and 4) working conditions.
Now, Mr. Chairman, there is the whole problem of regional pay. Electricians working for the Public Service of Canada receive $3.94 less in St. John's, Newfoundland, than in Victoria, BC. A first-class fireman employed in a federal airport earns $8,000 less per year than his municipal counterpart.
The other item involves job security. People say, and that is what the government's ad says, that public servants enjoy a certain degree of job security. Mr. Chairman, everyone knows that 13,000 positions have been cut since 1985. The government spends $5 billion for contracting out without establishing if it is cost-efficient. I defy anyone to find out how much contracting out costs the government. Try to find it in the books. Can any member in this House, can even the President of Treasury Board tell me where to find the total cost of contracting out government services? Unions say $5 billion. We can therefore believe that it is much higher. As things stand right now, it is impossible to know with certainty. Even the Public Accounts Committee that I chair has tried, without success, because bookkeeping is done in such a way as to make it impossible to have a clear and exact picture of the cost of contracting out.
As for the cost of living, Mr. Chairman, civil servants as each and everyone of us have been taxed by this government ever since the Tories came to power in 1984. That was seven years ago! The cost of living index has risen by 5,8 per cent since September 1990. Everything has gone up, the cost of living, taxes, income taxes, for civil servants as for everyone else. The government's annual salary budget, including social benefits but excluding the Armed Forces, totals $12 billion; that of the civil servants members of the Alliance represents $4,8 billion, that is to say 3 per cent less than the federal government's expenses. Those who are now on strike, Mr. Chairman, represent less than 3 per cent of the pay envelope.
Interests on the debt alone are totalling $41 billion a year. We talked about the debt last week and I refer those interested by that matter to read last week Hansard. They will get their money's worth!
Mr. Chairman, 67.9 percent of those who earn less than $30,000 in the Public Service of Canada are women. Sixty-eight per cent, Mr. Chairman! Fifty per cent of the
September 30, 1991

members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada earn less than $27,000 a year.
Several thousand public servants affected by the strike earn less than $20,000. I will come to that because constituents have sent me letters and have called me to explain their situation.
In 1990, 84,470 public servants earned less than $35,000. In 1982, Mr. Chairman, during a debate in this House, Michael Wilson found-and I emphasize it-"unfair" the 6 and 5 per cent salary increases offered to public servants. He was asking the government of the day-and I quote-"to provide a salary restraint program that would have some flexibility so that people on low incomes who are in the worst economic position today could be treated differently and those who warranted some merit increases could be treated differently". That is what Michael Wilson said in the House of Commons on June 29, 1982. Mr. Chairman, I do not know where he is today, but in 1982 that same minister was against treating public servants unjustly especially those who earned less than average.
Mr. Chairman, section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the 1982 Constitution Act reads as follows: "Every individual is equal before and under the law-"
Would big companies in Canada have the same right as the federal government to act like the governement is presently doing? Would they have the right to refuse to negotiate in good faith, to refuse to appoint a mediator, to impose their own choices?
The Tory government is trying by all means to draw the public's attention away from the causes and effects of free trade, of the GST, and to impute them to the lowest paid of its public servants.
Mr. Chairman, I could go on and on, but I only have 20 minutes and I would like to ask a few questions to the President of the Treasury Board.

There is no good reason to have abandoned 25 years of hard work in employee-employer relations in favour of a power struggle which is becoming increasingly ugly. This Tory policy of finding an enemy within the public servants of Canada is wrong, very wrong, dead wrong.
Government Orders
The Conservatives under Mr. Mulroney are trying to create an anti-public service atmosphere and they are failing. They are trying to distract Canadian attention from their own unpopular image. They are trying to find a scapegoat.
Mr. Mulroney himself, the Prime Minister, is trying to fool some Canadians into thinking that public servants are the enemy. I resent that strategy and so do many thousands of public servants.
In my riding, the average pay of a member of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, which is striking today, is $27,000. Many in my riding earn less than $25,000. I resent very much this government telling my constituents that they must accept lower pay, no job security, no pay equity, no rights to bargain. At the same time, this government is burdening them with high taxes, including the GST, increases in unemployment insurance premiums, high interest rates, 5.8 per cent inflation. The government is asking them to accept sacrifices while not providing the means to bear these sacrifices.
Public servants suffered for the last seven years under this government, which came into power in 1984 with the avowed-and I remember very clearly because we fought it at that time and we fought an election on this issue-objective to slash jobs in the Public Service, to demoralize the public servants by contracting out the jobs they had, to privatize Crown corporations, to unjustly decentralize. I come back to the Farm Credit Corporation move which was just announced last week.
What a coincidence. On the same day that we started looking at Bill C-29, this bill to force them back to work, we hear the government found, I am told, $10 million to move 200 public servants to Regina. On that same day a Tory government called an election.
I could read into the record, if the minister wants to hear them, letters from members of the Farm Credit Corporation of Canada who take exception to being used as pawns in this political game of his.
I only have one minute, and I want to ask the minister the essential questions on this debate. There is an amendment before us put by the member for Ottawa West. That amendment reads:
That clause 2 be amended at page 3 by deleting lines 2 through 6
and substituting the following therefor:
-amounts of pay-

September 30,1991
Government Orders
In other words, the gifts that were given were called by some editorialists luxury bonuses that were given to certain people. Is the government going to support this amendment, making it clear to all Canadians that there will be no bonuses, no indemnities, no special treatment for its friends in higher offices?


Gilles Loiselle: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I first wish to inform the hon. member that the government is very firmly determined not to leave any doubt on the matter of bonuses and performance pay.
I repeat once again that, for the current fiscal year, the year running from April 1991 to April 1992, the salary of these people has been frozen in April 1991. When it is time for a bonus, at the end of April 1992, they will receive zero cent.
As for the legislation, I can say that I receive his proposal positively. I am told that the wording presents only one risk, by preventing the Treasury Board, for example, from adjusting travel allowances, or such other matters. Which does not worry him at all, I think.
With your permission, I will ask my counsels to discuss with Opposition members, to see if we can find a suitable wording; but, we very clearly have no intention to go back on that issue. It will be done through legislation, or another way, but it will be a matter of wording. Not being a lawyer, and I do not apoligize for that, I will not go into the subject.
However, I would remind the hon. member that, because of the present situation, it is risky to talk about these bonuses which were never given. I would thus recommend him some caution.
He also made a little exaggerated statement when he said that we are ending 25 years of negotiations. Would he have wanted us to do as two liberal governments did, those of Newfoundland and New Brunswick, and impose a 0 per cent raise in the Budget? We preferred, after 25 years of negotiations, trying to solve this problem by means of negotiation. We did sit at the bargaining table for 60 days. Then we went to conciliation. We were in conciliation for 30 days without having a single proposal from the Public Service Alliance allowing us some hope of progress.
In other words, if we made a hard decision in the Budget by establishing pay raise parameters at 0-3-3 for
three years, it is because of the difficult situation our country is currently facing. We must not lose track of what is happening in the country. Quite a number of companies have experienced hard times and as we are getting out of our recession, we must send them a very clear message, telling them that we are determined to do our share.
Further on, he said that we tried to solve our budgetary problems on the backs of public servants. No. What we are asking public servants is to do their bit, along with many others. We ask unionized workers to do their share. We also asked managers to do their bit, since we will cut their number by 10 per cent. We asked the provinces to do their share, by reducing the rate of increase of their transfers. These will continue to grow, but the growth rate will be reduced. We asked all departments to do their share, since we intend freezing their overall operating costs.
So we asked everybody, be it the Prime Minister, the ministers, the opposition leaders and all the members of this House, to do their bit. If our process was such as he describes, can it be that four unions managed to use it and sign agreements accepting the 0-3-3? How can it be that binding conciliation reports recommended settlements within the parameters we established? Is it not because the Public Service Alliance, even before the budget was laid down, and immediately after, stated that it had absolutely no intention of negotiating, that it was launching into a political fight?
As for us, we made serious efforts. I told you the number of full days we spent at the table. Only this week, we had 35 negotiation meetings.
Now we could have done like those other Canadian governments who took even harsher measures. We had to take these measures because of an extremely difficult situation. With its deficits and its debt, the government takes up too much room. It takes up all the money available. Next year, we will pay $41 billion in interests. We are taking up all the money. And all the businesses wishing to get going again are stuck because we have them nothing. At budget time, we decided to make an effort. We saw there was also a risk of inflation brought upon by a very high increase in manpower costs, an increase of 25 per cent as compared to the United States for the last few years. So we wanted to send a very clear signal to everyone: Careful! We have to get with it. And the best way to do it, as one of the major employers in Canada, would be to take our responsibilities. The hon.
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member spoke of loyal employees who are being affected. He spoke of less favoured people whose salaries are much lower and who will be affected. But it is not the Treasury Board who terrorized people on picket lines. It is not the Treasury Board who accused those people of being scabs and scum of the world. It is the leaders of the PSAC who should ask themselves what kind of respect they have for their own employees.
On the other hand, knowing how difficult the salary freeze is on them, we have offered those less favoured employees, as I indicated this morning, who earn less than $27,500, a $500 bonus, a lump sum payment which will help them to make it through this difficult period.
The member also spoke of job security. He said that for one thing the government is proud to have slashed 13,000 jobs. What we have eliminated is positions. We have made the public service less expensive. But we have protected our employees since 1986. Between 1,300 and 1,400 public servants over a quarter of a million lost their jobs. And, in most cases, it was because they did not want to move to another place while we were willing to provide them with adequate training and to help them, for two years, to find something else. As an employer, we have nothing to be ashamed of.
We will not excuse ourselves for trying to manage more rigorously the country's finances or to maintain services at a lower cost.
The member spoke of regional rates of pay, he said we paid certain classes of employees lower salaries in Newfoundland than we did in Toronto. That is obvious and it is indeed our policy in a number of areas not to interfere in a certain region and completely disorganize the local market with salaries that are not in accordance with the local reality. So it is our policy not to do that according to the best rules both of good management and employees well-being.
So, if I may, Mr. Chairman, I would essentially invite the hon. member to think about my remarks and to try to be a little more level-headed in his accusations. In summary, no merit bonuses or performance awards will be given this year, that is for the year 1991-1992, if we find a satisfactory wording. Anyway, there will be none at
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all if we find a satisfactory formulation. As for me, I do not oppose in any way the fact that this be included in the law if it does not stop us from making adjustments, if you will, to travel expenses, etc., that are adjusted almost periodically.
And as for the negotiation, I want to ensure the hon. member that it has been done in good faith, that we have really tried to find a solution and that we are not the ones who left the table. The union is the one who dit it.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the minister's comments about the amendment before us. He said that except for the wording that could perhaps be tightened, or qualified again or redone, he would accept to include or exclude, if you will, the bonuses and all that.
I would like to ask him a very specific question. He said that the bonuses are excluded, that there will be no bonuses. But the answer is that there will be no raises if there are no bonuses.


Gilles Loiselle: The raise was due on April 1st, but it was not granted. These people were given a zero raise; therefore, they are in the year zero. So, when comes the time for the bonus at the end of the year they will receive a cheque for the amount of zero cent, zero dollar.


Steve Eugene Paproski: So, before recognizing the member from Saint-Maurice, I recognize the member from Mission-Coquitlam.


Joy Langan: Mr. Speaker, I have a number of questions which I would like to ask the minister, specifically under section 2.1 will try to be very specific. If I could just give the minister the questions, possibly he could answer them all at once.
First, under section 2, subsection 1(a), I would like to know if the minister could tell us which workers are covered under the Canada Labour Code.
Second, is it the intention of the government to impose wage controls on all workers under federal jurisdiction?
Third, are' other workers under the Canada Labour Code next, such as those who are not listed here?

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Fourth, this is the section that refers to the Canada Labour Code. Why are those under the Canada Labour Code being included in this pre-emptive way, beyond those who are in the Public Service Alliance?
Fifth, is the Government of Canada the collective bargaining agent for all of these workers?
Sixth, under 2(l)(b), is the government intruding on parliamentary privilege under this section?
Seventh, under 2(l)(b), are not MP's budgets now global with the right to determine numbers of employees and rates of pay?
Eighth, under 2(l)(c), this is under "Definitions." Will the government explain its intrusion upon, and pre-emption of, other collective agreements that have been negotiated in good faith by Public Service Alliance of Canada and other recognized bargaining agents?
Ninth, under 2(l)(c), because by law, a member's, meaning members of Parliament, staff is not entitled to be represented by a union, does the minister intend that those workers who are staff for the NDP caucus, and who have collective bargaining rights under voluntary recognition, shall be stripped of their rights under their collective agreement?
Tenth, under that same section, will the government respect the collective agreement signed between parliamentary association support staff and the NDP caucus?
Eleventh, does the minister believe in the principle of free collective bargaining?
I would also like to ask the minister: Under "compensation", under the (b)(ii) part of that definition, does this clause mean that the minister will grant adjustments to compensation, from time to time, at his discretion, with the approval of Treasury Board?
Does this not mean that the minister can be swayed by lobbying, pressure tactics and at his own whim? Does this clause mean that the minister can remove whole groups or sections now covered by this legislation? Does it mean then that it is an escape clause for the minister? Does subsection (b)(ii) also mean that those persons under the definition of "employee" who do not have a bargaining agent can appeal directly to the minister as individuals,
groups or departments? Under this clause, what kind of directive policy, regulation or agreement is the minister capable of recommending under section (b)(ii)?
Is the minister intent on passing this legislation, that goes far beyond the back to work order, and then make deals with the powerful or with his friends? Is it not the minister's intent to cut his own deals after this legislation is passed? If it is not his intent, why is this clause in a "compensation" definition of the legislation?
Under "compensation plan", does this include the agreement between PSAC and the NDP caucus? Does the minister intend that individual MPs and senators will bargain with the minister and Treasury Board for their own future salary increases? Does this clause include operating budgets of MPs and senators?
Under the section that is referred to as "employee" under "Definitions" are MPs, cabinet ministers and senators now considered to be employees? Why, in establishing this legislation, has the minister not included his friends, CEOs and senior executives of Crown corporations?
Under the definition of "strike", does this mean that an individual cannot be on strike unless he or she is acting in concert with others? Does this section include workers who judiciously follow work place rules who, therefore, appear to be working more slowly than normal, when normally they cut comers for speed and efficiency? Does this section include members of Parliament, cabinet ministers and senators?
Under the "wage rate" definition, Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask why this bill does not apply to bonuses paid to senior managers. Will the minister explain the difference between compensation and reimbursement for expenses? Will the minister explain what allowances are not included? Will the minister explain what bonuses are not included? Will the minister explain what differentials and premiums are not included?
The definition of "emolument" using the Oxford Dictionary is: "profit from office or employment, salary." Will the minister explain what will be realized and by whom? Will the minister explain what benefits are not included?
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Under the "Expiration of compensation plans", can the minister tell us how many employees do not have a set date for revision of wage rates, and when those revisions would take place?
Finally, I would like to ask the minister if he would agree to a unanimous consent request to call Mr. Bean and Mr. Capello to the bar as witnesses during Committee of the Whole.


Mr. Loiseile:: Mr. Speaker, the answer to the last question is no, but to the others, she has been throwing them faster than I can write them so I will wait for the transcription and I will provide the answers as quickly as possible.


Denis Pronovost: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate because I feel the present situation has gone on long enough and that Parliament should be allowed to legislate, as soon as possible, and end to the dispute between the leaders of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and the Government of Canada, or more specifically, Treasury Board.
Perhaps I may first comment on the tragi-comic role played by the Leader of the Opposition during Question Period today. The Leader of the Opposition rose in the House looking very stern and very angry. He was outraged that as a result of this dispute, farmers and especially Western farmers had lost up to $30 million per week. He said it did not make sense. The strike had been going on for two weeks, people had lost up to $30 million and this was jeopardizing the grain transportation industry in Western Canada, and finally the minister had not even considered designating these workers as providing an essential service.
It was rather interesting to hear the Leader of the Opposition tell us that after two weeks, the strike had caused irreparable harm, that it had to be settled quickly and that he was angry at the President of the Treasury Board.
Mr. Chairman, in 1975, the present Leader of the Opposition, who is so upset today, was then the member for Saint-Maurice and President of the Treasury Board of Canada. Do you know what happened in 1975? There
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was a strike in Western Canada. Grain shippers went on strike when the Leader of the Opposition was President of the Treasury Board. This morning, he was angry at our government for letting the strike go on for two weeks. He said it did not make sense and that we were going to destroy the economy of Western Canada. Do you know what the Leader of the Opposition did way back when, Mr. Chairman? He let the strike by grain shippers go on, not for a week, not for two or three weeks like the strike we have now, but for 31 days. He was President of the Treasury Board. He even went so far as to say the country would understand that sometimes we had to put up with some inconvenience because of a minor strike. Interesting. This was a strike by the people who shipped grain in Western Canada. A strike that lasted 31 days. But when he was President of the Treasury Board, it wasn't important. When the hon. member for Quebec City is President of the Treasury Board and the strike goes on for 14 days and negotiations are broken off, that is serious stuff, and so he rants and raves on the floor of the House.
On top of that-if the hon. member for Glengarry- Prescott-Russell would care to listen-do you know, Mr. Chairman, what kind of settlement the federal government granted its employees from the West in 1975, after they were on strike for 31 days? The Canadian people who are following this debate will understand why we have such a terrible deficit in this country and why it is so difficult to get it under control. After these 31 days of strike, the present leader of the opposition finally granted a 29.2 per cent wage increase over a two-year period! That is what he managed to do, Mr. Chairman, with the consequences that we know on the next generations of Canadians, these children who are yet to be bom and who will have to pay during their entire lifetime for the mistakes that government made in the 1960s and 1970s.


Mr. Plourde:: He gave them more than they were asking for.


Denis Pronovost: He did indeed give them more than they were asking for, as the hon. member for Kamouras-ka-Riviere-du-Loup has just pointed out. The union was asking for slightly less, and the President of the Treasury Board sought to buy peace by giving them an extra one per cent. That is going a little too far!

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Earlier I was listening to the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier and I can understand him, considering that his constituency is made up mostly of federal public service employees. I understand that he should stand up for them because they are his constituents. I too have many federal civil servants in my riding. For the province of Quebec, I may have more relatively speaking, Mr. Chairman, considering my riding is partly rural and partly urban. Yet, I will never toady to the local PSAC leaders. I refuse to do so although I know that these people are being penalized today. That is true! You know that nobody finds it amusing to get a 0 per cent increase.
On the other hand, the President of the Treasury Board came up with a proposal to give employees in the lower brackets, in view of the financial situation of the country, a $500 increase. And what did Daryl Bean think of that? He called it a slap in the face. Five hundred dollars; a slap in the face!
With the number of unemployed and welfare recipients in my riding of Shawinigan, Mr. Chairman, I know that many men and women in Quebec who would not mind getting a $500 slap in the face from the federal government. How many people across the country, do you figure? Personally, I am happy that federal civil servants are entitled to a slew of fringe benefits. I am not jealous. I think that we treat them well. Maybe union leaders should be reminded that there are in Canada millions and millions of workers who do not have a dental plan entirely paid for by the government or fully indexed pensions.
Mr. Chairman, civil servants' pensions are fully indexed. This is a monetary advantage for which Canadian taxpayers will pay for years and years to come. It is still reasonable.
I heard the Liberal member from the Ottawa area- because you see, since most federal civil servants are in the Ottawa area, we are no longer in the Quebec round or the Canada round but in the Ottawa round. You saw that today, Mr. Chairman. All members from the Ottawa area are out to defend the public servants and I understand them in a way.
They said that because the Liberals were in the habit of spending, the federal government will not save on the deficit we have by cutting a little from the Public Service. But for people in Shawinigan and my riding, Mr. Chairman, millions and billions of dollars are sizable sums of
money. This government's wage control plan will save the federal treasury $675 million this year and about $3.5 billion over five years. That may not be much for the member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, because when he was in power, he spent.


Don Boudria: I was not even here.


Denis Pronovost: But you were here in thought anyway. You drove around in the buses and heard what the MPs were saying. At that time you drove a bus, you were a House of Commons employee. You knew what was going on. Already a Liberal at heart!
Mr. Chairman, for the Liberals, a saving of $3.5 billion a year is not much. But the people in Saint-Boniface in my riding know that this plan, which applies to all MPs, ministers, RCMP officers, everyone without exception, and will save $3.5 billion and they realize that this government has at least taken note of the situation.
We will go even further. I just heard some Liberal members say that the four federal public service unions that accepted the 0-3-3 offers caved in to the government.
That is strange, but I will take the province of Quebec as an example. In the first six months of this year, public service unions in Quebec signed an agreement providing for no wage increase, without going on strike. Even comrade Gerald Larose of the Confederation des syndi-cats nationaux signed this document with Mr. Daniel Johnson, President of the Quebec Treasury Board. Gerald Larose, the president of the CSN, the most militant of all unions not only in the Province of Quebec but also in Canada, said: We don't like it, but the Quebec government has no choice because workers in the private sector have to make sacrifices and provincial civil servants should do the same.
Fernand Daoust of the FTQ and Lorraine Page of the Centrale de I'enseignement du Quebec took a similar position. They said: We do not like it, but we have to realize that the Quebec government is in a fiscal position that has an impact on all Canadians. All those union leaders signed that document. They didn't put anything in shambles anywhere. In Nova Scotia, the provincial government has imposed a freeze at 0 per cent. In Saskatchewan, an increase of 2 per cent over two years. In Manitoba, 0 and 2 per cent. In Newfoundland, 0 per cent. In New Brunswick, 0 per cent. The most generous government, in the whole of Canada at the present time,
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is the federal government, with 0,3 and 3. And we have a national strike, the consensus is broken.
I would like to say this: In Quebec, in 1972, we had a terrible strike in the Quebec Public Service. Union leaders from the CNTU, the FTQ and the CEQ were sent to jail. The social contract was totally tom apart. But unions in Quebec and the government understood something: the superior interest of the nation in such a bargaining. You cannot, Mr. Chairman, paralyze a country like it's being done today. Especially when you have seen what Mr. Daryl Bean and Johane Hurens can do.
People are saying that if the federal government is going to freeze salaries at 0 per cent, it is going to hurt. They are right, it is going to hurt, and I recognize it. This is being said when we known that, since February, the government was going to do it, we did not try to hide it like the Hon. Member for Lac Saint-Jean, leader of the Bloc Quebecois, who rolled back salaries in the Public Service in Quebec by 20 per cent without telling anyone. At least we said in February: "here is our fiscal policy, here is what we are going to do." This is what the Hon. Member did. He did many other things, but we will keep that for later.
When you are in a situation, Mr. Chairman, where you have to freeze salary at 0 per cent increase, it is no joke, but this is reality. At the same time, the Public Service Alliance of Canada is dragging its members into a strike which has been going on for three weeks now. Every single week of strike is about 2 per cent of the annual salary. These three weeks of strike mean that members of the Alliance will now have an increase of minus 6 per cent. The Public Service Alliance of Canada, madam Chairman, has just imposed a 6 per cent cut to all its members and they dare telling us that 0 per cent increase is awful.
Daryl Bean and Johane Hurens are playing the New Democratic Party's game, Madam Chairman. They are allies, they are Siamese twins. They are trying to make the government fall, to weaken the government, but I think that on this side of the House, as well as among
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most Canadians, it is understood that this an unacceptable political game.
I would also like to say that today's situation is the result of the irresponsibility of some union leaders who have broken law and order.

Yes, Madam Speaker, an appeal and a disrespect for law and order that is being displayed at numerous locations in the country today and yesterday. Let us take an example. At the Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue Hospital in Quebec, a hospital for elderly Canadian veterans, an injunction had to be obtained yesterday to limit picketers and to attempt to have these PSAC members obey the law.
This morning this court injunction was ignored. Picketers threw eggs and tomatoes at designated, essential employees, including nurses who have a legal obligation to report for work. They delayed these people from reporting for work which could have threatened the lives of many hospital patients.
All through the Atlantic provinces and Quebec this morning, picket lines were not only violating the Criminal Code of Canada by blocking access to many federal facilities, but they were directly violating an order issued last week by the Public Service Staff Relations Board not to delay designated, essential employees from reporting to work.
This union was directed to answer the cease and desist order by the board today in St. John's, Newfoundland, Saint John, New Brunswick, Dartmouth, Halifax, Gander, Montreal and Ottawa.
Picket lines today are flagrantly violating the order of the Public Service Staff Relations Board and are delaying or preventing essential services from being performed.
At the Sydney, Nova Scotia, airport this morning some 200 picketers from many federal offices in Sydney blocked the airport, preventing essential services personnel from reporting. They agreed on that. Only three out of 37 employees were able to get into work, thus requiring the closure of the airport from 5.30 a.m. to 9.45 a.m.

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At Dorval this morning, strikers destroyed facilities and did some damage in a number of buildings. Strikers also threw nails on the access roads to Dorval. This is an interesting point, Madam Chairman.

In Ottawa here today at the taxation office on Cumberland Street, 300 picketers blocked access to the building by lying down in the street, requiring the presence of the Ottawa anti-riot squad.
At federal prisons in Drummondville, Cowansville and Ste-Anne des Plaines, designated correctional officers were being delayed or prevented from relieving their colleagues on the overnight shift.

Madam Chairman, I could go on forever about incidents that jeopardize public safety, the safety of veterans in hospitals like Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue in Quebec, and the safety of meat inspection-what could be more important than ensuring the safety of the food Canadians eat? Today we had a situation that reminds me of the wild cat strike we had in Quebec in 1972. The President of the Treasury Board said-and I am reaching the end of my speech-that he negotiated with Daiyl Bean for 90 days. Well, Madam Chairman, I can tell you that people in Shawinigan and Grand-Mere, in my riding, think 90 days with Daryl Bean is a long time.
The President of the Treasury Board was extremely patient to listen to all these complaints, especially since in February, and I think Canadians should remember this, when the federal Budget was brought down, Daryl Bean and Johane Hurens said in the lobby of the House that they were going to call a general strike. They promised Canadians they would. They would paralyse the country and get rid of this government.
I can see why members of the New Democratic Party would get involved in this kind of strategy, because strikes and demonstrations make them feel good. However, I have trouble understanding Liberal members who have been in power and know what it means to be responsible, Madam Chairman. I realize they are trying to protect their power base in ridings in the Ottawa area, where members were elected by public servants, but they should have the guts to explain to their constituents, to
those public servants, that because of the present financial situation in this country, we cannot give more. The same applies to the other provinces and a whole series of enterprises in the private and public sector.
Madam Chairman, in concluding I would like to say that Parliament should conclude this debate as soon as possible and if it does, I hope we will be ready to vote on this bill immediately, because Canadians must realize that the Parliament of Canada is ready to act in a emergency. I know that according to what was negotiated with the opposition, the debate will be extended until 10 p.m this evening and tomorrow evening, but Canadians, Madam Chairman, would have preferred a different approach.
In concluding, I wish to congratulate the President of the Treasury Board for his courage and I want to ask all Canadians to try and bring their influence to bear on Liberal and NDP members, to make them change their destructive attitude towards the Canadian government.


