1991-03-07

Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 23 petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


[Stage Direction]
33RD REPORT
Hon. Kim Campbell (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, according to section 18 of the Law Reform Commission Act and Standing Order 32(1), I am pleased to table, in both official languages, the 33rd report of the Law Reform Commission of Canada entitled Recodifying Criminal Procedures, Volume 1, Title 1.



INTERPARLIAMENTARY DELEGATION


Mr. Yvon Cote (Richmond-Wolfe):: Mr. Speaker, I had the privilege of representing the Canadian section at the AIPLF meeting in Senegal. Pursuant to Standing Order
34,1	have the honour to table, in both official languages,
the thirteenth report on the activities of the Canadian Section of the International Assembly of French-speaking Parliamentarians.



INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY


Hon. Mary Collins (Associate Minister of National Defence and Minister responsible for Status of Women):: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today, on the eve of International Women's Day, and join with Canadians to mark the gains that women have made toward achieving equality both here in Canada and around the world.
International Women's Day encourages us to reflect on the position of women in our society today and to consider their aspirations for the future. Women in Canada have much to celebrate. We have made great strides in achieving equality in all spheres of society. It has become increasingly clear, indeed, that women's issues are becoming society's issues.
But these gains have not come easily. They are the result of hard work and co-operation. They are the result of women forming effective partnerships to promote ideas and initiate action.
Tomorrow, on International Women's Day, we will honour the spirit of co-operation through this year's theme: "Together Towards Equality".
Partnerships play a critical role in advancing women's equality. Business, labour and government must work closely with women's groups and organizations to make Canada a more understanding and tolerant society. Women must continue to work together, women from all walks of life, including those in the labour force, those working at home, women of colour, elderly women, disabled women, and immigrant women.
As Canada's Minister responsible for the Status of Women, I am proud to co-ordinate our government's initiatives on behalf of Canadian women.

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Routine Proceedings
Canada also has a proud tradition of actively supporting and promoting equality for women in major international forums. Within the United Nations, we have worked steadfastly to advance the role of women through our long-standing membership on the Commission of the Status of Women currently in session in Vienna. At this session, Canada has pressed for concerted action to address the priority issues of violence against women, education, the environment, and population.
Last October, I had the honour of chairing the meeting of Commonwealth Women's Affairs Ministers here in Ottawa. This meeting provided our Commonwealth friends with an opportunity to exchange views and share in a vision of a world in which gender equality is the norm and not the exception.
Here in Canada, I have met with more than 130 women's groups and many more women individually over the past year to learn first-hand about the issues that concern them. A meeting with representatives of women's centres last year confirmed my belief of the vital role that these centres play in Canadian women's lives.
I was delighted to join with the Secretary of State in January in announcing the continuation of funding for these centres on an ongoing basis.

Mr. Speaker, much progress has been made since the early years of this century, but although barriers to full participation by women in society have been eliminated, discriminatory attitudes, values and behaviour still exist. However, when the Canadian government started its first term, it made a commitment to gradually eliminate these societal problems and has acted accordingly.

Collaborative action among government and non-government sectors has resulted in many substantial gains for women in the past 12 months.
Among these key achievements are the increased parental benefits under the unemployment insurance program. The decision by the Supreme Court of Canada that recognized the battered wife syndrome is a justifiable defence. The initiative taken by the Canadian
Judicial Centre to establish an education program for judges on the subject of gender equality, and the announcement of the closure of the Kingston Prison for Women and its replacement with five regional facilities, including a healing lodge for aboriginal women.
Most significantly the government's renewed family violence initiative provided $136 million to the prevention, education and support for projects to counter violence against women and children, representing more than twice the level of funding committed since 1986.
As well, a parliamentary subcommittee is currently examining these issues as they relate to violence against women and the government's role in dealing with this problem.
Canadian women have much to celebrate, but we also must recognize the challenges they have had. Violence against women must continue to be a major priority. Women must be actively involved in decisions regarding the future shape of Canada and national unity. Women must play an important role in international affairs, bringing their perspective to achieve lasting peace and ensuring women's equality around the world.
Our government is fully committed to promoting the rights of women in Canada. We are committed to creating conditions that will enable women to achieve full and equal participation in our society. We are committed to being active members in a strong, dynamic and productive partnership with women to achieve these goals.


Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking the minister for her comments. I am aware of her interest and her commitment. Indeed it has been shown in the time that she has held this portfolio. But I fear that the actions of this government do not reflect a similar commitment on the part of cabinet, the Prime Minister, and the Minister of Finance.
While I do not deny that we have made strides, particularly over the last 20 years, I am afraid it is somewhat like saying: "Well, at least we are still not wearing slave collars".
The unfortunate truth is that in the six and a half years since this government has taken office, the economic status of women has not improved. Indeed, over six and a half years the economic picture has at best remained static and, if it has remained static in the face of increases in the cost of living and in other matters, then
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we know that the lot of women is worse than it was in 1984.
Women, if we count in professional women-and this is a small percentage-still make 64 cents for every dollar that men make. If we remove professional women from this equation, women make 50 cents for every dollar men make, and this is the vast majority of working women. These statistics have basically remained unchanged since the 1940s.
We know that women are still locked into low paying, pink collar ghetto jobs. They still face systemic discrimination, sexual harassment, glass ceilings, and an over-all attitude that tends to trivialize the work that women do, even when it is paid. When it is unpaid as in the home and in the volunteer sector, it is virtually ignored.
Women work in conditions that most men would not put up with. Like it or not, immigrant women in this country are still left to the mercy of exploiting employers and virtual slave wages. They are locked into a situation that they cannot escape because of a lack of access to English and French as second language training.
It is a sad fact but the ambitions of the average 18-year old man with a high school education can and will be realized, whereas the ambitions of a 20-year old woman with a university degree will put her into a lower salary scale than that young man with only a high school education.
We sit in a country today where one million children go without pre-school and after school care. Latchkey children are one of the disgraces of our society. Six years ago Judge Rosalie Abella in her royal commission report on employment equity said that child care was the bridge to employment equity.
That is no less true, indeed it is more true today than it was six years ago. Still we wait and the women and children of Canada wait for a meaningful national child care program that will bring us accessibility and quality child care across this country.
Over all hangs the spectre of violence against women, of injury and of death. In my own province of Nova Scotia, a small little province where we think of our-
Routine Proceedings
selves as fairly civilized as opposed to the rest of the people in the flesh-pots of central Canada-


An hon. member:: That is sexist.


Mary Catherine Clancy: I am not being sexist; I am being geogra-phicalist.
To return to a much more serious point, in Nova Scotia where we tend to think of ourselves as more civilized, we have been proven wrong in this past year because six women have been brutally murdered in the Province of Nova Scotia in the past year. Just last week, the body of a 17-year old girl was found in a garbage dumpster, brutally murdered, in my own metropolitan area of Halifax-Dartmouth. And the statistics go on and on.

Daily life is very difficult for some women in this country. They get no help from the government. They deserve a lot more, and they deserve to get it now.

We need in this country action today. We need a royal commission on violence against women. We need to shine the light in the dark comers to prevent more women and their children being brutalized and killed. We all sat back in horror at the events in Montreal of a year ago last December. But in that same year, 119 women died at the hands of men in this country, and nobody thought to mention those statistics.
In 1970, a royal commission was called on the status of women. It was the catalyst for the women's movement and those very real improvements over the last 20 years, which the minister mentioned in her statement. The time has come to do it again, to look at the problem that is the most crucial, the most urgent, for all of us in our society-the question violence.
I ask this so that those victims in 10 years' time will not have increased and we will not still be crying in the wilderness.


Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster-Burnaby):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be in the House today and to respond to the minister's statement on the eve of International Women's Day. As the minister said and as the spokesperson for the Liberal Party in the House said, women today do have a number of things to celebrate.

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Routine Proceedings
We can celebrate the defeat of this government's bill to recriminalize abortion for women in this country; we can celebrate the end of war in the Persian Gulf; and we can celebrate the reinstatement of funding that this government cut to women's centres. These were all defeats, reversals or terminations of government policy.
The Minister responsible for the Status of Women often speaks of partnerships. Her government is creating a partnership between women in this country and poverty. In the middle of a recession it has extended the spending limits on social assistance. It has created a GST, a goods and services tax, an additional tax that no one can afford, least of all single women and lower income women. It has cut spending for health and for education services in our country.
Single mothers and other poor families will find it even more difficult now to feed and clothe their children as a direct result of this government's policies.
The Tories turn their backs on women victims of violence by underfunding programs; by limiting the Canada Assistance Plan, which funds shelters for battered women; by refusing to move on mandatory equality training for judges in a criminal justice system; by allowing violence pornography to continue in our society; by limiting economic options for women; and by cutting affordable housing.
They are adding to the hardships of victims of violence and the hardships of women in our society. They are in fact a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.
By continuing to stall on the enactment of a clause in the Canadian Human Rights Act barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, they are further discriminating against a particular sector of women and men in our society.
The Tories are in partnership with employers who in fact exploit immigrant women in our society. They continue to refuse to give immigrant women the same access to language training that is given to male immigrants.
The government has shelved its own gun control legislation. The government is not in partnership with women who are shot and killed with guns that have been
legally obtained, and with ammunition that has been legally obtained. It is not in partnership with the families of these victims of violence.
The Tories are not in partnership with families who have a desperate need for child care and in fact have been promised a child care program in two successive elections, in many speeches by government members on that side of the House. We still have no child care program in Canada.
The government is not in partnership with aboriginal women, aboriginal women who are still tied up in the bureaucracy with Bill C-31.
The Tories are not in partnership with older women living in poverty, unable to have access to their pensions because discrimination still exists in federal pension legislation. In fact, the Conservative government is not in partnership with women at all in this country.
I read the minister's press release. It made me angiy, Mr. Speaker, because she talked about moving together towards equality; equality with women's groups whose funding has been cut; with education, which has also been cut; with all levels of government which are choked by federal cuts in transfer payments; with labour, which it has tried to destroy and continues to try; with concerned citizens to whom it never appears to listen. The minister also talked of many challenges to come, and I have listed many of them in my speech today.
If the government does not have the political will to call for a royal commission on violence against women- we must have a royal commission; the reasons are clear-then step aside and allow Audrey McLaughlin and the New Democratic Party to form a real partnership with the women of this country to work towards economic and social justice in our society.



BILL C-98 REFERENCE TO STANDING COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE

['I wish to inform the House that because of the ministerial statement, Government Orders will be extended by 17 minutes during the lunch hour.']
Mr. Murray Cardiff (Parliamentary Secretary to Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Privy Council and Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, I have a motion that I would like to move. I have discussed it
March 7, 1991

with the other two parties, and I am sure you will find consent.
I move:
That Bill C-98, an act authorizing agreements between the Government of Canada and the provinces to provide for protection for the income of producers of agricultural products and to enable the Government of Canada to take additional measures for that purpose, not be referred to a legislative committee but be referred to the Standing Committee on Agriculture.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Hon. Ralph Ferguson (Lambton-Middlesex):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present more petitions signed by constituents of my region of southwestern Ontario to add to the 4,000 names already tabled in the House.
These constituents are upset the government is dragging its heels on the use of alternative fuels. They are upset no incentives were contained in the budget last week which encourage the use of ethanol blended fuels that have been labelled as being environmentally friendly-
Rather it continues to allow the use of MMT in Canada, a substance which has been banned in the United States since 1978. Increasing evidence points out that MMT may be a worse health hazard than was the lead it replaced.
These people want action now, because this insidious substance accumulates in the body. It is irresponsible to wait.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions to present this morning on behalf of the great citizens of Kamloops.
One is a take-off on the old water torture technique. The petitioners are still calling on the government to withdraw the goods and services tax. I guess they feel if they keep raising this matter, eventually it will actually happen. They are calling upon the government to reconsider the GST.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, another petition, again on behalf of a number of people from
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Kamloops, points out again the way the federal government has approached the massive cuts to VIA Rail.
The petitioners are simply making a case of why it would be a good idea, for passenger transportation and also for environmental reasons, to reinstate VIA as a first class rail transport system for passengers.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, the petitioners, not only from Kamloops but other British Columbia centres, point out that whereas progress towards true equality for Canadian women continues to be slow in that equal pay for work of equal value is required by law under the Canadian Human Rights Act, they humbly pray and call upon Parliament to implement the results of the equal pay study to end wage discrimination in the federal public service.
Coming on the eve of International Women's Day, certainly this is something we are urging the government to consider with haste.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Mr. Felix Holtmann (Portage-Interlake):: Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I wish to inform the House that because of the ministerial statement, Government Orders will be extended by 17 minutes during the lunch hour.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Privy Council and Minister of Agriculture) moved: that Bill C-98, an act authorizing agreements between the Government of Canada and the provinces to provide for protection for the income of producers of agricultural products and to enable the Government of Canada to take additional measures for

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that purpose be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Agriculture.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to present to the House today Bill C-98 for consideration.
Bill C-98 is an act to provide for enabling legislation to allow provinces and the federal government to engage in the development of programs necessary to support and stabilize agricultural farm income. The short title of the bill is the Farm Income Protection Act.
This enabling legislation will go some distance in providing long-term stability to the agricultural industry. What is significant is that it is the first concrete result in one of the most comprehensive reviews of agricultural policy ever undertaken in this country. It will provide a new system of safety nets for Canadian farmers which will deliver programs and assistance equitably to farmers in all regions of the country. At the same time it will encourage sound farming and business practices, thus ensuring there is a clear response to the market signals of not only the country but, indeed, of the world.
It is important to note in that connection that the principles enshrined in section 4 clearly outline the basis on which agreements with the provinces can be negotiated. It is very important to consider the four principles.
Any agreements which are negotiated must be production or market neutral; second, they must take into account the regional diversity of this country; third, they must be sensitive and compatible to international obligations; and, finally, they must provide and encourage environmental and economic sustainability.
This enabling legislation will provide for the following programs: Gross Revenue Insurance Plan; the Net Income Stabilization Account; the Crop Insurance Program and Revenue Insurance Program; as well as the provision for the establishment of special measures.
This new legislation is built upon the provisions of the existing Crop Insurance Act and that part of the Agricultural Stabilization Act which deals with tripartite price stabilization. With the passage of this bill, the Crop Insurance Act, the Western Grain Stabilization Act and the Agricultural Stabilization Act will be repealed and all
agricultural products will be protected under this one comprehensive act.
Farmers will be able to choose crop insurance, revenue insurance, or both. They will also be able to set aside money in the NISA accounts which the governments will match.
It is important to point out, Mr. Speaker, that the two programs are clearly compatible and complementary with each other. If we are to have long-term stability, confidence and security for the future, it is important that both the GRIP concept-namely, the Gross Revenue Insurance Plan-and the Net Income Stabilization Account be implemented together.
I will have a little more to say about that. As it now stands, the Gross Revenue Insurance Plan will provide assistance to producers in the short to medium-term. There is some less degree of urgency in terms of the implementation of the NISA concept. I think if we were to consider the deliberations of the task force that designed these programs they outline the importance of having the two programs working hand in hand.
What is really significant about the legislation that we are introducing today, Mr. Speaker, is the way in which this legislation has been developed. It clearly outlines a first in the development of public policy, and in this case agricultural policy. It is fair to say that this program through the means of this legislation was designed from the ground up by farmers, by provinces and the federal government working together as a result of the policy review process.
This is really the product of the agriculture policy review which was launched in 1989 to take stock of where we are at, to look at our industry, to look into the future and try to implement the kinds of policy and structural changes that may be necessary to provide that kind of security and stability for the 1990s and beyond.
In the course of this we have had the support and the co-operation of many groups, many parties, including the provincial governments. Both federal and provincial governments called for this policy review at the regular meeting of the federal and provincial ministers which was held in Prince Albert in August of 1989. That became the turning point in our attempts to lay a new foundation for a solid, responsive, competitive, diverse
March 7, 1991

and vibrant agricultural industry. It is an important milestone. It is a new approach and it is a comprehensive approach. I hope that as a result of this more comprehensive approach in dealing with the problems of agriculture, we can establish long-term policies and rely to a lesser degree on ad hoc policies.
Colleagues will know that in November 1989 we published the discussion paper Growing Together to set out the course of this review. Literally everyone who had a stake in agriculture became a part of that review process. Growing Together is based upon four pillars: more market responsiveness, greater self-reliance within the agrifood sector, a national policy which recognizes the regional diversity of this country, and increased environmental sustainability.
In December 1989 Agriculture Canada hosted a huge national agrifood policy conference where just under 2,000 delegates from all across the country, reflecting both levels of government and the industry, and all of those involved in the agrifood industry, to come together to talk about a number of issues. We dealt at that time with issues such as food quality and safety, supply management systems, farm finance and management, marketing and trade development, transportation, sustainable agriculture and safety nets.
Following this conference, 11 task forces were established to examine in detail various aspects of agrifood policy. Because of the very serious problems facing the grains and oilseeds sector at that time, it was decided that the committee studying safety nets would be put on the fast track in anticipation of developing a safety net mechanism that would serve the grains and oilseeds but would also be applicable to other commodities.
The federal-provincial industry committee, which I referred to, was formed in January 1990. In May 1990 it presented its preliminary report, which recommended the dual concept of the Gross Revenue Insurance Plan and the Net Income Stabilization Account. I should say that this task force committee reported on a regular basis to the federal and provincial ministers of agriculture. They brought forward their progress reports along with their recommendations. We considered those at that time and gave the recommendations our particular blessing and encouraged them to continue.
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They worked on this and a second report was presented in August 1990. Again, the federal and provincial ministers examined the work and the recommendation. In November, when meeting in Winnipeg, we agreed to the principles of the two new programs and attempted at that time to set in place the motions and the mechanisms to implement these two programs.
I want to take this opportunity to express on behalf of not only the federal government, but I am sure provincial governments as well, and I am sure many farmers, to thank all of those who participated in this exercise. They gave of their time and their talents at considerable expense and inconvenience to themselves to come together in an attempt to devise a program that would not only serve the short-term and medium-term problems, but hopefully to provide a policy framework that would allow us to strengthen our industry and provide some predictability and some stability for the future.
It is important to remember that this committee was comprised of some 33 members. They were not bureaucrats working in isolation. They were not politicians working in isolation. The exercise was open. It was transparent. Of the 33 members of this committee, 19 of them were farmers, along with eight provincial and six federal government officials.
The committee studied eight different proposals before it came up with this recommendation. These proposals and various ideas and thoughts were advanced by industry organizations, by academics, by governments, so what we really have here is a bit of a compromise, because in that sort of an environment there is a fair amount of give and take. But I think what we have here is a consensus that reflects to a large extent a program which producers really want.
I think it is fair to say that we have here a program that was designed from the ground up by fanners. The provinces and the federal government worked with them in the development of this initiative, and I am very pleased about the way in which it has developed. The process, as I said, was transparent. All approaches and ideas were considered and again I say, as I have said on so many other occasions, I do believe that this reflects a unique approach to public policy-making in this country, and I think together we have designed a landmark

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program which should minimize the need for ad hoc assistance.
If this program does work-and I think it will-I think we will clearly establish and demonstrate that in an era of co-operation we can bring diverse points of view together and we can come together as a very diverse nation to develop a policy that is national in scope but that at the same time, takes account of the regional strengths and the regional diversities of this great land.
We have tried to work toward the development of a national agrifood policy. It was started by my predecessor when the national agricultural strategy was first announced, and since that time we have tried to build upon the principles that were agreed to by the federal and provincial governments.
Since I have been Minister of Agriculture, I have had eight different formal meetings with my counterparts, the provincial ministers of agriculture. We have had many, many bilateral meetings with individual ministers and groups of ministers. When you couple that with the tremendous number of meetings that we have with farm organizations, commodity groups and individual farmers, it clearly has opened up the process. I think we have an environment and a mood out there, while we are facing some very serious difficulties. I do not think that we approached the problem with the idea that any one group, any one political party or any one political administration or government has all the right answers, has all the perfect solutions.
We are trying to labour together in looking at the problems and examining what we are doing and trying to determine what we can do better, in an attempt to provide a better future for Canadian agriculture.
The new safety net will deliver assistance equitably to farmers in all regions while at the same time encouraging good management practices based upon long-term market trends. The two components of this new safety net, as I have said before, the gross revenue insurance plan and the net income stabilization account will give farmers the kind of program they really need for the long term and the kind of program that they, the farmers, have been asking for.
It is quite obvious as we have gone through the last four or five years that the existing safety net and
stabilization programs that we have had in place were inadequate to deal with the very serious difficulties that we have faced in agriculture. Hence, we were required to come up from time to time with various ad hoc programs which had to be designed to meet a certain problem that occurred, a problem that was not covered by the existing legislation or programs that we have had in place.
Indeed, the federal government, under the leadership of our Prime Minister over the past few years has provided unprecedented assistance to our farmers. This kind of assistance was designed to meet a specific need. But whenever you design a program after the fact, there are always inequities. First of all, these kinds of programs are not easy to design, not easy to administer and not easy to distribute effectively and equitably.
We have had to do this and I think that all farmers, governments and literally everyone involved in agriculture, wanted us to look at ways and means of providing a more stable future, improved programs that would allow farmers to plan on the basis of their market intelligence, their managerial expertise, plus the known support that would be there under the government programs. The various programs we have had to come up with have covered an array of situations. For example, the Special Canadian Grains Program, the Canadian Crop Drought Assistance Program, the Special Income Assistance Program, the Cash Flow Enhancement Program, the Livestock Drought Program. We have had programs for grasshoppers. We have had programs for floods. We have had programs for the fruit industry.
We have gone through a period, and I know colleagues will share this with me, that in many respects, has been worse than the dirty thirties in terms of drought conditions and in terms of price.
Just today, we are working out an eradication and a compensation program for the potato industry, particularly, in the province of Prince Edward Island, which has been devastated by a virus that has affected that industry. We have learned very, very quickly in dealing with this process, if wheat is important to Saskatchewan, potatoes are as important to the province of Prince Edward Island. We recognize that and we are dealing with it, again in a co-operative fashion.

Yes, there has been some political grandstanding and some political finger pointing. The fact of the matter is that the job we must do is rid ourselves of the virus, eradicate it and get on with the job of restoring normal production and normal trading patterns, and that is precisely what we are doing.
In the budget of last week, an additional $1.3 billion of new money has been set aside for producers in difficulty. I think this demonstrates another clear example of this government's commitment to the agriculture industry and, particularly, to the farmers.
The long-term programs like the Western Grain Stabilization and Agricultural Stabilization Act, which have been in place for some time, while they have provided some stability and some support for our producers, obviously were unable to deal with the catastrophic and prolonged situation that our industry faced in the last half of the 1980s and the early 1990s.
The Western Grain Stabilization Act was established in 1976 to provide income stability for grain farmers in western Canada. The program was created to counteract the wide swings in cash receipts that are an all too important feature of the grains and oilseeds sector. The fluctuations in cash flow can have a serious effect, as we all know, on a prairie economy, and particularly on the grains and oilseeds sector. So, it is important to have these kinds of mechanisms in place.
What the Western Grain Stabilization Act provides to the grains and oilseeds sector, the Agricultural Stabilization Act does for producers of a wide variety of commodities outside those grains produced under the aegis of the Canadian Wheat Board. And while, as I said, these programs have provided valuable support to farmers across the country, they have been unable to cushion farmers against the low international prices and reduced yields of the 1980s.
What is more disturbing about it is that we are not precisely sure how long this condition will continue. So, it is important for us to look at this, not only in the immediate term, but in the long term.
As we know, the first indication of the problems we now face emerged in 1985 when the European Community and the United States began a struggle over their respective market shares of the world grain and oilseeds market. They fought their battle in the marketplace with the backing of their treasuries and Canada and other
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mid-sized grain exporters watched as grain prices tumbled. We are the victims of the $245 billion a year subsidy war that is going on right now, as I speak.
The price of wheat dropped from $222 a tonne in 1980-81 to $120 a tonne in 1986-87. This downward price spiral was reflected in the Canadian Wheat Board initial prices for the 1986-87 crop year. It was clear that the excessive use of trade distorting export subsidies by the European Community and retaliation by the United States would translate into a major loss of income for our grains and oilseeds producer, a loss which went well beyond the scope of the WGSA and the ASA programs.
So, we were faced with responding to these concerns. We got together with farm groups to see what could be done. We analysed the scope of the problem and determined that producers would need a billion dollars in support from them for the effects of falling prices. In October 1986, the Prime Minister made a commitment to provide that kind of support.
This was duplicated through the special Canadian Grains Program wherein another $1.1 billion was committed in the following year.
In 1988, prices strengthened somewhat so there was no need for another special grains program. However, that spring in many parts of the country, including the prairies, parts of southern Ontario and Quebec, suffered a very severe drought which devastated yields.
Again, farmers faced financial difficulty and again the federal government stepped in. In November 1988, after a thorough examination of the extent of the losses, we announced the $850 million Canadian Crop Drought Assistance Program.
The amounts of moneys that have been provided by the federal government in support of agriculture between the periods 1985 to 1989 total just under $22 billion, and almost $12 billion provided to the grains and oilseeds producers.
Now the need for help to the farm sector continues today. International grains and oilseeds prices are down and our Canadian producers are suffering. This again is largely because of the continuation of the trade war between the United States and the European Community.

