1991-09-19

Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-273, an act to amend the Railway Act (Telecommunications).
He said: Madam Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to do exactly what Bill C-41, introduced by the government in the last session, would have done and that is assert federal jurisdiction over Crown corporations that operate telecommunications companies.
The government introduced this bill with great fanfare following a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in, I believe, August 1989, and then abandoned the legislation and let it die on the Order Paper. We frequently suggested that the government follow through with this, but apparently it lacks the backbone. This bill is designed to stiffen its resolve in that regard and place the matter up for discussion once again.


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

Mr. Dan Heap (THnity-Spadina) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-274, an act to provide for the conversion to civilian uses of technologies and skills used in the nuclear weapons industry.
He said: Madam Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to assist in the transition from production of nuclear weapons to production for peaceful purposes. It requires a company in nuclear weapons production to establish a committee of management and employees and the community to plan for that transition. It also requires the company to deposit 2.5 per cent of its annual gross revenue into a fund for this purpose and specifically for paying benefits to employees who lose their jobs in the transition.


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

Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour and privilege to present a petition signed by a number of Canadians from a number of provinces, all calling upon Parliament to support the NDP plan to restore VIA Rail services that were cut on January 15, 1990 and maintain, where appropriate, upgraded remote services on which many Canadians rely, provide a legislative mandate for VIA Rail and make available to VIA the resources which it needs to become a modern passenger rail system in a class with those throughout the rest of the western world.


Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to table a petition signed by residents of Val d'Or, Sullivan, Saint-Eustache, Dubuisson, Malartic, Senneterre and Barraute. During the review of the Canada Labour Code, Parliament is asked to consider the deficiencies of this legislation and recognize the need for including clauses on preventive withdrawal of pregnant employees with full pay.

September 19, 1991
Routine Proceedings


Mr. Robert E. Ske@: Madam Speaker, I have a number of petitions, first of all from residents of Port Alberni who criticize the unwanted and unfair cutbacks to postal service across the country, including the removing of mail sorting services from the community of Port Alberni against the wishes of residents without offering adequate justification for such a move, resulting in lengthy and unreasonable delays in mail delivery.
The petitioners call upon Parliament to request that the minister responsible for Canada Post authorize the return of mail sorting operations to Port Alberni and other affected communities on Vancouver Island.
Further, the petitioners request that Canada Post Corporation be instructed to halt privatization, cut-backs and centralization of services, and also that Canada Post Corporation be instructed to make efficient service to Canadian households its first priority.
Madam Speaker, I have a second petition from the residents of Ucluelet, also in my riding.
The petitioners call upon the government, whereas the government has cut back millions of dollars to postal services throughout Canada resulting in multimillion dollars loss for B.C. communities, and whereas the consequences of these cuts have been the reduction and erosion of service and the effectiveness of the postal service whereas the results of these cuts has also been the reduction in the number of branch post offices in small and rural communities in British Columbia.
The undersigned petitioners request and call upon Parliament to urge the federal government to restore proper funding to Canada Post so that it can fulfil its mandate and role as the only viable postal service for all communities across B.C.
We, the undersigned-


Madam Deputy Speaker:: This is getting to be two speeches from the hon. member, instead of presenting a petition.
Further petitions.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to present a petition today on behalf of a
number of residents of Kamloops, British Columbia who have heard rumours that the government plans to not fund the RCMP properly next year.
The residents are circulating petitions to ensure that it will not renege on support for the RCMP and are simply asking the Parliament of Canada to encourage the government to restore proper funding for the RCMP in the future to enable it to fulfil its mandate that we all know.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, I have a petition on another matter which is a veiy serious issue in British Columbia particularly regarding a company called Multinational Resources.
The petitioners are from Clearwater, Barrier and Vavenby, British Columbia. They point out that a Vancouver firm, apparently with the support of the provincial government, has announced its intention to dam the North Thompson River at Vavenby and divert the river through a whole number of channels to San Diego, California.
The petitioners are asking the Government of Canada to speak out that Canada's rivers are not for sale.


Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Madam Speaker, I have the privilege this morning to present, on behalf of the Finnish community in Thunder Bay, a petition requesting that the direct air link between Canada and Helsinki, Finland be maintained.
As you may not be aware, Madam Speaker, outside of Helsinki, the Finnish community of Thunder Bay is the largest Finnish community in not only Canada, but North America.
Since our direct air link will no longer be effective as of November 1, the petitioners request the members of the government to do something to maintain and retain that air charter between the two countries. It is entirely appropriate, too.


Joseph R. (Joe) Comuzzi: Madam Speaker, while I have this opportunity, I would like to present another petition on behalf of those in northern Ontario who are forced to pay such high transportation costs. The cost of transportation from northern Ontario to other parts of the country is absolutely beyond reach
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of most average citizens. The air fares are horrendous. We no longer have VIA Rail. Now the price of gasoline is getting to a point where it is no longer economical for people to go back and forth to work. Therefore, 230 people in my community have requested this government to look at the cost of gasoline in northern Ontario and reduce the taxes accordingly.


Mr. Ron Fisher (Saskatoon-Dundurn):: Madam Speaker, I have a petition here duly authorized under Standing Order 36 and signed mostly by constituents from the community of Dundurn. They point out that the recent actions by the government have been a direct attack on the rural way of life in Canada and those attacks include cuts to VIA Rail, abandoning the rail lines, neglect of the fishery, the forest, and agriculture, and particularly as far as their community is concerned, the closing of rural post offices. They call upon Parliament and the government to restore funding to VIA Rail and so on, but also to reverse this terrible stand that Canada Post has taken in closing down the rural post offices which are such a centre to rural life.


Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Madam Speaker, in conformity with the rules and regulations of the House of Commons, I have a petition to present from students across Canada. There are over 4,000 signatures on these petitions which refer to the serious cuts that have been transferred to the provinces by the federal government, to the closures of employment centres, and most of all to the 3 per cent administrative fee on student loans. That is the one I referred to yesterday, Madam Speaker, where students have to pay cash up front before they get their loans. It makes a mockery out of competitiveness, the whole idea of a learning culture.


Mr. David D. Stupich (Nanaimo -Cowichan):: Madam Speaker, I am privileged and pleased to present a petition signed by some 1,100 residents of Gabriola Island, approximately half the adult population. They are complaining that actions of the government are a direct attack on the rural way of life, including cuts to VIA Rail service, abandonment of rail lines, neglect of fisheries, forestry, agriculture, and especially the erosion of rural
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postal service, particularly the closure of small rural post offices.
They complain that Canada Post Corporation has not even bothered to talk to a single resident about their needs, and they urge, pray, and call upon Parliament to instruct Canada Post to cease its closures and privatization of rural post offices, and to maintain the post office on Gabriola Island.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Mr. Charles Langlois (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Industry, Science and Technology):: Madam Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Is it agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Mr. Vic Althouse (Mackenzie) moved:: That, in view of the desperate financial cash flow crisis facing Canadian grains and oilseeds and horticultural producers in this transitional year to the new safety net programs, this House calls on the government to consider the advisability of providing, this summer, third line of defence cash assistance on an emergency basis so as to provide the same net level of support that would have been provided under the Gross Revenue Insurance Program (GRIP) and the Net Income Stabilization Account (NISA), had they been in place for the 1990-1991 crop year; and
That, in the spirit of House of Commons reform and in recognition of the clear and urgent need, the House does not consider this to be a question of confidence in the government.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Point of order, Madam Speaker. I simply would like to indicate to the House that according to the new practice, our agricultural critic will speak in the first slot of the New Democratic Party during the day. The second slot will be shared by the members for Essex- Windsor and Moose Jaw-Lake Centre, and the third

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slot will be shared by the members for Regina-Qu'Ap-pelle and Nanaimo-Cowichan.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I thank the hon. member and I do understand that the first speaker will be using the full 20 minutes and then the other 20 minutes will be shared. The Chair would appreciate, nevertheless, that the names of the hon. members be given to the Chair in advance. It would make things easier.
The hon. member for Algoma.


Mr. Foster:: The Official Opposition will be doing the same thing. I will be leading off for our party and taking the full 20 minute period and after that we will be dividing the time with 10 minute periods from our side.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I thank the hon. member. Debate, the hon. member for Mackenzie.


Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: Madam Speaker, I think this motion we are putting before the House today may break some new ground in that it is a motion which has activity from all sides of the House, from all parties. The proposal probably originated this summer with a request from the member for Haldimand-Norfolk to the chairman of our agriculture committee, the member for Perth, requesting a meeting on the subject of the farm financial crisis that exists in rural Canada.
Our chairman, who is always forthcoming when it comes to addressing agricultural problems, called a special meeting before the House resumed. We heard from agricultural officials and members of the farm organizational community, and a resolution proposed by the member for Algoma and seconded by the member for Prince Edward-Hastings was put to the group. It was virtually the same as what we have presented to the House this morning. That motion was passed with the unanimous support of all sides of the agriculture committee because of the extreme urgency of the problems that exist right now in rural Canada.
I know that members from across the country will be addressing this problem today and I know that in the 20 minutes which I have it is extremely difficult to outline all of the background of the problem and give an overview for those members of the House and public who perhaps are not as well attuned to the difficulties that have risen in rural Canada. However, I will attempt
to provide the genesis of the problems, what has been going on, and what is being proposed by the agriculture committee, the farm community and the population in general.
This particular income shortfall that is hitting rural Canada at the moment, and in fact farmers in a lot of countries, began with the resources boom in the early seventies when energy prices rose four, five, six, seven times; food, forest, fishery products and minerals tended to follow. As a result of increased prices, a lot of countries that had not been exporting food products became exporters in an attempt to gain some dollars through export trade.
In response to this, many governments in the western world responded with a monetary policy that used high interest rates as a means of restricting inflation and placing controls on their own dollars, or whatever their currency denominations are.
The effect of these two things was that prices went up in most countries because of the increased trade and the increased demand for these basic food products. As a result land prices went up a bit and there was a bidding war for the capital, equipment, machinery and so on that farmers used.
On the other side, the government reaction in many countries was to raise interest rates, which meant that the debt the farmers had incurred to recapitalize was costing them far more than they had budgeted for.
A third, and perhaps most important factor, occurred in the early 1980s when it became obvious to some of the so-called larger powers in the world that this was a power struggle of economic importance and of importance to the way they wanted to view themselves in the world order of things. European policies basically set up a restitution fund to handle the problem of low-priced imports coming into a high-cost market. If wheat hit the border of one of the European Economic Community representatives at $4 a bushel but was protected at a level of $8 Canadian, the importer had to contribute to the restitution fund the difference of $4 for every bushel that was imported.
That fund accumulated reasonably large amounts of money which were then used by the community to dispose of any surpluses that were generated from their domestic production.
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The United States realized that now that Europe was beginning to produce enough grains and oilseeds to become an exporter, it would have to do something in response to ensure that its position as a dominant exporting power would continue. Therefore, it began to examine ways of ensuring that its farmers were well protected. It increased the subsidization levels internally and lowered the loan rate to farmers which, under stress conditions in the mid-eighties, became the world price.
When the U.S. farmer completes his harvest, he can lock his grain up at the loan rate which is currently just over $2 in Canadian funds, about $2.30 or $2.40. He gets the money. If the market price goes up he can pay off the loan and re-sell the grain at a somewhat higher price. However, under current conditions the internal market price has not been going up. As a result, the U.S. government is stuck with those stocks. It offers them to the international grain trade at the loan rate, or close to the loan rate, which means that all competing countries are going to have to meet a price just over $2 per bushel.


An hon. member:: Shame, shame.


Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: It is ironic that if that loan rate was at $4 or $5 a bushel, the Europeans would have a depleted restitution fund because the importers of products from outside Europe would not be contributing to the restitution fund, and there would not be any money to finance the disposal of their surpluses at high subsidized levels. However, we are locked into this political power struggle between the two competing economic power blocs and Canada, Australia, Argentina, and the other traditional world grains and oilseeds traders are caught in the middle. Their producers are being asked to bear the brunt.
What has this meant for farmers and for rural communities and for the Canadian economy? I could provide all the statistics available from Agriculture Canada, the farm organizations and Statistics Canada outlining the billions of dollars of shortfall that have occurred, the billions of dollars of debt that have accumulated. However, because of the shortness of time, I will simply point out some of the things that I see happening around me in my community. I live on a farm in a rural riding and I visit the rural parts of Canada from Atlantic Canada to British Columbia quite often.
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I see the same patterns emerging because this war has been going on for six or seven years.
A lot of families, a lot of communities and a lot of provincial economies are getting very war weary. First of all, you see a huge build-up of personal and community debt. You see businesses closing. Sometimes they are being closed because the bank tells them they don't have any credit and sometimes they are being closed because their creditors are tired of carrying them and force them into bankruptcy.
At the family and community level, people are withdrawing from the community. They no longer really communicate with their families. Their troubles are on their minds. They are worried about how they are going to be able to borrow the dollars necessary to pay the debts that have accumulated for that month, or for that season in the farmer's case.
Children sometimes do badly in school. Good students suddenly no longer can carry their class load. Families are breaking up. Businesses are breaking up. Families are leaving the community, sometimes in three or four pieces with the mother going in one direction, the father going in another, the adult or teenage children going someplace else, and the small ones having to decide whether they get taken with their fathers or their mothers.
You see alcohol abuse and worst of all, an all-pervasive sense of failure.
Madam Speaker, that has to be attacked if we are going to have economic recovery in this country and a sense that this country of Canada has a future as a country.
Rural Canadians are resilient people. They come from pioneer stock. They are optimists at heart. They do not mind working hard. They do not mind a few years of hard times if they think there is something at the other end.
The market fundamentals just now in the world for those who look at world trends and understand markets are sending them totally confusing pictures.
For three of the last four years, the world has failed to produce enough grains and oilseeds to feed itself. The carryover from last year was the second or third lowest carryover that we have ever had in history. Yet the price

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keeps falling because of this stupid competition between the Americans and the Europeans.
The market is not functioning, it cannot function because of political interference by those two large power blocs.
The first few years, all of us said that this would go away, that they could not afford to keep this up forever. They are ruining the whole theory of trade and market economics. In a period of time when we are watching competing ideologies, eventually the market is going to have to be permitted to function.
What we have seen instead is the apparent collapse of the price setting mechanism used in the communist countries, and at the same time, we in rural Canada are living the complete collapse of the market economy that our side was supposed to believe in.
Eventually to the credit of our governments, federal, provincial and local as well as our community groups, have decided to begin to take some action. Many people have been working at this for a decade or more because the whole of the 1980s was faced with the onset of this problem.
In the past year, beginning a bit over a year ago, farm groups and the governments, federal and provincial, worked out a series of safety net proposals which we know by the acronyms GRIP and NISA. They have been discussed in this House, so I do not think I have to explain what they are to the crowd which is here this morning.
Those programs were in place at the beginning of this crop year which began August 1,1991. In the euphoria of looking to the future and preparing future programs, one of the side effects has been that the crop year 1990-91, which ended on July 31, has tended to be forgotten.
There is a net income shortfall of something over $1 billion at the present time. That income shortfall has meant, according to witnesses we had before the agriculture committee, that net farm incomes in the grains and oilseeds sector will be something under $6,500 per farm family in that crop year. There were some areas and some farms that had a more positive income, but that is the average. And when you look at a range of poverty levels running from about $18,000 to $22,000, depending on the number of children in a family and the region the family lives in, that is a devastatingly depressing statistic, Madam Speaker.
The agriculture committee was attempting to have a new focus on the third line of defence with their motion that is now before us here today. The third line of defence was what was being discussed as a last option, a last measure, an emergency measure almost, when the effects of normal government programs do not work in providing incomes to rural communities.
We think that is the case in 1990-91, that a special measure has to be introduced for that crop year. There has been some talk and some action along those lines, but the committee is aware that the announcements up to this point simply deal with ameliorating programs that had to be announced last spring. I speak specifically of the program to reduce the GRIP premiums and to provide a NISA payment for the year just past. The NISA payment is appreciated, the reduction in the GRIP premiums is appreciated, but from the farmers' point of view that reduction in the GRIP premium was simply a reduction to an expense that they had not budgeted for.
GRIP premiums will make up between 10 or 15 per cent additional costs per acre for most farmers in the season just completed. There will be no advantage from those payments until the following year-which is sort of normal in agricultural circles-but it is an expense that is tied to that tax year and that calendar year and that is the tax year and the calendar year that is already, as I have pointed out, short more than a billion dollars.
It is that gap that I and my colleagues from the agriculture committee and from my party are urging the House today to address, to have the government address that income gap before it becomes ancient history and the trail gets too cold. The farm communities and those rural towns and villages are hurting so much that they cannot drag an additional billion dollars plus of debt into the coming crop year. Things are not going to be that good financially, given the current set of projections that they can add even further debt loads to the small business community and to the farmers.
I hear from my friends and neighbours in the small business community terrible horror stories of relatively small businesses being left with outstanding accounts of $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 which they see no prospects of collecting. They carry them on the books so they can keep the bankers satisfied that they are still running a viable business, can keep their credit rating, and can keep the doors open. In this way, they do not have to abandon their house and take their kids to some other
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part of the country for education. But the prospects are not good.
I think that in keeping with the new sense of co-operation that has been suggested should occur in this Chamber, that is expected from our constituents and from Canada, that passage of this motion will set an example of the co-operation that can exist to help take the country toward recovery. We recognize at the agriculture committee level and in our party that recovery cannot come about if rural areas are left destitute. This motion is urging the government to take some action so that that destitution is addressed.


Mr. Lyle Vanclief (Prince Edward-Hastings):: Madam Speaker, I noted with interest some of the comments of the previous speaker. I would like to ask him a question. Unfortunately, we now have an NDP government in the province of Ontario. Farmers in the province of Ontario are going through a very tough time this year as well. The minister in Ontario has had the opportunity to take part in the NISA program, which is one way farmers can get some assistance, albeit it is not all that should come forward and all that is needed.
To date the minister in Ontario and the Government of Ontario has failed to participate in that program to the extent that they had. For a very small investment by the Government of Ontario, they could assist Ontario farmers in obtaining tremendous numbers of dollars to help see them through.
I just wonder if the hon. member would care to address why he thinks that the Ontario government is not as supportive of Ontario farmers as it could be, and should be, and needs to be.


Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: Madam Speaker, I cannot speak for the Government of Ontario but I would observe that the difference being discussed here is that $100,000 worth of farm sales would amount to about $500 of assistance. Five hundred dollars is not a huge amount.
What the Ontario minister seems to be attempting to do is get the debate shifted to a more major kind of general support. Instead he had already committed a certain amount of funds to debt reduction and managing of debt for those people who were having some problems financing and continuing in business for the year. He
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thought that was more urgent at the time of the budget and that money has been expended.
I think that province, as all of the other provinces, is open to other suggestions. Ontario, and indeed all of the provinces, continue to make the point that the main hurt in this grain war has been as a result of external factors, international trade, questions of monetary policy, all of which are completely within federal jurisdiction. They are saying that their moneys are supposed to be spent for production programs and they have diverted their funds to managing to get another crop in to support the financing of the coming year's crop.
There is still an argument ongoing among a lot of the provinces with the federal government as to just whose responsibility it is. I think that is still going on and that this motion will help bring everyone back to the table to once again do something about addressing the tremendous net income shortfall that exists.
Perhaps $300 to $500 per farm would certainly be appreciated. The issue is much larger than that when you are looking at average incomes for families in the $20,000 range, and there are farm incomes just over $6,000. We have to use a much larger club than just the $200 or $300 response.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Madam Speaker, I have a couple of questions for the hon. member for Mackenzie. I applaud him for putting down this motion today because it is essentially the unanimous resolution that was put in the agriculture committee. He is in a position, because of his tremendous influence with the premier of Ontario and the Minister of Agriculture for Ontario to really pressure them for action.
What we are talking about here today is the third line of defence or emergency aid to compensate farmers for the extremely low farm incomes during the 1990-91 crop year. I know that we will have marvellous speeches from the Minister of Grains and Oilseeds to explain how there will be interim payments under GRIP and all of those things with names like FSAM and so on. The bottom line is how much funding is going to be provided as emergency compensation for the shortfall in incomes during 1990-91. Those shortfalls are to be shared by the federal and provincial government, whatever the arrangement may be.

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The federal government has put forward a program under NISA which would provide cash assistance relating to the 1990-91 crop year. It is my understanding that if the Ontario government would opt into that program, it would require a commitment of between $8 million and $10 million dollars for the province of Ontario, which does not sound like too much, looking at the magnitude of the problem out there. For that kind of a commitment by the province of Ontario, there would be some $24 million to $25 million available to Ontario farmers, grains and oilseeds producers, for corn, wheat, soybeans and other crops.
There is an existing mechanism. What they have to do is opt into that 1990 crop year and give their contribution, which I believe works out to .5 or 1 per cent. The figures are there. It is a pretty significant contribution.
Another area where I think it is very important for the hon. member to try to use his influence with Mr. Buchanan, the Minister of Agriculture for Ontario, is for special funding under the crop insurance mechanism. They have not calculated the total amount there but clearly, five counties in southwestern Ontario, especially Essex, Kent, Middlesex and Elgin and I believe one other, have suffered terribly. There is a need for special mechanisms under emergency funding or crop insurance.
I would ask if the member would try to use his influence to pry loose those extra funds.


Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: Madam Speaker, I am aware of the problems in that area of Ontario. I was there a couple of weeks ago and I am going back this weekend. I should remind the member that when there are drought zones of that magnitude, the crop insurance program under the existing federal-provincial arrangements functions as it has in the past. The federal government has on a number of occasions provided assistance whereby they have ignored losses from the previous year so that the coverage levels stay the same. They do not lose the step of coverage which is built into the program, which the member will understand. I expect that since it is a long-standing program, it will come into place.
My experience in having gone through that several times in comers of Saskatchewan, that I do not reside in, is that generally, later on in the year you will see such an
announcement. It will be in place for the use of the farmers some months down the road.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Madam Speaker, I think that this is an extremely important debate that is before the House because we are faced with a very critical time in Canadian agriculture this fall. I think that the motion today follows a motion which was put in the agriculture committee and was adopted unanimously.
The important part about this resolution today is that the member for Mackenzie has suggested that this is not a motion of lack of confidence in the government. I am sure that he did it deliberately because I do not think the people out there, especially in the farming community, exactly understand what goes on in Parliament. Maybe we raised their expectations too high because we passed a unanimous resolution in committee calling for special emergency assistance for compensation for the 1990-91 crop year.
Every time the agriculture committee passes a resolution it does not mean that the House of Commons, and most importantly the government, immediately responds. If this resolution were to be carried today, then I think that the government would be honour-bound to implement it in a fair way. It has a certain mechanism in it describing what amount of assistance is necessary, on the basis of the understanding that members of the Standing Committee on Agriculture had. So it is very important that it be done in a fair and honest way. If this recommendation and proposal to provide a net amount that would be available under the GRIP and NISA system had been in place for the 1990-91 crop year, those amounts of funds would be provided.
I know that there are debates going on between the government's minions and the agriculture community, arguing those figures and that, in my view, is really unseemly because of the desperate situation.
It seems to me that the motion that is before us today is about two or three things. It is really about human disaster in thousands and thousands of farming communities across Canada for hundreds of thousands of farm families. It is about a government's commitment and a government's word. It is about a trade war that has been going on in grain for the last four or five years. Most of all, it is about the government's response to that disaster, the government's commitment, whether it is going to
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honour its word and whether it is going to really move into a new era of support in an honourable and a clean way for that trade war. That is what this debate is all about. I want to talk about that today.
The human disaster affects literally thousands of farm families. I think that most of us who are from rural areas have talked to those people: people who do not have enough money to put food on the table; people who have diesel bills from last spring that they have not paid; people whose farm taxes are two or three years behind; people who simply cannot meet their debts. Something happened on August 1. The value of a bushel of wheat suddenly went from around $3 or $4 a bushel down to a couple of dollars a bushel. This was brought home to us very forcefully by Earl Geddes, president of the Keystone Agriculture Producers, when he was speaking before the agriculture committee on August 29. He pointed out that the value of his inventory in the bin that week had suddenly been devalued by 30 per cent. He also pointed out that the average amount of debt from the cash flow enhancement program was $9,000 for every farmer in Manitoba. Suddenly he is paying off those debts with grain worth $2 a bushel rather than with grain worth over $3 a bushel. The manifestation of that is springing up in communities across Canada.
Five farmers were sitting down having coffee in Lucknow or in that area of southwestern Ontario a few weeks ago and said: "We are in a terrible position. We cannot meet our debts. We did not get the special assistance from the last crop year. What are we going to do?" They said: "Let's each go out and get five other farmers and try to have a meeting and talk about this". They did. However, instead of having 25 people out for the meeting, they had 80 people. They said: "Gee, maybe we should have a rally to talk about this and to express to the Government of Ontario and the present Government of Canada how serious the cash flow problem is". So they did and a couple of weeks later they had over a thousand farmers out in Lucknow for a meeting.
Interestingly enough, I have talked to several of the farmers who attended. Something like 856 of them signed a petition saying that if the government does not act by the first of October there is going to be very dire consequences. They are talking about withholding their federal and provincial taxes. They are talking about more
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rallies. They are talking about the desperate situation in which Canadian farmers find themselves today.
It is not as if that is an isolated case. There have been similar meetings in Miami, Manitoba and in Russell, Manitoba. There is another rally planned for tomorrow in Brandon and another for early October in Winnipeg. Other rallies are springing up.
This is not all that surprising. Every farm group-and the chairman of the agriculture committee will confirm this-that came before the agriculture committee last February, March and April when that legislation was before the House indicated that they generally supported it. They had amendments and proposals, but generally they supported it as a new departure for safety net programs. But there is a problem. The value of a crop in 1990 dropped dramatically. At the same time that wheat was going from $135 a tonne to $90 a tonne on the world market, the government support programs dropped equally. They dropped by a billion dollars in western Canada and $300 million in eastern Canada.
We cannot sustain two drops like that without having dire consequences for every group. They told us that they supported the legislation but there had to be a third line of defence or special assistance for the 1990-1991 crop year.
The problem is that that assistance did not materialize. The government put out a program on April 18 called FSAM, Farm Support and Adjustment Measures. Farmers call it the federal smoke and mirrors program because much of it was to pay premiums for both the province and federal government and reduce premiums for farmers for these programs.
Some of it was to extend existing programs for cash flow enhancement and so on.
There is only one part that is considered, and that is a NISA program. That is the one that the Ontario government has not opted into for that year. It supposedly will provide some $337 million, according to the minister's statements this week.
That is the problem today, that these farmers entered into an agreement. They took out premiums in a longterm safety net program. The government did not meet

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its commitment to providing assistance for that shortfall in the past crop year.
That is what the rallies are all about and that is what the rallies will continue to be about. There will be rallies across this country until the government moves. I personally hope that the government will move before there are violent confrontations or other actions which are totally destructive and harmful.
Therefore, the issue here today is really about a promise made. I recall those great lines of Robert W. Service: "A promise made is a debt unpaid and the north has its own stern code" .
I believe if the government does not meet the commitment it made to Canadian farmers last spring, the north will have its own stern code. It is up to the government to provide the special financial assistance. It is not all the federal government; it is clearly a responsibility of provincial governments.
There have been various mechanisms suggested. A few days after our agriculture committee meeting in which we said that there had to be special financial assistance over and above the GRIP program, the minister's own advisory committee met in Winnipeg. It put forward a proposal saying there had to be special funding, that it did not want to destroy the GRIP, and that it wanted to have that special financial assistance provided now.
The assistance that is going to be provided in this coming crop year can be done under GRIP, the Gross Revenue Insurance Program, rather than for this coming year.
One of the proposals it suggested, the third line of defence committee in Winnipeg, was in terms of the NISA program, the Net Income Stabilization Account program which was being used, that the provinces could opt in fully for 1990-91 and that program could be doubled. That would be a mechanism. It suggested that since the mechanism was in place, they should do that.
I have already suggested to the hon. member for Mackenzie that in the Ontario region it is essential that Ontario come forward. One mechanism it can do to help in that situation would be to opt in to the NISA program.
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture and four other farm groups in Ontario held a press conference yesterday. They talked about "no support, no farmers, no food". This is the logo of those five groups. They see the shortfall over and above what has been proposed under NISA as $124 million. They talk about the dire consequences if this shortfall is not met by government. They talk about having to get this situation fixed quickly and the effect on farm losses being felt right across the province. There are a lot of individuals and businesses that make a living from agriculture and the food sector and their livelihood is also at stake.
This is more than fulfilling a commitment for the 1990-91 crop year. Clearly, the issue is spelled out. The need is really desperate.
It is interesting that not only have government members supported the resolution, but they have spoken out about the dire consequences of lack of action this fall on this special funding.
The Minister of Agriculture, in his responses in the House on Monday of this week, used the old smoke and mirrors approach by saying: "We do not want to talk about this whole business of shortfall, the third line of defence and all that. We are going to be making an interim payment under GRIP", much of which will be used up by the premiums that the farmers have to pay.
The figure he quoted was $406 million. It is interesting that that is in the same ballpark as the $350 million premium that farmers will have to pay under the GRIP program.
I think it is important to remember that the need for GRIP, NISA and third line of defence really comes from the international trade war. We have never seen anything like it. Grain and wheat are at $2 a bushel. In real terms, they tell me that it is lower than it was in the 1930s. It just calls attention to the international trade war where some 300 billion in American dollars are being wagered or fought back and forth. It is probably one of the most expensive and most damaging trade wars in history.
Of course it is only one-third of the trillion dollars that is spent on arms, but for Canadian farmers it is a total disaster. They cannot meet their bills with $2 wheat in 1991.
September 19, 1991

We are hoping the talks at GATT will be successful this fall. I understand they are going into the final round in the next two or three months. The success there is absolutely essential because the United States, through its export enhancement program, is going to up the ante. It has moved from $600 million to some $900 million this summer and this fall for driving down the price of grain, oilseeds and other farm commodities.
Next March that goes up to $1.2 billion. Clearly it is going to escalate. As far as we know right now, the need for GRIP payments in the 1992 calendar year will be essential. If they are used through interim payments of the Gross Revenue Insurance Program to solve the shortfall and farm income, the cutbacks that the government implemented last year, clearly farmers are going to be in the worst possible situation next year, because of the funding that should be provided under that program is not going to be adequate.
It seems to me that the question here today is most of all: is the Government of Canada going to take its responsibility? How will it respond? Will it respond now in a fair and just way for the cutbacks it made in 1990-91 crop year? Will it be dragged, kicking and screaming, after thousands of farmers have rallied all fall in communities like Lucknow, Miami and Battleford, Russell, Brandon, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the Lord only knows how many other places in Ontario? Will it respond now in a timely manner for the shortfall that they suffered?
After all, the government has brought in a program where it is going to be putting up something like only 42 per cent of the premium under GRIP. It has offloaded drastically its support. It is 35 per cent to farmers, 25 per cent to provincial governments. The need is for transitional funding for the 1990-91 crop year.
When the minister for grains and oilseeds responds today to the unanimous resolution of the House of Commons, I hope he will respond in a full and forthright way. Otherwise, there is going to be chaos, disaster and personal hardship for hundreds of thousands of farmers across this country.


Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg -St. James):: Madam Speaker, I would like the hon. member for Algoma to comment on one dimension of the farm crisis. The agricultural community is now facing the loss of its best farmers.
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The hon. member for Mackenzie mentioned in his speech a few minutes ago that this pernicious trade war has been going on for a number of years. It is not new. It has been going on now for about six or seven years. In that time it has had devastating effects on the agricultural community.
I understand that in the province of Saskatchewan alone two families a day are leaving farms. According to my calculation, over 3,000 families have left Saskatchewan farms in the last five years. Perhaps some of those were marginal operations. Perhaps a few of those were not the best farmers in the world. My understanding is that the situation is now so serious that some of our best farmers are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. If something is not done very soon we will lose our very best farmers.
I would like the hon. member for Algoma to comment on that if he could.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Madam Speaker, I think the question the hon. member for Winnipeg-St. James has posed is a very serious one. In fact, a great many of our farmers are part-time farmers. They not only have their farm income but their spouse works off the farm, and often they too work off the farm.
I was at a meeting just last Friday with a group of farmers. The argument that one put to me was: "I have a very good operation. I run a very efficient operation. My wife works off the farm. She brings in a pretty good income. I have been working off the farm because I have been having trouble making a go of it. We are still going backwards with two of us working off the farm and doing the cropping and seeding in the time that we are not working. We are still going backwards".
I think that is the argument. That is what those farmers were saying. Just three weeks ago the hon. member and I met with a group of farmers in Portage in Manitoba. The same argument was made. A woman there spoke for herself and her husband: "We are veiy good farmers. We are very efficient. We have not bought any significant new machinery in eight years. Yet we are going backwards. We are just grinding away at our equity".
That is the key point. People want a signal. There should have been a hiatus last spring when we were moving away from an old system of safety nets to a new system that required farmers to make a larger contribution, that required provinces to make a larger contribution. By its very nature the federal government was reducing its requirement. Yet we did not get a clean launch on the system because the federal government

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and the provincial governments did not provide the transitional funding.
It was laid out very clearly before the agriculture committee. The Ontario Commodity Council, which represents a broad range of producers, said: "For the shortfall we need at least $200 million", and things have gone badly since then. Crop prices have gone down. Western Prairie Pools Inc., all those groups from the west, Keystone, NFU and other groups were saying there is a shortfall of at least $1 billion. They are saying: "Provide us with the net difference". Unless we have that kind of assistance and have it quick and clean, the government's credibility and the government's support program, the GRIP program, is going to founder. As well, thousands of farmers are going to founder because they did not get that compensation, that transitional adjustment, for the 1990-91 crop year.


Lyle Vanclief: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I would just like to back up and support a couple of things mentioned by my colleague from Algoma. I would just like to emphasize to the House and to all who are watching today what is really happening out there. I have farmed all my life, though I have not farmed as actively during the last two or three years. I am absolutely astounded at the number of farm suppliers and people who do business in the agricultural community who are coming to me and phoning me and commenting about the level of their outstanding accounts at this time of year.
Farm fertilizer and farm supply people are saying that they are more than double what they were a year ago, and farmers know that the crops they have are worthless and they are not going to be able to pay those bills. Farm fuel suppliers are saying accounts receivable are an astronomical percentage. Bankers are already saying that if farmers do not roll and pay off their operating loans completely at the end of the year, whatever they carry into the next year will just be taken off of next year's operating loans. No business can go on like that. It is tearing the whole agri-food industry apart.
Farmers and the whole industry are disappointed. They were told they were going to have support during the transition from the old ad hoc system of support for
agriculture to the new safety net program system. Everybody was led to believe and told that: "If you will help us get that together, we will not see you go down during that transitional period". That has not taken place. Quite frankly, no one can say that it has taken place.
One can throw around the figures of what the new program is going to do. However, I would just ask my colleague if he could briefly comment on the following question. There is talk of an interim payment on the GRIP program, which many of us supported. We may have some questions about it, but it is there. However, if we are going to put an interim payment of GRIP into place in October or November, is that not taking from what should be next year's pay cheque for this year? Is that solving the problem we have today, or are we just putting it off and hoping and praying that someone from on high will create a different situation next year?


Hon. Charles Mayer (Minister of Western Economic Diversification and Minister of State (Grains and Oilseeds)):: Madam Speaker, I concur with the two previous speakers that this is a serious time for Canadian farmers. About half of the production annually of Canadian farmers is in the grain and oilseeds sector, and it is experiencing the worst prices, I would suggest, ever in the history of that sector of Canadian agriculture.
The prices that are prevailing on the world markets today are roughly the same as the prices that farmers received 20 years ago for their product. The farmer hauling wheat into an elevator in western Canada, for that matter in Ontario or any place else-Prince Edward Island produces wheat and wheat is produced from coast to coast in this country-is getting in the neighbourhood of $2 a bushel, and in some cases it is less. That compares to the full realized price for wheat in 1971 of $2.15 a bushel. Simply what is happening is that farmers are being asked to live on the same kind of income that they had in 1971.
I want to suggest that for a consumer or a taxpayer to put that into perspective, just think of where any of us would be if we were going to have to meet today's expenses of living, supporting a family, running a business and doing whatever on the same kind of income that we had in 1971. None of us would last very long and,

quite simply, that is the situation that faces a big part of Canadian agriculture.
The other side of it is that when you look at it, and it has been stated here by the hon. member who just spoke, Canadian agriculture is pretty good at what they do. We produce a good quality product and, by and large-and I will speak as a farmer because I still farm-we are not bad at what we do. We get up in the morning and if you look around the country this year, and there are some exceptions because there has been some drought in some areas and some pretty severe drought especially in parts of Ontario, the fields are clean, the crop is off, the fall work is done to the extent that it is going to be done, We run a pretty good show, but when international prices are where they are, it does not matter how good you are, the competition we are up against has nothing to do with how efficient you can produce. The competition we are up against is run by countries and people with larger treasuries. That is what is very difficult to accept.
Just to make the point further, the Canadian Grains Commission, which is an institution in Canada that has been here since the early part of the century and is responsible for weighing, grading and seeing that the quality of crop we produce is handled after we produce it, estimates this year that this is probably going to be the best quality crop that we have ever harvested.
So we have got a situation where farmers are good at what they do. They have produced probably the best crop on record and yet prices are as low as they have ever been, I would suggest, and even lower than they were in the 1930s. I can give numbers that would suggest that in relative terms, and if you want to compare dollars in 1930 to dollars today, prices today are worse than they were in the 1930s.
Then you ask: "Why is that the case? Is the world awash in wheat? Is there no more need for additional food?" When you look at that side of it, it is even more puzzling because the world is going to produce somewhere between 30 and 40 million tonnes less wheat this year than last year. Our production is going to be down to something like 550 million tonnes of wheat nationally from 590-some tonnes a year ago. There are obviously more people around now than there were a year ago to
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be fed, so you ask: "Why are prices not going up instead of down?"
Quite simply, the situation that we are in makes no sense. We need more food because we have more people to feed. We produced less this year than last year. Our farmers are good at what they do and yet the prices are as low as they have ever been.
Quite simply, in my view, by far the majority of the problem rests with the European Community. It has since the start of its common agricultural policy, had some very high support prices. We do not object to the community paying farmers high prices, or however you want to talk about them, but high relative to the prices our farmers receive. We understand that Europe wants to produce food so that it can no longer worry about going hungry which it did right after the Second World War. But when those very high prices they paid caused large increases in production and those increases in production resulted in the European Community not only being self sufficient, but now being the second largest exporter of wheat in the world, then in my mind that is where, by far, the biggest part of the problem is and I think that is what we have to address to really solve this problem.
Just to tell you how critical the situation is, a European farmer producing Durum wheat-the wheat we use in pasta products such as noodles, spaghetti and lasagna, those kinds of things-this year is being paid $355 a tonne. Compare that to Canadian farmers who are coming out an elevator in southern Saskatchewan and getting something like $70 a tonne. If you compare that number to $355 a tonne, you can see the kind of problem we face.
On top of that very high price, there are what the Europeans refer to as disadvantaged regions in Europe that are receiving an additional, we have estimated, $111 an acre subsidy. That subsidy in addition to the very high price they receive has resulted in a dramatic increase in Durum production in Europe this year. Something like one third more Durum is going to be produced this year in Europe than last year. Where does it go? It is going to have to go on the export market. The export market is very thin, to use the jargon of the trade. There is not a lot of Durum wheat exported, only about 5 million tonnes annually in the world.

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This year the Europeans, as a result of those veiy high prices and that per acre subsidy, are going to produce an additional 2.5 million tonnes to be put on the world market when the world market only absorbs about 5 million tonnes each year. The result, very high export subsidies that Europe pays when they export into markets that Canadian farmers compete in.
Quite simply, if our farmers are getting $70 a tonne and the European farmer is getting $355 a tonne in addition to a per acre subsidy, they have to export and we have to export. When we go to sell you can see the kind of subsidy that is going to be associated with that export sale from Europe. It is probably $250 or more dollars a tonne. This is absolutely outrageous. That is the problem we face.
Not only are they surplus in Durum, but the Europeans recently made a sale to China. The selling price was something like $85 a tonne Canadian. We estimate that the subsidy that went with that export sale was somewhere between $190 and $200 a tonne. Compare that to what our farmers are getting and you can see the kind of problem we face.
What we have is a situation where the Europeans believe, for some reason, that they can dump in third markets. Nobody agrees with dumping, which is selling in an export market below the price you sell in your own market. Nobody agrees with that. The Europeans do not agree with that. They take every opportunity they can to assail the Japanese or the Americans, or the Canadians for that matter, when they suspect that we are dumping in their market. Yet, when it comes to third markets, for some reason they think they have a God-given right to continue to do that.
That is what the GATT Round is all about. We absolutely have to address what is going on in these kinds of situations at the GATT Round that is as present still under way.
What the Europeans have done, with these large internal support payments to their farmers is increase their production dramatically so that they now are the second largest exporter-I am not only talking about grain and oilseeds-of sugar in the world, after Cuba. They account, I believe, for over half the exportable products on the dairy side. They are surplus in beef.
They are surplus in pork. They are surplus, as I have said, in Durum and milling wheat. They have done this to totally distort world markets in agricultural trade and hence the situation we find here.
The hon. member for Winnipeg-St. James and I were at a meeting in southern Manitoba, a week ago today as a matter of fact, and there were somewhere around 1,200 farmers there. The farmer is virtually-I use the word "afraid"-he is scared because he does not know what is going to happen. Nobody can survive for very long on $2 wheat. As I said it is the same price they were receiving 20 years ago for the product they produce. None of us could live today on the kind of salary that we made 20 years ago to bring it forward and have to meet today's expenses. That is the situation that is out there. What do we do about it? I have several suggestions.
First of all, in response to the member for Algoma when he made the point that if we pass this motion-and I want to conclude and say a few things about the way this motion is worded-I do not think that members should in any way, and I think he said, be honour bound to do what is suggested in the motion.
We have accepted our responsibility on behalf of Canadian farmers in the past and we have every intention of doing as much as we possibly can to keep our farmers in business in the future. Regardless of whether this is a motion that is passed or defeated as far as the opposition is concerned, I think our record speaks pretty loud in terms of the kind of support that we have for our farmers.
There are several things we can do. I understand the concern about the amount of money that should be there to meet the difference if GRIP and NISA had been in place for the previous crop year. I want to suggest that if in fact we were staring $5 wheat in the face and whatever that means in terms of com prices or canola prices or soybean prices, I am just using $2 wheat as a means of pointing out how bad it is across the sector, I do not think there would be nearly the concern about last year's lack of income. Again, I think we had better be pretty careful about tying it to what GRIP and NISA would have kicked out a year ago because the Department of Agriculture has done some numbers to show that GRIP and NISA would likely have put out less money for the 1990-91
September 19, 1991

crop year than was presently available under several programs that were there. I do not think that is the point.
I think the point is that there is real concern in the farm community that with these kinds of prices if they prevail very long, there are not going to be very many farmers around. I for one am concerned that if farmers are staring at the same kind of prices in the face when they go to the field next spring as they are now, what is likely to happen. It is my view that we are going to see a big number of acres not seeded at all. That, in my view, would be a big tragedy, not only for the way we use our land, but for the whole infrastructure that is there.
I have numbers here to show that the number of farm machinery dealers is down dramatically, depending on the part of the country you come from. It is down probably as much as 25 per cent right across the country. The whole infrastructure gets to be questionable as to how long it can survive. If you start losing that, then no matter how quickly grain prices come back, it is going to take a period of time to get some of those farm dealerships, fertilizer people, the farm chemical people and all those people back into business.
In the meantime, I think we have to do everything in our power to point out to the Europeans that what they are doing is totally unacceptable. In many ways it is like an invisible invasion on us. They have destroyed our markets internationally and we are suffering the consequences at home. The evidence of it was there at the meeting we were at last Thursday in Miami. The evidence of it is here in the kind of debate we are having in the House today. What they are doing is totally, totally unfair.
Their tariffs are away out of whack. For instance, when we buy automobiles from Europe, the tariff coming in is
9.2	per cent. When we send automobiles to Europe, the tariff is 29 per cent. What I find even more despicable- and I could use stronger language, but it literally is despicable-when we send our wheat to Europe the tariff in some cases is as high as 200 per cent. How can that be fair?
We produce a high quality product as far as wheat is concerned. When we send it to Europe, the tariff, because of their variable import levies, runs as high as 200 per cent. When we buy cars from them-they make good cars, we are not saying they do not-the tariff is 9.2 per cent. When we look at the balance of trade, the
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balance of trade is in their favour. The European Community, the 12 countries, run a balance of trade surplus with Canada that has been running $3.5 billion or in that neighbourhood.
The tariffs are decidedly in their favour and the balance of trade is decidedly in their favour. Yet when we go to compete with them, we find it very difficult because of their size. We have to do everything we can to let the Europeans know that this cannot continue. We have been doing this at the GATT negotiations. We walked away from the table when we were in Montreal two and a half years ago because they refused to deal adequately with agriculture. We did the same thing last fall in Brussels and said that: "Unless you are prepared to do something substantial on agriculture that is going to stop driving our farmers out of business, we have no intention of doing anything on the other areas that Europe wants to be dealt with in this GATT round".
Germany is an example. I do not understand Germany. By its own admission in conversations, 1 per cent of the German economy is agriculture. It is 1 per cent. There are ways in which it could support its farmers with the same monetary value, the same amount of money, without tying it to increased production.
At the same time, Germany now is the largest exporter in the world, both in percentage terms of its economy and in dollar terms as far as absolute amount. The Germans, of all people, with 1 per cent of its economy dependent on agriculture, should realize that unless it is prepared to address some very reasonable requests by the rest of the world-I do not have time to get into what is happening in the Third World-are going to find that the rest of the world is not going to give access to Germans for some of the manufactured goods it produces. Its common agriculture policy is damaging its environment.
For instance, I have figures to show that Holland uses somewhere between 25 and 30 times as much nitrogen fertilizer as we do in Canada. It has problems with its groundwater damaging its environment. Its common agriculture policy makes no sense, whether it is on the environmental side or the economic side.
As far as the Third World is concerned, the IMF for instance estimates that if you deal properly with agricultural trade in this GATT round, that you would increase the amount of earnings of Third World countries by as

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much as $50 billion U.S. annually. Surely that should account for something.
We face a very, very large problem in this sector of the Canadian economy, not because we are bad at what we do. We are good at what we do. We have to address it, and we have to do everything we can at the GATT. In the meantime, we are going to do everything that we possibly can to keep our farmers in business until we get a solution at the GATT.
Again, I think we have a veiy good chance of doing something at GATT this time around so that we can finally get some rules in place for Canadian agriculture that treat agriculture in the same way that other commodities are treated.
We understand the problem. Our record is there to show what we have done. Our record is there to show what we have been able to do in terms of putting pressure on internationally, and we are prepared to continue to do that.
I want to take a couple of minutes if I can on the motion. Nobody can disagree with the import or the content of the motion "to consider the advisability of providing third line of defence cash assistance on an emergency basis to provide the same level of support that would have been provided under the Gross Revenue Insurance Program", et cetera.
I think we have to be careful on the numbers, because we want to stick strictly with the numbers. I can demonstrate that that same kind of support is there, but I do not think that is the issue. Farmers are concerned about cash, so nobody can find much difficulty with considering that kind of thing.
As I have already said, we are prepared to do as much as we possibly can. What I do have difficulty with is the last two lines of the motion I have in front of me: "in the spirit of Commons reform and in recognition of the clear and urgent need, the House does not consider this to be a question of confidence in the government."
The hon. member should know that this is not the case. He should know, if he wanted to speak to his House leader, that this is the kind of reform that is under consideration. If we were to vote for this motion because of the way the rules are in the House, because this is a supply day and because it is a surrogate motion if you
will, on the budget, we are voting against our own budget.
If the hon. member wants to do this kind of thing, I would put a lot more stock in what he is saying. He could have phoned me up an offer or whatever for a kind of bi-partisan-if that is the right word-or all-party support. I have had some of those calls from the Official Opposition.
When he comes with this kind of a motion, I have to think that he is trying to play politics with Canadian farmers. As a farmer himself, he knows there is a desperate situation out there. Farmers do not need this.
To suggest that "in recognition of the clear and urgent need", the House does not consider this to be a question of confidence simply is not the case because this is an Opposition Day. This is a supply day. It is really a motion that is attached to the budget.
I suspect there is a lot of sympathy for the concern that is expressed in the main body of the motion.
To attach that on at the end really does not do any good in terms of sending out the right kind of signal from this place, which is that we understand the concerns of our farmers and that we are going to do everything we can to support them through this difficulty. I believe we will get through it, and I believe we are going to see improved grain prices.
In the meantime, as I said, and just to say again, we are going to do as much as we possibly can to see that our farmers get through this difficulty so that when we get better international prices and we can have some sanity in the European community-and I did not talk about the Americans or the Japanese, which I very much could-that we are going to have our farmers out there to take advantage of some of these better prices.
Again, I wish the NDP would stop trying to play politics in a very, very difficult situation out there with our Canadian farmers.


Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: Madam Speaker, on a point of order. Near the end of his remarks, the minister did raise something which I think is a point of order. As you know, being Speaker of the House, the whole motion itself ploughs new ground in terms of procedures in this House. The committee passed this motion, which under
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normal circumstances and under normal times would probably not have been considered a proper motion.
It is offered as an all-party proposal. It was discussed as such in the agriculture committee. These types of initiatives have been discussed as long ago as during the McGrath commission report and was in fact a part of the recommendations from that report which have not yet been enacted or taken up.
I think the fact that all three parties saw fit in this case to take up the suggestion of McGrath, and to blink their eyes at the existing rules to permit this kind of wording to pass the committee and be submitted again to the House, and because it had passed the committee the House accepted it, that the minister should be aware that this was an all-party proposal from a very important committee and that we had discussed it informally yesterday.
This proposal had the added words to make it very clear that it was not the purpose of the committee or any members of the committee or any of the members or parties in the House that this should be an embarrassment to the government. What it should be is simply a reflection of, first, what the Standing Committee on Agriculture thought was a clear statement of what we thought. We are referring it today, which is the first opportunity we can find under the existing rules to bring it before the House so that the whole House may have an opportunity to discuss the issue as well.
I would hope that the minister and his cabinet colleagues would accept it as that. It is nothing more devious or less than simply an attempt to have the issue discussed in the broadest way possible, and in the full knowledge of the House and the public who watch the House.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I will, of course, listen to the hon. minister and I will also listen to the hon. member for Thunder Bay-Atikokan or to any representative of the other party as well.
I have been listening very carefully to the hon. member for Mackenzie. I do understand very well what he is saying and what he means, but my problem is one of procedure. In matters of procedure, I cannot take this really as a point of order because there are none of our rules that mention what the hon. member was saying. In
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practice, there is some kind of a convention in this House that the government does decide on occasion what the government will consider or not, a confidence motion.
Strictly speaking, I am in a difficult position as far as procedure is concerned. I will listen to the hon. minister and will listen if someone else wants to be heard, but I think we should be careful. The Chair cannot let this go on very long because it is not really a point of order.


Charles James Mayer: Madam Speaker, I listened very carefully to what the member for Mackenzie said. Again, I am not in any way talking about the substance, the main body of the motion. I read some of the transcript from the agriculture committee, of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture, the chairman, both members of the government. There was a unanimous vote and I think that some of the farmers I spoke to who were there appreciated very much the way it was approached, and I think we have had quite a good discussion here this morning.
That is not what I am speaking about, Madam Speaker. What I am suggesting is that the hon. member should know and he should check with his House leader that by definition a supply day, as part of the budget, which goes back to King John at Runnymede, by definition is a vote of confidence. So no matter how you couch it, and no matter how cute you want to be with the wording, if the government votes for this motion they are voting to defeat itself.
The message I want to leave to Canadian farmers, who we are talking about here and who we want to reassure, that by the government voting against this motion, which we have to do by convention-and if we could get together and get our rules sorted out so we don't have to do some of these arcane things, it would be better for everybody. But, in the meantime, I want to suggest to the hon. member that he learn the rules and that he stop trying to use the rules to play politics at a time when Canadian farmers need reassurance and not politics. When we come to vote on this motion, which I understand is going to be deferred until next week, we are going to have to vote against this-not because of the content of the motion but because of the way the NDP put this motion forward, Madam Speaker.

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Madam Deputy Speaker:: This point of order that is not a point of order is really taking a lot of time. If the hon. member for Thunder Bay-Atikokan who had asked to be heard before would agree, I think we should go to questions or comments following the speech by the hon. minister and get into substance instead of procedure.


Iain Francis Angus: Madam Speaker, I do wish to rise on the point of order because there is one element that has not been offered to you for your consideration and that of the government.
The motion as it is written-


An hon. member:: We have already ruled on that. Are you challenging the Chair?


An hon. member:: Why don't you listen?


Iain Francis Angus: Madam Speaker, if the hon. member would listen instead of bellowing he might learn something. What I want to offer to the Chair-and I did not notice that you had ruled, you just wanted to move on to questions and comments-this House-


An hon. member:: The Chair ruled on the point of order.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Order. The hon. member for Athabasca is making my job more difficult than it should be. The hon. member for Thunder Bay-Atikokan.


Iain Francis Angus: Thank you, Madam Speaker, and in no way am I challenging your decision, if it in fact has been made. What I want to remind the House is that this House is its own master. Irrespective of whatever the convention has been, by motion this House, with unanimous consent, can do as it pleases. In the motion offered by my colleague it says very clearly that this House does not consider this to be a question of confidence in the government.
Madam Speaker, I suggest to you that the motion as worded gets the government off the hook. It was offered in a spirit not of partisanship but as a way to have this whole House follow the example of the standing committee.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I will, if I may, read only three lines from Beauchesne, which says:
The determination of the issue of confidence in the government is not a question of procedural order and does not involve the interpretive responsibilities of the Speaker.
So it comes back to what I said earlier, that the government and the government only can decide whether a question is or is not a question of confidence. I would imagine that all parties will at one point talk about it and make their own decisions. But this is not something that the Speaker can do for the House.
We will go into questions or comments. The hon. member for Algoma.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Madam Speaker, although I do not think the government would have fallen if this motion had been carried, I think it becomes a fruitless debate to spend very much time arguing. If the government decides that this is a question of confidence, then it is going to vote against it. I think your ruling is sound there.
I am really interested to know something from the minister. He certainly gave a great description of the problems that the world faces with the EEC support programs and so on. I think the key issue after all is that he is the Minister of Grains and Oilseeds, and along with the Minister of Agriculture, carries the prime responsibility to cabinet. I am encouraged if press reports are right, that he has been waiting on his colleagues in cabinet to find additional funding. Although the minister says that he can prove that the assistance in the 1990-91 crop year was equivalent to GRIP, I do not think he can persuade many farmers of that. If you look at the government's own data book on farm incomes and financial conditions, you will see that during 1990, government support programs dropped by some $1,275 billion. Of course, this spring we have seen the dramatic drop in the price of corn and other crops which carries over into that crop year.
I think it is generally felt by the farming community that of the emergency cash assistance which they had expected and hoped would be paid this spring, only a reasonably small portion of that, some $300 million, will be forthcoming through the NISA program. I am interested to know, since the press reports indicate that the minister has taken the issue to cabinet and is being supported by the hon. member from Regina, the hon. member from southern Saskatchewan and the rural caucus, how much progress he is making with regard to getting emergency financial assistance and whether that can be put in the hands of farmers in the very near future? That is really the basic issue of this debate, not

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whether it is a matter of confidence in the government or not. That issue is a really difficult one.
The question is, can we get new emergency funds to cover the shortfall, transitional funds for last year's crop, and can we get it to the farmers before many more of them go down the drain in their payments for their crops, supplies and taxes this fall?


Charles James Mayer: Madam Speaker, the hon. member is right.
I think the concern we have and all of us have is over the immediate financial situation out there. Somebody used numbers here showing that the average farm family net income for living expenses is something like $6,300. So that is obviously something that is going to cause and is causing some pretty significant difficulty right now, let alone what is going to happen as winter months get closer to us.
With regard to what we can do, the member knows that I cannot stand in the House here and talk about what in fact is likely to happen. We are aware of the problem. We are going to do, as I have been saying, the very best we can to address the problem. In the meantime, we have been encouraging some of the provinces and I would hope that the NDP here would be talking to their provincial counterparts in Ontario to put up the extra 1 per cent on NISA. We know that in terms of the overall amount of money that they need, it is not going to solve all their problems, but an additional 1 per cent by the provinces on NISA would trigger an additional .5 per cent by the federal government which would mean 5 per cent. Without getting into the technicalities of it, it would mean 5 per cent of your eligible income as opposed to 3.5. That would help. I think there are some other things we can do, but in the meantime we understand the problem quite well. Given the fact that it is a very difficult fiscal situation that the government finds itself in, and we all understand that, we are going to do the very best we can to address the problem.


Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Saskatoon-Humboldt):: Madam Speaker, I just want to comment and ask a question of the minister.
He has given us a very reasoned approach and a very clear definition of the reason why we are in this situation. But that very reasonable approach has indicated that there is a shortage in income and he has accepted
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the fact that there is a shortage as far as income for farmers is concerned. The statement in the motion is correct.
By his very reasonable approach, he has told us rather indirectly that the government is unwilling to make the kind of commitment to Canadian fanners that the U.S. government and the EC are making to theirs. I guess the farmers in Canada are not expecting that kind of commitment, but they are expecting a commitment which would allow them to survive. That kind of a commitment would be very much less than the EC or the
U.S. commitment.
I recognize also that the funds taken from GRIP and NISA for the 1991-92 crop are borrowing from the future. I recognize that money is being put forward that is new money, I suppose, to the farmers but the real problem is still last year's crop, where the billion dollar shortage is not being made up. Even if you take it from next year's crop, you have not solved the problem.
I guess what I am asking is: is the government at least studying the need for more money without taking it out of the 1991-92 crop income?


Charles James Mayer: Madam Speaker, just to comment on what the member said about not expecting us to do what the European Community does, I should give you a number.
It is estimated that this year the European Community is going to spend $42.5 billion on its common agriculture policy. That is more than our deficit-$42.5 billion the Europeans are going to spend on their common agriculture. That does not include some of the countries specific subsidies and some of the other things that go on. That is the kind of league that we are in.
Just to respond in the same fashion as I did to the member for Algoma, we understand the problem. It is there. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that a family cannot live on an average income of $6,300. You cannot live on an income of 20 years ago with today's expenses.
We have looked at all the numbers and as I have said, we are going to do the very best we can to address the problem so that our farmers can stay in business until we get to some better international prices, which I believe we have a very good opportunity of seeing before spring comes.

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Madam Deputy Speaker:: The period for questions and comments is over. We will resume debate. The hon. member for Essex-Windsor will be speaking for 10 minutes, which will be followed by a five minute period of question and comments.


Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Madam Speaker, I think it is especially useful, perhaps, to follow up the minister who has made some reference to the province of Ontario and the Government of Ontario's policy toward farmers. I think it is often forgotten that the very difficult situation facing farmers throughout this country is not confined to western Canada. In fact, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture this past summer declared what it called a state of emergency in Ontario agriculture.
It appeared before the agriculture committee along with the Ontario Corn Producers Association, the Ontario Soybean Growers Marketing Board, and the Ontario Wheat Producers Marketing Board, all of the major agricultural groups in the province of Ontario and commodity groups affected in the province of Ontario. They presented an agreed-to statement that put things in very tough terms. They said the income situation for thousands of Ontario grain and oilseed producers is desperate. They said that statutory programs and interim measures announced on April 18 do not come close to providing "a transition from income levels attained during the pre GRIP-NISA period based on those expected with GRIP-NISA in future years for Ontario grain and oilseed farmers".
They go on to say that without immediate government action, thousands of Ontario family farms will simply not survive through 1991 to realize the promise of improved safety net programs. They will enter 1992 in such a weakened condition financially that no safety net program will be able to prevent their ultimate demise.
I know that the minister has had discussions with the president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, Roger George. I know that the president of the OFA has reported that the minister has taken a very hard line toward some of his cabinet colleagues, that the minister has said there has to be action with respect to what is taking place in the province of Ontario. I had very much hoped that this week the minister and the Minister of Agriculture would have had something to say to farmers
across the province of Ontario to give them some hope as we head into the winter because what we face is, as they have said, a desperate situation.
They have suggested various things that need to be done so that Ontario farmers are treated the same way as western farmers. They have suggested for instance that there needs to be a top-up of ASA support prices to the 95 per cent level. There needs to be interim payments issued on 1990-91 crop sales, as was done in early spring under the Western Grain Stabilization Act program. The estimated cost of that is $36 billion.
They suggested that there has to be an incremental increase in the initial payment for 1991-92 Ontario wheat sales with an estimated benefit to Ontario farmers of something in excess of $4.5 million.
These kinds of points are what they have stressed to the agriculture committee. They have also made requests to the Ontario government. They have made requests for an immediate interim payment under the Ontario Grain Stabilization Program, for the waiver of the one-third producer premium deduction with the Ontario program. They have also asked, if the federal government increases its ASA payments to the 95 per cent level, that the Ontario government agree to maintain its payments at the present level, which had been promised.
The minister suggested that the province of Ontario needs to take action. I want to tell the minister that this is a message which has gone to the Ontario government from members of all political parties, including myself. We have said to the Ontario government that this is not action that should just be the responsibility of the federal government.
The other side of that point is that this is not a desperate situation which can be dealt with only by the Ontario government. The federal government must provide part of the assistance to Ontario farmers.
That is the general situation in the province of Ontario. There is a special situation in my area. We face in southwestern Ontario, especially in Essex County, but also in Kent County, parts of Lambton County and parts of Elgin County, severe drought conditions this year. These drought conditions reflect the lowest levels of rainfall ever recorded in Essex County, for instance, in the month of July and just about the lowest levels that
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have ever been recorded in the month of June. I think there was one year that was lower in the 1940s.
Farmers have been devastated, not just by the conditions that have hit prices, which are also hitting western Canadian farmers and farmers elsewhere in Ontario, but they have been devastated by the fact that the yields which they expected to receive have been a minuscule proportion of their hopes.
This is the fourth year in a row in which they have received very serious weather problems. As a result, for many of them their crop insurance has faced penalties which has reduced crop insurance protection to a 70 per cent level.
With the low prices which exist and the fact that crop insurance, even where it is held by farmers, is only going to give them 70 per cent of those low prices, it is easy to see that farmers in Essex County and elsewhere in southwestern Ontario face the very real possibility of being wiped out this winter.
I have written to the Minister of Agriculture about this. The minister replied to me in a letter which reached me yesterday. His letter unfortunately concluded, after a good deal of discussion of the potential benefit of crop insurance, not recognizing that people have been hit so hard in recent years by these weather problems reducing their crop insurance protection, that: "At the present time I do not believe that further federal action is warranted".
That is an attitude which does not respond to the very critical situation in southwestern Ontario.
I appeal to this government to make such a response as the Ontario government will be doing. Please make such a response. The minister agreed yesterday-if I could just finish the last sentence, Madam Speaker-to meet with farm groups from Essex County. I think that is an important step. I urge him and this government to listen seriously and to respond urgently to that severe drought crisis which has hurt so many people.