Don Boudria: Madam Chairman, I would like, first, to congratulate the member for Shawinigan who just spoke. Of course, I might not be in agreement with everything he said, but I do not doubt his sincerity and I listened closely to what he had to say. No one is for this strike, Madam Chairman. I would even go so far as to say that the strikers themselves did not want to strike. No one wishes for a strike. And no one will make me believe that those of my constituents who earn $24,000, $23,000 or $22,000 a year are happy today to be picketing to defend their rights. Nobody will make me believe that they do not have anything better to do or that they can afford the luxury of these activities. That is not the point, because I am sure that they cannot afford it and that they have other things to do than to stay outside in the cold and the bad weather, as they are doing today.
I also want to say that I do not support at all any kind of violence on the picket line or elsewhere. I do not agree with those who blocked the entrance to the air base here in Uplands a few days ago, and school children had a hard time getting home from school. Nor do I agree with the other violent incidences that the member from Shawinigan has described. I think that they are
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bloody awful and the people who perpetrated them are wrong. I want to say that unequivocally.
Some bosses within the Public Service have told their employees: "You come into work despite the fact that you are on strike or I will get you later if you do not". That is wrong. It is wrong as well for Mr. Daryl Bean to say publicly, as he was quoted in The Ottawa Citizen a few weeks ago, that scabs get what they deserve, or something like that, even though some of those so-called scabs were really designated workers and, in any case, most of them were members of that union. That, too, is wrong.
There is no monopoly on stupidity. The government has negotiated in bad faith in my opinion, and there have also been other actions which are wrong. Two wrongs make just that; two wrongs and not one right.

When the President of the Treasury Board appointed a mediator, a few days ago, and when the civil servants accepted to return to the bargaining table, Mr. Capello and the others should not have had their hands tied by the government saying to them: "You can negotiate whatever you want, but we will never depart form the 0 per cent rule.' ' What kind of negotiations is that, Mr. Chairman?

The government keeps saying and keeps pretending, telling Canadians who are unemployed and others: "Well, wouldn't you like to have the job of so and so who is employed and who is on strike." Everyone who is unemployed wishes they had the job of someone who is working, but what a strategy, to divide Canadians and to tell them: "Wouldn't you like to have the job of someone else."
Since when do we promote that kind of envy between our citizens, pretending it is the right thing to do?
Some say that federal public servants make all kinds of money, that they are just making oodles of money doing their job. There is a story in The Ottawa Citizen and I have a copy of it here. It is a comparison of various jobs in the public and the private sector. Here is what The Ottawa Citizen came up with. It has, for instance, a clerk 3 in the federal Public Service making $25,839 a year; a clerk 3 in the private sector making $24,930 a year. This is not a very big difference. Let us look at other positions. A senior program analyst, for instance, one of those computer experts, in the Public Service, $42,500 a
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year; in the private sector, $45,400 a year. Let us look at a receptionist in the Public Service, average salary $20,500; in the private sector, $22,500. In other words, the private sector pays $2,000 more a year.
The point is not to compare people who are working with those who are unemployed. Those who are unemployed are not working, that is obvious. Even the minister should understand that. The point is not to mislead Canadians into believing that people who work for the public and for the people of Canada are overpaid because it is not true.
Every morning when I come to work, I arrive on Parliament Hill at 7 a.m.. I drive on Catherine Street here on Ottawa. I see people in front of the immigration office standing in the rain at six-thirty and seven o'clock in the morning waiting for the office to open at eight o'clock so that they will be able to be served that day.
There is such a line-up of people wanting service from the Government of Canada and such a shortage of work force to do the work that Canadian citizens have to stand out in the rain for half a day to be served by their government.

Would you say that such a situation is acceptable, Madam Chairman? I am not talking about Canadians abroad, who are waiting at the Canadian embassy, or elsewhere, although that situation does exist too. I am talking about what is going on here, in the City of Ottawa, a few blocks away from Parliament. And that, Madam Chairman, is a poor service that is being provided to Canadians.
The government can brag, as much as it wants, about cuts it made in the Public Service, but it cannot call it a satisfactoiy service, it should not say that Canadians are well served anymore. When my constituents phoned me, out of frustration, because they cannot get through the office of the Canada Pension Plan here in Ottawa, even though they let the phone ring for 20 minutes, or half an hour, and nobody answer, and when in despair, they called their members of Parliament to try to contact that office, we cannot say that it is a good service that is being provided to Canadians, Madam Chairman! Call it cuts and call it fast savings for the government, but for the constituent, who has been waiting half a day in line at the door, or half an hour, or one hour, on the phone for nothing, how much is worth the time he has wasted? How much is worth the time of those people who are

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waiting for services to which they are entitled to as Canadian citizens?
The minister does not have to wait on the phone, and neither do I. Members of this House do not have to wait on the phone because they have special lines to help their constituents, and rightly so, because nothing could be done for them otherwise. I suggest, Madam Chairman, that the government should know that it is not providing a good government service to the Canadian population.

Now the government says that civil servants have a guaranteed job for a lifetime, or something of the sort. We have before us in this House the constitutional proposals of the government that were tabled. In those constitutional proposals certain powers are to be devolved, are to be sent to the provinces.
I have an article from La Presse September 19 in which a Quebec minister, Andre Bourbeau, states quite clearly that for those services that will be transferred under that proposal to the province, he does not need to hire any civil servant, he will do that with the personnel that he has already. What is going to happen to the people working in those sectors?


Mac Harb: They'll lose their jobs.


Don Boudria: Exactly, that is the point my colleague for Ottawa Centre says quite astutely. Those people will lose their jobs. That is a statement from the Quebec minister.

Madam Chairman, The President of the Treasury Board has a lot of work to do if he wants Canadians to believe him when he says that we must tighten our belt.
Speaking of work and of belt tightening, I have here my own records on government expenditures, Madam Chairman. With your permission, I will tell you about those expenditures.

I have an article here which is entitled, "Computer fiasco costs $140 million to the taxpayers".

I have here the list of limousines that were bought for the minister since 1988.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


Don Boudria: Yes, the limousines bought since 1988! Would you like me to read that list, Madam Chaiman? If you insist, I shall read it to you.

Let us start with the limousines. I have a whole list of limousines here that were purchased since 1988.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Don Boudria: I know the members are a little touchy across the way when I raise that subject: $762,568 of limousines since the election of November 21, 1988.
My colleague has asked me to repeat it: $762,568. Would you believe that one minister has had three limousines since November 21, 1988?


An hon. member:: Who's that?


Don Boudria: Yes, one minister has had three limousines since November 21, 1988.


An hon. member:: Which one?


Don Boudria: All right, my colleague says: "Which one". Because of popular demand I will have to say it. The President of the Treasury Board.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Don Boudria: The minister who is telling us today that they must tighten their belts has changed cars three times in two and a half years. I have got it right here: 1988 Pontiac, 1989 Ford LTD, 1991 Ford LTD Crown Victoria, all of that since the election of November 21, 1988.


An hon. member:: Are you serious?


Don Boudria: I am very serious. You know why I am serious about it? The information was given to me by the
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hon. government House leader from Hansard of June 19. I believe the government House leader. I really do. He would never lead us astray. Harvey is always right.
Let us continue-


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Chairman, all that might sounds very interesting, but if I had been President of the Treasury Board any longer-what, besides, would have not displeased me-I might have had three limousines, but I still have the same one. Maybe it has been purchased by my predecessors, but I have the same car as before being appointed to the Treasury Board.


Don Boudria: I invite the minister to pick up Hansard of June 19, 1991, signed by his colleague the government House leader.
The member who is now President of the Treasury Board is listed with what I have just read and I always believe Harvey because Harvey will never lead me astray.
I want to get into the goods and services tax. Do you remember the goods and services tax, the dreaded GST? When the government started the goods and services tax it hired 4,200 people to administer it. Now, this is a government that wants to tighten its belt. Furthermore, it had to buy all these computers and to go with the computers it had to buy the hardware and then the software. I have a computer expert right beside me here.
I invite him to listen to this: The total amount of contracts awarded from January 1, 1991, to June 30, 1991, for software on the GST, and this again is in response to an Order Paper question by the government House leader so it has to be 100 per cent accurate, is $9,343,771.00


An hon. member:: Amazing.


An hon. member:: Terrible.


Don Boudria: My colleagues are shocked. I do not blame them.
Let me give the House another one. This one here has upset a number of Canadians. The government spent $350,000 to build a doghouse in Rigaud.
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An hon. member:: A doghouse?


Don Boudria: A doghouse for customs and excise, for 12 dogs. You know why? Because the old doghouse was on the tennis courts and they had to remove it from there so that whoever could play tennis. To replace it the government spent $350,000. Again, that was provided to me through a request to Access to Information and it cost me $462 to find that information through Access to Information. I know it is accurate because the information came to me from the Minister of Public Works Canada and he always tells the truth.


The Chairman:: I would like to draw the attention of the honourable member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell on the fact that I know that he always has many documents before him and that the Rule of the House is certainly among those documents. I think that he might find it to his advantage to read particuliarily subsection 2 of section 101, on page 69. Once he will have read it, I will continue to listen to him very attentively.
Again, the honourable member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell.


Don Boudria: Madam Chairman, I might be wrong, but I believed, this morning, that there had been unanimous agreement in the House, shortly before 2 o'clock, to allow us to make comments on any part of this bill and not only on the text of the amendment that we were debating, in order to be able to offer all amendments simultaneously at 9 o'clock.
I believe that there was mutual consent to this effect and that any member could discuss any part of the bill, in the mean time. I invite the Chairman to comment, if I am wrong.


Andrée  Champagne: What was agreed is this, I believe: You can debate the various sections of the bill.
If you want to use section 2, definitions and interpretation, you can speak on any section of the bill. But, if I return to section 101 where it is said that speeches in Committees of the House must be strictly relevant to the item or clause under consideration, I would like nevertheless that we stick to the bill before us. I simply wanted to draw the attention of the member on that with no intent of implementing this rule with extreme severity.

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Don Boudria: Madam Chairman, I am sure that you did understand that I was speaking of line 44, on page 2 of the bill, which deals with wage rate. It is obvious that the wage rate is affected by the fact that the government has no money, or at least it says that it has no money since it has wasted it on some other things, Madam Chairman. That is why I raised that point with the President of the Treasury Board, and that I told him that if he would make a better use of the taxpayers' money, he would have some left for line 45, on page 2 of the bill, whose purpose is, of course, to adjust the wage rate of the civil servants.
I want to make sure that the minister knows that we need the necessary funds in order to do that, obviously.

In closing, I just want to remind the minister of the editorial in today's Ottawa Citizen which is entitled "Bad Mistake on Both Sides". I will agree that there were bad and serious blunders on both sides.
I want to remind the minister that the public interest is his job. It is the job of this government and the job of this House to discharge what is in the best interests of the public.
Even if both sides were evenly wrong, which I do not think they are, on this count, I want to remind the minister that it is his job to administer the Government of Canada in the best interests of the taxpayers of our country. The negotiator who was appointed the other day had his hands tied behind his back and could really offer nothing in terms of wage compensation, save $500 to some of the lower salaried employees. I say that the government acted in such a way that this process was doomed to failure.
I just want to conclude by asking one question of the minister in terms of how this thing is going to work: I notice that a person making $26,999 a year will now be making $500 more, $27,499. That person's senior or supervisor, or lead hand or whatever they are called in that particular department where they happen to be working, might be making $27,300 and now you will have the more junior employee making more than the senior one. I have some difficulty in understanding how that is possibly going to work. I say to the minister that he should at least have provided some sort of a top up to
people over $27,000 a year, even if, heaven forbid, it would be on a sliding scale, but not to arrange it in such a way that someone who makes more money will make less money than someone who makes less money. I have a hard time understanding how that could possibly ever work.


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Chairman, in answer to the last question of the hon. member, I will tell him that we did exactly what he is suggesting, that is the necessary gradation to avoid any overlapping. In any case, we must not forget also that it is a lump sum. We have made that gradation so that people would not make "a step ahead" which would have messed up the pay scales paid needlessly.
That being said, the hon. member is making fun of expenditures made by the government on some items such as the GST, which are quite legitimate and quite necessary expenditures. He went on and talked about kennels, and I hope the hon. member is not against the fact that the government is fighting drugs, that he would not want that those services be deprived of the necessary tools to do that job. That is what we are doing, and I am not making any apology for it, far from it. Those are legitimate expenditures.
As for the illegitimate expenditures, I would say that it is rather the case with the union which is responsible for some big losses incurred following this useless strike which will ultimately, cause a very serious prejudice, to such an extent that it will take quite a while for those employees, for whom everybody seems to be so much preoccupied, to catch up for what they have just lost.
So, for the last time, I would ask people to get back to their sense.
As far as responsibilities are concerned, the hon. member suggested that we have-

We have a job, as president of Treasury Board, as government, to discharge our responsibilities and protect the higher interests of the country.
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I would repeat again what I said earlier today: that is precisely what we did at budget time. We could have gone the Liberal way: borrow money, find money outside, spend it when we do not have it.
We ask our employees not to accept what is called a reasonable offer, but to accept what is a reasonable solution to a difficult environment. They have to consider the facts. When we talk about comparisons, we do not ask them to rejoice in the fact that they have a job, and in some cases, not so well paid as the hon. member has rightly said, but at least they have one.
During the pre-budget consultations, if there was one message that came across very clearly on all sides, it was that the government is spending too much. As a matter of fact, we will have a $30 billion deficit this year, so we needed to send out a very clear message of our determination to act. As I have said earlier, we have taken many different measures, of which one deals with salaries.
We are not asking the members of the Public Service to pay for all of this deficit, but to bring their contribution, as everybody else is doing.

He said that we tied the hands of our bargaining agent and would never budge from 0-3. I believe the government's position was clearly established in the Budget speech, which announced the government would propose a plan that would substantially reduce inflation and that one of the key measures sending this message was a decision to freeze wages this year, with subsequent increases of 3 per cent during the next two years. That is what we have done, and we did it to send a message to industry and other governments to be very prudent and avoid spoiling our chances for the economic recovery now taking place after a very severe recession. We were right, because in the weeks following the Budget, one province after another adopted our approach, with the difference that most provinces decided to legislate zero per cent. In some cases, they legislated zero per cent for two years.
We said we had some flexibility. Not much, but we would try to progress within those limits, and instead of legislating, we would negotiate. And then we heard the abrasive annoucements by the president of PSAC, who said that he was starting a great political debate. During days, weeks and months of negotiations, we tried to get back to more serious matters, but to no avail. On
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Thursday, at 7 p.m, we put a number of new proposals on the table. We indicated new options for flexibility but our offers weren't even considered. The answer was that a strike was called.
The hon. member said we should avoid giving the impression that Public Service employees make too much money. I agree. Far be it from me to claim that Public Service wage scales are entirely out of line with the private sector, but perhaps he would like to think about what Daryl Bean said. When someone has to go to the private sector, they ask for almost a year extra. Is it because people are better off here than in the private sector? In any case, it is always the same Canadians who are strick with those problems and who have to pay taxes.
So we had to send a very serious message that we were determined to deal with the problem, and that is what we have done, Madam Chairman.


Andrée  Champagne: Are there any more speakers on clause
2?


Mr. Bill Attewell (Markham-Whitchurch-StoufF-ville):: I would like to say at the outset that the government's offer of zero, three and three is fair when you consider all factors. The offer was made in the hon. Michael Wilson's budget in February of this year.
But the Daryl Beans, the Bob Whites, the Shirley Carrs of Canada have shown terrible judgement by rejecting the government's offer and forcing a strike. The taxpayers of Canada are furious at the union's decision.
This is a time for union leaders to take off their blinders and make decisions which are good for the country. This is a time when governments, management and labour must share some common goals about the economic future of this country. This is not a time for strident, militant threats by labour.
It is a time for union leaders to understand the realities of the real world. No one likes to propose a zero increase in salaries. As the largest employer in Canada, however, we must show leadership.
The total salary cost of the government is approximately $10 billion. The fringe benefits amount to 28 per cent, or $2.8 billion. The total salary and benefits, therefore, is $12.8 billion and there are approximately

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400.000	employees in total, including 196,000 civil servants.
Canadians are just emerging from a tough and difficult recession. Unemployment is high. The people of Canada are fed up with high taxes. They blame all three levels of government. They expect us to show more restraint and leadership in the handling of their tax dollars.
Yet, when the government takes steps to make true our commitment of restraint and fiscal responsibility, we are met with strong protests by the unions.
The government's recent proposal applies to all
400.000	employees. It includes all Armed Forces, RCMP, judges, et cetera. It includes the Prime Minister, cabinet ministers and all MPs. There is a formula for MP's raises each year. It works out to approximately 1 per cent less than inflation. The increase this year, effective January 1, 1991, was 3.78 per cent.
When this legislation passes, it will mean that MP's salaries will be frozen for all of 1992 and be increased by 3 per cent in 1993.1 personally welcome this legislation. Obviously, Daryl Bean and his executive do not.
Marjorie Nichols' recent comments in The Ottawa Citizen were very interesting and I quote:
A private sector union boss who proposed leading his troops into the streets to protest low salary increases at auto parts plants in Ontario would be sent away for a long rest. Yet, that is precisely what the PSAC President, Daryl Bean has done and the opposition parties are applauding.
Ms. Nichols goes on to say:
It is simply not good enough for the Grits and the New Democrats to keep hurling the accusation that the government has destroyed free collective bargaining in the public service. Obviously, the bargaining process has been short circuited by the government's restraint program, which limits public service salaries to 0-3-3 per cent over the next three years. A recession has precisely the same impact on bargaining in the private sector.
I could not say it any better than Ms. Nichols. Listen to this point.
The government has a moral duty to all of its shareholders, the citizens of Canada, to set an example and hold the line against reinflation that would boost interest rates and stamp out the recovery.
And in her closing lines she says:
Anyone who believes that this strike is about money, must also believe in the tooth fairy. This is a political strike by a politicized union, supported by political parties with political agendas of their own.
This strike is not about money. It is about people playing politics with the salaries and job securities of workers, many of whom cannot afford to be on strike.
Several provincial governments have shown leadership in these difficult times by freezing the salaries of their civil servants.
Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Manitoba have all passed legislation in recent months to freeze salaries, that is, zero increases.
There have been some notable exceptions. The NDP government in Ontario is busily introducing double digit increases across the board. It has shown callous disregard for the taxpayers of Ontario and for the health of the Ontario economy.
I personally believe that the right to strike should be taken away from all public servants. I believe that all the jobs of public servants should be designated as essential services. We should not allow this chaos every few years. Strikes are too costly.
Some people, particularly small business owners, never survive. In the metro area we were burdened with a crippling TTC strike, on top of the PSAC and the Canada Post strikes.
Fortunately Canada Post workers have agreed for the time being at least to go back to work while the mediator meets with labour and management.
Once these strikes are settled, I believe we need to pause and rethink the process. There must be a better way. The economic harm inflicted by such strikes must end. The labour movement should reassess some of its outdated policies and practices. It would be very interesting to have legislation requiring a mandatory release of the public union, their executives' salaries and recent salary increases.
It would also be worth considering the merits of having all union votes, not just some, conducted by secret ballot. I believe a great deal of pressure and intimidation of fellow union members goes on now.
Government must also rethink the right to strike of Canada Post workers. I have already recommended that the right to strike be stripped away from Canada Post. It is an essential service. Strikes cause too much grief and
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havoc among seniors, veterans, charitable organizations and small businesses.
An alternative to my proposal to ban strikes at Canada Post would be to end the monopoly Canada Post now enjoys. In other words, let the private sector into the game.
The most recent comprehensive study of the problems faced by Canada Post was conducted by Alan March-ment. In his report, he recommended the privatization of the corporation if Canada Post failed to achieve its objectives of service and financial self-sufficiency in
1990.
In closing, I want to say it is disappointing that it will likely take another week to pass this legislation. I am discouraged but not surprised that the Leader of the Opposition and his Liberals and the Leader of the NDP and her New Democrats could not resist the temptation to make this debate into a political charade.
They obviously do not care about the harm being done to the average Canadians who are losing their jobs. They do not care about the economic hardships being created right across Canada. The Canadian people will not be fooled by their shallow political rhetoric.
The Leader of the Opposition will probably order his Liberal senators to stall and delay Bill C-29 as long as possible, inflicting further economic hardship on Canadians.
I have had many telephone calls and letters about the strike by PSAC. Almost all the calls and letters are supportive of the government's back to work legislation. They are against the Public Service trying to hijack the government and they are very angry and frustrated by the harm being done to them.
Let me share with you comments I had from two business people from my riding of Markham-Whitchurch-Stouffville. I recently spoke with Maureen Hyman who owns a business in my riding. She has struggled throughout the recession to keep her family business alive. Miss Hyman is growing very frustrated with the strikes that are plaguing Canada.
She says that this country is in total chaos. She says that the notion of job security especially during difficult
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economic times is ludicrous. Nobody should have job security. Where is their job security in the private sector? Nobody should be given a job for life. That is total nonsense. Miss Hyman does not believe that workers should be given the opportunity to strike and disrupt the lives of Canadians.
I also heard from Joseph Wileman who lives and works in my riding. He called me to express his disapproval with the position taken by PSAC to strike. Mr. Wileman who was a public servant years ago insists that the Public Service should not be unionized.
They may not get a pay raise right now, but their job security more than makes up for that. He went on to say that they have a job, and they should be quite satisfied.
People in the private sector take a pay cut when a recession hits. Just this morning, Grant Heichert telephoned from Stouffville. He was upset with the union. He said: "If the union refuses to comply with the legislation, the union should be banned and broken up. If the workers refuse to go back, fire them".
In summary, Canadians all across the land are angry about this strike.
Here we are, just starting to recover from a severe recession; thousands of Canadians have lost their jobs, many Canadians who have jobs are worried about the security of their current jobs. They do not understand how Canada's civil servants can be so unrealistic in their pay demands.
Canadians are fed up with taxes. They blame all three levels of government, as I said a while ago. They feel angry and frustrated. They at least want their taxes which are collected to be used carefully and frugally. They certainly do not want civil servants to get salary raises at this time.
Canadians believe most civil servants are relatively well off, when you weigh such factors as job security, generous benefits and comparatively high salaries and fully indexed pensions.
This strike is creating severe economic harm. Grain farmers face the possibility of drastic cuts in cash flow because of the lack of shipping facilities; many manufacturers use the just-in-time inventory method, accord-

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ingly they have been paralysed; men and women have been forced out of work; sales have been lost.
I urge the general membership of PSAC to reconsider the unwise and insensitive leadership it is being given by its leaders. The government's offer is fair. It should have been accepted months ago. Now, because of the bad advice by Daiyl Bean, we must pass this back to work legislation this week to prevent further economic damage.
The Chairman We are still debating on clause number 2. The hon. member for Ottawa Centre.


Mac Harb: Madam Chairman, we are talking about the back to work legislation and about the bargaining between the federal government and the Public Service Alliance Union. In my view, if the minister is really interested in seeing an end to this crisis he could quite easily appoint a mediator right now and everybody would come out as a winner. The public servants will come out as winners and also the government will probably save face with the public servants as well as their families across the country, and as well with the general public.
The government is saying it did not act in bad faith and the union as well as the Public Service said yes, it was acting in bad faith. Here we go: A decision which was made by the Public Service Staff Relations Board states the following, and I will read it for the record:
Insistence on conditions precedent to negotiating terms and conditions of employment at the bargaining table is incompatible with the requirement to make every reasonable effort to negotiate a collective agreement. Accordingly, the Board declares that the employer has acted contrary to section 51 of the Act and orders the employer to comply with section 51 of the Act.
I cannot see anything that could be clearer than this statement. If anything, the government should have blushed, gone back to the negotiating table, discussed with the employees, and if it could not come to a conclusion then it should have gone to arbitration.
We heard quite a bit from the hon. members across the way on the government side about the fact that government employees are overpaid. Just for the record, survey after survey clearly states that the public servants, when it comes to their annual increase, are not in parity with the private sector increases.
For instance, in the private sector in 1989 the employees received on an average of 5.3 per cent, while the federal administration paid its employees 4.2 per cent. In 1990, the public sector on the average paid its employees 5.9 per cent, while the public servant received an average of 5.3 per cent. In 1991, the first quarter, the private sector paid on an average of 5.5 per cent, while the public servant received on the average of 5.4 per cent.
That is to say that all of those increases were somewhat lower than the inflation rate.
What is happening now? Why are the public servants complaining and why are they on strike? At issue are many of the points that the President of the Treasury Board was talking about, such as job security.
For instance, since 1984 until now there is in excess of
13,000	employees who have lost their jobs. The government continues to move in the direction of downsizing the Public Service. Many of those public servants are worried about the possibility of losing their jobs, like anyone else in any sector.
Pay equity is another concern. Despite the fact that a giant management-union committee came up with the results of a study that said that we have to get on with pay equity legislation, we have yet to see some sort of compliance with that.
There is another issue which has been raised by the public servants and that is the national rate of pay. It is surprising that most of the public servants are not paid for what they do, but for where they live. Some members still receive regional rates of pay. An electrician in Newfoundland, for example, is receiving approximately $4 less than an electrician who is doing the same job in British Columbia, which is highly unfair.
There is wage disparity. The pay for people who work in the federal government is lower than those who work in the private sector. As my colleague indicated a little earlier, a comparison between the public sector and the private sector clearly states that there is disparity. The reason for that disparity is because of the fact that the federal government's way of dealing with public servants has been underhanded.
On average a public servant receives approximately $11.73 per hour. When we look at the private sector, a labourer in the private sector-and I heard one of my
September 30, 1991

friends saying something unparliamentary perhaps, but we will deal with that later- earns approximately $14.56 per hour, up to $15.35.
If we are to compare specifics in both the public sector and the private sector, let us take for examples, secretaries, receptionists and telephone clerks. On average these people earn approximately $20,500 a year. While in the private sector on average people who do the same kind of work earn approximately $23,500. There is about $3,000 difference between what the public servant earns and what the private sector is paying.
We move on to the other side of things, professionals for instance in the Public Service. Take for example the computer programmers. On average a computer programmer in the public sector earns $42,500 a year, while his colleague in the private sector earns $46,400 a year. There is approximately $4,000 difference between what the private sector pays and what the public sector pays.
There are approximately 55,000 secretarial and clerical workers who deserve a 6 per cent pay increase and who are making almost $26,400. Most of those people, I might add, are women.
The government is saying: "My way or no way". It has offered the $500 one time lump sum to the public servants. I might add this $500 would be offered for one year and next year they will go back to their previous salary. They have been on strike now for about seven days. I would suggest that the government has already made $500 through savings because of the fact that the public servants are on strike. The government can solve the problem, but obviously it does not have any intention to do so.
Contracting out is one of the concerns that the public servants have. It is interesting to note that in 1990 the government itself admitted to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee that it did not know whether contracting out was cost effective.
My suggestion to the government is that when it is spending in excess of $5 billion of taxpayers' money it had better know whether it is cost effective. It had better know whether it is saving taxpayer's money.
This whole question of government action and inaction on this issue is cause for alarm in my constituency of Ottawa Centre where many of these people live and
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work. It is interesting to know that a poll concluded that four out of five Canadians believe they will be personally affected by cuts in government services. In many federal departments there is a need for more public servants, not less. All you have to do is go to 200 Catherine Street in my riding at 5.30 or 6 o'clock in the morning and you will be surprised to leant that there is in excess of 20 to 30 people lining up to get services from Employment and Immigration.
I would challenge my colleagues to dispute the fact that in the Department of Employment and Immigration there is need for more public servants, not less. Simply put, it is because there is an overload on the system and this is known by many of my colleagues.
A majority of 52 per cent of the Canadian public says that a reduction in the availability of federal government services due to budget cuts will have a negative affect on the future of Canada. It will because the Public Service of Canada is the most basic, fundamental infrastructure to any growth and unless you have that infrastructure in shape and in order there is no hope for anything else to function. These are the people who are making, introducing and implementing the law at the federal level.
A strong majority, which is approximately 71 per cent of the Canadian public, believes it is paying more in taxes and receiving less in services. That is certainly not because public servants are not doing their best.
Two out of three Canadians feel public employees are hard working and do an honest day of work. That is contrary to what one of my colleagues was stating a little earlier, that many public servants are fat cats. I have not seen a single fat cat public servant. If any one of my colleagues knows of a single fat cat public servant, maybe he should contact my office and let me know, or maybe he should contact the President of the Treasury Board.
We have one of the finest Public Services in the world and certainly the way we are dealing with it is not the best way.
The government should go back to the negotiating table. The Public Service wants to see the government going back to the negotiating table.
I want to ask the President of the Treasury Board one question. I know he has repeatedly answered this question by side-stepping it, by saying that he does not want to hire an arbitrator. The media asks him questions. The

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opposition asks him questions. The Public Service Alliance union has asked him the question.
I would suggest that the majority of the people would like to see the government answer this question: Why would he not proceed with the appointment of a mediator? If the mediator is to come up with a decision that the government is not happy with, it can do whatever it wants to do then. I might suggest that the reason why the government does not want to appoint a mediator is because it knows it is going to lose. It knows that based on the fact that we have been putting suggestions in this House and before Canadians the government is really not dealing with public servants the way it should be dealing with them.