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I wish to give some idea of the magnitude, which I am sure most colleagues in this House who follow agriculture are very much aware of, but it is important to state it for the record. For example, the European Community wheat export rebates went from $44 a tonne in July 1989 to $116 in July 1990 and reached approximately $200 a tonne in January 1991. In the same period, United States export enhancement bonuses went from an average of just under $19 a tonne in 1989 to $28 a tonne in 1990, and we now have topped the $50 mark, $50 to $55 a tonne.
Last year the European Community spent $4.3 billion in export subsidies on cereals, and last month the U.S. administration asked Congress to increase its cap on the Export Enhancement Program from $425 million U.S. to $900 million. We now have wheat selling in the neighbourhood of $100 a tonne, although there was some encouraging news last week that wheat prices have strengthened somewhat and let us hope that that trend continues.
Last year this government implemented two new programs to help farmers cope with this situation. Last March we announced a $500 million special assistance program and this was in response to the problems stemming from the international situation, successive years of drought, lingering debt load and high input costs.
We also at that time indicated our intention to continue to continue and expand the Canadian Rural Transition Program which has provided assistance to some 3,500 farmers. We enhanced the Farm Debt Review Board process which has provided assistance to some 11,000 farmers and we brought in place an Equity Leasing Program which, heretofore, has assisted some 400 to 500 producers in re-establishing themselves on the farm.
In October of last year, after we witnessed the second largest crop in the history of Canada, some 60 million tonnes, we announced, with obviously a clogged system and deliveries not running up to par, a cash flow enhancement program to provide interest rate relief to farmers for their unsold crops. This program will provide some $1.5 billion of interest-free cash to the farm economy. It will cost the federal government somewhere in the order of $100 million.
In dealing with the problems and the response, and the uncertainty about what kind of program and when a program would be designed to meet a specific condition, farmers continue to ask for predictable safety-net programs, that would provide equity to producers in all regions of the country. They also ask for programs that would help them manage their farms on their own and they wanted us to deal with this issue on an individual whole-farm approach. In other words, they wanted a safety net program brought in that could be used as a management and financial tool.
I think that the programs that we are trying to legislate today will help meet these needs.
The Gross Revenue Insurance Program will provide farmers with revenue protection. It builds upon conventional crop insurance by offering farmers price support as well as yield protection. For the 1991-1992 crop year GRIP will deliver similar benefits across the country although there very well may be some differences in program design from province to province. We have allowed for that flexibility to gain some experience and to try to adapt as close as possible without undermining the integrity of the principles. We tried to ensure that there would be similarity yet sufficient flexibility to address the unique characteristics of the industry in each specific province.
In under-current market conditions we expect that GRIP will trigger a pay-out something in the order of $2.7 billion for the 1991-92 crop year.
Fanners will be able to buy this price protection through crop insurance. They will continue to be able to buy their yield protection through crop insurance and price protection through the revenue insurance program.
I might add that the crop insurance program is working very well because this House had the opportunity of improving the crop insurance legislation which was passed last year.
Nothing will really change in the manner of how farmers sign up. They will go in and still continue to buy their crop insurance as they have done in other years but they will have an added feature which will be the revenue protection component and by enrolling in both crop insurance and the new revenue insurance plan fanners will guarantee their income per acre for each crop seeded.
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Crop insurance premiums will continue to be shared 50 per cent by producers and 25 per cent by each of the federal and provincial governments.
With respect to the revenue insurance program, farmers will pay one-third of the revenue insurance premium. The province will pay 25 per cent and the federal government will pay the remaining 41 and two-thirds per cent.
The advantage of GRIP is that the farmers will be able to calculate their guaranteed total returns early in the spring and this is a bankable commodity. They will be able to take it to their lenders and assist them in making their credit arrangements for this year. This indeed was borne out by the chairman of the Royal Bank, Allan Thylor, who said: "From a lender's standpoint, it's a very positive move-.When your clients have that sort of protection against a crop-a guaranteed price-you've got something much better to work with than the risk-taking that goes without that sort of protection".
There again even without this bill being passed we have sent out a very positive signal to the lenders on whom producers rely and I think that is a good signal.
In addition GRIP offers predictable equitable support across all commodities and regions, and it provides coverage for farm-fed grain-something that the Western Grain Stabilization Act and the Agricultural Stabilization Act have never done.
The program targets assistance to the individual and is therefore a more efficient way, we believe, of providing assistance, and support is based on long-term market trends which encourage sound management decisions.
If there is anything that we could say in reviewing some of the programs that we have tried to design as best we could I think we would find that under this program the assistance will be targeted more specifically to the areas of need.
It will be much more cost effective in providing the kind of support that the producing community will need.
We expect the Gross Revenue Insurance Plan to go into deficit for the first few years of operation but, as in any insurance program, there will be times both of surplus and deficit. But, one of the objectives of the task force was to design a program that was actuarially sound.
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Provinces have been cognizant of that, we have been cognizant of that, and the producers have been cognizant of that.
When we are looking at this program over the long term we expect it to be actuarially sound. Obviously, over a five-year period that would not be the case, but we are in this for the long haul and will continue to add refinements and improvements as the experience gained from the program would dictate that we should do.
NISA, the Net Income Stabilization Account, would let farmers set aside money in individual accounts with matching contributions from the federal and provincial governments. Farmers can take money out of their individual accounts when their margins fall below the level of the previous five years or when taxable income falls below $10,000. For the 1990 tax year the program is likely to trigger withdrawals of about $225 million, again aimed at those farmers who need it most.
That may be an over optimistic figure because, as I said earlier, I am somewhat disappointed that more provinces have not come on board the NISA program. That is not to say they have rejected it. They are considering it very seriously and I think we will have a fairly comprehensive coverage of the NISA program for the next year.
These programs which we are implementing here today, the GRIP and NISA concept, while it is applied specifically today to the grains and oilseeds, can be expanded to other programs. In fact, there is keen interest in the horticultural sector. We are engaged at this very moment in discussing how to bring the horticultural sector into the GRIP and NISA program.
We recognize that there are some concerns about the program, about its design and how it will influence farmers' decisions. But, this program is not an insurance policy to ensure against bad management decisions. It is really designed to reflect a producer's individual performance and we think that is good. If a farmer grows crops that are not suited to his region or suited to his capabilities, his coverage through crop insurance will be reduced and his premiums will increase over time.
We certainly have our share of critics, some genuine, some armchair. Some say it is too rich. Some say the program is not rich enough. I note that the cattlemen say they are going to choke on GRIP. I find that strange

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because they have been involved in the development of the program. I think it is fair to say that we have tried to cure the grains and oilseeds problem and not transfer it to the livestock sector. In the livestock sector, the Red Meat Tripartite Stabilization Program is one that is in existence, and I think it has been well accepted.
We have received other criticisms that suggest the program is not market neutral, that it masks markets signals. Economists, and this I find rather interesting, have lashed out at the program in the last couple of weeks. The development of this program has been under consideration for the last 12 months and we have invited literally everyone to come forth with their ideas and their suggestions. The economists are saying that this program is going to destroy our soil. They say it might destroy incentive. They say that farmers are going to farm the program.
It is something to make those allegations and not really substantiate them.
We are going to have our share of critics, particularly arm-chair quarterbacks. When it comes to examining those criticisms as against the opinion of producers, those of us who are interested in preserving the welfare of and creating a better climate for our agricultural industry will have a tendency to listen to our producers rather than economists. I have nothing against economists; we need them as well.
It is fair to criticize this program in a constructive way, but it would be kind of nice, if one has that criticism, to come up with some positive alternatives and constructive proposals which will help improve.
We claim no ownership of this particular policy. It is certainly under our name. It is one that was designed co-operatively. It was designed by producers themselves, with the support of this government and the support of other provincial governments. It is a program that has been designed to meet a specific need and to build a stronger future for Canadian agriculture.
There are always some simplistic approaches. I notice that the president of the National Farmers Union took exception to the program and said that we should really join it because it is the only thing we have, but he said
that it does not meet the need because "we need a policy which pays producers at the farm gate".
I only say to him welcome. He should get engaged in the wonderful world of reality. Those of us who have been close to the agriculture scene know that you do not have somebody come knocking on your gate to seek out an agricultural product that you produce. You have to produce a product that is wholesome, nutritious, in demand, and is sold at the right price. We live in a day and age where the consumer is the king.
While I mentioned some negative comments, there have also been some very positive comments from various quarters: The Globe and Mail headline, "Farmers' new safety net will offer much-needed security"; Western Producer, "Safety nets pull farm income up from disaster"; another headline, "GRIP 'exactly what lenders need'"; the Saskatoon Phoenix and the Kindersley Clarion, "Farmers like new programs"; Kindersley Clarion, "New farm 'Safety Net' programs get good reception", "New farm aid worth up to $3 billion", "GRIP should be good for everyone"; from letters to the editor, "Farm safety nets worth $1 billion", "Safety net meeting draws large crowd", "GRIP offers better protection", "Farm program is better than expected", "Safety net to provide stable effective coverage", "It's tough, but programs will help"; the Alberta Wheat Pool Budget, "Pool pleased with safety net deal"; The Leader Post of Regina, "No longer must Prairie farmers nurture without a net"; the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, "Farm aid welcome in West"; and I could go on.
I guess it is balanced. I am sure that members of the House will have some views on it, but I do not think this bill comes as a surprise because the program is not a surprise. It has been developed and it has evolved in a clearly transparent fashion.
The program is not perfect. It is laced with all the human frailties that each and every one of us has, but it is an attempt in a very broad way to try to wrestle with a very difficult problem. I think it is also fair to say that even with this mechanism in place farmers will have the primary responsibility of managing their own risk and using their own talents and their own judgment calls. This is what we refer to as the first line of defence.
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Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.
Safety net programs that this legislation will allow us to design is the second line of defence which will provide that stabilization, some security and predictability for the future.
On occasions, there will be the necessity of a third line of defence. That is something that we are addressing right now. That is why we have announced the creation of the third line defence committee. The first task of this committee will be to examine the third line defence options, which will provide a bridge and a transition to the new safety net program and allow us to adjust it to the longer term realities of our industry.
They will be looking at debt problems, diversification and adjustment. We will also be looking at options and ways in which we can use the scarce resources in the most effective way possible.
I should say that this bill also provides for the establishment of a special measures committee. It establishes the criteria under which the third line defence programs will be designed, again to try to put some order, some principles and criteria into the system.
Mr. Speaker, I know that my time has expired. I simply want to present this legislation to the House today for colleagues' consideration in the open fashion in which it was developed and in which I tried to present it.
Given the circumstances and the need for this kind of framework legislation, I hope we can proceed with it as quickly as we possibly can. It is expected out there by the producers. It is an important first. It is a program design that has taken place within the open public policy domain, one that I believe can provide a greater security for the future, one that I believe will provide confidence for the future, and one that will restore the kind of vibrant industry that we know our agricultural industry to be.
Going through this period of difficulty, a legislative measure like this one can provide hope for our young farmers. It can also provide the kind of stability and confidence those who have had some very difficult times in the last four or five years will welcome. It will provide something firm and predictable. When they decide to plant their crops for this year, they will have this mechanism at their disposal to assist and guide them in making those very difficult decisions.


Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to Bill C-98, the Farm Income Protection Act, which the minister has outlined before the House today.
This bill provides for the most massive farm support programs, GRIP and NISA, which have ever been proposed to Canadian farmers. Obviously the government has very skilfully managed this program, putting it before Canadian farmers in such a way that the legislation before the House today provides a framework for the federal government to make agreements with the provinces and with producers.
This legislation does not spell out what the premiums will be for producers who want to make a contribution and participate in the program. It does not say what the benefits will be. In some ways, that is the program that farmers have before them. They know the general outline, but they do not know specifically the premiums they will pay or the benefits they will receive, even though the program is well down the road toward contributions.
Clearly GRIP and NISA have a number of aspects about it which are very appealing. The pay-outs are made, for instance, on farm fed grains. There is no requirement to sell grain within a particular crop year to be eligible for a payment. The range of eligible crops compared to the western grain stabilization fund has been expanded and the pay-outs are predictable. The period over which the estimates are being made have been expanded from five years to fifteen years.
For many producers in western Canada there is a great deal of uncertainty because of the massive sales program which has been taking place this winter. Really, the sizzle is being sold but the actual details are not there. When this bill is being studied in the committee stage, technically we will not have the details of GRIP or NISA program before us even there because we are talking about just a framework legislation for signing agreements.
There is no provision in this legislation, for instance, for the GRIP and NISA agreements, which are being put together between the provincial governments that want to participate, to come before the House for members of Parliament to debate or amend them. It is kind of an executive federalism where a deal is put together between the Prime Minister or the Minister of Agriculture

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and the premiers, but not by members of the House themselves.
Clearly the need is tremendous. The government during the last three years has reduced government support programs by $1.8 billion. The minister spoke about the payments which were made in 1987 and 1988-and they were promised in 1988-of $1 billion, $1.8 billion, $1.1 billion, and $850 million. Clearly those payments were needed then, but they were needed this year too. They were needed last year. Yet there were massive cutbacks: $500 million in 1989 budget. There was no special grains program this crop year or last year.
If we look at the government's own estimates of support programs, we see a decline from the 1988 to 1991 estimates involving a reduction of $1.8 billion, even though in this crop year grain prices are clearly the lowest in history. Sales of wheat of less than $100 in real terms are clearly the lowest in history.
In the budget estimates last week which the Minister of Finance brought down, he suggested there was going to be $1.3 billion. The prairie pools and farm groups have suggested that there should be a deficiency payment of at least $1 billion, perhaps even $1.3 billion.
Even the minister's own advisory committee has estimated that in this crop year there needs to be a deficiency payment of that magnitude. Yet, when the budget announcement was made, it is not clear exactly what that $1.3 billion will be used for. It is suggested in the minister's press release that it may be used for the Canadian Wheat Board shortfall. That has been variously estimated at $750 million to $1 billion. It might be used for the federal government premiums in the GRIP and NISA programs. It might be used for a deficiency payment this year. Clearly, his own advisory group is telling him that there is a need, as a straight deficiency payment of that amount. So, it is obviously being kept in reserve in case it is needed. If there is a provincial election in Saskatchewan, there can be a deficiency payment made there.
There is a concern that politics is almost as important here to the government as a long-term stable support program for Canadian agriculture. That is what concerns western agricultural producers and to some extent, in other areas of the country as well, that we are really
dealing so much with a sizzle here, that we have to be careful that we do not create a program that is not nearly as workable as it should be.
For instance, the minister has outlined the criticisms of the program by agricultural economists and other groups. But I think we would have felt better if he had gone into some detail as to what mechanisms there were in the program. We are not dealing with that program here, we are dealing with enabling legislation. But clearly, this enabling legislation provides for those agreements. Those are the kinds of questions that everybody wants to see answered.
There is a great concern as well, that this legislation essentially is an off-loading kind of legislation. We have seen that the government's support programs have dropped by $1.8 billion during the last three years. This bill seems to move from programs like the Special Grains Program, like the ASA, like the drought assistance, which essentially were totally funded by the federal government, or in the case of Western Grain Stabilization Fund, 60 per cent by the federal government, to off-load onto the provinces and the producers.
Many people in Saskatchewan wonder, for instance, whether a program that is going to cost the producers and the provincial government something like 60 or 65 per cent by those groups, whether payments of $400, $500 or $600 million a year in that province can be sustained, when programs in the past were substantially funded by the federal government. Many people make the argument that if the low prices are due to international grain wars, then the federal government has a responsibility to fund a great deal, just as they have in the past under the Special Grains Program or as the United States government does under its program. Whereas, under this GRIP and NISA program, there is essentially something like 60 per cent or 65 per cent being funded by the producers and the provincial governments.
That calls into question whether this will really be a national program. Under ASA and the Western Grain Stabilization Fund, between those two programs, there was a so-called national arrangement for support. It is not to say that those programs are adequate. Clearly, the Western Grain Stabilization Fund to fight a grain war, an international trade war, was simply not capable of doing that.
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At the same time we wonder about the amount of the deficit in the Western Grain Stabilization Fund. It has been variously estimated at $750 million to over a billion dollars. Whether or not that is going to be rolled into the GRIP program and whether it will have to be covered and paid for by the provinces and the producers paying, essentially, 60 per cent of the costs.
Mr. Speaker, there is a great deal of uncertainty and concern. Clearly, there is a desperate need for support, and we want to see that support. Unfortunately, it is my impression that very little, if anything, will be paid out under the GRIP program in this calendar year, 1991. There could be an initial payment later this fall and there could be interim payments sometime, but the kind of massive deficiency payment which the prairie pools, the NFU, and other groups are talking about for this calendar year will not be provided by the GRIP program. In fact, there is no guarantee that any of it will be provided until the fall of 1992, which, under the GRIP program, as I understand it, that would only become due and payable. I think there is great concern as to whether this will be used as a political tool for a fall election in 1992 or used in 1993.
There is great concern and uncertainty: What is the pay-out going to be? When is it going to be made? What are the premiums going to be?
Farmers who worked on the committee, the safety nets program, were working towards a program where the premium would be about 18 per cent of the dollar coverage, with the farmer putting up 6 per cent, and a possible increase of 2 per cent, bringing it up to 8 per cent. I am told by farmers in Saskatchewan that the premium may be as high as 12.5 per cent, with an additional cost of a possible 2 per cent if the deficits are too high in the first year or so and there is provision. The farmer effectively is locked in for four years. He is locked in for the initial year when he signs up and for three additional years. The premiums which the safety net committee had talked about could be doubled from what they had initially started dealing with. So, there is great uncertainty in that regard.
Because farmers desperately need a deficiency payment for the 1990-91 crop year, I believe there is great uncertainty as to whether or not they will have to sign up for GRIP and NISA in order to be eligible for that deficiency payment. I hope that the minister will be able
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to clarify today, that farmers will not have to sign up for the GRIP program in order to be eligible for a deficiency payment in the crop year 1990-91. It is essential for the minister to clarify that particular arrangement, because it clearly would be most unfair to farmers who do not know what the premium is going to be, what the situation will turn out to be, to be forced to sign up for this to be eligible for a deficiency payment in this crop year.
Those are some of the concerns and uncertainties. Perhaps the government has answers to these questions; if they have, that will be great. We want to see support provided to farmers and we want to see it provided very soon. There has to be support in this particular crop year, with grain prices below $100 a tonne for wheat.
The minister talked about the criticisms of the bill. I wish he had taken some time to deal with those criticisms which have been made by various groups, because I think it is very important to know what mechanisms there are in the proposed GRIP program to prevent abuses such as those which have been signalled by some groups or claimed by some groups.
Section 4 of the bill sets out the need for regional diversity of agriculture, marketing signals, and sustainable agriculture, but the program is not countervailable under the existing GATT rules. It is important that the government respond to those criticisms and explain how market signals are going to be maintained. If there is anything that people do not want in the long run it is a program where farmers farm the system rather than farming, in an efficient and effective way, the land.
I have spoken, for instance, to one seed grower-a seed plant in Canada would, in a normal year, sell to one producer 8,000 pounds of canola seed to seed perhaps 1,000 acres-this year, the farmer is planning to put in all wheat. Looking at the agriculture trends you see why that would be. For instance, the pay-out per acre for red spring wheat is estimated at $44.72 a tonne, whereas for canola it is something like $19.28 a tonne.
It is important that the government explain how the system will work, with all the benefits that should be provided, without masking market signals, without having people farm the GRIP program rather than farming the land. It is essential that the government explain what mechanisms there will be in this program to prevent that, because otherwise we will have a gross distortion in

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production, we could have a gross misuse of the land, and move to a system which is not desirable.
I hope that the minister and officials will be able to explain how those market forces are going to be allowed to operate and signals maintained, how there will not be abuses with regard to sustainable agriculture, and how the revenue guarantee will not be subject to a GATT countervail.
We have had enough problems with the United States alone on pork and other commodities; we do not want a countervail on our wheat-our most important agriculture export.
Those are some of the concerns which we hope will be dealt with when we go to a committee stage of this bill and, hopefully, in the debate that takes place during the next few days.
It was interesting that when the minister spoke he provided an estimate of the amount of the benefits of $2.6 billion. The documentation put out by his own department in December showed $2.4 billion. I would be interested to know if the government could provide the changes that have taken place with regard to the amount of the benefits.
We think this is a very important bill. It sweeps away the crop insurance legislation which we spent so much time on last year and essentially just provides an arrangement for agreements with very little of the specificity that was in the previous bill that we passed only a year ago. It will be interesting because it gives a very broad range of arrangements that could take place under crop insurance, quite different from the legislation that was passed only a year ago.
The minister mentioned as well reinstating interest free cash advances. We are amazed that he fought so hard to get rid of interest free cash advances only a year ago and then five or she months later the government reinstated them with larger amounts. We are hopeful that the massive cutbacks that farmers have sustained over the last year or so will be done away with as well.
I think we need to have some arrangement in this legislation for Parliament to have an input into these agreements that are reached with provincial governments. Otherwise, we essentially have an arrangement where the House passes enabling legislation, the government puts together a program with the provinces which will provide benefits of $2.6 billion-according to the Minister of Agriculture-and the members of the House of Commons have no input into that agreement except through the umbrella arrangement-which does not get into specifics, as it did with the Western Grain Stabilization Fund. I think that is very important.
I think serious questions have been raised, both by the minister and by prairie pools and other groups, as to how the legislation will ensure environmental arrangements, market forces, and farm practices. We need to have those questions answered as well. How will the gross revenue guarantee not be subject to a countervail, especially that portion not the crop insurance.
We need to know at this stage, or very soon, what the premium is going to be. The task force that worked on this recommended a 6 per cent premium, now we are hearing estimates as high as a 12.5 per cent premium for the full GRIP program. Can farmers on a $100,000 worth of gross farm income afford a premium of $14,500? Can provincial governments sustain the massive percentage which they will be required to provide? Bearing in mind that in the Western Grain Stabilization Fund, under the previous crop insurance arrangement, under the Special Grains Program, they did not have to make a contribution.
We should not be asked, as members of Parliament, to give a blank cheque for the government to go ahead and cut any kind of a deal that is to the political advantage of individual premiers for their election campaigns. We all remember in 1986 when the premier of Saskatchewan phoned in the middle of the night the former Minister of Justice to demand that the Prime Minister make a payment of a billion dollars to ensure his election.
Surely if GRIP and NISA are ultimately enacted under the authority of this bill there are long-term ramifications. We want to know if there is just going to be a big pay-out in 1992 and 1993 when there is likely to be a federal election? Or, is there going to be an ongoing arrangement where there is going to be a benefit to farmers? I am sure the government has the facts but it certainly has not made them clear to producers or to
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members of Parliament, and under this legislation there is no provision for that. It is just a framework legislation where the government can cut any deal it wants and so there should be an arrangement where the agreements that are reached with the provinces come back to be approved by the Parliament of Canada. Otherwise the Parliament of Canada becomes almost irrelevant in this whole situation.
Under the Western Grain Stabilization fund there was a provision that it was covered by the Parliament of Canada. We made the arrangement, members of Parliament if they wished actually debated and amended the legislation, the premium arrangements, the triggering mechanisms, and the pay-out. Under this legislation there is no such provision.
We feel that this is important legislation. It requires a great deal of explanation to members. We want to see it go forward. We want answers to the the questions which we have raised, and which the minister himself has raised. We want to see what provisions there are to prevent abuses and ensure the long-term viability and benefit to Canadian farmers. We believe there should be no coercion by the minister, or by this legislation, to force farmers into GRIP and NISA arrangements in order to qualify for assistance in this crop year.
Clearly the grain industry is facing the worst possible situation. The government has chopped back support programs during the last three years by $1.8 billion-that is $1.8 billion. The world price of grain as a result of the export enhancement program and support programs by the EEC has been driven down below $100 a tonne for wheat. That whole arrangement makes the whole industry unviable without support programs. We want to see a predictable support program put in place that is going to be to the long-term benefit, that is not going to be used as a political mechanism but is going to be there to sustain and support agriculture over the long haul, of what is in my opinion our most important industry.


Mr. Vic Althouse (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, we are here today to discuss Bill C-98, a bill which integrates a number of programs in the agricultural area that have been in existence for some time. It will integrate the Western Grain Stabilization Act, the Crop Insurance
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Act, the Agricultural Stabilization Act under this new legislation.
This is a continuation of a trend we have seen in the last number of years on the parliamentary level where governments are introducing umbrella legislation that effectively asks Parliament to give them the power to do almost anything they like by executive fiat.
This legislation is no different. It follows that scheme. It allows the federal government to make deals with the provinces and with farmers, through the provinces, to come to agreements on Gross Revenue Insurance Program, a Net Income Stabilization Account, and revenue insurance programs.
In brief what is contemplated as near as we can understand is that a Gross Revenue Insurance Program will be put into place in most of the grain and oilseeds areas this spring.
This would provide certain guarantees based on a 15 year index moving average price for each of the 18 covered commodities, which would have the effect of covering wheat at something over $4 or $4.15-in that range-with the percentage of coverage varying slightly from province to province.
On the prairies, it is conceived that the program would be 70 per cent of the index moving average price for those 18 commodities times the average yield as shown in crop insurance in those three prairie provinces. When we get into other parts of the country, there are some other options open. It is possible to use a system of price setting other than the index moving average price, to do a production expenditures model which may prove useful to provinces like British Columbia or Quebec, which are already using a cost of production type model to provide their stabilization programs. They may find that option of interest.
The program also permits the Net Income Stabilization Account which still seems to be in a certain amount of flux. The idea there that seems to be public is that the farmers would pay half of this. The federal and provincial governments would split the other half of the cost.
Frankly, I am not up to date on what the Department of Finance has ruled. The origin of this was to make a self-insurance kind of program which would be attractive to those areas that do not suffer huge fluctuations in production.