Lyle Vanclief: Madam Speaker, I asked a question of the previous speaker's colleague a few minutes ago concerning the Ontario government contribution.
It is my understanding that if the Ontario government was to support the NISA program that is available to it-the offer is still there from the federal government- with the contribution of another 1 per cent, that would trigger another half of one per cent contribution by the federal government. That would very quickly put some $24 million into the hands of Ontario producers.
I know we are all in this together. The federal government, the provincial governments, we from all parties and the industries are all in this together. Why can the member not convince his colleagues in the Ontario government that it would be a good investment in this important industry and his farmers in the Essex area? Why will they not do that? It boggles my mind that that small investment is not seen as a good investment by the Ontario government.


Steven W. Langdon: Madam Speaker, I would not want to get partisan in what should be a non-partisan debate.
The same problems in convincing provincial governments that NISA is something which is worth the extra payments have been experienced in trying to persuade the Prince Edward Island Liberal government, the New Brunswick Liberal government and the Quebec Liberal government to participate completely in the program.
I would say from my discussions with the minister's office-I am meeting the minister on Saturday-that the Ontario government's concern is to see to it that the greatest possible increase in cash flow can be generated by the province of Ontario in response to the problems of the past crop year. It is not convinced that NISA is necessarily the best way to do that.
It is reviewing a number of different options. The federal government has tried to persuade it that an investment in NISA is the best approach. Frankly, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has suggested that the Ontario government should look at NISA, but there are some other things that it should look at which might be of more use.
The National Farmers' Union has suggested some points that might be of more use. All of the points are being looked at and I expect an announcement very soon. I expect an announcement particularly with respect to the drought situation as it exists in southwestern Ontario.

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However, I make the point again which I made earlier. This is such a serious and severe situation in southwestern Ontario that it cannot be the responsibility of a provincial government alone.
It must be the responsibility of both provincial and federal governments. At this stage the federal government, witness the recent letter of September 18 from the Minister of Agriculture, does not seem prepared to move.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The five-minute question and answer period has expired and we will resume debate for 10 minutes.


Mr. Rod Laporte (Moose Jaw-Lake Centre):: Madam Speaker, after listening to the minister's remarks, I think there is something that must be clarified for the people who are watching this debate today.
The minister made a comment in his speech that the government cannot vote for this motion because it considers it to be a motion of non-confidence. I think it is important to review some of the history and some of the detail for people watching this debate today.
The motion before us now is almost verbatim a motion that was passed unanimously by the Standing Committee on Agriculture at the end of August. That meeting came about as an emergency debate on the agricultural situation. At that time we had representatives from most of the farm groups across the country calling upon this government to take some action with respect to the third line of defence.
In that spirit, and after listening to the various groups, there was a unanimous vote by the members of the standing committee. The standing committee, as you will know Madam Speaker, is made up of all three parties. As a matter of fact, the majority of the committee are Conservatives. They saw fit to vote for that motion.
I am surprised that the minister stood in his place and said that the member for Mackenzie is trying to play petty politics. That is absolute nonsense. That is hog-wash. The fact is it is the minister who is playing the politics here. We came to this House with this motion in a sense of fair play and openness, hoping to highlight the problems that are being felt in agriculture and looking for support from the government, particularly when its
own members on the standing committee had voted for this motion.
When the minister rises in his place and says it is politics on our part, that is hogwash. That is nonsense, and it is simply not the case.
The McGrath report was a report by a committee of the House of Commons dealing with parliamentary reform which made its report in 1985. I would like to refer to page 106 of the McGrath report, paragraphs 40 and 41 where it says:
In keeping with the desire to make the House more relevant to Members and to the public, your Committee believes that matters of confidence in the government should at all times be clearly subject to political determination. Motions of no-confidence should not be prescribed in the rules but should be explicitly so worded in the text of the motion itself by the Member presenting such a motion.
Paragraph 41 goes on to state:
Your Committee notes that the Standing Orders, as presently worded, declare to be 'no-confidence' those votable motions which are moved by the Opposition on allotted days.
Today is an allotted day, Madam Speaker.
We repeat that a question of confidence should be expressed in precise terms in the motion, and not prescribed as such by the Standing Orders. Previous Speakers have indicated that determination of what is, or is not, a question of confidence is not a matter for interpretation the Chair. We agree that this expression ought not to be used in the Standing Orders to predetermine the nature of a motion.
In other words, prior to 1985 it was stated in the Standing Orders that on any allotted days-and this is considered an allotted day-a motion put forth by the opposition would be considered a vote of non-confidence. Therefore if the government voted for the motion the government would presumably fall.
The whole McGrath report was not adopted by the House. However, portions of it in essence were in that in 1985 the Standing Orders were amended by removing the no confidence reference. That was removed in 1985. There is no mention of no confidence in the Standing Orders with reference to allotted days. The fact is that the determination of whether or not a motion is a matter of confidence or non-confidence lies with the government. It is not in the rules. It lies with the government. It is the minister of grains and oilseeds who has chosen, on behalf of his government, to make this a non-confidence motion. No one else, certainly on this side of the House, believes it to be a non-confidence motion. For the minister to stand up and say that he is required or that it
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is history to do such a thing, is nonsense, is not correct and the people of Canada should be aware of that.
I am really surprised that the government would take the position it has on this particular issue. It is certainly my hope that the government will see its way clear to decide that this motion is not a matter of non-confidence. It is in the best interests of agriculture across this country to do so.
It is not the New Democratic Party playing politics, it is this government that is playing politics and the minister playing politics, and he knows it.
I do appreciate some of the comments. In fact given some of the comments the minister made, I am surprised at the attitude he has taken. I appreciate the fact that he indicated that the farm communities across this country are in a terrible situation, that in fact the infrastructure is disappearing and if something does not happen very soon, the dealers in fertilizers, chemicals, fuel and so on are going to disappear and we will lose an infrastructure that will be very difficult, if not impossible to replace.
There has been a tremendous amount of interest in the recent past by academics and others in finding ways to save rural Canada with respect to not only agriculture but also to fishing and forestry and so on.
It is essential that we maintain a viable economic base and viable farm families in rural areas where agriculture is an important industry. I appreciate the minister's remarks in acknowledging that. That is important. It is a first step.
With respect to other comments made by the minister, it is true that Europe has caused Canada a lot of grief with its programs. I am surprised that the minister did not go on to mention the United States, which is also causing problems, particularly with its export enhancement program. The United States has been moving into this area, which really has not been an area where the Europeans are dealing. Their export enhancement program provides a subsidy on grain sales which makes it very difficult for the Canadian Wheat Board and others to sell grain from this country. The express purpose of the export enhancement program, as indicated by the Americans some time ago was to compete with the Europeans.
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It is very clear now that the use of the export enhancement program has expanded to countries where the Europeans are really not a major competitor. In fact, it is where Canada is a competitor and where the EEP has hurt us directly.
The other factor is that under the free trade agreement, I believe it is Article 701.4-1 stand to be corrected on that, but I believe it is the correct article-in agriculture, neither country shall interfere with respect to subsidies, in the markets of the other party. The United States has clearly done that and there are many examples where the United States has moved into countries that have been traditionally Canadian markets, have implemented the export enhancement program and have cost Canadian farmers sales.
There is a remedy under GATT which we have to pursue, but there is also a remedy under the free trade agreement. I am surprised that the minister and this government are not taking stronger action with respect to the lack of compliance by the Americans with the free trade agreement, their lack of respect for the free trade agreement and their lack of respect for Canadian agriculture. I wish the minister had expanded on that.
I believe I only have a minute or two left.
I would just like to close by saying this and reiterating my opening remarks. I am disappointed in the comments of the minister with respect to calling this a matter of non-confidence. I do hope that members of the agriculture committee on the other side of the House will be making positive comments with respect to this matter. I really wish and really hope in the spirit of openness and fair play that the minister will please retract his remarks and make it clear that the government does not consider this a vote of non-confidence because no one else does.
The fact is that if there was a vote today and the government voted for it, there is no way the Governor General is going to call an election. The minister knows that. The minister should make some comments with respect to that and let Canadian agriculture know that the government is going to vote for this motion in the spirit of co-operation in this House.


Charles James Mayer: Mr. Speaker, I wish to comment on the remarks the hon. member made as far as procedure is concerned. If the NDP wants to make this a non-partisan issue, then I suggest they do one of two things. First,

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make it a non-votable motion, and we speak the way we have been speaking. Every one knows the concern and I suspect I know it better than the hon. member because I farm and he does not. If the NDP want to be really serious about making it non-partisan, do not make it a votable motion.
Second, if the NDP wants it as a votable motion, it should not try to be cute and hide the fact that this is essentially a vote on the budget and as such is a confidence motion. If the NDP wants to do that, fine, but do not get up and grandstand in the meantime when it has done some things to be veiy cute at a time when we do not need to be cute in this place. We need to do everything we can to support Canadian farmers who need our support.


Rodney Edward Laporte: Mr. Speaker, I do not appreciate being called cute, but I think the fact is that it is very clear, and the minister knows, that this does not have to be a vote of non-confidence. This is a motion that was a result of an emergency meeting of the Standing Committee of Agriculture, whereby most of the farm groups in the countiy appeared before the committee or had representation in front of the committee and called on it to take some action. They were expressing their concern over the lack of response on a third line of defence and over the desperate straits that many people in agriculture right across this country are in.
As a result of that debate, there was an all-party committee that unanimously endorsed the motion that is before us. We have brought this into the House today to further acknowledge the problems that exist in agriculture and in the spirit of non-partisanship brought it forth. Our motion states that it is not a vote of confidence. The minister knows that.
I am beside myself to understand why the minister is the one that is being cute. He is the one who is playing petty politics. I do not know why he is doing it. It certainly does not help Canadian agriculture.


Mr. Jack Shields (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I can enlighten my friend across the way. When a House of Commons standing committee makes a motion and presents it to the government, it has nothing to do with confidence. It is the position of the House of Commons standing committee and it was unanimously done and
presented. The government took the motion into consideration.
What the NDP has done on an opposition day-that is what it says, opposition day-is made a votable motion and taken the motion from the House of Commons standing committee but added to it:
That, in the spirit of House of Commons reform and in
recognition of the clear and urgent need, the House does not
consider this to be a question of confidence in the government.
It stated this knowing full well that the motion itself refers to the budget. The committee can comment on and put it forward to the House and no confidence is involved. That member should know that this is a confidence motion.
If the NDP wants to make it a votable motion and remove the bottom part of it, make it a votable motion. Then we know it is a non-confidence motion and it is done with. If you really want to make it a non-partisan issue, as it was done in the House of Commons standing committee and brought forward to this House, remove the bottom portion and make it-the member is not listening, obviously he does not want to listen. I am suggesting that if you want to make the motion non-partisan in this House, remove that sentence at the bottom and make it non-votable. Then we can all stand and address this very serious problem plaguing the agriculture industry right across this countiy and get on with the work, instead of becoming partisan the way we are doing today.


Mr. Van  De Walle@Acting Speaker: I regret the time for questions and comments has elapsed. Very well, a very short comment.


Rodney Edward Laporte: Mr. Speaker, I am amazed. This is a party that talks about open government and more reform and they are the ones who are stalling it.
I am sure that the people in western Canada will be pleased to see this debate where this government is refusing to allow a vote in a situation where it is clearly allowable. The member can keep playing politics all he wants but the people of Canada see clearly what they are doing. This is a time to move to a more open government. The New Democratic Party believes in that and I wish the member would as well.
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Iain Francis Angus: On a point of order. Very briefly, Mr. Speaker, in order to assist the hon. member, if he wishes that sentence out of the motion he can move an amendment.


Mr. Van  De Walle@Acting Speaker: We will move on to debate. The member for Perth-Wellington-Waterloo.


Mr. A. H. Harry Brightwell (Perth-Wellington-Waterloo):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand and discuss this topic today because it was generated from my standing committee.
The motion before us is essentially the same, with that little add-on that seems to be picking up most of the emotional debate today, whether it is a matter of confidence of not. It places me in a difficult position. If it is a confidence motion, do I vote for the motion and, therefore, vote against my government? That is difficult. But I am thinking it is almost as difficult as the problem the member for Mackenzie had, and the member for Algoma, both of whom spoke earlier, when for the last nine days they supported a strike by the Public Service Alliance that was crippling the ability to ship grain and was costing the farm community some $36 million a year.
So it is one of the conundrums all of us have, particularly in my committee, which is so concerned about the farm industry. We speak to these people on a regular basis, an every day basis in our ridings. We held a special meeting-not an emergency meeting per se, but a special meeting-in August and listened to all the farm groups.
The member for Mackenzie in his introduction has very fairly stated a good part of the genesis of the problem we have in Canada at the present moment. I would like to go a little further with the genesis, however, because it goes back into the seventies when people in the farm business, and indeed they are in business, were encouraged to get bigger. Basically, several factors did this; governments did this, farm communities did this, circumstance did this.
In the seventies and the early eighties, I guess mainly in the seventies, farm land prices were increasing, often at the rate of something like 22 per cent a year, so farmers had to buy more farm land. They borrowed money because farm profits were very high. The bankers basically said to the farmers; well, don't borrow just the
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$25,000 that you need now, borrow $50,000 and do it right and do it bigger".
The whole psychology-government, bankers and farmers-led the farm community into a very high debt situation. Our study last year shows that there is about $5 billion in non-serviceable debt, and many of the farm leaders-at least one significant farm leader at the moment-is saying that that is one of the major problems that has to be overcome in the farm community, to get rid of that debt. Somehow that debt has to be eaten by somebody like it was in the States-although we do not want the trauma that went with that down in the States. How that will occur I don't particularly know.
Part of the reason for the large debt increase in the seventies was the fact that we changed policy; we allowed the banks to get into lending money as well. Prior to that point they could not lend long-term money to buy land.
We know as well that farmers vary in efficiency. There are larger differences in what the same two farmers, farming the same type of land side by side can produce on their land. We know that there are people out there hurting more than others because their efficiency is not as great as others but, indeed, we also know at the moment, like the member said, that even many of our very best farmers are now having problems.
We are into a circumstance in Canada where it is difficult psychologically for the farmers because all around the problems are there, not just grains and oilseeds which we heard about this morning and I would like to talk about a little more later, but the pork industry right now is having very low prices. The situation in Ontario, for instance, where shipping 75,000 hogs a week would normally mean a peak in prices, but the prices coming to the farmers are quite low.
In Canada, we often trigger the Canadian price by what we can export to the United States. However, for reasons I do not totally understand, prices in the United States are low as well. Perhaps it is because of things that are happening in North Carolina, for example. When pork farmers from my riding of Perth-Wellington- Waterloo, but primarily from the county of Perth, went down to the Carolinas, they visited a farm called Murphy Farms. That one farm has 80,000 sows in production at the present time. They plan to expand their operation

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from 80,000 to 100,000 sows this year, and I am told it will be from current profits with no further financing. Now you can imagine the efficiencies of this. They would have their own feed contracts. If they do not have their own mills they can deal with the feed dealers on a very big basis. They can construct their barns in a manner that is cheaper than ours because of weather. It is something like $600 a sow.
I suggested to our farmers that if we had the same size and the same efficiency the price in Canada, and in Ontario particularly, could be brought down below the $2,200 we pay now per sow to perhaps $1,800 or $1,700. But you can still see the great advantage that those producers have and the great expansion that is going on.
So the pork farmers, sitting beside the grain farmer or perhaps also a grain farmer, is also depressed. Even dairy, with its supply management, is suffering from a reduction in quotas. There is not enough consumption taking place so that they can ship the full amount that they can produce. They are also concerned with GATT, the concern we addressed yesterday, that was reasonably dispelled as far as an agreement at the moment between Europe and the United States on tariffication, but the thought that that may occur, the ice cream and yoghurt and, of course, there is steady competition. The dairy industry competes very strongly with itself in its cost to production formula. So they are not very high psychologically right now.
The egg producers have problems within their group with surplus removal. Their boiler quotas are having difficulty in adjustment across Canada. The horticultural area is not good. There are so many segments in horticulture it is hard to pick them up and to measure them totally, but we know about the apples and their need to go into a controlled production, but that industry as well is depressed.
In the the middle of all of this farm unhappiness comes the grains and oilseed producers. They have been exposed to poor prices for something like seven years, based on the problems around the world or, at one time, it was drought in our own country. We have kept giving them support each year hoping that next year would be better, but the next year did not turn out to be better. Last year the big disappointment was when the GATT agreement did not take place. We were there and saw the European farmers, and sadly I must say even some Canadian farmers, over there demonstrating against any
agreement by the European Community. But we did not get that agreement and that certainly hurt the farmers psychologically.
Now we are topped with this very difficult cash flow problem for the 1990 crop year.
The increasing production by countries like China and India so they are not buying as much grain from us are other pressures that the grain farmers have had. Indeed, we are going to see the same thing now from the Warsaw Pact people, the Iron Curtain countries, as that institution breaks down. It is interesting to know that our technology in fact probably helped China and India to increase their production. As our western technology creeps into the Iron Curtain countries, as well as modem equipment, communication and roads, will mean that they will produce for their own market what we have been supplying for quite a while. Indeed, I suspect they are going to produce for some of the world market that we have been supplying.
We heard the problems of no new machinery on the farms. The fact that if we get a better income for the grain sector, it is going to take a lot of that just to keep in business and keep some equipment there.
I must say our grain farmers, like all Canadian farmers, have responded very well to the pressures. They cannot respond totally, but they have done a great job in improving their efficiency so that if prices had been low they produced more and more of the product with less and less labour.
In fact I think I saw a figure that in the European Community, because of their lack of efficiency, the fact that they do not produce grain as efficiently as we do, it takes a lot less subsidy per farmer to keep them going. Of course they have so many more farmers there that they spend a great deal more money than we do in this particular area.
I want to add to this debate a not very happy note about agriculture. It is not a happy note, but I think we are in for restructuring. I think there are going to be changes coming in the whole of agriculture, and I do not think anybody really knows what that restructuring will be. Perhaps in the pork industry we have to do something to get into a size of buying power that will compete with the people across the border. I do not know what they will be but I think we are on the edge of a restructuring
September 19, 1991

in farming. GRIP and NISA will certainly assist, but there is still only a percentage of income for their previous years and it will put a bottom on the amount of money that the farmers will receive. It will guarantee an amount of money but I am not too sure that is a solution for the very long run.
We passed the motion in the Standing Committee on Agriculture which everyone has seen. In that standing committee I asked the officials from the Department of Agriculture how much money did come to the farmers in the 1990 crop year. That is the year we are most concerned about. The farmers believe that if they do not have assistance for that crop year they will not have any money to go into subsequent years that do not promise to be very good either.
The minister has already alluded to this this morning. Since I asked that question in the committee, since the committee as a whole asked the questions of the officials, they have been trying to generate some figures. I have not questioned or edited these figures, nor have I done anything with them. I understand there has been about $1.3 billion paid out to Canadian farmers in the 1990 crop year.
The motion then does have a problem in that it asks that we as a government provide the farm community with an amount equal to what we would have given had NISA and GRIP been in full operation this year. It does not, however, take away from the problem. It does not take away from the fact that there is not the cash flow out there right now in the 1990 crop, and it does not take away from the fact that the farmers have not seen any of the benefits of the subsequent help coming to them, and it does not take away from the despair.
By the way, I am told on the same set of figures that had NISA and GRIP been in place in this particular year, the amount that would have been paid out would be $1.1 billion or about $170 million less than what has already been received for the 1990 crop year.
We have heard from the member for Essex-Windsor on the matter of equality. I want to report to the House and to the people watching that when I called the standing committee meeting on agriculture, I knew that there would be a motion coming out of that meeting similar to what resulted.
Supply
I knew that people on the government side of the committee had a motion ready and I suspect that the people on the NDP side did as well. Certainly, we did have the motion from the member for Algoma.
I knew that was going to happen and I wanted it to happen. I also called the meeting because there was a suggestion by the Ontario crop group that there was an inequality in the amount of support given across Canada.
I could not get anybody to talk about equality at that meeting. In fact, when I spoke to the chairman of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, he simply said that it was not a thing to do.
When he would not discuss it, I knew his main point about equality was the matter of the NISA plan and the fact that Ontario was not contributing to it.
I am in another difficult position asking for more assistance for Canadian farmers, particularly the grains and oilseeds people for the 1990 crop, because of our deficit. I preach on a regular basis that we simply cannot be spending more money, borrowing it to allow our children to repay it later. They are deficits which now are demanding so much of our money and causing us to have to raise taxes as high as we have. We still have not covered all of the cost.
I have often said that there are two situations where I can agree with deficit financing: first, for capital goods or for things that generate income in the future, and second, in an emergency.
I must say that I believe that we are now in an emergency in the farming community, both on a cash flow basis and on a psychology basis.
This motion then encourages the government to assist the farmers, and I am going to support this particular motion. I know that the matter of farming is not just a matter of business. It is not just a matter of what you do day to day to earn a living.
The member for Algoma has talked about the desire of farmers to farm. He was talking about a man and wife would go all day, all night or all week to a job some place just to maintain a farm.
The farmers want the farm. We absolutely need the farms and they are in an emergency situation now. I certainly want them to have that help.

September 19, 1991
Supply


Ms. Catherine Callbeck (Malpeque):: Mr. Speaker, I have listened with interest to the hon. member on the debate on agriculture.
Being from the province of Prince Edward Island, which is an agricultural province, I want to make a few comments on a very difficult situation which the potato farmers are experiencing at this time.
They are experiencing this because of what Agriculture Canada diagnosed as the PVY-N virus. It now appears that Agriculture Canada may have misdiagnosed it, maybe it was not the PVY-N virus. However, this has created a lot of problems within the province.
Many of the potato farmers have ploughed under their crops. They did this on the diagnosis of Agriculture Canada and because they were instructed to do so by Agriculture Canada.
Many of the potato producers have lost their markets simply because Agriculture Canada told the United States that we have the PVY-N virus. The reputation of the Prince Edward Island potato industry has been destroyed. It faces a major crisis.
I know my time is limited for these comments but I just wanted to ask the hon. member of the government a question. How would he feel if he was a Prince Edward Island potato farmer and he ploughed under 200 acres of potatoes because he was told by Agriculture Canada that his potatoes had the PVY-N virus and that he had to plough them under? How would he feel if he found out now that the tests are in question?


A.H. Harry Brightwell: That is not a difficult question to answer. If I were that farmer I would feel very, very badly. I would feel outraged, I would feel misused. However, the member has raised the question and it is certainly just a question at the moment. I am told through sources that it may not be, that in fact it is probably not true that there was a mistake in the testing.
I have had long-term experience in agricultural testing in Canada, usually in the animal health field, and I have developed a great deal of faith in our scientists. In fact, I still have that faith. I am sure if there is an error in this particular situation, and I say only if there is, there will be a fair solution for this other branch of horticulture,
one that I really should have mentioned because it is brought up quite frequently in the standing committee discussions. In fact, there is a proposal at the moment that we consider the testing process for this particular virus.


Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: Mr. Speaker, in my brief comment I would like to thank the hon. member for assisting the committee, as he always does as our chair. He has taken a very courageous position both in bending the rules slightly to have us use the procedure we used in the committee and to permit it to be presented in that form here today. If we could have more members like the hon. member for Perth-Wellington- Waterloo in this House, it would eventually reflect the true need and requirements of Canadians and make this House a much more functional place. I congratulate him and thank him for the actions he has taken, both in the committee and today in this House.


A.H. Harry Brightwell: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments, but I must say that I was surprised to hear that I had bent the rules in committee. The member for Mackenzie is much more experienced than I and apparently he let me bend those rules without telling me at that particular time. However, he is telling me now. In fact, I have great faith in every member in this House. They are genuinely concerned about the people of Canada and particularly with the farmers of Canada. We are in a position now where all of us have experienced situations where we had to go along partisan lines and indeed it created some difficulty for us. So, I thank the member for his comments.


John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, I wanted to put a question to the previous speaker concerning the possibility of restructuring which he had mentioned. I think he is right, and I do not think there is anybody in this House, perhaps anywhere in this country, who knows exactly what the restructuring will be like, what form it will take.
It may depend, for example when it comes to grains and oilseeds, on the success or lack of same at the current GATT negotiations. One of my concerns is that even if restructuring does come, who is going to be left? Who is going to be around when it takes place? Farmers are just going through an absolutely dreadful period, an absolutely dreadful time. It seems to me that with or

without restructuring we have to support the farmers until that happens, whenever that happens.
I would like to know whether the hon. member shares that point of view?


A.H. Harry Brightwell: Mr. Speaker, it a question that should not have to be asked, but I am delighted to answer it. Certainly, we have to support the farming communities. My riding is one of the great farm ridings in Ontario and,
I am sure, in Canada. I am totally on their side. We have to help them through.
On the other hand, the restructuring that is going to take place is going to be farmer driven. They are the people who know the demands and will find the solutions. They helped in creating the GRIP and NISA programs which are coming in next year. Those programs are going to be a major part of keeping the farmers in place until something else happens in in the world and in Canada.


Lyle Vanclief: Mr. Speaker, just a couple of comments to the hon. member for Perth-Wellington-Waterloo. I just want to first of all thank him for the efforts of him and the agriculture committee staff to get the meeting together in August. It was one that was badly needed. I hope before we are through this crisis it will prove to have been more effective than it has to date. That is certainly no fault of the committee itself. I think the committee did what needed to be done and we did it quite well. It is just getting the follow-up.
Furthermore, the minister of grains and oilseeds made it veiy clear this morning that he understands the problem and that is of some comfort to us. However, what the minister did not address was what he is going to do about it, other than talk to the people in the European Economic Community. He did refer briefly to the United States and I think he should have referred to the Americans more. They are no angels on this issue with their export enhancement program.
I will ask the member for Perth-Wellington-Waterloo what he feels is going to be done. He certainly disappointed me when CBO-FM Radio reported on September 14 of this year that: "Ontario Tory MP, Harry Brightwell says an interim farm aid package from Ottawa would not include special relief for Ontario farmers". It went on to say that the support would come from Ontario.
As a member of this House and as a member from Ontario, in particular, I was hoping that he would go to bat a little bit more for Ontario farmers than is evident from this quote. I would just ask the member if he would care to comment on that.


A.H. Harry Brightwell: Mr. Speaker, I am trying to recall the two particular instances where I was misquoted on the radio and in the press. In my experience, if we let everyone mention misquotes, we would have a few hundred. This is twice on the same issue in the same week, both from the same area. The situation with the newspaper arose when a reporter called up and asked if there was going to be a special package of assistance for the drought damage in southwestern Ontario. He said as well that there would be a package of assistance for western grain farmers. I said: "No way. It would be for all grain farmers if there was such a thing". By the way, the rumour of such an announcement was coming from a member of Parliament on the member's side of the House. He started the particular rumour.
I told him if it were true, it would be for everybody including Ontario farmers but would not be especially directed at the drought area. I do not know how they chose to quote me but that is the background of it.


Mr. Van  de Walle@Acting Speaker: It being one o'clock p.m., I now leave the chair until two o'clock p.m.
The House took recess at one o'clock.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Mr. Russell MacLellan (Cape Breton-The Sydneys):: Mr. Speaker, Canadian National has announced its intention to sell the rail line that presently runs from Sydney to Truro, Nova Scotia, to the private sector. The sale of this line will have a very damaging effect on the maritime region. CN says that the private sector will keep this line going.
However, we heard this a few years ago when Canadian National decided to sell its trucking firm, CN Route, which became known as Route Canada, to the private sector. The sale was approved by this government

September 19, 1991
and shortly thereafter, 15 months, the new owners filed for bankruptcy and laid off 2,000 workers.
Now CN wants to privatize a line which it admits is profitable and provides much needed employment in Nova Scotia. Not only is it profitable, but CN is not marketing the line and is in fact discouraging business to make the bottom line look as bad as possible.
I would urge this government to do the right thing for eastern Nova Scotia and Canada and stop the wholesale dismantling of our rail system. I would ask the government to stop the privatization of the Sydney-Truro line.


EAST TIMOR
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg Tbanscona):: Mr. Speaker, sometimes we wonder where the Secretary of State for External Affairs' head is at when she answers questions about foreign policy. Many Canadians were astonished at how blase she was about the coup in the Soviet Union.
Anybody who knows anything about East Timor would have been equally astonished yesterday when she said that there was no history of independence or self-determination or self-government in that territory and that the Government of Canada regarded the Indonesian occupation of East Timor as a fact that it could not do anything about. The fact of the matter is that East Timor was a territory with its own integrity. Just because it was a Portuguese colony does not mean that it had no history of independence.
If Canada is prepared to send Canadian troops to participate in the liberation of Kuwait, why is the minister not even prepared to adopt a policy of non-recognition such as we adopted with respect to the Baltics? Why this incredible ignorance and neglect when it comes to this small South Pacific territory which is desperately in need of global attention?


WOLVERINE TUBE
Mr. Stan Wilbee (Delta):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the hon. member for New Westminster made a very accurate statement regarding the corporate irresponsibility of the Wolverine Tube Company which is shutting down a tube
mill in my riding of Delta, British Columbia, throwing 160 people out of work when there is absolutely no reason to do so.
This company has produced substandard tubing in the B.C. mill, and now it has been found that 55 per cent of 82 tubes produced in the London, Ontario mill failed to meet the minimum standards, 40 per cent just met the minimum standards, and only 5 per cent exceeded the minimum standards.
With such shoddy practices the government should make in-plant independent testing mandatory. Likewise, all tubing imported into Canada must conform to the national standards in order to protect Canadian consumers from such irresponsible manufacturers.