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Chairman, I would like to take on some of the points that the hon. member for Ottawa Centre has raised.
I am a little bit flabbergasted by some of his statements. Being from Ottawa Centre, I would expect him to be more aware of the reality of the Public Service. He said that 13,000 employees have lost their jobs. This is not the case. We have removed positions but we have been very careful to find other jobs for the employees who are there. We have done it through attrition. It is very exceptional that members have to leave the Public Service against their will.
I would give him a number. We are one of the largest employers in Canada. We have 225,000 people working for us. From 1986 to now, I would think it is in the order of 1,500 persons who had to leave the Public Service against their will. If this is not the best job security ever, I do not think you can find it.
I think the hon. member should be very careful in making statements that we are not concerned about job security. We are.
The hon. member referred to the decision of the Public Service Staff Relations Board and he again stated that the commission had found us to have negotiated in bad faith. In all fairness, I would ask him to put the question to Mr. Ian Deans, chairman of the Public Service Staff Relations Board.
Section 51 covers two things: "bad faith" and "every reasonable effort." The union put the two questions to
the board and the board decided that we had not made every reasonable effort, but did not say that we had acted in bad faith.
We have made additional efforts, because we had 35 different meetings last week negotiating with the union. We put forward offers to them that were not even considered. That is why I do not see the point of continuing this process.
He has given us numbers with respect to the private sector. Would the civil servants of Canada like to have the same treatment as was given to thousands and thousands of Canadians during the recession who lost their jobs, who had to re-open their collective agreements in order to maintain their companies' competitiveness and to try to weather the recession.
We have been very fair. Of course, zero per cent is not what they deserve, but it is what this country can afford at this particular time, and it is also showing a sign of concern about what is happening across the country.
When you say that in 1981 settlements in the private sector were at 5.5 per cent, for those who found the settlement, but in the first two months 146,000 Canadians would have loved to have a zero per cent offer.
He said we should need more public servants. Do we need to raise taxes, increase the deficit, borrow more money? Companies that are in opposition just fold up because they cannot afford to continue. We continue because we are a government. But we cannot overdo it. We have to be very careful not to go beyond a certain capacity. Otherwise, it is our very capacity to continue to maintain a good, strong public service that would be threatened.
Just remember that next year the interest only on our debt will be $41 billion. This is money that we do not have, that it is not possible to use for salaries, services to Canadians. We could increase it to $43 billion. For every dollar we get, 35 cents goes to servicing the debt. We can let it go to 50 cents or 53 cents, and what would happen then to the civil service?
So we need to balance this. We felt that at this time in the recession, when we made the budget, we had to look ahead and make sure that the government was sending out the right signals, and was making decisions that would help the economy pick up again, as it is doing now.
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The hon. member says we should go back to the negotiating table. I would tell him that we have negotiated for 60 days. We have been in conciliation for 30 full days. We came back to the table after the strike for 35 meetings, and never did we get an offer from PSAC. In any case, they are the ones who left the table, not us.


Andrée  Champagne: There are only three minutes left. The hon. member for Ottawa Centre.


Mac Harb: Thank you, Madam Chairman. I hope the President of the Treasury Board is not suggesting it is normal to try and reduce the deficit by bearing down on those in the public sector who earn less than $30,000.

I hope very much that the President of the Treasury Board is not trying to solve the deficit question by attacking the public servants' salaries. As he knows, the money that the government pays to the public servant does not account for more than 12 per cent. In fact, it is less than 12 per cent of the total expenditure.
He alluded to the fact that next year we are going to have a deficit of $40.5 million. I hope that figure is not accurate. We have been hearing that the deficit was going to be reduced this year.


An hon. member:: It was reduced. Interest on the debt.


Mac Harb: Interest on the debt, okay. I will take this one back.
In any event, the 13,000 jobs we are talking about were lost. Whether somebody has been laid off or fired is irrelevant. Those jobs that were there are no longer there, so the people who have been doing them could be on UI or on the welfare roll.
I would like to ask the minister how he can justify penalizing 55,000 people in the Public Service who are earning less than $30,000 a year? How could he have the heart to expect those people to bite the bullet? The inflation rate was in excess of 5 per cent over the past year or so. There is no guarantee the inflation rate is going to be close to zero per cent. He knows it.
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He knows as well that everything should be in line with the cost of living. Why would he just force the public servant to bite the bullet while everybody else is getting off the hook?
Why do 55,000 workers, Madam Chairman, who make less than $30,000 have to pay the price?


Andrée  Champagne: Does the hon. member wish an answer? There is not very much time.


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Chairman, the principle that they do not seem to understand on that side of the House is that there is something called the "capacity to pay".
When we arrived in government in 1984, for every dollar that was coming in, the government was spending $1.33. You can be popular with the Public Service. You can be popular with Canadians by borrowing money and spending more than you collect in taxes. We have turned that around.
We are paying the debt, and we think that by putting our House in order, we are providing a future for our Public Service. If we were not to do it, we would not be really caring for them. It would be very quickly threatened as are all our programs.
I do not agree with them at all that you do not pay into account. In which world do we live? The capacity to pay is not taken into account. We need more civil servants: I agree with him. How do we pay them, by borrowing more money? Do we go the way of Argentina, down the drain? We do not want that. We keep a balance.
It was a tough recession, and instead of letting it go with rates of interest of 22 per cent, inflation rates of 10 per cent and 14 per cent, we have taken the other direction: tighten up and leave some room for the economy to prosper. Do not take all the room that is available.
That is why we have taken this measure. It is not at all to punish anyone. It is a small contribution we are asking, compared to what Canadians have to go through. It is difficult. I understand that, but I think it is reasonable.


Andrée  Champagne: The hon. member wants to speak to clause 2?

September 30, 1991
Government Orders
I just wanted to make sure that hon. members are aware of the motion introduced earlier today, which allows amendments to be tabled. If hon. members want to know what those amendments are about, it will be necessary perhaps, at one point, to suspend debate on clause 2 and move on to other clauses.
However, I do not mean to tell hon. members what to do. I just want to refresh their memory in order to make things easier for them a little later.
The hon. member for Laval East has the floor.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Point of order, Madam Chairman.


Andrée  Champagne: The hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier has the floor on a point of order.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Madam Chairman, you just raised two important points. I do not want to interfere in any way with the hon. member's right to speak, but there is a practice which is common for Committees of the Whole and that I think we should follow in order to allow all hon. members of this House who want to table amendments to do so before supper so that we can see them, understand them and make a decision on each of those amendments.
The other point is this. I noticed that each time a member has the floor, the president of the Treasury Board takes 20 minutes, sometimes 15 minutes, to launch into a debate. He has been using this tactic since this morning. I think this is out of order.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Now listen. This is not in keeping with the usual practices of the committee of the whole. Standing Orders provide that each member has 20 minutes and the minister's answer must be included in this 20 minute period. What happened today, at least up to now, is that each time a member took the floor, the minister's answer was almost as long as the member's question. That way, fewer members will be able to participate. The minister will have to take into account the 20 minute constraint the way it used to be done.


Andrée  Champagne: I agree with the hon. member up to a point. The fact remains, I think, that when a member has the floor and wants to ask questions, he or she should keep in mind that there should be enough left for the minister to answer the question or questions. I can
understand the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier's point, but I think that, if a member speaks for 19 minutes and then asks 11 questions in a row, the minister cannot be expected to reply to all 11 questions in the minute that is left.
I think it is a matter of good will on the part of all members and I will remind the House again of the motion adopted earlier this afternoon to the effect that any amendment tabled with the Chair prior to 9:00 p.m. will be deemed proposed and be put without further debate at 10:00 p.m. Some hon. members may want to know about the contents of the amendments. So, all I had in mind when I suggested that we move on to other sections was to allow members who had made amendments to tell us about them in their speeches.
Resuming debate, on section 2 still. The hon. member for Laval-Est.


Mr. Vincent Della Noce (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State and to Minister of Multiculturalism and Citizenship):: Madam Chairman, I appreciate all the advice we have been given here today. The hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier has a lot of experience and I have great respect for him, but today's debate was on things people want to talk about, like their riding and the workers they represent.
I must begin, Madam Chairman, by saying that public servants are not found only in Ottawa. I heard members from the other side who represent the Ottawa area speak today. That is well and good, but there can't be public servants only in Ottawa. There must be some in Laval, in Abitibi, in Riviere-du-Loup, in Montreal.
So I was rather amazed to see how much those people had to say. I represent Laval, which has many civil servants. I must tell you that there are five prisons in my riding. These five prisons have many public servants. They are also workers who I think do an excellent job and are very unhappy about getting no increase. The only thing I can tell those people listening to us and who will read what I say is that I too am getting no raise. We are in the same boat. So what many people said is untrue, and I see the hon. member get up with a smile on her lips. She was the first to-I listened to the radio today; they were all public servants who called in and were asked whether they agreed with the strike. Certainly, they sometimes gave themselves away when they talked. They said that the government was stepping on them. That proves right
September 30, 1991

away that they are people who work as public servants. They were asked to answer the survey.
The hon. member even mentioned in some of her questions that MPs had voted themselves generous increases and then froze salaries. How many times have we heard that? How many times, and people believe it because someone said so.
Well, I would like to tell people that MPs here have gone backward, not forward, since 1984: they had an average annual increase of 2.9 per cent compared to inflation of 4.3 per cent.
Those of us who have been here since 1984 and made the calculations, taking into account the cost of living and the increases received, have found that the loss in salary is $7,000. But that is alright, we are just members of Parliament. I know many people will be delighted to hear that. As I stated in an radio interview this afternoon: "The listemers will be happy to hear that members of Parliament, ministers and even the Prime Minister are affected by the wage freeze. Figure that, we are all in the same boat."
I heard horror stories today, Madam Chairman. People come to see us at our offices and tell us: "We want to work." Some people are on strike, and they have the right to be. But others are not and want to go to work but are being prevented.


An hon. member:: Day in and day out.


Vincent Della Noce: Day in and day out, they are threatened. I was talking earlier, outside, to a fellow whose wife was threatened when she showed up for work. "Should she go in tomorrow? he asked me." My answer was: "Let her go to work tomorrow. I will escort her myself." Imagine, threatening people because they want to go to work!
The funny part of it Madam Chairman, is that people come to us and say: "I used to work for Air Canada, but I lost my job. I would certainly take a zero per cent increase."
Others worked for Canadian or other airlines and lost their jobs. They tell us: "I would sign a ten-year contract at zero per cent, just to have a job." That is when it dawned on me, Madam Chairman.
I have been in politics since 1984 and meet people at my office all the time, like everyone else.


An hon. member:: Day in day out!
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Vincent Della Noce: When they came to us. I ask them:"What can I do for you?" A common answer is: "I want a job, but I want to work for the federal, provincial or municipal government." Why? "Because I want job security." That is when it dawned on me that it is not so much a job that they want, but rather a position, a place where they are safe. That is what they are after, because they know that when you work for the government, there may be a zero per cent wage increase, but there is job security and many other marginal benefits.
So, people want two things: some want to go to work and others want a position. The concept of jobs seems to have disappeared. Yet, in my riding, people do want jobs and would be ready to accept increases below zero per cent to get one.
Remember what happened in Quebec. When I hear the Bloc on the other side say outside now, and the member for Hull, who is with the Bloc, whose leader cut Quebec public servants not 0, not 5, not 10, not 15, but 20 per cent. Today they are in bed together. They sit next to each other holding hands and embracing. Fine press conferences together. But do they really take the people for fools?
The member for Hull says anything, anywhere in any way, although public servants had their pay cut by 20 per cent.


An hon. member:: He is not here.


Vincent Della Noce: He is not here? He will be back soon.
So, Madam Chairman, many people here today are talking in favour of the public servants, but I think it has much more to do with vote getting. Everyone wants to protect his own bailiwick, especially the members from Ottawa.
Today, I listened to an open-line radio show, just to find out. Of maybe 37 calls, 36 came from public servants, who were asked whether they agreed with the strike. They said, "Of course. The government is squeezing us. The Treasury Board President lied to us." However, if anyone behaved correctly, it was the Treasury Board President. The minister accepted everything. He put the bill on hold. He agreed with the NDP. He agreed with the Liberals. They agreed. There was a chance it might work. It did not. Now, what do we see on television-unfortunately, I saw it too-violence. I saw Daryl Bean say that there would be violence. He was the first to break down the door at the entrance here, even

September 30, 1991
Government Orders
though it is not his property. Daryl Bean used to be a mechanic. It hurts me to see people like that.
In my riding, for example, residents of Laval called us and still call us every day to say, "Send a message to the President of Treasury Board. Tell him not to give up and to maintain order." They have a good job. It is true that they deserve more; we also deserve more here. Everyone deserves more. But where will you get the money? There is no more money. The bag is empty. It is finished.
So what must we tell people? Be glad we saved 6,000 jobs. Air Canada employees in Laval would have liked to keep their jobs. They liked their jobs.
I see people who are glad that MPs' salaries were finally frozen. I told my son to take my MP card and to tell the director that I was a member of Parliament and that my salary had been frozen. But my son had to pay $1,500 nevertheless. I do not know if the director misunderstood him, or if he does not like members of Parliament, but my son, who is attending the University of Montreal, must pay $1,500 and not $500. It happened that my salary had been frozen too. That is most unpleasant. Such a freeze is not pleasant for the Public Service, and it is not pleasant for me neither.
That is not pleasant to see violence. I have organized strikes myself and I use it to put the baseball bats under the truck. There is always room for negotiation.
I would ask my colleague from Toronto, who has some lessons to teach me, to cool down. And I would suggest to him to go outside to calm down the civil servants instead of boosting them up because you are the one who are boosting them up instead of telling them the truth. Go and tell them to calm down. They have a good job and they should stick to it. It is not a job, it is a position. They have all the job security in the world!
They were negotiating and the President of the Treasury Board made a generous offer to them. Mr. Bean, whe should be called "Uncle Bean", had saved face. Mr. Bean came along and then left the table, all of sudden, and we would be the ones who are dishonest? The civil servants say that the government is dishonest. Who left
the table first? Is it the government? No, it is them who quit first.
Let us talk about the poor hon. members! We hear nothing but falsities here. I see unkindness and falsities when I hear those Hon. members say here that we have voted -And they give, as an example, the $80,000 bonuses! But they did not mention that those people had seen their salaries cut by 15 per cent, so that we could be in a position to give them bonuses if they were doing a good job.
I have always been with the private sector and I suggest that a man who works hard deserves a bonus. I am not against bonuses. But even the bonuses were frozen, as the minister has explained once more this afternoon. He said that it was a zero freeze for everybody. There will be no bonuses!
I have seen some extraordinary things since this morning. I heard civil servants repeat again and again that it was the government's fault. The opposition did such a good job at that, and I include the Bloc Quebecois, that if the Montreal stadium is falling part, it is Mulroney's fault there too. It is not him who sold the cement! I know who sold the cement to build the stadium, and it is not Brian Mulroney.
For some of my colleagues, it is always the fault of the poor guy who tries to fix up the mess you left us with. Somebody said, this afternoon, that we should have fixed that problem after 7 years of government. But the mess is so big that it will take more than 7 years to straighten things up, it will take another 20 years before we can pay up the debts we have inherited from you. Seven years is not long enough! The interest rates were so high- they had reached 13.5 per cent. You have not been in business much! Personally I have been in business for 25 years. Management is important.
I was talking about essential services. What is this nonsense about essential services? Who gives essential services? It is a joke. Let's go and see in the hospitals if they give you essential services. Let Mr. Bean go and see if his brother or his father were there! He would see what services are not provided to our senior citizens. Where are essential services for those who are in need? Nails have been thrown on the ground, people have been beaten, and pushed, essential services are provided- It is utter nonsense! There is no such thing as essential services. They tell people if you go back to work your
September 30, 1991

name will go up on the wall and next week we will give you a wallopping. I am looking forward to seeing these people. I cannot wait for the names to be out. Some people have the right to strike, others have the right to work, because their heart is still in their work.
Back home, we often heard people say: we were called- I do not know if they go to work, but send them back to work. The least we could do is send them back to the office! You know what people say: I am sorry you had to hit them with a law- You can take a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. But at least we are going to try. We are going to keep them from in front of the offices, because they are bothering those who still want to work, who still take their work to heart. I know some people in my riding office who give 110 per cent to their work. They come in at 5 a.m. to help our people. Those people want to work, let them be! If you do not want to work, step aside, stay on the grass, the weather is fine, Indian summer will be here soon. But these people say: Tell the minister to push, not to draw back, we are behind him. They say everyone is in favour of this strike, and that is not true. They will not shoot at each other. Come on! They have not reached such an extreme. But they shot themselves in the foot when they quit the bargaining table.
As the minister explained it so well this afternoon, they have settled for a freeze of zero per cent in Nova Scotia. That freeze has been ruled. In the Province of Quebec, a few years ago, the chief of the Bloc Quebecois settled once for 20 per cent less than what we can offer. Wage settlement has been less than 2 per cent in Saskatchewan, it is zero in Manitoba; and it is zero per cent for six months and less than 3 per cent for 1992 in Quebec. It has been zero per cent in Newfoundland, zero per cent in New Brunswick, and a limitation has been imposed upon wage increases in British Columbia. That is to say that some people understood before we did that that policy was necessary. Everybody has abided by the agreement and everybody is treated equally. You think that the unemployment rate is only-
Earlier today, I was looking at some information with my colleague from Abitibi, who said that in his riding, the unemployment figure is 12 per cent; it is 13.1 per cent in Lac-Saint-Jean and 14.8 per cent in Gaspe and we are talking at ways to go through some difficult times as far
Government Orders
as unemployment rates are concerned. There are eight areas; we find that one region, among others, has been hit for quite a while, and that is the important region of Montreal and Laval.
My colleague from Saint-Leonard is always making references to Montreal, but he never talks about Laval. He did not say that Laval sits just next to Montreal. There are always some windfalls, either economically positive or negative, but Montreal is often mentioned as the area. But when we talk about Montreal, as does my colleague, we must include Laval. It is true that we have gumption in Laval, and that we do not have the NPD style, that is to hate money and love the guy. We like everything, and if the guy has some money to invest at home, he is very much welcome. We have an extraordinary and enterprising mayor, and we are on the go!
There are some people in Montreal that do not see business that way! There has been some problems. My colleague from Saint-Leonard submitted to us a whole list of problems. He quoted every articles on that subject that has been published for the last six months. He did a good job at it since he told the truth, but he forgot conviently to mention the Merck Frosst Project. He did not mention that article, since it is positive news on a 300 job and $300 million project. He has also mentioned refineries. He said that four refineries closed their doors in Montreal. We are not responsible for the dismantling of those refineries. It is Marc Lalonde's policy, his Energy Program that did it. He closed 11 refineries in Canada, including the four plants located in Montreal. Things cannot go well with such a policy. It is obvious that they will be a little worst.
But in conclusion here today, Madam Chairman, allow me to quote the editorial in La presse of September 30 where Pierre Gravel says: "Considering the actual economic situation, aggravated by the constitutional tensions, Canada cannot afford a long paralysis of its public service or its disastrous effects on trade and commerce industries already in bad shape. So, the government must have the courage to go all the way and to pass as soon as possible a special law suspending the right to strike and establishing the working conditions in the public service." That is exactly what business people and industries at home told me: "The situation is bad enough already.

September 30,1991
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Leave us alone with your pressures and your strike! We can no longer stand this." And they are right.
When you know that the average civil servant, a member of the Public Service-one who has a position, not a job-is earning $33 500, while, back home, the average worker who has a job, not a position, no security, nothing, earns $27 000 and, watching the whole show on television, he does not appreciate it very much. He does not consider that as a joke, and he phones me, so that I will tell the minister to go ahead and sock it to them! We have nothing against these public servants; they do a great job. I say it and I will repeat it, again and again; they serve Canada well, better than ever before. But one thing must be clear: more money means more taxes. When you ask people to give more in taxes, do not ask members in Ottawa, do not ask civil servants, but ask the unemployed at the other end, who pay taxes. Ask them if they agree to give more. I can tell you that a lot of people must be saying: we are fed up with taxes, we pay too much, there have been too many tax hikes, that is enough! You must start cutting back. But where?
We must start putting our own house in order. So, if people can be more businesslike and less political, maybe this country will fare better. If we don't fight the deficit, we become violent, we have confrontation, that is all we do instead of solving problems like a businessman should do, that is, if you earn $1000 a month, you cannot spend $3500. The manager becomes an extraordinary friend, he comes knocking at our door to visit us. The first month, everything is fine, the second month, it is not as good and the third month, he takes everything away, leaving us nothing. That's life. Of course, the government cannot go bankrupt. But it was very clear to people like Pierre Gravel, a well known journalist in Montreal, who knows what he is talking about. Then, he does not always agree with the government.


An hon. member:: Not often!


Vincent Della Noce: But there is one thing. He said: Let's get going, guys, it's urgent, because there are people who desperately need services, and there are people who want to travel. Today, someone was asking about air transportation. Transportation is taking a nose dive. It is not just in Montreal or Toronto, it is a global phenomenon. But now, we are making it lose still more ground; it will break down completely if things go on like they have, if we stop people from travelling, those who still have the
courage or the money to do so. But think about those who are out of a job in the regions of Gaspe, Abitibi, Bellechasse-


An hon. member:: Temiscamingue.


Vincent Della Noce: -Temiscamingue, everywhere, in Trois-Rivieres, these people are wondering what civil servants have to complain about and why the NDP stands up for them. No wonder.


An hon. member:: They are the ones who have organized that!


Vincent Della Noce: For violence, there are strike organisers. But there is no blood, and they are not happy, so there will be some, soon. Carry on, there will be some. But when there is, you will be the first ones to try to wipe it off.
Such things make no sense. That is what the people in my riding tell me. That is why no one voted for you there, and they probably never will, because the people want jobs, and they don't like it when you prevent them from working. It is not the government who prevents them from working. It is other people who want to protect not their job, but their union, their position. They prevent others from working to gain strength. I was listening to them on television, this afternoon-


Andrée  Champagne: I am sorry, but I must interrupt the hon. member. His time is up.
It being 6 o'clock, shall I rise, report progress, and request leave to consider the bill again later this day or at the next sitting of the House?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Progress reported.

It being six o'clock p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 45(6) the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred division on Bill C-32, an act to amend the Canada Assistance Plan.


CANADA ASSISTANCE PLAN
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Friday, September 27, consideration of the motion of Mr. Mazankowski that Bill C-32, an act to amend the Canada Assistance Plan,
September 30, 1991
[Stage Direction]
be read the second time and referred to Legislative Committee F; and the motion of Mr. Vincent (p. 2536).
Madam Deputy Speaker:: Call in the members.


PAIRED-MEMBERS
[Stage Direction]
Anawak	Blondin
Callbeck	Collins
Cooper	Edwards
Kaplan	MacLaren
Redway	Worthy
Madam Deputy Speaker:: I declare the motion carried. [Translation]


Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member for Saint-Leonard on a point of order.


Alfonso Gagliano: Madam Speaker, I think there could be unanimous consent so that the vote we just had on second reading and referral to the Legislative Committee of Bill C-32, an Act to amend the Canada Assistance Plan, be equally applied to the motion by the Minister of Transport for third reading of Bill C-ll, an Act to amend the Railway Act.

September 30, 1991
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Mr.   Benoit@: Madam Speaker, I agree provided that it be indicated that I voted against C-ll.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Madam Speaker, there would be agreement on the government side to have that applied. I would also like to take the opportunity to remind members that at the conclusion of Committee of the Whole at ten o'clock this evening the voting will start but there will be no bell. It is a very unusual procedure. Members perhaps should be reminded that there will be no bell at ten o'clock.
Madam Deputy Speaker I thank the hon. government Whip.
The House has heard the terms of the suggestion made by the hon. member for St. Leonard. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


An hon. member:: No.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Everyone has noted the dissension of the hon. member for Rosemont.