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The farmer would be permitted to put some money aside, in the original concept, in his own self-insurance fund which would be considered an expense for income tax purposes.
My latest information is that that whole concept has been turned on its head by the Department of Finance. When we get to the committee stage, we are hopeful of getting some of the Department of Finance officials in to explain what they have in mind and what they see it as, compared to the original intent.
The revenue insurance plan program part of this legislation will be a receptacle for the old Agriculture Stabilization Act commodities that have tripartite plans in place. They will now come under the aegis of this program. The scheme for integration is set out in this bill.
When all is said and done, it is a concept which attempts-I think properly-to make some more predictable long term kind of agricultural program. It is not so ad hoc as some of the programs that we have had in the past five to eight years. There is still quite a lot of confusion and argument among the farmers, the farm press and the public as to just what is being seen here.
It is a little bit like the old poem that was in our readers when I was in school a long time ago of the seven blind men and the elephant. The seven blind men approached the elephant, and each one found a different part of the elephant to touch. They came to quite wrong conclusions as to what it was in front of them.
Some running into the belly thought it was a wall. Another feeling the tail thought it was like a rope. Another grasping a leg felt the elephant was like a tree. Another feeling its ear thought that the elephant was very like a fan, et cetera.
I suppose, to a certain extent, that is what has happened with the reaction from the various farm organization and the various analysts around the country.
We have a publication from United Grain Growers which does an analysis on GRIP, as it is understood in western Canada at the moment. It concludes that GRIP will produce more acres of crop with lower yields due to fewer inputs being bought, because there is an incentive under GRIP with the current levels of pay-out guarantees to tiy one's best to hit an average yield. Do not go overboard to try to get yields, because it will only reduce
the amount of income that you have. There is a real disincentive to try for higher yields according to their analysis.
They also point out that there is potential, if there are no changes in the current proposals, to make a mess out of the specialty crops, to use their words. What they have said in their report is: "Even a glut of lentils would not prevent farmers from growing more lentils the following year. The support levels in GRIP are fairly static, declining slightly over time". That is because of it being an index moving average over 15 years even though the price this year might drop considerably because a glut of lentils would not show up; it would only be one-fifteenth of the value of the price in the coming year. There are some concerns expressed by some of the groups who have done their analysis on it up to this point.
They point out also that farmers will react not to market forces any more but the new reality will be that they will react to new incentives created by GRIP and these reactions will be to alter acres and to change production decisions.
As well, we have a report from a group of agricultural economists in Manitoba and Saskatchewan: Kraft, Fur-tan, Rosaasen, Gray and Weisensel. They conclude that the way the program is written now, the way that the agreements that are in the works, federal-provincial, tend in their opinion to favour wheat because it is the safest crop with a fairly high price guarantee. They provide two proposals in their discussion paper which would have the effect of giving all crops equal or similar advantage by using their wheat acreage base as a form of coverage, so it would not matter. The pay-out would be based on an acreage, so to speak, and the farmer could grow whichever crop he thought he would get the maximum return from the market as a result.
Alternatively to that, they provide a rather complex basket per acre approach which would tie in all of the crops that are generally grown in a region and make that the base coverage model. As well, the group of agricultural economists have concerns about the possibility of very large pay-outs because the program does not seem to have any upper limits. They point out that it is very realistically within the realm of possibility that someone who seeds 5,000 acres could be taking home $.25 million of government funds having put in $16,000 to $32,000 in this particular year, or not more than $50,000 in this
March 7, 1991

particular year as his share of payments. There are some concerns about that.
We have a paper submitted by the National Farmers' Union concerned about the long-term shifts that this program may create to rural communities. They are pointing out that there is a very real off-loading of federal responsibilities and costs on to the provinces and on to farmers. This is particularly difficult for those provinces and regions of the country that are basically rural, particularly costly to the provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island where the farm output is very high and the population that is non-farming is relatively low compared to the rest of the country.
They express some concern for the regional sustainability of these very important regions of our country, especially since metropolitan areas require the food that these rural areas produce but are being allowed under this program to opt out of paying so much for the program and leaving those costs up to the rural areas themselves to raise. That concern is echoed somewhat by the Minister of Agriculture for Manitoba, the hon. Glen Findlay who says:
If grain prices continue the way they are there could be very significant debt.
He is talking about debt to his province. He goes on to say:
I think Manitoba has taken a more responsible approach because we want to know the exact fiscal responsibility to our taxpayers.
So, Manitoba is bargaining very hard-headedly as to the sharing of the program as far as it applies to GRIP and particularly to NISA.
All of this discussion, of course, has raised the attention of the political columnists, and we have a number of those who have given opinions on GRIP and NISA. I have one here from the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix. Les McPherson is a columnist there and I hope he is talking tongue in cheek. He presents his solution to the farm problem thus: "Money could be collected in the cities, loaded into grain cars and hauled by railway to rural elevators. Then, whenever a farmer needed more money he would only have to drive his grain truck to the nearest elevator and load her up. Back on the farm he would simply use his auger to unload his money from his truck into a granary. The beauty of this approach is that it is self-limiting. When a farmer's granary is filled with
Government Orders
money he simply would not qualify for any more subsidies."
Now that may be a bit tongue in cheek, but it also does, unfortunately, reflect a growing opinion in those parts of Canada that are not farming and are not more directly dependent on farming, as to what the whole idea is behind transfers of tax dollars to cover expenditures that farmers have to make in order to produce food.
That goes beyond just Les McPherson. Dale Eisler of the Leader-Post, who is considered to be a serious political columnist, did an analysis on the Net Income Stabilization Account, NISA, in which he argued fairly strongly that NISA is a special consideration that nonfarmers should say no to.
So there is some growing concern from some of the press at least that these programs are very expensive and that taxpayers should not be concerned about continuing the very large pay-outs and large pay-outs are of concern.
I think it would be particularly difficult to explain and sustain the kind of pay-out that Furtan and Kraft look at in their proposal when they say that there should probably be a cap on this because there were caps on WGSA and on the ASA programs that this program supplants. It is hard to explain $250,000 of government funds going into one producer, even though I understand why that producer is probably going to need most of that money.
We have not had much discussion, though the minister did refer to it, as to what the third line of defence is going to be. Even in the country, we are only aware that there are a number of subcommittees working on the so-called third line of defence which was originally perceived to be an established program that would take care of disasters, whether they were international price disasters or weather disasters that were quite beyond the normal ability of these long-term programs, like GRIP and NISA, to look after.
What we are seeing is that the third line of defence is much broader than that. We have subcommittees looking into soil saving programs for regrassing and reforestation. We are not sure whether the third line of this defence also includes encouragement or assistance to have social shifts out of agriculture, but some comments

March 7, 1991
Government Orders
in the realm of third line of defence make it sound as if that might be part of the program. Some third line of defence programs are looking at development of alternative employment in rural areas to diversify into something either related to agriculture or completely unrelated, as long as it provides jobs.
Some of the third line discussions seem to be looking at assistance with diversification and breaking the grain dependence of some areas in Canada.
Over all, the bill before us is broad enough and vague enough that is is very difficult to be opposed to it. There is nothing there to oppose. There is very little there to support either. It is quite nebulous. It is quite wraith-like in its presentation. It will take form as federal-provincial agreements are signed and as those are made public. We presume that they will eventually be made public. Until that happens, it is almost anything one wants it to be. That is a problem we have with legislation. But, as I said at the outset, that is the new style of government of this particular government: to achieve from the Elouse of Commons the power to do anything it wants and then go on from there to run the country.
We are prepared to allow it to go quite quickly to the agriculture committee for review. In the committee we can seek answers, clarifications and perhaps discuss amendments and some of the merits of amendments that have already been proposed by some of the groups I quoted earlier in my remarks. We can perhaps get the Department of Finance in to explain what it has done to NISA and why it thinks it should not be a self-insurance program but instead a kind of farmers' RRSP or a special retirement fund or whatever it will be used for under what I understand are the current rulings with regard to it.
We will have to look at questions of choice. I was pleased to hear the minister say that no one has one perfect solution. That is particularly reassuring to my ears, because when I hear GRIP and NISA being discussed in my province of Saskatchewan I get the impression that the year after next we will have basically two choices. We can either participate in GRIP and NISA or we can opt out and, if we opt out, we will not be
eligible any more for any other kind of government assistance.
It is no longer clear that one can take either GRIP or NISA. Apparently one will not be able to continue with crop insurance and NISA, which is an option a lot of people in the more stable production areas find to be a useful and viable alternative.
I see the member from Assiniboia looking very puzzled. Perhaps he has not done all of the calculations.


Mr. Gustafson:: You meant GRIP, not NISA.


Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: Crop insurance and GRIP. The word we are getting so far is that crop insurance will exist under GRIP in two years and that it will not be possible to have a NISA plus crop insurance after two years. That restricts choice considerably, because once he does the economics of it he would find, as my preliminary discussions have discovered, that once outside the more drought ridden parts of the prairies there is not a lot to be gained from joining GRIP. Yet, we are not particularly keen to get out of crop insurance for the odd year when we have hail or frost.
Unfortunately, a lot of the decisions on these programs are being dominated by King Wheat in the southern prairies without reference to the rest of the country, and the rest of the country produces a lot of farm goods as well.
If there are going to be choices, I hope that in the committee we will be able to convince the government and the contracting parties that they should be recognizing that there are more farmers than just wheat farmers.
The questions of cost are also high on farmers' minds, as well as ministers of agriculture. I already quoted the hon. Glen Findlay from Manitoba, but I have been getting calls from farmers in the western part of the province saying that this could be a very costly program for them, that they have no choice but to be in or out. One woman said that this could cost her farm $60,000 to $80,000 in annual premiums and, perhaps better uses could be found for that money.
They want a clear understanding of what the cost is, what they might get out of it. They are quite cognizant that they might get nothing. This coming year, even though I expect, along with most grains analysts, a very low price for wheat, probably about $2.50 or perhaps
March 7, 1991

even lower, and given that GRIP covers $4.15 you would think that it would be a sure thing for a pay-out. But this is a gross revenue insurance program, so it is price times yield.
Even though the price may be one-half what the target price is, if the yield is double a normal crop, you would have produced yourself out of a pay-out. You may not be able to sell it, but that does not matter to this program. You would simply be sitting there with bins full of grain and no money, and probably complaining and yelling for the kind of solution that Les MacPherson in the Star Phoenix was offering: to shovel out money and send car loads to the rest of the bins. Now, because they are already full, there would not be room, I suppose.
Anyhow, those are some of the questions that are being asked. At committee I want to find out more about the assumptions that are being used to achieve what are described as actuarially sound premiums, because some of the premium prices I have been hearing sound as if the government is going to have great difficulty in keeping the fund out of deep debt for a long time.
I am concerned about that because this legislation appears to be intending to integrate the debt that is already there in the western grain stabilization fund account which, on February 1, was approximately $1.1 billion. I think the new act will also probably be required to absorb-though it is up to the cabinet to decide in both cases-the reinsurance fund debt which exists under crop insurance legislation. That is $471 million of debt as well. It is not expected to get itself out of trouble for at least six years, and under this program it may take quite a lot longer than that.
I want to know more about what sorts of arrangements are being made, whether the government is using a 15-year cycle, a 30-year cycle, or whether it is trying to keep program actuarially sound over 10 or 15 years.
There are going to be questions in committee about the cost. Also there will be the question of equity to smaller agriculturally dependent provinces, the shifting and offloading of the cost of food on to the areas that produce the food. Essentially what we are doing when we shift the cost of these programs, which have traditionally in this country been mainly federal in order to sustain prices and look after export problems because there are many metropolitan areas in this country that have a larger income and tax base, and need this food.
Government Orders
This program and this government are proposing-the program does not force them to; it is the kind of deals it is getting into-to make provinces like Saskatchewan carry a very high per capita debt each year in order to get GRIP; to make Manitoba carry a very high per capita debt each year in order to get GRIP and NISA. The same will apply to Prince Edward Island if the program is expanded to include potatoes.
These are questions that have to be dealt with.
Also, we have questions about GATT conformity. We were told by the minister-and I tend to concur-that the legislation itself is not breaking any GATT rules, but the agreements that have been talked about, I believe, are. I believe those are, as they say, "GATIhble". Some of our products will be subject to countervail and dumping actions as a result, particularly if we continue with the program as it is now where, as some analysts have pointed out, it has a wheat bias. If we do not take that wheat bias out, our wheat could very well be countervailed.
We have to know fairly soon, whether in committee or in this House. Somewhere the government is going to have to address the very real problem of the one-year GATT payments. Even if GRIP and NISA come into play, the programs will not be putting very much money into farmers' pockets until some time in 1992.
The last government payment to help us fight, sustain, and live through the American-European grain war occurred in July to September across the country, and there will be over a year's lapse in assistance. That gap has to be filled, and this government has to decide very quickly how that is going to be done and when it is going to be done.
Finally, there are questions of sustainability for rural communities, not just sustainable in the economic sense and not just sustainable in the environmental sense. But, if we are going to talk about sustainability in the environmental sense, let's remember that people are part of the environment too. The communities that those people are trying to sustain in those rural areas are also part of their environment; not only their ecological environment but their social environment. These programs that are being developed have to reflect that.

March 7, 1991
In conclusion, I am prepared to let this go fairly quickly to committee so that the vague assertions of this legislation can be clarified. Hopefully, the agreements that are arrived at between now and the end of the legislation will be made public, and then perhaps the committee will have a better idea of how this dream and this myth can become a reality. Until then, nobody can be particularly helpful with their criticism of this legislation. I hope we can find those answers in committee and that the government is willing to listen to proposed amendments, not only from our side of the House but also as proposed by farm groups, academics and individuals.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being 1:17 p.m., I do now leave the chair until two o'clock this day.
The House took recess at 1:17 p.m.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Mrs. Christine Stewart (Northumberland):: Mr. Speaker, while the western world, northern nations of the world, concerned themselves with the crisis and ensuing war in the Middle East, Third World nations, southern nations, have become more and more convinced that the world has passed them by. Already crippled by the financing burdens of their international debts, the gulf war has created calamitous conditions in dozens of Third World countries as a result of increased oil prices and the loss of wage earnings from their expatriate workers in the gulf region.
For the third year in a row, the Canadian government budget has cut Official Development Assistance to Third World countries. Here in Canada families in poverty, including one in six of Canada's children, waited in vain for a sign of concern. Instead of programs to lift our Canadian poor into productive, dignified, secure futures,
the already fragile social safety nets were further weakened by this government's last budget.
Neglect of the priority needs of both developing Canadian citizens, our children and youth, and developing nations is to threaten the well-being and security of Canada's future as surely as is the neglect of our national debt.
What we criticize today is not the government's focus upon the need to eliminate our debt, but the inappropriate and short-sighted priorities of the government in achieving its objectives. Two plus more wrongs do not make a right.


COMMUNICATIONS
Mr. Lyle Dean MacWilliam (Okanagan -Shuswap):: Mr. Speaker, the latest budget has revealed that while Canada's cultural sector is reeling from $18 million in cuts, the Department of Communications has awarded itself an increase of over $41 million, the lion's share of which goes into operating expenses.
Using $41 million for operating expenses while starving Canadian culture is tantamount to a slap in the face for all the dedicated and talented artists in Canada who continue to live well below the poverty line.
The minister should re-examine his priorities. When stalwarts of Canadian culture like the CBC are slashed $108 million and funding for Canada Council is frozen since 1986, how can the minister justify a 13 per cent increase to his department's bureaucracy?
The minister promised last fall to go to cabinet for more funds for Canada's cultural community, but what he neglected to explain was that he would use this money to pump up his own bureaucracy and lavish lifestyle, and not to the benefit of Canada's cultural community.


FARM INCOME PROTECTION ACT
Mr. Larry Schneider (Regina-Wascana):: Mr. Speaker, it is my sincere wish that all members of Parliament will support the rapid passage of Bill C-98, the Farm
March 7, 1991

Income Protection Act. This legislation provides a basic framework under which GRIP and NISA will function.
In western Canada, 70 to 80 per cent of all agricultural receipts are from export trade, 75 to 85 per cent of Canadian wheat is exported, as is 60 to 70 per cent of Canadian canola.
As we all know, the international agricultural subsidy war is having a disastrous impact on the economy of Canadian agriculture. There is no question that the fate of Canada's most efficient and effective industry, that is Canadian agriculture, is beyond the control of the producers. A more stable agricultural sector provides for more viability in our cities, towns and communities. Hence this stability of utmost importance to our small business sector as well.
In Saskatchewan there are critics who claim this process is too complex and too time consuming. These same critics are short of alternatives, short of logical alternatives that must encompass Canada's entire agricultural sector and be responsible to all Canadian taxpayers.
Those critics and the media that pay heed to shallow criticisms do nothing to solve this problem that must be addressed by all Canadians.


SPRINGHILL, NOVA SCOTIA
Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland-Colchester):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to read into the parliamentary record the following resolution of the town of Springhill, Nova Scotia.
Whereas the Town of Springhill citizenry, during past major conflicts, participated at the highest level of enrolment in the Armed Forces per capita in Canada-be it resolved the Tbwn of Springhill citizenry support the role the Government of Canada has taken in support of the United Nations war effort in the Persian Gulf, and be it further resolved the Tbwn of Springhill adopts the ships' companies of the HMCS Protecteur, the HMCS Alhabaskan and the HMCS Terra Nova as honorary citizens of the Town of Springhill.
All three ships' personnel, military and civilian, will be adopted by the town of Springhill and will receive a certificate to commemorate the occasion.
Springhill has certainly found a unique way to show the pride and appreciation of all Canadians for a job
extremely well done by our Armed Forces in the Persian Gulf.


SOVIET JEWRY
Mr. Jim Peterson (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, last year, 183,732 Soviet Jews were allowed to leave the Soviet Union to go to Israel. Over the next two years we expect that there will be one million Soviet Jews going to Israel.
The problem is one of absorption and housing in Israel itself. The war destroyed between 3,300 and 7,000 housing units in Israel.
The U.S. and European community are providing aid of over $1.3 billion to Israel. Canada is providing aid to Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq. We have to help the Soviet Jews.
There are disturbing trends in the Soviet Union: new examples of anti-Semitism, new examples of a hard line being taken. How long do we know the door will be open? We have to do the best we can, otherwise the plight of the Soviet Jews might be forever on the conscience of Canadians.


INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY
Mrs. Pierrette Venne (Saint-Hubert):: Mr. Speaker, tomorrow women throughout the world will stop to consider and celebrate the progress they have made on the road to equality.
International Woman's Day is unique in the history of women's struggle equality. It was celebrated for the first time in 1911, to commemorate a strike started by garment workers in New York to protest exploitation and intolerable working conditions.
In Canada, Quebec women have celebrated International Woman's Day since the early seventies. In 1978, women in the rest of Canada joined them, demonstrating their solidarity.
Mr. Speaker, this government wants to celebrate the efforts of women who are dedicated to the cause of equality in our society, and we remain firmly committed to promoting women's participation in the constitutional process and Canada's future.

March 7, 1991


THE CONSTITUTION
Miss Deborah Grey (Beaver River):: Mr. Speaker, less than a year after his major constitutional initiative died, the Prime Minister has stated his intention to re-enter the constitutional fray because of the Allaire report, saying that he and his government speak for all Canadians in negotiations to formulate a new Canada, reConfederated, rebuilt, and reborn.
However, if this Prime Minister wishes to speak for all of Canada, then I urge him to seek a mandate on this issue for he has, unfortunately, no mandate and no credibility to lead any further constitutional negotiations. From Meech to Spicer, his road is one of failure.
Reformers would prefer Quebec to remain part of Canada. However, if the goals and aspirations of the people of Quebec are irreconcilable, then it is clear that Quebec and Canada must consider a mutually agreeable and more separate relationship.
The Reform Party of Canada will continue to communicate, to promote its view of a new Canada and to participate in any negotiations openly and honestly. Threats, bullying, and a failure to make a commitment to Canada beyond a mere economic commitment cannot long unite a country. They simply delay the inevitable.


MULTICULTURALISM
Mrs. Shirley Maheu (Saint-Laurent-Cartierville):: Mr. Speaker, over the weekend the Minister of National Revenue stated before a public forum in Scarborough that he did not believe in multiculturalism. He added that he felt multiculturalism should eventually be phased out.

How can we believe a minister who says, in no uncertain terms, that he does not believe in multiculturalism? How can we assume he will know the standards set by this legislation and will apply them in his own department? How can we expect this government's commitment to be genuine, when there is dissension on this point in cabinet?

The Prime Minister must tell Canadians whose vision he shares: that of the Minister of National Revenue or that of the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and Citizenship.
As Canadians are trying to understand where this country is going, they need a clear message. The Minister of National Revenue must resign.


CANON CANADA
Mr. Bob Horner (Mississauga West):: Mr. Speaker, too often industry gets a bad rap for being the polluters of our environment. It is time to take another look, because the world is changing and industry is proving that technology and the environment can operate in harmony.
Last month, Canon Canada, a business in Mississauga West, launched its clean earth campaign. Under this program, Canon will collect and recycle toner cartridges used in the company's laser beam printers and personal copiers. In Canada, it is estimated that 1.4 million cartridges will be eligible for recycling in 1991, which should help alleviate the land-fill problem.
This is a significant initiative, but Canon's commitment does not stop there. For every cartridge returned, the company will donate $1 to be shared by the World Wildlife Fund (Canada) and the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
My congratulations to the people at Canon for their vision and commitment to the environment, and for finding a new r word to go with reduce, reuse and recycle. Yes, remanufacturing may well be the way of the future.


GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURES
Mr. Louis Plamondon (Richelieu):: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister talks about restrictions on federal spending, but now, less than a year and a half before the next election, he has just authorized 30 Tory members to move to new offices.
March 7, 1991

One move may cost as much as $10,000, Mr. Speaker. This means it will cost the House of Commons nearly $300,000 to let 30 members play a new version of musical chairs.
How can the government justify this kind of frivolous spending in the face of budgetary cutbacks, when it has just asked its own employees and all Canadians to tighten their belts?
I urge the Prime Minister to set an example to Canadians and postpone these moves until after the next election.
An office does not the member make, and I think the Prime Minister, the President of the Treasury Board and the Conservative Party whip should put a stop to this foolishness immediately.


GEOGRAPHIC HERITAGE
Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Mr. Speaker, it has been said that this government lacks a vision of Canada. As it enters into free trade negotiations and agreements with nations to our south, it has ignored our own future. It completely ignores Canada's north.
The budget, the government's estimates and its legislative program indicate a sad lack of knowledge and understanding of the vast potential within our borders.
Where is the northern vision of John Diefenbaker? Why have the goals and dreams of those who explored and settled our nation disappeared? Why is the idea of developing northern ports like Churchill simply ignored? Why have we not trained people to live and work profitably in the vast majority of Canada? Why have we looked at our geography and simply shrugged? Why has this lack of vision prevented Canada from including our native population in developing the north?
Is it any wonder why this nation struggles so much with finding its soul, when it has managed to ignore the very nature of our geographic heritage?


INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY
Ms. Barbara Greene (Don Valley North):: Mr. Speaker, tomorrow is International Women's Day. Women in Canada have little cause to celebrate, particularly in Parliament.
Participation in the subcommittee looking at violence against women is ample evidence of the indifference of male MPs to this issue.
Indeed, many members of Parliament feel that the ability to blow apart rabbits rapidly is a higher priority than the need to reduce the carnage by guns from which women suffer disproportionately across this country.
Systemic sexual discrimination and harassment are rampant. Women are under-represented on key committees. Many parliamentary association executives, for example NATO, are private men's clubs. Signs and titles such as chairman identify this as a male place.
In a country where one in four women are sexually assaulted and 90 per cent of women experience sexual harassment in the work place, we as parliamentarians must act as a united force to combat this problem.


OGILVY RENAULT
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, friends in greed are friends indeed.
Claude Fontaine sits on the Board of Directors of Petro-Canada.
Claude Fontaine is a senior partner of Ogilvy Renault, barristers and solicitors.
Ogilvy Renault has been retained by the Government of Canada to assist in the privatization of, guess what, Petro-Canada.
Bernard Roy, appointed principal secretary to the Prime Minister in the past, now works for Ogilvy Renault. What another happy coincidence.
The Prime Minister, before becoming Prime Minister by way of Iron Ore, also practised law at Ogilvy Renault.
The Prime Minister and Bernard Roy were roommates at university.

March 7, 1991
Oral Questions
Friends will be friends. Greed will be greed. Tories are always the same.


Mr. Bill Attewell (Markham -Whitchurch -Stouff-ville):: Mr. Speaker, today over 200 students from across Canada representing the Jewish Students' Network and NAHON are in Ottawa for their annual lobby day.
The group led by Joey Felsen, Batia Tobin and Marla Silverberg are meeting with members of the House of Commons. Today, there is an urgent call for action due to the housing crisis already facing Israel and the large amount of damage caused by the Scud missile attacks.
The Government of Canada just recently confirmed its intention to extend humanitarian aid to Iraq. In a similar spirit the government should extend such aid to Israel, which has been an innocent victim throughout this war.
The Government of Canada has always supported the cause of Soviet Jewry and, as chairman of the Canadian Parliamentary Group for Soviet Jewry, along with all members of the House, we urge the Government of Canada to aid the people of Israel in rebuilding homes destroyed by the unprovoked attack by Iraq and, in addition, to build additional housing for the newly arrived Soviet Jews.