DE HAVILLAND
Hon. Bob Kaplan (York Centre):: Mr. Speaker, the situation at de Havilland calls for greater hands-on participation by the federal government. This government has never recognized how important a role government plays in the success stoiy of aerospace in other countries.
With no plan but to get rid of what it perceived as a liability, the government sold out to Boeing. Boeing tried, but it has not been able to profit from the deal. As Boeing leaves, the government should be certain that all de Havilland's intellectual property, including augment-er wing technology patents, be not taken home by Boeing.
As to possible purchasers, our government needs to be certain that the Canadian public interest and our future in aerospace is at least as well protected as the interests of Italy and France whose taxpayers are backing the bidders.
The Ontario government seems the only party willing to ante up as a shareholder. Public ownership lies in the face of this government's philosophy, but surely the record of the Mulroney government disasters shows the shortcomings of its philosophy.
As to the plant, it needs to be recognized that there is no such thing as guaranteed-

September 19, 1991


LEADER OF THE BLOC QUEBECOIS
Mr. Jean-Guy Guilbault (Drummond):: Mr. Speaker, I am surprised at Lucien Bouchard, the Leader of the Bloc Quebecois, and his attitude to the strike by PSAC members.
I wonder why he voted against the Public Sector Compensation Act? According to an article published in the Chicoutimi Le Quotidien on May 23 this year, the great defender of the interests of Quebecers received, in addition to his usual legal fees, more than $250,000 from the Quebec government to impose a 20 per cent wage cut on teachers, nurses and all social sector employees, when he represented the employer for the PQ government in 1982-83.
Mr. Speaker, the government is taking a very serious approach to the deficit and government spending. This public sector wage restraint program is part of our economic recovery plan, and it also applies to ministers, senators and members of this House.
So far, six provinces have followed our lead by introducing a wage freeze in the provincial public section.


CANADA HEALTH ACT
Mr. Jim Karpoff (Surrey North):: Mr. Speaker, the provincial ministers of health and the federal minister of health at their meeting in Winnipeg reaffirmed their commitment to a partnership among federal, provincial and territorial governments for a universal health care system.
They have called upon the federal government to ensure stable future funding and to uphold national standards as set out in the Canada Health Act. This act specifically prohibits user fees.
However, the two provinces that did not attend the conference, Quebec and British Columbia, are the two provinces which are promoting user fees.
I call upon the minister of health to inform Quebec that he will proceed immediately under the Canada Health Act to penalize Quebec for Bill 120 which imposes user fees in emergency wards.
He should also inform the premier of the province of British Columbia who has been advocating user fees that he will not accept user fees in that province.
All Canadians, regardless of where they live, must be assured of universal, accessible health care.


MONT TREMBLANT SKI RESORT
Mr. Jacques Vien (Laurentides):: Mr. Speaker, on September 11, I attended a special evening to mark the purchase of the Mont Tremblant ski resort by Intrawest, a group from Vancouver.
This group is a major Canadian resort developer and also operates the Blackcomb ski resort in British Columbia. The purchase represents an investment of several million dollars, which will stimulate the economy of the region and consolidate the local market.
I would like to point out to the House that Intrawest, by focussing on the Laurentian area, made a very substantial investment. The Laurentians are a vacation paradise, and our region is attractive to entrepreneurs looking for a good business investment because of its potential for growth and development. Intrawest's investment is a case in point.


Mr. Peter L. McCreath (South Shore):: Mr. Speaker, in the press today there were three reports concerning Mr. Glen Kealey's Micot project in Hull.
Looking at a translation of one news item by Telemedia reporters, Yves Bellavance and Carole-Marie Allard, I read that according to testimony and correspondence of ex-employees of Mr. Kealey, Mr. Kealey ordered the falsification-I repeat, falsification- of his company's accounting books.
It. would appear that in order to avoid embarrassing explanations about the company's performance in the project presumably by his associates and investors, Mr. Kealey ordered the falsification of his accounting books.

September 19, 1991
A similar report in the Journal de Montreal states that small investors in the Micot project lost more than $160,000.
One can only wonder if Mr. Kealey's cries of injustice are merely an attempt to deflect attention from his own failures.
* jje aje


GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Mr. Lawrence MacAulay (Cardigan):: Mr. Speaker, the GST has become an economic disaster for Canada and for Prince Edward Island in particular. All areas of the economy are suffering, particularly the tourism industry.
When our American friends come to Prince Edward Island and sit in a restaurant and order a meal, GST is added. This leaves a bad taste in their mouths.
Canadians used to visit the United States for a vacation, not to outfit their children for school. Recently, the director of the Maine State Publicity Bureau said he was very sorry that Canadians could not be patriotic and support their own businesses, but one can only be patriotic so long. It is unfortunate that the economic policies of this government are hurting the Canadian people so much.

[Translation\


MINING INDUSTRY
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, to maintain consistent production values and ensure the renewal of mineral reserves, mainly in the precious metals sector, Quebec must do a certain amount of off-site exploration costing from 250 to 300 million dollars a year, with 80 per cent in Abitibi-Temiscamingue.
In 1990, only $145 million worth of off-site exploration was carried out in Quebec. In 1991 things seem to be even worse. For several months, the Association des prospecteurs du Quebec has been trying to find new sources of financing but the response from Ottawa has been negative. According to Mr. Jean Rainville,' the problem seems to be with the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, where the oil industry appears to
come first and the mining and exploration sector in Quebec is no longer a priority.


TOURISM
Mr. Jim Jordan (Leeds-Grenville):: Mr. Speaker, the Canadian tourist industry has just recorded its poorest summer in more than a decade. Canadians travelling to the U.S. on a regular basis continues to spiral upward, while American tourists continue to avoid Canada.
Canadian retail sale losses continue as Canadians are lured to the U.S. Same day trips to the U.S. rose to 5.9 million in July, our busiest tourist month, up almost 10 per cent for the same month in the previous year.
When will the minister of revenue offer more than a mere acknowledgement of the problem and offer instead some new initiatives to help retailers in the tourist industry regain some of the lost revenues that they have experienced, particularly now that the full impact of the GST is taking its toll on the Canadian retail sales and the Canadian tourist industry?


UKRAINE
Mr. Jim Edwards (Edmonton Southwest):: Mr. Speaker, 10 days ago I had the honour of assisting our external affairs minister in opening Canada's new Consulate-General in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.
Among the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe, none has closer ties to Canada of blood and culture than Ukraine. Today, a million Canadians proudly claim Ukrainian ancestry, among them our distinguished Governor General.
This month marks the centenary of permanent Ukrainian settlement in Canada at Edna-Star, just northeast of Edmonton. And so it is timely that as Ukraine asserts its independence, its current leader, the Chairman of the Supreme Rada, Leonid Makarovych Kravchuk, pays an official visit on Monday to Ottawa.
Chairman Kravchuk was a hardline ideological Communist until one month ago today when Ukraine proclaimed its independence. Now he proclaims himself a Ukrainian Nationalist.
September 19, 1991

Ukraine will shortly hold a referendum on independence and a presidential election. Kravchuk, the bom again nationalist, might win. Whoever is chosen president, Canada should move quickly to respect the outcome of the referendum and transform that Consulate-General in Kiev to a full-fledged embassy.


KOREAN WAR VETERANS
Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing):: Mr. Speaker, on June 17 of this year it was announced that a medal would be struck to recognize and honour those Canadians who served in the Korean war.
Though this announcement was long overdue and anxiously awaited by our Korean war veterans for years, little if any action has taken place on it. Three months have passed and the process for distributing these medals has yet to be determined. In fact, the application forms were finalized only a couple of weeks ago.
In my conversations with officials at the chancellery it was revealed that the medal itself has yet to be struck. Moreover, I was told that the medal, which was scheduled to be presented at ceremonies throughout the country on or about Remembrance Day, will not be anywhere near ready by then.
Why has it taken so long to act? Why have Korean veterans associations across the country not been consulted to facilitate and expedite this process?
It seems that the officials responsible for administering this award are focusing on why this honour cannot be processed on time instead of how it can be done.
Nobody is interested in pointing fingers and assigning blame. All we simply want is for our Korean war veterans to get what was promised to them and what they deserve without further delay, because after three decades I believe they have waited long enough.


REFORM PARTY
Mr. Felix Holtmann (Portage-Interlake):: Mr. Speaker, if you are thinking of becoming a grain farmer and if you bought a membership in Preston Manning's Reform Party, here is what would be in store for you:
Oral Questions
(1)	A shift from a government supported agricultural industry to an industry shaped by market forces only.
(2)	The removal of agricultural support programs.
(3)	A reduction of marketing boards as a federal cost reducing measure.
(4)	The PC government is spending $2 billion on farmers.
Preston Manning would hold a referendum and let the people of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver decide it.
With policies like these, Mr. Speaker, you would need to win at least one 649 lottery per year just to stay in business.
I dare Preston Manning to try his policies on the farmers of Brandon, Manitoba this coming Friday. They will likely run him right out of town.



HOUSE OF COMMONS PAGES

Mr. Speaker:: Before commencing Question Period, I should like to notify hon. members that we have the pleasure of welcoming 43 new pages who join us this year.

More than 400 young Canadian men and women across this country submitted applications, and the young people with us today were chosen after a vigorous selection process.

I assisted at their swearing in ceremony on Monday. I know hon. members will be impressed with the calibre and enthusiasm that these young Canadians will bring to their duties.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Jean Chretien (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question of the Prime Minister.	.

September 19, 1991
Oral Questions
There are press reports falsely suggesting that the Liberal Party of Canada has agreed in advance to support the constitutional proposition of the government.
I want to tell the Prime Minister that he does not have and will never have a blank cheque from the Liberal Party when it comes to constitutional reform.
The Prime Minister knows that in order to avoid another constitutional disaster he has to work with both opposition parties.
The Prime Minister promised to brief me and the Leader of the NDP on this proposition. I want to ask the Prime Minister when he will keep his promise.


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I have never asked the Leader of the Liberal Party for a blank cheque on constitutional reform or anything else, and he knows that.
Second, with regard to his second statement that on constitutional reform we would have to learn to work with the opposition parties, he may have been absent from the House, but the Leader of the Liberal Party, as he then was, and the Leader of the New Democratic Party and almost every single one of their members, endorsed the last constitutional position brought forward by the Government of Canada. My hon. friend will want to reflect on that.
With regard to the briefings that we agreed upon, the Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs and I will be in touch with both opposition leaders later on today to suggest some times that we hope will be mutually convenient so we can proceed within the next few days to do precisely that.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I am glad he realized that today's newspaper reports were not correct and that he has the benefit of our party's position put before the public on April 21, which is clear and to the point. I want to ask the Prime Minister whether he can guarantee that the constitutional proposals he will table will respond to the legitimate aspirations of Quebecers, reflect the legitimate aspirations of the people of Western Canada and the Mari-times who want an elected and reformed Senate, and
also, by means of sound proposals, respect the aspirations of Canada's native people?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition took the titles from three speeches made recently by the Minister responsible for Constitutional Affairs, in which he referred to issues concerning native people and Quebec and also to Western Canada's desire for an elected and reformed Senate.
Since the minister has already stated what our intentions are in this respect, I would imagine that considering today's statement by the Leader of the Opposition, this should be exactly what he had in mind.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to learn that the minister is reading my speeches before he makes his, because that is exactly what we have done.
We stated our position a long time ago because we wanted to make sure that this time the people would know ahead of time that there would not be a deal cooked in the backrooms and there would be participation by the Canadian public.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I have to give credit to the minister. He is listening to that. The other day he said in the House that the way it was done the other time was completely wrong, and I agree with him.
I want to ask the minister or the Prime Minister if he can give us a guarantee that they will take the proposition that is part of our nine propositions to make sure there will be a real economic union in Canada and the movement of goods, people, services and capital in Canada will be free from sea to sea to sea.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend is clearly very offended by deals cooked in backrooms. What does he think about deals cooked in kitchens?


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I did not want my hon. friend to get exorcised. I was just asking for his opinion,

-2? -
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September 19, 1991

because the only one who has really had experience with that kind of deal is my hon. friend. But I take in good faith the suggestions that he is making.
The minister has tried to make the point time and time again across the country that the document which will be tabled hopefully early next week by the government will be the beginning of the process and not the end. We think it is a sensible document and a sensible approach, but we are inviting constructive criticisms.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: You are learning.


Martin Brian Mulroney: My hon. friend says that I am learning. I hope so, I hope so. Most people of various kinds try to learn as they go along in life. That is something I recommend to my hon. friend, the Leader of the Opposition. It is not bad.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Martin Brian Mulroney: We look forward to constructive ideas from the NDP, from the Liberals, and from all other people in this country who believe in Canada and who believe in one Canada; not one English and not one French and not French hived off into certain parts and not the west against the east. One Canada solidly united and prosperous, that is what we all want.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


THE ECONOMY
Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, Statistics Canada today reported that Canadian family incomes grew by 34 per cent in the sixties, 22 per cent in the seventies, but less than 1 per cent in the decade of the eighties despite world-wide prosperity.
This government's high tax and high interest rate policies stole from Canadians real improvement in their financial situation and creative massive unemployment.
Is this what the Prime Minister meant when he said he would impose prosperity on all parts of Canada?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member looks at the study, she will learn that the Statistics Canada study uses as a point of comparison the incomes of families prior to the 1981-1982 recession.
Oral Questions
As a matter of fact what has happened since 1984 is that there has been real growth in family income at the rate of 2 per cent per annum and that is continuing.
With the economic policies that we are following, not policies of inflation but policies of prosperity, competitiveness, and growth, we will not only sustain that level of growth we will probably exceed it.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, amazing exaggerations and a lack of understanding of what Statistics Canada said.
You are always busy blaming someone else for the insensitive approach you have taken.


Mr. Speaker:: I would ask the hon. member to put her question through the Chair.


Sheila Finestone: In Quebec, 700,000 people are unemployed!
Does the Prime Minister agree with his Minister of Transport, his minister responsible for the Montreal area, who said yesterday that nothing could be done for Montreal and that it was up to the people of Montreal to create their own jobs? Is that what he means by a policy for prosperity?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the-


Sheila Finestone: In French!


Martin Brian Mulroney: The hon. member says I should answer in French. But of course!
I can inform the hon. member for Mount Royal that thanks to a decision made by this government and rejected by the Official Opposition here and in the Senate on two occasions, we passed Bill C-22.1 will be in Montreal on Monday to announce 300 new jobs and investments totalling $200 million, which will directly benefit the pharmaceutical industry and research and development in Montreal.
This is only one example of the thousands of new jobs being created in Quebec and across Canada, thanks to the policies pursued by this government. I would like to mention the aerospace industry and the petrochemical industry-the Liberals voted thumbs down, as they always do-patents and the pharmaceutical industry, where they also voted against the government.

September 19, 1991
Oral Questions
We now have a serious problem in Montreal. Industries that have become obsolete must be replaced by new aerospace technology-


TAXATION
Hon. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, Statistics Canada reported today that the average Canadian is no better off in 1991 than they were in 1980. The Minister of Finance says that in fact they are 2 per cent better off. That is the poorest who are 2 per cent better off, but the rich in Canada are 10 per cent better off. Under the Liberal and Conservative governments what has happened is that the rich have become richer.
Is the Minister of Finance now prepared to look at a fair tax system, because it is the tax system that ensures that the rich continue to get richer? Will he institute a fair tax system? Will he start by establishing a fair tax commission to study this issue?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows, there has been a great deal of change to the tax system that has made the tax system not only fairer but indeed simpler in many respects and more broadly based.
I repeat to the hon. member that the government's efforts to sustain growth and prosperity have shown up in an increase on an annualized basis of incomes of 2 per cent per year since 1984. That growth is continuing and we hope it will continue. With the turnaround in the economy and the need to improve our competitiveness, we believe we are on the track to sustained recovery, sustainable growth with price stability. The price stability is the most important factor because it is inflation that hits the low income and middle income people the hardest.


CHILD POVERTY
Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Prime Minister.
Last year the Prime Minister attended the world summit on child poverty. We all had great expectations that that would result in some changes for all countries
including Canada. Yet, a major study of eight industrialized countries shows that Canada has the second worst record on child poverty of those eight industrialized countries.
We must address that issue now. I want to say that so far the government's response to poverty has been to extend the cap on CAP, to take billions of dollars away from social assistance for Canada's poorest.
Will the Prime Minister stand up today in this House and say that he is prepared to do something for child poverty in Canada and he is prepared to do it now, not tomorrow's agenda? What is today's agenda for the children of this country?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the enhancement of the child tax credit and other changes in the tax system have been very helpful in terms of improving the income levels for families.
I draw to the attention of the hon. member the fact that the United Nations, using a human development index that measures incomes, education, quality of life, environmental considerations, health and longevity, voted Canada number two out of 160 nations as the second best country in the world in which to live.
What is more important, according to the UN report, Canada's ranking improved from seventh in 1970 and sixth in 1985 to number two in 1990, and only Japan had a higher ranking than Canada in 1990. I think that is a pretty good record.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I say to the Minister of Finance that I do not think the poor children in this country want to hear us exchanging statistics. They would like to know that there is a future in this country. I would like to say that this government has a responsibility to those children.

However, the minister knows perfectly well the best way to stop being poor is to have a good job. Exports create those jobs, but our exports to the United States are now at their lowest level in 10 years. Where are the jobs the government promised Canadians? What is this government going to do for the unemployed?
September 19, 1991


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, in just the last couple of days the OECD has presented a report on the Canadian economy. It is headlined: "OECD says Canada headed for recovery. Canada appears headed for a moderate export led recovery over the next several months with growth reaching an annual rate of 3.5 per cent by the end of next year and a further deceleration of inflation".
Not only did it say that, the OECD endorsed the Canadian government's position on monetary policy. It was very supportive of the fiscal policy and the fiscal direction that was contained in the February budget. It was very supportive of the structural policy changes, i.e. the free trade agreement, the GST, the changes to the unemployment insurance program. Yes, it was critical of labour efficiency, critical of interprovincial trade barriers, critical of an over-generous UI system.
We find this report to be very objective and we will be analysing it closely. It is not all gloom and doom. It is positive and it is full of optimism for the Canadian economy.


THE ECONOMY
Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Finance. By the way, the OECD report also says that it does not expect any improvement in jobs in this country until the middle of 1992. That will not sound optimistic to very many Canadians, except the minister and his government.
Today, Statistics Canada reported that in July Canada's trade balance with the world fell to only $63 million, the lowest in more than 10 years. How can the minister continue to talk about an export led recovery in the face of these disappointing figures? Why will he not admit that his high dollar policy is holding back our exports and our entire economy and do something about it?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is very much aware that there has been a substantial increase in the level of imports, I believe by $773 million
Oral Questions
dollars. The imports are essentially machinery and equipment for the manufacturing in the industrial sector. That is a positive sign, not a negative sign.
Exports have not gone down. They have remained constant. Imports have gone up because there is a confidence in the economy and there is a growing belief that the recovery is under way. In order to fulfil and capture the demands that are being created, not only in Canada but indeed outside of Canada, it is important to gear up to take advantage of these opportunities, and that is precisely what is happening.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, I ask the minister to look at the Statistics Canada report. It said that the exports of machinery made in this country fell by $165 million in July. How is that good for this economy? Forestry products exports fell by $91 million, and the minister says that is good for our economy. Nobody is going to believe that.
I want to say to the minister that Canadian factories are operating at only 71 per cent of their capacity. More than 1,300,000 Canadians are out of work. How can there by a recovery when these people are out of work? Why is the minister willing to continue to inflict the pain and suffering of this level of unemployment on Canadian men and women right across this country?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member knows very well that there was a 4.9 per cent annualized growth recorded in the second quarter. We expect that growth to continue, albeit somewhat at a more moderate level. I do not think that that is unusual.
Furthermore, he talks about industrial capacity utilization. He would be interested in knowing that last month the industrial capacity utilization rate went up by 1.7 per cent. That is a clear indication, a clear, positive indicator, and that ties in precisely with the importation of machinery and equipment to gear up for a sustained demand and a sustained recovery.


PORT OF HALIFAX
Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, in November 1990 the Department of Transport commissioned a report on the competitiveness of Canadian ports. Today

September 19, 1991
Oral Questions
Ports Canada confirmed that this report, although finished, will not be tabled in the House of Commons and will not be given to MPs for their perusal.
My question if for the Prime Minister. What is in this report that is too sensitive for the public to see? What is in this report that is too sensitive for the duly elected representatives of the people to peruse?


Hon. Doug Lewis (Solicitor General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Minister of Transport and the Minister of State for Transport, who are both travelling in the country, meeting with constituents in the industry, I will take that question under notice and try to get back to my hon. friend.


Mary Catherine Clancy: Mr. Speaker, while I thank the hon. minister for his response, this is the third time this year that I have posed a question through you to the government on the question of the port of Halifax and been told that I will get an answer at a later date.
Is there no one on the government side who is prepared to talk about what the plans are from this government for the port of Halifax? The litany of disasters is beyond belief. What does this government have in mind for the port of Halifax, and when is this government going to do something for a dying port?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend would be perhaps interested and I think pleased to know that I had a lengthy meeting last Friday with Premier Cameron of Nova Scotia who made-


Mary Catherine Clancy: It warms my heart, Brian.


An hon. member:: So you don't want an answer?


Mary Catherine Clancy: Yes, I do.


Martin Brian Mulroney: I am trying to answer her question. As soon as I begin to answer, the member for Halifax indicates she is not interested.


Mary Catherine Clancy: I am interested.


Martin Brian Mulroney: All right. If you are interested now, I will try to give you the answer.
Premier Cameron, the premier of Nova Scotia, has devoted a great deal of time and energy to the problem of the port of Halifax and has made it the highest priority
of his government. He has come forward to the Government of Canada, not with criticism and uninformed comment but with some precise, constructive points of view as to how Halifax and the port of Halifax can benefit greatly from co-operation by the Government of Canada and the Government of Nova Scotia.
We have taken his views veiy seriously. We are going to act upon them to the benefit of the port of Halifax.


TRUCKING INDUSTRY
Steven W. Langdon: All day, Mr. Speaker, I have been trying to persuade the Department of Transport to agree to meet with truckers' representatives from Windsor so that the truck blockade with its adverse economic effects would come down. That is all these truckers want-a chance to be listened to.
I want to ask the government why it has now refused to set such a meeting. Why will it not make this simple gesture to give people a hearing and end this blockade?


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, the present Minister of Transport has continued the task force on trucking which was set up when I was the minister. There has been a great deal of effort put into it. It represents all of players in the industry. That is forum within which independent truckers and all players in the industry have been working.
I would think that it would be appropriate for my hon. friend to suggest to the truckers who are blockading the bridge and throwing thousands of Canadians out of work, to work through the recognized trucking associations. That is the way we will get progress in this matter.


Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-St. Clair):: Mr. Speaker, on the same question, there is no question that the blockade is causing a great deal of economic harm.
But does the government not understand that this is an act of frustration that involves not just truckers but farmers, pensioners and workers and it is symptomatic of the explosive conditions that this government has produced in this country as a result of a seething anger among Canadians that you refuse to answer to them?
September 19, 1991

Why can you not do this simple thing and agree to meet with the truckers when they come here? Why can you not become a government that listens?


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I should tell my hon. friend that when I was Minister of Transport I went to Windsor and cut a deal and the Independent Truckers did not keep it.


CANADIAN PASSPORTS
Mr. Jesse Flis (Parkdale-High Park):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs. It pertains to the issuance of fraudulent passports.
Yesterday the minister said in this House:
Security is our highest priority in the issue of passports.
Yet her own aid says that they cannot afford to hire enough staff to ensure each application is genuine.
Is security the highest priority or not?


Hon. Barbara McDougall (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, yes, security is a high priority.
The reason it is the highest priority and the evidence of it is in the answer that I gave yesterday, that the people in the passport office in the consular division, when problems are brought to their attention, immediately report them to the RCMP.


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, we know from the four versions of the Al-Mashat report just how accurate the minister's investigations can be.
I want to draw to the minister's attention that the
1991-92 estimates show that the minister has almost $5 million in the passport office revolving fund. For half that she could hire at least 50 security people to check the documents and guarantors.
Will she protect Canadian security and assure this House that these people are hired at once?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, I do not need any lessons from the hon. member on doing my job.
Second, I am satisfied that the passport people who work very closely with the RCMP when there are questions of security will continue to do their job as they have in the past.
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I have indeed discussed this within the department as to further steps that may be taken. As I said yesterday, I have asked for a report. We will continue to ensure that the Canadian passport is secure, and security will continue to be our priority.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mrs. Christine Stewart (Northumberland):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
Again yesterday Canadians were shocked and angered to learn how lax and inadequate government procedures are allowing, this time, drug dealers into our country.
Last June 10, 11 and 12 the Secretary of State for External Affairs, responding to the Al-Mashat inquiry here, told the House that she had a team of officials urgently looking for a secret memo, a memo she was confident would be found.
My question is: where is the memo?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, the question of the missing memo has already been thoroughly canvassed.
It is a secret memo, not top secret as members opposite have continued to say. The department has made every effort to find this memo, and it has not yet been found.
We did have an internal investigation on this and, as the hon. member knows, the internal investigation did not produce any evidence of any fraud or anything that should not have existed.


Christine Susan Stewart: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister.
Six months is a long time to be looking for a memo. Although the minister states that the memo in question has not been found, surely the officials searching for that memo have made a report to the minister.
I would ask that the hon. minister make public to us that particular report made by the officials about their search.


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, the report that was made was a normal one through the internal security of the department and the security within the department, as the hon. member knows, is an internal matter. I will not

September 19, 1991
Oral Questions
be producing a report, although I will be producing a formal reply.


CANADA POST
Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister responsible for Canada Post.
Canadians hope that the present mediation process will resolve the postal dispute. However, this summer pensioners, the disabled, veterans and others faced a real mess with regard to the mail delivery system.
Will the government and Canada Post respond positively to the request of anti-poverty groups and others and sit down with postal workers in order to work out an agreement with regard to the delivery of pension and other cheques?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, along with the hon. member and I am sure all Canadians, I am sincerely hopeful that the mediation effort will result in a conclusion to this dispute and a contract mutually satisfactory to both sides. That is what is to be wished for.
If there is another strike, and heaven forbid, I do not think we can stand idly by and see anybody hurt, pensioners or anybody else. But I have to say to the hon. member that if there is concern on the part of the union about cheques being caught in the system and not available to those who need them, all they need to do is give 48 hours' notice before going on strike and the cheques will be delivered to every pensioner and they will not be hurt as result of the strike.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Mr. Speaker, I do not know if anyone can predict exactly when a strike would occur, so I do not know if the minister himself could deliver on that promise.
Therefore I would ask again that the government and Canada Post agree to sit down with representatives of CUPW. Surely, if those members are willing to deliver those cheques, the government and Canada Post are able to sit down and try to negotiate this before there is any dispute.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, I hope the hon. member is not predicting that through his sources there is going to be another strike.
I repeat, the problem last time was that cheques from the government were trapped in Toronto where strikers refused to allow anybody to go in and recover the cheques. They illegally blocked entry and the police would not break the entry.
To avoid that happening again, all that needs to happen is 48 hours' notice so that cheques do not get trapped in the system. Perhaps he could use his channels to communicate that. If there is concern about the pensioners, give us some warning and we will make sure that pensioners are not hurt.


REFORM PARTY
Felix Holtmann: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Agriculture.
Could the minister inform this House how a Canadian Reform Party policy? of a reduction in agricultural support programs and a reduction of marketing boards would benefit western grain farmers?


Charles James Mayer: Mr. Speaker, that is quite a challenge. It would probably be better directed to the hon. member for Beaver River.


Mr. Speaker:: It is a challenge to me too, but do the best you can.


Charles James Mayer: Beyond their policy of advocating a reduction in support to all industries, you have to think that what they are presently advocating on behalf of agriculture would be very damaging at a time when farmers need our support.
I would suggest, giving that we are going through an opposition day with a debate on agriculture-and we have had some pretty good debate here this morning-it might be appropriate for the hon. member for Beaver River to enter into that debate to tell us what her party would do to support Canadian farmers in a time of great need.
September 19, 1991


EDUCATION
Ms. Ethel Blondin (Western Arctic):: Mr. Speaker, in April 1989 the federal government arbitrarily changed the policy for post-secondary education for the funding of aboriginal students. Now its latest action has created a waiting list of up to 400 in the Atlantic region. I know the minister will say 100, but that is doctoring the numbers. As well as there is a 30 per cent reduction of post-secondary education funding for aboriginal students.
Why is the government sloughing off its responsibility to the bands and these students under various arrangements? Why has it not lived up to its obligations to aboriginal peoples as guaranteed under section 35 of the Constitution?


Hon. Thomas Siddon (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, this is a very timely question. I want to assure the hon. member that the Government of Canada is very proud of the leadership we have taken in increasing the funding for post-secondary aboriginal students from some $50 million a year, as it was at the time when the previous government left office in 1984, to almost $200 million this year, rising to $240 million by 1995.
The number of aboriginal students presently enrolled in post-secondary programs is 22,000 compared to 5,000 in 1984 and less than 1,000 when the Leader of the Opposition had the portfolio I presently preside over. Of these programs, 70 per cent are administered by aboriginal leadership and aboriginal organizations.
We would like to see all of these programs administered in the spirit of self-government by aboriginal leadership because this is a management problem. All aboriginal student in Canada can have access to a post-secondary education under the program that has been put in place by this government.


Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister.
The math does not compute. On April 23, the Prime Minister announced to the chiefs at a First Nations Congress meeting in B.C. that a $320 million increase would be made to post-secondary education for that budget.
Oral Questions
Nonetheless, we have a 30 per cent reduction or shortfall and we have students on the waiting list. This is totally unacceptable and this is a breach of the fiduciary that the government has for this responsibility.
I want to ask why there is such a blatant contradiction between the fine words of the Prime Minister to make this increase and the actions of that minister.


Thomas Edward Siddon: Mr. Speaker, if we are talking about math, I think it is the math of the hon. member that is faulty. In fact on average every aboriginal student in Canada, over and above the normal support their receive in their communities as aboriginal students, receives an average of $10,000 per year to attend university, which is four times the cost of tuition and books.
As I said previously, this is but a management problem: 70 per cent of these programs are managed by aboriginal leadership and we are happy to work co-operatively with that leadership to ensure there is no hardship to any qualified student who should be attending university this year.


Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
This summer there were several ugly incidents of racial conflict in Montreal, Halifax and other cities. Unfortunately, there are signs of growing intolerance and racism in Canadian society.
Under these circumstances I would like to ask the Prime Minister if he would show leadership by bringing in new measures to combat racism in Canada and, in particular, more effective affirmative action for the justice system, especially for the police, the courts, the prosecution and the parole system. Would he do that, please?


Hon. Gerry Weiner (Minister of Multiculturalism and Citizenship):: Mr. Speaker, since 1988, we have effectively moved the program of my department, the new Ministry of Multiculturalism and Citizenship, to combat

September 19, 1991
Oral Questions
racism and help eliminate racial discrimination and to bring forward programs that will help in integration and equality.
The member is referring to Halifax. We recently put together a small working committee with the province, of course. The Attorney General and the mayor were very co-operative and helpful. Black community leaders working together came forward with some 94 recommendations which are now being examined very carefully, a process that can help a whole community in its coming together to help overcome decades and decades of that inequality.
We have a very active plan for Montreal as well.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, this supplementary question could be for the minister of employment.
As the government knows, racial conflict is often related to high unemployment. Since there is a clause in the Employment Equity Act requiring a full review of that law this year, would the government help these unemployed Canadians by proposing stronger sanctions to enforce this employment equity law?
I remind the government that the present law has not been successful in providing more jobs for the racial minorities in Canada and the other target groups.