[Stage Direction]
Anawak
Callbeck
Cooper
Kaplan
Redway
Blondin
Collins
Edwards
MacLaren
Worthy
September 30,1991
[Stage Direction]
Government Orders
Madam Deputy Speaker:: I declare the motion carried.
Bill read the second time and referred to Legislative Committee F.


RAILWAY ACT
[Stage Direction]
Scott (Victoria-Haliburton)
Siddon
Soetens
Stevenson
Tetreault
Thompson
Tremblay (Quebec-Est)
Van De Walle Vezina Weiner Wilbee
Shields
Sobeski
Sparrow
Tardif
Thacker
Thorkelson
Tbrner (Halton-Peel)
Vankoughnet
Vien
White
Wilson (Etobicoke Centre) -120

[Stage Direction]
++NAYS
The House resumed from Friday, September 27, consideration of the motion of Mr. Corbeil that Bill C-ll, an act to amend the Railway Act (grain and flour subsidies), be read the third time and passed.

[Stage Direction]
Anawak
Callbeck
Cooper
Kaplan
Redway
Blondin
Collins
Edwards
MacLaren
Worthy
Madam Deputy Speaker:: I declare the motion carried. Bill read the third time and passed.

September 30, 1991
Government Orders
PUBLIC SECTOR COMPENSATION ACT	[Translation]


MEASURE TO ENACT
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration in committee of Bill C-29, an act respecting compensation in the public sector of Canada and to amend another act in relation thereto-Mrs. Champagne in the chair.
On Clause 2-Definitions
Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Madam Chairman, I rise on a point of order. You may remember earlier this day we passed a motion to set in place a somewhat different way of proceeding in Committee of the Whole to allow every member of the House the opportunity to make sure that any amendments they had for this piece of legislation would be put to the House before the close of business this day and have a chance to be voted on.
Because it is 6.30 p.m. and we are still on Clause 2, there have been discussions and I think you would find a predisposition, Madam Chairman, to next recognize the member of the Official Opposition who would be in a position to explain to the House a series of amendments which have or will be tabled with the Table shortly so that they are available to all members. There would be some explanation of that, followed by a representative of the New Democratic Party who would do likewise for its amendments.
There may be other members of the House who have tabled amendments and would like to explain them. We could conclude with the President of the Treasury Board who could explain his amendments and respond to any of the others that he chose to at that point. Then I think we would be in a position to move through clause 3, clause 4, and sort of speed it up a little. Hopefully members would then be disciplined in their questions and their responses to the clauses under consideration.
From that point on, those who had more general comments to make on clause 2 might find that opportunity as early as tomorrow on third reading stage. It might be more appropriate for 20-minute speeches to take place at that point and enable us to be targeted between now and seven o'clock, more specifically on proposals for amendment that could come from anywhere in the House.
I think that predisposition exists.


Alfonso Gagliano: Madam Chairman, I would like to confirm that indeed there were discussions before the vote. It was agreed that a member from each party would introduce various amendments, as well as any other member who would wish to do so, in order that we can continue the debate and explain all of the amendments before 10 o'clock.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: There were discussions and the proposal as put by the government Whip is acceptable to the NDP caucus.
I might say it is an unusual procedure, but I think it responds to an unusual situation, and for that matter an unusual interpretation of the motion which was adopted by unanimous consent earlier today.
Some of us thought at that time that it was simply a way of dealing with amendments which might not have had the opportunity to be moved from the floor, but the government had a different understanding. It has met the problem with that understanding by consenting to this particular arrangement, and I thank it for that because it will give everybody an opportunity to say what amendments they have tabled and why.


Marlene Catterall: I think, given the limit on time for debate, it is relatively important that for the rest of our discussions in Committee of the Whole all members be aware of amendments that have been or will be tabled.
I would therefore like to move the following amendments in addition to the one already moved to clause 2. The first of those amendments would be, and I move:
That Clause 3 of Bill C-29 be amended by adding immediately
after line 31 on page 3 the following:
(e) persons engaged as independent contractors.
What this does is ensure that people engaged from outside the Public Service to perform work for the Public Service of Canada are treated exactly the same as those employed within the Public Service.
We in the Official Opposition see no reason for limiting employees of the government, whether term employees or continuing employees, to no salary increase for a year and only 3 per cent for the following year and for providing preferential treatment to persons engaged as independent contractors performing the same work. If the government were serious about fiscal restraint then surely that fiscal restraint applies to people hired from outside to perform the same work.
September 30, 1991

This offers opportunity for even more savings because independent contractors constitute a larger amount of spending at $5 billion than the entire payroll of the Public Service Alliance of Canada with which the government is now in dispute.
With respect to my next amendment, hon. members might wish to insert my proposed new clause 5 immediately after line 2 on page 4, following clause 4 and before the existing clause 5 of Bill C-29. The proposed clause 5 now deals with pay equity and reads as follows. I move:
That Bill C-29 be amended by adding after line 2 on page 4 the following:
5.	(a) Forthwith on the coming into force of this act
(i)	Treasury Board shall revise the classification system to incorporate fully into pay scales the compensation now paid to certain employees and groups of employees as equalization payments in respect of pay equity;
(ii)	Treasury Board will cease all actions before the Human Rights Commission in opposition to the Commission's ruling on any matter related to equal pay for work of equal value.
(b) One year after the coming into force of this Act, the Treasury Board shall revise classifications as necessary to implement full pay equity as agreed to between the Treasury Board and bargaining agents for the employee.
(c) For any employee or group of employees for which the Treasury Board and the bargaining agents have not been able to reach agreement pursuant to section 5(b) on new classifications to implement equitable pay scales, all disputes will be deemed immediately referred to the Human Rights Commission for binding resolution.
To put in simple terms what this accomplishes, it takes an archaic provision whereby the government provides token payments to female dominated groups of employees in lieu of fully equivalent salary. They are token payments. Equalization payments are not pay equity. Only pay incorporated in the salary scale is pay equity.
With respect to the amounts required to implement that, the amount available for pay equity is already being paid in equalization payments. It could just as easily be incorporated for the same amount into salary scales, and
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one of the conciliation board reports has already determined that the government has set aside money for that.
This further provides that full pay equity will be implemented within one year after the coming into force of this act for a number of groups and employees for which pay equity is in dispute. After 14 years, it seems to me it is time to do that.
This amendment is put forward because the bill specifically contains provisions to allow for the implementation into the classifications of pay equity. This is an amendment to those provisions, but more from the point of view that the Official Opposition does not believe that pay equity is negotiable. It is the law. It is a right. It is not an item to be negotiated against any other consideration.
The fourth amendment I put forward is:
That Bill C-29 be amended by deleting everything after line 3 on page 4 and substituting the following therefor:
Forthwith, on the coming into force of this act, the chair of the Public Service Staff Relations Board shall name a mediator acceptable to both parties who will endeavour to mediate all matters referred to the mediator and to bring about agreement between the parties;
6.	The Chair shall refer to the mediator all matters relating to the compensation plan for any employee or group of employees covered by this act which has expired and for which no new compensation plan has been established.
7.	The mediator shall report to the chair on the resolution of all such matters on the date fixed by the board.
The effect of this amendment is to delete all the provisions of this act relating to the imposition of a wage freeze and wage controls and to delete all provisions of the act that suspend collective bargaining rights for employees of the Government of Canada.
It is also to substitute for those provisions the establishment of a mediation process to lead to the resolution of all matters in dispute.
The fifth amendment is:
That Bill C-29 be amended in clause 7 on page 4 by deleting line 33 and substituting the following therefor:
What this does is change a provision that the Canadian Human Rights Act, as it might apply to any of the provisions of this act, is superseded by or, in the words of the bill, "subject to the act".

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In the view of the Official Opposition, the Human Rights Act should not be subject to the provisions of this act, because this act is contrary to the provisions of the Human Rights Act. Therefore, we move:
That line 33 on page 4, be deleted and the following substituted therefor:
Rights Act, the terms
Therefore, deleting the part which would subject the Canadian Human Rights Act to this bill once enacted.
Motion No. 6 refers to clause 8, on page 5.
That Bill C-29 be amended in clause 8, by deleting line 42 on page 5 and substituting the following therefor:
award, including wage rates and other terms.
What this does is amend clause 8, which prevents any provisions relating to wage rates or conditions of compensation being included in any agreement that may be reached by arbitration or collective agreement. We believe that wage rates and other terms should be arbitrable or subject to collective bargaining.
The seventh amendment and second last, refers to clause 10, page 6. The amendment is:
That Bill C-29 be amended in clause 10 by deleting lines 20 through 42 on page 6, and substituting the following therefor:
10(a) by such amounts as are agreed upon by the parties as a result of collective bargaining.
What that does is take out an imposed settlement and allows for the possibility of compensation plans being implemented that are reached as a result of collective bargaining.
The final amendment I propose:
That Bill C-29 be amended in clause 11, on page 7, by deleting lines 14 through 22 and substituting the following therefor:
11(1) The previous compensation plan and wage rates may be adjusted by such amounts as are agreed upon by the parties as a result of collective bargaining and any wage rates so adjusted shall
The effect of that is to allow for the inclusion of compensation as agreed to in collective bargaining in collective agreements.
I table a copy of these amendments and commend them to the House. I particularly urge the government to look seriously at those clauses relating to pay equity and
to agree, after 14 years of a Human Rights Act in this country, that pay equity is not a bargaining chip.


Joy Langan: Madam Chairman, on behalf of the New Democratic caucus I would like to table amendments, starting with the amendment on clause 3.
That clause 3 be amended by striking out lines 13 to 42 and that
clause 3 be further amended by striking the word "not" at line 43.
The reason for this amendment is that we feel very strongly that this act is far too broad. The application of the act is including and sweeping in everybody who may have any remote connection to the federal government. It is certainly far too broad under the act.
We feel very strongly about subclause (4) "For greater certainty this act does not apply to persons engaged as independent contractors".
We want to take the word "not" out, because we feel very strongly that independent contractors would be excluded from this act, when you could have two people working side by side, one earning a different salary than the other, and certainly one getting an increase and the other not.


An hon. member:: Well, one is Brian's political friend.


Joy Langan: Well, it might be the Prime Minister's political friend. We very strongly feel that those amendments should take place.
Under clause 5, we suggest that subclause 5.(1) be amended by an addition at line 11 of "with the exception of a mediated mutually agreed upon settlement having been arrived at before or after proclamation of this act."
Obviously, what that means is that we feel very strongly that one further step in collective bargaining has been missed by this government with its mediation, and that if mediation were undertaken and achieved after the act is passed, obviously the act would become redundant.
We urge the government and other hon. members to seriously consider this amendment.
In addition, under subclauses 5.(1) and 5.(2) we would like to put a new amendment, that subclauses 5.(1) and 5.(2) would have no force or effect should a mediated
September 30, 1991

settlement be arrived at. Again, we feel very strongly that the minister should be appointing a mediator and that the minister should be taking those steps.
Under clause 6 the amendment we have would say that clause 6 should be amended by adding at line 30 on page 4 the following:
-with the exception of a mediated, mutually agreed upon settlement having been arrived at before or after the proclamation of this act.
A new subclause 6.(1) "that proposed section 6 would have no force or effect should a mediated settlement be arrived at."
The reason is because these clauses spell out the time frames and who is in and who is out, and when they are in and when they are out, and we want to make very clear that we believe a mediation should take place and that if a mediated settlement is achieved that these people should not be further penalized.
Under clause 7 our amendments are that clause 7 be amended by adding immediately following line 42 on page 4 "for greater certainty any order by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal respecting pay equity in the federal public service shall be exempted from the application of this act."
We feel very strongly as do others on this side of the House, in the Official Opposition as well as our caucus, about negotiating something that is already law and having it subjected to human rights tribunals because the minister does not implement it, and then being further subjected to appeal before that tribunal. We would like to see in this legislation clarification that that will not take place and that pay equity will be implemented.
Regarding clause 7, clause 7 be amended by replacing the word "may" with the word "shall", at line 43 at page 4. Everybody is aware, I think, that the word "shall" compels the minister as opposed to "may" which leaves considerable discretion on the part of the minister.
We would ask that the amendment on clause 7 at line 43 on page 4 be changed to read:
The Treasury Board shall change any terms and conditions of a
compensation plan that is extended-
We then asked the minister, in a further amendment:
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That clause 7 be amended at line 5 on page 5 by striking out the
words "in the opinion of the Treasury Board".
The reason that we are asking that the lines "in the opinion of the Treasury Board" be struck is that we do not think the Treasury Board should have discretionary opinions. We feel very strongly that once a collective agreement is arrived at, it should be mutually arrived at by two parties. That should be sufficient and Treasury Board should not be overruling. Again under clause 7, line 10 on page 5, we are asking to replace the word "may" with the word "shall".
The final one is on clause 7, that it be amended at line 28 on page 5 by striking out the word "not", which is:
The Teasury Board may not make or authorize any increase in
wage rates pursuant to subsection (3) or (4) that is not in accordance
with section 10.
We believe that collective bargaining should provide a circumstance under which this can take place.
The amendment under clause 8 is that at line 42 on page 5 we strike out the words "other than wage rates or other terms and conditions of the compensation plan". We believe that a freely negotiated and ratified collective agreement should be respected.
Under clause 9 the first amendment would be at line 5 on page 6. We would strike striking the word "not". The reason for that is that we do not agree there should be 12 months following the introduction of the 0 per cent. We believe that the wages again should be freely negotiated.
Then that clause 9 be further amended at line 7 on page 5 by an amount equal to the Canadian Consumer Price Index for the immediately preceding year. It probably is pretty evident to everyone who is listening why we would have put that in rather than a 0.
Clause 9 be amended at line 11 by striking out the words "three per cent" and inserting immediately following by "an amount equal to the Canadian Consumer Price Index for the immediately preceding year."
Again we believe that 3 per cent should not be a pre-condition, but that we should at least be negotiating within the framework of the cost of living.
That clause 9 be amended by the addition of a new subsection (3):

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Notwithstanding any other act of Parliament, but subject to section
11, every compensation plan for employees to whom this act applies
shall be deemed to include a no layoff provision.
I think that clause speaks for itself.
We would ask that clause 12 be amended at line 36 on page 7 by replacing the term "Treasury Board" with the words "Public Service Staff Relations Board"; that clause 12, subsection (2) be amended at line 42 on page 7 by replacing the words "Treasury Board" with the words "Public Service Staff Relations Board"; and that clause 12, subsection (3) be amended at line 1 on page 8 by replacing the words "Treasury Board" with the words "Public Service Staff Relations Board".
We really believe very strongly that it would be far more appropriate for the Public Service Staff Relations Board to be overseeing the administration of collective agreements for the public sector than to be having Treasury Board, a more political body, overseeing collective agreements.
The amendment to clause 13 would be that clause 13 be amended at line 10 on page 8 by striking out the word "no". Again it is in response to our belief that a freely negotiated agreement should be honoured and bargainers should be going to the table without pre-condition or prohibition.
Clause 14 be amended at line 36 on page 8 by inserting immediately following "are" the words "being forced". Clause 14 would then read:
(a) to fail to give notice to employees participating in the strike that they are being forced to resume the duties of their employment immediately;
I think that clause speaks for itself.
On clause 20, that clause 20 on page 9 be amended by striking out all words following the word "Majesty" on line 27. The reason for that is that we believe veiy strongly that there is a slight conflict between having an organization fined for failing to comply with the law and then the employer receiving the fines. We believe that section 20 should be amended as stated.
The final clause that we have an amendment for is:
That clause 25 be amended by inserting at line 29, on page 11,
immediately following the word "force", the following:
only once the report of an independent mediator is received by the minister. If the report of the mediator is refused by the minister, this act will not come into force.
Again we believe that a mediated solution would be the appropriate solution and that a mediator should be able to bring both parties together to a mutually agreed to solution.
The final amendment is:
That clause 25 be amended by inserting sub paragraph 2, line 33 on
page 11 to read:
Notwithstanding clause 25(1), this act shall come into effect six months hence.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Are there any other members wishing to table amendments?
The Hon. President of the Treasury Board.


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Chairman, like my colleagues from the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party, I would like to propose three amendments. I will be brief since copies of these amendments have already been distributed to our colleagues who can read them. I would simply say that the first one allows us to make an exception to the rule regarding compensation so that, as I said in my speech, we could pay a lump sum of $500 to people earning less than $27,000 less than that with that sum being reduced step by step for those earning between $27,000 and $27,500.
The objective of this amendment is to make sure that it is not prohibited by the Act.
The second amendment would allow the Governor in Council to order pay adjustments, again outside the bill, up to the time when the bill received Royal Assent. What we are requesting is enough flexibility, up to the time when the bill is assented, to continue bargaining with some unions and possibly come to some agreement.
Finally, the third and last amendment, dealing with section 23 is required in order to correct a mistake, to add something which was forgotten in the French version at line 31. It adds the word "cent" before the word "trois", to read "cent trois pour cent". So I would say this is only a technical amendment to the translation.
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These are our amendments. As to the amendments proposed by my colleague from the Liberal Party, I note that the first one asks that we apply the same rule of 0, 3,
3 to independent contractors to whom we contract out.
We cannot accept that amendment because if we need, for instance, the services of a secretary who is working for that contractor, we would be forcing her employer to settle wage claims for at zero and 3 for a year, and we would go well beyond what we wish to do as an employer. We consider that this amendment is not acceptable.
In the case of the next amendments, that is amendments Nos. 5, 6 and 7, on the sheet that been handed to us, as well as amendment Nos. 10 and 11, they are all amendments linked to the mediation process and they would put us in a position of mediation. I have already explained earlier to this Elouse that the government, for the reason that I have already mentioned very clearly, did not intend to accept it.
If we proceed to the third paragraph, on page 2, we find that those amendments deal with the wage equity. I had also the opportunity today to explain why, for instance, we did not intend to withdraw our appeal before the court, because it is a very important appeal that deals with some principles. There has been a conflict between us and the other party as to the definition of the extremely important principle of wage equity, and that is why, of course, we want to maintain our prerogative and why we are not prepared to forego such prerogative as this amendment would have us to do.
I remind that amendments at the bottom of the page, that is that "Bill C-29 be amended in clause 2" etc., and "that Bill C-29 be amended in clause 7", would prevent us from granting other premiums such as the bilingualism premiums. I have a whole list of premiums -

-which are given shift premiums, weekend premiums, stand by premiums, pedagogical factor allowance, overtime meal allowance.

We made it abundantly clear that we do not want that at all when we say that premiums would be limited to zero. That is why this clause is not acceptable for the simple
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reason that we cannot limit bilingualism premiums at zero per cent. That is not our intention at all. We are talking about wages and remuneration.
As for his concern about the clause on page 4, substituting the following therefor Rights Act the terms, I would like to remind him that there may be some confusion here. The government has no intention whatsoever to avoid the human rights legislation. I believe that it is absolutely clear in the way it is stated the French version of the bill and the problem might be in the interpretation that the hon. member could legitimately make when he wondered if we intended to override that legislation. That is not the case at all. On the contrary, we said that we totally agreed that it should be subject to the Act.
In the last amendment, which is on page 3 of the document provided by my colleague of the Liberal Party, we are asked to amend clause 8 by striking out line 42 at page 5 and substituting the words "including wage rates and other terms". This would imply reopening the salary question which is precisely what we considered to be a constraint at Budget time, and we have no intention to reopen it.
As for the amendments presented by my colleague for Mission-Coquitlam, she recommends that clause 3 be amended by striking out lines 13 to 42. We do not really know by what these lines would be replaced, and it would be impossible to know to whom the law applies. Therefore, this motion is obviously unacceptable because it eliminates altogether the people to whom the law applies. We do not know anymore to which law it applies.
Amendment to clause 5 at page 5. Again, this is an unacceptable change because it focuses once more on mediation, and that we will maintain the 0 and 3. We have already said very clearly where we stood on that matter.
On clause 7, we are asked to make an addition following line 42 at page 4:

for greater certainty, any order by the Canadian Human Rights
tribunal respecting pay equity shall be exempted from the
application of this act.
This is already implicitly covered I would submit, Mr. Chairman, by the opening words which say in clause 7(1):

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7.(1) Notwithstanding any other Act of Parliament except the
Canadian Human Rights Act
Therefore, the Human Rights Act applies.
She says:
That clause 7 be amended at line 5 on page 5 by striking the words: In the opinion of Treasury Board,
This is fully within the prerogative of Treasury Board under the Financial Administration Act to deal with personnel management. This only recognizes a principle.
As for striking the word "not", we stick, of course, to the zero, three. We would only have to amend it if we were prepared to go beyond that. I think she knows very well where we stand on this.
On clause 8, she recommends that we strike the words "other than wage rates or other terms and conditions of the compensation plan."
It would cover monetary items. The purpose of this bill is precisely to prevent this occurrence.
On clause 9:
That clause 9 be amended at line 5 on page 3 by striking the word "not" by an equal amount to the Canadian consumer, not at all. We are not prepared to legislate the Consumer Price Index. I have indicated that we have to fight this and make sure that we break the vicious circle which would carry us to higher deficits, higher taxes and higher debt. We are not prepared to accept that.
That clause 9 be amended at line 11 by striking the words "3 per cent", well this is a 3 per cent year and we will hold on to that.
Another item, that clause 9 be amended by the addition of a new subparagraph, I would say that this is a wage restraint bill, not a job security bill, which can be dealt with in the proper form which is the National Joint Council.
That clause 12 replaces the words "Treasury Board" with the word "Public Staff Relations Board", I beg to remind the hon. member that this is the employer. The Public Service Staff Relations Board is an adjudicative body which does not deal with matters such as the
enforcement of an act. Sometimes I wonder, I must say, but they are supposedly an adjudicative body.


An hon. member:: Why don't you talk to the judge?


Gilles Loiselle: He said he wanted me to talk to them. I am not supposed to talk to a judge, you know. I did not. But everybody else has, it seems. I wonder.
On Clause 14, by inserting the words "being forced", this is not helpful and I do not think it would add anything to enforce penalties.
Again, Clause 25 is related to mediation. The effect of the last amendment on Clause 25 is beyond what is not in the agreement with what we are trying to achieve.

Mr. Chairman, these are roughly the amendments we are moving in an effort to tie up a number of loose ends in our bill. This is what I had to say about the proposals made by the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party. Thank you.


Joy Langan: Mr. Chairman, could the Chair please explain if we are still on clause 2, or if we are going to have an opportunity to move on to clause 3?


Steve Eugene Paproski: The Speaker is in the hands of the House and it is up to hon. members to let me know when no one else wants to discuss clause 2. In accordance with a motion passed earlier today, clause 2 will be set aside for a vote by 10 o'clock tonight. At that time, I will deal with clause 3.


Mr. Simmons:: Mr. Chairman, the member for Mission-Coquitlam has raised a point of order as to whether or not we are going to clause 3. Maybe we should remind the committee that the informal agreement we had in the House an hour or so ago, put to the House by the government Whip, was that a speaker for each of the three parties in the House, the government, the Official Opposition and the NDP, would in umbrella fashion explain and/or introduce any amendments for whatever clause.
Having done that, and that has been accomplished, we have had the member for Ottawa West, the member for
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Mission-Coquitlam, and now the president of the Treasury Board. That round is completed.
As I understand the agreement we made an hour or so ago, we now revert to our debate on clause 2.1 had risen a moment ago because I wanted to be the next speaker for the Official Opposition in that respect.


Joy Langan: Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that the member wanted to speak on clause 2. I am not challenging his right to do that.
I am not sure you were in the House when the Whip for the government side explained that in the agreement we were going to try to move through some of the other clauses after we had introduced our amendments.
I have no objection to the hon. member speaking. I just wondered if we were going to start now moving through the clauses as had been agreed by all three parties.


Mr. Kempling:: Mr. Chairman, just to clarify it. If the member for Mission-Coquitlam wants to move on to clause 3, she can merely ask that we stand clause 2 and move on to clause 3. It is straightforward.
If the member wants to speak on clause 2, then we are officially on clause 2. We have not moved off it.


Steve Eugene Paproski: I appreciate the comment made by the hon. member for Burlington, but having said this, it is nevertheless true that, since the beginning of our proceedings in committee of the Whole all hon. members dealing with clause 2 have taken this opportunity to deal with all the issues connected with that bill and I intend to keep the same flexibility and allow all hon. members to discuss clause 2 as well as any other features of the bill, when I recognize them in the House, if the House agrees. I think this formula is very flexible and allow every hon. member given the large number of people who want to participate in the debate, to discuss clause 2 as well as the other clauses of the bill.


Roger Simmons: Mr. Chairman, I have a few words to say on clause 2, and perhaps some other clauses of Bill C-29, an act respecting compensation in the public sector of Canada and to amend another act in relation thereto. That is the gentle characterization of what we are doing here today.
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I suppose it is the nature of bill drafting that one has to be fairly innocuous or genteel in putting labels on those bills. I have no difficulty with that. But let us be aware that what the government seeks to do here today is more Draconian than talking about compensation in the public sector.
I listened with great interest to the gentleman from Laval Est-

-who just made a speech. The member for Laval-est said to this House: "We have nothing against those people", meaning the civil Servants who are now on strike. I would like to tell him this: What you say and what you do are two different things.