FISHERIES
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, the Government of Canada has published a booklet entitled Sustainable Development and the Northwest Atlantic Fishery.
The Law of the Sea is invoked to argue the case for restraint in catches. The Law of the Sea was designed to avoid crises in fisheries by affirming the responsibility of all nations to co-operate in conserving and managing fishery resources in the high seas.
The government hopes that the principles of the Law of the Sea will become "ingrained in the strategies of the world's fishing industries" so that ultimately "destructive overfishing will become as rare as it is unconscionable".
This is a great statement, but it is hollow because this government has not yet ratified the Law of the Sea. If the government wishes to be taken seriously on environmental issues, it should at last ratify the Law of the Sea and make sure that Canada does not become the laughing stock of the international community.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
Yesterday the Prime Minister denied that there is a private committee of senior bureaucrats working on constitutional change behind closed doors.
Does he deny a front-page stoiy in The Globe and Mail of January 31, and I quote: "Teams of Deputy Ministers Work on new plan for Canada"?
Does he also deny the statement of his own minister of federal-provincial relations, Senator Lowell Murray, who said: "We're working in the federal government on our own constitutional program"?
Does he deny this statement of his own minister?


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend began by saying that I denied the existence of a private committee. I did no such thing. I denied the existence of a secret committee.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Martin Brian Mulroney: There is no secret committee. The best evidence of that is the newspaper quotes that my hon. friend has just cited It is not secret. It is public-


Sheila Maureen Copps: It is a private committee.


Martin Brian Mulroney: -and it is legitimate work being done by the Government of Canada to-


An hon. member:: Bravo.


Mrs. Marleau:: Unbelievable.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Only a Liberal would want deputy ministers not to work. We put them to work in the interests of Canada.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.
March 7, 1991

Oral Questions


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, it is clear that the Prime Minister has learned nothing about the lessons from the death of Meech.

I wish the Prime Minister would explain what Senator Lowell Murray meant when he said that the government was working on a new plan for Canada. We are worried that once again, the Prime Minister may be working behind closed doors and setting us up for a new constitutional disaster.
Will the Prime Minister inform the House today what the exact terms of reference are of this committee? Will he identify the people on the committee? And finally, will he provide for public consultation on the Constitution? Public, not private and not secret.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons told us yesterday that the opposition parties have 9 full days, at their discretion, for debate on a subject they may select.
In the circumstances it would be quite normal, indeed appropriate and quite useful, if the Liberal party, with its present apparent concern for constitutional matters, were to initiate a debate on the Canadian Constitution and, perhaps for the first time, make known their perspective and positions regarding the reform or renewal of Canada. I think that would be a very constructive approach.
As far as the government is concerned, we have started a series of consultations across the country, through the Special Joint Beaudoin-Edwards Committee and the Spicer Commission. Committees at the provincial level are doing their job in this respect and, of course, a number of officials have been asked to consider these issues on behalf of the Canadian government. I think all this is quite normal. We have a responsibility, considering developments in other provinces, and I am thinking first of all of Quebec, to prepare a dossier or a series of dossiers that, in due time, will help parliamentarians make considered decisions to promote Canadian unity.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, the leader of the NDP falsely stated on national television last night that Parliament had voted on December 13 on a motion to expand the mandate of a parliamentary committee studying the amending formula. She also falsely stated that the Liberal Party had voted against it.
I am sure that the hon. leader of the NDP or her party at three o'clock will take the opportunity to correct the record. Unfortunately, no such vote ever took place either on December 13 or at any other time.
Therefore, my question to the Prime Minister is this. Given his reference in the previous question to the work of the Beaudoin-Edwards committee, will he put a motion before the House of Commons today to expand the mandate of the Beaudoin-Edwards committee beyond the mere study of the amending formula? Will he put that motion today and show some leadership so that Parliament can have a public process, not a Prime Minister's process behind closed doors?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, as my hon. friend knows, indeed as the country knows, I have a great deal of time for the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, but any lover's quarrels she has with the NDP should be resolved privately, not here on the floor of the House of Commons.
My friend says that the Beaudoin-Edwards committee is involved in mere study of the amending process. Nothing could be more important. It is inaccurate to suggest that this should be cast aside as mere study of the amending process.
My friend refers to the difficulties we had at Meech Lake; indeed we did. I was grateful then for her support and the support of her leader at the time, Mr. Turner, and grateful for the support of the NDP as well. On two occasions we managed to get the signatures of 10 provincial premiers on side to endorse the concepts contained in the Meech Lake Accord in 1987 and in 1990.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Will you expand the committee?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Subsequent to achieving those signatures, we had unanimity for the first time in constitutional history in Canada. We achieved unanimity, but we

March 7, 1991
Oral Questions
then had difficulty in respect of its ratification by a provincial legislature. I will acknowledge that. I also acknowledge that failure to ratify has brought about some very serious difficulties. But that was not the first failure that we have had constitutionally.
In 1982 the Constitution was repatriated without the endorsement of the province of Quebec and that too has brought about very serious difficulties which this government and this Parliament are trying to prevent.


Mr. Speaker:: I want to observe that there has been on the part of the opposition some determination to keep the questions shorter and I hope that will be kept under consideration by all sides of the House.


Hon. Roy MacLaren (Etobicoke North):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister for International Trade. The government has not been open with the Canadian people about what it hopes to achieve in the trade negotiations involving Canada, the United States and Mexico. The minister says he seeks a single comprehensive agreement, not two or three agreements, but a single comprehensive agreement.
What will be in that single agreement? In the existing Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, energy is in. But both the Mexicans and the Americans have said that in a trilateral agreement, energy will be out. How can the government negotiate a single comprehensive agreement when Canada says that energy is in and Mexico says energy is out?


Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister for International TVade):: Mr. Speaker, it must have taken a lot of energy to come up with that question.
Canada has not said energy is out or that anything is out in the proposed negotiations between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. There will be no negotiation until and unless the U.S. Congress approves the fast-track authority that President Bush has asked them for. So it is not anticipated that negotiations could begin until the end of May or early June.
Mexico has not said that energy is out or whether energy is in. But we all know that Mexico has a very sensitive concern about the ownership of oil. They have said that discussions about the ownership of oil are out
because the Mexican Constitution is in. We have said that we are not going to negotiate the terms of the Mexican Constitution.


Roy MacLaren: Mr. Speaker, the minister continues to obscure the discussions and the Canadian people are no wiser from his answer than they were five minutes ago about what it is they expect.
Yesterday the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources stated that the remaining limits of foreign investment in the energy industry should be removed. The Minister for International Trade has said repeatedly that the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement does not need to be reopened. The Mexicans say that energy is not in. Canada now says that the remaining provisions in the energy section, Chapter 19 of the free trade agreement, should be reopened.
Will the Minister for International Trade state, once and for all, what it is that Canada seeks in these negotiations and will energy be on the table or not?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, any proper subject for the negotiations on trade will be on the table to be discussed. Whether Canada, Mexico or the U.S. agrees to any particular side of an issue will have to be decided when the issue arises. We will agree to anything that is in the national interests of Canada, but we will not agree to anything that is not.
With respect to investment, I am glad to report that investment in Canada has increased greatly as a result of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and we would anticipate this would be even more so under a North American free trade agreement.
I am glad to see that my hon. colleague agrees with me, that foreign investment is good for Canada. It creates jobs and we have been able to get Canada going again as a result of our attitude towards foreign investment.


TAXATION
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg TVanscona):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. Yesterday, the Minister of Finance said that we needed the executive tax deduction, and I will quote the minister: "We have a tax system in Canada that we must maintain in a
March 7, 1991

competitive way with those of other countries, in particular, the United States."
Does the Prime Minister agree with this absurd excuse? Do we have to cut health care so that executives can have a free lunch while hospital waiting lists are getting longer and longer?


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I also congratulate the hon. member. I believe that yesterday, the Minister of Finance was talking about tax shelters. I think that was one of the answers he gave to questions on that subject. In fact, the Canadian government has eliminated an impressive number of tax shelters which, in the past, tended to stew the equity of our tax system and the government has turned it into a much fairer national instrument, especially as far as the neediest in our society are concerned. That was the purpose of tax reform, and the minister mentioned a number of examples that are in fact quite the reverse of the point raised by the hon. member from Winnipeg.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, if the Prime Minister will check the record, he will see that what was raised yesterday was the business and entertainment tax deduction. The Minister of Finance justified it on the basis that we had to be in step with the Americans on this, as we have to be on so many other things. It appears that the only differences we can have in our tax system is that we are allowed to be more regressive than they are with things like the GST, but we are not allowed to be more progressive than they are.
So, I ask the Prime Minister, is this not the first fruits of the free trade agreement? On top of that, why do we see the obscenity made known today that 42 chief executive officers were given a 4.2 per cent increase the day before the government announced a 3 per cent cap on Public Service wages? Why is that? How does the Prime Minister justify that in light of the rhetoric of the government about everybody doing their fair share?


Hon. Gilles Loiselle (President of the Treasury Board and Minister of State (Finance)):: I think this, Mr. Speaker, is much ado about nothing. The information
Oral Questions
provided by the hon. member may be interesting, but it is wrong.
I would like to remind the hon. member that for the heads of Crown corporations for the calendar year 1990, we received some months ago from an independent commission a recommendation to give them increases in excess of 6 per cent. We looked at that, not for the coming year, but for the calendar year 1990, and we decided that they would get the same as deputy ministers for the past year, 4.2 per cent. For the next three years, I can assure the hon. member that all Crown corporation heads will get 3 per cent like everybody else.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, the 1,400 railroaders in my riding who just learned that they will be laid off for three months this summer because of a downturn in revenues at CNR will be very impressed with that answer, that the government has managed to finesse a 4.2 per cent increase for the head of CN while they have to go on the street.
I go back to the Prime Minister. I have asked this of the Minister of Finance and he refuses to answer, so I ask the Prime Minister. On behalf of the government, would he please tell us why the Business Council on National Issues and all the corporations they represent were not asked to contribute one single penny to deficit reduction? What is the answer to that question? Is it because they donate so much money to the Conservative Party or what?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend knows that as a result of the closing of these tax loopholes-


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: What closing of loopholes? Not one.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: I am sure hon. members would want to hear the response of the right hon. Prime Minister.


Martin Brian Mulroney: As a result of the closing of tax loopholes, there are, as the minister has pointed out, thousands of corporations today paying income tax that had never paid corporate income tax in the past in Canada, or paid it on a lesser scale. For example, the chartered banks of Canada, the insurance companies and others who were able to take advantage of various fiscal breaks, no longer can do so. And, for the first time in

March 7, 1991
Oral Questions
many, many years, if not decades, they are paying their fair share of taxes.
My hon. friend is scandalized by some statistics that he raises. Someone showed me-and I will get it for my hon. friend-a statistic about a group of employees working for one of the Public Service unions, because unions have employees themselves. They went on strike some months ago for a month asking for a 5 per cent increase. The union management said it was too high, you must settle for 3 per cent.


NATIONAL UNITY
Mr. Brian Tobin (Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
In answering questions from the member for Hamilton East, the Prime Minister today acknowledged the presence and operation of a senior committee of officials dealing with the question of renewed federalism.
I want to ask the Prime Minister whether he would fully answer the question put by the member for Hamilton East.


An hon. member:: In secret.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Yes, in secret, operating behind closed doors, reporting to the Prime Minister.
Will the Prime Minister tell the House today when this committee is scheduled to report to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister also tell the House whether the report of the committee, the recommendations of the committee, will be made public so that the public will truly have an opportunity to participate in the constitution making process this time around.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, we are now going through a new phase. It is one of decreasing expectations. When my hon. friend began with this question two days ago, the committee was secret, then it declined to private, and today it is senior. He refers today to a senior committee of deputies. There is one, indeed there are probably many committees of deputy ministers doing various things throughout the Government of Canada. I hope they are.


Mary Catherine Clancy: You mean you do not know? You better find out.


Martin Brian Mulroney: You can never be sure, Mary.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Martin Brian Mulroney: If my hon. friend is suggesting that a senior group of officials cannot meet and advise the government of their point of view, this would be a unique burden to be placing on officials of any government. Normally, officers of a government are allowed to come together, pursuant to instructions from a minister and to meet outside of the television cameras and provide advice to their ministers, which is then rejected or accepted. It is the ministerial responsibility to accept the criticism or reject it on the floor of the House of Commons. That is entirely appropriate.
I do not think my hon. friend should be scandalized by the fact that indeed there are many committees of senior deputies at work on various aspects of Canada's ongoing problems. It is entirely normal and prudent that we do that and that they function the way they traditionally have for 123 years and then give advice to the ministers, who accept criticism on the floor of the House.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, Canadians are not scandalized at the prospect of the deputy ministers meeting or their working or that they are giving advice to the Prime Minister.
What they are scandalized by is the notion that even as the Prime Minister tells the people of Canada that this time they will be involved in the Spicer commision, they are part of the public process, in back rooms behind closed doors, in private, in secret, a commission meets and there is no provision to involve Canadians in that process. That is what they are scandalized by.
Will the Prime Minister give a straight commitment to the people of Canada today that this time they will be involved, that the recommendations of this committee, the government's plan held in its hip pocket, for a change will be shared with the people of Canada.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, let me begin by giving, of course, the assurance to my hon. friend that there will be ample opportunity for the public and members' involvement in the evolution, not only of the constitutional provisions on the procedural side, not only with the Spicer commission,
March 7, 1991

but in other ways where we will have an opportunity to consult.
My hon. friend, however, raises an interesting question, and that is the question of any aspect of secrecy. He is asking me whether I would be ready to throw open the doors of these public servants' meetings to the television cameras. My answer to that is yes, if the Liberal caucus will open its doors when they discuss the Constitution and let us all see what goes on.


Mr. Paul Martin (LaSalle -Emard):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for International Trade. The Canada-Mexico free trade proposal will have a tremendous impact on the environment. In the Cana-da-US agreement the minister failed to stress the environment. He must not make the same mistake twice. Mr. Speaker, my question is this: Can the minister give the House the assurance that he will insist that Mexican industry observes the same environmental criteria that will be, or are supposed to be, applied to Canadian industry?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member fails to recognize that these are different negotiations with the United States. We had a U.S-Canada trade negotiation which resulted in the brilliant U.S.-Canada free trade agreement that has been so productive and so beneficial to Canada.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


John Carnell Crosbie: Why do you not read the Canada West Foundation report, the Royal Bank report? You people do not read.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: I am sure hon. members would want the hon. minister to complete his answer.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, at the same time, there was a negotiation on environmental matters, led by the
Oral Questions
Prime Minister, which resulted in the clean air agreement that has in a sense been entered into by our two countries.
We have an environmental protocol with Mexico at the present time. If I have the chance, I will research that and pass on additional details to the hon. gentleman.
If there is any need of a negotiation or a treaty on the environment between Canada and Mexico, then we will do it as a separate negotiation, and with the same kind of success the Prime Minister had with President Bush and the United States.


Paul Edgar Philippe Martin: Mr. Speaker, the minister talks about reading. It is pretty clear that he has not read the green plan.
In the absence of the Minister of the Environment who occasionally thinks about it, let me ask my the question of the Prime Minister.
Quoting from the green plan, the federal government requires environmental impact assessments for all proposals coming before cabinet for decision. A statement of the environmental implications of new policies will be made public at the time that the cabinet initiative is announced.
The Mexican initiative has been announced. The issue is: Will the Prime Minister force his reasonably bumptious and antique colleague to come out of the back room? Did the government make the environmental impact assessments that are called for in the green plan? Will the Prime Minister table the implications now, as he is honour bound to do?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member is correct in his view of what the law is, then we are indeed in very significant difficulty because we are negotiating with 102 countries in the GATT on trade matters, and we have not made an environmental assessment of those 102 countries.
I guess we are doomed by the hon. member to a great deal of additional criticism in that connection. It is a trade negotiation. If we need an environmental negotiation, we will enter into an environmental negotiation with far greater success than the hon. gentleman's predecessor's ever had.
Oral Questions PAY EQUITY

March 7, 1991


Dawn Black: Mr. Speaker, during a nationally televised debate at the time of the last federal election, the Prime Minister made a commitment and said that he had already set aside money for pay equity for women in the Public Service.
After what we heard in the budget last week, I want to ask the Prime Minister: In spite of the warnings in the budget, does he intend to keep that commitment to the women in the Public Service? Will he fulfil that commitment to women of Canada? Yes or no?


Gilles Loiselle: Yes, Mr. Speaker, without any hesitation, I can repeat the commitment of the government to pay equity.
As you know, we did something that former governments did not do. We settled for a very generous, honest and fair package. It is being contested. We will see where we are, but this is more than the Liberals did over I do not know how many years or decades of government.
We have committed ourselves to this. We have set aside in the budget the money necessary to continue that, and I can vouch that we will continue to proceed in this direction. It is the only good one in any case.


Dawn Black: Mr. Speaker, today we learned that friends of the government, appointees of the government, get raises of tens of thousands of dollars while women, who are at the bottom of the economic system in this country, are told in the federal service that they get 3 per cent or they lose thousands of jobs.


An hon. member:: And they lose thousands of jobs.


Dawn Black: Can the Prime Minister assure this House that he will not compound this injustice to women in the federal civil service? Will he assure us that the job losses will not be women's jobs at the bottom of the economic order? Will he assure us that women will get pay equity and be fairly treated by this government, finally?


Gilles Loiselle: I can only repeat that this government has not only spoken about these things but has acted. I would like to repeat that one of the
central issues that we have to be concerned with is that we cannot afford not to allow women to bring their full share not only to the federal civil service but to the whole society. I can assure the hon. member that the performance of the managers will be judged on their capacity to deal with these very important issues. We are committed to pay equity and it will be seen that we are, over the months.


Mary Catherine Clancy: Words are wonderful. Nearly seven years ago this Prime Minister, on national television, committed his government to economic equality for Canadian women. Today, those women still make 67 cents for every dollar made by men.
I want to know from this Prime Minister what became of this commitment. Is the Prime Minister satisfied with these statistics, and when will he keep his promise and act to seriously improve the economic status of Canadian women?


Mary Collins: Mr. Speaker, I always feel badly when all a member can say is negative about the status of women in Canada as opposed to talking about the positive things. I am sure my hon. colleague is aware that there are today 900,000 more women working in this country and that there has been a 77 per cent increase in jobs in administration, management and professional jobs. In fact, there has been more than double the number of women working in those jobs. Fifty per cent of the students now in our colleges and universities are women.
Through the financial initiatives of this government- there are economic initiatives-indeed, the status of women is improving, and we should be encouraging our young women of this country to take advantage of the opportunities which exist for them out in the workplace.


Mary Catherine Clancy: Those advantages, Mr. Speaker, may exist somewhere, but one of the places they do not exist is the Public Service of Canada, unless either the minister or her Prime Minister is unfamiliar with the report of the public service, "Beneath The Veneer". In that report we are told that women who work in this Public Service are daily and constant victims
March 7, 1991

of systemic discrimination. There is no glass ceiling for men.
When is the Prime Minister-and I apologize for being negative-going to act meaningfully to end discrimination for women in his Public Service here in this country and fulfil his commitment?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend for a very important question. I know that, as someone very committed to the cause of the promotion of women, she will be very interested to know that the day I was sworn in as Prime Minister, there were three women Deputy Ministers in Canada; there are today 21. There were two women serving as ambassadors; there are now 16. There were 37 women in the federal judiciary; there are now 79. The number of women serving on agencies, boards and commissions-the highest Order in Council appointments of the Government of Canada-has, in the space of six years, after 16 years of Liberal government, been increased by 107 per cent.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


CULTURE
Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, in the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade talks, Canadian culture will again be under attack.
American negotiator, Carla Hills, assured U.S. congressmen that they will get Canadian cultural industries this time, that giving a cultural exemption to Canada in the last round was a big mistake.
Will the Minister of International Trade assure Canadians that in any future trade talks that protection for Canadian cultural industries will be strengthened, and will not be weakened as suggested by the U.S. negotiator, Carla Hills?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, I think the members of the House already know from the provisions of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement that this government is well capable of preserving the strength of Canadian culture and Canadian cultural agencies.
Mrs. Hills is simply expressing on behalf of the U.S. government its chagrin at having failed in the U.S.-Can-
Oral Questions
ada free trade negotiations in having got anywhere with reference to the Canadian cultural industry.
I can assure the hon. member that the Mexicans have exhibited no desire to make an assault upon Canadian culture, and as long as I am the trade minister she can depend upon it. Canadian culture is safe.


Sheila Finestone: I know that beer is safer than Canadian culture and I know that we got strangled with clause 2005, so do not tell me what the condition of Canadian culture is, based on what the minister has to say. With the so-called cultural protections that this government has given us, and the minister knows this, our creators, our film makers, our magazines and newspapers and our book publishers are all at risk.
So my question to the Prime Minister, seeing as how he will not let his minister of culture do it-


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps the hon. member would put her question.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, I would kindly ask the Prime Minister to give serious consideration to reinstating a proper film distribution policy, to reinstate the postal subsidies for our magazines and our books, and to enforce Canadian control of the minister's famous Baie Comeau policy. Or, I wonder, Mr. Speaker, if he needs Carla Hills' permission.


Hon. Marcel Masse (Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, I can give the hon. member the assurance that the government's responsibility for cultural industries in general and this one in particular is being taken very seriously, that policies have been initiated, and that compared with the situation under the previous Liberal government, Canada's cultural industries are now in far better shape.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


ARMS EXPORTS
Mr. Ian Waddell (Port Moody-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Justice.
Will the minister confirm that a consortium of companies, including General Motors of Canada and Diema-co, has recently signed a contract to export light armoured vehicles. The House saw those types of vehicles in the Oka crisis. They have machine guns on top

March 7, 1991
Oral Questions
of them. The contract is with Saudi Arabia and it is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
We should confirm that the contract appears to stand in violation of Canadian law.
Is the government considering an amendment to the Criminal Code of Canada and the Export and Import Act to allow this deal to go through?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, as I told the House on December 20 in answer to a question from the hon. member for Kitchener in whose district the firm of Diemaco is located, the government is considering such an amendment. Diemaco is the manufacturer of automatic weapons and as a result of a technical problem in the Criminal Code, its business is interfered with. It has about 500 employees, I believe, in Kitchener and if that firm is to continue operating and supplying automatic weapons to the Canadian Armed Forces, it has to be able to enter into contracts with others outside Canada who pass the intense scrutiny and control that is given to this matter by the Department of External Affairs.
So, yes, that is under consideration as it has been for some time, as I explained in the House on December 20.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplemental question for the Prime Minister on this matter. His Secretary of State for External Affairs said the other day: "If there is one priority, one lesson which the world must learn from this war, it is that an unrestricted arms trade in this region, the Middle East, is no longer acceptable and constitutes a threat to the security of all members of the UN". I could also quote his letter to Perez de Cuellar on the matter of arms sales.
Instead, I want to ask the Prime Minister: Is this the time for Canada to be making a record arms sale to the Middle East and indeed, changing our existing gun control and export laws to do it?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, there are arms and then there are arms. We are discussing automatic weapons, that is rifles and other small arms of that nature, machine guns and the like which are necessary for armies, police forces and civil authorities to have if they are to be in a position to
keep order in their own countries. We are not discussing other offensive or horrendous weapons of war.
If hon. members will look at the report I tabled yesterday on behalf of the Secretary of State for External Affairs, they will see the small amount of arms exports that Canada does have and the careful system of controls there is. I can assure hon. members that the Secretary of State for External Affairs keeps a very close personal eye on this.


MIDDLE EAST
Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister. In light of the statement made last evening by President Bush putting forward a Middle East program, where he underlined the necessity of having a resolution of the Arab-Israeli dispute, I would like to ask the Prime Minister if he agrees with the statement that was made yesterday by the Secretary of State for External Affairs in Jordan, where he said that the PLO must have an important role in any Arab-Israeli peace negotiations.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, we were very pleased with the statement last night by President Bush because it in many ways supported very actively the positions that this government set out in a letter to Perez de Cuellar and then again on March 4 in regard to the position of the Government of Canada.
The Secretary of State for External Affairs yesterday, when you read the full remarks, was actually quite careful in respect of this sensitive matter, where he said there obviously has to be a representation by Palestinians and it will be Palestinians themselves who are best placed to determine who their representative should be. Then he went on to say that "In respect of the PLO, its authority I think there has been diminished by this war". I personally believe that the authority of the-


Mr. Speaker:: I hope hon. members will remember that yesterday a matter of order was raised as to the difficulty in many members not being able to get to the floor through Question Period. We are in the last few minutes, the Prime Minister is replying and I know that hon. members would want him to continue and conclude his
March 7, 1991

answer as soon as possible, so that perhaps I can recognize another member.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Obviously any durable resolution of this matter will require discussion between Israel and the Palestinians on the one hand, and Israel and its Arab neighbours on the other. The Palestinian people, as I have indicated in the past, will choose their leaders and their organizations in regard to any participation.
But I must say on behalf of the government that anyone who has looked at the position of the current leadership of the PLO, particularly in its support of Saddam Hussein and its cheering of Scud missiles as they rained on Israel, would have to conclude that the PLO and its leader, Mr. Arafat, have been substantially if not completely discredited as a result of their own actions.
Our strong dissatisfaction with the PLO position and statements on the gulf crisis has been stressed over recent months during official contacts in this regard. We acknowledge that there is an important role for the Palestinians to choose their own leadership, but our enthusiasm for the present PLO leadership is zero.