Hon. Monique Vezina (Minister of State (Employment and Immigration) and Minister of State (Seniors)):: Mr. Speaker, I can inform the hon. member that we are aware the Employment Equity Act is to be reviewed after five years. This timely social measure was introduced by our government. We are making gradual progress, and within the next few weeks we intend to announce on the floor of the House how we intend to revise this legislation, in consultation with those for whom the measure was intended, to make it more effective and ensure the kind of working conditions to which the four groups concerned by employment equity are entitled.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Hon. Jean Lapierre (Shefford):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of the Environment. Last summer, the minister appointed the Lacoste Commission to review the Great Whale Project. My question to the minister is this: does he really think he has the right to do an assessment of the Great Whale project? What right does he have to examine Quebec's energy policy? And what right does he have to review Hydro-Quebec's business plan?


Hon. Jean J. Charest (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, in accordance with its obligations as imposed by the courts, the federal government announced on July 10 that it intended to proceed with a comprehensive environmental assessment of the Great Whale project. We did so, keeping co-operation with Quebec foremost in our minds. In the mandate of what today is referred to as the Lacoste Commission, it says clearly that the commission will not examine the energy policies of the Government of Quebec.


Jean-C. Lapierre: I have a supplementary, Mr. Speaker. Hydro-Quebec representatives told us they would refuse to appear before the Lacoste Commission because the Government of Canada was exceeding its authority, which is limited to migratory birds and marine mammals, and to Hudson Bay.
Could the Minister of the Environment explain why his Lacoste Commission is exceeding its mandate? And why does he want to force Hydro-Quebec to justify its business plan before a federal commission, something it is under no obligation to do under the present Constitution?


Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, I can inform the hon. member that in addition to the federal environmental assessment process provided under the agreement, we must comply with the terms of the federal environmental assessment and review process.
The hon. member for Shefford says no, Mr. Speaker. I just quoted a letter to the Quebec Environment Minister, dated November 20, 1989, and signed by Lucien Bouchard.


MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY
Hon. Alan Redway (Don Valley East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology.
September 19, 1991

Last week Colgate Palmolive closed a plant in Toronto and moved some 250 jobs to the United States. The minister is aware of the fact that there is a growing concern in southern Ontario about the fear of permanently losing our manufacturing base.
We know that the minister has a strategy for competitiveness for the long term, but in the long term we are all going to be dead. What is the government going to do right now about this situation?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology and Minister for International TVade):: Mr. Speaker, what we are doing right now is getting interest rates down as much as we can. The Minister of Finance has commented on that on a number of occasions.
We have been promoting trade aggressively. I have been in five different countries in the last six months promoting international trade, promoting our exports, which will help our manufacturing community. In addition to that are some of the structural policies that my colleague, the Minister of Finance, has just talked about and the GST which is designed to help the competitive position of manufacturers. All of these combined are what we are doing now, but I should reinforce the point that my colleague has made that the medium and longer term policies are equally important.
That is the essence of the consultation that we will be announcing with Canadians in general to have a national action plan to deal with this problem.


JUSTICE
Rodney Edward Laporte: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Justice.
Many people in Saskatchewan were appalled when the Minister of Justice recently appointed Devine cabinet minister Gary Lane to a position on the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, a position that Lane himself created.
The Canadian Bar Association has called for a two-year cooling off period before politicians can go to the bench. Why has the minister allowed her political partisanship to infringe upon the credibility of Saskatchewan?
Business of the House


Mr. Speaker:: I am deeply concerned with the tone of the question. The minister may want to deal with it, but I am certainly not satisfied with that approach on the appointment of a judge.


TRANSPORTATION
Mrs. Coline Campbell (South West Nova):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister, in the absence of the Minister of Transport.
This morning on Annapolis Valley radio, a source was quoted from Transport Canada as saying that the feny service between Saint John, New Brunswick and Digby, Nova Scotia would be greatly reduced in that they would eliminate truck service as well as put it on a seasonal basis for car passengers. The source went on to say that it would not impact in the area.
Can the Prime Minister allow somebody from the department, a source, to talk about how this would impact on an area, whether it would impact or not, and will the Prime Minister tell this House that this is not a valid source and that this is not a policy of this government to cut off an area?


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I will be pleased to take note of that question for my hon. friend and will try to get back to her as soon as possible.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY
Mr. Speaker:: I draw the attention of hon. members to the presence in the gallery of His Excellency Butrus Butrus Ghali, Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister of State for Immigration Affairs of the Arab Republic of Egypt.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. David Dingwall (Cape Breton-East Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to put my regular question to

September 19, 1991
Business of the House
the government House leader with regard to the business of the House for Friday, Monday and Tuesday.
While I am on my feet, I wonder if the government House leader could inform the House as to whether or not Monday or Tuesday of next week will be set aside for the introduction of the government's comprehensive position with respect to the Constitution, whether the government House leader could indicate to the House if they have reached a decision with regard to the funding that will be made available for the committee, and whether or not there can be further discussions between respective House leaders of the various parties in order to make sure there is a clear understanding of the nature of the funding, where it will be going, and the amounts that will be involved.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, in terms of House business, let me say that it is my intention to call Bill C-21, the debt servicing bill, tomorrow for completion at second reading. Hopefully we will also be able to deal with the completion of third reading of Bill C-ll.
On Monday it is my intention to begin second reading on Bill C-32, and I would like to have the usual discussions with opposition House leaders in terms of the business for the rest of the week.
With respect to the constitutional committee and its announcements, perhaps you will allow me, Mr. Speaker, to let the Minister responsible for Constitutional Affairs answer those questions.


Right Hon. Joe Clark (President of the Privy Council and Minister responsible for Constitutional Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I do not do this very often, but just for greater certainty could I have the questions again.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the minister who is now listening could inform the House as to whether or not Tuesday of next week will be set aside for the Prime Minister and respective leaders, the Leader of the Official Opposition and the leader of the NDP, and perhaps himself in terms of the government laying its proposal before Parliament with regard to constitutional reform, whether or not all the arrangements for the committee in terms of the funding and membership will be announced forthwith, or whether they are going to require further discussion among all parties.


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his understanding of my brief predicament, which he has resolved.
It certainly would be our intention to have the Prime Minister present to Parliament on Tuesday morning, September 24, proposals for renewal of the Canadian federation with the expectation that that would provide an opportunity for the Leaders of the Official Opposition and the New Democratic Party to respond.
It would be my hope that there would be meetings with the relevant committees of the House today or tomorrow to give effect to the creation of the special joint committee that had been agreed to by the House earlier in the spring. I would hope that that committee would be in a position to hold its first meeting on Wednesday, September 25, when I would like to have the privilege of coming before the committee to present the proposals in more detail.
With respect to funding arrangements, those are matters that would have to be worked out by a committee of the House. I want to state a general inclination on the part of the government with regard to the functioning of this committee to seek for the most reasonable ways possible in which members of the three parties with standing in this House can work together to ensure that we achieve the kinds of reforms and changes that Canadians expect of us, and indeed, that we can involve to the greatest degree possible the imagination and the understanding of the people of the country in this process.
I have had some discussions with the Leader of the New Democratic Party regarding a particular question concerning participation of members who are not formal members of the committee. I think there has been an agreement worked out there that I trust and believe would recommend itself to all members of the committee.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to belabour the point. The minister has made reference that the committee will decide with regard to the funding for the purposes of research.
It was my understanding, and maybe I was under a false premise, that when I exchanged letters with the parliamentary secretary, which I believe the government House leader has, that we were going to have a decision sooner, as opposed to later, and that funding and the funding arrangements would not be funding which is
September 19, 1991

going directly to the committee. It would go directly to the three parties which are represented in the House.
The government House leader and I have debated this point in private, but that was my understanding back in June.
I am wondering if the minister or, indeed, the government House leader could amplify that point.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, there is no reluctance on this side to pursue funding of the form that the House leader of the opposition talked about.
It is a question of source and process. As he knows, the process is for the committee to meet to make a request for funding to meet its obligations and to be used for whatever purposes it decides. That request then comes back to the House. We usually deal with the House leaders first. If it is satisfactory, a motion is put to the House to request the funds.
There are no other pockets of money so to speak that we could get the funds to by-pass that process in order to provide the funds.
That is the process. There is no reluctance to proceed in a way that will facilitate the work of this committee and ensure that for the benefit of Canada, the right outcome occurs.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I am not trying to put words in the mouth of the Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs, but am I right in assuming that we are looking at Tuesday, September 24, for the Prime Minister tabling the comprehensive position that the government has with regard to constitutional reform? Is that right?


Charles Joseph Clark: That is correct.


Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs. I wonder if he is in the position today to announce who the co-chairs of the special joint committee will be and if he cannot do it today, can he tell the House when that will happen?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I am not in a
position to do that at this moment.


Mr. Marcel Prud'homme (Saint-Denis):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for either the House leader or the minister responsible. The Constitution is so important
Business of the House
that I am sure without requesting permission we could ask questions directly without giving notice. Having had a long time interest and having been a member of the committee in 1972 that travelled across Canada, am I to understand that on Tuesday there will be a debate or just a statement by three ministers and no questions by interested members? Is that the understanding? I did not check with my House leader because I did not expect this to come at this time.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, the process is, using the rules of the House in the usual procedure, a statement by ministers, the statement by the Prime Minister in this case, at the end of which time he will table the paper which will then be referred to the committee set up by this House for consideration and initiation of public debate, discussion and consultation.
It is not intended, and indeed the hope is just the opposite, that we do not on that day at that precise time get into an extensive debate either about the contents or about the whole general constitutional situation. There will be ample time for that. This is simply the traditional mechanism of releasing a government document of some importance, a statement by ministers. That will be done.
As a senior parliamentarian, the hon. member will appreciate that there will be no press lock-up, that the only people who will see that in advance are the Leader of the Opposition and the leader of the New Democratic Party. Everyone else will receive it at the same time, including the media, whom I am sure will be surprised that they are not getting the favoured treatment they usually get.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to prevail upon the government House leader too much, but since he has been somewhat generous in sharing with the House the activities which will take place on Ihesday, perhaps he and the Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs could indicate to the House as to when the Leader of the Official Opposition and the leader of the New Democratic Party will see the proposal of the Government of Canada?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I think that if the schedules of the Leader of the Official Opposition and the Leader of the New Democratic Party allow, that there would be a full briefing for each of them on Monday. I think it is the expectation that there would be a briefing without a document available to each of the

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spokespersons of the two official opposition parties probably earlier in that day on the Monday.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Hon. John McDermid (Minister of State (Finance and Privatization)):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 84(1), I have the honour to lay upon the table copies of the notice of ways and means motion to amend the Excise Tax Act and related acts, and I ask that pursuant to Standing Order 84(2) an Order of the Day be designated for consideration of said motion.


ALLOTTED DAY, S.O. 81-AGRICULTURE
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Althouse (p. 2361).
John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, so far, on this particular motion, I think we have had a very good debate. It has been quite stimulating and somewhat illuminating. I must say that to some extent I have mixed feelings about the motion. On the one hand I wish that it were not necessary to have this kind of debate. If things were not so difficult down on the farm, I guess we could be dealing with some other matters, talking about some other important issues. So that is on the negative side.
On the positive side, I welcome this motion. I welcome the debate around it because the motion reflects something that was already done some days ago near the end of August in a meeting of our Standing Committee on Agriculture. What we did was pass a motion almost identical to the one that is before us now. What is so encouraging about that is we had all-party support for that motion in the Standing Committee on Agriculture. It would be veiy encouraging if the same thing happened here in the House of Commons because, after all, the purpose of this motion and the purpose of this debate is
to help the lot of farmers, to help them face the challenge that is before them right now and it is a very difficult one.
The hon. Minister for Grains and Oilseeds has already indicated that the government will not be supporting this motion. I find that discouraging and I will tell you why. I think what it does is it sends mixed signals to the agricultural community. On the one hand we go out of our way to listen to the farmers and hear what they say, to recognize the terrible problems that they face. Yet, when it comes to a motion like this which, in effect, says there is a problem out there and it has to be addressed right now, the hon. minister of grains and oilseeds says: "I cannot support that."
Now the minister says he cannot support it because of rules of the House and rules according to parliamentary procedures that go way back to Runnymede, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. But the fact of the matter is that the motion points out and really says, on behalf of the House, that if it is passed it is in no way an expression of non-confidence in the government. So I cannot see, for the life of me, why the government cannot support the motion. It does send a mixed signal to the farming community.
Now there are other mixed signals too, distressing signals that I want to point out. For example, the important issue, the issue that is concentrating the minds of farmers at this moment has to do with emergency assistance.
Yesterday, in the House, I said to the hon. Minister of Agriculture that we do not need any more information as to what has gone on in the past few months. We do not need any information with respect to what farmers might expect under the safety net programs GRIP and NISA. We have that information already. What we do not have is what the government is going to do in the way of emergency aid, that is what we are looking for and that is the information that we want. Yet, the Minister of Agriculture, yesterday, refused to deal with that question.
I must say, and again it is discouraging, that the Minister of Grains and Oilseeds stood up in the House today and he spoke for a long time, 20 minutes or more, and hardly addressed this matter of emergency assistance except to say that he recognizes the problem, he
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has great feeling for it and they will do as much as they can. Well that is not a lot of information.
It seems to me that if the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of State for Grains and Oilseeds have some very serious problems in cabinet or elsewhere, I think they should be telling us what those problems are. You never know. We might be able to help them a little bit.
There was a mention in the House this morning about playing politics with this issue. Yesterday I said in the House, as part of a question, that there was going to be a rally in Brandon, Manitoba, today. Actually, it is tomorrow. That was an inadvertent statement on my part.
Yet the Minister of Agriculture chose to play politics with that. He chose to score brownie points on me because I inadvertently gave the wrong date. The Minister of Agriculture can go around and abuse me, and that is fine and dandy. However, he should not be playing politics with farmers, and he should not be trivializing the situation faced by the farming community.


Ron J. Duhamel: It was a cheap shot.


John Harvard: I wanted to put those remarks on the record because I think farmers can be somewhat confused by what is coming out of the House. On the one hand we say we are concerned, that we are listening, and we recognize the problems, and want to do a lot. Yet we hear some of these remarks which, if not 180 degrees, are at variance to some of those expressions.
I think we should, as best as we can as politicians, as members of Parliament, be very clear in what we are saying because we are dealing with an extremely serious situation down on the farm. I know that the member for Mackenzie was extremely eloquent this morning when explaining the kinds of problems faced by farmers.
Mr. Speaker, I do not have to tell you that there have been changes in the way we help farmers. We have gone from an old ad hoc approach to providing assistance to something that is a little bit more predictable called GRIP and NISA. The old program is gone. That was for the old days. GRIP and NISA are for the future more or less, even if that is the immediate future, a few months
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down the road. The problem we have, and this is why the farmers are crying out for emergency assistance, is what do we do in the interim. What do we do to tide the farmers over from the old system to the new system? This is where the so-called third line of defence comes in. This is where transitional assistance comes in, or call it emergency payments. Call it what you will, but the farmers are in desperate need and they need that help now.
There is a shortfall there of $1 billion, maybe a little less, but it is around $1 billion. What we have been trying to do is get the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of State for Grains and Oilseeds to address that shortfall of about $1 billion and let there be no question. There was, there is, there remains on the record a commitment from the government to provide that assistance, to provide that so-called third line of defence payment.
It must happen and it must happen soon because if we wait for GRIP, if we wait for NISA, it is going to be too long. There are going to be some farmers gone, some very good farmers gone, by the end of the year if we wait around. There is no time to fool around.
Mr. Speaker, I do not think I have to go through a litany of figures to tell you just how serious it is. But let me touch on a paragraph in a statement made by prairie pools not too long ago. In fact it was August 29, the very day the Standing Committee on Agriculture met here in Ottawa. Let me read one paragraph: "The five-yearlong trade war has taken a significant toll on the grains and oilseeds industry. Net cash income in 1991 will be 5 per cent less than it was last year and 39 per cent lower than the average for the last five years. If the cost of investment and machinery, equipment, and buildings is taken into account there will be only about $1.1 billion to grains and oilseeds producers to cover living expenses". Put another way, said vice-chairman Leroy Larsen, and I quote: "Unless they have some other source of income, the average farm family will have to live on between $5,000 and $6,000 in 1991"-$5,000 and $6,000 in 1991. That is less than one third of the low income cut-off or poverty line for a family of four, which has been set at just over $19,000.

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We have a serious situation. I am glad that this kind of a motion is before us. I am happy that we have had this kind of debate. I just hope that we can come to grips with this situation as soon as possible.


Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview-Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague on his remarks. We know this member has a tremendous amount of experience in the area of communications.
Speaking as one urban member of Parliament, we quite often sit in this House and listen to these debates on agricultural matters and are naturally not as knowledgeable as many of our members who have rural ridings. I also believe that many of our constituents in urban areas are not as familiar with the complexities that surround this issue.
For example, when I listened to the minister responsible for the Wheat Board this morning, he talked about the tremendous subsidies that the European countries were giving to their farmers and said they were virtually holding our farmers in this country hostage. They were creating a situation where even with all the cash assistance that hopefully this government will be advancing soon, it still does not correct the problem in the long term.
I was wondering, as I was listening to the minister for the Wheat Board this morning and my hon. colleague just recently, if it would be more effective for us as a country to have these meetings debating agricultural subsidies not just with the bureaucrats and the politicians. Somehow we should communicate to the communities at large, not only in Europe, but also in our country, just exactly what is going on in terms of subsidies.
I know how effective the Greenpeace campaign was in terms of the baby seals. There are many other examples in terms of the rain forest.
I wonder if the hon. member could react to what his views would be in terms of communicating these problems to major urban markets, not only here but also in Europe.


John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, I think that my hon. colleague has made a very good suggestion. I think we have to communicate better on this issue. This is not just a farm issue. It is an urban issue. It is a national issue. The farmers feed all of us. They feed themselves and they feed the people who live in the urban areas of the country. In fact, this is really a food security issue. That is how important it is. We are not just talking about saving
a few farmers. We are talking about the very security of the country.
I have said this before and I will say it again. If a country, be it Canada or any other country in the world, cannot feed itself, if it does not have a stable agricultural community, if it does not have farmers who can make ends meet, that country is in terrible shape. If the farm community goes down, the rest of the country will not be far behind.
I think that my hon. colleague from Toronto is absolutely right. We do have to come together on this issue because we are all involved in it.


Mr. Jerry Pickard (Essex-Kent):: Mr. Speaker, the contributions of farmers and the agri-food industry is this nation's lifeline. We just heard a minute ago how important the food industry is to any person in this world. It is very clear in Ethiopia how important food is. It is very clear in the Soviet Union how important the food and agricultural industry are. It is important to the European Community because it suffered 40 years ago with no food. It must be important to all Canadians.
The Canadian food industry as well as the farm community in this country today is in jeopardy. All Canadians must share a common goal of making certain that the farm community is raised to much better status than it is presently. I believe that the people in government, the people in the opposition, can all agree to that tenet. We must agree to that and we must work toward that today-not tomorrow, not in the future sometime, but today.
In my riding of Essex-Kent we have a very, very bad situation in the agricultural community. In the last four years poor weather has caused disaster in the agricultural community. I have seen plants leave my riding. Nabisco is one good example of a plant that was very productive and had to leave; Hunt-Wesson, another one that was very, very important in producing canned goods; Olinda, which is on the verge of being brought back. We are talking about hundreds of workers being laid off in factories in my riding, hundreds of farmers losing contracts, and certainly a disaster in the drought right now.
A lot of people would say "well, the farm community is protected a bit by crop insurance". Well, let me tell you and tell the people of Canada that crop insurance is based on the average of the last five years production. In my riding it happens to be that we have had disastrous weather conditions in four of those five years-drought, floods, drought, hail, all things which the farm community could not control, and yet things that have caused the
September 19, 1991

dollars and cents coming into my community, into Essex County and into Kent County, to be far diminished.
This year I understand if we were to look at the local situation in Essex County alone, we are talking about 40 to 60 per cent of our farm community in dire financial straits. Half the people in Essex County in agriculture are in dire straits. Essex and Kent counties are, without a doubt, the best agricultural producing counties in this country, and yet they feel this pressure, they feel these problems.
Why has this occurred? We know that there are disastrously low prices throughout the world on many, many commodities. A colleague of mine, Ralph Ferguson, has written a document using Statistics Canada documents and co-ordinated that material. He has called it Compare the Share. In this document he very clearly points out that we have farm commodity products which are basically the same price today that they were ten years ago. Minor increases in some of those products, but the cost to the consumer out of the farm is the same. Our consumers, looking on the grocery shelf, would never visualize that to be the case. We have seen high increases in the products that Canadian consumers are buying, yet at the farm gate those prices have not increased.
When I look at the soya bean, the corn and the winter wheat commodities in Essex County alone, we have a $40 million loss in just those three commodities.
I think that when we realize that and we add to it-the vegetable processing industry down $6 million in 1989 figures and the tender fruit industry down $1.6 million- we certainly realize that there is a disaster in my area.
We can look at how the farm is operating in a riding such as mine. What have the farmers done over the last four years when they have had disastrous conditions and disastrously low prices because of climate? They have gone out and borrowed money to plant more crops. They
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have borrowed money to make sure that the debts on the farm are paid.
As a result, all the past reserves of funds they have are now gone. Older farmers who have retired have taken money out of what they considered their retirement funds, and have put it in to help the younger people who are farming in my area.
When we look at the total situation, we certainly realize that our farm community today cannot survive if it does not receive some pretty strong help very quickly.
Off farm income is being affected as well. Many farmers kept their farms going by working in the small store, in the manufacturing industry or by having a job in a factory. That is not happening today. In my riding of Essex-Kent because of free trade, because of the recession, many of those jobs have been lost.
We are talking about thousands of jobs lost in almost every community throughout my area. At the same time, the small business person is feeling a tremendous amount of pressure because that small business is not having the same dollars flow into it.
People are being laid off in the manufacturing sector. People who are not receiving decent farm incomes are not buying the products in small stores. They are not buying the products on main street in small towns.
The result is those merchants are suffering tremendously as well. They are laying people off, and therefore, what might be considered a job that a farm wife, son or farmer himself could have has been lost in my riding. Add to that, the cross-border shopping crisis and you have a major disaster, one that we really must look at and treat very carefully.
It is not a situation where we can sit back and say: "Well, we put a program in place and there will be dollars coming next year to answer some of these problems." That is nonsense.
We applauded the putting into place of the GRIP and NISA programs to help the farm community. However, from the 1991 crop, no dollars appear except in some possible interim payment. No dollars appear until 1992.

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There was a year in there. The 1989-90 crop year was never addressed. The minister said that there would be money for that 1989 crop year. They would treat that as a third line defence, and they would make sure there were funds available for the farm community then.
Many people in my riding still have their commodities in storage. Many of them have sold them for far less dollars than the cost to produce them, and they are in dire trouble. I talked to a farmer the other day who said: "My crop is sitting in storage. I owe more in storage than I can sell that crop for." When we realize that those are normal situations for a lot of our growers, then we know the disaster that people are in. We realize this nation has to come forward and help those farmers.
That does not even deal with the horticultural problem. There are no GRIP payments for the horticultural problem. There are no support payments in that area to help other farmers who are finding it just as disastrous.
I believe that our federal government must very seriously consider the problems that our farming community is facing and act accordingly, or we will have a national disaster concerning food. When we stop and think about it, I do not see a younger farm community coming up. I am seeing older farmers having tremendous problems surviving on the farm and younger people not willing to take on those burdens.
I see my time is getting a little short. I also believe that it is not just a federal problem but that it relates to the Ontario problem as well. I must make a point of the fact that our Ontario government, at the same time, must make certain that they do their fair share of support.
When I looked at the program in NISA that is available, the federal government will put in .5 per cent more money if the province would support the NISA program as well, meaning a fair amount more dollars. Some $24 million could be brought into the Ontario farm community if our provincial colleagues would come up with a fair bit more funding in the NISA program.
I also believe that the government has offered to bring up the $50 million which it offered in farm support for our community. Those dollars are sadly lacking and should be brought forward at this present time.
There is also some question about the stabilization payments. The federal government has asked that the provinces top up stabilization by 5 per cent if the federal government tops it up from 90 per cent to 95 per cent, which would bring Ontario farmers into 100 per cent stabilization payment. I believe that should occur.
There are many things that both levels of government should be doing which I, unfortunately, feel they are not.


Mr. Bob Kilger (Stormont-Dundas):: Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by sincerely congratulating all the members of the Standing Committee on Agriculture. I believe the motion that was passed unanimously in that standing committee of the House, the motion presented by my hon. colleague from Algoma and seconded by my colleague from Prince Edward-Hastings, was somewhat instrumental in leading to the motion we have before us today brought forward by the member from Mackenzie.
Like many other parts of Ontario, my riding of Stormont-Dundas contains a number of producers who face a rather bleak economic future if third line of defence emergency cash assistance is not made available to them by the government.
Producers throughout Ontario have been hit hard and many are facing severe cash flow difficulties. GRIP is too far off to help at this time. There must be some sort of transitional assistance.
There is also concern in the industry that the government may take money from GRIP to give producers money now when it will be needed for the next crop year. This would not be appropriate in my estimation. Emergency assistance must be based on the principles of GRIP, but not obtained from GRIP.
I would like to ask my colleague from Essex-Kent what he believes will be the long-term consequences for Canadian agriculture if-and I hope not-the government fails to implement emergency assistance at the earliest opportunity to cope with the crisis which is now facing Canadian producers?


Jerry Pickard: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for the veiy astute question that he puts forward because, when we look at dollars and cents that are put into programs, if we are robbing next year's funding in order to keep somebody floating or keep somebody economically viable today, we are really not supporting that person. We are throwing a lifeline only it
September 19, 1991

is going half way out to the person who needs the lifeline.
What must happen-and I believe there is no question in the agricultural community-is that they have to look at the crop that is presently there, the one that no support has come forward for, and apply GRIP principles to that, the same as if GRIP was in place and not just borrow from next year's GRIP payments to keep somebody in a position where they can make their NISA payments this year.
The reason that the interim payment was suggested, in my opinion, is that the government felt we must have some funding available so farmers could pay the NISA payments required to enter the program. As a result, an interim payment was suggested in GRIP. That interim payment in GRIP will only go back into the government coffers to cover the NISA costs. In many cases, therefore, the farm community will not come up with any extra dollars, will not have the dollars to plant the crop next year. They will have a few dollars to enter and pay into a program.
I think it is inherent upon all of us to realize that we have a crop that has been there for a year, that has been promised some support and that support is not forthcoming. My colleague is suggesting to me what possibly could happen if those payments are not made or if the support does not come.
I can clearly suggest that if half the farmers in my riding are in serious financial difficulty, adding more dollar and cent pressure to them will only put them under. Therefore, our agri-food industry is in jeopardy.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: On a point of order the hon. opposition House leader.


David Charles Dingwall: I am just wondering, Mr. Speaker, if the government is going to be able to have a minister sit through the proceedings for the remainder of this day which is an allotted day to my colleagues in the New Democratic Party. There was a period of time when there was no member of the cabinet on the front benches. I am just wondering if perhaps, Mr. Speaker, through you to the members opposite, you could ascertain whether or not ministers will have the time to participate in the proceedings that are taking place here today.
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The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I would remind the hon. Leader of the Opposition, who knows the Standing Orders very well, that one cannot point out the presence or absence of a colleague in the House.
I am pleased to recognize the Minister of State for Agriculture. Resuming debate.


Hon. Pierre Blais (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: Mr. Speaker, as Minister of State, I want to add to what my colleagues have said about the situation facing Canadian farmers, which is the subject of the motion by the hon. member for Mackenzie.
Mr. Speaker, we must admit that the difficulties are not confined to one region of Canada. At the present time, grains and oilseeds in Ontario are in a similar situation to the one in the West. Horticulture has very varied problems, including adverse weather conditions in eastern Canada. In your very beautiful riding, Mr. Speaker, it has delighted vacationers, but we must also admit that it has been the despair of the many market gardeners in your riding and the horticulturists in mine.
The motion before us, however well-intentioned it may be for farmers, suggests that governments are indifferent to the situation, are doing nothing to remedy it or are sitting on their hands. That is not true, Mr. Speaker. Previous speakers have shown that. The federal government has dealt with the need for various types of transitional programs for the implementation of measures to help farmers across Canada.
Farmers are expected to receive $3 billion in income support for 1991, of which nearly $2 billion will come from the federal government. This means that 61 per cent of this aid will be redistributed by the federal government throughout the country.
Mr. Speaker, the complex problems facing modem farming were never really attacked on so many fronts at once before we did. I remember that with the previous agriculture minister nearly two years ago, we set up twelve task forces to analyse all the programs for farming across the country. These task forces have done outstanding work over the last two years; the reports are not all in and have not all been implemented, but they helped us see the complexity of the problems.