I want to say to the gentleman from Laval Est that his actions contradict what he is saying. We have an expression that says: "your actions speak louder than your words." It is not enough for him and others to stand in this Chamber and say: "We have nothing against those people," when every single action of the government, and those who toe the line over there, indicate clearly that it must have an awful lot against these people in the union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, because how else, I say to him, can you explain the toying with them, the aggravation, the setting them up over the past few weeks?
My colleague and friend from Ottawa West raised the question today in Question Period on this very issue. She said in her first question that the government was much more concerned with its place in the polls, that these 160,000 people were pawns in a game.
If you look at the way the government has gone about this, it is a two-faced approach on this issue. The old "now you see it, now you do not" approach, the government changing the ground rules to suit its particular purpose at the time.
First, it told these employees there would be negotiations. Now it refuses to negotiate. First it said that salaries could go up, but it would mean job losses. Now it says zero increase and the job losses continue.
It is very difficult. It is always difficult to deal with a moving target. It is always very difficult when you have a government that places no stock at all in credibility, no

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stock in its word at all. To use the expression that is almost worn out, but still very revealing, a government that rolls the dice as it sees fit.
The sad result, of course, is that there are many thousands of people out there on strike in front of this building today, and countless other buildings, in Ottawa and the national capital region and across this country. Of course they are. I suppose, all of them, to a man, to a woman, do not particularly want to be there. That should come as no secret to anybody. They have been goaded into it by a government that does not care an awful lot about the pain or inconvenience it inflicts on people. It has goaded these people into this strike. It has been a contrived confrontation from the beginning.
I put it to you, Mr. Chairman, that this strategy was mapped out a long time ago. It was part of the contrivance, part of the plan, part of the way to grasp at straws, to hang on by the fingernails, to find a way for this government to redeem itself in the public eye, to play tough with a group of people, to go out there and show that there is going to be restraint, or else.
There is another side of this that needs to be put on to the record. I cannot get veiy excited about the way the government is handling this particular grievance. I heard some insinuations a few moments ago. At the same time, there is always the danger that because one criticizes one side one is thereby thought to be embracing all the actions of the other side.
I stand here representing about 85,000 or 86,000 Canadians who happen to live in the riding of Burin-St. Georges. Relatively few of those people, a mere handful of them actually, are involved as members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. I suppose, on a per capita basis, I probably have fewer people in that union than almost any other member in this Chamber. My riding is a very rural riding of 158 communities. The largest communities have a population of are 7,000 or 8,000, communities like Stephenville and Marystown and Port aux Basques. However, most of them are much smaller communities of 50, 60 or 100 people. In those communities you will not find government services. I am not saying there is an absence of services, but there is an absence of a government installation. The services are usually delivered from outside the community, from
more urban centres such as St. John's or Comerbrook, or in some cases Stephenville or Halifax or Moncton or so on. On a per capita basis we do not have a lot of PSAC people.
But that is not the issue. Surely, members of this Chamber ought not to have their participation and debate determined on that basis alone. I also represent 86,000 people, including many thousands of taxpayers, who are going to be footing the bill for whatever settlement there is here. They are going to be putting up with whatever inconvenience or lack of service during the course of this strike.
As I have said, I do not have many of those members directly in my riding. I want to give an example, just to illustrate a point I think is important.
The point I alluded to just now is that because we criticize the government, do not, anybody, be under the illusion that somehow we embrace all the activities of PSAC on this.
For example, I do not at all embrace the way it has in a very partisan way tried to politicize the entire issue. I do not embrace that at all. I am sure that comes as no secret to many people in this Chamber.
There is something else that I do not at all subscribe to. I will give a specific example. My friend and colleague from Gander-Grand Falls has a community in his riding called Gander. I happen to go through that community to use the airport on a fairly frequent basis, last Friday afternoon being one of those occasions. It was just after the union had decided to go back on the picket lines.
I arrived just after a particular incident had taken place. I was not witness to this, so it is second-hand in this situation. I was informed about it by a person at the airport who did it mainly just to make conversation with me. We were passing time together, and that individual decided to tell me about this particular incident. I want to tell the committee, because it is revealing.
An elderly woman had approached the airport in a car as a passenger late in the afternoon, hours after the picket lines went up. She was a woman in her sixties. She was to take a flight from Gander to St. John's, a 25 or 30 minute flight, to have a CAT scan, a medical examination, for her particular medical problem.
September 30, 1991

Her case was known to the people on the picket line. Her age was known, it was obvious to see. Her circumstances were known. The importance of her getting to that airport to get that flight was known.
That woman was obliged to vacate the car in which she was travelling and walk for just about a mile, carrying her luggage, to get to the airport.
What point was served? If they wanted to do that to the President of the Treasury Board, make him walk a mile to get to the airport with a suitcase, I suppose it could be considered that they are aiming at the target.
What did that poor little old woman have to do with those people getting a settlement. I think we all know the answer.
I was talking a moment ago about this government engaging in a contrived confrontation. It is like an argument, it takes two. You cannot have a confrontation unless you have people on both sides willing to engage in the confrontation.
I have to say on this one in passing, before I get on to some of the other issues in this bill, that given the example I have just put before the committee, that woman approaching Gander airport last Friday, either the union leadership is not very bright, else it is just anchoring to get legislated back to work.
I do not believe for a fraction of a second that we have to embrace all the antics that are going on out there in the name of strike action. I would hope that the union leadership would smarten up and realize it is not those little old ladies I am talking about who are the brunt of its problem, but if it wants to take it out on this government, it has a duty and a right to do so. I will be there with it.
Let us come to some of the issues, because I just wanted to set the record straight on that one. It bothers me that some of the people out there are missing the real issue here. The real issue is to inconvenience the government. The real issue is to get the message home to the government.
I doubt the President of the Treasury Board even heard about that incident until I told him just this last minute, not that he should have, but I am just saying to the union that if it thought that woman, and she was mirrored many times across the country, was going to
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bring the government to its knees, maybe it was mistaken on that one.
In this business everything is black or white. I suppose the reason I do not have a full bench of NDP members here is because they have all rushed out to call Daryl baby now, and get their latest instructions from him and tell him what little old Rog has said here in the Chamber about them. In the age of black and white, I suppose, I will now be blacklisted as a fellow who does not like unions.
I happen to like them very much. I just do not like some of their tactics. When they go interfering with the freedom of some senior citizen who wants nothing more than to get to a doctor on time, then it is time for them to have a little pow-wow and refocus on what their target is. I do not believe it is those people out there who are innocently suffering on account of some tactics of which I cannot believe for a second anybody in his or her right mind is actually approving.
I say to my NDP friends, while they are calling the union, maybe they could pass on a message or two. Maybe they could tell the union that yes, I, this member, supports pay equity. I happen to know people in my riding and people across the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and people across the country, carpenters and labourers, who are getting $4 less an hour than then-counterparts in Vancouver.
Here is a carpenter in Vancouver and he gets so much an hour for doing a job for the government. He is employed by the government, he is a civil servant, he is a member of PSAC and he is getting a certain wage in Vancouver. His counterpart in Newfoundland, doing the same thing, driving the same size nails, drawing out the same nails, squaring off the same board, using the same kind of a Skil saw, maybe wearing the same brand of overalls, is getting $4 less an hour.
What is the difference? Is the fellow in Newfoundland doing a sloppier job than the fellow in Vancouver? That is entirely possible, I suppose, because the law of averages says that you are going to have some sloppy carpenters in Newfoundland, some sloppy ones in Vancouver. You would not mind if they were paying the sloppy ones $4 less. All the carpenters in Newfoundland who work as members of the PSAC union for the government are getting that rate. What is their sin? Is

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their sin that they are sloppy, as opposed to competent? No, no, oh, no. Their sin is that they are living in Newfoundland instead of in Vancouver.
You talk about discrimination. This government is paying a carpenter in Newfoundland $4 less an hour than if that same carpenter were in Vancouver.
To extend the example, this government pays the carpenter in Newfoundland $2 less than his counterpart in Ontario. You do not need a strike. You do not need negotiations to tell you that fair is fair. This government says to women librarians that because they are women it is going to pay them several thousand dollars less. It is happening right in this city to librarians.
Again I make the point: it is not on the basis of whether they are sloppy or incompetent or thorough or experienced or a novice. Oh, no, none of the above. The only question in effect is: are you a women or are you a man? If you are a woman you get paid several thousand dollars less a year than if you were a man.
We do not need strikes. We do not need collective agreements. We do not need negotiations to settle those questions. These were settled in the minds and hearts of Canadians many, many years ago. That is addressed in one of the amendments put forward by my colleague from Ottawa West. Take those things off the table. Pay equity should not even be a negotiable item. That should be a given. The government will now say it as it should have said a long time ago, and oh, yes, it said it, the Prime Minister has said it many times. Like so many other things, he has not exactly put his money where his mouth is.
Let the government say now that it recognizes its error on this. It is not a matter for negotiation that a carpenter in Newfoundland should be paid less than one in Vancouver; that a woman librarian in Ottawa or wherever should be paid thousands of dollars less than a male librarian. That is disgusting, it is absolutely disgraceful. It is unthinkable.
Let us not get these things wrapped up in government's ability to pay. When we get to the stage in this country at which we have a government that can justify discrimination on the basis of the pocketbook, can justify using the public purse to discriminate against people because they happen to be female or happen to be living in one part of the country or another, it is time for
somebody over there to smarten up. This has nothing to do with Tory politics or right wing politics. Certainly, lowering the agenda is not that right wing. It cannot be. That has to do more with basic insensitivity, basic stupidity.
Does the President of the Treasury Board not actually have some women in his riding who voted for him at one time. Surely, he is not expecting them to vote for him again if he keeps up this nonsense.
Does he not have some carpenters, some labourers in his riding who are getting less money than they would if they were living in some other province in Canada?
If the minister had nothing going for him, only an instinct for survival, forget looking after the deficit and all the other things he is worrying about these days, if he only has an instinct for survival, an instinct to stay alive, he should rush out there and cure this one, this pay equity issue. This has nothing to do with negotiating. When you have to negotiate something like this, it shows how out of touch with reality you really are.
There are so many more things I could say about this bill, given the time. I see by the signal that my time is up. Perhaps I will get another crack at it later in the evening.


Joy Langan: Mr. Chairman, I just want to set the record straight. The hon. member who just spoke asked if the NDP was out getting our marching orders from Daryl Bean. I want to let the House know that we were getting our share of the dinner before the hon. member finished and got up to the food.


Roger Simmons: Mr. Chairman, to the legitimate point of order, as always, the member for Mission-Coquitlam, as is often the case with her, is away behind. I already had my dinner before she got to it.


Gilles Loiselle: First of all, Mr. Chairman, I would like to congratulate-


Don Boudria: Did you have your dinner?


Gilles Loiselle: No, not yet, I am still waiting for my three limousines!
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I would like to congratulate my colleague from Burin-St. George's for his remarkable performance in French. I was quite impressed when he started his remarks by answering a question from my colleague from Laval, and I invite him to do so more often. He did extremely well, indeed. He reminded us that the hon. member for Laval said we have nothing against these people, meaning public servants. In French, he said: What you say and what you do are two different things. I understand, of course, that a 0 per cent increase or a salary freeze, is not, on the face of it, the most pleasant way to tell our employees we greatly appreciate their work. That is the reason why, as the months went by, I took so much time, as did the government, to explain to our employees that was one of many measures we had to take, a difficult, painful, but still necessary decision to make. The hon. member said we have tried since the beginning-

He said it was a contrived confrontation that we had been seeking for political purposes to confront the unions. I will tell him that if one were to look at what other Liberal governments have done this year in other provinces, they have not taken the decision we have to sit down and negotiate. They have just legislated zero per cent. We chose to try and make an effort to improve it.
He said: "You have been shifting the ground rules or changing the ground rules by saying first it will be three and then it will be zero. In February, what we said was that the wage budget would remain at zero, but if we could soon enough come to some agreement where we could balance 1 per cent against 2,000 positions, we could give 1 and then 2 and then 3 per cent. It would be a very high cost. This was not considered by the union. When we sat down, and June came, it was too late. We could not find a saving within the wage budget to proceed this way. We have been, I think, very fair and very consistent. We did not change the rules.
He mentioned a lot about pay equity. I wonder where the members of that party were over the last decade. We are the government which decided in 1990 to give $370 million, in a lump sum payment, for pay equity. We have also agreed to pay, on an ongoing basis, $81 million to
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allow for catching up. We are not only talking about pay equity as they do, but we are acting. I would certainly compare our record to that of the Liberal Party any time.
He also refers to regional pay. He said it was unfair to pay carpenters in his riding less than what is paid in Toronto or in other provinces in Canada. We have a policy, in certain areas of regional pay, which seems to be fair. I do not see why the Canadian government, which gets its money from the taxpayer, should create a totally unfair competition at the regional level. We try to follow the market pressure in each area and react accordingly.
This, in my view, seems fair because we have to compete with others in that particular area. We do it, I think, as a way of managing well. This is a fair and accepted way.
On the whole, I would like to repeat in closing, we have not chosen confrontation. Far from it. We have chosen negotiation. It is sad that finally the union, as it said the day before the budget: "We are never going to accept this if they so decide to freeze our wages. We are going to go on strike," and they said: "This is a political strike."
It is their problem. For us it is not a political decision. It is a good sound fiscal decision we have taken.


Mr. George S. Baker (Gander-Grand Falls):: Mr. Chairman, I have just a couple of words for the minister. I could not help but interject after the minister stated a moment ago that it is okay to pay people in the Public Service less in the province of Newfoundland, for example, or Nova Scotia, or New Brunswick or Prince Edward Island than people are paid in a similar job in other parts of Canada.
In other words, what the minister has just said is that one's wage rate should depend upon where one works, that is, in what province one works. That is quite a statement from the President of the Treasury Board. The President of the Treasury Board speaks on behalf of the government for all policies relating to wages.
In other words, does it mean that the Government of Canada now is trying to pay secretarial staff, clerks, radio announcers with the CBC, who are in competition with private radio, clerks who work for the federal government, who are in competition with clerks in the private sector, secretarial staff, managers, all of our profession-

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als what it figures is the going rate in that particular province?
That is totally unacceptable. That is discrimination of the worst kind. That is discrimination depending upon where one lives, where the border is. I notice in section 7 of the bill it refers to work-sharing agreements approved under the Unemployment Insurance Act. Right now under this government you collect unemployment insurance depending upon where you live, not where you work. In other words, you take the government's policy and depending on where you work, that is the sole determinant of how much money you get.
Then when you leave your place of work and you go home to draw unemployment insurance, it depends on where you live, where you take up residence, as to whether or not you qualify for unemployment insurance benefits. In some places it is 10 weeks, other places it is 14 weeks, other places it is 20 weeks, and so on.
It is an outrageous form of discrimination, Mr. Chairman, and the minister just verified it. He said that it is only fair to the private sector in the places affected. I want to remind the minister that some of these employees qualify because they live in those same areas for environmental bonuses, or what is commonly referred to as isolation pay. Why? Because they are living in an area in which the cost of living is higher than if they were living in another area where the cost of living would not be so high.
On the one hand the minister turned around and said in this Chamber a few moments ago that they are going to pay carpenters less if they live in Newfoundland than if they lived in some other province, they are going to pay pipe fitters because they do less if they live in Newfoundland than if they live in some other province in Canada, they are going to pay tractor operators less if they live in Newfoundland-oh, no, work in Newfoundland. Excuse me because it is not where you live. It is where you work which is the sole determinant of how much money you make.
I bring up this point simply to point out that this is one of the things that has demoralized people in the Public Service. You wonder why somebody would willingly go out on a picket line and remove their income from their family. It has to be pretty important to these people to
say: "I am going to give up a day's work, or week's work now. I am going to give that up and I am going to have it docked on my next pay cheque". They are being docked on their next pay cheque for the days they were out on the picket line in September. Why would you want, in this day and age, in this country, to lose a week's pay?
The reason for it is because of the demoralization of the Public Service. This is one of the things the minister just said a moment ago and it is enough to make you angry. Regional rates of pay, he says, are okay. You live in Newfoundland, he says you should get paid less for doing the same job than if you lived in the province of Quebec.
What an outrageous statement for the President of the Treasury Board to make on behalf of the Government of Canada. What an outrageous statement for the minister to make.
It is not only that why people go out on strike and sometimes do things they should not really do. The other part of the story is connected with the way the government has treated these employees. After this period is over, this bill will re-enact the same types of agreements, same wage scales, same rapport they had with union members prior to this legislation.
Three years ago the Government of Canada brought in a system under the orders of the President of the Treasury Board to get rid of employees in the Public Service. When you make a decision to get rid of employees in the Public Service, the people who get hit the worst are of course people who live the furthest down the line. They are the first ones to go.
We had upper management in the Public Service being paid money called "productivity bonuses" to get rid of employees in the Public Service. How would that make you feel?
Here you are, sitting in an office in Grand Falls, Newfoundland, sitting in an office in Gander, Newfoundland, or in St. John's, Newfoundland and you know that this President of the Treasury Board has approved a system whereby certain managers along the way will get bonuses if they meet the government's guidelines of getting rid of person years in the Public Service, because that is what was in effect.
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In other words, you had one manager ordering other managers to get rid of employees so that he could get his bonus. Then, further down the line, you had managers wondering whether a manager above them was ordering him to be got rid of so he could get an extra bonus.
In other words, you had everybody looking back over their shoulder wondering who was getting paid off to get rid of you. What a system to be living under. The President of the Treasury Board could rightly be called the terminator because he was terminating people by giving bonuses to upper management in the Public Service.
That certainly is not a very good working environment for people in the Public Service. Here they are now, some of them, getting less pay than people in other provinces, and the President of the Treasury Board stands up here tonight and says: "That is the proper thing to do. You should get less pay because you live in the province of Newfoundland, or Nova Scotia".
If you lived in Quebec or Ontario, you would get higher wages. If you lived in British Columbia, you would get higher wages still. That is what the President of the Treasury Board just said.
On top of that, a system of pay-offs for lay-offs in the Public Service. We can understand why the Public Service has been totally demoralized and why the public of Canada are the real losers, because public service to the people of Canada has gone downhill ever since this government took office.
They stand in this Chamber and they say once a year: "Here is a report from this auditing firm saying that it takes two days for a letter to get from one province to another." Canadians are sitting out there and wondering why it takes their letter two weeks to get there. Of course, the reason is that the things that they are judging are only the letters that are pumped out of a computer or a typewriter and have the address exactly in the centre of a letter so it can be read by a machine.
The grandmother who sits down and writes a letter to her granddaughter at university somewhere writes it. She does not type it. The letter takes two weeks to get there, or three weeks. A Christmas present takes a year sometimes. We come across these cases.
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People applying to universities, and their student loans going between one province and another. Every member of Parliament has cases now of the mail not arriving at all because public service to the people of Canada under this President of the Treasury Board and under this Government of Canada has gone downhill. Service to the people of Canada has been substantially reduced because the Government of Canada will not treat its public servants properly.
It is not very good to be working in a job today and not know when you are going to lose it or when some manager somewhere is getting a Christmas bonus to take your job away, and wondering why you are making less than somebody in another province and why the President of the Treasury Board stood up here tonight and said: "That is great. That is fine. We are in total agreement with it." Shame on the President of the Treasury Board.
I want to ask him one question. I want to just get this straight on this bonus business that was brought up recently. I just want to get it straight. He can stand up and say yes, that is correct, or no, it is not correct.
If I understand him correctly, what he has said is this: There are really three types, of bonuses. One is a performance pay by managers in the Public Service. Of the 4,700 managers in the Public Service, 97 per cent of them qualified for performance pay this past year. Now, that is one type of performance pay. That runs from 3 per cent to 10 per cent, as I understand it, Mr. President of the Treasury Board through you, Mr. Chairman. Now, that is one type of bonus, which is really a part of, as the President of the Treasury Board explained in the House, the salary. The President of the Treasury Board said that that was negotiated years ago and about 15 per cent was taken off of their range of the salary scale and that amount of money which would have been spent anyway was being used as performance pay for management in the Public Service. That is the massive number-4,600 public servants. That is one group.
Then there is another group which involves Crown corporations, people who sit on boards and commissions; in other words, mostly Order in Council appointments. In fact all of them are. That is a completely separate group now from the public servants. If the minister understands me correctly, am I to understand that the bonuses for both those groups will be removed from April 1,1991 to March 31, 1992, for that working period? Did I understand him correctly when he stood up in the

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House that that is what he said? Is that correct, I am wondering, Mr. Chairman? Is that correct, or is it not correct? If it is correct, it is oui, it is yes, and that will settle it.


Gilles Loiselle: But with a nuance, if I may say so. It is that the calendar year is not exactly the same for both groups. For the Crown corporation it is April to April, as he has said. So, zero salary, and at the end of the year zero bonus. For the managers, it is June to June. So, they have zero since June and when the time comes after that period to get their performance pay, it will also be zero.
If I may, on the other point raised by the hon. member-


George Baker: Just for one year? And everybody loses it as soon as-


Gilles Loiselle: Yes, exactly. The hon. member talked a lot about the performance pay, and he said that I had decided that people who work in Newfoundland would get less. Not at all; they may get more, for all I know. What we say is that we try to adjust a certain number of our categories of employees, a very small number in all, if I may say so. Because out of a quarter of a million employees there are 26,000 to whom these regional pays apply, in nine occupational groups. This policy which, from listening to the comments of the hon. member sounds so horrible, must not be so horrible because it was implemented by the Liberal government.
If I may go on and explain why we maintain this. First of all, when there are occupational groups for whom the outside pay data indicates significant regional variation from the Canadian average, this is taken into account. Where you have occupational groups where the area of recruitment and the mobility of employees in the Public Service is limited, and when occupational groups for which regional rates would contribute to the achievement of fair and competitive rates of pay in the labour market, these are the elements on which we base our decision. In my view this is a fair approach.
On another aspect of the issues raised by the hon. member, he said that since we arrived in power the
service has gone downhill. I would like to remind him that when we came to power, for every dollar that Canadians were paying in taxes, the Liberal government was spending $1.33.
They were playing at being Father Christmas, which is all right for a while, but obviously, at one time or another, one has to face this reality and one has to act accordingly and try to bring one's expenditure within one's capacity to pay.
This is what we have been trying to do, I must admit with great difficulty. The opposition has opposed every one of our proposals to try to bring our fiscal situation to a better position.
Basically, we are trying to improve service, to find new ways of providing services, and to use the best possible methods. I think that we should be commended for this. In the reform program I introduced in the House, PS 2000, it says that people are looking behind their backs at the bosses, and so on. This is what we are trying to change. We want to empower people and allow them in the regions to get on with the job, find good people, help them get the best training, and then let them get on and not have Ottawa on their back all the time.
This is what we are trying to do because we find it is a good way of using our good employees.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Shall Clause 2 stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Does the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan wish to speak on Clause 2?


Mr. Stupich:: Mr. Chairman, I would prefer to speak on Clause 10 but if two more Liberals want to make free speeches we will never make it to Clause 4.


An hon. member:: What do you want to do?


David Stupich: Call it Clause 10 if you like.
The point of my conversation, Mr. Chairman, is ask a couple of questions and I will be brief.


Steve Eugene Paproski: I think it is very important to remind all hon. members that on Clause 2 the-
September 30, 1991



-discussion is very broad and open. However, when we reach clauses 3, 4 and 5, comments will have to be much more succinct and deal exclusively with these specific clauses.
As long as we are considering clause 2, the discussion is wide ranging. The hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell on a point of order.


Don Boudria: Mr. Chairman, I would like to make sure I understand the point the Chair is making quite clearly. As far as I can gather from the discussions the three parties had in this House before noon, the amendments were to be tabled and members would then be allowed to refer generally to any of them at any point in tonight's debate.
If the Chair is now saying that, as soon as we are through debating clause 2, discussion will be limited to the content of the clause under consideration at the time, I think that will be more of a problem and that some members may depart from clause 2. As a matter of fact, we were told this morning-if I recall correctly and I would ask for advice from the Chair-that we could address the issue in a much broader way than we normally do as we are dealing with a special order of the House.
Could thg Chair please clarify that point for us?


Steve Eugene Paproski: It is quite simple, but first, I will hear the hon. member for Gander-Grand Falls on the same point of order.


George Baker: Mr. Chairman, if I might just speak to that point of order, I can understand your difficulty. On the one hand, as I interpret it, the rules of procedure apply to motions. In effect, all of the motions have been presented to the Chamber. Since all of the motions when they were laid on the table are taken as presented to the House and before the House, that is my understanding of what happened in the Chamber today. Every motion that was tabled was actually before the Chamber because if they were not before the Chamber when they were tabled then you cannot vote on them.
They must be before the House now. It is a very irregular procedure that has been adopted by the government. The Government of Canada, in trying to wrap up
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all the debate in one day, has practically destroyed the whole logic behind motions and when one can speak to them and what one can say and what one can amend.
Mr. Chairman, I can understand your difficulty, but I do believe that all of the motions are presently before the House. The hon. member down here with the NDP should be permitted to speak on any of the motions at any moment in time.


Steve Eugene Paproski: I thank the hon. members who just spoke. I think I can sum up what everybody is thinking by saying that as long as hon. members stay on Clause 2, they can address the whole of Bill C-29, any clause, any amendment. In other words, the discussion remains wide open as long as we stay on Clause 2. If this is the way hon. members wish to proceed, the Chair will just accept it.
So, in that perspective, I recognize the hon. member for Portneuf on a point of order.


Mr. Ferland:: On a point of clarification. There are some twenty-five clauses in this bill. We have till 10 p.m. tonight, in fact we have two hours left to adopt the twenty-five clauses. I understand that if the twenty-five clauses have not been read, at 10 p.m., they will be deemed as having been read, considered and discussed by members of Parliament. Is that correct?


Steve Eugene Paproski: That is correct.


Marc Ferland: That means, Mr. Chairman, that if we stay till 10 p.m. on Clause 2, Canadian citizens will not be able to get from the President of the Treasury Board explanations on twenty-three clauses of this bill. Is that correct?


Steve Eugene Paproski: Yes, being understood that on Clause 2, as I just said, hon. members can talk about any clause and any amendment tabled during the day. So, as you can see, the rule has been made very flexible to allow for the widest discussion possible, even if we stay on Clause 2.


David Stupich: The
President of the Treasury Board said, on repeated occasions earlier today, when he did not answer a question that was put to him by two of my colleagues, that: "All we were trying to fight, or combat, is the deficit."