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, whether the Prime Minister or the government is enthusiastic is not my question.
I was asking: Does he agree with the sentiments expressed yesterday by the Secretary of State for External Affairs that the PLO must have a role in helping to negotiate that?
It is a very important issue that is raised at this very sensitive time in trying to develop a peace resolution in the Middle East.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I have just given the answer on behalf of the Government of Canada-


Mr. Simmons:: No, you haven't.


An hon. member:: It is an important issue.


Roger Simmons: Explain that to Joe.


Mr. Speaker:: The right hon. Prime Minister.


Martin Brian Mulroney: If my hon. friend cares to examine it, he will see that there is nothing at all inconsistent in the
Privilege
principles that I have set out with the full context of the remarks of the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
This has been the position of the Government of Canada and it remains the position of the Government of Canada.
All parliamentarians, those who supported the deployment of Canadian troops to the gulf and those who opposed, will agree that the conduct of the organization purporting to represent the Palestinians has by its very own actions, in my judgment, discredited itself over the course of these very difficult last number of weeks.
I am telling my hon. friend that this is the position of the Government of Canada. We are looking for peace, a durable peace. That peace must respect the security of Israel and it must also accommodate the legitimate rights of Palestinians. This is the way a peaceful solution can be brought about and Canada is committed to that process.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


PRIVILEGE
Mr. David Dingwall (Cape Breton-East Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, I gave you notice earlier today with regard to a question of privilege concerning the comments made by the hon. leader of the New Democratic Party, which we believe has misrepresented the proceedings of this House with regard to the debate on Motion No. 25, on television last night.
From time to time mistakes in point of fact can be made but the-


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond is rising on a question of privilege which involves the leader of the New Democratic Party.
As he well knows as an experienced parliamentarian and as other members know, in a matter of this sort we usually try to make some effort to have both of the parties in the Chamber.
I wonder if the hon. member for Kamloops could give me some indication as to whether it would be appropriate to continue at this time, or whether he would ask that we arrange an appropriate time for this matter to be raised when the hon. leader of the New Democratic

March 7, 1991
Business of the House
Party can be here. I will hear the hon. member for Kamloops on that point.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I might say I was a little disappointed in my hon. friend, the Liberal House leader, for not having the courtesy of informing us that this-


Mr. Speaker:: I know that the hon. member for Kamloops will forgive me for saying that I did not want to start a debate. This is a request from the Speaker to the New Democratic Party, and I would like to know what its view is at the moment.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, our view is simply that we ought to proceed as we always do on these kinds of issues and that they are raised and debated when the members involved are in the House.
I would like to say that the leader of the New Democratic Party will be in the House on Monday, and perhaps we can revisit this issue at that point.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I will abide by your advice and your ruling. The point is clear with regard to a misrepresentation of fact. I am sure, if I were given the opportunity, that the House leader for the New Democratic Party would want to avail himself of the opportunity to make a simple apology.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, a simple apology? First, all I can say is that we have a long-standing tradition that if you are going to raise an issue about a member, you wait until he or she is in the House. On top of that, you would have the courtesy of informing the person with whom you are going to discuss some aspect, ahead of time.
We always do that. It is a tradition of this House. I am a little disappointed in my hon. friend that he did not make that effort.


Mr. Speaker:: I should point out that the hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond has indicated his complete co-operation with the tradition which we have followed.
I take it, then, that we will hear this matter at the earliest convenience on Monday, and we will hear the hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond further on that matter on Monday.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, we fully intend to comply with the wishes of the Chair with regard to to this
particular matter and would want to co-operate in any way possible, in order to give our friends to the left an opportunity to make a full and complete apology when necessary.


Mr. Speaker:: I look forward, with anticipation, to Monday.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the government House leader, perhaps the parliamentary secretary could indicate to the House the business for tomorrow and for next week.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, it would be our intention today to complete second reading of the agricultural bill which is before the House. Should that not be completed by this evening, it would be our hope that it would be completed tomorrow, as well as Bill C-91 for tomorrow.
At this moment we would be looking at an Opposition Day on Monday. We are having ongoing discussions with the House leadership of the other parties. We will continue those discussions, and I think through that information we will be able to inform all members of the House.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Mr. Speaker, I will also direct my remarks to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House. As he knows, last week in the House I asked the government when it would be introducing legislation on the northern tax benefit.
I have subsequently checked with our House leader, and it is not in the government's legislative program for the next couple of weeks to introduce that legislation.
I have also been informed that the Senate is going on a break. I would like to know what the government's plans are, in that a number of Canadians in communities across northern Canada want to fill in their income tax. They do not have the legislation passed by this House. Even if they fill in their income tax, there is no way the government is going to pay back any rebates owing to them.

We have been sitting here for a couple of weeks now. The Minister of Finance gave the press the wording of the legislation prior to the House coming back. Why has that legislation not been introduced in the House? Why has it not been put through the House by this time? Why has it not been done prior to the Senate taking another holiday?


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for raising a very important issue, a question that of course is near and dear to my own heart.
If this is a representation from him and an indication that we would have a quick and speedy passage of that legislation through the House, I would be more than happy to bring that to the attention of the Minister of Finance.
Perhaps we could make a very quick decision in the House and look after those people in northern and isolated communities.


Rodney Edward Murphy: On the same point and just to reassure the parliamentary secretary, we made that obvious to the Minister of Finance weeks ago and we made it obvious in the House last week. I would suggest that it is the government that is stalling on its own legislation.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his confirmation of rapid and speedy delivery of this legislation. I will have a discussion with the Minister of Finance and will bring that information back to the House as quickly as possible.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Wednesday, March, 6, consideration of the motion of Mr. Wilson (Etobicoke Centre) that Bill C-97, an act to provide borrowing authority, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Finance.
Mr. Speaker:: It being three o'clock p.m., pursuant to orders made Tuesday, March 5, and Wednesday, March
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6, 1991, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred division on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-97, an act to provide borrowing authority.


[Stage Direction]
Call in the members.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I declare the motion carried. The bill will go to the Standing Committee on Finance.
Bill read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Finance.


FARM INCOME PROTECTION ACT
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of motion of Mr. Mazankowski that Bill C-98, an act authorizing agreements between the Government of Canada and the provinces to provide for protection for the income of producers of agricultural products and to enable the Government of Canada to take additional measures for
that purpose be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Agriculture.
Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg-St. James):: Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to thank my hon. colleagues opposite who gave me this particular time space to make my speech, as I have a commitment at 4.30 p.m. that I cannot break. I want to thank my hon. colleagues. I appreciate that very much.
This bill is very important to all our friends in the agricultural community in Canada. It is very important to all Canadians. It is safe to say that we cannot have a strong Canada if we do not have a strong agricultural community. We are painfully aware of the plight of farmers. It is unacceptable to all of us in this House, and it is especially unacceptable to the farmers of Canada.
The farmers of Canada are a very proud people. They do not like the situation. They do not want to feel that they are somehow dependent on all of us. If there is any group in this country that wants to be self-sufficient, that wants to be totally independent and free to do its thing on its own without relying on anyone, it is the farmers of Canada. They are a very proud people and I can assure you that I am very proud of them.
As I said, this bill is very important and I can assure my colleagues opposite that there will be no obstruction and no unnecessary delay from this side of the House. We want to see this bill go as quickly as possible to committee.
However, we do have our parliamentary duty and our democratic obligation to debate the bill before it goes to committee. But it will go to committee as quickly as possible as far as we are concerned.
We are all aware that this Bill, C-98, is really enabling legislation. It is legislation which is going to provide, at least in the first instance, two farm safety net programs: the Gross Revenue Insurance Program, known by its acronym GRIP, and the other program, the Net Income Stabilization Account, known by its acronym NISA.
Right now, most farmers are riveted on GRIP. There are some very positive aspects to the GRIP program. Let me just point out some of them, and we agree with our hon. colleagues from the other side. GRIP, for example, will have pay-outs that are made on farm-fed grains. There will not be a requirement to sell grain within a
March 7, 1991

particular crop year to be eligible for a pay-out; that is positive.
The range of available crops has been expanded; that is positive. The pay-outs are more predictable and that is the one thing that fanners, right across this country, have been asking for. They want some predictability brought into the system. When the grain farmers go out on the land in the spring, they want to know what they are getting into. It does not have to be completely detailed, but they must have a strong idea of what their return is going to be come the fall, come harvest. I think that is very reasonable.
Also, and this is another positive aspect of GRIP, the 15-year moving average of prices provides more support during long periods of low prices compared to a five year average of prices.
I want to point out those positive aspects of the bill.
As you might expect, we have spoken in recent weeks and months to a lot of farmers. There are concerns out there. There are concerns of the producers and, of course, there are concerns of our own.
Let me point out one as a parliamentarian. It really has to do with this legislation which, in effect, side-steps Parliament. It really makes Parliament irrelevant because this is enabling legislation, the kind of umbrella legislation which gives the powerful Minister of Agriculture-and I would hope that his successor will be powerful as well-or, if you will, the Government of Canada, great leeway, power to bring about agreements with the provinces and bring about agreements with producers. We in this Chamber are pretty well reduced to nothing.
In effect, what we are doing with this legislation-and we are going to have to discuss this further-is giving the government of the day a blank cheque, an open cheque. Here is the legislation, do with it whatever you will and you can consummate an agreement with one province, two provinces or three provinces and you do not even have to come back. That is a concern to us and it is a concern that has to be brought up at this time because we feel this sense of responsibility as parliamentarians.
There is another concern that we have, because under this bill, the government is trying to get away with murder. It is trying to get away with murder by off-load-
Govemment Orders
ing huge costs on to the provinces and on to the producers.
I think that as we look at these agreements, there is going to be an unbearable strain put on some taxpayers and some producers. Let's take a look at an example with respect to the GRIP agreement as it applies to the province of Saskatchewan.
Federal premiums will be increased only 8 per cent. Farmers' premiums will be increased 35 per cent. However, the provincial premium will go up a whopping 355 per cent. That is a lot of money. That is an enormous strain to be put on taxpayers in the province of Saskatchewan.
I was talking to a gentleman just today-and this is a man who knows a lot about GRIP, a lot about NISA, and about farm safety net programs-who feels that there is no way that the province of Saskatchewan could sustain this kind of premium, sustain this kind of agreement, for very long. So that is a concern of ours.
When we say that there is going to be a strain on the province of Saskatchewan-which there will be-I doubt whether that is going to be of any great concern to Mr. Devine, the premier there. That is something that he wants and he wants it badly, because there is going to be an election in the wheat province this year. Not only is he using GRIP as a way of advancing his political interests in the province of Saskatchewan, but he is also looking for some kind of deficiency payment. I would think that he will be getting his deficiency payment some time just before the provincial election in Saskatchewan. How much it will be, I don't know.
When I look at the budget, I notice a provision there for approximately $1.3 billion for agriculture. It is not going to be enough. We have GRIP, NISA, the third line of defence, the deficiency payment, which will have to come some time this spring; we have a deficit in the Wheat Board account; we have a deficit exceeding $1.1 billion in the WGSA. I don't know where the government is going to get all the money. When I look at the budget, when I look at the accounts, there is not enough there.
Another concern we have is that there appears to be an effort on the part of the government to hold a stick over the heads of producers, and the stick really says this: You sign up for GRIP or you are not going to get a deficiency payment. At least, that is the threat. I think that is unfortunate. I would hope that farmers would feel

March 7, 1991
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free, that they would feel as unfettered as possible to make decisions with respect to either getting into GRIP or staying out of GRIP.
While I am on this matter of costs, there is something else I want to raise. Many months ago when GRIP and NISA were being envisaged-and I will speak now only of GRIP-there was talk that the premiums for the three parties-that is, the provincial governments, the federal government and the producers-would run at about 18 per cent, that is 18 per cent of return. That 18 per cent would be split evenly, 6 per cent each way.
However, it is not working out that way. In fact, if you look at Saskatchewan alone, Saskatchewan premiums are going to run at about 12 per cent, 12.5 per cent. That is about 100 per cent more; in other words, double the provincial premium that was envisaged just a few months ago. That is a concern to us.
You have to ask yourself the questions: Are those kinds of increases sustainable? Are those kinds of premiums sustainable? If you can have that kind of premium going up 100 per cent even before the program starts, what is it going to be like a year from now? What is it going to be like two years from now, or three years from now? Those are questions that we have to raise now and, in particular, we have to raise those questions at committee.
While we are at it we might as well raise questions about the deficit. The hon. Minister of Agriculture pointed out in his speech this morning that at the outset, at the beginning of GRIP, there will be a deficit.
The hon. minister says that the program is actuarially sound and the time will come when everything will even out, that there will not be a terrible deficit. I hope he is right, but there are some people around who say that the way it is set up, the way it is currently constituted it cannot fly. It just cannot fly. Those are questions that we are going to have to raise at committee.
Remember one thing, despite all these concerns we do look at GRIP and NISA as a lifeline for farmers. I think that we have a responsibility, an obligation to farmers to throw out to them a lifeline, to help them over the hump, and to help them through this very troubled
period. Farmers have been devastated by what has been going on in world markets. This world trade war is crazy. It is an abomination. I think we have an obligation to help farmers through. Farm safety programs are not the ultimate panacea but we have to help farmers through this difficult period.
In the first year of GRIP the estimated pay-out is $2.4 billion. That is a lot of money and the government certainly has gone out of its way to emphasize the amount of money, $2.4 billion. Let us put this thing in perspective. In just the last couple of years, this government has slashed $1.8 billion from agricultural support programs.
In effect, on one hand the government is saying: "Look at how great we are. We have arranged a program that will pay out $2.4 billion". Yet on the other hand, I think it is responsible on our part to remind people of the serious cuts that took place in agricultural support programs in just the last couple of years.
Forgive me, Mr. Speaker, but I must at least for a moment succumb to a moderate bout of cynicism. My cynicism relates to the GRIP payments. It does not take a genius to notice that the GRIP payments more or less will come on stream in 1992 and there will be perhaps another major GRIP payment in early 1993. What is so significant about 1992 and what is so significant about 1993? Look at the parliamentary calendar. My reading of the parliamentary calendar tells me that we might have a federal election in 1992 or early 1993. Would it not be very propitious for our good friends across the way to be sending off, through Canada Post, some big fat cheques to producers at just about the time they are asking themselves: "Who should we vote for". It would be very propitious.
I am sure that did not dawn on my good friend, the agricultural minister. If it did come to him, it must have come to him second hand. In any event, I took note of that.
If you think that this cynicism that I am exhibiting is just pulled out of the sky, it is not. We saw this happen back in 1987 and 1988. Under the Special Grains Program we saw huge dollops of money being handed out to farmers. What happened in 1988? We had a federal election.
March 7, 1991

Forgive me for my cynicism, but I think it is important to get these things into perspective.
Now, I want to list, since I have only four or five more minutes, some other concerns that will have to be dealt with at committee. This leads to some technical questions. But let me just touch on a few.
There is a concern, a worry on the part of some producers that GRIP is going to be a nightmare to administer. Here is a quote from one Saskatchewan farmer by the name of Jim Coghlin: "When I look at the plan I see a glaring opportunity for abuse; given the times morals can fall out of our pockets pretty fast". That is what the gentleman from Saskatchewan said.
There is a concern about GRIP distorting the market. There have been many questions raised by certain agricultural experts, particularly in the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. One of the worries they have is that GRIP will distort the market. In effect, what they are saying is this: take wheat, for example, the wheat market around the world says: don't grow wheat, please don't grow wheat, the price is terrible, you can do better elsewhere. But what does GRIP say? More or less GRIP says: grow wheat, please grow wheat, you can make more money growing wheat. And that does not come as any great surprise.
So, there could be some serious distortion in the marketplace as a result of that. We are going to have to pursue this in committee.
There is also the concern that there will be an expanded acreage of specialty crops which could produce-and I underline the word "could"- a glut on the market of these specialty crops. If that happens that would only lower the prices of the specialty crops, and at the same time would raise the costs of the farm safety program.
There is also the worry that the program may discourage good farming practices. I want to mention something that was said by an organization called Agri Decision Research and Consulting of Winnipeg. It points out that a farmer would get the same revenue for a 20 bushel an acre crop as for a 35 bushel an acre crop. The reasoning goes, according to this organization, that if the farmer has to spend money, for example, on fertilizer to get the larger yield, would the farmer do it? Or is he just, in his
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opinion, throwing money away under the GRIP program?
I think it is a legitimate concern, something that is going to have to be dealt with at some length when the bill goes to committee.
There is also the concern that GRIP discourages diversification, that bankers will be telling producers "stay with the tried and the proven; stay with the conventional cropping, because that is where the lower risks lie; don't try anything too new; don't diversify". It is a concern that we have.
There is also the concern that GRIP will not result in conservation, that at least some farmers will rush out and tear up marginal land, like hay land, to maximize their acreage, to in effect maximize their yield.
While we support the principle of this bill, because we have an obligation to take care of our farmers, they are going through tough times. There are questions about this program, as there would be questions about any program. I think the hon. Minister of Agriculture pointed out in his speech this morning that in anything like this there will be differences of opinion.
If we were bringing in a program something like this, there would be questions. The same applies to this program being brought in by the Minister of Agriculture.
We want it to go to committee as quickly as possible where we can look at this bill in much more detail.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member a question. I appreciate very much the very constructive and positive tone of his speech. Some of the points that he did raise obviously need to be addressed.
Having regard to the fact that we have gone through a five or six year period where we had disastrous price levels and other natural disasters that have had a very devastating impact upon the agricultural community, particularly grains and oilseeds, perhaps they would have been out of business had it not been for the generosity of the people of Canada and the support that the federal government directed.

March 7, 1991
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I would like to ask him whether in his view this kind of an enabling legislative approach, which outlines certain principles and objectives that bring the provinces into the fold and bring the producers into the fold, may very well constitute a more effective policy measure than simply trying to design a program after the fact, as we have been forced to do, because the existing stabilization and safety net programs were not adequate enough to cover the very severe losses that were incurred.
Does he not agree that this approach would cover all bases in a more effective manner?


John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. Minister of Agriculture for his question.
I think all of us on both sides of the House, and certainly those out in the farming community, were fed up with what is called ad hockery. The system that we had, where we sort of react to crises, react to the latest events, just did not work, and mainly because farmers never knew where in the world they stood. They did not know how the government of the day, be it Conservative, be it Liberal, might respond.
As I said in my speech earlier, the element of predictability is a very positive one, and this in my opinion is a step toward predictability. I want the farmers to get some better sense of where they stand. When they go out to the land in the spring, they should have some idea of what is in place, what they can expect in the way of a monetary return when they have worked hard all spring, all summer and through the fall.
Yes, I agree with the hon. Minister of Agriculture. I want a framework like this, but at the same time I am concerned that we as parliamentarians or this House are being somewhat side-stepped.
We have seen examples of so-called executive federalism in the last few years. Sometimes it works; sometimes it does not work very well. As one parliamentarian, a backbencher on the opposite side, I am a little concerned when I see ministers of the federal Crown and premiers or ministers of the provincial legislatures getting together and doing their thing as if the House of Commons was not important at all.
But, yes, if the minister were also suggesting wide consultation, I am all in favour of that and I am very glad
that farmers in the last number of months have had an opportunity to say their piece. When I look at this bill, I can see farmer written into it, without a doubt, and that I appreciate.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, not to prolong the debate, but I find it very intriguing. I share his view. I am as much a House of Commons man as the hon. member. I appreciate the significance of the institution and the importance of it.
What we have tried to do here is seek a balance. If we have a legislative measure that has rigidity built into it, as we have had, it is very difficult for any government to respond to these kinds of circumstances. What we have been trying to do in the process of the enabling legislation is to build in certain principles and establish flexibility, so that we can respond in a way that provides some predictable nature in the programs we are establishing. I guess it is that balance we have tried to achieve.
The opposite to that is legislative framework that is far too rigid and that does not give the flexibility to respond to these kinds of things.
I am glad that the hon. member did make the point that producers had been involved. What I find very fascinating and intriguing about this whole process is that I firmly believe-and it may very well set the stage for a new era of public policy making-that while this might take a little longer and our patience has to be a little more controlled, in the final analysis we can get a better piece of legislation and hopefully a better program with the broad based consultation we have tried to engage in.


John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, again I thank the hon. Minister of Agriculture for his comments.
Let me just make two points. I am hoping that through this process in the House we can improve the bill. When it goes to committee, I would hope that the minister and the government would entertain some amendments. We humbly suggest that it can be improved in some areas.
Another thing I want to point out is that the hon. minister talks about balance. I want to see balance as well. I want to see a balance that is fair to the federal government, a balance that is fair to the provinces, and a balance that is fair to producers, but I am not absolutely sure whether the balance we all want has been arrived at.
March 7, 1991

As I pointed out before, the premiums come pretty hard on the provinces. I cite the example of the province of Saskatchewan, where premiums are going to be horrendous for them. The burden on the provincial taxpayer in Saskatchewan is going to be nearly unbearable.
I remind the House of what someone told me just today, that he does not think in the case of Saskatchewan-and we might even throw Manitoba into this-that Saskatchewan can afford this program. The taxpayer in Saskatchewan cannot afford it. The day will come; probably not until Grant Devine is gone or at least until after the next provincial election, but some change is going to have to be arranged because it is simply too burdensome on the provincial taxpayer in Saskatchewan.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments are now terminated.
Before I recognize the next speaker let me say the following:

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: The hon. member for	Glengarrry-Prescott-Russell-Unemployment;
the hon. member for Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt-The Lumber Industry; the hon. member for St. Boniface-The Budget.

I will recognize the hon. member for Lambton- Middlesex, then I will recognize the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan.


Ralph Ferguson: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to take part in this debate on the farm safety net program with which the minister has led off this debate today.
I speak with apprehension, but I do want to say that I recognize the need for a safety net program. I only wish this safety net was a little higher off the ground. Let us look at what is happening across the border in the U.S. in terms of its wheat target price this year which is $4.60 a
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bushel. Ours will work out to about $4.25 a bushel. I am talking Canadian funds here in both instances.
Then I look at our input costs which are about 25 per cent higher in Canada than they are in the U.S. I updated these just two weeks ago. I wonder how we as Canadians are going to produce in competition.
I should just take a moment to point out that the wheat prices are the lowest in history at the present time. Yet, when I look at the farmer's share of wheat that goes into a loaf of bread, it is only worth 6 cents per loaf. The one-pound package of sugar cookies contains 2 cents worth of wheat. Spaghetti, in a package that costs $1.19 there is 24 cents worth of wheat. In a 40-ounce bottle of rye whiskey, there is 1 cent worth of grain. In a bottle of beer, there is 1 cent worth of barley.
Everybody else in society has had their return from the marketplace, except the producers. Their returns are being forced lower and lower every year, to the point where it is going to be very difficult for the farmers of this nation to survive.
The minister mentioned earlier that this program had to be revenue neutral. I attended a producers' meeting here just about three weeks ago where one of the officials there from the commodity organization warned the producers not to go out and bid up the price of land because this program will not pay off the mortgage.
I want to make that point very clear at the outset. It will not pay off the mortgage or the debt. It may sustain the farm at the current level, if in fact there is a reasonable interest rate on the mortgage.
In response to the comments by the minister that it had to be market responsive, I ask: What does he mean by being market responsive? The price setting mechanism in the marketplace for the last number of years is simply not working, nor is it being allowed to work.
I want to point out two or three things things here. Perhaps I should say that the February 1991 issue of the World Grain Situation and Outlook points out that the grain reserves are the lowest since the 1970s. In fact, the United States' supplies are about one third the level that they were in the early 1970s. They are the lowest since the early 1900s.