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It is not always simply a matter of giving money but also of protecting farming on a long-term basis.
The motion before us today, Mr. Speaker, suggests that we have not provided any third-line assistance under our general income security plan for farmers. This overlooks the farm support and adjustment program. Like a third line of defence, it adds $600 million to the total aid given under our two basic programs, more than $400 million of which will be spent in 1991. It also overlooks all the adjustments already proposed by the national horticulture income security committee for 1990 and 1991.
It is true that we use regular programs including NISA as a vehicle for several of these support measures. It is also true, Mr. Speaker, that discussion with the provinces on their participation in the NISA program is dragging on and has not yet given all the results expected of it. Nevertheless, it is estimated that it will provide $356 million in aid to farming in 1991. I am not unduly surprised that it takes some time to implement these programs. They were developed and prepared by the farmers themselves, who worked with us, the provincial and federal governments, in preparing long-term defence programs for farmers. They made these programs; the government did not impose them on farmers. The government did not. Farmers themselves prepared them with us.
Of course there is an adjustment period. It is natural, I believe, for a government that listens to the provinces and the farmers' associations to hold effective discussions with the provinces and have adjustment measures that give it and the provinces some flexibility.
La Presse agricole de VOntario said that grain growers in that province hoped that an agreement on the Net Income Stabilization Account would be reached as soon as possible. Ontario has already announced that it would make interim payments to its farmers under GRIP. Mr. Speaker, under this program, grain growers in Canada may have earned as much as $6.5 billion for the last crop year. We may regret the long and demanding process involved. We can't afford to short-circuit the process or get rid of it altogether or jeopardize its effectiveness by making decisions on the spur of the moment which, I admit, is sometimes tempting in the circumstances.
What the government is trying to achieve in the agricultural sector is the kind of stability that is economically sustainable and does not have to be constantly challenged and rebuilt. The whole point of linking third-line-of-defence assistance programs to existing, longer term programs is to help producers in all regions, in Quebec, Ontario, Western Canada and the Maritimes, opt into long-term protection programs, so that in the middle or at the end of the crop season, the government does not have to intervene with ad hoc programs, something everybody in this country deplores. That is exactly why we set up long-term programs, and now we are being criticized for using those programs as a vehicle for providing assistance to farm producers.
The process is a lengthy one. We must be patient and prudent, at a time when the finances of both provincial and federal governments are under severe constraints. The multifacetted measures we are trying to introduce are intended as a response to an extremely complex situation. Their efficiency and effectiveness can easily be compromised if we fail to act cautiously. If all the gears are not carefully adjusted, we may end up with a machine that won't run. The intricacies of this process were explained by Mr. Mazankowski, Minister of Agriculture at the time, at the federal-provincial meeting of Agriculture ministers in Regina last March. On that occasion he reminded his audience that it would be simplistic to calculate farm assistance on the basis of a comparison between 1990 and 1991 incomes. He said that this approach had been tried for the past five years and had always left us with a problem. We could no longer afford a stop-gap solution that would only be effective for another year.
The 12-point program he proposed at the time was built around the two new programs we are trying to implement systematically today. There would also be a third line of defence which for 1991 would have a component that would apply to the grain and horticultural sectors.
Mr. Speaker, this has been done. In fact, we are ahead of schedule because the program will apply to 1990-91. We cannot do more without jeopardizing the structure of the program, especially if we act without good reason.
Mr. Speaker, hasty actions and generous hand-outs are no way to provide our farmers with a lasting solution to their problems. Many conditions were identified as essential to the success of farming, that we care about, but they are far from being met. A lot needs to be done yet, Mr. Speaker. Take the unfair trade practices which

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are responsible for the hardship suffered by our grain industry. They have not been eliminated, far from it. The GATT negotiations resumed this week, thank goodness, albeit at a snail's pace. Undaunted by the opposition it faces, Canada fiercely carries on to have its position recognized.
On that point, Mr. Speaker, I must say that Canada was most careful in developing its position to be put forward at GATT. We brought together farming groups from across Canada; we established an advisory group; we met with the provinces. The position we put forward and still defend, Mr. Speaker, has not changed. The Minister of Agriculture reaffirmed that fact in this House yesterday, in response to a question from the opposition. Our position has not changed, Mr. Speaker, and it will not change. We realize that our position is miles away from the American and European' positions. Changes have been taking place recently, and Canada is now somewhere in the middle. Based on a basic principle of physics, we are pretty confident that, if the parties are drawn closer together, they will necessarily adopt positions closer to our own, since we are in the middle. We will certainly do our best to make that happen. We will spare no effort, hopefully with the support of the opposition parties and the members of this House, to ensure that the Canadian position is recognized at the GATT. Because it is sensible, of course, but mainly because it reflects perfectly Canada's historical position as well as the farm producers' position.
As far as international trade is concerned, the Canada US trade agreement which has proven beneficial nevertheless confirms the need for constant vigilance. You know, the funny thing is that the members opposite who were against the Free Trade Agreement strangely enough keep pretty quiet when it comes to the Canadian agri-food industry. The reason is, Mr. Speaker, that agri-food products exported to the US have increased by approximately 30 per cent over the first two years since the FTA was implemented. More than 30 per cent, Mr. Speaker! Now, the deficit we had incurred because of the need to buy fruit and vegetables out of season, that $700 million plus deficit was brought down to $300 million by the end of last year which means that we had already done a lot of catching up as a result of our export increases.
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It was constructive and positive long-term work because we need to ensure our farmers' income security. That is a long-term proposition. It does not involve temporary measures adopted ad hoc eveiy year, not as part of an overall plan.
As has been said many times, we cannot help it that our competitiveness is an "in" topic in all regions of the country. We realized that despite the considerable efforts made in recent years, we had forgotten that Canada could not afford to lose its competitiveness. You cannot export or sell your products elsewhere in the world, even to another province of Canada, if you do not remain competitive. That holds true for the agri-food sector, Mr. Speaker. It is especially true for farming because we, western farmers in particular, will depend very heavily on exporting our products abroad, not only in the West but also in Ontario and Quebec. We are exporters. The strength and vitality of the Canadian economy has been its ability to export.
Mr. Speaker, it will not be possible to remain strong, to remain the exporting country we have always been, if we do not act quickly, taking drastic action in some cases, to ensure that Canadian industries are competitive.
Our competitiveness will depend on quality products that attract increasingly well-informed consumers. I believe that the markets have room for higher-priced upscale Canadian products in some cases. However, for the same quality, needless to say, lower production costs will always carry the day. To stay ahead, we must find ways to produce at lower cost and always remain on the alert to be ready to use the most efficient and productive methods.
Farming feeds the whole food-processing industry. Processing can be the key to success for the whole agri-food sector. If it can rely on high grade commodities produced at competitive costs, a creative industry can work wonders on the market and promote both production and economic diversification. It was the case, I remember, with the chicken industry and the poultry industry as a whole.

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I think that about 40 per cent-give or take a couple of per cents-of all poultry products on the market today were not available just five years ago if they were produced at all. This goes to show that, owing to the vitality of that sector, product diversity was increased, products became more easily available to consumers and the needs of the consumers were better met. That is tomorrow's challenge, Mr. Speaker. When our log exports were frozen in 1985 or 1986, we ended up increasing our pork processing activities, therefore creating new jobs in this country to process the products, give them added value and export those products to the United States and to Japan. That is the kind of challenge facing our farm industry. I think that there is no two way about this. These are tomorrow's challenges. We should not delude ourselves in thinking that we can maintain the same farming system and keep our borders more or less closed forever. That is just not possible. We must use whatever means at our disposal-the quality of our products and of our workforce-to ensure we are capable of facing the challenges of the 21st century.
We will have no choice either but to support, in a creative way I might add, our Canadian agriculture where the marketing boards are very active on the domestic market. They too will have to adjust to new realities and, in many cases, to a shrinking market. To ensure our survival in that context, we will need high grade products and a greater sensitivity to market trends.
The point is, if only it could be conveyed to the entire nation, that the growth of our farm industry depends on the confidence the farm producers will have in their industry in the years to come, and their ability to adapt to new realities.


Rodney Edward Laporte: Mr. Speaker, I was very interested to hear the minister's comments. I would like to ask the minister this. A couple years ago there was the Growing Together paper and a number of task forces were announced which were going to change the face of agriculture. To date we have had just one piece of legislation, that being the GRIP and NISA farm income. Farmers across the country are very concerned about what is happening next, in particular with respect to farm finance and transportation. I think those are two of the areas that have caused a lot of concern.
I am wondering if the minister can say when we can expect some legislation with respect to farm finance under the Growing Together task force report and with respect to transportation. Is it going to be coming soon? There is a piece of legislation that is before the House that is going to limit spending in this country by 3 per cent. I understand that GRIP and NISA legislation are exempt from that bill, but what effect will that piece of legislation have on any farm finance or transportation bills that will be coming forth?


Pierre Blais: First of all, I would say that those two programs, GRIP and NISA, were designed by the producers themselves. In agriculture we have the chance to have three, four or five meetings of ministers of agriculture every year. We are in touch all the time. We met in Kananaskis, Alberta and in Regina last year. In Kananas-kis in July the ministers and the deputy ministers agreed to look at transportation. Not the federal government unilaterally, it is not working that way. We are working together.
We received information on that. Not everyone agrees on how we should address the situation. What we want is a real consensus from all parties. The pay to producer formula has been raised. We do not have an agreement from all parts. We have different opinions from all parts of Canada. What we are trying to find is one way to deal with the transportation situation to ensure that by doing something in one region of Canada we are not going to put pressure on another region, or resolve a problem in one area and create another problem in another area, in Ontario, Quebec or even Saskatchewan. Some provinces do not prefer the same approach for those problems.
What we have to do is get opinions from the provinces, from the producers, groups of producers and work together to find a final solution. The work that has been done by the task force was very good and very helpful. We are still working on that. On the finance side I would say that my colleague, the Minister of Agriculture, will announce very good news for Saskatchewan today, but I will let my colleague-


An hon. member:: It has been announced.


Pierre Blais: We have moved the headquarters of the FCC to Regina. That is good news for Saskatchewan.
September 19, 1991


Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, I want to question the Minister of State on that last point. He mentioned during the course of his speech that he did not believe in ad hoc measures and that he did not believe in benefitting one area to the detriment of another.
I find it rather interesting that there is a Saskatchewan election on the way and that very recently the premier of Saskatchewan announced his fair share program which moves jobs out of Regina and into rural Saskatchewan. At that time there was speculation that part of the deal was that his friend the Prime Minister would then move jobs from other parts of Canada into Regina to fill the void left by the moves of his friend, Premier Grant Devine.
I, and I think all my colleagues in the official opposition, find this playing ping-pong with peoples' lives to be rather cruel. It is a hoax that has absolutely nothing to do with good agricultural policy, and absolutely nothing to do with good management of the government. In his reply to my question which will come momentarily, the minister might want to tell us what the cost of this move is and how much of that money might otherwise be going directly to farmers. He might also want to tell us exactly why he and his minister and the Prime Minister are playing politics with peoples' lives in trying to buy Grant Devine's election.


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, I am a little bit surprised that the hon. member would take such a partisan approach. Maybe the hon. member who just put the motion should have listened to what was said. We have tried to answer to the concerns of farmers all across the country. It would be better for them to talk to the provinces that have really not put their fair share of money into agriculture in Canada.
Look at the debt. We should be very proud of what we have done over the years, very proud because the federal government has put a lot of money into agriculture. If the hon. member would look at the data, the provinces did not really put in their fair share. In some areas, particularly in Saskatchewan over the last two or three years, a lot of work has been done to provide funds in order to answer the needs of farmers. I would say that the data speaks for itself. When more than 60 per cent of the loans are made in Saskatchewan, it might be a good decision to transfer the headquarters of the FCC to Saskatchewan.
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If the hon. member thinks it is not a good idea, perhaps it is because she is from the Ottawa area. The hon. member has the right to her own opinion, but I think a good decision has been made for the farmers and for agriculture in Canada.


Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the participation of the hon. minister in the debate and the brief outline of the government's positions on international trade.
He said that the Canadian tradition is reasonable. I was pleased to hear that because this morning we heard the view of the Minister of Grains and Oilseeds which was definitely anything but reasonable. He was not taking a position between the Americans and the Europeans as this minister describes the official government line to be. The Minister of Grains and Oilseeds was damning the Europeans outright and blaming all the trade war on the Europeans. He was ignoring the marketing facts, that 40 per cent of the grains market in the world is controlled by the United States. Only about 20 per cent, usually slightly less, is made up of sales from the dozen or more countries making up the European Economic Community and approximately the same by Canada.
The U.S. dominates the trade. They set the price.
If we are going to do anything about price, raining our damnation on the Europeans is not going to solve the problem. I hope that this minister will be a little more forthright at the cabinet table and make certain that some of the rest of his colleagues follow what he says is the government line once we get beyond the borders of this country.
When I hear him, it makes much more sense than when I listen to the minister for grains and oilseeds whose position makes no sense at all and defies reason.


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, I would say to my hon. friend that we have been in that business for years and years. He knows very well that when I say that we are between the Europeans and the Americans, what I ment was that with the balanced position we have with the supply-management system where we ask to strengthen and clarify Article XI of GATT, we are put in the middle because we have some allies in Europe, in Asia and other areas. The Americans are very cold to the Canadian position. That is what I mean.

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For the grain sector, I agree with the Minister of Grains and Oilseeds. Obviously, we have defended our position for years and years for the export subsidy war that we have. We all ask for those subsidies that destroyed our agriculture in the west to be put aside.
What I meant when I said that was that it put us in the middle. On the other side, the supply-management system is supported by the opposition and the whole agriculture community across the country. It put us in a more delicate situation and more in the middle. I do not want to be misunderstood.


Mr. Mark Assad (Gatineau-La Lievre):: Mr. Speaker, with leave of the House, do I have your permission to put a question to the Minister of State (Agriculture)?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent to allow the hon. member for Gatineau-La Lievre to exceed the ten-minute period for questions and comments?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Agreed. The hon. member for Gatineau-La Lievre.


Mark Joseph Assad: Mr. Minister, in your answer yesterday regarding Canada's position on Article XI in the present GATT talks in Europe and our concerns in this respect, you said in concluding that until the government decided otherwise, it would defend Article XI. I would appreciate an answer from the Minister of State (Agriculture). Does this mean that despite any pressure from other parties, you still have a moral commitment to Canadian farmers to maintain this article which is extremely important for the agricultural industry? Do you have a moral commitment?


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question put by the hon. member for Gatineau-La Lievre, and I would like to clarify Canada's position, because I know there are various rumours doing the rounds about Canada's position on Article XI. Mr. Speaker, Canada's position on Article XI is clear and has not changed one bit. We support Article XI. We want it to be clarified and reinforced, because its present wording, and everyone is agreed on this point, does not give us the kind of
flexibility we would like for our marketing board programs.
The problem, Mr. Speaker-and I think it is useful to repeat this, since it is an important point-the problem is that among those who support this position in Europe and elsewhere, some parties may be more reluctant to support us. However, although some people might have changed their minds, this does not mean that Canada has changed its mind. We have not changed our position. We have no intention of doing so, but we must be vigilant, and I am sure I can count on the hon. member's support. We must be extremely vigilant to ensure that we can maintain a strong position in the international community among 99 or 100 other countries, a position that will be and that continues to be to defend Article XI and to reinforce and clarify it. That is where we are now.
A week or two from now I will in Geneva, Mr. Speaker, to meet the Director General of GATT, and I will also be meeting the President of the Union des producteurs agricoles du Quebec very shortly, in Europe, to discuss this matter.


Lyle Vanclief: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in this debate today which I think, without question, concerns a very, very important motion.
At the outset I think we should emphasize that this motion was passed in the Standing Committee on Agriculture in the last week in August. It was passed unanimously, which means that all members present and all parties supported this motion at that time. It disappoints me greatly that the Minister of Grains and Oilseeds this morning told this House and Canadians why today his party cannot support the motion. It makes it very clear that in the motion and in the statement following the motion, it would not be considered by anyone as a vote of non-confidence in the government. I think we should make it very clear that the government members said on August 28 or 29-1 forget the date- they support the motion, but today they are indicating that when they vote on it next Monday night-I believe it is going to be a deferred vote-they are not going to support it. I think that begs the question of Conservatives, did they mean what they said at the standing committee or not?
September 19, 1991

Anyway, on with the topic. What we are talking about here, Mr. Speaker, is a very, very important industry. It is a wealth-creating industry in this country, and there are only four of them: fishing, farming, forestry and mining. Everything that we have, as I said before in this House, before us and used as Canadians comes from one of those basic natural resources. We go on with farming and with all of them. We provide for the needs of ourselves and our society from that. We have an industry here that is in bad trouble, a bad financial situation.
There are 425,000 to 450,000 Canadians involved in the industry. There are many total communities that are involved in that industry. At the present time, we have a tremendous amount of disappointment in the government and what it has said in the last two or three years and what has happened. The minister who just spoke said that the plans and the support programs that have been put in place for the future were done in conjunction with and with the assistance of the farming community, and indeed farmers themselves and their organizations. I agree, that did take place, Mr. Speaker. But when those groups were asked to come forward and take part in planning their future and come up with the right ideas, they were told and they were led and they were shown very clearly by the government that in the transition from our old ad hoc type assistance programs to agriculture to a new safety net program, that in that transitional period they would not be let down.
However, that let-down has happened. Producers in this country, primary producers in the agricultural industry, are asking the government to reconsider and to live up to that promise and that commitment, and that has not come forward.
That is why I am getting phone calls from farm suppliers. That is why I am getting phone calls from individuals, from farmers who say "Lyle, I took over my father's farm. My father had some savings and some equity in the business, but I cannot survive. My parents are putting more money into my business every year and now they are having everything they had disappear". In the meantime our food producing abilities in this country are going down the drain and closing up every day, day after day.
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I just want to give the public some information to look at. Ontario soft winter wheat farmers this year got $75 a tonne for the wheat they delivered in August from this year's crop.
Last year I believe that was $115 per tonne or $120 per tonne. I asked how many people took that type of drop. If we just want to convert that to what the farmer gets out of that, in a 500-gram box of cereal which is said to be 100 per cent wheat, at $75 a tonne the farmer got less than 4q for the wheat that was in that box of cereal that probably sold for three dollars-plus in the grocery store.
In 1933, if we look at the figures, the price relative to what farmers are getting for their products compared to the cost of living and the cost of doing business today is as bad or worse than it was in the dirty thirties.
In 1933 it took about three bushels of wheat for a man to get a haircut. Today it takes five. I am using wheat, although I could use other crops, but that seems to be the one we use as a yardstick.
For an average retirement home in 1933 it took less than 7,000 bushels of wheat. If a farmer sold that, he could buy an average retirement home. In 1991, instead of less than 7,000 bushels of wheat, it will take 60,000 bushels of wheat. That is some comparison.
In 1933 the average man's dress shirt would take five bushels of wheat. You could sell that and go to town and buy a dress shirt. Today it takes 15 bushels of wheat. I could go on, but I think that brings home the point.
There is another matter. Farmers keep saying to me: "Lyle, we have concerns about the environment, but are we not a little bit out of whack? Where are we here?" We talk about sustainable agriculture and sustainable environment, et cetera. Yes, I agree with this sustainable environment and I promote it and I support it. But I maintain that unless an industry is sustainable economically, it cannot sustain the environment as well. If the industry is not there, so what?
I have farmers and individuals and other business people who have nothing to do with agriculture coming to me and saying: "Are we not a little out of whack?" In society today it takes between $150 to $200 to dump, or the term that is used is to "tip" a load of garbage. That is

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on average what it takes to get rid of a load of garbage in today's society.
The Ontario fanner gets $75 for a tonne of wheat. As one chap said to me the other day, why do we not eat the garbage and dump the wheat? We cannot survive on that. Nobody can survive on that.
The other fact I want to mention is that the average farmer in Canada today feeds between 95 and 100 Canadians. That is their production. We are in an incredibly efficient, excellent industry. The average farmer feeds between 95 and 100 Canadians, while the farmers' spouses, be that the man or the lady in the house, goes out and finds work off the farm so that that farmer can afford to put groceries on the farm family's table. There is increasing difficulty in finding jobs out there in the rural communities, because we are losing jobs across this country.
We are now in a situation where the spouse cannot even go out and find that farm. As the minister of grains and oilseeds said this morning, the average farmer in Canada today has $6,300 left after they do their business in order to maintain their homes and in order to look after their families. We talked a lot about fairness this week. I do not think that is fair.
We are talking about interim GRIP payments coming forward. Yes, that money is going to be welcome, but it is not providing the transitional assistance for that one year gap until the GRIP and NISA gets up and running and does what we all hope it is going to do. There is a big let-down here.
What the government is saying is that it will make an interim GRIP payment this fall. That is the same as me saying to you that I know you are having difficulty making your November mortgage payments on your home this year, but I tell you what we will do, we will bring your next year's November cheque to you and you can have it this November to use. But just remember, there will not be a pay cheque next November.
So what we are doing and what the government is doing is saying that we are prepared to reach into next year, bring next year's income back to this year and hope that somebody looks after you next year.
I would just like to make one other statement before I sit down. We know there are a lot of farmers going out to
meetings. In Lucknow, Ontario last week there were over 1,000 fanners out. In Miami, Manitoba last week there were over 1,000 farmers out. But I think it is summed up by a statement, and I will quote, from a Mr. Bev Hill, who is quite well known and well respected and a very clever young chap in Ontario, and I will close with this. He stated this at a meeting last week in Ontario and I think it sums up the feeling of the total farm community: "Our fields of dreams have become acres of anguish".


Mr. Rey Pagtakhan (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a few comments. I too would like to participate in this debate, which I truly think is about the current plight of the farmers and what the government has for them in an emergency.
When we heard the minister telling us earlier that he would not take ad hoc measures, I wondered if the minister had understood the meaning of an emergency.
One imagines in a health setting that you know the diagnosis of the patient and then somehow something happens unpredictably and there is an emergency. You take an ad hoc measure. You take an emergency measure to avoid the imminence of death.
To the issue before us today, there is no doubt about the diagnosis. There is a crisis among our fanners. There is a shortfall of cash flow. The standing committee of this House on agriculture has made that ascertainment. So, there is no doubt about that. We, in fact, know the two fundamental causes.
First, because of the non-resolution of the international trade war. That, to me, is a failure of leadership on the part of this government for not being able to bring this forward to a speedy and complete resolution.
The second major cause is that this government has failed to have real, meaningful support programs for 1989 and 1990.
Just in my province of Manitoba, concerning the 1991 cash advance of over $300 million, I am advised that over $63 million is still outstanding, and you are asking the farmers to absorb the whole gross income decrease of 25 per cent in 1990 and a 30 per cent drop in 1991.
I would like to ask my colleague for his comments. What is the value of making a special grains payment at this time as an emergency to allow us a transition before
September 19, 1991

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we allow the support programs to take their natural course of support. I would like to ask my colleague to please respond to that.


Lyle Vanclief: Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to respond to that.
I think, without question, that requirement of that transitional payment is absolutely necessary. I recognize that during this time we are in a bad deficit situation as a country. Even in those situations there are emergencies, whether it is in our personal life or in our business. We are at a real crisis. I have farmed all my life and we are in a crisis such as we have never seen before.
The agriculture community went through a shakedown in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, part of which I went through. It was said then that we will shake it down. There will be some fall-out. The inefficient will fall out and what is left will be our efficient farmers and we will go on from there.
We are going through a worse shake-down than that. We are tearing families and homes apart. We as a House of Commons, as a Parliament and Canada as a country need now to make that decision. It is a very simple question. Is agriculture and food security, and I could go on and on, important to Canada or is it not? To me the answer to that is very simple. It definitely is, not only in the short term but in the long term. If we do not keep that industry and all the spin-offs through manufacturing et cetera that is involved with it, it will not be here for our children and our grandchildren.
This government and all governments like to talk about what we are going to do for our children and our grandchildren. I maintain, and I speak very strongly on this, this is one thing we had better do for those who follow us, maintain this industry.


Mr. Joe McGuire (Egmont):: Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank my colleague from Prince Edward- Hastings for sharing his time with me this afternoon.
I am happy that the House of Commons has set aside the time to address one of the most important issues facing our country, the farm financial crisis. The crisis is not exclusive to the prairie provinces or to Ontario and Quebec. It also includes the maritimes in most sectors in the industry. It is a national crisis. It affects farmers in the agri-food industry right across this whole country.
There is a great deal of uncertainty in the dairy industry, one of our most stable sectors, because of the GATT negotiations and the rumours that have been emanating from Geneva. I hope that the mandate given to our negotiators is an inflexible one. Article XI of GATT must be protected and extended. The retention of Article XI is paramount if we are to keep our supply managed commodities, which guarantee at least the cost of production for the farmers involved in these commodities.
I urge the government to hold fast to the position of retaining and strengthening Article XI. It would be a sad day for Canada if our dairy industry was reduced to the chaotic state that the American dairy industry is, where bankruptcy is a very common occurrence.
I want to address my main remarks to the unfolding tragedy of the potato industry in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick and especially in Prince Edward Island where potatoes have been the cornerstone of our economy since the colonial days.
P.E.I. basically has two wealth-generating resources, agriculture and fisheries. The health of these two industries is vital to our whole economy. We have no mining in Prince Edward Island. We have no rivers large enough to harness hydroelectricity and no gas and oil deposits. Agriculture is the industry which is most vital to P.E.I. and our table and seed potato industry is the most important sector of that industry.
We have long enjoyed a world-wide reputation for our seed and table potatoes. Our seed is in demand in Europe and South America, in Africa and Mexico, the United States and the rest of Canada. Potatoes growing from P.E.I. seed out-produced seed from any other source in the world, including Holland, the next most important source of seed. The potato industry has been an industry which has competed in a world market for many years virtually on its own.
If you are looking for an example of an agricultural commodity which is operated in a free-market system, the capitalist, international, non-subsidized milieu, you will find it in P.E.I. seed and table potato industry. Rarely, and only in times of world over-production and two-cent a pound potatoes, have Prince Edward Island producers looked for government assistance in order to survive.

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For the most part, the industry has competed head to head with the world with little extraordinary assistance from the Canadian taxpayer.
P.E.I., Canada's smallest province, competed against a nation, the Netherlands, in seed quality, and won.
The victory was not won overnight. It took years and the efforts of generation of farmers to achieve this position. It took support from Agriculture Canada over many years in developing new seed varieties, identifying new markets, inspection and protection services. It took many years of support from the provincial government which augmented and facilitated the efforts of the farm community and Agriculture Canada.
This combination of ideal soil and environmental conditions, with industrious, progressive farmers, who are committed to quality, disease-free stocks, in co-ordination with governments, has enabled the potato industry in Prince Edward Island to withstand the ups and downs of a very volatile industry. There were many poor years, and fewer good ones, but enough to sustain the industry over the long term.
But this scenario has been brought to an abrupt halt with the discovery of the potato virus Y-N strain in our potato crop. There is zero tolerance for this virus in North America. This discovery has closed the door to the exports of our potatoes to our largest markets, the United States and the rest of Canada.
Europe, which has had the disease for over 50 years, has established a tolerance level for the virus which has enabled the European community to live with the virus which they had to do because its elimination and eradication was impossible.
I must remind the House that the potato virus Y does not affect human beings in any way, shape or form.
All potatoes have the PVY virus of one strain or another. The problem with the potato virus Y-N strain is that it is deadly to tobacco. It destroys tobacco.
The transmission to the Americans of the information that P.E.I. had PVY-N resulted in the immediate closure of the American border to P.E.I. seed. The embargo was soon extended to include table stock unless sprayed with a sprout inhibitor. Canada, after protesting to Washington about how unfair this was, followed the American example and closed Canada's borders.
These actions, of course, brought the potato industry in Prince Edward Island into chaos.
The lack of time prohibits me from going into a step-by-step unfolding of the drama to this point in time. It is sufficient to say that an eradication compensation program was put into effect for the 1990 crop in an effort to contain and eliminate the disease. A massive leaf testing offensive was put in place for the 1991 crop. Millions of leaves were tested in P.E.I., but considerably less testing was done in other provinces.
Ninety-six new cases of PVY-N were discovered in Prince Edward Island, ten in Ontario and a few in the other provinces.
PVY-N was said to be found in varieties which were PVY-N-free last year. The eradication program for the 1990 crop seemed to have been a failure, that is until the validity of Agriculture Canada's testing methodology was brought into question.
Independent scientists have brought into question Agriculture Canada's methods and results which, if proven correct, means that there has been a misdiagnosis of the virus.
Agriculture Canada's 96 positive cases may not be PVY-N at all, but rather a fusion of other PVY strains which can produce the same result when swabbed on tobacco leaves.
As one commentator said, the Island was ploughed down for nothing and its main industry destroyed. This whole sad tale has produced a whole series of questions which have not and may never be answered.
(1)	If PVY-N was rampant on Prince Edward Island, why has there been no infection of the P.E.I. tobacco crop, no infection whatsoever? Our tobacco producers have absolutely no fear of infection saying that if there are PVY-N infected potatoes, a regular spray program will take care of the aphids.
(2)	Where did the PVY-N virus come from in the first place? How was it introduced to Prince Edward Island? One thing is sure, this government with its centralization program and taking scientists and virologists from the provinces to Ottawa only means that it will be easier to have diseased stock coming into this country in the future.
September 19, 1991

(3)	Why has the state of Maine been able to dictate to the USDA and Agriculture Canada on the lifting of the border restrictions? Maine has tried for years to prevent P.E.I. potatoes from entering the state or passing through the state. They have tried anti-dumping procedures and border harassment. You name it, they have tried it and have failed.
Maine was losing out badly to Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick seed and table producers, and indeed to table producers from the western U.S. states. They failed to keep up with advancements in the industry and their products could not compete.
As far as Maine is concerned, the PVY-N crisis is the best thing that has happened for them in years, and they do not mean to let go. They and Senator Mitchell are calling the shots on this one, and our government does not have the political or moral courage to take them on.
(4)	Are Agriculture Canada's testing procedures up to date and accurate? Other scientists think not and, if proven correct, this could be the crudest cut of all. It is possible that the whole problem has been blown vastly out of proportion and the reputation of P.E.I. potatoes and Agriculture Canada has been destroyed.
(5)	Why has the United States not tested for PVY-N? After all, if we have it, they have it because we have been shipping potatoes into the United States since the time we are told it was first discovered in P.E.I. in 1987. Therefore, they have PVY-N if we have it. As long as the United States does not test-they say they do not have it-is this really logical? If we both have it and it cannot be eradicated, why not strike a tolerance level?
(6)	Why has it taken so long to get the 1990 compensation cheques issued? Why are there no forms for the 1991 compensation claims?
Elow would you, Mr. Speaker, or any of us in this House like not to have been paid during the past year? These farmers are living on bank loans for over a year. This must be corrected.
To conclude, I want to make a few remarks about the farm financial crisis in general.
It is a fact that our farm debt is $24 billion. Interest on this debt at the rate of 10 per cent is $2.5 billion. That means the over $2 billion the government bragged it is going to put into the farm sector this year is merely going
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to pay the interest on the farm debt. The only ones really getting paid are the bankers.
Mr. Speaker, thank you very much. I would like to say a few things more, but you have indicated that my time is up. Thank you.


Mark Joseph Assad: Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Egmont and the speaker before him have demonstrated how productive farmers in general are. There is no doubt about that. In turn, our colleague from Prince Edward-Hastings described production, past and present. There is no doubt that they are indeed very productive.
I have a question for my colleague at this point. About the answers the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of State (Agriculture) provided yesterday, the problem is that farmers or producers are requesting protection. We know that agriculture has become as important as national defence. There is no doubt about it, we cannot rely on production from abroad as regards agriculture. We must be self-sufficient. That is a steadfast rule. Here is my question. The Quebec UPA made several representations and, contrary to what I was told in both answers I received yesterday, they asked for our borders to be protected so as to prevent dumping. According to the UPA, the former Minister of Agriculture, the hon. Eugene Whelan was a man of great convictions. I was told that he was the father of joint programs. He is. However, what Canadian farmers need right now is protection.
So, I ask my colleague: is protection provided for in joint programs, is there a moral commitment on the part of the government or is it just left open in the free market? We suggest that government involvement is required to keep the market in line. However, would the government not endanger the Canadian farm industry by claiming that the best approach is to force farmers to produce beyond their capacity?


Joseph Blair (Joe) McGuire: Mr. Speaker, one thing is certain. That is if Canada continues on its present road, it will not be self-sufficient in food, while at the same time the Americans have made it much easier for their farmers to become more productive and to shed their burden of debt.

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For example, the Americans have set up a system which includes debt forgiveness and they have restructured their debt forgiveness procedures putting their farmers at a considerable advantage over ours. They have, over the long term, come to the conclusion that the debt load their farmers were carrying was just too heavy. They took the attitude that the situation in the United States was like an airplane flying at 30,000 feet which was absolutely certain to come down. The choice was whether it would have an easy glide and a fairly soft landing, or it would crash. These are the same options that our government has today. Is it going to make the landing a little softer, or is it going to let the agricultural community crash and be destroyed, thereby making Canada reliant for her food resources on other countries?


Catherine S. Callbeck: Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to take the opportunity to compliment the hon. member for Egmont, from my province, for his comments on this very serious issue.


An hon. member:: Hear, hear.