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The deficit this year is expected to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of $34 billion. All of the members of the alliance, all of their salaries put together, if they were to donate that back to the government for a full year, that would total something like one-seventh of the deficit. There would be a lot to make up from other sources. This is a pretty weak way to attack the deficit if that is all we are doing, if that is the only effect. What we are looking at is only a small portion of the total bill for the employees in the alliance, rather than the total thing.
That was not really the point I wanted to make. We are talking about a total salary bill of $4.8 billion. If all of those people who were to get the expected increase in inflation this year, which at this point is running at about 6 per cent, it would total $288 million.
Currently, we are spending $1.2 billion keeping our troops in NATO. I wonder if the President of the Treasury Board gave any consideration at all to speeding up the withdrawal from NATO, which is scheduled to take place in 1994 and 1995, so as to take one-quarter of that amount of money back this year, so that he could meet even a 6 per cent increase in wages paid to the employees. Did he give any thought to that, in view of the fact that the U.S.S.R. armed forces are leaving just as quickly as they can find transport and alternative accommodation back home? That is one possibility.
I just have one other question, Mr. Chairman, and then I will let the President of the Treasury Board answer. There is an alternative.
The Department of National Revenue-Taxation estimated that each year the Crown is losing $1.2 billion through inadequate enforcement of the Income Tax Act. One can only assume when it made that public it knew people would hear about it and wonder about it, and that in one way, it was simply asking Treasury Board to approve the hiring of more auditors.
Now consider that $1.2 billion, and once again one-third of it would be enough to give a 6 per cent increase to all of the Public Service Alliance employees, and have $12 million left over. Did the President of the Treasury Board actually receive such a request from the Department of National Revenue, that is to hire more auditors to close some of this leakage, and turn it down, or did he never hear from DNR when they wanted more auditors?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Chairman, the hon. member has come forward with a couple of proposals that I will try to deal with.
He talks about NATO. I do not want to get into this debate, but I can explain to him that should we accelerate any changes he will know very well that, for the first year, it will probably cost us more money than it does now. It is always a difficult and costly operation to make such a transformation. So I do not think there is any savings there to be accomplished.
We have already indicated otherwise that we are proceeding with some changes in Europe and they will be dealt with as expeditiously as possible. We can say that they have already been booked and provided for.
As for the Department of National Revenue, we have, indeed, granted additional persons to tighten up and make sure that there is a better enforcement. But I would also like to remind him that members of his party have been getting up, over the last little while, talking to us about bankruptcies. Much of the reasons why we have this income tax which is theoretically due, but cannot be easily collected, is because of that. This is an impact when companies or individuals are in difficulty and cannot meet their obligations. So we have granted additional human resources and a budget to do that.
I would say that in the bill that will be introduced, if it has not been done so by my colleague, the Minister of Finance, on the spending limits, we make provisions for spending which brings in additional revenue. We will certainly look at that as one way possibly, but again I would say that we have tried to have as efficient an organization as possible. We tried to improve enforcement, but this is an end of a recession and of course it is not always easy to collect all the money which is owed the government.


David Stupich: Mr. Chairman, I thank the minister for his answers, but I would remind him that, as late as the Auditor General's latest report, he was still complaining about the shortages of auditors and pointing out that an extra auditor could bring in something like $375 million or $750 million, depending upon the area of his or her investigation.
I do not expect the minister to have this information at his fingertips right now, but I would like to know by how many the audit staff in National Revenue was increased in each of the last three years.
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With respect to bankruptcies and the like, yes, we have been complaining about the way in which government policies, in part the free trade deal itself, the high interest rate, the high dollar, all of these things have certainly exacerbated the situation as far as companies going bankrupt is concerned. But my colleagues have not been complaining quite so much about that as they have about the large corporations that are able to evade or avoid tax. That is where the auditors, according to DNR itself, Department of National Revenue-Taxation, feels that it could be getting a lot more money in, not going after the ones that are going bankrupt, but going after the ones that are doing very well in living close enough to the rules to get away with it.


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Chairman, I think I heard this from the NDP source, large corporations are running away. They fail to recognize that this government is the one that imposed a minimal tax on capital, which had never been done before. We have closed about 200 different loopholes which existed. So we have done our share.
As for the number of corporations or so-called companies, most of them are small companies that are marginally profitable and have great difficulty carrying on. We can put the pressure on them and have more of them go into bankruptcy.
The banks and the financial institutions for the first time have a minimal tax on assets. This brings in $2 billion. It was not there when we came in. We have not been giving any gifts. The hon. member mentioned, and it is frequently heard, high dollars.
One of the reasons we want to tackle the deficit and the debt, and it is not that it is fun per se, is because it is one of the major causes of the high dollar. We are all borrowing heavily.
The provinces, in the first six months of 1990, have gone on foreign markets and have borrowed $10 billion in foreign currency. This currency, in turn, is changed into Canadian dollars and so there is a huge demand for Canadian dollars and the price goes up. This is the reality of it.
It is very interesting. You can sit down, not invest in a company, buy government certificates and go sit in Florida. We want to change that. We want to make room for entrepreneurs. We can find cheaper money.
This is why we want to fight the debt and the deficit, not for the fun of it, but because it is central to the well-being of Canadians and a sound economic policy is necessary. It is tough because we get requests from the NDP to spend, spend, spend.
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I repeat that next year we will paying $41 billion on interest on our debt. This is horrible. Should we increase it more? Where will we get the money? That is the problem we have to deal with, and we are trying to balance these various responsibilities as well as we can.


Mr. Ross Harvey (Edmonton East):: Mr. Chairman, I deeply regret that this is not the appropriate time to engage in a discussion of macroeconomic policy and that sort of thing.
I would just note in passing that given the minister's remarks of a few moments ago, he and his government must find it strange given the rigorous treatment that he claims they have given to their allies in the corporate sector, that in spite of this, the relative proportion of taxes paid by corporations continues to decline and that paid by individuals continues to rise.
I wish the government success and solace as it works its way through the puzzlement in this regard.
I would like to take this time in a fashion started by my friend and colleague from Nanaimo-Cowichan to pose a series of questions to the minister. These questions will be presented at the table and I understand that answers will be forthcoming.
It strikes me as a useful exercise that these questions be put in the public record and be made part of this debate tonight.
If I may proceed, sections 3 and 4 have already been covered by my colleagues, and I wish to start with clause 5 of the bill and ask the following questions with regard to clause 5, which extends the collective agreement existing on February 26, 1991 for a period of two years.
(1)	To which contracts do this clause apply?
(2)	How many workers are affected?
(3)	What are the wage rates for the workers affected by this clause?
(4)	By this clause, is the government suspending free collective bargaining for a period of two years?
(5)	Is this not a violation of International Labour Organization Convention number 87, and perhaps other conventions?
(6)	How many times since the signing of the ILO conventions has the government been found to have been in violation of ILO conventions?
(7)	Why is the government persisting in this bill when it must know that it is yet again in violation of ILO conventions.

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(8)	Is this an indication of the government's attitude toward international conventions which it is ostensibly bound by?
(9)	Is the minister aware that the Government of Canada has violated ILO conventions more often than any other country?
With regard to clause 6, which extends the collective agreement which had expired on or before February 26 for a period of one year:
(1)	Would the minister explain this clause?
(2)	Is it not usual that when two parties negotiate a collective agreement they mutually establish an expiry date?
(3)	Has the minister chosen to apply the hammer of this legislation rather than negotiate those expired agreements covered by clause 6?
(4)	Is this clause included because the minister has no faith in the collective bargaining process?
(5)	Possibly this clause is included because the minister is uncertain of the ability of Treasury Board to negotiate?
(6)	Does the minister consider pre-empting free collective bargaining for expired agreements without exhausting all avenues available, including mediation, to be fair?
(7)	Will the minister be abandoning free collective bargaining in the future and merely imposing collective agreements?
(8)	Does the minister not consider his failure to reach a fair agreement through collective bargaining a failure in his role as minister?
(9)	If not, does he not then consider the need for this legislation a failure of the process?
With regard to clause 7, which provides that any settlement reached by a decision of the Canadian Human Rights Commission on pay equity will be excluded from the restraint measures of the act, as well as other provisions:
(1)	Does this act apply to any pay equity settlements ordered by a Canadian Human Rights tribunal?
(2)	Will the minister continue to appeal decisions set out by the Human Rights tribunals concerning pay equity?
(3)	Does this clause mean that the only way pay equity will be included for workers caught in this act will be through a complaint to the Human Rights Commission?
(4)	How many workers are eligible for pay equity
increases?
(5)	How much money is the government saving annually by failing to implement the 1977 pay equity legislation fully?
(6)	Has the government taken into account that it would immediately realize approximately one-third of pay equity payments in the form of taxation?
(7)	Would the pay equity increases not stimulate the economy through those workers who are eligible for pay equity having more disposable income?
(8)	With specific regard to subclause 7(2), what are the parameters under which Treasury Board will be establishing its opinion in respect of a conversion, in respect of a revised classification?
(9)	With specific regard to subclauses 7(3) and 7(4), under what circumstances might this clause be implemented and is this clause another attempt to pre-empt bargaining?
(10)	With specific reference to subclause 7(6), does this include future work sharing agreements?
(11)	What employees will be affected by this clause?
(12)	How many employees will be affected?
Moving on to clause 8, which provides for changes to the collective agreement by mutual agreement for nonwage settlements to that collective agreement. Questions:
(1)	Does the minister intend the 11635017 Board and the Public Service Alliance to return to the bargaining table to negotiate non-wage items?
(2)	What would be included under non-wage and conditions of the compensation plan?
(3)	How many non-wage, non-compensation items are still outstanding at the various tables?
(4)	If the parties are unable to effect an agreement on these items, does the minister plan to appoint a mediator or an arbitrator?
(5)	Does the minister consider pay equity matters to be included within this clause?
Moving on to clause 9, which imposes the zero per cent wage increase and the 3 per cent wage increase for the second year of this-


Mr. Charles Langlois (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Industry, Science and Technology):: On a
point of order, Madam Chairman.


Andrée  Champagne: The hon. member for Manicouagan on a point of order.
September 30, 1991


Charles A. Langlois: Madam Chairman, I am very much interested in this debate tonight and I would have liked to take note of all the questions the hon. member is asking, but he proceeds at such a pace that it is impossible for members on this side to hear, let alone understand his questions. I will have no choice but to ask him to repeat his questions or else to write them down for me, Madam Chairman.


Joy Langan: On a point of order, Madam Chairman. I think we have already indicated that we would be providing the minister with copies of these questions. It is our understanding that in the past the discussion in Committee of the Whole was to question the minister. Because this Committee of the Whole has turned into a debate, we wanted to be sure that we did have an opportunity to raise these questions and would obviously have to be satisfied with answers to these questions at a later time.
We have told the minister that we would provide him with the questions in written form.


Don Boudria: Madam Chairman, all what we hear might be true, but the fact is that for interpreters and other peoples who do their best to interpret what is being said, it is almost impossible to work at the spead the member is reading his text. And those, in this House, who want to listen in French to what is being said or even people at home and people who receive the electronic signal have the same problem. So I think we should ask the member to read his text so that it can be interpreted at a reasonable spead because, honestly, I cannot see how anybody can interpret at that speed. It is ridiculous, madam Chairman.


Mr. Jean-Marc Robitaille (Terrebonne):: Madam Chairman, given the great interest of the questions raised by my colleague of the NDP, I would greatly appreciate if it was possible for him to start all over again, since the translation was hard to follow for those who are more fluent in French. Could he repeat his questions from the start because we find them very interesting and we would like to understand them.
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Andrée  Champagne: I realize that the hon. member for Edmonton East was also following in French what was being said. It would be appreciated if maybe we could make it possible for everyone to understand who is interested. It was slightly, I would imagine, difficult for our interpreters to follow at this rhythm. Let us all make an effort and I am sure we will be able to understand. It will be appreciated if those questions can be given in writing to the minister and the other member.
The hon. member for Edmonton East.


Ross Harvey: Madam Chairperson, first of all I wish to assure you that written copies of the questions will be supplied both to the minister and to the Table. I do apologize for perhaps speaking with too much celerity to now. It was only my attempt to husband closely the time of the House. I have sent most of the remaining sheets, save three, of questions that I have out to be photocopied and will supply the translators with photocopies which I hope will aid in the process. I will try for the remainder of these questions not to conduct myself with such vitesse.
Moving then to clause 9, which again imposes the zero and 3 per cent caps. The questions for the clause are one, if the wage increase is zero per cent, is this clause extending that increase retroactively? Two, does the minister consider zero per cent to be fair in light of average settlements in the private sector, settlements that in 1990 averaged 5.9 per cent? Three, does the minister consider zero per cent to be fair in light of the cost of living projected to rise by 5.8 per cent? Four, does the minister consider having 20,000 workers in the public sector earning below the poverty line to be fair? Five, will the 3 per cent-how about those people who are losing their jobs, the hon. member asks.
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that the government seems to have created this dichotomy. I am advised not to rise to debate.
Five, will the 3 per cent in the second year be calculated on the base rate after pay equity has been added? Six, does the minister consider 3 per cent on his salary of $143,000 which would amount to $4,300 as opposed to 3 per cent on a worker's salary who earns $20,700 which would amount to a mere $621, to be a fair arrangement? Seven, if the minister requires at least 40,000 workers to be essential, does he not believe these

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workers are important enough to be fairly compensated? Eight, does the minister just consider these workers to be numbers on a balance sheet as opposed to being individual people who labour on his behalf and on behalf of us all?
With regard to clause 10, which allows for the payment of retroactive wage increases for three groups which have reached agreements with the Treasury Board, these groups will fall under the zero to three per cent guidelines after the expiry of any agreement reached.
(1)	With regard to subclause 10(a), does this clause mean short-term gain for long-term pain by those here covered 10?
(2)	Elow many workers fall under this clause?
(3)	What are the departments and classifications covered?
(4)	When do these agreements expire for the zero and three to kick in?
(5)	Will there be layoffs attached to the wage increases this year?
(6)	Will there be layoffs attached to the 3 per cent future increases?
With regard to subclause (b) I would like to ask the following:
(7)	Who would be in the "any other case" category?
(8)	Will there be any layoffs attached to 4.2 per cent increases mentioned in this clause?
I do hope the photocopying gets back quickly. Clause 11 of course allows for any arbitration award to hold subject to the wage guidelines imposed by Treasury Board. It is intended to accommodate those agreements reached between February 26, 1991 and the tabling of this bill.
The questions with regard to this section are:
(1)	Do lines 10 to 15 mean that regardless of what has been agreed to between February 26, 1991 and the tabling of this document Treasury Board may arbitrarily adjust wages up or down?
(2)	Can the minister explain just who is Treasury Board in this clause?
(3)	Dealing with subclause 11(2), does this clause mean unions were forced to waive their collective bargaining rights for two years following expiry of current agreements?
Clause 12, one of my personal favourites, concerns administrative aspects of the bill. The questions for subclause 12(1).
(1)	Does Treasury Board normally have the powers and duties of clause 1?
(2)	Is this clause stripping the Public Service Staff Relations Board of its duties and functions?
(3)	Is Treasury Board taking on the role of collective bargaining cops?
(4)	With regard to subclause 2, does the Public Service Staff Relations Board not normally receive information and documentation to determine compliance with acts relating to government workers?
(5)	Does this clause make the Treasury Board the anti-inflation board of the nineties?
(6)	With regard to subclause 3, what form would these directives take?
(7)	If the employer continues to fail to comply, what are the consequences?
Moving to clause 13, which provides for any agreement reached outside the confines of the act to have no force or effect, the questions are:
(1)	What are the wage rates, although we might appropriately these days talk of rage rates? However, the question is what are the wage rates that public sector workers but for this act have received?
(2)	Will the minister not agree that this clause is redundant?
Moving to clause 14, it provides that no bargaining agent or representative or officer of a bargaining unit shall advise the continuation of the strike if there is a strike and no employee shall participate in a strike.
With regard to subclause 2(a) which defines condoning or acquiescing, I would ask the following:
(1)	What kind of notice is the bargaining agent required to give?
(2)	What does immediately mean? The next shift, half way through a shift, the next day? What is the notice period, given the use of the term "immediately"?
September 30, 1991

With regard to subclause 2(b), the questions would be:
(3)	What does the minister consider to be reasonable steps, reasonable being the term used in the subclause?
(4)	What if those reasonable steps fail?
(5)	Is the union being set up to be a cop for the government?
(6)	Has it occurred to the minister that he can legislate these people back to work, but he cannot legislate work place morale?
With regard to subclause 2(c), the question would be:
(7)	What might "anything" be? What would the minister see to be encouragement not to resume the duties of their employment?
(8)	Does the minister not consider his handling of these negotiations to be all the encouragement some workers might need to fail to resume the duties of their employment?
Clauses 15 to 17 impose fines of a maximum of $100,000 per day on the union for the continuation of a strike, fines of a maximum of $50,000 per day on representatives of the union, and a maximum of $1,000 per day on individual members participating in a strike.
With regard to clause 15, the questions are:
(1)	Does the minister not consider his role in this bargaining and the inflamed situation he has created to be at least equal to that of the bargaining agent?
(2)	What will be the minister's penalty for his role?
With regard to clause 16, what will the minister be doing to determine if representatives or bargaining agents contravene clause 14?
(3)	Will the minister commission surveillance teams to use listening devices, peek in windows, and follow these people? Perhaps CSIS or the RCMP, groups that are also embraced by the legislation.
With regard to clause 17, one question: What would be a legitimate excuse for not returning to work at the prescribed time? Or, is there any excuse that would be deemed legitimate? Surely there must be some.


An hon. member:: Death, probably.
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Ross Harvey: I am not even certain they would accept that.
Clause 18, which declares the bargaining agent to be a person, the question is: Who might that person be?
Clause 19, failure to pay the fine will not result in imprisonment. The question is: Is this clause included because the minister is worried that the jails are not big enough to accommodate all those workers who just may be angry enough not to comply?
Clause 20, which provides for the failure to pay the fine, will result in Treasury Board recovering the amount of the fines from the check-off of union dues by the employer.
On subclause 20(1), the questions are:
(1)	The minister should be given credit for creativity. Obviously he does not want any martyrs, but does the minister not consider this section to be unadulterated union busting?
(2)	The union will be penalized by withholding of union dues by this government for fines that may be accrued by angiy individual union members, even though the bargaining agent may have made every effort to get the individual to return to work. Is this fair?
With regard to subclause (2), the questions continue at number 3. It is a handy section. The minister whips the workers into terrible anger, beats them up with back-to-work legislation, fines them for any defiance, and then collects union dues from their paycheques and it goes back to the government. Is there not a tiny bit of conflict of interest here?
(4)	Would the minister not consider it fairer to apply those dues to pay equity adjustments for those workers entitled to pay equity?
With regard to clause 21 which allows the Governor in Council to add departments not already covered to the application of the act and with regard to subclause (a), could the minister explain just who he might have managed to miss in this legislation?
With regard to subclause (b), again which agencies, boards, commissions, or Crown corporations is the minister referring to? The third question: Is the minister suggesting the government has not done its homework and so finds it necessary to write a clause that includes anyone else who might turn up?

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Finally, and I know this comes as welcome news to everyone in the House-


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Ross Harvey: I trust I am not going too fast.
With regard to clause 22 which allows the Governor in Council to terminate the application of the act with regard to any particular employee or group, the questions are:
(1)	Under what circumstances might this section be implemented?
(2)	Is there some faint hope implied here that the government might suddenly understand that 20th century industrial relations preclude blaming workers for bad fiscal management?
(3)	Is this another escape clause for the government to help its friends?
(4)	Does this mean after this legislation is passed the minister might cherry-pick his way through and lift this legislation for some, maybe for department heads, or deputy ministers or some other group the minister favours?
Those are the questions that will have been placed on the table and will be provided to the minister to which certainly we crave answers, answers to which in our submission all Canadians are entitled.
It is unfortunate that such answers will not be forthcoming prior to the final consideration of this bill by this House, because the answers might, just might, cause some of the members in this House to rethink their opinions with regard to this bill. It is a long shot, but as a New Democrat from Alberta I am used to long shots.
Before sitting down, which I know is the event at this point most hon. members are having the greatest hope for this evening, I would like to point out just two things. First, even allowing that this bill is obscenely unfair on the face of it, there are provisions within it that render it obscenely unfair squared, raised to the second power. I refer specifically to subclauses 7(2) and 3(4).
These clauses together allow the government at whim to exempt virtually anyone it chooses, any group of people, any area of the Public Service, any individual.
The government clearly has no intention of achieving fairness even in the application of this odious bill.


Andrée  Champagne: I am sorry, I will have to interrupt the hon. member. Considering that we have a 20-minute time period for interventions and taking into consideration the time which was involved in points of order, there is not even time for the minister to ask a question of his own.
The 20 minutes being completed, I would need unanimous consent to allow the minister to-


Gilles Loiselle: I would only say that of course I will take these questions into consideration, but my guess is that if I were to average my answer it would be no.


Mrs. Diane Marleau (Sudbury):: Madam Chairman, I rise here to speak to this back-to-work legislation. I fear I do not have the knowledge of clauses in the bill that my predecessor has. However, I must say that it is not the clauses that bother me as much as the whole bill and the politics behind the bill.
This is not a bill based on rules. This is the Conservative philosophy of politics based on power, sheer power over who is going to do what, who is going to listen to whom, and who is going to be the patsy. I think about the poor person who will bear the brunt of this government's terrible legislation.
I would venture to say that it is not going to be this government's and I say Conservatives' powerful friends, absolutely not. They would have us believe that this is a bill to fight the deficit. Maybe it will fight the deficit, but it is not really about fighting the deficit. It is about who is going to pay the price. That is what this is all about.
How can they talk about controlling the deficit? On the one hand they have money to pour into the Spicer commission that travelled the country first class. I mean, hey, these were all friends of the government; this is fine, there is no problem, expense has no limits. Do you want to live in a first-class hotel? Who are we to question? You are working for the Conservative government, the holiest of holies.
On the other hand, you have the poor typist over there. Well, I am sorry, you cannot have an increase because we have no money; we are so pure and we do not spend money on ourselves.
September 30, 1991

"Forget the fact that the day before the budget we voted bonuses and pay increases for our top management. I mean that was last year and they were our friends. We have to look after our friends." This is about power, let nobody forget this. It is about power. I have no illusions because power knows no rules. When you are in power and when you want to have the upper hand and you have it, you do what you want when you want. It has nothing to do with people. Rules have to do with people.
Where are the rules in this one? You have a budget and you announce 0 per cent, 3 per cent and 3 per cent, and we are a perfection. You go to your backbenchers and you say: "You know we have to fight the deficit." I have to tell you that in my previous occupation I understood about deficits, yes, and I commend you in your fight for the deficit. I believe that we have to control the deficit, but not at the expense of the poorest of the poor, of the lowest wage earners. Come on now. If you had led by example, I would have been the first one to say what great people you were. That is the worst mistake of all. How can we go to these people and say to them: "I am sorry, we have no money for you. We have money for everybody else and we have had money for everybody else." All of a sudden, notice there is an election in B.C.: "We have money for the KAON TRIUMF project, don't we." Do we have money for that KAON project?


Some hon. members:: Yes.


Diane Marleau: Sure we did. Now we are going to move something to Saskatchewan, there is an election there.


Don Boudria: Oh, that is a coincidence.


Diane Marleau: Coincidence, purely coincidence. We have money for those things and I expect that there will be money for other pet projects of this government.
This is not co-operation. This is power. It is saying: "This is what I like, this is what I don't like. These are the people who are expendable." That is wrong.
These people across the way talk about being in tune with business. I come from Sudbury, which is perhaps the union capital of Canada if not the world, and the big businesses in my municipality learned a long time ago that the worst thing that you can do is turn everybody in the union off by decreeing that it shall be that way and
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going out and spending the money the way you feel like it. All that does is create more problems.
How, when you are in business, can you expect people to work for you in a good and in a happy manner and be productive? Productive is the word of the 1990s. You have to be productive and you have to be competitive. How can you be happy and do these things when you are being ordered from above? How about co-operation? How about conciliation? Why not appoint a mediator? Why not? There is nothing wrong with that.
I know we are proposing that kind of a motion. There is nothing wrong with that. I know the government is afraid that it is going to cost it a little bit more. Just cut back a little bit on some other expenses on the other side, some of your friends over there, some of the contracts that you let out. That is the other sham about this whole thing: "We have cut back on civil servants, are we not good?" We forget we have got all these contractors on the side and they cost as much. You do not have control over how much that costs you. Every time you subcontract it is take it or leave it. You have no choice at that point.
Do not tell me that you run a tight ship just because you have got numbers to prove it. There is creative accounting and then there is magic of accounting and you can make things say beautiful things if you want to and it is all in the eye of the beholder if you can manoeuvre it.
I ask the minister one question: Why will he not consider a mediator? Why not? I think it is a very important point.
Before I sit down and let you answer that question I have another one, a big one on my side.
The other question is: How are you going to control costs of the subcontracts you let out everywhere? You just tell me for one second how you are going to control the costs? How about the cost of the advertising that you have?
I notice that all of a sudden there is money for a big advertising campaign because it is going to make you guys look good. Believe me, I can understand you need to look good. I believe it. You really are in need of looking good.

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That is not going to help you, because you are misjudging the people of Canada. They know what this is all about. There is a new reality and that is that people are aware. You cannot treat them like fools. They understand. They really understand.
The other thing about pay equity is that everybody bandies pay equity around but it is a real thing. It is not a make believe project. Why does it have to be part of negotiations? If you are worth something, you are worth it. You should not have to negotiate for it. What is this? I understand about being a woman and sometimes having a bit of a rough time. I can take that. I can take it from you because I can dish it out as well or better. That is okay.
There are many people out there who need to have that recognition. I ask: when and why is that a part of this package? It is like the inherited right to self-government by the native people. It is a right. Why does anybody have to negotiate it. It is there. Why do we need to have an understanding about it?
These are some of my questions, and I really am preoccupied with these things because I feel that you are trying to impose your will. You are being sanctimonious about fighting the deficit and the debt. What kind of grand gesture are you prepared to make to convince first me, and the rest of the people out there, that this is not just using lower echelons of the Public Service to achieve your ends while at the same time controlling the agenda, controlling what comes to you and your friends?


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Chairman, this all sounds very good but I wonder what the hon. member will say when I tell her that Liberal governments in Canada have done worse.
We have negotiated for 90 days, and this week we had 35 sessions. Clyde Wells did not negotiate 90 days. He legislated zero. New Brunswick legislated zero. Some governments have done it for two years. We tried to negotiate with our members.
Far from doing the power trip you describe, we could have done it easily, we sat down and negotiated. This is the difference between them and us. Today, we are being reproached for going on a power trip. That is easy. We just order it. We could have legislated zero at budget time.


Diane Marleau: You did.


Gilles Loiselle: We did not. We said we would introduce legislation if the need was there to negotiate. There were many other aspects that could be offered in a deal. We sat with our unions and tried to make a deal. We worked at it this week again during 35 different meetings. We made new offers on Thursday that were not even considered.
Basically, if we are a Conservative and if we try to reach agreement on the basis of zero, three, we are terrible people. If a Liberal had dictated that through legislation, it is good I suppose. This is why I do not accept at all this nonsense about looking for power. It would have been easy to use power.
We tried negotiating within a very difficult framework, therefore she said that we cut back but we spent more money by giving out contracts. Why have we managed to turn around a $16 billion operating deficit? We could not even pay the salaries. We had to borrow money. We turned it into a $14 billion surplus. It is a $30 billion turnaround. This is what we have done, and we are very proud of this.


Diane Marleau: I listen to this and I think to myself, where does he live?
Did you not listen to your own leader's budget speech? I was sitting here. I heard 0, 3 and 3. We will bring in 0, 3 and 3. We will allow you to legislate. That is like holding the gun to the head and saying: "We will not let you talk to us. Say exactly what we want, or else, pow." What kind of negotiating is that?
You talk about the provinces and say: "They gave 0 per cent." They negotiated. They did not decree first and then say nothing to anybody.
They did not give everybody else a big raise and then turn around and say "no way". There is a difference. Wake up, wake up. How many more polls do we need to have in this country for this particular government to wake up? The people of Canada want you to listen and to co-operate and stop with this decree. That is no way to govern. That is not democracy. Just because you say so does not mean it is right.
I was at a number of functions this weekend in my riding and one of the things they said was "why can these people not sit down with you and talk reasonably?"
September 30, 1991


An hon. member:: They don't know how.