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Consequently, if the market is going to respond, then those prices should have been a lot higher than they are right now. The fanners should never have been forced into the position they are.
Let us recall some witnesses we had before the agriculture committee of this House last spring. It has been further documented since that time that the Chicago Board of Trade is being influenced by very large infusions of money and by very large corporations.
Two or three years ago, 68 people were indicted in that Chicago Board of Trade. Eight of those immediately pleaded guilty. We recall last summer, the last Friday of July and the last Monday of July, when the price of barley at the Winnipeg Grain Exchange dropped to the limit on those two consecutive trading days.
There is a lot of speculation of what has happened, but I just have to suggest that perhaps the ongoing investigation for several years has more work ahead of it.
The market system is not responding to supplies, and yet the farmers are being forced to accept lower prices as the supplies fall into fewer hands in the grain trading nations. The U.S. Acreage Set Aside Program also has an impact on prices because they start out in the early part of the year and establish their various target prices for the farmers, and that is referring to the $4.60 pay-out which I mentioned earlier.
They also calculate what they think the market price will be. Then of course the difference between their calculated market price and their target price is their deficiency payment. So why would any grain company pay more than what the forecast market price is going to be?
Of course on top of that we have the Export Enhancement Programs that are having a direct influence and we saw that at various times last year and again this year when the U.S. export enhancement payments ranged from $19 per tonne up to $52 this year. If you figure that back to the farm gate, in Canadian terms, it works out to about $27 per tonne for our wheat at the farm gate.
The marketplace is not working. It is not reflecting the world supplies. Neither is it reflecting the free marketplace system.
I would have to suggest that while this bill will go a long way to resolving a problem if these low prices continue-and we have no evidence at this point that they will not continue-there is going to be a terrible financial burden placed, not only on the shoulders of the farmers of this nation, but also on both levels of government.
There is no substitute for getting your returns from the marketplace. The farmers' returns which I quoted earlier for a loaf of bread, which costs approximately $1, are very low from that, and of course the other items I mentioned are equally as important.
I look at what is happening on those world markets and I have to quote from a publication from the state of Michigan which I picked up two weeks ago. It reads: "The current local farm price for com has been about $2.23 a bushel. The release price for corn in the farmer owned reserve is $3.25 per bushel. The Secretary of Agriculture could keep this corn off the market until the market price reaches $3.25."
You would think he would at least hold it until the market price reaches $2.75 a bushel. However, it is being released on to the marketplace at the present time to further depress our markets here in Canada. A lot of that is Commodity Credit Corporation corn that may be several years old and which is coming into our markets to be blended with higher quality com and having a disastrous price impact on our own markets.
The prices have edged up a little bit the last week or so, but were off a bit yesterday.
So it does not reflect at all what is happening in the marketplace. It is interesting that when the U.S. released, or sold, an additional 1.5 million tonnes to China on the export enhancement program, they paid their export enhancement subsidies in the form of other commodities. This is a real sweetheart deal for the big grain companies because these subsidies are charged to farm programs and the cost is paid by the farmers.
How does it work? A net exporter sells grain to a foreign market and the export enhancement programs allow the grain exporter to capture the sale by offering grain at or below the world market price and the subsidy will cover the difference between what the exporter paid for grain and the sale price, plus his profit margin.
March 7, 1991

As I said earlier this is not paid for in money. It is paid for with a commodity certificate for the specific number of dollars. These certificates are paid for in Commodity Credit Corporation grain.
This action in turn continues to depress the price of com. Cheap com in turn is great for the six or eight big companies who not only export most of our grain but are also the biggest processors of grain and beans. These same corporations over there feed cattle, hogs, and chickens; they operate meat packing plants, crush soybeans, manufacture cereals, flour mills and own restaurants. They are the benefactors really of that program and the low prices that are involved.
I have to wonder, when we look at the free trade agreement and all the hoopla that came with it, just why-with all those export enhancement subsidies being paid by the United States, export enhancement subsidies that are allowing them into the marketplaces of other countries of the world-under the free trade agreement this government has not taken action to ask for consultations. It is veiy clear under Article 701.4 of the free trade agreement that the U.S. is to take into account the effects of its export subsidies to other nations on Canada to ensure they do not prejudice our exports.
In view of what I have said to this point, I call on the government now to ask for those consultations to increase the price of world grains and to make the United States live up to their agreements and stop taking our markets that are depressing our prices, necessitating the need for a program that is going to cost a lot of money to our wheat and com farmers across this nation.
It is interesting that the government can withdraw from this program with just two years' notice. Yet if a farmer wants to withdraw, that requires four years' notice. What is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. Consequently, I want to see something done to ensure that there is an opportunity in that legislation for consultation. If the government can withdraw in two years because the program is no good or it is putting undue financial hardship on the farmers or the provinces, farmers should have a similar accommodation under this bill.
Nobody knows what is going to happen with this bill in terms of the costs. We are already hearing some of the
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provinces complain about the high costs involved with their involvement. We have to recognize that this whole area has been a transfer of responsibility not only to the provinces, but also to the farmers involved.
When I see that the level of premiums for com is somewhere around $12.50 an acre; for soybeans $13.91 an acre; and for wheat probably about $15 an acre in Ontario, I have to wonder how the farmers are going to come up with that level of money if these prices do not improve over the next three or four years, unless there is a dramatic turnaround in world prices. Certainly I do not see that coming unless there is a natural disaster, and let us hope there is not one.
I think that the government should be working more strenuously to make sure that the marketplace reflects the world supplies and the producers themselves can get their returns from the marketplace, and have a return that is commensurate with that of the rest of society. It makes no sense to me at all that we have the involvement of our government in a program form which the producer gets such a small amount of return.
I also call on the government to establish a two-price system for wheat and other commodities that are used here in Canada, such as we had a few years back, because you can bet your bottom dollar that is exactly what the U.S. target prices reflect, a two-price system in the United States.
As I said earlier, I will be supporting this legislation but it does not go nearly far enough. There has to be a lot more thought put into this. I hope the government will be open to suggestions when this comes into the agriculture committee for more study.
The other thing that I am very concerned about is the fact that we have not seen these agreements. We do not know whether the agreement with the prairie provinces will be the same as that with Ontario, or the Ontario agreement will be similar to that with Quebec. What will those pay-out prices be per bushel? Will one province have a lot higher pay-out than another one? Will that in turn affect the comparative advantage of production, that we could have crops moving from one section of the country to the other?
We should have these answers available to us and we should certainly have access to the agreements that are being hammered out at the present time so that we can

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study them to make sure that all producers in Canada are used on an equitable basis.
We have to be very careful when entering into longterm agreements and, if at all possible, try to have the agreements for wheat apply to all prairie provinces or, for corn, applied equally to Ontario and Quebec.
The whole concept of a safety net would be more acceptable to the farmers in Canada if, in fact, we had the regular ups and downs and regular cycles in the marketplace.
As I indicated earlier, these marketplace fluctuations appear to be influenced by outside factors other than those of supply and demand. I have to wonder just what consideration was given to these fluctuations, the fact that the marketplace is not being allowed to respond because of outside influences. I have to wonder what the government is doing to put us back on a level playing field.
Looking at the southern United States where they can grow two or three crops a year, we are dreaming in Technicolor if we think that we can compete-with a bill such as we have here today-with two crops a year that have their targeted prices and deficiency payments.
The livestock industry in the United States is moving south, particularly the dairy industry which is moving south into Florida and into Texas. With up to 7,000 animals per herd, I have to wonder what lies ahead for us here in Canada.
It is time this government examined how to compete in such situations like that. How do we compete, for example, when 50 per cent of the United States' agriculture efficiency is cheap labour, most of it in the southern states where Mexican labour is available for $1 an hour with no benefits. In fact, 3,000 hours of labour per worker per year is considered to be labour not fully utilized in that part of this North American continent. Most of these people work 9.6 hours per day, six days a week. On an average Michigan dairy farm the workers work 2,700 hours per year versus 2,000 hours per year in industry.
There are a lot of things involved with this bill, a lot of things to consider. Are we simply pouring money into a program like this trying to follow a supposedly free world market that is so heavily subsidized by other countries?
Are we simply pouring money into a bill that is going to be detrimental not only to our country, but will instil a sense of false hope among our farmers that they will be able to pay off their mortgages and have a living commensurate with that of the rest of society?
I hope the government reconsiders some of these issues I have raised when it goes into committee. While I support the bill in principle, there are a lot of loopholes and a lot that has to be examined in detail. I trust the government will be responsive to our concerns.


Mr. David D. Stupich (Nanaimo -Cowichan):: Mr. Speaker, of the members who have spoken on this so far, the hon. member for Mackenzie said: "It is difficult to criticize the details of legislation when the details really are not in it", and it would be equally difficult to praise it, I would think.
The hon. member for Winnipeg-St. James said it would be easy to be cynical about the timing of the payments coming as they do when one might expect a federal election and, I suppose, it is easy. I do not intend to dwell on that.
The hon. member for Lambton-Middlesex said that it is difficult to talk about agreements when none of the agreements have been seen. I suppose if I were entering into such an agreement with the federal government, on behalf of a provincial government or even on behalf of an individual, I would think carefully about what the federal government has done with respect to agreements for cost sharing between the province and the federal government and the changes that have been made in those.
I am sure all that will be covered. As the hon. member for Mackenzie and others have said, when we get into committee we can deal with the details and hope to improve the legislation and make something more of it.
I intend to talk about my own experience in the few minutes that I have. I can recall when I first stood in the legislature in the province of British Columbia. I am going to digress for a moment, Mr. Speaker, to recognize the presence in the House of the hon. Minister of Agriculture. I know in the jobs he has, there are many things he could be doing other than sitting here listening to this debate. But I am aware also that he has been here
March 7, 1991

as much as he possibly can. I want to recognize that and thank him for attending in the way that he has.


Some hon. members:: Elear, hear.


David Stupich: As I started to say, when I first spoke in the legislature in B.C. 27 years ago concerning agriculture, one of the Socred cabinet ministers interjected and said that the NDP must have fallen to a pretty low level when they were calling on a chartered accountant to lead off the agriculture debate. The leader of the opposition at that time, Bob Strachan, replied to the effect that I was the only member in the House with a degree in agriculture. I had been raised on a small farm and had operated my own poultry farm for several years, so I had something more going for me than a degree in agriculture when I spoke.
Since then, I have added to that experience by having been minister of agriculture the whole time the New Democrats were in office in British Columbia. It is about that experience that I would like to talk briefly.
First, may I say that with respect to this legislation, the long title of the bill tells it the way I like to see it. The long name of the Farm Income Protection Act best spells out the government's intent. It is:
An Act authorizing agreements between the Government of
Canada and the provinces to provide for protection for the income
of producers of agricultural products and to enable the Government
of Canada to take additional measures for that purpose.
I wish this kind of enabling legislation had been in effect when I was minister of agriculture in the province of British Columbia.
The legislation talks about the goals, the guiding principles of the legislation itself. There is a comment about that from some representatives of the departments of agriculture and economics in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, to the effect that GRIP, while the legislation says that it should be market responsive, is not market responsive. The legislation says that GRIP should encourage self-reliance, and the economists say that it does not encourage self-reliance as the pay-out from the program is more important than the level of output, when talking about grain. The legislation says that it should recognize regional diversity; the professors say that it does not so recognize. The legislation says that it should be environmentally sound, and they say that it is not.
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I will leave all that to the discussions in committee. I am sure there will be representatives there from the Minister of Agriculture to deal with those comments.
There is a quotation that I used in the second report of the B.C. Agricultural Land Commission that tells it the way I see it, and I think it is worth repeating at this time. It comes from a book by William Jennings Bryan, entitled Cross of Gold. It reads:
Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will
spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will
grow in the streets of every city in the country.
Mr. Speaker, it is important to maintain the rural areas, but you cannot maintain the areas unless you have people there and you cannot have people there unless it is economically sensible for them to be there. We have a responsibility as a society to make sure that farmers can make a living farming.
It used to be that in the province of British Columbia, and I suppose in every other province, farmers looked forward to making their living or at least their retirement income by selling their farmland for a great price. One of the first things that I was able to do as Minister of Agriculture in B.C. was to bring in legislation freezing the development of agricultural land. We wanted to make sure that that land would be there for the future when it might be needed to produce food, where people could see farmers in action, farmers producing, where youngsters could go from school and see that milk does not come from cans or out of a bag of powdered milk but that food is produced by people working the land. I felt it was important to do that and important to maintain the rural areas.
Another of my experiences was five years in the air force during the war. During two years of that I was teaching at a school for flying instructors. In my experience, those students who came from farming areas anywhere in the British Commonwealth-this was the Commonwealth Air Training Plan-the ones who came from farms as opposed to those who came from cities, had learned to be reliable working on their farms. They had learned to be self-reliant, since you cannot stop your farm operation because something breaks down. You have to haywire it together somehow and keep it working. They turned out to be the best air crew personnel, certainly the best pilots. That was the experience of all those working in the Commonwealth Air Training plan.

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Government Orders
As I said, the first step of our program in British Columbia, was to save the land. It was not easy. There were demonstrations and hot meetings. One particular demonstration, was led by leaders of the B.C. Federation of Agriculture on the Parliament Buildings grounds. The premier came out and spoke to them. He was not listened to, but he spoke. But he was listened to when he invited the leaders of that demonstration to come into his office and talk about what they wanted, not in opposition to farmland program, but to make it possible for farmers to make a living farming the land, rather than selling it, exploiting it, developing it.
They came into his office and he offered to match anything they wanted to spend for consultants, or whatever, up to $50,000, dollar for dollar, so they could bring in their programs. The select standing committee of agriculture at the time was instructed, or authorized if you like, to travel around and listen to farmers all over the province of B.C., much in the same way this minister listened to the fanners and farm organizations. We did the same thing.
In addition to that, my own department, as I am sure was the minister's department, was working on its program and we came up with a program that provided for a safety net. This is not unusual. But it was so widely complained about.
People talk about subsidies, and I was never more in agreement with the Minister of Agriculture of the day, Eugene Whelan, when he said at meeting after meeting: "It is not farmers who are being subsidized, it is the consumers, and it because governments are not prepared to pass on to consumers the total cost of producing food". Politically unpopular. So consumers are subsidized. Sure, it is handed through farmers on occasion, but not all the time. It is because we are competing with other nations with substantial subsidies paid either to farmers or to the community that we have to do the same thing. There is no way out. We are subsidizing the price of food so that consumers will not have to pay the full cost.
But in society outside of that, the unemployment insurance program is a safety net for a significant body of our population. There is no question about that. Professionals of many kinds, for example, doctors enter into contracts in every provincial government in Canada. They enter into contracts which provide them with a very nice safety net.
Farmers had one safety net for a long time, several decades I suppose by now, and they still have it-the Crop Insurance Program. It has been a good program. It has helped to protect them from disaster arising from what we call natural causes. We have just had a snowfall in British Columbia that started on March 1 or 2.1 do not know if that is natural or not, but it is certainly nature, if not natural.
But they never have had one program that would deal with all of the problems. This, as I see it, is what Bill C-98 is trying to do: bring under one umbrella all of the programs. That is certainly the direction I wanted to go, and had I carried on as minister of agriculture after the election, then that would have been the direction I would have wanted to go, to bring everything under one program.
As I mentioned earlier, I agree totally with the principles as listed on page 3. They were the same principles that guided me in bringing in the farm income insurance program we brought in in B.C., with another one added, I think. I will come to that just a little later.
To arrive at our farm income insurance program, and again I might compare it to what the minister did, we entered first into negotiations with the B.C. Federation of Agriculture as the organization which represented the most farmers in B.C. In B.C. the National Farmers' Union was a factor only in the grain growing northeast part of the province. It was not a factor even in the Creston area, where grain was grown as well. But in the northeast comer of the prairies, that part in B.C., they were a factor and we were prepared to deal with them, but never got that done during my tenure in office. We arrived at a master contract, a cost of production contract. That is the way we looked at it. We settled the details that would apply in general to farming as a whole. After that, it was up to each commodity group to come to us and say whether they wanted to be a party to it or not. That was their choice. They came one by one and said they wanted to get into the program. There was the master contract that had been negotiated, and really it was tough negotiations, with the Federation of Agriculture on behalf of everyone, and then with the representatives. The first to come on board were the dairy farmers and I think the next were the fruit growers. The dairy farmers came in before we actually got the program organized.
March 7, 1991

One of the things the minister said was that he did not want to move too fast and then make mistakes. He would rather move into it more slowly. I would certainly recommend that to him because we got into the dairy first because of an emergency situation. They are since out of it and I think everybody is happy about it now.
We got into it with the fruit growers secondly after the commodity group representatives had made their agreement with us based on the master plan. It was then up to individual farmers to choose whether or not they wanted to belong. I notice in this legislation there is reference to that as well, that it is still the individual choice.
I notice the minister saying something to the effect that the cattlemen are saying that they are going to choke on GRIP. GRIP was not used in those days, but I heard much the same response from the B.C. cattlemen's organization in B.C. when we brought in our agricultural insurance program. However, it was not very long before the cattlemen's organization out-voted the big people in their own industry and wanted to become part of the farming insurance program in B.C., and did.
Individuals signed on; they had that choice. They had to sign a five-year contract. I have heard some of the details that have been talked about concerning the legislation, talking about contracts for a certain period, not necessarily five years but certain periods of notice before they can get out.
A cap on the volume of production was used for most commodity groups. That is, the program was effective up to a certain number of cows for cow-calf operations, up to a certain number of poultry for egg laying and that kind of thing. It was not to provide an umbrella for the largest operators. It was to provide an umbrella significant enough that anybody could maintain themselves. If they were bigger than that they could still get coverage up to that limit, but that was it.
There was no cap in production with respect to the fruit growers because as you can understand, Mr. Speaker, it takes so much longer to start producing tree fruits; once you cut the trees down it would take a long time to
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get back into business. So it was not practical to put a cap on the production for the fruit growers and we did not.
The premium was a three-way split. I said earlier that I wished that this legislation had been on the books of Canada when I was Minister of Agriculture. In making it a three-way premium split, it was our expectation that the federal government would move, and I know the federal minister wanted to, but he could not get the Liberal government of the day to go along with him. He told me on many occasions he would like to be co-operating and he did to the best of his ability, but he could not get this kind of a program operating. We hoped that the producers would pay one-third, that the provincial government would pay one-third and that the federal government would pay one-third.
The government was paying in the same way it used to share the UI program, in the same way that it shared other programs because in my belief the community as a whole had some responsibility for maintaining agricultural land in production or not in production, but at least maintaining it so it would be available for food production if and when it was needed. It was important, we felt, that the community should share in the responsibility for financing this program.
By the end of the program, at least by the end of the first five-year period, each commodity group was operated as a separate fund. By the end of the five-year period for each one of them, they were all in balance within dollars of a slight surplus or slight deficit, except one, and that was the fruit growers. Of course the government paid two-thirds hoping that the federal government would come along with its share later on.
Nevertheless, there were years when the pay-out was much larger than the fund and the government put up the money to fund it until it could recover it. It did that with most of the programs, because they were hurting when the commodity groups asked to get in. If they were doing very well, they would not have asked, so there was a deficit, initially, in all of them.
As I say, four of them paid off the deficit by the end of their five-year term, and the fifth one, the fruit growers, I suppose never did. The fruit growers is a tough one to deal with.

March 7, 1991
Government Orders
We participated. We saved the farmland in the province of British Columbia, but not on the backs of the farmers. It was the community that accepted the responsibility for making sure that the program would work and that it was possible to make a living farming rather than developing and selling off farmland. Even if that would work, not everyone can sell his farm to a developer. It is just on the fringes.
The B.C. Federation of Agriculture, before I appeared on the scene, had said that if there was to be any program for helping farmers stay on the land, it should take no recognition at all of the development value of land. That is what land should be worth for development as opposed to what it should be used for farming. That should not be recognized at all.
May I say in determining the cost of production, it was negotiated step by step, but the one thing that we said would not be in it was the quotas. As a government, we were not prepared to participate in financing the purchase of quota. Everything else we recognized as a true cost of production, we included it all in the formula, we shared the premium and, of course, if there was a deficit, then the premium was raised enough to cover the deficit.
The farmers were encouraged by the calculations to get as much as they could out of the marketplace. I noticed that some members have talked about the importance and desirability of getting everything on to the marketplace. I agree totally. Some of the farmers have their own organizations, and some of them sell as individuals.
You were not reimbursed for the full cost of production. If there was a shortfall, then the formula generally was that the farmer would recover 75 per cent of the shortfall. The closer the producer was able to get to the calculated cost of production, the better. If he got more than that, he was so much better off.
The closest he was able to get up to it, the more revenue he ended up with. I notice one of the criticisms of this GRIP program is that the producers are not encouraged to get the maximum out of the marketplace.
Ours was designed very deliberately to do that. It was not always possible to do it, but certainly the pressure was on producers to maximize their return from the marketplace.
The program worked in the province of British Columbia. The leader of the demonstration against us when we first introduced the agricultural land legislation at the time was the president of the Fruit Growers Association. Shortly after that, it was the president of the B.C. Federation of Agriculture. He was the leader against us.
When we were in the election campaign, he asked if he could go on TV and tell the people of the province what what it thought about our programs in agriculture. We agreed because we need not use them if we did not want to use them. He was ready to go on an advertisement.
What he said was totally positive. He said it was the first time in the histoiy of his total experience in agriculture and in politics in the province of British Columbia that any government had lived up to its promises to farmers.
Some concern has been raised as to whether or not this government will really live up to the promises. I like the principles. I like the way the minister presented it, and I am going to go on hoping until somebody convinces me otherwise that the minister does intend to deliver on this program.
Out of it will come a program that will make it possible for Canadian farmers to produce and make a living out of fanning, rather than hoping that they are going to sell off.


Ralph Ferguson: Mr. Speaker, I just want to ask our colleague from Nanaimo-Cowichan a question. He and I go back some 18 or 19 years ago when we developed some federal-provincial agreements that are still in place to this day, except for some special allowances that were made to Atlantic Canada because of the lack of opportunity there that we recognize from across the rest of Canada.
We made some concessions for them to assist them in their poultiy operations, but all provinces other than those few were used alike.
I know that about two and a half years later we had to bring in a supplementary agreement to fine-tune the programs, but those programs and those agreements broke new ground and they are still in effect today.
March 7, 1991

I would like to ask the member, in his experience, will this legislation that we have before us today achieve its objective if each province has a different agreement and different level of support?
For example, if one province is to get, $3.38 a bushel for its com and another one gets $4.38, a dollar difference in the agreements between provinces, will this work? In your opinion does this reflect the comparative advantage to production? And will this cause a shift to production between provinces in this country?


David Stupich: The National Farm Products Marketing Board allows for some differences in the return to the producers of various commodities on the basis of the difference in the cost of production in different provinces. I think that is a principle that has stood the test of time and that the federal minister would want to include in this program.
Apart from that, the federal government under the Liberals would never allow any topping up-that is, if there was a federal-provincial program in agriculture. If the province was prepared to go one step further because of a particular situation in that province, then the federal government would withdraw its support by the same amount. So it was not possible for a provincial government to top up programs.
I am not using that as a criticism of the Liberals. After all, these things are evolving.
I gather from the legislation before us now-at least from what I have heard and from what I have read, I understand this is the case-that if this particular legislation and this program goes ahead, then the federal government will allow topping up by provincial governments if they are so inclined.
If that is the case, well then I think that is the way it should be.


Christine Susan Stewart: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to have the opportunity this afternoon to say a few words to the legislation before us, Bill C-98, the Farm Income Protection Act.
I would like to say from the outset that I am certainly not an expert in farming and agricultural practises here in Canada, as some of my colleagues in the House are. But I have listened to the minister speak to this bill today and I would like to say from the outset that in general I support this legislation that has been presented today.
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But, in particular, what I support is the process that the minister has used to bring about the legislation that we have before us today. I would wish that all of the legislation that we had before this House had the same level of input from all levels in this country-the grassroots, in this case the farm producers, the provincial government, federal officials, and the minister himself.
However, in speaking to the bill it is also, I believe, important for me to say just how concerned I am about the well-being of agriculture in our country, because I believe that it is a sector of our society that we in this House know is crucial to the economy of this country at this point in time. Yet, I believe that Canadian citizens as a whole depreciate the value of agriculture to not only our Canadian economy but to our individual well-being as Canadians.
I do not believe that Canadians understand that they do not really pay the real price of the food they eat, when they go shopping, and when they prepare their meals at home. I do not think they realize how little of the cash they pay at the grocery store counter actually goes into the pockets of our hard-working fanners. I believe that very often-and I see this in my own riding of Northumberland- those hard-working farmers often work in isolation and perhaps are not the best people in the world for joining to lobby together for improved circumstances for themselves.
In my own riding I often have farmers come to me individually, farmers who have worked extremely hard, often to the point of losing their health, but who in the end find themselves in economic circumstances that they simply cannot withstand any longer and are at the point of bankruptcy, which in many cases has resulted in further deterioration of the physical and mental health of our farmers.
Having worked abroad, before I came to this House, in developing nations and having assisted in many programs of agricultural development, I cannot repeat too many times how important I feel it is that we focus and concentrate on the value of agricultural production. I believe that agriculture is a security issue for every country around the world. I think it is a security issue for us here in Canada, but I think it is an issue which is not understood in that context. I feel that day by day, month by month, year by year we are losing our capacity in this country to produce the food that we require for our-