Catherine S. Callbeck: I especially appreciated his comments on the PVY-N virus, the crisis we are having in our province at the present time.
I know my time is limited so I just want to mention one thing that the member referred to, and that is the compensation claims that the potato farmers have made for their 1990 crop. Four hundred compensation claims were sent to the government and at present only a hundred of our potato farmers have received any money. That seems like a long time to wait for the money, and certainly it is putting many farmers into very serious financial problems. I think it is very unfair for the government to expect farmers to wait this length of time and I would call on the government to do everything possible to speed up this process.


David Stupich: Mr. Speaker, I think it is worth while to review the resolution: "In view of the desperate financial cash flow crisis facing Canadian grains and oilseeds and horticultural producers the House of Commons calls on the Government of Canada to consider the advisability of providing cash assistance that would have been provided under the Gross Revenue Insurance Program and the Net Income Stabilization Account, had they been in place for 1990-91".
I read that resolution to remind members in the House, all 295 of us, that we are not instructing the government, that is the cabinet, but we are simply asking it to consider the advisability of helping at this time. That is why various members have expressed their disappointment that the Minister of Grains and Oilseeds chose to say that this was considered by the government as a matter of non-confidence. He said that the rules and the procedure in the House required it to be so. However, the Speaker at that time did not rule that way. The Speaker at that time, quoting from one of the books of authority-and I do not recall exactly which one-said that the government can decide whether a vote is or is not a vote of non-confidence. This leads me to believe that the minister at that time could have said: "We agree, it is not a vote of non-confidence, we agree that it is simply advising the cabinet of how the members in the House feel; that they think it is an emergency and that they think it is an emergency that can be helped by a cash infusion at this time and that we think it is proper that cash infusion be made at this time".
However, presumably the minister, on behalf of cabinet, did not want the members to be able to vote that way. What he was really doing when he said it would be considered a vote of non-confidence was reminding the members on the Tory side of the House that they would be required to vote against this resolution when it comes to a vote. He did not want them to have the right to vote for it because in committee they expressed that right by voting for this very same resolution. He did not want them to have that right in the House.
One can only wonder why. One can only hope that the government does have plans to make this kind of cash infusion. One can hope that it is going to use it for political purposes just as it did five years ago when it approved during an election campaign in Saskatchewan a cash infusion of one billion dollars under similar circumstances one week before the farmers went to the polls and voted, along with the other voters in Saskatchewan.
Let us hope that it has the same plan in mind this time and that some time during the election campaign, which is to be announced momentarily just as it is in B.C., the government will decide: "Yes, it is just and proper that we help the farmers not just in Saskatchewan but all over Canada at this time. So we have decided that we are going to make this kind of cash infusion". That it will happen one week before election day is perhaps fortuitous for the Tory government in Saskatchewan but even more important for the farmers, in particular the wheat producers, in that province. Farmers all over Canada are
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suffering in the same way, and the resolution speaks of them as well.
The Minister of State for Agriculture toward the close of his remarks-he did not say it really-hinted that there was going to be an important announcement in Saskatchewan. When he was told that it had already been announced, then he said: "This is certainly going to please the farmers of Saskatchewan".
I am talking about the just announced move of Farm Credit Corporation to Regina. This is supposed to make the farmers happy. I do not know what it is going to cost to make that move. We have heard of other government agencies moving. Here is another one. Is it going to cost $5 million, $50 million, $100 million? We do not know at this time. We have not found out yet what it is going to cost in total to move the Energy Board to Calgary.
At a time of restraint, to put those millions of dollars, however many they are, into moving an office, when that money could be used to good effect to help the producers seems to me to be a poor example of restraint.
It was suggested by my colleague, the hon. member for Mackenzie, that perhaps the reason that Farm Credit is moving to Regina is because it would be much more efficient for them to deal with the foreclosures of farm properties in Saskatchewan if they are right there on the scene. One wonders just why at this particular time have they decided to spend money on that kind of a program as opposed to doing something productive and proper to help the farmers in Canada at this very bad time.
A farmer's life anywhere in Canada is not a happy one. I think I am paraphrasing a line from Gilbert and Sullivan when I say that. There was discussion earlier today about marketing boards and about supply management.
The supply management farmers generally have it easier than the others, but even they do not have it easy. They do not know what they are going to get for their product, but they have some control over the selling price to the producer as opposed to the example given by the member for Prince Edward-Hastings. He said that a $3 box of cereal might return four cents to the producer.
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There is one interesting thing about that that he did not mention. That is that everyone other than the producer gets a fair return for his or her labour. The only one who does not get anything near the cost of producing that grain is the producer. Everyone else gets it because they have a guaranteed mark-up. Right up until the time that the consumer purchases that box of cereal, everyone gets a mark-up, everyone other than the producer because the producer has no control over his or her price. Everyone else has that control.
With supply managed products the producers generally have enough control that they do get the cost of production out of it. It is the one area in agriculture where consumers are paying what it costs to produce the product. In every other area of agriculture the producers do not always get the return equal to the cost of production or anything near it.
Certainly that applies to the grain growers, it applies to fruit growers, it applies to horticultural crops generally where there is not this protection that is afforded to those farmers who are able to engage in supply management.
Even with supply management, farmers cannot be sure of getting a decent return. They are fighting the elements. It is said that Canadians have a higher per average cost of energy than people in any other industrialized nation in the world. We do live further north. It does cost more for energy. We need more energy in almost everything we are doing.
The Minister of State for Agriculture talked about the efficiency of Canadian producers and that is true. They are very efficient. We are very efficient.
Mr. Speaker, I know my time is about up, and I will just say this. Of all the people in the community who cannot have any control over the selling price, the producers are the ones that at the present time need this cash infusion. The government is abandoning its responsibility to a large section of the community when it says that its own members will not have the right to simply advise cabinet at this time. This responsibility should be recognized by letting the members vote and give the cabinet this kind of advice.

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Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his address. Having listened to his as well as to a number of other statements in the House today with respect to the farm situation, the farm crisis, and addresses by my colleagues from Winnipeg-St. James and Essex-Kent I suspect that the Minister of Grains and Oilseeds will not want to go to the Brandon farm rally tomorrow. I wonder if he will want to go to the rally that is going to be held in Winnipeg in October. Some members will know of the rough ride he had in Melita, Manitoba, just roughly a week ago.
My question, however, is why the government is unwilling to support this particular motion. It is not a motion of confidence. It is one it could support if it chose to and still continue to sit as it does and be the government.
I want to make sure that I understand the points that he made. First of all, if I have understood him correctly and interpreted his comments accurately, the hon. member is saying it would be afraid of the support this motion would get from its own members, from the members of government. The minister would then realize that his own members support this kind of emergency assistance. Of course, once that vote had been taken the farmers would have clearly proven the point.
There is, in a significant sense, politics being played here. Is there not? I wonder if my hon. colleague would care to respond to the remarks I have made and to the questions I have raised.


David Stupich: Mr. Speaker, I said earlier that I am hoping the reason the cabinet is reacting this way is that it believes there will be a resounding vote in favour of this resolution if all the members were able to vote.
That would eliminate the surprise and political advantage if it were announced here and now. If the government acted positively to that request, it would be acting in response to a united vote from the House, from all three parties, all saying it would be a good idea. However, it wants to be able to wait until the election campaign is well under way and at the most auspicious moment from the point of view of re-electing the Conservative government in Saskatchewan then announce the same kind of program it announced five years ago, a $1 billion
or $2 billion program to help the farmers. For partisan political reasons the government is instructing its own members to vote against this resolution today so the cabinet can make it public some three or four weeks from today.


Rodney Edward Laporte: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his remarks. I would like to focus on one comment he made with respect to the comments of the Minister of State for Agriculture regarding the movement of FCC workers to Regina. In fact, it was his response to a question I had placed before him about farm finance.
We have had a bill presented on GRIP and NISA which deals with farm income but there is still great concern about farm finance. When I asked the minister what this government would do about farm finance or when we could expect something on farm finance, he said there was something happening today with respect to FCC.
I would like to ask the member, who was a minister in British Columbia, how the move of the head office and some employees to Regina at the cost of a few million dollars is going to make farmers happy and make them feel more comfortable with their financial situation and the fact that there is not going to be another dime put in their pockets. How does he think the farmers will react to moving the head office of FCC to Regina?


David Stupich: Mr. Speaker, I can only anticipate that the farmers will be very disappointed when they hear about the resolution that has been debated and is still being debated in this House today, when they see us vote on it and the government members defeat it.
I am very disappointed that the government feels proud about spending another x millions of dollars to move an office from one part of the country to another when it could have been spending that money in announcing a program to help the farmers who are desperate for that kind of assistance. I expect they will be disappointed. I hope they will react properly when they get the opportunity to vote.


Mr. Jack Whittaker (Okanagan -Similkameen-Merritt):: Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today and speak in favour of this motion which is asking for a third line of defence cash assistance on an emergency basis to
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provide certain levels of support to the farmers who are facing crisis in Canada.
Although the concentration so far has been on grains and oilseeds, the resolution also refers to other horticultural producers. It is some of those other horticultural producers that I hope to speak about and bring to the House's attention. Although in Canada we have a concentration on the bread basket of Canada, being the prairie provinces, and our grains and oilseeds area, a very important sector of our community, we often have a tendency to forget that there are other pockets of agriculture and horticulture throughout Canada, areas such as the Okanagan, Similkameen, the Nicola Valley and Merritt area and the boundary country of which I am the representative. There are also areas in the Niagara Peninsula and Annapolis, fruit-growing areas of this country and the cattle areas of this country.
We know that the producers of grain on the prairies are hurting. This is in response to that. However, I am here to tell this House and the people of Canada that people in my area, the grape growers, the fruit growers, cattlemen and women, farmers of all stripes and descriptions are hurting. They are looking for help and guidance. They are tired of the bankrupt ideas of this government and governments of similar ilk who continue to tell them not only to make it on their own but continue to turn their backs on them in their time of need.
In my area we have just come through the second summer after the free trade agreement and have seen some of the problems it has created. It may perhaps be only a perceptual problem but a problem nevertheless. Last summer, for instance, the cherry growers in my area witnessed a massive dumping of product from the United States into Canada at well below production cost not only in Canada, but well below the production cost in the state of Washington. Although there was not that much of a benefit to the Washington growers, they perceived that because of the free trade agreement they had a new and open market. They gave benefits to their purchasers that the growers in Canada could not touch.
We witnessed toward the end of last summer and throughout the fall and winter acres of cherry trees being ripped out. This was just directly after, in my area, watching approximately 2,000 acres of vineyards being
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ripped out as a result of the free trade agreement and GATT rulings.
Over the past year I personally have watched some young farmers, up and coming, advanced, enthusiastic farmers, losing their enthusiasm for the land. There is not a farmer out there who can make it on agriculture alone. Either he, she or the spouse has to go and find another job in order to try to make a little extra money to keep their families and pay for their mortgage. When you are a farmer, it becomes a labour of love as opposed to a way of making a living.
I have watched these young farmers not only lose their interest in the land but turning their backs on the land, letting the banks take it back or trying to sell it. That becomes a very great problem also, because right now it is often difficult to sell 10, 15 or 20 acres of orchard land because everybody knows you cannot make a living as a fruit farmer.
There are things this government must do. We must face up to the reality that we want to continue to be able to produce food in Canada. Most Canadians want to ensure that we have a viable agriculture industry. We have to look at short-term benefits for these farmers as set out in this motion, not just to the grain farmers, but to other farmers in Canada, the fruit farmers, the grape growers and the cattlemen.
Lately in the fruit farming area they have run into low prices. They have run into the usual things farmers can expect, inclement weather, massive destruction as a result of hail; low crops in some cases because of a late spring and a freeze-out of various crops or a very cold winter during which a number of farmers lost trees.
The farmer is told to get up to date on what is being sold. In British Columbia they were offered $3,000 for each acre of replant, but it costs anywhere up to $11,000 or $12,000 an acre and they are told by the banks that they are not good risks. Well, where do they come up with the money to improve their lot, to ensure that they have a product that meets the needs of the market?
I spoke recently to a farmer from Oliver, B.C., and he told me how he has over the last little while diversified into a number of different apple crops in order to get a higher price. But the cost of that is enormous.

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The Minister of State for Agriculture has talked to us about competitiveness, yet these farmers run into problems with the high cost of borrowing and the high cost of storage. In order to get a higher price for their product they have to have conditioned atmosphere storage, the cost of which is enormous. Again, they have to borrow money. With the various problems in marketing, they are having difficulty repaying some of these loans.
Whether we look at it in the short term or the long term, the agricultural industry in Canada is in major difficulty. They need a hand this year to assist them to pull themselves up by the boot straps so they can live to fight another day. Just as important, they need a government that is feeling and sensitive to what is required in the long term.
In our area it is education. The farmers need assistance in running their farms as a business. They need education in new and upgraded methods of agriculture. They need the time and ability to get that education. They need the assistance in investigating new markets. Although they have to be expected, to some extent, to find some of those markets, they have to be given proper assistance and show of support by this government to find those markets.
I cannot emphasize enough how important this particular motion is to the farmer, because of its over-all look at agriculture and the long-term needs of this country.


Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Madam Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to take part in today's debate on a motion asking the government to assist the Canadian agricultural industry. This afternoon,
I would like to raise a few points in connection with grain production and subsequently, I intend to discuss the present and future status of GATT talks. Finally, Madam Speaker, I think I should tell the House about some rather depressing events in the agricultural sector in Glengarry-Prescott-Russell.
Madam Speaker, this has been a difficult year for Ontario grain producers. For instance, the price of com, soy beans and wheat is 35 per cent below what it was last year and 45 per cent less than the 15-year average. If the prices of these commodities remain uncharged, Madam Speaker, Ontario farmers alone will suffer a $175 million shortfall this year, compared to last year.

I have before me a chart. It compares the cost of com flakes with the price of corn. In 1980, corn sold for 15 cents a kilogram. Corn flakes sold for $2.21 a kilogram. In 1990, corn sold for 14 cents a kilogram, less than 1980 by 1 cent. Guess what happened to the price of com flakes. It jumped from $2.21 to $4.28. In other words, while the price of this particular product to farmers was decreasing, the price to the consumer doubled.
Canadians have reason to complain about the prices, but it is not the farmers who are getting the money. Of course, notwithstanding the fact that some of those middle people are getting more than their fair share, we still manage to have the second lowest food prices as a proportion to our income of any nation on earth.

On August 29 this year, the hon. member for Algoma moved a motion at an emergency meeting of the Standing Committee on Agriculture of this House. In his motion, the hon. member asked the government to provide emergency assistance to grain producers, starting this year, because there would a gap between existing programs, or rather programs that existed until quite recently, and the new programs that will be introduced next year.
We need an emergency program during the transition period. As I said earlier, the hon. member for Algoma moved a motion asking the government to take this kind of action, and of course, the committee adopted the motion unanimously. And I congratulate members on all sides of this House, the Conservatives, members of our party, and all the others who voted, asking for government action. So far, however, no answers have been forthcoming.

We have a few more problems on the horizon.
Canadian farmers are veiy worried about what the Government of Canada intends to do at the GATT negotiating table. As you know, we are presently in the so-called Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations. In this round, there is tremendous concern, and rightfully so, about the price of agricultural commodities, prices which have been deflated as a result of the subsidy war
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between countries, more particularly the EEC nations and the United States.
Canada has been the victim of this. Canadian farmers are afraid, and I think they have every reason to be concerned, about the future of Article XI of the GATT agreement. Article XI presently permits supply management in agriculture. In simple language, it permits farmers to have quota systems where they wish to have them as producer organizations.
The negotiating team right now before the GATT is having discussions. That team was brought before the Standing Committee on Agriculture yesterday. Members of Parliament tried desperately to obtain assurances from our negotiating team that we had not offered to sacrifice Article XI of the GATT in exchange for something else.
Despite the best efforts of all MPs from all political parties, no such assurance came forward yesterday. I can tell you that I am very concerned. Usually when someone refuses to tell you something, there is a good reason for it, and I am very afraid about the future of Article XI.
Two members yesterday, the member for Haldimand- Norfolk and the member for Gatineau-La Lievre both asked in this House for the assurances of the government that Article XI of the GATT would be protected and strengthened. Do you know the answer they received? The Minister of State for Agriculture said, roughly, as follows: "There will not be any changes until we announce that there are changes." Well, that is a great reassurance for the dairy farmers of Canada.
The government has to announce clear policies, and has to assure the farmers that Article XI will continue and will be enhanced and not be done away with.

Madam Speaker, finally I would like to raise in this House a tragedy that happened in my riding about an hour ago. A reporter told me that a slaughterhouse in my riding, Viandes Saint-Isidore Inc. of St. Isidore de Prescott, Ontario, was closing down tomorrow, resulting in the loss of 40 jobs.
This company slaughtered about 5,500 pigs a week, Madam Speaker. At the end of the day today, while we
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are making speeches in this House, slaughtering operations will cease in St. Isidore. Tomorrow evening, the factory will shut down completely. Of course, in my riding, with such a high unemployment rate, this bad news will be very hard for us to take.
In this case for once, at any rate, it does not seem to be due to free trade or something like that, but other government policies influenced the outcome, such as the policy of too high interest rates that hurt this company. Of course, there were other problems along the way.
But, Madam Speaker, it would be important to point out the price of farm products again. As I did earlier with corn, I will compare the price of bacon. Once again, I have here in front of me a diagram that compares prices in 1980 and 1988. In 1980, bacon sold for $1.30 a kilo-that is the price the farmer received. In 1990, he got $1.38 and today, as we speak, the price is about the same, $1.38 a kilo. The consumer, however, paid about $5.54 a kilo in 1980 and now pays about eight dollars. So in 1980, the consumer paid about four times what the farmer got. Today, it is more than six times. We need help for agriculture, Madam Speaker. I hope that the government will listen to the needs and for once try to help Canadian farming.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague once again on addressing the issue with specifics. I want to ask him a very specific question. One of the problems of those of us who spend most of our time in urban markets is our lack of information on the specific reasons why we have a farm crisis in this country. Many times today we have referred to the problems being caused by the European Common Market approach to agriculture and the tremendous subsidies.
Does the hon. member not think that as part of our strategy to win support for correcting this problem in the long term might be to develop a communications plan explaining this problem that is happening in rural Canada, in agriculture in Canada, which goes beyond that community itself? In other words, we go into the major markets not only here but also in Europe and explain exactly how these subsidies are putting our young farmers and our experienced farmers out of business.

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Maybe through that kind of process we might get a more rational approach to the subsidy program that is being handled all over the world. I wonder if the hon. member could speak to that.


Don Boudria: Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. My colleague comes from an urban riding. One thing that I appreciate particularly is the fact that he as an urban member is always here when we are discussing agriculture. Whereas I cannot speak of the presence or absence of any member singularly, I must tell you, Madam Speaker, how pleased I am when members who are from urban areas take that kind of an interest. That is the first step and I congratulate him for it. I wish all members had that same kind of interest.
Our colleague, the hon. member for Lambton- Middlesex, produced very good documentation about how in fact farmers are not getting their share of the revenues of agriculture. I for one will be putting out a householder to my constituents shortly to explain just the discrepancy, just like I described for the price of com and the price of hogs how the discrepancy between what the farmer is getting versus what the consumer has to pay and how it is progressively getting worse. We must continue to say that to all Canadians so that they understand.
We must do it not only in our agricultural constituencies. All MPs should do this across Canada. As well I think it is the duty of our government to try to make other nations understand what it is that we are doing. Effectively what we are doing is we are whipping each other with our dollars. That is what we are doing. We are completely inundating the situation with subsidies.
Farmers in other countries, particularly the United States and the EEC, are receiving huge subsidies. Those subsidies of course benefit nations which then purchase those commodities. It is unusual to see, for instance, that countries, what we used to refer to as eastern bloc countries, are buying food that was subsidized by the countries of the west because they are arguing with each other as to who should have the so-called rightful share of the market.


Mr. Murray Cardiff (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Agriculture):: Madam Speaker, I just want to remind the member that in his comments about Article XI and our Canadian position at the GATT talks, the
minister, if he would recall, was very adamant yesterday on the position of the Canadian government and our position there. I would just like to read part of that answer of yesterday.
The Government of Canada has stated, as my colleagues have, its position on Article XI. We are not talking about weakening Article XI. What we have asked for, and what the policies of this government is, is that Article XI should be further clarified and strengthened. That has not been changed -
That is the position of the Canadian government. I would not want the message to go out from this House of Commons that that has been changed. We do support it. We have been consistent. This has been developed with the producers in consultation with the stakeholders of that industry and with the government as to how that position was developed, and that position has not changed.


Don Boudria: Madam Speaker, I will only read the following sentence. It goes like this:
That has not changed and will not change until the government says it will change.
That is the assurance that the minister gave yesterday, and it is not good enough.


Mark Joseph Assad: Madam Speaker, the last few words of my friend here relate to one of the questions I wanted to ask the Minister of Agriculture. Yesterday, I and my colleague from Ontario asked for assurances from the Department of Agriculture that the government is committed to preserving quotas and defending, strengthening and clarifying Article XI of GATT which deals with quotas which impede the free market, etc.
Madam Speaker, if you look at the history of agriculture in Quebec, it is the whole history of Quebec you are looking at. In 1950-and this is not very far back, I am quite sure that most members here recall those years- there were 240,000 farmers in Quebec. Some 40 odd years later only about 45,000 are left. It is true that the average productivity has increased tremendously, much more than it was thought possible 40 years ago, nevertheless, agriculture remains one of the extremely important elements of a nation. No nation wants to depend on another for its daily bread. All want to be sure that their agriculture is in good health. One has only to look at the Common Market, where there is a real agricultural war,
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if I can use that expression, where all the members want to protect their farm production.
Here in Canada, we created, under the previous government, a system of quotas for milk, pork or other commodities like grain. This is extremely important for our farmers and for the farmers of Quebec. We had a system which was more rational, where the government could intervene not to control the market but rather to discipline it, make it more human, if I can use that expression. There are three elements, for when you talk to farm producers, and I veiy often had discussion with them on this question, they say that there are three fundamental principles. The first, according to them, is that you must always have the guarantee that borders can be controlled, that is to say that you can prevent dumping on your own market. You know that all sorts of explanations are used, like globalization, etc., but you would be surprised to learn that, when they use the term "globalization", other countries make nice sentences, speak of productivity, and so on. All countries, of course, have ways to protect their own market. One must not be fooled by these words, but look at the reality.
There is one more thing that must be protected in the farming industry, it is the fact that Canadian producers- and I know the situation of farmers in Quebec-have always wanted a form of protection which I always considered as totally realistic and that is to guarantee their production cost. That has always been, if you will, their basic argument.
If a farmer could be sure from the beginning to recoup his production costs, he could survive, and someone would take over after him. That argument is familiar to all of us, except that, to this day, our neighbours in the South have never really applied the program of quotas.
I heard on the news that milk producers from the State of Vermont, will meet in the coming weeks. They even made known their intention to carry out some form of strike because Vermont farmers, mostly milk producers, have benefitted from a quota system similar to the one we have in Canada. Obviously, Madam Speaker, I wish them great luck. It will be a start. They will make Americans aware that a quota system which guarantees production cost recovery is undoubtedly a sensible thing.
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But that is where a moral commitment is needed with all this argumentation by the government, with the answers that the Minister of Agriculture gave us when he said: "As long as the government does not decide otherwise, we will keep protecting Article XI of the GATT." But during the consultations known as "Growing together", a leader from the Union des producteurs agricoles pointed out to me that they had been consulted on that issue. We surely want a growing agriculture, not only in Quebec, but throughout Canada. But they said that they never felt that their production costs were guaranteed. And I think that we should address that issue. Farmers do not have that guarantee. We hear about productivity almost every day. But if farmers are not sure of getting back their production costs, if they are subject to the law of the jungle, as it is the case in the United States-When you consider that over 100,000 farms have been lost in the last few years in the States, you get an idea of how the big multinationals came into the agricultural world. They are literally quashing the family farm in the United States. However, here in Canada, we have a different way of seeing things.
We would like to have a guarantee, a moral commitment from the government, that we will not expose our farmers to the law of the jungle. We would like to offer them the support that is vital for the survival of agriculture, and that is what we would do by ensuring them the production cost. If it is impossible to give them such a commitment, that in my view is a moral one, what future can they hope for in farming?
That is basically the question we are asking in this House. If the Minister of Agriculture, his Quebec counterpart and the Minister of State for Agriculture would provide an answer, I am sure farmers throughout Canada, and especially in Quebec, would be very happy to have it.
But the two answers we got yesterday are not enough. We want support for our farmers, not just for today, but for the future, especially to assist the next generation.
Madam Speaker, I will ask again the Minister of Agriculture and his colleague, the Minister of State, to make a moral commitment to really support our farmers,

September 19, 1991
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to ensure they cover their production costs, since we know that our farmers are efficient and productive.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Madam Speaker, on a point of order, there are a couple of conversations around the House. The hon. member for Beaver River has not had an opportunity to speak.
I wonder if there might be agreement among the parties and the members to allow her 10 minutes. Most of the speeches this afternoon have been that length. We might just not see the clock for 10 minutes to allow her to make her speech. Then, we can proceed with the regular proceedings of the day.


Murray Cardiff: Madam Speaker, we would agree to the recommendation that the member for Beaver River be allowed to speak for 10 minutes and then, as the member suggested, proceed with the normal closing of debate.


Rodney Edward Laporte: Madam Speaker, in the spirit of co-operation we certainly would be willing to let the hon. member for Beaver River have 10 minutes.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I see that there is unanimous consent. Do I understand that we forego the period of question and comments following?


An hon. member:: Yes.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: We will not see the clock until 5.50 p.m.


Miss Deborah Grey (Beaver River):: Madam Speaker, I would just like to thank all parties for allowing unanimous consent for me to carry on. Surely that, if nothing else, is a good example to the Canadian public who is watching that this place can work and we can work together effectively.
I would just like to put on record some of the Reform Party's policies regarding agriculture because I heard some comments in statements this afternoon and also in Question Period by the member for Portage-Interlake and also the Minister for Grains and Oilseeds reflecting the fact that I should perhaps answer the questions in Question Period on behalf of the Reform Party.
There are policies, facts and global things that are happening that we simply cannot deny. What we need to do is be very frank and honest in admitting that some
things are happening around the world that we need to be very clear on and realize that they are happening.
First, I would say that there is an increasing need, both internationally and domestically, to reduce rather than increase government subsidization of agriculture due to the inability of governments and the community at large to finance such subsidization in the long run.
Whether we like it or not, because of our national debt and the way things are going around the world, this is the way things are happening. We have to agree that whether we like it or not, that is what is happening.
The Reform Party recognizes that there is a need for transitional support to protect agricultural producers against policies over which they have no control, including international subsidies that increase supplies and depress prices. We have certainly seen that with the price of wheat and barley in this latest crop year.
We recognize that we cannot just completely eliminate subsidies, that simply cannot and will not happen. We need to provide transitional support.
As well, the member for Portage-Interlake made some comments quoting the Reform Party, leaving out some very important words. I will just quickly go over those.
The Reform Party believes that the agricultural producers should offer the rest of the world and the rest of the country a deal leading to a step-by-step reduction of government agricultural support, at home and abroad. Yes, we need to be leaders in this. Yes, I believe the agricultural sector is willing to make that step and become a leader in a step-by-step reduction if other economic sectors and our trading partners will do the same. That is where the hon. member left off his sentence half way through.
I believe the agricultural sector is willing to do that if, and only if, every other sector will do it at the same time. Then we would see an equality of sacrifice right across the country.
Looking internationally again, the Reform Party supports a trade distortion adjustment program to compensate for the adverse effects of subsidies by other countries. If we were looking at a ratio, for roughly every $5,000 that Canadians are subsidized in our agricultural industiy, the figure is approximately $10,000 for Ameri-

cans and $25,000 for Europeans. We ask: "How could those figures balance out?"
We need to see a government that is very aggressive dealing with Article XI that is firm at the GATT negotiations. We are looking to this government to be very tough, as the hon. member mentioned earlier, to go to the GATT and say: "We simply will not give up these things, we will be tough and we will continue to press for lowering subsidies around the world".
The Reform Party supports an agricultural policy based on market mechanisms with the objective of meeting the needs of consumers for safe, affordable and secure supplies of food.
"Where circumstances allow" is another phrase that my friend from Portage-Interlake left out. That would mean a shift from a government supported agricultural industry to an industry shaped by the free operation of comparative advantage between regions and commodities, free entry into all sectors of production and marketing and free trade on a global basis.
If any opposition party is opposed to free trade, that is its political prerogative. With the global economy becoming so small, we realize that with trade travelling so quickly, with communications travelling so quickly we are looking at a global market whether we like it or not.
Again, my friend mentioned this afternoon that the Reform Party is going to absolutely reduce and eliminate all subsidies whatsoever. He left off the first part of that sentence which was "if other domestic sectors and countries will do the same". Now, we are looking at an "if then" clause grammatically. If this happens at the national and at the international level then of course the Reform Party supports the phased reduction and elimination of all subsidies, support programs and trade restrictions.
This is what farmers are concerned about. These are what farmers in Beaver River are talking about. These are what farmers who in fact developed the Reform Party agricultural policy are concerned about.
When I look at what is happening in the agricultural sector, and at what is happening in my riding of Beaver River, which is very much agriculture intensive, people are saying they do not want handouts all the time, but that they are facing a very difficult time right now with
Supply
cash flow. We are looking at depressed prices for grains and oilseeds. We are looking at a government that is going to the GATT negotiations. However, the Uruguay Round has come far short and almost stopped in its proceedings.
We are looking at a people who are proud of their heritage. We are looking at farmers who are very proud of their Canadian heritage and what they are doing in this country. They are saying they are willing to adopt some of these measures if, and only if, everyone else is willing to do that.
It makes me proud to be the member of a very agriculture intensive riding, a riding which this summer was stricken with such serious drought that we had barley crops in the heart of Beaver River which were four inches tall. They were not even good for silage because they were too short for cutting and too dry for making silage.
I understand the problems because I was there and went on tour after tour looking at farmland in my area which suffered so devastatingly. For example, in the area of Two Hills and Willingdon, a large meeting was held at which farmers said: "We do not want handouts forever. We want a transitional program here before GRIP and NISA kick in".
These people do not want to have to give up then-farms and they are concerned whether they will be able to participate in the programs and will get transitional support. That is the key word I would like to say on behalf of the Reform Party, as well as member of Parliament for Beaver River.
I wonder about criticisms of the Reform Party but that is fair enough, I can appreciate that.
I would just like to say in closing that these are policies which have been put together by farmers, and of course our blue book is on display for anybody to look at. That is something I have never found from any other political party. Nobody has sent me anything telling me what they really believe and what they really stand for. These are things which were passed by the general membership at our assembly in Saskatoon this year, and that, of course, represents the 90,000 members that now belong to the Reform Party.

September 19, 1991
Private Members' Business
The September 9, 1991 issue of the The Alberta Report, a magazine from western Canada, says that northern and southern farmers in Alberta are supporting the party at
39.4	per cent. These are people who are proud and are very willing to say they are willing to tighten their belts if everyone else across the country does the same.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: It being 5.45 p.m., it is my duty to interrupt these proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the supply proceedings now before the House under the provisions of Standing Order 81(14).
The question is on the motion. 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 nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Call in the members.
And the division bells having rung:


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Pursuant to Standing Order 45(5)(a), the government whip has asked me to defer the vote. Accordingly, pursuant to Standing Order 45(6) the division on the question now before the House stands deferred until Monday, September 23, 1991 at 6 p.m. at which time the bells to call in the members will be sounded for not more than 15 minutes.