Diane Marleau: I agreed: Why? It is a frustration out there. I know you mean well and I am going to give you credit for that; I know you want to do well, but you do not know how. You talk about past governments and past deficits and past all this stuff. I have to tell you that since you have been in power you have had some of the best growth years. As a matter of fact, before the election in 1988, how crass can you be? You loosened up your fiscal policy, you let the interest rates come down, you brought down the income tax rate, and you went on a free for all. You paid and you bought and you gave and you had a great time to try and get re-elected. You did not win the election on all those giveaways before the election. That did not win it for you. What won it for you was the free trade debate and the outside influences which came and actually bought and scared people into voting for free trade. You did not even have a majority there.
What I want to say is this: As soon as the election was over and this government came back in 1988, all of a sudden you had a tightening of fiscal policies and you had an increase in everything. Then we had to have a recession, we had to have a recession.
When are you going to start taking responsibilities for your own actions? I am not saying we have always been perfect, but what I am saying is you are not either. Let us sit down and work at this together because this is our country; this is not just your country, this is our country and we want to make the best of it. It is high time that you realize that this is a two-way affair. I do not want to blame you for all my troubles and you should not blame me for all of yours.
I think you should take your responsibilities and start admitting that there are times when even you have made mistakes. I am willing to admit that we have made mistakes, are you willing to admit that you have made mistakes? Obviously, this is a big mistake you are making now, because when you have legislated these people back to work what kind of productivity do you think they are going to give you? What kind of love of their job do you think they are going to give you? What kind of Public Service 2000 are you going to have? Do you think we are going to have this whole new public service in which we are going to be very good and we are going to give you authority? Authority to do what? To do nothing.
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I am asking you, how do you expect Public Service 2000 to work when this is all over? Are we going to end up worse off than we have ever been because you had one of the best unions working for you? It did not demand high settlements. It has taken less than the average for the last number of years. What have you done? You have turned it from a very reasonable union to this very unhappy, terrible force that is taking over. What have you done with this confrontation? How are you going to solve these problems? Putting them back to work is not going to solve your problems.
What kind of programs do you have? After you have decided and decreed them back to work, what are you going to do then?


Gilles Loiselle: I would like to go back to a couple of examples of similar actions that have been taken in Canada to help the hon. member understand that maybe we had to deal with a very difficult recession at budget time and we wanted to do our share.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: On a point of order, the hon. member for Ottawa West.


Marlene Catterall: Madam Chairman, we are in clause-by-clause consideration of a certain Bill C-29, not bills that have been passed and disposed of previously. The minister has been asked questions specifically relating to Bill C-29. I believe under the Standing Orders of the House he should confine his response to providing information to the House on the clauses of the bill before us.


Andrée  Champagne: I am sure the hon. minister will come to things that will be totally relevant to the bill in front of us. The hon. member, who has been here all day, I am sure will admit that everyone has been using clause 2 to go fairly far on points that were outside of the bill. Even the hon. member's colleague from Glengarry-Prescott-Russell will agree with me.


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Chairman, I understand that hon. members have been a little all over the place. My feeling is that we had agreed that we would proceed this way. I also have been answering these questions all over the place. I was trying to explain to the hon. member, who questions the philosophy behind our action, so she would understand why we did it. This is extremely important for our bill.

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We were faced with a very difficult situation, much more difficult than that of Newfoundland, for example, where our debt is much higher, our deficit is higher. Therefore we had to take tough measures. But we were not as tough as Newfoundland, and I do not hold it against them.
It is very relevant that the premier of Newfoundland, the government of that province, passed an act in April 1991 that there would be no salary increases, no benefit improvements. We have accepted to increase the benefits for employees.
What he did, a horrible Liberal government is it not, was cancel previously negotiated increases due in 1991-92. We did not do that. We proceeded very openly at budget time and we said that we had a mandate to go and negotiate other things. They were on the table. We negotiated for 90 days and again last week for 35 different meetings. We tried to reach a negotiated settlement and I would not like the hon. member to hold this against us.
The alternative would have been perhaps to do like Nova Scotia: a two-year freeze on wage increases. In Quebec the unions have said: "Yes, it is a reasonable thing to do in these times and places," and they have agreed to a 0 freeze for six months and 3 per cent for 12 months.
Basically, this is in the ballpark of efforts that all Canadians have to make at this time to help our country get out of this recession quickly and get on with the recovery.


Andrée  Champagne: The 20 minute period is over. The hon. member for Portneuf is rising on a point of order.


Marc Ferland: Madam Chairman, since this morning I have been listening carefully at the two opposition parties and I must say, Madam Chairman, that I am far from being edified by these people who should stand for those who in fact have no means to defend themselves right now.
I never heard these opposition members defend the interests of the workers involved in this dispute. I heard no opposition member tell Mr. Bean that he was responsible for the loss of 4 per cent of his members' wages. Normally, the opposition members should have
stood for those people. But they have not done it, Madam Chairman.
The ten days of work that those workers lost, they lost it because their union reresentatives have badly informed them, because their union representative want to play politics.
Madam Chairman, perhaps it would be time for some union leaders in Canada, rather than hiding behind workers, to have the courage to do like me and the other members of Parliament and to run for election, try to get elected here to make sure that the laws are implemented as they should be for the greater welfare of all Canadians.
They probably forgot to do something else. They forgot to say something that probably the workers and unionized members of the Public Service do not know. The President, Mr. Bean, gave his union's unionized staff at 3 per cent increase this year, but to do so, he cut 20 jobs. Probably the union members would have accepted a freeze this year to save their jobs. But it was all right. It was fine because a union leader was subjecting his union's employees to it. That is called union solidarity. But it is not really that.
Madam Chairman, it is time to let the voiceless speak. This morning's Le Soleil says that 609,500 people in Quebec are on welfare. There will soon be a million in Ontario. Those people do not have an average salary of $33,500 a year. They are on welfare, Madam Chairman. The opposition did not talk about it. Of course not. They say, "Thke from these people and raise the salaries of those who are already well protected." Those people do not have job security.
The MUCTC will cut 500 jobs. Why? Because it seems that the union representatives do not want to accept certain adjustments to the agreement that would save 500 jobs. Sacrosanct "acquired rights" mean that those who came in before the 500 concerned are protected. They do not care about the others. I am not sure that union members care about their neighbours. However, it seems that the union leaders want to save face, not try to defend the basic interests of working people.
In my riding, Madam Chairman, it was announced that 50 jobs would be cut at Domtar at Donnacona, in addition to 53 others a few weeks ago and 35 a few months ago.
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Since December 1, or perhaps I should say between January this year and next January, about 130 jobs will have been lost. That is at the paper plant. I am not counting the 135 jobs that were lost on August 2, again in Donnacona, when the Domtar insulation board plant closed its doors.
I am not talking about 500 IVI employees in Val-Belair, the only plant in that town. I am not talking about Bois Sylve in Saint-Raymond, a small municipality with a population of 6,000. Bois Sylvex: 225 workers. Saint-Raymond Paper: 250 jobs lost. They don't talk about these people. Of course not. You think they had job security? No, they didn't. Job security was part of the collective agreement they had with the company but the company no longer exists, and that was the end of their job security. We hear the same refrain in my own riding and across Canada. These people are not defended by the opposition. What the opposition is doing here is protecting their friends. What they are doing is making political capital out of all this. That is what our NDP and Liberal friends are doing today. They couldn't care less about the bottom of the pyramid.
Well, I can tell you that at Domtar in Donnacona and at IVI in Val-Belair and throughout the riding, those people would have accepted a three-year wage freeze to keep their jobs, three years, without making a fuss. Even that didn't help. When it was announced the plant was closing, they agreed to re-open the collective agreements. Everything was on the table. The plant was closing down. Why? Because these plants have to compete. That is a fact of life people have to live with every day in that area. I didn't hear anyone mention this in the House today. Of course not. They are defending people who are much better oganized.
The average Public Service salary is $33,500 per year. The average salary in Canada is $27,400. We are asking people who earn an average of $27,400 a year in this country to raise the incomes of those who have job security.
I read in today's newspaper what is offered to them. "A $500 lump sum payment to approximately 35,000 employees earning less than $27,000." But, workers in the private sector, earning that salary will not receive such an amount this year.
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"Guaranteed Employment for employees laid-off as a result of contracting out or privatization." In the private sector, such things do not exist.
"A guarantee of a reasonable job offer to all other employees affected by workforce adjustments, as long as they are mobile and able to recycle." Such a guarantee does not exist in my riding.
"A commitment to assume all dental costs and to raise the ceiling for orthodontic services from $2,000 to $2,500." Such things are unknown to people in my riding, who work for $15,000, $16,000, and $18,000.
"An increase of the employer contribution to disability insurance premiums from 75 to 85 per cent." They do not know that either. When you do not have a job, it is not part of your contract.
"An increase of on-site day care facilities from 10 to 15."
"From April 1,1992, six-week annual vacation after 29 years of service." As far as I am concerned, some people back home are now on holidays for life.
"Shift bonuses increased from $1 to $1.10 an hour and weekend bonuses, from $0.75 to $1 an hour, as well as meal bonuses, from $6 to $7." In my riding, there are people who are working and who do not get meal bonuses. Really, there are limits.
Will the Official Opposition of this House, which is supposed to defend the people without a voice, say that these high officials have a higher status than anybody else in Canada? I am not the only one who says it; in an other editorial, today, they talk about the Spoiled Children of the System. What I find sad is that Mr. Bean's behaviour has caused some editorialists to denounce public servants and workers who do a damned good job.
I have been working with people at the grassroots for 7 years. Not with the union representatives, in Ottawa, who drive around in their little car, with their expense account and salaries that the people at the grassroots don't even get. I work with people who know what it means to be serving Canadians. These people know it, except that Mr. Bean says: "If you don't walk out, we will make you walk out."


An hon. member:: That is true.


Marc Ferland: If you don't walk out, we will take care of you afterwards if we can't now. These are threats. Is that union democracy? Is that what the NDP and the Liberal

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Party are defending? Is that what Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition defends, violence on the pickets lines?


Don Boudria: No, no. I already talked about that.


Marc Ferland: Really, there are damned limits.


An hon. member:: Right.


Marc Ferland: Companies, Madam Chaiman, are presently facing a terrible problem. In the Gaspe Peninsula, Donohue just went bankrupt which means loss of 600 direct jobs and 1,000 more in related industries. It is these people who are going to pay for the wage increases. They too would have accepted a three year freeze.
You have to draw the line somewhere. I think that comes a time when Her Majesty's loyal Opposition must be able to clearly tell Mr Bean: "You are organizing your people and we are not going to be a party to it." That's it, you should denounce him but you don't. He has really cost his members 4 per cent, but you don't talk about it. Then, I am going to say it. There are people working for the Public Service who live in my county and who do not agree with Mr. Bean's behaviour, not one bit.


An hon. member:: In mine too.


Marc Ferland: They have only been partly informed. People who work for the Public Service have told me: "It seems 62 per cent voted in favour of the strike, but I have never been consulted." How many are there in Canada who have not been consulted either? Their representative in Ottawa, God the Father, has decided for them, and he told them if they did not strike he would force them. This is not the way to do things, Madam Chairman. I cannot accept that in this House the majority of hon. members do not stand up for those who cannot speak here. It is unthinkable. They try to have the Canadian people believe that we want to score political points at the civil servants' expense. What do they think we are, fools? These people work with us every day. Am I going to turn the civil servants against me on purpose? Come on, it does not make sense.


An hon. member:: It is obvious.


An hon. member:: It is stupid.


Marc Ferland: Yes, it is stupid to believe that. It makes no sense, but that is what they are trying to put across on
the radio and TV. They have open-line shows to lead everyone to believe that everyone agrees, when we know very well that it was rigged; we know how it's done. There are specialists who know how across the way.
But there are limits! People must not be taken for fools or for imbeciles either. There are problems, due to a misunderstanding of some people who lead public servants, be they at the municipal, provincial or federal level or for school commissions; it is always the same story. They say that essential services have to be negotiated. Are any services provided by the federal, provincial or municipal governments not essential? Can anyone tell me that a government service at any level is not essential? All these services are essential. Were they not, private enterprise would provide them. It is as simple as that. They are all essential.
I think that they are quite well paid and you can compare it with anyone. But I rather get the feeling that what bothers you in the opposition most is that you are affected too; your salaries are frozen as well and you don't seem to like that. Your salaries are frozen and will go up 3 per cent next year if things are going well, as far as I am concerned. There are limits, and we are not close to being poor.
But, you seem more disturbed by the fact that you should receive the same treatment as the average man. We are paid by the taxpayers, who give us money, but we owe them some explanations. I will not ask my constituents, who can hardly make a living for their families, to raise my salary, oh no! And I think that people are aware of that.
Many companies, Madam Chairman, are now negotiating. Unions have asked bosses what they could do to save their companies, to save tomorrow's jobs. These negotiations are presently going on back home. But, you get here and, because this is government, there are no negotiations. The key to the success is to hold the people hostage. The dissatisfied bus driver stops driving his bus. Who is walking? The moron taxpayer. Not me, I have my own car. But there are many people who do not own a car and who need public transportation.
What happened last week in Toronto? The population was taken hostage. On what grounds? Could these citizens object in any way? No! What happens during a public hospital strike? Who are the first to suffer? Are
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they the workers or the people who are taken hostage in the hospitals?
If you were to conduct a poll across the country, you would see that more and more people believe that those who choose to work in the Public Service should not have the right to strike. I hear that comment more and more. I think that we pay them pretty well. It is easy for you to ask us to pay them, but you still have not told us where we should take the money. Indeed, you would simply print some more.
You not only mortgaged your grandchildren's future but that of your great-grandchildren as well. If someone is paying the bill today, it is the workers, the 609,000 welfare recipients in Quebec, the million of them in Ontario. They are the ones who are paying the bill now for all the nonsense done over the last 20 years.
You pride yourselves on standing up for the poor in this House. But that is not true. You are not standing up for the poor, but for the best paid workers in Canada. I find your behaviour unacceptable. You should denounce Mr. Bean much more severely than you have done up to now, especially you, the members of the NDP, because he is betraying his own members, giving them incorrect information, improperly transmitting the message to the base and preventing workers from going back to work. These workers are willing to end the strike since they fully realize that you cannot ask the taxpayers for more money. Mr. Bean tells them that, if they do go back to work, he will deal with them physically.
Well, this is not true, Madam Speaker. It is time to put an end to this nonsense. I hope that by 10 o'clock tonight someone from Her Majesty's loyal Opposition will rise and properly defend these people.


Mr. MacLellan:: I love it when I hear the complaints about Ian Deans being appointed to that job. I wonder who it was who appointed him.
I want to just reiterate that when the government throws mud in a fan it is going to get some of it back in its face.
I hope the President of the Treasury Board will be coming back. I have some things I wanted him to hear.
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I am very concerned about the way this strike has progressed. The President of the Treasury Board and the government obviously have precipitated this strike and then chose to go back into negotiations, but not really meaningful negotiations. I think that has really exacerbated the problem.
When one looks at the federal government's advertisement about: "Here's what the Public Service Alliance of Canada walked away from", it is really galling to see what the government purports to be an offer to these people.
For one thing, the $500 lump sum payment to approximately 35,000 employees earning less than $27,000 a year. The government has said it guarantees employment for employees whose jobs are transferred to the private sector, as a result of contracting out or privatization. Those who chose to work for the contractor would receive six months salary to compensate for lower benefits in the private sector. This is not meaningful negotiation.
The next one is a guarantee of a reasonable job offer to all employees affected by work force adjustments. One would expect that if there were going to be work force adjustments, that there would be a reasonable offer of employment. But we do not have the government's definition of what "reasonable" is. When we look at the track record of this government, "reasonable" in its eyes is completely different from the definition of "reasonable" that most of us have become accustomed to. I do not think one can look at the government when it is bargaining and use the word "reasonable" with any kind of assurance. I am sure the striking Public Service did not.
The most incredible one was that the government mentioned payments totalling $81 million, now made under equal pay to be incorporated in employees base salaries, thereby increasing the dollar value of future raises and pensions.
Why would the government not do that in the first place? It would be the decent thing to do instead of using it as a bargaining chip at a time when the workers were expecting meaningful negotiations.
Considerable work went into this by all parties, hoping that there would be an equitable settlement to this strike. We thought the government was sincere when the offer to go back to the bargaining table was made. That

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the government was sincere in doing something to bring about an end to this strike.
Then, we heard about the bonuses that were paid to senior members of the Public Service and to the heads of the Crown corporations. It is absolutely incredible that these people would receive that kind of an increase. I know it has been going on for some time. That kind of money was given to these people without justification. The government did not do anything about it, until it was actually confronted with it. It said it was just going to freeze the bonuses. Then, finally, it was embarrassed into doing away, with these bonuses.
Is Mr. Lander, the president of Canada Post, paid a bonus per post office closed?


An hon. member:: Probably, with this government.


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: Is Mr. Lawless, the president of Canadian National Railways, paid per mile of railroad track that is taken out of service? Is he paid because he sold a CN route to a private company which went bankrupt in 15 months, with 2,000 people unemployed, without any kind of benefits? They would be wiped out completely and not even be able to make the payments on their trucks. They and their families would be absolutely destitute. There has been no response from this government. For the government to take three years to get an RCMP report, is that how they measure the benefit of the people they pay those bonuses to?
There is not one bonus to Mr. Lawless, but two bonuses to Mr. Lawless because he was also president of VIA Rail. The fact is they were not going to leave it at that.
The first offer was that the government was going to freeze the bonuses. Oh, yippee, yippee. That meant that it was going to actually increase the bonuses.
Mr. Lawless in all his magnificence was going to get more than he had got before. Why not? He is going to sell the rail line in eastern Nova Scotia. That has got to be worth at least $30,000 in the minds of the government. He is going to get rid of a railroad that has been in existence since the mid-19th century on whom people in eastern Nova Scotia depend.
It was going to sell it to somebody of substance, some worth-while company that had the revenues to be able to take it over. It is not as if we have not heard that before with Route Canada. There was supposed to be a marvellous company. It was supposed to carry on the trucking firm, but it did not.
It is one thing to cut off the services, to destroy the Canadian symbols, but it is another thing to insult completely the intelligence of Canadians from coast to coast.
The measure of this government is: "If you are a big shot, you get paid because we need you to keep the little person under control. We want to keep the small person under our thumbs". That is the thinking that Canadians from coast to coast attribute to this government.
The government wonders why there is a strike at the present time. It is because the mood is sour, because Canadians do not trust this government. They are fed up with this government and they do not believe anything this government says.
The only thing they will absolutely give any credit to is what this government does and it has done very little, if anything, to try to fix this very tragic situation.
Why is the government not including independent contractors in this? Last spring, when his own officials were asked, they said that the independent contractors were paid more than public servants, yet they did not know really if the independent contractors were saving any money for the government. They did not know if this was saving any money for the government, because they did not keep track. They did not keep track.
We do not know what this whole government thrust of giving money to the independent contractors is doing. We do not know if it is helping the country or not, because the government does not keep track. It does not want to keep records.
Has the President of the Treasury Board got a hold of his department? Does he know whether the step of giving work to independent contractors is saving money?
I want to know if he can give us some examples of that so that we can have information we were not able to get last spring.


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Chairman, the hon. member has covered a lot of ground. I will try briefly to go over each of his points.
He said that he had the feeling that we entered this round of negotiation without really being serious and that we had not gone through meaningful negotiation. I would like to disagree very strongly with him. He knows full well that at a time when hundreds of thousands of
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Canadians are thrown out of a job, job security is something very precious.
When I sat with Daryl Bean to get the negotiations going again, I spoke to him very bluntly about the wage budget. We explored together the areas where we could make some progress. Certainly this was a central issue. That is why it is there. It is for the union. At a time when everybody in Canada is worried about his or her future we felt that we could move on that and do our best to try to give some job security to our employees.
I would say that on that point we have a good record. I did not feel we needed to go very far. We are Canada's largest employer. We have nearly 225,000 employees working under Treasury Board rules. Out of those, at a time of deep recession as we are reminded every day by the opposition, 106 employees had to leave against their will, and in most instances it was because, for reasons I respect, they could not move. We were prepared to retrain them. We are prepared to spend two years with our employees to retrain them and help them find other jobs.
Even though we have tried to remove or limit the weight of government from 1986 until now, in a work force of 225,000 people we have lost only 1,500 persons who had to leave against their will. This is a very good record, and I do not know of anyone who has a better record. It is a better record than Daryl Bean's record in his own staff.
Listen to Daryl Bean a few months ago when he said: "Oh, these are tough times; I cannot go beyond this. I have to close positions". We are all going through rough times and trying to deal with them as best we can. We thought that job security, being something well identified, we could move on that.
You said: "We thought the government was sincere". We were sincere, and the lump sum payment is not something indifferent. It is something that was reasonable in our view for the lower income people who of course have to suffer more because of the zero year. We were quite happy to put that on the table.
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We did not do like some other Liberal governments in Canada that have removed all benefits this year. We tried to improve them: dental care, medical and, as you have stated, a long list of benefits.
The hon. member says that we are trying to destroy the Canadian symbols. I would like to remind him that when we came to power in 1984, for every dollar that Canadians were paying in taxes to Ottawa the federal Liberal government was spending $1.33. Of course you can make a lot of people happy. Of course you can throw money around that you do not have. But sooner or later it catches up with you in a huge debt, and this is what we have been trying to tackle.
We would like to give more to people, but do we need to borrow it, increase taxes? We have asked our employees to do their share. Somebody said on the NDP side: "What is significant, $200 million?" Of course, they have a printing machine out there. We do not have it.
It is important. It is tough on the employees, but it is their one share. We have taken many other measures at budget time. We have dealt not only with unionized employees, but we have announced that we would cut 10 per cent of our managers. This is a very difficult decision.
We are trying to live within our means, and we feel that Canadians have too much government that they have to pay for. This money comes from thousands and thousands of Canadians who are without jobs. We wanted to set an example. It has been followed by many provinces. It has given the right direction and we can see now that the economy is picking up again. Because interest rates are down, this is helpful to the economy and we can hopefully create better conditions where we can protect the future of our employees. To do otherwise would not be useful.
As for the independent contractors, we have said that we will continue to look for the best possible ways of providing services at the lowest possible cost. This is reasonable. When you are as broke as we are, with a $400 billion debt and a $30 billion deficit, you have to find ways to try to cut your spending. Otherwise it is only down.
We looked at that as one of many options of reorganizing, going to special operating agencies, as we have done with great success and using various means of trying, if we have a limited responsibility which is limited in time, to deal with it without committing ourselves to a forever

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salary, a forever benefits and so on and so forth. Each department has been asked to look at that, but in the process we said we would protect our employees and the numbers I have given you indicate that we have done so.
We have abolished many positions, thousands of them, cutting money, but we have done it through attrition and we have not done it by firing people. We have been very careful to manage well and I am very proud of our record in that respect.


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: Mr. Chairman, you would swear that the government was the saviour of the Canadian economy. I have never heard anything so completely nutty in my whole life.
The debt has more than doubled since this government came to power and it had good economic times. Not only has the debt more than double, but in 1984, when the debt was approximately $180 billion, only 17 per cent was being financed outside Canada. Now it is over $400 billion and 38 per cent is being financed outside the country. We do not even have control over our own economy.
This government has to sell Treasury bonds to keep the country going from week to week or we are out of business. He has to give a high interest rate and that is the reason the Canadian dollar is high. If we did not have the high interest rate you would not sell the bonds and the country would be out of business. It has put us on the rocks economically. It is blaming poor public servants and the inflation rate. I have never heard anything so full of hogwash in my life.


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Chairman, if the hon. member takes the time to look at the numbers, he will understand that the deficit has not doubled. It is much below what it was with a much larger economy. The debt of course is higher, but all of it is interest on the debt you left. We have cut. We could not even pay the salaries when we came in with the situation you left us with. We had to borrow $16 billion to make the payroll. You had a $38 billion deficit plus a $200 billion debt. We started trimming down, being opposed every step of the way by people across this room. Now we have, this year, a $14 billion surplus and we intend to continue trimming governments for the great protection of our own employees.


Ross Harvey: As you know, Mr. Chairman, I am at this point but the first of the three amigos to come in the next 20 minutes.
If I may, I just have to start by calling to the memory of this House a commercial that used to air on television.


An hon. member:: Slow down so that the interpreter can follow you.


Ross Harvey: That was too fast, my apologies.
Several years ago on television there was an advertisement for a candy called Certs. In it there were two people, one of whom insisted that Certs was one kind of mint and the other insisted it was another kind of mint. I am remind of nothing so much as that tonight, watching the Liberals and the Tories trying to determine precisely which has been the most disastrous for Canadian public finances when of course in fact, as the line in the commercial had it, "stop, you are both right, you have both been entirely disastrous for the Canadian public finances".
Moving from that, I owe the House an apology because when previously I was going through my list of questions dealing with the various clauses of the bill before this committee I omitted two clauses. This is an omission I would like now to make up.
Hiking in turn clauses 4 and 3,1 would note that clause 4, which of course is that section which binds the Crown, is in some senses unique and would only ask in that regard: how is it that most often the government excludes itself from legislation, for example, pay equity and human rights, in its practice at least but in this case deems itself bound by the legislation? But more substantially with regard to clause 3, which is the section that creates the entire regime of the act in terms of forcing the terms of employment on its employees, I would ask the following questions:
(1)	Why is there an inclusion of those not involved in job action?
(2)	How many workers are to be affected by this bill?
(3)	How much is this bill going to save the government?
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(4)	EIow is Treasury Board going to enforce these restraint measures on staffs of MPs?
(5)	Does Treasury Board have or will it seek the authority to examine the rates of pay for staff of MPs and senators?


Gilles Loiselle: We will send CSIS.