March 7, 1991
Private Members' Business
selves as Canadians on a daily basis, on a monthly basis, on a yearly basis.
If and when we become dependent upon other nations to provide us with our daily bread then we are in serious trouble as a nation.
I think it is very important that with this Bill C-98, we have a new program in place to provide necessary financial insurance and assistance that stabilizes production for farmers to some extent. I also understand that this legislation involves considerable realignment of already existing programs. Although the existing programs will essentially remain the same, there is a realignment of programs, plus new programs to assist farmers. This is a substantial change.
One of the areas that does concern me about the legislation, and I only have a few minutes left, is the proposal to set up a special measures committee. I understand, from what the minister was saying today, that already there has been discussion about setting something up. But the legislation reads that 'where the minister is of the opinion that exceptional circumstances exist that require that action be taken outside of the scope of the program established under this agreement, the minister may implement such procedures or other special measures as the minister considers necessary to determine the appropriate action to be taken", et cetera, under those circumstances.
I am also concerned, as one of my colleagues mentioned, that we really have an executive legislative type of authority envisaged by this particular measure in the legislation. I would hope that when this legislation goes to committee it can look at the nature and scope of this special measures committee and consider whether or not it is necessary right now, in fact, rather than waiting for the minister, at some distant point in time or now, to look at exceptional circumstances. Whether we should have a committee composed of those very people and groups involved in the creation of this proposed legislation that we have before us today; whether a committee comprised of those people should not, on an ongoing basis, from this point in time, be looking at this legislation and making recommendations to the ministry on particular changes to the legislation simply because the legislation is such a change.
I am sure that when the regulations are put in place and when the program is itself in operation that, no doubt, there will be some problems and glitches in the legislation that a committee should be looking at on a consistent, regular basis.
I feel strongly about this because I feel that it is a program, as I said at the beginning, that is in support of one of the most important facets of Canadian life and the Canadian economy and if it is a good program-and it appears to be substantially a good program-we want to ensure that nothing goes awry with the program.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member will have 14 minutes left, plus 10 minutes questions and comments.
It being five o'clock, the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi) moved:: That, in the opinion of this House, the gouvemmet should consider including in the Canada Labour Code a provision for precautionary withdrawal from work for pregnant women working in federally-regulated businesses in Quebec and Canada.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to address a matter of vital importance to pregnant workers in Canada and Quebec.
This particular issue caught my interest when members of my staff from Val d'Or and Senneterre received a complaint from a worker from Val d'Or who had applied to the Commission de la sante et de la securite du travail-better known as the CSST-in Quebec. The reply from the Rouyn-Noranda CSST was that the relevant Quebec legislation did not apply to federally regulated businesses.
My assistant, Ms. Frangoise Lamarche from Senneterre who knows all the social cases in my riding, told me that the Canada Labour Code had a preventive function only. The Labour Code has no equivalent of precaution-
March 7, 1991

ary withdrawal. The woman in question could only be granted leave without pay.
When I reached my office Saturday morning and read the file, I realized that this pregnant worker was employed by a federally regulated bus company, and that as part of her day's work, she would lift parcels that might be as heavy as 70 pounds each. I immediately wrote to several ministers, including the Minister of Labour and the Attorney General of Canada, to find out what the situation was and why there was no provision in the Canada Labour Code for paid leave for pregnant workers on the basis of precautionary withdrawal, a provision that does exist in Quebec.
On January 17, I received a fairly quick answer to my letter of December 12, sent just before the holidays. The Minister of Labour, Mr. Jean Corbeil, wrote: "I am aware of the apparent discrepancy with respect to pregnant workers who are employed by federally regulated businesses in Quebec, who are denied compensation for precautionary withdrawal by the Commission de la sante et de la securite du travail". The minister also said: "Part III of the Canada Labour Code contains certain provisions to protect pregnant workers employed by federal businesses. The Code protects them against termination of employment or other disciplinary measures on the grounds of absence due to parental leave or illness. The employer must continue payment of the usual social premiums during parental leave or absence due to illness. However, if a pregnant employee is no longer able to perform the essential duties of her position and no other appropriate position is available, the employer may order her to take maternity leave. I can assure you that the issue of precautionary withdrawal of pregnant workers will be considered as part of a review of the Canada Labour Code".
I also received a letter from the Attorney General of Canada, the Hon. Kim Campbell, who said: "I will keep you informed of any changes in this respect when the Code is reviewed".
As the elected representative of the people of the vast riding of Abitibi, I never take any chances on an issue that is so important to the women in our area. On May
17,1	tabled a petition in the House of Commons, with 35
Private Members' Business
signatures, which reads as follows: "The Canada Labour Code must observe the principle set forth in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and is thus supposed to protect the rights of women. The regulations on compensation for pregnant women do not consider all the demands of the workplace. The option of preventive withdrawal from the workplace for pregnant women is one that is both desirable and necessary for women working outside the home." The petitioners, from Senneterre and Val d'Or, humbly prayed and called upon Parliament to give serious consideration to the shortcomings of the legislation when the Canada Labour Code was reviewed and to recognize the need for including provisions in the Code concerning the preventive withdrawal of pregnant women from the workplace.
A petition always gets an answer from the minister. That is a very important point. Some members forget to present a petition, and it just stays there on the table or on the shelf. However, every petition tabled by a member of Parliament gets an answer from the minister-it is his duty-within a reasonable period of time. In his reply, Hon. Jean Corbeil stated:
The protection of pregnant women against the hazards in the workplace is assured, to a certain extent, by the general terms and holidays provided under Parts II and III of the Canada Labour Code.
As far as the reassignment of pregnant women and their preventive removal from the workplace is concerned, it is an issue which will be examined and dealt with alongside several others, within the framework of any legislative review of the Code, with both the representatives of the employers and employees under federal jurisdiction being present.
On or about May 22nd, I informed the media and constituents in my riding in a press release which reads as follows:
When a woman is expecting, the least of her worries should be the security of her job, just the same, in spite of a specific federal legislation dealing with maternity leave, she can only obtain leave without pay if she is compelled to ask for preventive removal.
And further:
I suggest that the Labour Code should not violate the principles in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and it is therefore supposed to protect women's rights. The rules dealing with pregnant women's compensation do not take into account all the requirements of the labour market and the possibility of preventive removal for pregnant women is a desirable and necessary option for women in the labour force.

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Private Members' Business
Following that, I informed Conservative members. Gilles Bernier, the hon. member for Beauce, wrote me a letter on June 1, 1990, which pleased me very much. When I met him in person, he repeated again: "Guy, in my own riding, several pregnant women working at the radio station, in Saint-Georges-de-Beauce, called me to tell me of their grievances under the Labour Code". He added:
I agree with you when you say that the Canada Labour Code should include some standard for the preventive removal of pregnant women with pay, just as the Quebec Labour Standards legislation does.
In July, as I continued my efforts I received a letter from Hon. Robert de Cotret, President of the Treasury Board. Meanwhile, on May 17, 1990, I had moved the very motion M-655 that we are dealing with today. He wrote:
I should like to inform you that even if there is no federal legislation dealing with this issue, the policy concerning federal civil servants makes it a responsibility of Deputy Ministers to find other jobs, as the case may be, to pregnant women who are concerned about the possible effects of carrying out their assignments during their pregnancy.
And so on. He added that each case had to be looked into. I appreciated receiving his letter.
And, at the same time, around November, I modified all the unions in my riding. I wrote:
In November 1989, an Abitibi woman in the labour force told me of the problems she had to face when, pregnant, she asked to be compensated for preventive removal.
You know the story. I said everything there was to say. But last June I came across an article concerning precautionary withdrawal in the June 1990 issue of the magazine Le Travail. The title was "Pregnant women at work, insist that your rights be respected". It was the first time I read an article in that magazine. Here is a quotation from it: "A mother first in the eyes of everybody". A woman called Danielle said: "At work there are men and women who will not admit that pregnancy does slow you down some. Surely a pregnant women should be allowed to stay home when she does not feel well, said Danielle, who had a difficult pregnancy. Of course there are a few things we cannot do as quickly, like walking or carrying heavy loads. How often did I hear those words! It is not my fault if she is pregnant. That is not an excuse not to work. And these are the people who complain about the low birth rate in Quebec".
Mr. Speaker, it should be noted that in Quebec precautionary withdrawal is a CSST-paid leave so that women working in a job which does not accommodate the normal evolutioon of pregnancy may stay off work during that time. I want to say to all members of the House that the government should consider including in the Canada Labour Code a provision for precautionary withdrawal from work for pregnant women in federally-regulated businesses in Quebec and in the rest of Canada, with pay.
Mr. Speaker, I hope all members and all ministers in the House will support this motion in favour of pregnant workers in Canada and in Quebec.


Mr. Robert D. Nault (Kenora -Rainy River):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the hon. member for Abitibi for his consideration, abilities, and foresight to understand the needs of working women in Canada and his hope that he will bring it to the attention of the government of the day through his motion.
I would like to read the private member's motion:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider including in the Canada Labour Code a provision for precautionary withdrawal from work for pregnant women working in federally-regulated businesses in Quebec and Canada.
I say first of all to the member in a general sense and in principle that I think the Liberal Party itself can obviously agree with something as important as this is to working women. There are some loopholes and problems with the Canada Labour Code in this regard.
Perhaps the member could inform the House down the road, as we get into this matter a little further, just what are the nuts and bolts of the particular motion or, if we are to change the Canada Labour Code, what he means and to what extent the provision for precautionary withdrawal would take effect.
Is the meaning in that regard that the moment a woman is pregnant, that is at the very early stages of pregnancy, it is within the realm of the Canada Labour Code to allow for that woman to go on sick leave from that moment on for the whole period? Or, are there going to be criteria and some safeguards of the public
March 7, 1991

purse in that regard and to the bottom line as relates to the business we are discussing?
Those are the areas that I mention to the member because I think that when we are discussing legislation there are always the negative aspects as well.
I say to the member that this is something which we on this side of the House feel should be addressed and addressed soon. As members are aware, at the moment there are more and more women working in the work force every day. They are having difficulties working outside the home. At the same time trying to make a living is becoming more difficult.
I say that because, lo and behold, not too long ago in the budget of the Minister of Finance there were some major caps and wage restraints to the Public Service, and probably to all workers in Canada as we struggle to put in place the process that will hopefully, through time, allow this government to get a handle on its deficit.
On the one hand, this government would like to have us believe that wage caps and freezes will improve our bottom line as a country but, on the other hand, members such as the member for Abitibi are looking to improve the Canada Labour Code. Also, even though he did not say so, in this motion he is suggesting that there be some dollar cost. I know that when we put forward motions in Private Members' Business we are not to use that aspect of it, because it is not within our rules to charge dollars to the present day government but to suggest ways of doing it without costing money.
I am suggesting to him and to members that this particular initiative by the member would obviously cost us some dollars. That is not to say that I do not agree with it. I think it is a very important endeavour. I just would like to caution all members that there always is the down side to it.
I would like to reiterate something that happened to me. When I was not too long ago heavily involved in the labour movement, as a union member I represented 6,000 employees. Out of those employees there were 30 women. It was not too long ago in the railway that there was no such thing as a woman conductor, brakeman or engineer.
Lo and behold, we woke up to the modern age and realized that in most cases women made better engi-
Private Members' Business
neers, conductors and trainmen than some men. However, when that took place, we found something out that we were not aware of before: that there were no washrooms, there were no special rooms for women in the bunkhouses; these private areas that, as men, we never even considered until this hit us square in the face.
Something else took place and I relate it to the member because I think it has merit to what we are talking about today. One of our members who I was representing became pregnant. When you work on the railroad there are some physical difficulties in being a conductor, a trainman or an engineer: you have to get off and on moving equipment; in a lot of cases you have to be very physically fit. This particular woman came to me one day and said that she felt she should be able to take a leave of absence during a certain period of her pregnancy and in her estimation-and also in mine-be able to get paid for it. The railroad at the time-this is not too many years ago; we are just talking about five years ago-said that she could not do that, that if she wanted to become pregnant that was her own business.
It has now changed somewhat in the railroad industry. There was a ruling by the Human Rights Commission relating to pregnant women, to the effect that should they become sick during their pregnancy-such as morning sickness, for example-they should be allowed to take time off work for that. And, through that process, we were able to get this particular young lady on sick benefits under the unemployment insurance program.
However, what people should know is that under that particular program, those weeks of sick benefits went against the weeks that she would automatically have been able to take off as maternity leave. It did not rectify the problem, but it did at least bring home the argument we are having today in the House, and what the member for Abitibi is bringing forward, that there are some unique problems for women in the work force when pregnancy occurs.
I hope I speak for all members of the Liberal Party when I say that it is long overdue that we take a good look at the Labour Code, in particular at the areas that seem to be silent as they relate to women. It seems to me not too long ago that women were not considered to be people who would be in the work force for their whole career, as men are. Now we have come full circle and realize that this indeed is the case.

March 7, 1991
Private Members' Business
If we could take a look more specifically at what the member for Abitibi is asking and see whether he could outline to the members of both the Liberal Party and the NDP how this would be structured, we would be more than willing to participate in looking at some improvements to the Canada Labour Code.


Mr. Ken  Janies@Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Labour: Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking my colleague, the hon. member for Abitibi, for his initiative in putting forward this important motion. I can assure him, and the Elouse, that I fully support the spirit in which it is proposed.
As we all know, in recent years women have entered the work force in ever increasing numbers. Their contribution to society and to the economy has certainly been enormous. At the same time, we cannot neglect their contribution made as mothers of the next generation. Women's responsibilities to their families are just as important as their responsibilities to their employers.
Many recent initiatives of Labour Canada are intended to help workers, both men and women, balance their responsibilities at work and in the home. Most notable, perhaps, are the 1986 amendments to the Canada Labour Code which, among other things, extended the periods of leave for maternity and for child care. A further example of the study recently prepared by the Women's Bureau of Labour Canada, concerning leave for employees with family responsibilities. Another study by the women's bureau deals with workplace day care centres.
So Labour Canada is continually seeking ways to support workers in fulfilling their family responsibilities while continuing to contribute to the national economy at work.
Much has been done, but as my colleague has pointed out, more remains to be done. The Canada Labour Code currently provides a number of projections for pregnant workers. But further improvements may well be introduced in the future. I know the minister is open to suggestions and the current motion is an example of the kind of suggestion that he welcomes.
As we all know, many women go on working well into their pregnancies and return to work soon after giving birth. Not so many years ago, it was common for employers, as was mentioned by my hon. colleague across the way, to lay off workers who became pregnant, or forced them to take unpaid leave. For some reason it was considered inappropriate to have pregnant workers in the workplace. Of course, this situation caused needless hardship for women who lost their pay cheques just at the time they needed to save and have money. It also caused undue stress for women who felt forced to hide their condition from their employers in order to avoid losing their jobs.
For these reasons the Canada Labour Code prohibits the arbitrary lay-off of workers simply because they are pregnant. The law upholds a pregnant woman's right to continue working unless her employer can demonstrate that she is unable to perform an essential function of her job.
Pregnancy is not an illness. In most cases it does not affect a woman's ability to continue doing her job right up until the time that she decides she is ready to take maternity leave. The Canada Labour Code protects the rights of the majority of pregnant workers to decide when to take their leave.
Moreover, the law provides for the continuation of job benefits for women on maternity leave who have completed six months' service with their employer. Pension and health benefits continue on the same basis as when the worker was on the job. Seniority continues to accumulate. In addition, the worker has a right to receive notice of job and training opportunities that arise during her absence. She is entitled to return to the same job, or at least a comparable job at the same level, upon completion of her leave.
I should add that these same provisions apply to workers, both men and women, who take parental leave to take care of a newborn child, or a newly adopted child. A further provision enables these workers to receive income replacement through the unemployment insurance program. Many employers, recognizing the value to their organization of productive workers, voluntarily supplement these unemployment insurance payments, so that their employees do not suffer financially from taking maternity or parental leave.
March 7, 1991

I can say with pride that the present law provides very well for the majority of pregnant workers who wish to remain in the labour force and who can do so without any great difficulty.
However, the law is not written only for the majority. We must also remember and make allowance for, the group of pregnant workers who, for whatever reason, encounter problems that make it difficult for them to continue working at their normal job.
Such difficulties may arise from medical complications of pregnancy. For although pregnancy is not in itself an illness, as I have said, women are susceptible to certain conditions requiring medical treatment as a result of their pregnancy. In this case, the existing provisions for sick leave certainly would apply.
A second kind of difficulty that pregnant women may encounter arises from conditions within the workplace; conditions which, though a normal part of the job, may cause concern because the pregnant woman is especially susceptible.
It is precisely this kind of situation that my colleague's motion is intended to address. I agree that the legislation should be examined to see if there are ways to strengthen and clarify the protection afforded to pregnant workers.
After all, federal legislation prohibits the discrimination on the basis of sex. I think we all agree that it would be discriminatory not to make allowances for a woman's pregnancy.
To this end, the minister has directed Labour Canada officials to consider changes to the Canada Labour Code that would guarantee a pregnant worker's right to be reassigned to more appropriate work for the duration of her pregnancy. If a reassignment is not possible, the worker should have the option of taking precautionary leave, during which time her job would be protected and her benefits would be continued.
Labour Canada is currently consulting with federally regulated employee and employer groups regarding the fairest and most practical way to achieve this objective.
I cannot over-emphasize the importance of the process of consultation with the representatives of labour and industry, which is now under way. For some time now, consultation has been the key ingredient in the
Private Members' Business
development of all new laws and regulations in the federal labour jurisdiction.
It has been our experience that the legislation with the best chance of being accepted by everyone concerned is that which has been developed with co-operation of both employers and employees. Especially in these times when productivity is of the essence, we seek an atmosphere of co-operation rather than confrontation in the workplace.
No one else has a better understanding of the actualities of the work place than those responsible for its maintenance and those who spend every working day in it. As legislators, we have much to learn from the workers and employers in our jurisdiction, and I know that Labour Canada is committed to listening and learning.
Therefore, to ensure that our legislation proposals on this matter are workable and acceptable to those most affected, we will give full consideration to the viewpoints expressed by labour and industry in drafting any amendments.
My friend may rest assured that his concerns are indeed under consideration. Amendments, when they are introduced in the House, will take account of the whole range of issues that are involved.
Again, we thank the member for Abitibi for bringing this important issue to the attention of the ministry and of the government.


Mr. Lyle Kristiansen (Kootenay West-Revelstoke):: Mr. Speaker, it is with considerable pleasure that I rise today to support the initiative in the motion brought forward by the member for Abitibi. To read it again briefly:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should
consider including in the Canada Labour Code a provision for
precautionary withdrawal from work for pregnant women working
in federally regulated businesses in Quebec and Canada.
The motion is timely, not only in regard to the remarks of the last speaker who indicated, as I was aware, that the government is in the process of some broad consultations on the subject matter at the moment, but also in coming into the House for debate the day before International Women's Day. That in itself makes it seem doubly appropriate that we should be dealing with a question of this nature at this time.

March 7, 1991
Private Members' Business
My own experience is in blue collar industry in particular. My riding is not dissimilar to that of the member for Abitibi, although we are at opposite poles geographically. We are largely employed in the forest industry and the mining and smelting industry, particularly lead and zinc.
There are many areas, particularly in Cominco in the lead industry, where women of child-bearing age are totally precluded from working. We are hopeful that with the current modernization program taking place, we will get rid of that problem and women may be able to work safely, both for themselves and for their children in all areas of that industry.
While we are generally supportive of this proposal, we understand some of its limitations and what it does not say is due to the limitations imposed by the rules of the House.
I would like to take the opportunity to point out, perhaps, what cannot be stated within the motion itself. Of course, the motion does not go far enough because of those limitations. It does not go far enough to protect the health and safety of pregnant women in the workplace.
What is needed are specific changes to the Canada Labour Code to ensure the safety of the woman and the foetus during pregnancy, as well as the health of both the woman and child after birth.
Amendments need to be brought forward to address the health and safety needs of women while they are pregnant, as well as while they are nursing. What the government needs to bring forward are amendments to the Labour Code in Parts II and III, to improve the rights and benefits of women workers, before and after the birth of a child.
While the purpose of the present Part II of the Canada Labour Code is to ensure a safe and healthy workplace, at present Part II provides virtually no protection for pregnant and nursing workers.
The right of a worker to refuse work does not cover situations where the danger is inherent to the work or where the risk is considered a normal condition of employment. These limitations have the effect of excluding pregnant and breast-feeding workers from full workplace health and safety protection.
Not only are pregnant and nursing workers not protected by the health and safety part of the Code, but under Part III of the Code, a pregnant worker can be forced to take an unpaid leave of absence from employment if the employee is unable to perform an essential function of her job and no appropriate alternate job is available.
I do not think it really needs to be pointed out, but I would stress, in any case, that this comes at a time when the expectant mother and the family most need the income from her work, because they are looking forward to an expanded family.
It is this situation which simply enforces the existing barriers to pregnant and nursing workers. The Code not only does nothing to remove these barriers, it enforces this discrimination as it currently stands.
Pregnant and nursing workers should not be penalized for workplace hazards and risks. Employers should be required to find suitable alternate employment, or measures need to be put in place to provide for full replacement wages if the worker is forced to leave the workplace.
Part II of the Code needs to be amended to require that the employer must ensure that pregnant or nursing workers are protected from workplace risks, specific to the condition of a pregnant or nursing mother. These risks should be defined to include psychological and stress related conditions.
Workplace risks should not be restricted to physical conditions. The psychological effects of working with video display terminals, VDTs, for example, could be greater than the physical dangers in the workplace and could cause abortion or other equally serious trauma.
When a pregnant or nursing worker presents a medical certificate indicating a risk, or if the action is initiated by the employer, then the employer should be obliged to either modify the work environment or reassign the worker to another job. If these alternatives cannot be met, the employee must then be entitled to appropriate fully paid leave.
There also has to be a mechanism in place to allow for a complaint to be filed with Labour Canada, in the instance where an employer refuses to accommodate the legitimate health needs of the workers. This would be handled much like other Part II complaints and subject to appeal to the Canada Labour Relations Board.
March 7, 1991

Finally, measures need to be adopted to ensure that paid leave is available to all pregnant or nursing workers. Further, parental and child care leave should be increased from the current 24 week maximum to 52 weeks.
I would just say, before wrapping up, that I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to urge that both this and other health and safety protections be extended to parliamentary employees. In June 1986, the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act was passed by this House, in which Parts II and III incorporated Parts III and IV of the Canada Labour Code for the protection of parliamentary employees. But those provisions still have not been proclaimed, almost five years later.
I would urge the member who introduced this motion to assist those of us on this side of the House who have been pressing the government again and again to proclaim those sections so that these improvements, when they come into place, will impact upon employees of this place and on Parliament Hill, as they would impact upon other Canadians.
Finally, since tomorrow is International Women's Day, the New Democratic Party and myself would urge the government to move soon and perhaps they might even announce tomorrow a very clear intention to pursue the objectives of the motion introduced by the member for Abitibi.
I can think of no better time than today to begin to ensure fair and non-discriminatory treatment for pregnant women in the work force and to safeguard them and their children from the impacts of workplace induced accident and disease.


Mr. Jean-Luc Joncas (Matapedia-Matane):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak to the motion tabled by the hon. member for Abitibi. We seldom have an opportunity to take a position on an issue that is so directly related to child bearing, and we have that opportunity today.
The hon. member's motion is aimed at helping women reconcile the demands of the workplace with their family obligations. Many of us are very familiar with this problem. In fact, most of us have to deal with this problem every day.
Private Members' Business
Canada is a country of families, Mr. Speaker. It is also a country of workers. Statistics Canada reports that more than half of the women with young children also have jobs, and their numbers are steadily increasing. This trend is due to a number of factors. First, today's women are better educated. They have qualifications they want to put to good use. Thanks to changing attitudes to the type of employment considered suitable for women, they now have access to jobs that are more interesting and more satisfying than those generally offered to previous generations. It is not surprising, Mr. Speaker, that today's women should wish to pursue their careers after starting a family.
This is not simply due to the fact that women want to "have it all", as some magazine articles would have us believe. And not only highly educated women keep on working when they are pregnant and go back to their jobs a few months after the birth of their child. It is a pattern that is followed by women from all classes in our society. For many young mothers, it is not a matter of choice but of necessity.
We all know how much Canadian families have changed in the past 30 years. The typical family in the fifties, consisting of two children, the father and family breadwinner and the mother, at home full time, is no longer the norm today.
In fact, in the nineties, only one family out of six resembles this model. There are far more families where both parents have to work, either full time or part time, to make ends meet. Furthermore, many Canadian families are single-parent families, most of which are headed by women.
Most women with children cannot choose to go to work or stay home. They must work to support their families.
Over the years, the present government has passed legislation to help working mothers. Provisions concerning maternity leave have been amended to extend this leave, to provide for greater flexibility in selecting the period during which maternity leave may be taken and to reduce eligible periods.
A woman with six months of continuous employment may now take maternity leave for a maximum of 17 weeks, at the time she feels is appropriate. She may start her leave up to 11 weeks before the expected date of confinement. However, she may work up to the day her child is born, unless her employer can prove she is unable to perform an essential function of her position.

March 7, 1991
Private Members' Business
This means that maternity leave may last as long as 17 weeks after the birth of a child.
In addition to maternity leave, either parent (father or mother) is entitled to a maximum of 24 weeks' leave to care for a newborn or adopted child.
Although the maternity leave and parental leave provided under the Canada Code are leave without pay, eligible employees can receive unemployment insurance benefits during those periodes, which relieves the financial burden somewhat.
The most important aspects of the maternity and parental leave provisions may be the safeguards concerning employment and fringe benefits. Seniority is not affected by the time spent on maternity or parental leave and entitlement to pension and health plans, for instance, are maintained, provided the employee keeps paying her premiums.
The employee also has the right to be advised of any training or promotion opportunities during her leave, so she will not miss career advancement opportunities simply because she is away. Upon her return to work, she has to be reinstated in her former position, or at least in an equivalent position, and in the same workplace.
Mr. Speaker, these provisions of the Canadian Labour Code give working women the assurance that they will not have to give up their careers to start a family. Knowing this helps reduce the stress which inevitably surrounds the birth of a child. With this weight off their mind, the employees can pay more attention to their jobs during the time they are at work.
The legislation is also beneficial for the employer, because with the assurance of having their jobs back upon returning from maternity leave, employees are likely to be more consciencious and more productive. Recognizing the value of these employees, many employers keep paying their employee's UI premiums for the duration of the leave so that they incur no financial loss because of their pregnancy.
All these provisions serve the objective of assisting women who want to go back to work after giving birth, as long as medical problems and reactions to conditions
existing in the workplace do not cause complications when they are pregnant. The motion put forward by my colleague from Abitibi is intended only to extend the same benefits to a few women who would encounter medical problems during pregnancy. That sounds only fair.
At the present time, a woman who has health problems during the first six months of pregnancy is entitled to a maximum of 12 weeks of sick leave without loosing seniority or benefit entitlements. But if her problems keep up and it remains impossible for her to work after that period, she usually has no other choice but to take her maternity leave earlier than she would have liked, which gives her less time after the birth of her child to devote herself to that extremely important task of taking care of her newborn.
It seems there is also a floating period of two weeks between the end of the six months of pregnancy and the beginning of the eleventh week before delivery; the employee may then have no recourse but the goodwill of her employer.
I think we have an excellent system of assistance to pregnant employees, but the motion points out one of its few shortcomings. It would be appropriate, in the name of fairness, to eliminate that deficiency.