[Stage Direction]
SUSPENSION OF SITTING
Madam Deputy Speaker:: I will suspend this sitting until 6 p.m. this day when we will proceed to Private Members' Business.
The sitting of the House was suspended at 5.53 p.m.



SITTING RESUMED The House resumed at 6 p.m.


Hon. Walter McLean (Waterloo) moved:: That, in the opinion of this House, the government promote a summit level meeting at the United Nations on global security, to examine ways of implementing and strengthening the United Nations peacekeeping and enforcement mechanisms.
He said: Madam Speaker, it is timely that this motion has been drawn for debate today, timely because it affords us with an opportunity to sustain the momentum that has been building in the aftermath of the gulf conflict, in favour of strengthening the United Nations.
It is also timely in light of today's call for a UN force to intervene in the conflict in Yugoslavia. I think also of events in the Soviet Union, peace efforts in the western Sahara, Cambodia and Angola and the simmering situation in Iraq and the threats of further violence.
The motion that I present for the House today reads, as you have said:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government promote a summit level meeting at the United Nations on global security, to examine ways of implementing and strengthening the United Nations peacekeeping and enforcement mechanisms.
Here, in this motion, we are presented with an opportunity, a golden one at that, to encourage the building up of a mechanism that can allow the United Nations to fulfil its intended role.
We Canadians have a responsibility to use our prestige and expertise in the area of peacekeeping. We can use our reputation as a devoted member of the United Nations family to ensure that this historic opportunity is not lost. It is a responsibility that Canada and other governments should seize. Canada's participation in the gulf was done, as we recall, in the name of the United Nations. And when it was argued that the operations against Iraq did not follow the UN charter to the letter, the reply was that the UN security mechanisms were not in place. It was, therefore, impossible to expect to the UN Security Council to have full command and control of the enforcement of its resolutions.
September 19, 1991

Has the lesson been learned? The answer, as we stand today, months later, has to be no. The UN is today being called on to perform peacemaking duties in the tragic conflict in Yugoslavia and, once again, the excuse back to the European community and to others is that the UN is not prepared. This has a hollow sound to it and it puts at risk the credibility of the union to maintain security and peace.
It is important to follow up the criticisms of the gulf action with constructive action. Clearly our world needs a functioning UN security mechanism. It is a responsibility not only of governments but of individual parliamentarians to seize this moment to help build a reliable collective security system of enforceable international law. If we do not rise to this challenge, succeeding generations may well scorn us for having missed so great an opportunity to bring about an international system of law that can reliably prevent aggression.
Bernard Wood, the chief executive officer of the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security, has offered this warning to Canada: "There will be another test before very long and probably it will come in some region that is not as much of an economic or strategic interest to major world powers. If at that stage this international consensus and the international security structure fail to respond with equal vigour and even-handedness, the cynics will then have been vindicated and more importantly, the world will have been plunged backward".
Canada should not allow this to happen. We have invested too much in working toward the dream of a strong and effective United Nations to allow this moment to pass without undertaking a major effort to build up security mechanism of the UN. We are investing too much of our resources, talents and hopes, whether it be in Central America, in the Middle East, in Cyprus, in Angola or elsewhere not to act now, now that there is a genuine openness about reforming and renewing the United Nations.
There are no lack of ideas for strengthening the United Nations in the aftermath of the gulf war. New and old proposals are finding a renewed interest. A mechanism for preventive peacekeeping is being promoted, for example, whereby as a deterrent to aggression, UN troops could be deployed along the border of any nation that is being attacked. Others are beginning to look seriously at implementing the provisions of Article 43 and 47 of the UN Charter. That would enable the UN to mount its own force rather than having to rely on a major power.
Private Members' Business
There are still other discussions of an early warning capacity for the UN to ensure that developing conflicts can be detected and prevented from escalating. The question is: how do we turn these ideas that have been thought through, plans have been laid, how do we turn them into political realities? Surely, that is a job for politicians and political leadership. The tired pace of diplomatic discussions in the cavernous committee rooms of the UN will not bring the UN into the 21st century. What is needed is an infusion of political will.
We recall that in the 1960s people spoke of a rising tide of expectation. That was in relationship to development and decolonialization. We need today a rising tide of expectations that the international institutions that we have will be strengthened. What is urgently required is an infusion of vision, innovation and a renewed commitment to the ideals of the UN Charter. The spirit of San Francisco, that lofty idealism of the founders of the United Nations, that was of course one of the first casualties of the cold war, must be rekindled. To relaunch that spirit, we need to focus high level political attention.
That is why I have proposed in this motion that the Canadian government promote the convening of a high level meeting on global security. Earlier this year, under the auspices of parliamentarians global action, legislators from Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa gathered here in the House of Commons to discuss this issue. We were briefed by UN officials, we had members from all major parties and across party lines from abroad and the focus of our discussion and time together was UN collective security. We were looking at it in the perspective of the aftermath of the gulf conflict.
Two days later, after these briefings, we agreed on the Ottawa declaration on UN collective security. The key recommendation of our time together in that representative meeting is a call for a special session of the UN General Assembly on International Peace and Security. The need for such a high level meeting has been recognized not just by our group and by parliamentarians, but by eminent persons here in Canada and abroad. The World Federation of the United Nations Associations, headed by Canadian Maurice Strong, has called for a major conference on the UN in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the UN. On April 22, 32 leading spokespersons, statesmen, including Maurice Strong, Stephen Lewis, Sonny Ramphal, Edward Heath, Jimmy Carter, Robert MacNamara, Sir Brian Urquhart and Eduard Shevardnadze, called for a world summit on global governments. At their July summit meeting in London,

Private Members' Business
Prime Minister Mulroney and the leaders of the G-7 industrialized nations devoted unprecedented attention to the question of strengthening the UN security role. Listen for a moment to the G-7 political declaration. Here is what the G-7 leaders, including our Prime Minister, said:
We believe the conditions now exist for the United Nations to fulfil completely the promise of its founders. A revitalized United Nations will have a central role in strengthening the international order. The UN's role in peacekeeping should be reinforced and we are prepared to support this strongly.
A month earlier, in Berlin, our Prime Minister echoed the sentiment that no step could be more important in strengthening the international order than strengthening the UN itself. He said Canada would like to see the UN's capacity to prevent war enhanced. We would like to see the role of the Secretary General enhanced and the organization's peacekeeping capacity increased.
There is then, clearly, a great deal of enthusiasm. The groundwork has been put in place for political work, for the generating of political will.
Here we have the world leaders looking at how to strengthen the UN. What is needed today is for Canada and supportive governments to organize ourselves, to formally present a proposal at the current session of the United Nations General Assembly. That session opened earlier this week in New York, welcoming as we saw with world attention the Baltic nations, South Korea and others. There is a good chance that Canadian leadership will be supported and we can be instruments in the process of change.
But, in politics, as all of us in this House know, timing is everything, timing is crucial, and we must act now while there is still momentum behind strengthening the United Nations. For I fear that in a year or two that this present window of opportunity will have slammed shut.
And, what might this summit level meeting focus on, the summit level meeting that the motion encourages Canada to work for? Well, global security is, of course, a multifaceted concept and the issues of environment, development, disarmament and human rights are all key.
But I think there can be a broad agreement on a starting point. The issue of strengthening the UN's peacekeeping and other security mechanisms has been sorely neglected and I believe the circumstances are particularly auspicious to remedy this problem at this time. I believe that the establishment of an effective UN security system is, in many ways, the key to many of the other problems we face, providing a reliable alternative to the bloated military budgets that nations rely upon for their security.
Here is the challenge. A mechanism of collective security is the precondition for an extensive disarmament to take place. Governments, like citizens of any community, need to be able to call 911, they need to be able to summon an international fighting force or police force. This security mechanism, in turn, would free vast resources that are needed to meet the host of domestic and international problems of environment, of education, of health care. And so I am urging the Government of Canada to seize this opportunity to develop, in concert with others, the idea of preventive peacekeeping. This could have deterred Iraq from aggression. It could avoid future bloody conflicts. The UN should have this capacity. We cannot expect the United States of America to be the world's policeman. This is unacceptable to Canadians, unacceptable to the world community, as well as to many Americans.
Ironically there has never been a high level political meeting, never been high level political attention devoted to the question of strengthening peacekeeping and international security.
If we think back for a moment, there have been special sessions of the General Assembly devoted to disarmament. There have been a number of sessions devoted to development. We are now in the midst of preparing for a second major conference on the world's environment to be hosted in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
But there are no such plans to devote this kind of attention to the issue of how we strengthen the security role of the United Nations and so strengthen the sense of security and confidence of the nations of the world. This is in spite of the fact that the maintenance of peace
September 19, 1991

was intended to be the primary function of the United Nations. This was its raison d'etre.
Such an initiative would give the entire international community an opportunity to shape the new world order of which both President Gorbachev and President Bush have spoken. There is a good deal of healthy scepticism of this concept. The concern is that the new world order will be dictated by a single power.
By launching a global intergovernmental conference, all nations will participate in the shaping of this order. They can insist that it meet their immediate needs and the needs of the global community.
As a result of the Ottawa workshop of parliamentarians sponsored by Parliamentarians for Global Action and CUPS and other agencies here, that several of us who are here in the House tonight attended, there is a network of parliamentarians around the world organized to promote this kind of initiative. The broad representation of our Canadian group and our international network gives me confidence that there is a high degree of receptivity to and enthusiasm for this initiative, not just by the leaders as we have heard their statements, but also potentially in the Parliaments of the world.
One nation needs to take the lead. It needs to be a nation with an international reputation for support of the United Nations. Canada is in that position. As parliamentarians we owe it to the people of Canada and to the people of the world to press our government to show continued leadership in the creation of an effective United Nations for the 21st century.
So this evening I am asking for colleagues' support, and as I speak in the House and also across Canada for concerned and interested Canadians' public support, in urging the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for External Affairs to be proactive. When Canada addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York next Wednesday, I urge Canada's voice to be heard in calling for a UN summit on global security and committing resources to see it come about and lead us to a secure 21st century.
Private Members' Business
Madam Speaker, colleagues, I thank you for the opportunity to introduce this motion and for your kind attention.


William Warren Allmand: Madam Speaker, I want to start by congratulating the hon. member for Waterloo for this important motion which he has put before Parliament today.
In his motion, as he said, he is asking the Government of Canada to promote a summit meeting at the United Nations on global security and, in particular, to search for ways to prevent aggression by an improved peacekeeping policy and through the enforcement of international law.
Let me acknowledge immediately the outstanding work done so far by the United Nations in peacekeeping since 1956 when we had the first real peacekeeping operation to solve the Suez crisis. Of course, the proposals for that peacekeeping operation were put forward by our foreign minister of the day, Lester B. Pearson, who was, at the time, the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
As we all recall, Mr. Pearson won the Nobel Prize for that initiative. There is a long tradition for Canadians taking the kind of initiatives that the hon. member for Waterloo suggests today in his motion.
Over the years, these peacekeeping forces of the United Nations have monitored ceasefire operations. They have supervised elections in countries. They have monitored the withdrawal of armed forces from certain countries. They have also been there to govern the transition of certain colonies to self-government.
In fact as you will recall, UN peacekeeping forces won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988 for the outstanding work they did over the years in bringing about peace.
All along since 1956, Canada has been one of the great leaders. Since 1948, Canadian peacekeeping forces have participated in 30 countries in peacekeeping operations. Over 80,000 Canadians have been involved in peacekeeping. This year, there are 2,000 of our troops involved but unfortunately again over that time, 81 Canadians were killed in peacekeeping operations.

September 19, 1991
Private Members' Business
As I said, what has been done so far has been good, but we have to admit it is still limited. Improvements are necessary and that is why this summit meeting at the United Nations is essential.
The gulf war in February, the war between Iraq and Kuwait, demonstrated this. The main problem at that time, you will recall, is that the UN peacekeeping forces had to go into operation once Kuwait was occupied by Iraq. It came in after the fact. What we are seeking is a type of UN peacekeeping force and a preventive peacekeeping policy which would have prevented that aggression from taking place in the first place. We are not to act after the fact, after the aggression, but prevent the aggression from taking place.
What we need is a new world order that would provide for preventive peacekeeping. What do we mean by that? We mean a process whereby there would be early warning on potential aggression that would provide for certain peacekeeping. There is no doubt that it is easier and less costly to prevent the occupation of a country such as Kuwait than to evict an aggressor once that occupation has taken place.
How would we set up such a preventive peacekeeping policy, or operation? I might mention that I have a private members' motion before this House which is motion 535 which sets out some of the details for preventive peacekeeping such as I will now discuss before the House.
What we need are, first of all, regionally located standing UN forces made up of national contingents on a rotating basis. When an incident takes place, the Security Council decides that we need a peacekeeping force, and the force is drafted from national contingents at the time.
What I and other experts are suggesting is that UN peacekeeping forces would be stationed on perhaps the six continents of the world in certain friendly countries with contingents made up of many countries. They are trained and they would be trained by special UN training units on how to properly carry out peacekeeping operations, but they would be there ready to respond if a nation felt threatened by the aggression of another country. So, if there was such a threat of aggression, the threatened nation could call upon the Secretary General and the Security Council and there would be a force in that region of the world to immediately go to the border area and patrol the border under the UN flag, the UN
helmets and uniform patches and so on, and with weapons, not heavy weapons, but to deter the aggression.
Now imagine if we had had such a policy before the Kuwait war. If Kuwait, seeing the build-up of forces and the threatening action that was made against it by Iraq, could have called for a regional UN force that would have already been in place in the Middle East somewhere or close by in that part of the world which could go there and station itself along the border between Kuwait and Iraq. It is very unlikely in those circumstances, despite the character of Saddam Hussein, that he would have invaded against a multinational UN force that was already on the border under the UN flag. Not under the United States flag or under the Canadian flag, but under the UN flag. That is what is suggested as a part of a preventive peacekeeping policy.
There would also be, in different parts of the world, probably in the same place as these regional forces, stockpiles of equipment ready to support the forces. Now these forces that would be permanent with national contingents of UN armies or national armies could be supplemented by additional forces from the countries of the world if the thing escalated beyond what was originally considered necessary.
Once the UN force was on the border to deter aggression then you could immediately refer the outstanding issues of the dispute to the Security Council, to the General Assembly, perhaps to the World Court, the International Court of Justice, for mediation, for arbitration to resolve the underlying causes that might lead to that aggression that would have been under way, but which was prevented by the UN force on the spot.
Other things that have to be considered of course are proper financing for such UN operations. Unfortunately, at the United Nations now there is a large sum of arrears for UN peacekeeping operations. I believe it is over $800 million. Most of this, again unfortunately, is owed by the United States and the Soviet Union. That is what I think has to be pursued at greater length at the summit suggested by my hon. friend. As he said, many of these recommendations came out of a forum sponsored by Parliamentarians for Global Action here in Ottawa on May 21 and 22 of this year when 21 parliamentarians from 15 countries, parliamentarians who specialized in these things, came together and discussed this matter with experts for two days and then produced what is
September 19, 1991

called "The Ottawa Declaration on United Nations Collective Security".
I fully support the hon. member's proposal. As I say, there are a lot of good ideas that could be put into more concrete form at such a meeting at the United Nations and all it requires really is the political will. As I say, let us look at the example of Kuwait, how less expensive it would have been in human lives, how less expensive in financial resources if we had had such a preventive peacekeeping policy in force there to prevent the aggression of Iraq. We would not have had to dislodge them from Iraq, we would have prevented the aggression in the first place.


Mr. John Brewin (Victoria):: Madam Speaker, I rise to support this motion moved by the member from Waterloo to establish a UN summit level meeting on global security. This motion has our support and we would hope that all members of the House will not only support it but restrain their oratory to the point that before six o'clock this bill can receive unanimous approval of this House. I am sure it has that. Those who observe Private Members' Business will know that there is too often a propensity to talk a bill out. If we could have some discipline, perhaps we could put on the record of this House this very important motion, which I am sure reflects the hopes and aspirations of all Canadians.
It is important I think in analysing the motion before us to keep in mind the different concepts of peacekeeping and enforcement that are embodied in the motion which reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government promote a summit-level meeting at the United Nations on Global Security, to examine ways of implementing and strengthening the United Nations peacekeeping and enforcement mechanisms.
Canadians are very familiar with the peacekeeping role and potential of the United Nations. We have been involved since the beginning when we were involved in the innovative approach to the UN Charter and the way in which the UN works to get around the rigidities put in the Charter in Articles 43 and 47 to allow the UN itself to play a direct role in keeping the peace. Invariably this role has been confined to coming in after hostilities have
Private Members' Business
broken out to essentially police the peace by putting a UN force between the previously warring parties in the hopes that its presence would deter any future outbreak of hostilities. That is a very important role and one in which Canada has played an important part over the years.
There are important ways in which this role can be strengthened. In passing I note with regret that the government in its defence statement of two days ago included UN peacekeeping only as an afterthought, a paragraph stuck in the statement. It made no commitment to improve the work of the Canadian military in training and preparing itself for a role in peacekeeping.
The government has put a cap on the contributions that Canada will make to peacekeeping, contrary I believe to the will of most Canadians. It is a role that would be very, very effective and important in actually preserving lives and keeping the peace, far less expensive than the waste of money which is reflected in most of the rest of the defence policy of this government. Instead of emphasizing this constructive role, the government is just carrying on.
It is important that we devote much more attention than we have. It is being said privately by generals of other countries that Canada's capacity to contribute in peacekeeping has deteriorated, that we are not doing as good a job as we could.
Our individual soldiers who go overseas do a good professional job, those who are working specifically do a good professional job. However, the collective effort of Canada in this area, the level of training and so forth is not what it should be.
As well, I note we have had a lot of discussion about base closings. The people in the Annapolis Valley have come up with a proposal for long term development of the base in Cornwallis for a number of training purposes, including that of a multinational training centre. It is an idea the government should follow up very quickly and not wait for the report of the advisory committee.
As sort of an extension of peacekeeping, the UN has got into other very important areas, such as the monitoring and verification of elections and the work in Namibia with the police, in which Canada made a contribution.

September 19, 1991
Private Members' Business
The motion goes on to talk about enforcement. This is the area which is going to need an enormous amount of international effort if we are to achieve any significant improvements. The concept behind enforcement is to get involved in a potential military dispute, a potential war, before it breaks out and/or to have sufficient military capacity to enforce the will of the United Nations and the international community where a breach of international law has occurred.
We have had some examples of UN involvement in this way. Neither of the examples reflect an exercise of the UN Charter as it was originally contemplated. The first major one was in Korea where the United Nations Security Council happened to be missing the Soviet Union, which had gone off on a boycott at that stage. The remaining members of the Security Council were able to get together and agree that the response to the North Korean invasion of South Korea would come under UN direction. The command in that case, while it was really American, was officially that of the United Nations. That particular instance has never been duplicated.
In the gulf war, while the Security Council agreed in effect virtually unanimously-and certainly the superpowers, the permanent members of the Security Council all agreed-they were able to get through Security Council resolutions. However, the direction of the forces in the Gulf were not that of the UN but rather that of the member states which decided to contribute to the military response in that case. Therefore, the effect was that the Americans provided the military direction and leadership in concert with the other individual members of the UN who participated. That was not a direct UN operation.
It is probably beyond our hope in the immediate future that a global summit or any other political activity is going to produce such a dramatic change that a military operation the size of the Gulf operation will come under direct UN military supervision. Apart from anything else, the political problems are enormous.
It would be highly unlikely that a government such as the United States, which made such a huge contribution militarily in the Gulf operation, would be prepared in any future operation to turn over the direction of its forces in such a sizeable conflict to the UN or to any other command. However, the UN may be able to move step by step into a far more effective role in less
significant conflicts, in more minor conflicts where the size of the military operation does not have to be as large as in the Gulf where there were 500,000 troops and a major connection between the various forces working together in that particular conflict.
While I support this motion and I support the idea of a global summit, I am inclined to think that the Canadian government should not just leave it at pushing for summits. As we have seen in the case of the arms sales issue, the government's call for a global summit there has evaporated into thin air. It is very hard to get the nations of the world to come together for a global summit unless there is a strong common will. The political effort involved in simply getting them all together, while it is important, should be directed toward more incremental gains and to work at the UN for the development of a UN force that operates in a similar way to the peacekeeping forces where various nations contribute forces to a UN command to work in a specific conflict or dispute. It seems to me that working on that would be a progressive step.
As the member for Waterloo mentioned, I think the UN may also have a role in international surveillance, security communications and development of an exchange of information, in confidence building measures and in other ways to head off disputes.
I recently attended an interesting conference in Windsor on civilian based defence. We heard an interesting address from Gene Sharp, who has written on the subject. There is in fact a civilian based defence association which promotes a series of useful ideas for heading off violent conflict and offering the potential for resolving disputes more effectively without resort to military means.
My final point, if I can, is to relate this motion to the debate that goes on in this House and elsewhere on the future of NATO and the role of NATO and other possible forces in regional conflicts in Europe.
As the cold war is now over and the threat of a Soviet Warsaw Pact invasion into western Europe, if it ever existed, is now gone, what is left in Europe are totally different security questions.
Again, the member for Waterloo mentioned Yugoslavia. That is a totally different security problem from that posed by the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact: a
September 19, 1991

massive invasion similar to that in the Second World War.
What is needed to respond there militarily is a small force which can move quickly into that area. The issue then becomes: who runs it? The desirable answer for that is the United Nations. It should have a force which could go into Yugoslavia and deal with it.
Short of the United Nations in the interim, it should be all the nations of Europe including the United States and Canada that have some sort of security arrangement. The least desirable result, in fact non-desirable result, is to have NATO, which was designed for a totally different purpose and has a narrow base of members in the new Europe, taking on the responsibility of being the region's police force.
I urge the House to support this motion. I urge the Canadian people to support the direction of this motion. It is a very important one with great hope for the future of the world.


Mrs. Louise Feltham (Wild Rose):: Madam Speaker, I too wish to lend my support to my hon. colleague's ' motion. It is very important.
The United Nations, as the international community's guardian of peace and security, has obtained a new lease on life from the end of the cold war and a successful outcome of the gulf crisis.
The United Nations can now start to deliver on its promise as the only organization able and mandated by the whole international community to deal with the global issues and challenges.
The Security Council of the United Nations is empowered to recommend and decide on action to be taken to preserve and to maintain international peace and security-
During the cold war it was literally crippled. It was prevented from agreeing on tangible responses to acts of aggression or other threats and defiances. Consequently, the provisions of chapter 7 of the charter of the United Nations was almost never used.
With the end of the east-west confrontation, the world has witnessed a rare degree of co-operation among the council's permanent five and the other non-permanent members of the council.
Private Members' Business
The ability of the Security Council to act in concert is a testimony to the new era of co-operation which is now open to all of us. In fact, the international community was able last year to deal with the severe Iraqi threat to international peace and security in an unprecedented manner, a manner that gave the whole United Nations system a new lease on life.
Iraq's aggression was a litmus test for the United Nations. The successful outcome to that aggression sent a clear message that the world has changed, that it will not tolerate aggression and that international law cannot be ignored.
It is clear that peacekeeping and peacemaking must remain the focus of the council's mandate. Recent events have underlined the promise of peacekeeping. Future trends for peacekeeping operations are to combine traditional military elements with political, humanitarian, economic and sometimes social.
We need those mechanisms. More advanced planning and financing will be needed. However important peacekeeping is, peacemaking must take on a more important role. We all agree that long-term security depends on the development of a more comprehensive apparatus that enables the Security Council to manage not only the crises that have already erupted, but also disputes which threaten to degenerate into crises.
The United Nations' previous inability to bring its members to respect the council's decisions meant that the organization was never able to achieve its potential as a peacemaker. It has never put in place the machinery which would allow the organization itself to enforce peace.
Now that the United Nations has the potential to act in this area, it is important to look at the arrangements that were foreseen in the United Nations charter which could enable the organization to meet its obligations in this regard. These are foreseen in chapter 7 of the charter.
Should we consider activating the provisions of article 43 which ask all members of the United Nations to:
- undertake to make available to the Security Council, on its call and in accordance with a special agreement or arrangements, armed forces, assistance, and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.

Private Members' Business
Such agreement or arrangements shall govern the numbers and types of forces, their degree of readiness and general location, and the nature of the facilities and assistance to be provided.
Agreement or arrangements shall be negotiated as soon as possible on the initiative of the Security Council. They shall be concluded between the Security Council and members, or between the Security Council and groups of members, and shall be subject to ratification by the signatory states in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.
This is what article 43 of the United Nations charter calls for.
The first request is to make armed forces available to the United Nations. Once this is decided, this route would require the negotiation of agreements specifying the numbers and the types of forces, degree of readiness, the general location, and the nature of facilities and equipment to be provided.
Such an agreement might have the following advantages. The nature of the commitment would be determined in advance, which is very important. Defence authorities would be able to allocate the necessary resources and develop and exercise operational plans. It might be possible to avoid a need to relocate resources on an emergency basis as has often been the case for major Canadian participation in a United Nations peacekeeping mission.
Such an agreement would also allow participation by contributory states in the Security Council's deliberations and decisions concerning the employment of those forces. They would thus have a seat at the table which might not otherwise be available to them.
The events of the past two years have raised the expectations of the people all over the world. The international community now expects stronger council actions and a wide variety and range of conflicts that could jeopardize the international peace and security in a broader sense than was ever envisioned. In these, those events have led to a process of reconsideration of some of the reference points of international relations, including the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of member states.
In terms of foreign policy, Canadian participation in peacekeeping has always served to reinforce our status as an international player of consequence, and our reliance on multilateralism. I believe that Canadian participation in a renewed concept of international peacemaking
under the United Nations auspices will also serve Canada's image and policies well.
It is my conviction that the United Nations has to change, it has to evolve, so as to be able to execute the mandate given to it by its founders. The strengthening of the United Nations organization and system should become one of our main objectives in the current General Assembly. The strengthening of the United Nations enforcement or peacekeeping mechanisms will be an evolutionary process.


Christine Susan Stewart: Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure this evening to support the motion before us put by my colleague from Waterloo across the floor. The motion reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government promote a summit level meeting at the United Nations on global security, to examine ways of implementing and strengthening the United Nations peacekeeping and enforcement mechanisms.
It is not my intent this evening to talk out this issue because I think it would be an important signal for the Parliament here to approve this motion. I hope that we get an opportunity to do so on this.
When the United Nations was founded at San Francisco on June 25, 1945 its charter was signed by 51 states, primarily the nations of the western hemisphere and Europe. Now, close to half a century later, there are over 160 signatory states, representing all regions and peoples of the globe. The delegates at San Francisco met in the face of a world very different from that facing the delegates today in New York.
Although the original challenges identified at San Francisco, such as economic development, peace and security and human rights remain; many others have risen. The concepts of sustainable development, third world debt, self-determination and high technology were unknown to the framers of the UN Charter. The emergence and persistence of these and many other challenges, coupled with momentous global political change in the last two years, let alone in the last half century, have contributed to a sense of crisis today which did not exist in 1945. There is an increasing demand for a rethinking of the means by which humankind orders its affairs.
The role of the United Nations, the largest multilateral organization in the history of civilization, is both central and critical to this task. As a fundamental supporter of the United Nations system since its inception, Canada's contribution to United Nations reform and an enhanced United Nations presence in world
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affairs is both necessary and vital to Canada's national interests.
Madam Speaker, I am also, besides being pleased to stand in support of this motion this evening, very pleased to say that I am a member of the organization Parliamentarians For Global Action, an organization which represents a large non-partisan group of parliamentarians from around the globe. As was mentioned by other speakers this evening, representatives of this organization met in Ottawa on May 21 and 22 and produced the Ottawa declaration on UN collective security. Perhaps I can outline just a few of the points that were made in this declaration, which in some respects go a little bit further than the motion before us this evening that we are debating. One of the points made in this declaration is that the rule of law ultimately will prove less costly than the chaos of war.
Earlier this year after the gulf war crisis the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade met on February 6 to hear witnesses from non-government organizations working in Third World countries speak to the problems that the gulf war created for many Third World nations.
It has been suggested that the gulf war, the crisis we have lived through this year and are happy to see the end of, could be only the beginning of north-south wars in our world. Nobody would want to see that happen, but I think it is true that that is a possibility given the amount of militarization and the amount of arms trade that goes on in this world and the frustration that is experienced by so many nations of the south. Unless we are very vigilant and determined that war will not occur again and carry through on such proposals as is presented in the motion this evening, it could be the first of the north-south confrontations in our world.
When the non-government organizations came before our committee and spoke of the cost of the gulf war, not to the developed nations but to the developing Third World southern nations, they spoke of the fact that that war threatened and affected the lives of millions of people in nations all over the world. Who would have imagined that a war that took place in the Middle East would affect countries so disparate in location in our globe as Brazil, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines; but that in fact is what has happened.
Prtivate Members' Business
It is these wars that create more difficult economic circumstances for these already struggling nations, causing standards of living to deteriorate and immediately causing for our own concern large numbers of refugees and insecurity globally speaking.
The declaration that was made in Ottawa spoke of different initiatives that could be taken: preventive peacekeeping where UN troops could be deployed along the border of a nation legitimately fearing attack, to be backed as necessary by forces authorized by the Security Council, as a deterrent to possible aggression by another state and a signal of the resolve of the international community to remain seized of the situation. It requested particular parliamentary initiatives and it stated specifically: "We call upon our colleagues in Parliaments, assemblies, and congresses around the world to begin a major review of the structure of the United Nations with a view to broadening the political legitimacy of the United Nations collective security actions and to ensure that those actions reflect the interests of all member states".
In response to that, the first paragraphs that I read as I stood here in the House this evening were from a notice that was sent out internationally and to colleagues and friends across this country announcing that the Liberal Party of Canada is sponsoring a public symposium entitled "Canada and the United Nations System in the 21st Century", which will take place in Vancouver, British Columbia, beginning on United Nations Day, October 24, and going through to October 26.
At that time we are hoping to discuss the topics of the maintenance of peace, environment and development, trade and development, the movement of peoples, leadership, the UN role in world society, and the role of law.
The very first workshop of that session to which all are invited is entitled "The Maintenance of Peace".
The role of the United Nations in maintaining international peace and security, the powers of the Security Council under chapters 6 and 7 of the charter, residual powers of other organs such as the General Assembly, peacekeeping, the role of the secretary general, options for reform of charter provisions, Security Council membership, and UN versus regional arrangements will all be on the agenda in that workshop.

September 19, 1991
Private Members' Business
I encourage anybody interested in supporting this motion and seeing the necessaty reform that is required in the United Nations to tiy to attend.
I cannot say often enough how important I feel the text of this motion is and what it implies for our future. It is significant that Parliaments around the world are promoting this in hope for world peace and improved security.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired.

Pursuant to Standing Order 96(1), this item is dropped from the Order Paper.
It being seven o'clock, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 7 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Friday, September 20, 1991