Ross Harvey: The minister jocularly says: "We will send CSIS". Yes, they just may. Lord knows there is ample precedent for it.
(6)	Is not this bill more than back to work legislation but a back-handed way for the government to introduce restraint measures it does not want to or cannot through separate legislation?
(7)	Does the minister not find a touch of irony in the fact that the RCMP and military, the very people expected to control angry workers who are on the picket lines, now find themselves swept up in the same legislation?
(8)	Why, given that the government spends in excess of $5 billion a year on contracting out, would the government exclude independent contractors from the restraint measures of the act?
(9)	How many individuals are affected by this exclusion and what is the cost of these contracts?
(10)	How much does a lawyer on contract to the government earn?
(11)	Why would that lawyer be excluded?
(12)	How much does and architect on contract to the government earn?
(13)	Why would that architect be excluded?
(14)	How much does a temporary staff person in a clerical position earn?
(15)	If a public sector worker under the PSAC contract is working next to an independent contractor doing the same work, why would the independent be excluded?
(16)	Does thee independent contractor earn a different rate of pay?
(17)	Why are federally appointed judges excluded from the bill?
(18)	Does this bill apply to compensation received by the Governor General?
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(19)	Does this bill apply to the Bank of Canada?
With those questions on the record, I shall defer now to my hon. colleague, the member for Saskatoon-Dun-dum.


Steve Eugene Paproski: It is up to the
chairman to give the floor. The hon. member for Saskatoon-Dundurn.


Mr. Ron Fisher (Saskatoon-Dundurn):: Mr. Chairman, I believe the member for Portneuf, if I can remember correctly where he was sitting and if he is still in the House, strenuously defended all these people he was enumerating who were laid off in his constituency and those who are unemployed. The opposition, and in particular the NDP, certainly did defend those people.
Do you forget the debate on free trade? Why on earth do you think those people are unemployed? Why do you think they have been laid off from their jobs? Why do you think those people have been laid off? They have been laid off because of the free trade agreement and the companies they have worked for have moved south of the border. That is why they are unemployed. That is why they are losing their jobs.
In any event, this debate is not about fighting the deficit. I submit to you that the deficit is a very fortunate turn of events for this government. It gives it the opportunity to be able to do something. The question was asked and I made the answer. I think I received the answer to that about nine months subsequent to asking the question.
This is not about a large deficit and it is not about wage restraint either. This debate is about wage suppression. What a marvellous opportunity to bring in legislation, and there is no question whatsoever that this government has not bargained in good faith with these people from the moment the budget was brought in, a budget that brought in by law a constraint on the government's employees which guaranteed with the majority the government had that there was no way fair bargaining could possibly take place. Fair bargaining was pre-empted the moment that the finance minister read the budget, and there is just no question about that.
Turning to the deficit itself, I do not know who requested the survey or the study that Statistics Canada did. It is one of the most reputable adjuncts to the

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government. I do not know. I wonder if employees of Statistics Canada are going to be subject to this legislation as well. Probably they are, unfortunate bunch of people. Anyway, Statistics Canada and the exemplary employees who work for it found that 44 per cent of the debt of this nation was caused by successive Liberal and Conservative, particularly, governments having given away tax breaks to corporations.
Fifty per cent of that debt is directly attributable to high interest rates. That leaves 6 per cent and Statistics Canada did find-and I will readily admit that is what it said-that 6 per cent of that debt is directly attributable to Canadians living beyond their means, which is very roughly and quickly translated as the social programs, the unemployment insurance, medicare, and so on.
If we listen to the finance minister, if we listen to the President of the Treasury Board, if we listen to the Prime Minister, we find that they are blaming the whole 100 per cent on Canadians living beyond their means or, if you will, the social programs of medicare, unemployment insurance, and so on. No more deceitful lie has been perpetrated on the Canadian people in all of Canadian history or for more devious reasons. The only reason that this action is being taken is in order to suppress wages.
I am going to conclude very quickly so that the member for Beaches-Woodbine will be able to get his points in. There are a couple of other interesting sets of figures. Since this government was elected in 1984 inflation has gone up by 29 per cent and corporate taxes have gone up by 17.7 per cent. I am not even going to give you time, Mr. Speaker, to guess how much it is; I am going to tell you. For the individual, taxes have gone up by 103 per cent and they wondering why people are angry. Are they wondering why they are at 15 per cent in the polls?
I would like to point out that in the sixties the disposable income of Canadians went up by about 34 per cent. In the seventies the disposable income of people went up by 22 per cent, and in the eighties, dominated by this free enterprise, free wheeling capitalist government which was going to bring in free trade, this panacea of prosperity, the disposable income of Canadians has risen by .5 per cent. And they are wondering why Canadians are angry. They are wondering why Public Service
employees are so angry. There has to be some way for these people to be able to capture some of the wealth that this country is supposed to have offered.
If you started working in 1980, Mr. Chairman, your disposable income has risen by .5 per cent, andi they wonder why Canadians are angry.


Mr. Neil Young (Beaches-Woodbine):: Mr. Speaker, I have listened with great care to the discussion that took place in the House today, and particularly the comments by the hon. member for Portneuf.
When that hon. member spoke about the unacceptably high welfare rolls in Montreal and in the Quebec province, I can also point out to him that there is an equally unacceptable level in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Newfoundland, and the Atlantic provinces, and there is good reason for that.
There is not an economist in this country who would not agree that the recession that Canada is still in is a made-in-Canada recession by this government. Perhaps the Fraser Institute would not agree but every other reasonable economist in this country would agree with that.
I want to say something that is absolutely offensive to me, and I think to most members of this House. Since 1984 this government has never made one initiative without finding a scapegoat for it. Every initiative this government comes forward with is accompanied by a scapegoat. In 1985 it wanted to reduce the deficit. It blamed pensioners and it attacked pensioners and tried to deindex their pensions. Later on, when it wanted to blame the unemployed, it attacked the Unemployment Insurance Program. Again, when it wanted to reduce the deficit, it went after family allowances. Then, again, as recently as last Monday when the Prime Minister announced his constitutional initiatives, who did he blame? He went after housing.
If you combine all these things together, no wonder there is an unacceptable level of people on welfare and unemployment in this country. Today we find the government blaming public servants for the deficit.
I listened to that hon. member who said that he was trying to talk to principles here, and did nothing but try to set the Public Service unions against the unemployed, the Public Service unions against people on welfare. The
September 30, 1991

real question here is this government's role in negotiations with Public Service workers; it is as simple as that.
I have listened to the President of the Treasury Board try to justify the government's actions in these negotiations. There is not one major media outlet in this country that I have seen in the last three or four weeks that has not clearly seen through what this government is trying to do. Look at the editorials if you do not believe the people on the opposition benches and what we have been saying for the last couple of days. The Globe and Mail: "Ottawa should respect the right to negotiate", a whole editorial attacking this government's credibility with its own public servants. In The Globe and Mail again: "Tories do the almost impossible to spark sympathy for public servants". That was written by Jeffrey Simpson.
The Vancouver Sun, hardly a bastion of the left, put this in: "Don't freeze out public servants", and then it goes on to attack this government's credibility in negotiating under law with its own public servants. "Provoking a strike" says the Edmonton Journal, there is another real lefty. The Citizen-. "Back to work legislation, there must be a better way."
I heard the President of the Treasury Board today say that the government would not agree to the appointment of a mediator because it will not accept some third party that had nothing to do with the negotiations so far intervening in these negotiations, helping these negotiations, because the third party may very well dictate what a settlement should be. I find that to be the height of ignorance and one that is not acceptable to any right thinking Canadian who believes in the free bargaining process.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to say a few words before the debate ends. I wanted to review very briefly the government's mishandling of this case, because if there was ever a situation that cried out for incompetence, this is it. I will have to be brief because of the time. It is a shame I cannot go on at length because it is a disgraceful record and the President of the Treasury Board should be ashamed of the government's record in this regard.
Government Orders
I want to go back to the budget of February 26, 1991 when the Minister of Finance who has since been replaced-he is now the Minister for International Trade-made the following statement concerning the situation of the Public Service in this country.
The government will continue to bargain with its employees but, as
any employer would do, it will at all times be cognizant of its bottom
line as dictated by the seriousness of the federal fiscal situation.
It was a federal fiscal situation, I might add, that was seriously exacerbated by seven years of Tory mismanagement.
It then said: "The deteriorating deficit situation dictates that for the next fiscal year available resources simply will not allow the government to increase operating budgets to compensate for wage and salary increases. This means that any wage increases resulting from the collective bargaining process will have to be funded through a corresponding reduction in Public Service employment.
With a Public Service work force of approximately 215,000, each increase of one per cent in pay could lead to a loss of approximately 2,000 jobs." That is what the minister said in this House in his budget speech. He did not actually say these words, but it was printed in the material that he distributed in the House at the time.
He went on: "To contain the loss of Public Service employment, and to ensure continuation of the provision of vital public services to Canadians, the government is not prepared to contemplate wage settlements exceeding three per cent a year over the next three years. Negotiated settlements of three per cent are consistent with this environment of severe restraint and are in line with the government's inflation targets. The alternative to a firm wage bargaining stance would be a much deeper reduction in public sector employment including layoffs."
In other words, 3 per cent was the figure that was given out and it was understood at the time that if there were negotiated settlements of less than 3 per cent there would be lay-offs to take their place.
Well the government apparently abandoned this scheme and it abandoned it, of all places, at the negotiating table. Imagine, you announce it publicly in the House what your bargaining stance is and then you go into the

September 30,1991
Government Orders
negotiations and you turn around and say: "Sorry, we were wrong, it is now zero per cent."
Do you know why? It is because the President of the Treasury Board suddenly realized that he could not afford to part with 6,000 public servants.
The government pruned the number of public servants by 15,000 over six years and it boasts about it. Then all of a sudden he is confronted with a situation where he could lose 6,000 more if he ended up with a 3 per cent increase according to the Minister of Finance. So he abandoned that policy at the table and said: "You are getting zero."
Who did he say it to? He said it to all the lowest paid workers. Just before the budget came down on February 26 it gave a big increase to all the higher paid workers who were not negotiating with them in a union. That is what it did.
Now the government suddenly realizes its error and said: "Oh boy, we are going to apply this freeze." In June, the minister had the gall to stand in this House and say he was extending the freeze of zero per cent to everybody because he had realized the blunder he had made in giving the increase in January and February to these people.
Then, having recanted that far, the minister says zero per cent now applies to everybody, except the bonuses. He did not say that, of course, but we drew it to his attention and the unions drew it to his attention. He said: "Oh well, the bonuses are included too, it is all zero now."
That is what he wanted all along, but he did not have the nerve to admit it in the House, in the budget, in February. His predecessor did not. He was the one dictating the terms at the time. He did not have the guts to admit it in the House in June.
It was only when the unions pressed him to come out with a fair policy for everybody that he then said zero is the rule. But what he had done is give a substantial percentage increase to the highest paid ones in a year when the inflation rate was 6 per cent. He then says to the lowest paid: "You get zero this year. You may get three next year, but for the year when inflation is 6, you get zip." The others all get 4.2 or whatever it was that was given.
It was a shocking abuse of power by this government and a total mismanagement of the Canadian government that has cost us and cost us dearly in terms of jobs and that is why we are facing this legislation here today.
I have here some quotations from some experts in the labour field, a quotation from the Kingston Whig-Standard. These people are experts and professors at Queen's University. I will read the story:
Ottawa has badly bungled its handling of the public service labour dispute, two labour relations scholars say.
Dictating a wage freeze and forcing civil servants back to work is an ugly move that could have been avoided, say professors Pradeep Kumar and Donald Carter of Queen's University.
The scholars, who teach industrial relations, say the federal government's mistakes as an employer over the past few months could very well:
Demoralize civil servants.
Scuttle efforts to make the public service more efficient, flexible,
and responsible.
Promote a more militant public service union with more militant
and politicized members.
While they see some things differently, the two scholars agree that Ottawa has erred by imposing wage restraints under the guise of collective bargaining, a cherished labour principle under which unions and management jointly define employment conditions.
These are experts in their field. They say the minister has bungled this and bungled it badly. I say I agree with them and so does every member on this side of the House, and so does the Canadian public. This government is incompetent and should resign and get out. It is no good. I have got more.
Then, we have the Minister of Supply and Services who represents an Ottawa riding. He says: "Public Servants have nothing to complain about." He represents an Ottawa riding, and he has lots of public servants. Listen to what this man says. This is an unbelievable set of statements.
"They did not get laid off. They simply did not have their wages rolled back," says Dick, supply and services minister and Ottawa area's lone representative in the cabinet. I may say he is the only Tory in the whole Ottawa area, the people of eastern Ontario knew better than to elect this bunch.
He went on: "They did not have their plant shut down. They do not have to work-share. The Tory MP for Lanark-Carleton makes no apologies for the government's freeze on the salary of its employees in spite of the fact that the freeze only applies to the lowest paid".
September 30, 1991

This government is a disgrace. This government has botched this affair so badly that it amounts to nothing but a national disgrace. I say to the President of the Treasury Board through you, Madam Chairman, that he should get up and withdraw this bill at once. He has no business forcing this kind of legislation on the public without a mediator, without following the usual practices of labour negotiations. He knows that is his responsibility.
I would love to be able to quote more, but I know that my time is running out.


Some hon. members:: More, more.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: I told you they want more. I could continue, Madam Chairman, with the speeches of the Minister of Supply and Services. He refers if you please-he is a minister as I say from the Ottawa area-to fat cats in the Public Service. He, of all people, refers to fat cats in the Public Service.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Andrée  Champagne: It being ten o'clock p.m.-


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Andrée  Champagne: Order. Order, please.
It being ten o'clock p.m., pursuant to order made Tuesday, September 17, 1991, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of Bill C-29 at the committee stage.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Andrée  Champagne: The first clause to study is clause 2.

On clause 2, it is moved-
Order, please.
Mr. Loiselle moves:
That clause 2 of Bill C-29 be amended
(a)	by striking out line 2 on page 2 and substituting the following: "Schedule I to that Act,"
(b)	by striking out line 20 on page 2 and substituting the following:
"paragraph (i), or
(c)	in one lump sum payment that may be made payable; on or after 1he coming into force of this Act, to or for the benefit of an employee whose rate of pay does not exceed $27,500 and that is in an amount equal to
Government Orders
(i)	where the lump sum is payable to or for the benefit of an employee whose rate of pay does not exceed $27,000, $500, or
(ii)	where the lump sum is payable to or for the benefit of an employee whose rate of pay exceeds $27,000 but does not exceed $27,500, that portion of $500 that the rate of pay for that employee exceeds $27,000;"
The amendment is admissible. Shall the amendment
cany?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Andrée  Champagne: I declare the amendment carried. [English]


Andrée  Champagne: On clause 2, the second amendment. Mrs. Catterall moved:
That clause 2 be amended at page 3 by deleting the lines 2 through 6 and substituting the following therefor:
"amount of pay".
This amendment is also acceptable. Is it the pleasure of the Committee to accept this amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.
Amendment (Mrs. Catterall) agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: Shall clause 2, as amended, cany?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.
Clause 2 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: On clause 3, Mrs. Catterall moved:
That Bill C-29 be amended in clause 3 by adding immediately following line 31 on page 3 the following:
(e) persons engaged as independent contractors
This amendment is out of order. It is not intelligible, as it would require a subsequent amendment to subclause 4.
We will now move to amendment no. 4. Ms. Langan moved:
(a)	That clause 3 be amended by striking lines 13 to 42.
(b)	That clause 3 be further amended by striking the word "not" at line 43.
This is out of order. This amendment really attempts to redraft the clause. According to Beauchesne,S 698(9), it cannot be accepted.
Hence, shall clause 3 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.

September 30, 1991
Government Orders


Some hon. members:: On division.
Clause 3 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: On clause 4, Mrs. Catterall moved:
That Bill C-29 be amended by adding immediately after line 2 on
page 4 the following:
5(a) Forthwith on the coming into force of this Act.
(i)	the Treasury Board shall revise the classification system to incorporate fully into pay scales the compensation now paid to certain employees and groups of employees as equalization payments in respect of pay equity;
(ii)	the Treasury Board will cease all actions before the Human Rights Commission in opposition to the Commission's ruling on any matter related to equal pay for work of equal value.
(b)	One year after the coming into force of this Act, the Treasury Board shall revise classifications as necessary to implement full pay equity as agreed to between the Treasury Board and bargaining agents for the employees.
(c)	For any employee or group of employees for which the Treasury Board and the bargaining agents have not been able to reach agreement pursuant to section 5 (b) on new classifications to implement equitable pay scales, all disputes will be deemed immediately referred to the Human Rights Commission for binding resolution.
This amendment has also been deemed out of order because it is beyond the scope of the bill.
Shall clause 4 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.
Clause 4 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: On clause 5, Mrs. Catterall moved:
That Bill C-29 be amended by deleting everything after line 2 on
page 4 and substituting the following therefor:
5.	Forthwith on the coming into force of this Act, the Chair of the Public Service Staff Relations Board shall name a mediator acceptable to both parties who will endeavour to mediate all matters referred to the mediator and to bring about agreement between the parties.
6.	The Chair shall refer to the mediator all matters relating to the compensation plan, for any employee or group of employees covered by this Act, which has expired and for which no new compensation plan has been established.
7.	The mediator shall report to the Chair on the resolution of all such matters on the date fixed by the Board.
This amendment is also out of order because it brings a new concept to the bill and is irrelevant to the bill as it is presented at this time. Amendment No. 7, moved by Ms. Langan:
That clause 5(1) be amended by the addition at line 11 of "with the exception of a mediated mutually agreed upon settlement having been arrived at before or after the proclamation of this Act".
"5(3) Sections 5(1) and (2) will have no force or effect should a mediated settlement be arrived at".
This amendment is in order.
Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt this amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: The amendment is negatived on division.

Is clause 5 adopted?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.

Clause 5 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: On clause 6, it was moved by Ms. Langan:
That section 6 be amended by adding at line 30 on page 4 the following: "with the exception of a mediated mutually agreed upon settlement having been arrived at before or after the proclamation of this Act".
That section 6 be further amended by the addition of:
"6(1) Section 6 will have no force or effect should a mediated settlement be arrived at".


Andrée  Champagne: This amendment is in order and I think the Committee should know what it is voting on.
Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt this amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Shall Clause 6 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed


Some hon. members:: On division.
September 30, 1991

Clause 6 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: Clause 7, moved by Mrs. Catterall:
That Bill C-29 be amended in Clause 7 by deleting line 33 on page 4 and substituting the following therefor:
"Rights Act, the terms"
The amendment is in order.
Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt this amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


Andrée  Champagne: The amendment is negatived.


Joy Langan: five different motions. The first one, moved by Ms. Langan:
That clause 7 be amended by adding immediately following line 42 on page 4: "For greater certainty any order by the Canadian Human Rights tribunal respecting pay equity in the federal public service shall be exempted from the application of this Act".
This part of the amendment is out of order. It brings a new concept to the bill and is considered irrelevant.


Joy Langan: That clause 7 be amended by replacing the word "may" with the word "shall" at line 43 on page 4.
Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt this amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


Andrée  Champagne: The amendment is negatived.


Joy Langan: That clause 7 be amended at line 5 and 6 on page 5 by striking the words "in the opinion of.Treasury Board".
This amendment is in order.
Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt this amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed


Some hon. members:: No.


Andrée  Champagne: The amendment is negatived.


Joy Langan: That clause 7 be amended at line 10 on page 5 by replacing the word "may" with the word "shall".
This amendment is in order.
Government Orders
Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt this amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


Andrée  Champagne: The amendment is negatived.


Joy Langan: That clause 7 be amended at line 28 on page 5 by striking out the word "not".
Is it the pleasure of the Committee to adopt the amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


Andrée  Champagne: The amendment is negatived. [Translation]
Shall Clause 7 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 7 is carried on division.

On clause 8, Ms. Langan moved:
That clause 8 be amended at line 42 and 43 on page 5 by striking the words "other than wage rates or other terms and conditions of the compensation plan".
This amendment has been deemed to be out of order. It is inconsistent and contrary to the principle of the bill.
On clause 8, Mrs. Catterall moved:
That Bill C-29 be amended in clause 8 by deleting line 42 on page 5 and substituting the following therefor:
"award, including wage rates and other terms".
This amendment has also been deemed to be out of order because it is contrary to the principle of the bill.
Shall Clause 8 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 8 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: On Clause 9, Ms. Langan moved:

September 30,1991
Government Orders
That clause 9 be amended at line 5 on page 6 by striking the word "not". That clause 9 be further amended by inserting at line 7 on page 5 "by an amount equal to the Canadian Consumer Price Index for the immediately preceding year" .
That clause 9 be amended at line 11 by striking the words "three percent" and inserting immediately following 'by" "an amount equal to the Canadian Consumer Price Index for the immediately preceding
year".
This amendment is deemed to be out of order. It offends the royal recommendation.
On clause 9, moved by Ms Langan:
That Clause 9 be amended by the addition of a new subparagraph (3). "(3) Notwithstanding any other Act of Parliament but subject to section 11, every compensation plan for employees to whom this Act applies shall be deemed to include a no layoff provision".
This amendment as well has been deemed out of order. It is beyond the scope of the clause.
Shall Clause 9 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 9 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: On Clause 10, Mrs. Catterall moved:
That Bill C-29 be amended in Clause 10 by deleting lines 20 through 42 on page 6 and substituting the following therefor:
10(a) by such amounts as are agreed upon by the parties as a result of collective bargaining.
This amendment is deemed to be out of order as well because it offends the royal recommendation.
Shall Clause 10 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 10 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: On Clause 11, Mr. Loiselle moved that Clause 11 of Bill C-29 be amended:
(a) by striking out lines 2 and 3 on page 7 and substituting the following:
"on which this Act comes into force, or"
(b) by striking out lines 29 and 30 on page 7 and substituting the following:
"day on which this Act comes into force if the parties to the plan"
This amendment is in order. Shall the amendment
carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: I declare the amendment carried, on division.


Marlene Catterall: That Bill C-29 be amended in Clause 11 by deleting lines 14 through 22 on page 7 and substituting the following therefor:
the previous compensation plan and wage rates may be adjusted by such amounts as are agreed upon by the parties as a result of collective bargaining and any wage rates so adjusted shall
This amendment has been deemed out of order. It offends the royal recommendation.
Shall clause 11 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
An hon. member. On division.
Clause 11 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: On Clause 12, moved by Ms. Langan:
That clause 12.1 be amended at line 36 on page 7 by replacing the words "Tteasury Board" with the words "Public Service Staff Relations Board".
That clause 12.2 be amended at line 42 on page 7 by replacing the words "Treasury Board" with the words "Public Service Staff Relations Board'.
That clause 12.3 be amended at line 1 on page 8 by replacing the words "Treasury Board" with the words "Public Service Staff Relations Board".
This amendment is out of order. It brings a new concept which is irrelevant to the bill.
Shall Clause 12 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


An hon. member:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 12 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: On Clause 13, Ms. Langan moved:
September 30, 1991

That clause 13 be amended on line 10 on page 8 by striking the word "no".
This is not in order. It does offend the royal recommendation.
Shall Clause 13 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


An hon. member:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 13 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: On clause 14, Ms. Langan moved:
That clause 14 be amended at line 36 on page 8 by inserting immediately following "are" the words "being forced".
This amendment is in order. Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt this amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


An hon. member:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Negatived on division.
Shall clause 14 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 14 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: Shall clause 15 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 15 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: Shall clause 16 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 16 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: Shall clause 17 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 17 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: Shall clause 18 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.
Government Orders The Chairman: Carried on division.
Clause 18 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: Shall clause 19 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 19 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: On Clause 20, moved by Ms. Langan:
That clause 20 on page 9 be amended by striking all words following the word "Majesty" on line 27.
This amendment is in order. Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


An hon. member:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Negatived on division.
Shall clause 20 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 20 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: Shall clause 21 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 21 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: Shall clause 22 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 22 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: On clause 23, it is proposed by Mr. Loiselle:
That clause 23 of the French version of bill C-29 be amended by substituting line 31, on page 10, by the following:
"ble pour 1992 par cent trois pour cent."
Is it the pleasure of the Committee to adopt this amendment?

September 30, 1991
Government Orders


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: The amendment is agreed to on division.
Is clause 23, as amended, agreed to?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.
Clause 23 as amended is agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: Shall clause 24 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 24 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: On clause 25, Ms. Langan moved:
That clause 25 be amended by inserting at line 29 on page 11 immediately following the word "force" the following:
"only once the report of an independent mediator is received by the Minister. If the report of the mediator is refused by the Minister this Act will not come into force".
This amendment is out of order. It brings a new concept irrelevant to the bill.
Shall clause 25 carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Clause 25 agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: Shall Schedule I carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Schedule I agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: Shall Schedule II carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Carried on division.
Schedule II agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: Is clause 1 agreed to?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Agreed to on division.
Clause 1 is agreed to.


Andrée  Champagne: Shall the title carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


Andrée  Champagne: Title agreed to on division.


[Stage Direction]
Title agreed to.
Andrée  Champagne: Shall the bill carry?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


Andrée  Champagne: The hon. member for Churchill on a point of order.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Madam Chairman, I do not wish to delay things any further, but it seems to me that when you were going through clause 25, the two amendments that were offered by my colleague, Ms. Langan, were not both read.
You read only one of them and you asked for a vote on only one of them. The other one was not dealt with.


Andrée  Champagne: They were treated as one amendment, and both were out of order. They were treated as one amendment.


An hon. member:: You read only one.


Andrée  Champagne: I read only one? I can read the second one for the record:
That clause 25 be further amended by inserting in subparagraph (2) line 33 on page 11 to read: "Notwithstanding clause 25(1), this Act shall come into effect six months hence".
This was also out of order because it brought a new concept to the bill.
Shall I rise and report the bill?
September 30, 1991


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Madam Chairman, on a point of order, there have been discussions and our understanding was that on the motion to report the bill back to the House we wanted a recorded division. We want an actual count.
And the standing vote having been taken:


Andrée  Champagne: I declare the motion carried.
On a point of order, the hon. member for Calgary West.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: I do not think the microphone was on for that voice count and I wonder if you could give it to us. He was at the other end of the table and we could not hear it.


Andrée  Champagne: I was given the yeas, 120; nays, 61. Shall I rise and report the bill?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Bill reported.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Mr. Loiselle, seconded by Mr. Andre, moved that Bill C-29, an Act respecting compensation in the public sector of Canada and to amend another Act in relation thereto, be concurred in at the report stage as amended.

It is the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: All those opposed will please say nay.


Some hon. members:: Nay.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: In my opinion the yeas have it.
And more than five members having risen:


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Shall I dispense with the ringing of the bells?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Government Orders


PAIRED-MEMBERS
[Stage Direction]
Anawak	Blond in
Callbeck	Collins
Cooper	Edwards
Kaplan	MacLaren
Redway	Worthy
Madam Deputy Speaker:: I declare the motion carried.
When shall the bill be read the third time? Pursuant to order made Tuesday, September 17, 1991, at the next sitting of the House.
It being 10.42 p.m., this House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow, pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 10.42 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Ttiesday, October 1,1991