Mr. Eugene Bellemare (Carleton-Gloucester):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate and thank my colleague from Abitibi for moving a motion amending the Canadian Labour Code and seeking to protect the pregnant worker. We know very well that, pregnant workers are often single parents with very limited financial means. They often have different needs: financial needs, social needs, the need to be encouraged.
Maternity is something extremely sacred. We should respect the pregnant worker and encourage her. We know fully well that presently maternity leave and parental leave are legally protected. But, as was saying the member who just spoke, there are flaws in the Canadian Labour Code, and the pregnant worker should get some protection when, during her pregnancy, which can be difficult at times, she is forced to take some days off. This person could have a sympathetic employer, but she could also have one who is far from being sympathet-
March 7, 1991

ic. She could suddenly find herself without a job if an employer was not sympathetic towards her.
So, in Canada, we must have an act to protect the worker who is in such a situation.


Mrs. Edna Anderson (Simcoe Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to speak today on this motion which touches on two issues I care deeply about: human rights and economic productivity.
First, this is a human rights matter because the added support for pregnant workers that the motion proposes would have the effect of defending women's right to equal opportunity at work. Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and other human rights legislation have established that special benefits for pregnant women do not constitute unequal treatment. In fact, such special benefits may be necessary to ensure that women are not discriminated against, even unintentionally, because they are pregnant.
Second, this motion, if acted upon, helps to remove some of the stresses on pregnant workers that would otherwise interfere with their productivity at work. I hardly need to remind the House how important worker productivity is to the economic health of Canada in an age of increasing competitive global markets.
One of Canada's great advantages in those competitive markets is its well-educated, healthy, highly motivated work force. As we will know, a significant and growing part of that work force consists of women of childbearing age.
Women now represent 44 per cent of the country's labour force. That means that virtually every Canadian industry, office, hospital and assembly line depend on women to get the job done. Increasingly, women occupy responsible, essential positions in management, the trades and in the professions. Gone are the days when a woman could simply be sent home if she became pregnant.
Labour unions have led the way through collective bargaining in winning protection for their members from such arbitrary treatment. Today, the Canadian Labour Code provides for maternity and child care leave as basic labour standards available throughout the federal jurisdiction.
Private Members' Business
Nowadays, enlightened employers value the women who work for them and do whatever is necessary to retain them as productive employees. If this means offering generous benefit packages, including maternity leave and extended child care leave, most employers recognize that the cost of such benefits is small compared with the economic benefits they bring.
The additional leave provisions envisioned by this motion could easily be accommodated at very little expense to the economy. As I have said, the result would be the full recognition of an important human right: the right to equality of opportunity in the workplace.
A provision allowing for precautionary withdrawal for pregnant workers would, in the first place, apply only to the relatively few cases where a woman experiences medical complications during pregnancy or where a normal condition of her work causes abnormal difficulties for risks.
The latter condition might arise in a number of professions. A pregnant worker might be concerned about the effect of heavy lifting or the effect of prolonged standing. A laboratory technician may be concerned in her especially vulnerable condition that normal occupational exposures might pose an unusual risk to her or her child. In any one of these cases some form of precautionary withdrawal, either reassignment or leave, would go a long way toward relieving a woman's concerns.
I do not wish in any way to prejudge the results of the consultations with employer and employee groups, which as the parliamentary secretary has said, are currently under way. Here is one way I think the matter could be dealt with through an amendment to the Labour Standards section of the Canada Labour Code.
An amendment might be introduced that would mirror the already existing provision in Part III of the Code which allows an employer to require a pregnant employee to take leave or be reassigned if she is unable to do an essential function of her job. But the new provision would allow the worker to initiate such an action by presenting a doctor's certificate that states there is a medical reason for concern.
Upon presentation of this medical certificate the employer would be obliged, if possible, either to modify the work environment to eliminate the risk or to reassign the pregnant worker to another job. The employee would be entitled to leave with full job protection and

March 7, 1991
Private Members' Business
continued benefits until the required modification or reassignment was arranged. If a suitable reassignment job or a job modification were not possible or practicable, then the employee would be entitled to leave for as long as the medical concerns related to her pregnancy persist.
Of course, the usual means of dispute resolution already existing under Part III of the Canada Labour Code would apply. The worker would have to give her employer fair notice of when she intended to return to work or to her usual job if she had been reassigned.
This approach seems eminently fair since its effect would be to give pregnant employees exactly the same rights to request reassignment or leave as a precaution that employers already have when a pregnant worker is judged unable to continue doing her job. The principles and mechanisms are already in place. As I have said, the provisions would affect relatively few workers and involve relatively little cost.
Thus, through an amendment to the Canada Labour Code, we could ensure that the important human rights to equality in the workplace is extended. Women workers are extremely valuable to the Canadian economy and their continuing commitment to the labour force should be recognized and encouraged.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, I would like to congratulate the hon. member for Abitibi who tabled this motion in the House. The hon. member is in fact suggesting that the Canada Labour Code should contain certain provisions that would enable pregnant workers in federally regulated businesses in Canada to claim certain rights with respect to precautionary withdrawal. The motion says: "-federally regulated businesses in Quebec and Canada". I am not so sure about the wording at this point, because so far, Quebec is still part of Canada, and I hope it will remain so. But in any case, this is a minor detail. I think that basically, what the hon. member is trying to do is to make these privileges available to pregnant women.
I wholeheartedly support this initiative, Mr. Speaker. In fact, I think not enough is being done, and this is an understatement, to encourage pregnant women who can work to stay in the labour market. Unfortunately, some people still have this attitude that as soon as a woman is pregnant, she should get out of the labour force as soon
as possible. Of course, that is just not true. If a woman decides to work throughout her pregnancy, why not, and I think we should ensure that at least in federally regulated areas, the opportunity should be there for pregnant woman to stay on the job if they want to.
Mr. Speaker, I also think that if we adopted this motion today, it would be a clear message to the women of this country. Lest we forget, this is Women's rights Week, and tomorrow is International Women's Day.
So I think adopting this motion would be good news for Canadian women. The motion does not oblige, it only says "that the government should consider-". Of course if the government decides to adopt this motion today, I imagine there will an amendment to the Canada Labour Code. Subsequently, the amendment will be considered in the House, voted on, considered in committee and go through all other stages. In any case, I think this would be an excellent message for us to send today, especially if the vote is unanimous.

It has happened in the past in this House that some government members are instructed or asked to talk a bill out and speak in favour of it until the bill dies in the House of Commons. I hope that will not be the case today. We are on the eve of women's day. This is women's week. This would be an excellent initiative to adopt. I think it would send the signal that we care about working women and that we want to do something to help them.
If that is the case, which I trust it is, now that we are only a few minutes before six o'clock, I hope that the House will permit this bill to come to a vote and that the motion will not be talked out. If the motion is talked out then let the message be clear that those who talk it out, even if they are speaking for it when they are talking it out, are really against the motion.


Mr. Jean-Pierre Hogue (Outremont):: Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues explained-and I am quite aware of the situation- working women in federally-regulated businesses enjoy some benefits like maternity leave and parental leave. What our colleague, the hon. member for Abitibi, proposes would be a very minor improvement but nevertheless rather important for the pregnant women involved. The amendment he proposes would fill one of the remaining void in the legislation and help a growing number of working Canadian women who try to
March 7, 1991

Adjournment Debate
strike a delicate balance between their responsibilities at work and at home.
My only concern, Mr. Speaker, is that as legislators we must resist the temptation to change legislation piecemeal and to fall prey to sensationalism. On the contrary, we should favour a co-ordinated approach, which would take into consideration the whole of the employment standards as well as their enforcement provisions. We must be, Mr. Speaker, more of a good legislator than a popular one.
Several concerns of workers who must juggle their work and family responsibilities are dealt with in the federal employment standards. This is the case, for example, with bereavement leave, sick leave and, as my colleagues were saying, maternity leave and parental leave.
Striking a balance between family responsibilities and work obligations is something every Canadian must do, including politicians, and I must-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I regret to interrupt the hon. member.

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



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, a while back, I asked the Conservative government a question about unemployment in Eastern Ontario.

I enumerated at the time, on November 8, 1990, the series of plant closures in my riding. That list included 1,100 jobs lost in Cornwall, 1,600 in Renfrew, 250 in Hawkesbury, 325 in Alexandria, and I even included at the time a lay-off of 100 people at the Consultex Textile plants in Alexandria.
Little did I know then that things would not get better. In fact they would get worse.
I asked for government help at the time to help the unemployed of my constituency. What did the government say?


An hon. member:: No.


Don Boudria: It says: "No one likes plant closures," and the minister for science says: "If the hon. member is going to talk about plant closures then I think it is important to talk about those that have closed in recent months. If he strings off a list of plant closures over the last three or four years that is not fair in terms of this economic problem. We acknowledge that we have a problem and we are going to try to resolve it".
They have done nothing.
First of all that answer was most inadequate. Now we have the minister of state for small business who is with us this afternoon and I am particularly pleased that he is here because he knows of the unemployment in the riding that I represent and I hope that we can get some assistance from that minister because I know that he has taken this issue seriously.
In the last 24 hours another blow has hit the community of Hawkesbury. This one is not exactly the fault of the federal government, but I think it needs to be raised just about now. The Community Initiatives Fund of the Community Futures Committee in Hawkesbury, Ontario, in my riding had recommended in favour of a large federal government contribution toward la Cite collegiale, one of the new post-secondary colleges of the province of Ontario that was proposed to have been located in Hawkesbury. We now hear as of yesterday that the government of Ontario is planning to withdraw those funds and to put them elsewhere.
I hope that the minister who is here today will be able to convince Evelyn Gigantes, the provincial minister

March 7, 1991
Adjournment Debate
responsible for eastern Ontario, and others, that the college in Hawkesbury and the one in Cornwall both have to stay.
I wanted to make those points and I continue with other layoffs that have occurred since I raised this issue last fall. Two weeks ago a plant in EOrignal, Ontario, the Ivaco steel mill, laid off an additional 150 people. In Hawkesbury the Canadian Pacific Forest Products Research lab closed down two weeks ago, 63 jobs. And now there is another textile mill which is threatening to sell its machinery and to lock its doors because of a recent change in tariff policy on the part of this government. That announcement was made to me yesterday.
That community of 10,000 people has seen hundreds and hundreds of lay-offs in the last six months.
I ask the minister who is here, and I know the parliamentary secretaries are usually assigned to answer these questions, to please give a ray of hope to the people of Hawkesbury and elsewhere in eastern Ontario. We need help. We need it badly.
Other regions of the country have federal-provincial agreements or other kinds of tools to assist them in their development. I am thinking of the new agreement in Quebec for $80 million or something for infrastructure. That is fine. I like it.
I hear of the FEDNOR agency for northern Ontario. It is similar. I like it too.
But I think that eastern Ontario is depicted as if we were all living in the city of Ottawa, and I think the minister knows that Cornwall is not Ottawa, and Haw-kesbury and L'Orignal and Pembroke and Renfrew are not Ottawa. They have problems that are very serious. Unemployment is 15.5 per cent in Hawkesbury, close to 20 per cent in Cornwall. Hawkesbury is 60 miles from here. Cornwall is 150 miles from here. We do not even think that that is possible in the almost shadow of the Peace Tower. But it is the sad reality of this situation.
I am inviting the government again to respond to the question I raised last fall and particularly to respond to the situation that has become seriously worse since.
Finally, I ask the minister if he could commit himself to contact the provincial Government of Ontario and at
the very least ask it not to scrap the plan for La Cite collegiale in Hawkesbury and that of Cornwall.


Mr. Barry Moore (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State (Small Businesses and Tourism)):: Mr. Speaker, I certainly can relate to the hon. member, coming from western Quebec, where I think we have the same situation.
The federal government is very active in eastern Ontario and in western Quebec with a wide range of program support. For example, Industry, Science and Technology is providing a broad range of ongoing programs and services which help companies improve their international competitiveness and marketing efforts. These include programs related to research and development in strategic technologies, as well as diagnostic programs related to technology transfer and development.
I am sure the hon. member is aware of these; if not, he should become aware of them. I would be happy to sit down with him and with the minister to explain these different programs that are available to areas such as eastern Ontario and western Quebec.
These targeted programs and a wide range of business services are aimed at enhancing the international competitiveness of Canadian industry. They are complemented by the international market development programs and services at External Affairs and International Trade Canada, which are also delivered through the ISTC Ontario Regional Office.
In addition, the Industrial Research Assistance Program of the National Research Council provides financial assistance and technological advice in support of increased industrial competitiveness and is delivered through the NRC's offices in Ottawa and Kingston.
However, it is the Community Futures Program, with its core objective of helping designated communities and areas adjust to structural and economic change, that is the key federal mechanism for supporting communities and areas facing economic difficulty.
I can tell the hon. member that I have three Community Futures in my riding, Pontiac-Gatineau-Labelle. These are the key to the development of areas such as ours. The federal government has decided that it is not somebody sitting in Ottawa or Quebec City in an ivory
March 7, 1991

tower who is going to decide the future of our communities, but the local people who will deliver the programs and know the programs. They have to deal with the people there, and they know what the problems and the solutions are.
I might add that eastern Ontario has a very broad Community Futures coverage.


Don Boudria: I have four.


Barry D. Moore: That is right. The designated areas include Renfrew County, Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry, Haw-kesbuiy, Prescott-Russell, Land O'Lakes, Smiths Falls, the St. Regis Reserve, and extends as far west as Prince Edward County. You are well covered, Mr. Speaker, and I am sure that the hon. member will be using these tools in the future.


Don Boudria: Oh, I have.


Barry D. Moore: These areas have well established Community Futures Committees, comprised of local members from the private and public sectors. Their role is to assess local problems and opportunities and to develop a strategy to address them. With a strategy in place, the community can seek funding from the community initiatives fund for the establishment of a business development centre, for self-employment incentives, for direct purchase of institutional training, and for other specific projects.
Under the program, some 13 business development centres have been established through eastern Ontario-and I am not counting those in western Quebec- providing a wide range of information and counselling services to local small businesses, as well as loans of up to $75,000 for business establishment and expansion through each centre's $1.5 million investment fund.


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


THE LUMBER INDUSTRY
Mr. Jack Whittaker (Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt):: Mr. Speaker, the question I rise on arises out of a question asked back on February 15, 1990.
However, the question is relevant in that it deals with the forest industry and it deals with not only how it has been hit through the goods and service tax but through
Adjournment Debate
the memorandum of understanding and the 15 per cent export tax when it exports to the United States.
The importance of the forest industry to Canada goes without saying. However, I should remind the House of some of that importance.
For instance, 79 per cent of the land mass of Canada within the 10 provinces and territories is covered with forest land, with 60 per cent, or 243.7 million hectares in forest production-in other words, productive land. The value of that production is $43 billion and accounts for 16 per cent of Canada's exports and 21 per cent of all world trade in forest products.
It also employs directly or indirectly approximately
770.000	people as of 1989. However, it appears that that is falling off. From 1985 to the present, the jobs have gone down from approximately 840,000 jobs in 1985 to
770.000	in 1989. I would suggest that it is probably down substantially from there.
In British Columbia, for instance, the forest industry accounts for 20 per cent of the labour force, and 45 per cent of all manufacturing shipments in the province. In my riding alone, Mr. Speaker, I have mills or part of the forest industry in every area of the boundary country: mills in Grand Forks and Midway, in Penticton I have a major mill, in Princeton and in Merritt.
These jobs are directly affected by the policies of this government, whether it be by the goods and services tax, the memorandum of understanding, the 15 per cent export, by cuts in unemployment insurance, or by cuts in the forest resource development agreement. Mr. Speaker, my area hurts.
The Okanagan region, in the last figures I saw, had an unemployment rate adjusted of 16.7 per cent. That region is not the highest region of unemployment within my area. The Nicola Valley has at times gone almost double that and is at present well over that rate.
We depend on the forest industry. In Merritt alone there are five mills which deal with forest products. Any time there is a policy that is brought out that hurts the forest industry, it hurts Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt directly, but also it hurts the province and the rest of Canada.

March 7, 1991
Adjournment Debate
I have given the context of how important forestry is in this little recitation so that people will understand that any policy that is developed where it cuts back on anything that goes into the forest region is going to hurt, and hurt drastically, a major sector of Canada.
The Forest Resource Development Agreement that has just been negotiated with the province of British Columbia cuts the funds in those areas from $300 million in the first five years, as a joint agreement, to $200 million in the next five years, a cut of $100 million. The Forest Resource Development Agreement helped in many ways; not only did it create employment but also it cut back on the not sufficient restocked areas, it assisted in spacing and fertilization of overgrowth and new areas of development within the forest area, as well as silviculture and replanting.
A major area also in my riding is silviculture. In Oliver, British Columbia, for instance, we have a major silviculture establishment that depends on that Forest Resource Development Agreement progressing substantially. So it is rather unfortunate that that has been cut back.
In the goods and services tax area, Mr. Speaker, the government tells us that the goods and services tax will be good for the area. Yet the industry tells us that it is not helping; in fact, it is hurting them in many different areas, including the taxation on their fuels is increased.
A recent initiative by this government with respect to marine user fees came under attack by the Council of Forest Industries of British Columbia in a recent letter of February 25.
They point out the folly to the industry in this user-fee area and they advise that users should not have to fund insufficient services, that there is no accountability to the users of the marine or air facilities that they will be charged for. Once again, an added cost to the forest industry.
One of the major areas that sticks in the craw of the foresters in my region and across Canada, of course, is the memorandum of understanding between Canada and the United States. It appears that this understanding restricts our own management of our forests. The documents show that the United States must approve many of the changes in Canadian forest policy. At present we know that the United States has sent at least 64 directives to Canada since the memorandum of understanding was signed.
All of these things, whether it be FRDA, the goods and services tax, the social housing costs, the increase in unemployment insurance, whether it be the initiatives to have users pay in the marine area, or whether it be the cuts in the Canada Assistance Plan or Established Programs Financing. All of these things filter down to the forest industry through taxation and property taxes.
The forest industry is important to Canada. We must properly look after that industry.


Mr. Pierre H. Vincent (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, our producers and distributors in the lumber industry certainly depend on their capacity to sell their products on export markets. The GST will put them in a better position to compete efficiently on the world markets. Also, it will increase their competitiveness on our domestic market.
The multi-stage GST will totally replace the export tax. Like any other business, exporters will recover all tax paid on their purchases. That will decrease their operating costs in Canada and improve the performance on export markets.
The GST also helps the Canadian lumber industry save a lot. It does not create any problem to our lumber producers and distributors. It really gives them the opportunity to expand their business and create more jobs in Canada.
Early in 1990, Mr. Speaker, some lumber wholesalers expressed concerns about their cash-flow situation, because of the tax they were paying on the wood purchased to resale on the international market. Our government listened to them, as we always do, Mr. Speaker.
Nowadays, registered exporters can buy zero-rated lumber in Canada to sell on foreign markets, which should satisfy the needs of the industry.
If my hon. colleague ever wanted more details on this subject, I would recommend that helook at the Interpretation Bulletin B-044 of February 1, 1991, issued by Revenue Canada.
One of the main flaws of the previous federal sales tax scheme was that it charged a large hidden tax on our exports. That situation increased costs and made our exporters less competitive than it would have been the case otherwise. The hidden tax on exports accounted on
March 7, 1991

average for nearly 1 per cent of the export price or, more than 10 per cent of many exporters' profit margins.
By removing the tax on inputs, the GST is doing away with this disadvantage and reducing operating costs in Canada. The direct result of that will be an increase of about $9 billion, or 1.4 per cent of our gross domestic product, i.e. the amount of products and services generally produced by our economy. Increased growth means increased investments and job creation for Canadians.


THE BUDGET
Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: By coming to this House this evening and being rather angiy at the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, I am going to let my colleagues in this House and Canadians decide whether or not I have cause to be in this state.
A week ago yesterday I asked a rather simple question in the House of Commons, and I will quote it in order to make sure that I do not mislead anyone. A little over a year ago the Prime Minister stated, and I quote the Prime Minister: "In our second mandate we are going to focus more and more of our attention and resources and the fundamental building blocks of a competitive society on long-term investment in people, skills training, education, research and development."
I went on to say: "yesterday's continued freeze"-because it was the day after the budget-"of transfer payments for education as well as the $100 million cut for training constituted a flagrant contradiction of what the Prime Minister said."
What answer am I given? What stands out most of all? "They are not frozen". I did not say that. I said that there was a continued freeze of what had been. I pointed out that according to the minister's own budgetary figures, $100 million had been reduced or cut-call it what you will-for training.
After the Minister of Finance makes his statement, there is in Hansard documentation that the Prime Minister said: "They are not frozen." Supposedly they have been increased by 3.7 per cent. Why does the Prime Minister or the Minister of Finance not tell Canadians
Adjournment Debate
what that 3.7 per cent means? It means a transfer of tax points, but that is very different from cash. The cash is drying up. The Prime Minister knows it. The Minister of Finance knows it, and I am disappointed.
When is a cut a cut? We have in the estimates dealing with post-secondary education a reduction, a change of $485.8 million, almost $500 million. How large does it have to be? When is a cut a cut? Why this doubletalk? When will the minister stop using gobbledegook? Will the minister or his parliamentary secretary stand up in this House today and tell Canadians, admit to them that he has cut post-secondary education, thereby threatening our nation's competitiveness?

Last year, the Canadian University and College Association as well as the Canadian Federation of Students had predicted, in light of last year's budget, that the cash payments would stop in some provinces-if I remember well and I think I do-in 1997 in Quebec, in 1999 in Ontario and at about the same time in the other provinces. That was before another freeze was brought in. The situation is getting worse. Why is the federal government withdrawing completely from the cash payments program? Why is the minister penalizing the poorer regions? Why does the government persist in attacking programs that bring us together as a nation?

On October 23, 1990,1 had also asked the minister a question with respect to the goods and services tax and the impact it would have on students. I suggested, according to a study it received, that it would cost students between $340 and $750 more per year.
Again, it was gobbledegook. It was inconsistent. It was illogical. It was not precise. This continued freeze will cost students another $1,000 between now and 1995. We know that the tuition fees are going up at an astronomical rate. I mentioned that at one college in British Columbia the rates were up over 300 per cent. There are tuition fee increases of 200 per cent, over 100 per cent.
The student debt is skyrocketing out of sight. I met a young woman two days ago from my constituency who said to me: "I have just graduated. It was from a very prestigious university, but I cannot find a job. What am I

March 7, 1991
Adjournment Debate
to do? How am I going to repay that $10,000 debt?" I really do not know. During the last week, I have been talking to constituents, people from Diamond, St. Germain, River Park South, St. Vital and in my own area where I live, Windsor Park, Niakwa. I have been talking to people from Norwood and from St. Boniface.
They have been saying a lot of interesting things. Interestingly enough, they match some points made by Carol Goar in The Toronto Star today. First of all, she identified the major culprit in the increase of inflation, the very element that the minister is trying to control, as the minister himself. Why? Because of the increases in taxes. The minister is the major culprit. She goes on to say that between 1986 and 1990, income has gone up since 1986 by 32 per cent. But the federal tax load has gone up by 35 per cent, and that is not even counting the astronomical increases in provincial and municipal taxes.
Ms. Goar goes on to point out that beating the inflation rate down is one way of proceeding but it has high costs, severe unemployment. We know that. It is almost 10 per cent. It is predicted to go up to 10 per cent. So people are frightened.
One more point that she makes and my constituents have made is: "In order for Canada to enjoy an new golden era, it will have to find its niche in a world of fiercely competitive trading blocs where the environment must be respected and brains count more than natural resources".
That is the issue. That is what the government has not understood, that we have to invest in our people in order to be competitive. Cutting the transfer payments, cutting the grants for training and retraining, capping research and development, science and technology is not going to achieve that goal.


M. Pierre H. Vincent (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, if you knew how fed up I am to hear the Opposition say foolish things. Education, first of all, comes under provincial jurisdiction. The federal government makes a substantial contribution to this sector under Established Programs Financing. It will contribute $20 billion this year and this amount will continue to increase in the following years.
Total federal transfers to the provinces, Mr. Speaker, will reach $36 billion this year. It means that 22 per cent of the federal government total Estimates, 22 per cent of the revenues collected from Canadian taxpayers will go directly to the provinces, to provincial organizations, and these payments are in cash. Furthermore, the government gives financial support to the provinces under various other programs.
And you know, Mr. Speaker, since 1984, an attempt was made to reduce the inherited debt. My colleague from the Opposition does not like it to hear this, but it is a fact. We have to try to reduce the debt which we inherited from his party, from his government.


Ron J. Duhamel: Tell the truth!


Pierre H. Vincent: You see, Mr. Speaker! I let him speak. He could be polite and return the courtesy.


Ron J. Duhamel: Tell the truth!


Pierre H. Vincent: I am telling the truth. Allow me to speak, I was polite with you.
Mr. Speaker, my colleague referred to a $100 million cut-back in the employment development program. Again this is not true. It is not a cut-back but a reduction of the projected increase. There is quite a difference between a decrease in salary-the people of Trois-Ri-vieres know all about that-and a decrease in the rate of increase of my salary. That difference has to be made.
As my colleague pointed out, at the 1989 conference of provincial premiers the Prime Minister was the one who raised the issue of education in Canada, and he has already done an excellent job to find solutions to the national problem of education. It was the Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney, who did that with his provincial colleagues.
Mr. Speaker, I see that my time is running out. In conclusion I should like to say that the budget of the Minister of Finance relies on the private sector so that our policy will produce dividends for all Canadians.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly this House stands adjourned until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning, pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.29 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Friday, March 8,1991